Category Archives: Religion and Philosophy

The Intellectual Legacy of Carl Schmitt 1

by • Religion and Philosophy • Tags:

                                                by Keith Preston

Part One: p. 1

Early Life and Intellectual Development

The Turmoil of Weimar and the State of the Exception

Part Two: p. 6

The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy and The Concept of the Political

Part Three: p. 11

The Destruction of the Weimar Republic and the Rise of the Nazis

Part Four: p. 15

The Nazi Era, The Postwar Period, and Schmitt’s Contemporary Relevance

Part One: Early Life and Intellectual Development

Among the many fascinating figures that emerged from the intellectual culture of the Weimar Republic that existed in Germany between the two world wars, perhaps none are quite as significant or unique as Carl Schmitt. An eminent jurist and law professor during the Weimar era, Schmitt was arguably the greatest political theorist of the twentieth century. He is also among the most widely misinterpreted or misunderstood. The misconceptions regarding Schmitt are essentially traceable to two issues. The first of these is obvious enough: Schmitt’s collaboration with the Nazi regime during the early years of the Third Reich. However, the other reason why Schmitt’s ideas are so frequently misrepresented or even reviled in contemporary liberal intellectual circles may ultimately be the most important. Schmitt’s works in political and legal theory provide what is by far the most penetrating critique of the ideological and moral presumptions of modern liberal democracy and its institutional workings.

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Reflections on His Goofiness: William Gillis on Positive and Negative Liberty 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Religion and Philosophy

Goofy Gillis has a lengthy interview podcast interview available. Listen here.

Here’s my general take on the content of this interview.

He’s not unintelligent, and much of what he is saying is not “wrong” per se. But I know enough about him to know that his idea of “freedom” amounts to the de facto compulsory universalization of the PC/SJW/Antifa/call-out culture paradigm, although perhaps enforced by extra-legal vigilante violence rather than a conventional state.

His ideology seems to be “Total positive freedom to make unlimited choices resulting in absolute diversity, except for people who might do something I don’t like, such as being ‘reactionary.'” That’s consistent with the nonsense I’ve seen in his Twitter feed.

Technology or no technology, progress or no progress, the evidence from all relevant fields shows that humans are naturally tribal in a social context, and individual values are rooted in their psychological and genetic proclivities. Where there is “freedom,” there is “diversity.” But diversity often includes the existence of polar opposites.

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A History of Decentralization 5

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Environment, Law/Justice, Left and Right, Men and Women, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Secession, Strategy

aragon.black
Jun 11, 2019
14 minute read (full)

First let’s decentralize history…

This month’s thematic has been a real challenge for us and raised many questions in our minds. Why? The history of decentralization is complex and non-linear. But most of all, it is difficult to be considered from an objective point of view, stripped of the predominance of the state.

Talking about decentralization leads obviously to discuss about centralization; to find the ghosts of history, to cross-reference the victories and failures of social-political movements; to discover some contemporary alternatives to the generalized centralization of our lives. Unless we consider that a technology is neutral, in the end, we cannot talk about decentralization without talking about governance, suffrage, politics or apoliticism, autonomy, organization… and the dominant model of centralization: the nation-state. Still, if a very vast literature and documentation concerns rise of states, it must be stated that the one granted to the opposite, i. e. the absence of a state, is almost non-existent. More…

The Dr. Strange of the American Revolution Reply

by • Health and Medicine, Religion and Philosophy, Science and Technology, Uncategorized

nautil.us
Brian Gallagher

“I ascribe the Success of our Revolution to a Galaxy,” Benjamin Rush wrote to John Adams, in 1812. He wasn’t invoking the astrological. It was commonplace then to associate a bright assembly of people with the starry band in the night sky that Chaucer called “the Milky Wey.” Yet Rush crossed out “a Galaxy” and wrote in, perhaps for the sake of specificity, “an Illustrious band of Statesmen—philosophers—patriots & heroes.” Historian Jill Lepore has written that, in the “comic-book version of history that serves as our national heritage, where the Founding Fathers are like the Hanna-Barbera Super Friends, Paine is Aquaman to Washington’s Superman and Jefferson’s Batman.” And Rush? I posed this question to Stephen Fried, author of the recent book, Rush: Revolution, Madness & the Visionary Doctor Who Became a Founding Father. Fried replied, “Dr. Strange.” More…

Why we disagree about human nature Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy

Elizabeth Hannon & Tim Lewens (Eds) Why we disagree about human nature.Oxford University Press, 2018. 206 pp. £30 hbk.

JULY 1, 2019

By Simon Jarrett

If one day a disturbingly precocious child were to ask what part you had played in the nature/ nurture war, what would you reply? Were you with the massed intellectual ranks who, since the philosopher David Hull’s ground-breaking 1986 classic ‘On Human Nature,’ have denied that there is any such thing as a common nature for all humans? Or did you join Stephen Pinker’s 2003 counter-revolution, when The Blank Slate sought to reclaim the ground for the Enlightenment, and the idea that there is something essentially the same about all humans across time, space and culture?

If you are not quite sure where you stand, or perhaps too sure where you stand, then this pleasingly eclectic collection of ten essays on human nature, and whether we can meaningfully talk about such a thing, will be of great help. Its contributors, who come from psychology, philosophy of science, social and biological anthropology, evolutionary theory, and the study of animal cognition, include human nature advocates, deniers, and sceptics. We could perhaps call the sceptics ‘so-whaters’ – they agree there may be something we can attach the label ‘human nature’ to, but query whether it really matters, or carries any explanatory weight. These people would take our (hopefully apocryphal) infant prodigy aside and say, ‘well there are some conceptual complexities here that make it quite difficult to give you a straightforward answer.’ More…

Video Games That Made People Question Their Beliefs Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized

Gita Jackson
Kotaku

When Scott Udall first played Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance shortly after it came out in 2005, he was in a vulnerable spot. Udall, who grew up Mormon in Salt Lake City, Utah, was very religious, and his family were all politically active Republicans. His parents had gone through a messy divorce, and he’d lost contact with his father’s side of the family. He found solace in Path of Radiance’s world, and when the sequel, Radiant Dawn, came out two years later, he was excited to revisit the characters. He didn’t realize when he started playing that Radiant Dawn would become a catalyst that shook him from his previously held convictions. More…

Smash All Dogmas: Overcoming the Addiction to Ideology 7

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy

By Keith Preston

Originally published in Tribes Magazine

Perhaps one of the most curious features of modernity is the way in which ideologies have replaced religions as a principal source of contentiousness. During the era of the nineteenth century, when the intellectual revolution of the Enlightenment was being institutionalized, a few perceptive thinkers recognized that the “death of God” did not mean the death of dogma. In 1844, Max Stirner noted that “our atheists are pious people,” an acknowledgment that humanism and liberalism had replaced Christianity as the religion of the intellectual elite. Similarly, Friedrich Nietzsche’s “Parable of the Madman” was rooted in the recognition of the consequences of the loss of faith, its metaphysical underpinnings, and its derivative traditions.

“What was holiest and mightiest of all that the world has yet owned has bled to death under our knives: who will wipe this blood off us? What water is there for us to clean ourselves? What festivals of atonement, what sacred games shall we have to invent? Is not the greatness of this deed too great for us? Must we ourselves not become gods simply to appear worthy of it?” (Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882)

The era of the twentieth century revealed that the Age of Faith gave way not to an Age of Reason, as Voltaire or Thomas Paine would have hoped for, but to an Age of Ideology. What were the great conflicts of the twentieth century, whether the two world wars or the Cold War, but wars of ideology that paralleled or exceeded the great wars of religion that had taken place during previous centuries?

Many different ideologies abound in the same manner that many different religious sects can be identified. Ideologies are typically grouped into the categories of Left and Right. The Left is thought to favor equality, progress, and universality, and leftists include liberals, progressives, socialists, social democrats, communists, left-libertarians, and left-anarchists. The Right is thought to favor hierarchy, tradition, and the particular, and rightists include conservatives, reactionaries, traditionalists, monarchists, right-libertarians, fascists, and national socialists. There are also a range of ideologies that defy the left/right model such as nationalism, populism, environmentalism, regionalism, feminism, and third positionism.

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Trans-Tribalism or: Why Traditionalists Should Stop Worrying and Embrace the Queer Revolution 8

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy, Sexuality and the State • Tags:

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

I like conservatives. Not all conservatives. Not the bomb bomb bomb bomb bomb Iran kind or the endangered white male victim kind. But the Traditionalist kind. The Old Right, Paleolibertarian, fuck-you-mind-your-own-damn-business kind. I like people like Bill Kaufman, Wendell Berry, Ron Paul and H.L. Mencken. I admire the prose and courage of Yukio Mishima. I appreciate the insight of Martin Heidegger. I think Oswald Spengler’s ideas are at least as prophetic as those of Gramsci and Marx. I even think Alain de Benoist has a few good ideas (and about 67 bad ones). Justin Raimondo used to be one of my favorite writers before he mysteriously vanished up Donald Trump’s orange asshole. And I consider antifa-hate-thing Troy Southgate to be a personal friend of mine.

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The Last Temptation of the Evangelical Right 2

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy

I generally hold to the obviously heterodox view that, contextually speaking, Donald Trump is the most liberal president the USA has ever had (though Barack Obama was more liberal on some social issues like the environment and transgender rights, and Jimmy Carter was more liberal on some foreign policy issues like international human rights). It is therefore interesting that his biggest supporters would be some of the furthest right sectors of US society, such as the religious right and the racialist right. Imagine Hugh Hefner or Larry Flynt running for president in the 1960s, 1970s, or 1980s with followers of George Wallace, Jerry Falwell, or Pat Robertson as their biggest backers., and you have a rough analogy to the present situation. This article by a neocon evangelical and former member of the Bush administration explains why. During the George W. Bush era, I said that Dubya did not govern any further to the right than LBJ, and Trump is much further to the left.

By Michael Gerson

The Atlantic

ne of the most extraordinary things about our current politics—really, one of the most extraordinary developments of recent political history—is the loyal adherence of religious conservatives to Donald Trump. The president won four-fifths of the votes of white evangelical Christians. This was a higher level of support than either Ronald Reagan or George W. Bush, an outspoken evangelical himself, ever received.

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The Church of Jesus Christ Satanist 1

by • Religion and Philosophy

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

Maybe this is evil but I’ve always wanted to start a cult. It just seems like a fun thing to do. The robes, the guns, the girls, the mirrored aviator shades. Death squads, armed compounds, and fireside orgies. There is just something strangely romantic to me about taking over a ghost town in Wyoming, painting all the buildings blood red, and declaring war on the federal government and reality itself. The fact that it’s also a tax exempt way to get laid and loaded doesn’t exactly hurt either. Sure it usually ends badly but to go out in a blaze of glory set by the feds on live television while neck deep in barely legal pussy, oh sweet Jesus, what a way to go! So I figured, after 11 years in Catholic school and another 6 in hermetic self-isolation, why not try my hand at the game. I’m an off-puttingly charismatic and mentally ill gadfly. If Jim Jones, Osho, and Charlie Manson, then why not Comrade Hermit. It’s high time we had ourselves a genderfuck messiah. The idea is very 2019, don’t you think?

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Keith Preston on “Thinkers Against Modernity” Keith Preston 2

by • Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy

My recent interview with Kevin Barrett. This is one of the better interviews I have done. Listen here.

Listen HERE

Keith Preston is a notable anarchist thinker and incisive critic of Secular Humanist Idiocy Tending Towards Political Correctness (SHITT-PC)*…the same hegemonic pseudo-religion Jonathan Revusky calls Anti-Religious Religious Fundamentalism (ARRF).

In this interview we discuss Keith’s recent book Thinkers Against Modernity, a concise and readable synopsis of intellectuals who have influenced the European New Right. Though it leaves out the two most important Traditionalist thinkers—René Guenon and Renée Girard—Thinkers Against Modernity does a terrific job of elucidating complex and difficult ideas, and showing why late 19th and 20th century intellectuals who questioned progressivist materialism (among other post-sacred cows) are now more relevant than ever.

Thinkers Against Modernity is cheaper than a course in 20th century intellectual history—and offers a much higher signal-to-noise ratio than is normally found in the academy. It also has the courage to ask the million dollar question: What will happen when the Western world completes the process it is now undergoing and finishes losing faith in nihilism?

Some of us, following René Guenon, have lost faith in nihilism and turned to traditional religion in general…and the best-preserved one, Islam, in particular. Others have sketched out other possible paths: Belloc and Chesterton’s Catholicism, Nietzche’s superman, Junger’s heroic individualism, or  various forms of political engagement. Keith Preston’s book is a terrific introduction to some of the most significant thinkers who have seen, and struggled with, the failure of modernity.

 

*Don’t blame Keith for that acronym, I just made it up.

Aristocratic Aesthetic Socialism 1

by • Religion and Philosophy • Tags:

By Robert Stark

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By Robert Stark: Originally Published on Alt of Center

The concept of beauty throughout history has been a force for creation, inspiring mankind to reach the pinnacle of civilization. From men accomplishing great things to win over a lover, the beautiful female as a muse for the artist, religions building great temples and cathedrals to attract worshipers, kings and emperors building monuments to demonstrate their greatness, and businesses using aesthetics in architecture and advertisements to attract more consumers.

In today’s society aesthetics serves primarily as a force to manipulate people to keep them striving and conforming to the liberal capitalist system. Advertisements use aesthetics to create a vision of a product to consume; not just the product itself but an overall aesthetically pleasing scene involving beautiful women, luxurious furnishings, great architecture, natural scenery, and music to create the mood.

Aesthetics then become a mechanism to keep people enslaved to the system in hope that they can one day date or marry an attractive woman, buy aesthetically pleasing merchandise, vacation in aesthetically pleasing locals, and live in an aesthetically pleasing community.

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Just Grateful Reply

by • Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized

“Cultivate the habit of being grateful for every good thing that comes to you, and to give thanks continuously. And because all things have contributed to your advancement, you should include all things in your gratitude.”

―Ralph Waldo Emerson

struggle

“Struggle” statue, Kalemegdan

 

When I was on blackout status at the treatment facility in Las Vegas, thinking I was special and therefore deserved and expected the CAs to keep an eye on my car for me, I was forced to take a loss and didn’t find out about it until it was too late. During that time I wasn’t allowed to receive any visitors for the first 45 days – except for my sponsor – an older recovering alcoholic from Texas who walks with a cane and talks about Death during breakfast; and who was diagnosed with a wicked case of malignant spinal cord tumors some years ago. Surgical strategies were successful at removing the tumors from his spine but the operation left him with permanent disabilities that wiped out any chance of walking again. The old man literally had to shit in a pan for the first 6 months and couldn’t go to sleep without going through an entire process of crawling and “transferring” into bed. After nearly 2 years of assisted shitting solutions, he was able to move one leg just enough to smash around on a cane. He continued gaining movement until he was able to shit in peace again, and then, started showering on his own. Before anyone knew it, he was somehow driving again. Then, the tumors came back. He had to go for a second surgery and although the doctors were successful at removing the tumors from his spine again, the surgery took him back to the start.

All the way back to the pan.

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EVACUATING UTOPIA: A History of Christian Anarchism Reply

by • Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

Lecture delivered by Wayne John Sturgeon at the second international conference of the National-Anarchist Movement, England, June 23, 2018.

“Isn’t the world already

At Peace and aren’t we

The only warring faction?”

-Crass

Improvements made straight roads,

but the crooked roads without improvement,

are the roads of genius.

-William Blake

INTRODUCTION

I would like to begin this lecture with a quote from a contemporary theologian, Alasdair Macintyre, who made the following candid observation in reference to our own times, when writing on the fall of the western Roman Empire:

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Troy Southgate Speech – Masters Of Our Own Destiny : Anarchy Beyond Ressentiment Reply

by • Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags: ,

A must listen. This a much needed critique of the radical left and radical right alike.

Troy Southgate’s speech about Masters of our own Destiny : anarchy beyond ressentiment@ Second International N-AM Conference in UK,June 23-24 2018 More info : http://www.national-anarchist.net

When Conservatives Become Outcasts Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags:

The Southern Poverty Law Center now attacks religious conservatives and mainstream political conservatives in the same way it attacks white supremacist organizations. The further leftward the wider society, government and culture drift, the more people and groups with “conservative” values will be on the receiving end of such attacks. It will be interesting to see if these groups retain their traditional patriotism the more they are regarded as outcasts, or whether they will (hopefully) embrace “anti-Americanism.”

By Carol Swain

First Things

Catholics, Evangelical Christians, and pro-family organizations have a common adversary, one that is virulent and relentless. The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is a powerful progressive advocacy group that says its primary mission is to fight hatred, teach tolerance, and seek justice. Despite its noble beginnings in the years following the civil rights movement, during which it fought white supremacist groups resisting social change and the rule of law, the SPLC now works to advance the agenda of the cultural left. Ironically, given the deeply Christian character of the civil rights movement, the SPLC now equates traditional Christian and pro-family organizations with hate groups such as the Aryan Nations, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazis. What makes these religious groups an SPLC target? A shared biblical worldview that condemns homosexuality and transgenderism.

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The Ugly Coded Critique of Chick-Fil-A’s Christianity Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Religion and Philosophy, Uncategorized • Tags:

Liberal and left hysteria over “Chick-Fil-A” coming to town is reminiscent of the way the religious right would react to the opening of an adult bookstore or a gay bar back in the day. This article also makes an interesting point about demographics.

By Stephen Carter

Bloomberg.Com

The New Yorker has been taking it on the chin lately for its essay about Chick-fil-A’s “infiltration” of New York City. Although most of the piece is about the evils of fast food and the chain’s ubiquitous “Eat Mor Chikin” advertising campaign, the essay has been excoriated for its anti-Christian tone. “The brand’s arrival here feels like an infiltration, in no small part because of its pervasive Christian traditionalism,” we’re told. Not just that: “Its headquarters, in Atlanta, are adorned with Bible verses and a statue of Jesus washing a disciple’s feet. Its stores close on Sundays.” And lest we forget: “The restaurant’s corporate purpose still begins with the words ‘to glorify God.’”

What the author really seems angry about is that the company’s CEO opposes same-sex marriage. But the framing of the piece made Christianity the villain, and the headline — “Chick-fil-A’s Creepy Infiltration of New York City” — was sufficiently troubling that Nate Silver quickly tweeted “This is why Trump won.” Fair point. Religious bigotry is always dangerous. But there’s a deeper problem here, a difficulty endemic to today’s secular left: an all-too-frequent weird refusal to acknowledge the demographics of Christianity. When you mock Christians, you’re not mocking who you think you are.

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