Category: Glenn W

Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 02DEC2023 – Dissident Monarchists

photog Glenn W, Guest Contributors , ,

Hi photog,

I’m a reviled civic nationalist just like you but you shouldn’t put more weight on successful predictions by the dissident right than they deserve. I realized in 2004-2006, when Republicans had the presidency and both houses of congress, that we were in deep do-do. With Republican control nothing changed. Literally, nothing changed. While I like to think I’m smarter than the average bear it doesn’t mean that I have a solution for all that ails the U.S. any more than the dissident right does.

Before I stopped following the Zman (please don’t think I have a grudge against him, I just know him better than most) he was reading a lot about Karl Marx and the early Russian communists. Zman was impressed by their sharp social criticisms; they did an excellent job of diagnosing the problems 19th century Europe was facing. The elephant in the room with the Marxists was their solution to these problems was horrific. Seeing a problem doesn’t mean you can solve it.

I hate to say it but a lot of what is happening in the U.S. right now reminds me of problems I used to associate with South America; a loss of the middle class and large slums. When I was younger I would wonder why the ruling classes in these countries didn’t do more to encourage the development of a middle class. As time passed I realized that the ruling classes in those countries liked things that way, they liked being an aristocracy that lorded it over the peasants. They had a class identity and not a national identity. I think that’s where the U.S. is now but the dissident right solution of moving toward monarchy is not a solution. All it will do is formalize the class distinctions we’re already seeing.

At least that’s how I see it.

 

Comment from TomD

I’m not certain I see that it is the far right moving to a monarchy. It seem that the current trend of the concentration of all power into the executive branch and the underlying administrative state would come closest to a de facto monarchy. And that looks to be a feature of a significant portion of the entire ruling class, regardless of party affiliation.

Please expand on the equation of far right to monarchy.

Reply by Glenn W

Hi Tom,
 
When I wrote the comment about monarchy I had in mind an argument that Zman has made on many occasions where he compares our modern democracy with a monarchy. Zman argues that being in the white hot spotlight of an election discourages any self respecting person from running in the first place. Over time the sane people are boiled off and only the most superficial people would consider running for election to any public office. This how we get congress critters like Alexandria Ocasio-Cortes in office. He then compares the democratic clown show to a monarchy where the king has to keep the people happy or risk being toppled from power. That is an over simplification but not by much.
 
To be fair, Zman probably isn’t advocating for monarchy but he does consider it to be superior to any democratic system. What I think he actually advocates, without saying it in the open, is some form of commmunitarianism (for an introduction to what that is please read “The Communitarian Option”).
 
The common thread that runs throughout the dissident right, to use Zman’s term, is its antagonism to individualism. Zman constantly hits on the theme that the voting public is a bunch of morons who cannot be trusted to vote for enlightened self interest. Of course that is the principle that our founding is based on and why he disdains civic nationalists. The details of what exactly the dissident right would like to replace our system with are always vague but it won’t be a system where the hoi polloi are allowed to mess things up.

Guest Contributor – Glenn W – 18APR2023 – Subjectivity on the Right

photog Glenn W, Guest Contributors ,

ZMan, as a rule, is an excellent observer and commenter on the moral and social decline of the West. That being said, his over confident analysis of the psychology of woke is subjective and full of unsupported allegations. I’m not going to try and write a comprehensive critique but I do want to point a couple of things out that are worth considering.

I know James Lindsay and Paul Gottfried got into a dust-up but haven’t followed it closely. I don’t have, and won’t have, a Twitter account so I couldn’t follow the discussion. This statement by ZMan is, at best, a half truth:

“It needs to be said that Paul Gottfried’s dog probably knows more about this topic than Lindsay will ever know. Given Gottfried’s connection to Frankfurt School theorist Herbert Marcuse, he is as close as we get to an expert on the forerunners of this new ideology gripping the minds of the ruling class.”

First of all I’ve heard Gottfried say that his PhD is in European history. His studying under Marcuse as a PhD student gives him no special insight into what is happening now. He may have such insight but it isn’t because he studied under Marcuse 60 years ago.

Lindsay has spent a tremendous amount of time studying the “woke” primary source material and can legitimately be called a subject matter specialist. That does not mean he can’t make mistakes but ZMans blowing him off out of hand is just hand waving.

This ZMan statement made me chuckle:

“That said, there is a tendency of people on what we call the Right to engage in the same binary thinking we see with the people we call the Left. That means playing the old game of linguistic guilt by association.”

Let me get this straight: Paul Gottfried who studied under the hard core leftist Herbert Marcuse is a great guy but Harry Jaffa who studied under that “mediocrity” Leo Strauss is a bum. Gee, that seems pretty binary to me. Projection anyone?

The last thing I want to point out is ZMan claims special insight into the psychology of the “woke” ruling class. While he is a smart man he has no claim to special insight into the hive mind that is our “woke” overlords. His opinion isn’t worth any more than those dreaded civic nationalists.