Describe the American Right and how it got to where it currently is as well as its current course.

[Navarro]

In order to properly defend itself from an Enlightenment that cannot stop Enlightening, they've (unwittingly or not) latched onto some far older attitudes as a new bed rock, a lot of which harkens back to the ancient Republic the Founding Fathers much admired. Liberalism has been the Achilles heel of the West, unable to counter the left, if not it's progenitor! It is a noble idea (disregarding its lack of built in "stop" function), but liberty alone is no backbone for a civilisation's beliefs.

The problem isn't anything inherent with liberalism or the Enlightenment. Liberalism is, as you said, a noble ideology which brought in a new age of human freedom and development, but it assumes a Christian foundation. Guess what WW1, WW2, the Holocaust, and other such atrocities and genocides shattered the West's faith in?

 

[Aldarion]

Modern Right, including American one, is little more than warmed-over old Left.

 

[LordsFire]

Modern Right, including American one, is little more than warmed-over old Left.

If by 'old' you mean '1790's left,' then sure.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

The problem isn't anything inherent with liberalism or the Enlightenment. Liberalism is, as you said, a noble ideology which brought in a new age of human freedom and development, but it assumes a Christian foundation. Guess what WW1, WW2, the Holocaust, and other such atrocities and genocides shattered the West's faith in?

I'm no baby out with the bathwater neo-reactionary, don't misunderstand me. Liberalism, especially in the English context, evolved out of a very old constitutional heritage. But you're sort of proving my point how, in order for it to work properly, liberalism has to be constrained by older ideas that are the true bedrock of a civilisation. On its own it just runs amok and cannot stop, made all the worse by being wrapped up and confused with French liberalism, the year zero doctrine of Rousseau from which all this madness derives.

 

[Aldarion]

If by 'old' you mean '1790's left,' then sure.

Yes. I mean, I know it is ancient history for Americans, but 1790s were basically yesterday.

Although the so-called "Right" in the US and Western Europe seems to be making big strides towards reaching the positions of 1970s Left.

 

[Lord Sovereign]

Yes. I mean, I know it is ancient history for Americans, but 1790s were basically yesterday.

They're yesterday in the same way the Punic Wars would have been for Julius Caesar. You'd be surprised at the amount that can change in a few centuries.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I'm no baby out with the bathwater neo-reactionary, don't misunderstand me. Liberalism, especially in the English context, evolved out of a very old constitutional heritage. But you're sort of proving my point how, in order for it to work properly, liberalism has to be constrained by older ideas that are the true bedrock of civilization. On its own, it just runs amok and cannot stop, made all the worse by being wrapped up and confused with French liberalism, the year zero doctrine of Rousseau from which all this madness derives.

Ok I have got to get this off my chest. Maybe if said "Bedrock" wanted any credibility it should have not gotten greedy during and after the first World War with the Treaty of Versailles and not have been made the "Call girl" of just about every megalomaniac authoritarian regime ever since for all of the Old World's talk about yesterday's glory it's had a really REALLY bad habit of playing the capitulation and has had to rely an awful darn lot on American wealth and manpower. This is also one of the many reasons why we are in the spot we are.

As far as the problem with the "American Right?" well... which one? Problem is that Right wing is essentially anyone not of the uniparty . The problem with the Ancap and liberalism branches is that rather than try to protlotyse strengthen our own base and demand smaller government, we tend to have a habit of going "The enemy of my enemy is my friend" and then have a surprised Pikachu face when said "Allies" either straight up stabbing us in the back and or kicking dust in our face and leaving us in a weaker position than before.

turns out fair-weather friends are not really good friends.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

The problem isn't anything inherent with liberalism or the Enlightenment. Liberalism is, as you said, a noble ideology which brought in a new age of human freedom and development, but it assumes a Christian foundation. Guess what WW1, WW2, the Holocaust, and other such atrocities and genocides shattered the West's faith in?

Which is amusing because all of that misery was brought about by atheists, secularists, neopagans and sun worshipping theocrats.

Almost as if there was a group of social deconstructivists who ensured that the wrong lesson was learned from the century of global conflagration their mongrel kindred engineered.

 

[Aldarion]

They're yesterday in the same way the Punic Wars would have been for Julius Caesar. You'd be surprised at the amount that can change in a few centuries.

Problem is that change is usually for the worse. Seems to be the human nature...

 

[Morphic Tide]

Problem is that change is usually for the worse.

For the last two hundred years to be "usually" for the worst, you have to thoroughly ignore the material conditions. Famines and plagues were routine enough tragedies to be readily identified as outright cyclic. The way the world has changed has rendered these things so few and far between that the bulk of the former in the last century are readily traced to spectacular mismanagement if not active malice and the latter are readily seen as something we can stop outright, with a lot of work and a little luck.

Unless you place your faith as of supreme importance, literally sitting back and watching entire peoples die out because to prevent that would demand you compromise that faith in some way, flat-out Luddite or Amish views on modern life that the safety or leisure is actively bad, I fail to understand how industrialization in itself was a bad thing. And that covers such a huge amount of the changes that it immediately calls into question the plausibility of them being "usually" for the worse.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Industrialization has been a net benefit for the species. Automization without say making sure your employees are also investors though? That's utterly maimed our civilization

 

[Morphic Tide]

Industrialization has been a net benefit for the species. Atomization without say making sure your employees are also investors though? That's utterly maimed our civilization

Exactly, going out of the way to meet labor demands on as short a time-table with as little risk or liability as possible, all things that have fairly ready impediments given the will to do so, lead to shuffling millions upon millions around the world and hundreds of thousands sloshing around between non-communal neighborhoods in the major cities.

But that's feeding industrialization as quickly as possible, with too little time to realize problems before they became inevitable. The world could very well have been much better off with another 50 years of mercantilism for the transition in economic system to happen well into the industrialization process instead of being practically synonymous with its start. If for no other reason than making it clear what are industrial problems and what are capitalism problems.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

Industrialization has been a net benefit for the species. Atomization without say making sure your employees are also investors though? That's utterly maimed our civilization

Explain.

 

[Zyobot]

Look, I get the modern world is far from perfect, but as others have noted, it’s myopic to assert that everything new soiled a glorious past that should never have ended, and reflects the people who believe in a false “Whiggish progress or pre-Enlightenment tradition” dichotomy more it does actual reality.

I mean, c’mon, we’re typing this on our high-end computers from heated homes, with food in fridges that’ll remain fresh for weeks on end and is readilt replenished via a quick trip to the grocery store (at least, for now). Sure, fertility rates are low (probably lower than they should be), but infant and child mortality have been practically eliminated, not to mention how people in general typically don’t die in their thirties anymore, in large part thanks to modern medicine and the fact that minor cuts that might’ve become gangrenous and killed you even a century ago heal good as new nowadays. Frankly, our ancestors probably would’ve killed to have the luxuries we do, and while I’m sure there are ways “Modernity” could be greatly improved upon, preferring to be born a peasant living in 1300s France is utter idiocy—much trying to force the rest of us to partake alongside you.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

Explain.

I'll tackle it from two ends, the Mental and the Material.

As a species we are evolved to proliferate and work long, demanding hours. We thrive on healthy stress and bad, cubicle stress kills us. We are inherently competitive and hyper minarchistic to the extent that a mistrust of stuff outside our little tribes is genetically encoded.

Converting to factories from farms and specialized smiths and wrights worked so well because the civilizations that did it could just point to new land masses and tell then to go there. Vent your inner nature and make kings of yourselves in those new lands.

But now on the modern age when any energy and resources that ought to be used to colonize our skies is put to welfare and moronic social causes.

When manufacturing is out sourced and so efficiently automatic that hundreds of millions of people can't even make money...it's created a situation where our species can't earn, can't explore, can't compete and can't take risk.

And that's going to cause serious problems.

So much of our society is displaced and it was done without say making the employees share holders so they at least could see a modicum of gain even if it's just pennies; from their obsolescence and they're told its wrong to try and build a life outside of a narrow academic fetishizing system that further degrades the human spirit.

And that's the problem.

Not industrialization its the attempt by the proponents of AI and urbanization so turn men into insects.

And it won't work, something will break.

 

[KilroywasNOTHere]

I'll tackle it from two ends, the Mental and the Material.

As a species we are evolved to proliferate and work long, demanding hours. We thrive on healthy stress and bad, cubicle stress kills us. We are inherently competitive and hyper-minarchistic to the extent that a mistrust of stuff outside our little tribes is genetically encoded.

Converting to factories from farms and specialized smiths and wrights worked so well because the civilizations that did it could just point to new land masses and tell then to go there. Vent your inner nature and make kings of yourselves in those new lands.

But now on the modern age when any energy and resources that ought to be used to colonize our skies is put to welfare and moronic social causes.

When manufacturing is out sourced and so efficiently automatic that hundreds of millions of people can't even make money...it's created a situation where our species can't earn, can't explore, can't compete and can't take risk.

And that's going to cause serious problems.

So much of our society is displaced and it was done without say making the employees shareholders so they at least could see a modicum of gain even if it's just pennies; from their obsolescence and they're told its wrong to try and build a life outside of a narrow academic fetishizing system that further degrades the human spirit.

And that's the problem.

Not industrialization its the attempt by the proponents of AI and urbanization so turn men into insects.

And it won't work, something will break.

eh I think I have to go with zyobot on this one it's not like the peasants were living long lives, yes part of the low life expectancy was due to high infant deaths but outside of your wealthy upperclass (much like most of the founding fathers ironically enough), it wasn't out of the ordinary to call 40 or even 50 years, old. If not stress, then disease famine and violence.

And contrary to what Hollywood likes to portray the wild west wasn't exactly the best of times either. Most of that "New Land was already taken up by the railroads and big Government Also an 1870s depression that almost no one talks about. So it wasn't as explorative as one might think.

now does modernity have it's share of problems, yeah, but I can't help but think it's a trade-off and more of a matter of what you're personally willing to tolerate.

 

[The Immortal Watch Dog]

eh I think I have to go with zyobot on this one it's not like the peasants were living long lives, yes part of the low life expectancy was due to high infant deaths but outside of your wealthy upperclass (much like most of the founding fathers ironically enough), it wasn't out of the ordinary to call 40 or even 50 years, old. If not stress, then disease famine and violence.

And contrary to what Hollywood likes to portray the wild west wasn't exactly the best of times either. Most of that "New Land was already taken up by the railroads and big Government Also an 1870s depression that almost no one talks about. So it wasn't as explorative as one might think.

now does modernity have it's share of problems, yeah, but I can't help but think it's a trade-off and more of a matter of what you're personally willing to tolerate.

I was hardly glorifying the past, merely stating that we are hardwired to compete.

 

[Aldarion]

For the last two hundred years to be "usually" for the worst, you have to thoroughly ignore the material conditions. Famines and plagues were routine enough tragedies to be readily identified as outright cyclic. The way the world has changed has rendered these things so few and far between that the bulk of the former in the last century are readily traced to spectacular mismanagement if not active malice and the latter are readily seen as something we can stop outright, with a lot of work and a little luck.

Unless you place your faith as of supreme importance, literally sitting back and watching entire peoples die out because to prevent that would demand you compromise that faith in some way, flat-out Luddite or Amish views on modern life that the safety or leisure is actively bad, I fail to understand how industrialization in itself was a bad thing. And that covers such a huge amount of the changes that it immediately calls into question the plausibility of them being "usually" for the worse.

I was talking about the social change. You were talking about Romans, and for them technology didn't change much in 200 years.

Although, considering how technological progress has engendered globalization, I wonder whether it may really be a damnation in disguise.

 

[Zyobot]

Even if technological progress is damnation in disguise, short of something like nuclear war, that’s still hardly worse than dying at thirty from a flesh wound that became gangrenous or starving to death because your harvest failed. Really, that’s no way to live, and any God who’d chastise us for advancing instead of subjecting our descendants to the short, miserable lives we lived before the Industrial Revolution doesn’t deserve to be worshipped at all. So, if that makes me one of the Devil’s accomplices, then so be it, as a “Third Way” option that syncretizes the best of both isn’t available right now.

 

[Bacle]

A problem with the American Right is that it keeps letting foreign 'conservatives', who are not part of the US culture or society, try to dictate what their platform should be.

Foreign Monarchists in particularly have no place in debates about US politics.