Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - What is the Point of Conservatives？

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May 3, 2021 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

01:28:30

What is the Point of Conservatives？

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	I think I'm live.
	You'll have to give me a moment to get everything sorted as these things are.
	You know how it goes.
	There's no professionalism around here.
	That'd spoil the fun.
	Yep, I can hear myself there.
	There we go.
	Okay.
	At least that's working.
	Andy B asks, small C or big C?
	Good question.
	I mean, I suppose the big C is a derivative of the small C, so I guess we'll start at the root of the problem, which is, what's the point?
	What's the point of conservatives?
	I'll give it a minute.
	How are you guys?
	If I look tired, it's because I am.
	I have long days at the moment, just on holiday, reading books, working hard, as always.
	There's no rest of the wicked.
	But the guys are covering things very admirably in my absence.
	I will be back.
	I'm entitled to my holiday legally, so I'm taking it.
	What was I going to say?
	Yeah, no, I went rock climbing again today as well.
	So I'm absolutely exhausted and I ache all over and it's late.
	So yeah, this will probably be less coherent than normal, especially on the subject.
	I haven't got a clear answer yet.
	That's the thing.
	Normally I do these sort of things when I have a clear answer to something.
	And I'm not, I don't have a clear answer to what is the point of conservatives.
	But I think that what I could do is possibly lay out the problem and hopefully greater minds than mine can solve it or at least prompt us in the direction towards an answer.
	Because I've been really, really trying hard to figure out just what the hell it means to be called a conservative.
	And I have no idea.
	So for anyone who isn't aware of my political journey, I have always considered myself something of a liberal in the English tradition.
	Although in my 20s, in my early 20s, I wasn't really very political at all.
	In my late to mid-20s, I read a lot of philosophy and history.
	And I guess you kind of get a sense of these things.
	Even if it's just reading for fun, you still end up establishing your own view on things.
	And I read part of Das Capital, and I think it was about a third or a half of it.
	It was really boring.
	And it was way more fun to read about Caesar crossing the Alps.
	And so I guess in a way I became a kind of soft socialist.
	Like, yeah, sure, you know, a bit of redistribution wouldn't hurt.
	I never bought into like communism as a philosophy or anything like that.
	But I understood the moral arguments that, look, the people in the bottom are the people who actually need the help.
	And if there is help to be given, then maybe that's the place that you start.
	And honestly, it's a position I still hold now.
	You know, I don't see why, in a sort of more sort of Tucker Carlson-esque way, I guess, where it's like, it's just a pragmatic look at, okay, if we're using the state to do something to improve society, that's where you need to begin, because these are the people who need the help.
	The middle and upper classes can figure out their own solutions, can't they?
	They've got all the tools, they've got the education, they've got the wealth.
	Why would they need any kind of help?
	But instead, now we have, of course, loads of identity leftists claiming oppression while they've got their university degrees and their 50 grand a year jobs.
	It's just like, just shut your mouths.
	I just don't care.
	You're not oppressed, especially if you're not an elect, especially if you're an elected politician.
	Don't give me sexism, racism, blah, blah, blah, isms.
	I just don't want to hear it.
	Your highness, okay?
	Like, don't give me this crap.
	But anyway, so I got into YouTube politically because of feminism invading my video games.
	And I got to work.
	And so I hardened and solidified my position in classical liberalism, which I guess you could call a form of republicanism, because I suppose if I was going to start afresh, I wouldn't set up a monarchy.
	But I'm not anti-monarchy in the sort of hardline republican sense.
	I don't think monarchies are evil.
	I think they're just kind of nonsensical.
	They have come to us as an inheritance from the past.
	And we have had lots of social, like civilizational political, we in the English-speaking world have had lots of civilizational conversations regarding these things over the course of like a thousand years.
	So for any of the leftists in America, like, oh, what are Anglo-Saxon political traditions?
	That.
	Constitutionalism is the Anglo-Saxon political tradition.
	How do we create a world in which everyone seems to feel they're being treated fairly?
	And a constitution seemed to be it.
	That seems to be the best way.
	That's what it is.
	It's nothing to do about race, nothing to do about like Nazis.
	As I've seen some left-wingers go, oh, Anglo-Saxon political traditions are a synonym for fascism.
	That's just, it's just the dumbest take in the world.
	It's the least educated take.
	And it seems like a take that is born from racism because you're just like, well, English people are white.
	Germans are white.
	Therefore, Nazis.
	They must be the same.
	And it's so ridiculous.
	It's embarrassing.
	It's the polar opposite that the state shouldn't have control and over dominion of all of society versus the state should have control and dominion over all of society.
	It's like it's chalk and cheese.
	You are idiots if you think that.
	But anyway, what is, like, conservatism, traditionalism, whatever it is?
	Because I'm just – it seems that I'm being called a conservative an awful lot, right?
	And certain sort of respected centre-left, quote-unquote, liberal people who think that rights are constructed with the state accuse me of being conservative.
	I'm like, okay, but what does that mean?
	Like, what are you saying that I'm advocating for in that statement?
	Because I can't seem to figure it out.
	As I'm sure that you've seen many, many times on the internet, people are just like, look, conservatives are actually progressives that are just driving the speed limit.
	They agree to all of the progressive changes.
	They don't disagree with the direction this is going in.
	And if they do disagree, what do they do, really?
	You know, they're very tepid on their defense when they should be going the offense.
	If they genuinely think that critical race theory and the sort of beating heart of the beating anti-liberal heart of Western progressivism and critical race theory is like genuinely a threat to what you consider to be the right moral order of the universe, then you should be rooting this out and banning it and pathologizing those people who are promoting it as being the racist that they are.
	But instead, the conservatives just say, oh, please don't attack us again.
	Please don't attack us again.
	And it's, I mean, it's got to the point where like entire positions are being reversed.
	And like what I mean with the Anglo-Saxon traditions thing, like, for, like, I can't remember the name of the woman.
	Let me see if I can find her name.
	I've probably still got the thing up.
	Here we go.
	Right.
	So this woman called Zelina.
	I saw Atheism is Unstoppable's video on this.
	I've got a lot to say about atheism in the near future as well.
	Not that it's good or bad, just how the discourse is surprisingly unuseful to get to a resolution and doesn't seem to be able to resolve.
	But anyway, this lady called Zelina had a congressman called Ted Liu, some sort of East Asian immigrant to America.
	And they were both basically saying, yeah, so, you know, that's just Nazism.
	And it's like, it just seems that you're racist.
	And so for some reason, the conservatives aren't like, hey, this is just open bigotry.
	We are completely against this and we're going to act against you because of it.
	And in this country, I realize in America it's a different story.
	But in this country, racism is illegal, basically.
	You can't legally be a racist.
	And if you are, you'll be put on a terror watch list.
	Now, I'm not a racist, so I don't, and I don't like racism.
	I don't think it's right.
	I think it is wrong.
	But I also think that maybe the state shouldn't just be persecuting you for having an opinion.
	You know, I don't like, you know, I probably don't agree with Nick Fuentes on very much, but let's assume that we both agree that maybe your civil rights shouldn't be violated by being put on a no-fly list.
	Like, you don't have to be a fan of Nick Fuentes to say that.
	I don't think Jeremy Corbyn should be put on a no-fly list.
	And I think he is literally the closest thing in Britain to an open revolutionary and terrorist, you know, but I don't think he should be put on a no-fly list until he does something, actually does something.
	Because the common law, again, one of those Anglo-Saxon political traditions is entirely based on action and not just having a belief, right?
	It's based on what you do.
	You shouldn't be criminalizing beliefs.
	Unlike the French view of the Enlightenment, in which the beliefs were the problem.
	And the people, the circular firing, or sorry, the circular guillotining squad was just guilloting each other out of what they thought they would potentially do because of the thoughts in their head.
	And that's very much against the Anglo-Saxon political tradition.
	And that's important.
	And I think that if there is going to be something called conservatism, it's surely going to be rooted in that, that kind of skepticism of power and government.
	That seems like the most English way of doing things, the most traditionally English-speaking way of doing things, if you care about traditions.
	But I'm putting that into the mouths of conservatives, though, right?
	I'm, as an outsider, someone who was sort of centre-left and is now, whenever I do a political compass test, centre-right, but still very much in the libertarian sort of quadrant because I'm, of course, for small government.
	And I'm for constitutionalism.
	I'm for individualism.
	You know, I'm for all these things.
	But all of these things make, like, intertwine into with what I guess that we'll just call traditionalism rather than conservatism to make the English political tradition of the last 300 years.
	And so it's like, right, I don't want to just jettison all that.
	There's a lot of value that's been found in that.
	But I also don't want to just jettison the traditions either.
	Because there's something aesthetically pleasing about them.
	And I think there's something that's probably morally right about them as well.
	And I think this is one of the key points I think the atheists kind of missed, is that Christianity is not immoral.
	That's the first thing that atheists need to accept this and admit it, that Christianity is not immoral, right?
	It can be weaponized as any religion, as any dogma can be weaponized by people who are immoral.
	But invariably, like most, I think most people agree that Jesus Christ wasn't the sort of overbearing, dogmatic evangelical preacher who's like, right, we need to burn the queers, right?
	I don't think Jesus would have done that.
	And I don't think any sensible, reasonable reading of what Jesus as a man was like would get you to that point.
	It obviously is something that has come in elsewhere to get to that point.
	And so the atheists, and this is the thing with the left and I we have to call it the left because that's just kind of what it calls itself.
	But the left and tradition, a lot of our traditions are actually quite noble and a lot of them are actually really good.
	And they provide us with a kind of grounding in not just the real world, but also a continuity as a civilization.
	So we get a perspective of where we are and where we have been.
	And this gives us a good opening into where we could go.
	But I never, again, I'm putting all of these words into the mouths of conservatives from my best reading so far.
	Because it seems that conservatism is just kind of in all other aspects of politics, right?
	I could be like, right, the communists are here.
	I know what they want.
	They want revolution, seizure of the means of production, you know, the international overthrow of capitalism, whatever that means.
	And we'll talk about the language that we end up using in a bit.
	And, you know, you've got the classical liberals who want to reduce the size of the government, want the government out of my business.
	I want, you know, various other things.
	Then you've got like fascists over here who essentially want to turn everything into state veneration.
	Then you've got, you know, various other, whatever, you know, like minor political offshoots from these out of Enlightenment thought.
	And so they gradiate down to the most fine distinctions where it's like, yeah, well, I'm an anarchist, anarcho-primitivist, you know, vegan, transgender, blah, blah, blah.
	And it's like, okay, but that describes about five people.
	So just, okay, your personal view.
	But they're in these broad categories.
	But they sit around this sort of black hole that is just the term conservative.
	It's like conservatism.
	Okay, what does that mean?
	And I assume that it means traditionalism.
	And I say that because no one seems to be able to adequately define anything outside of the left's own definitions of that thing.
	And these are almost always pathologies.
	And people, which means that they're always framed in a very negative way, as if the very meaning of what it is that the opposition is doing is invalid at the core.
	And of course, this is a natural tactic to adopt.
	If you are political activists and you're trying to delegitimize the opposing position, you will, of course, characterize it and frame it in a particular way that's not very good.
	It's not to their benefit.
	But then why do the people on the other side of a left-wing attack just go, okay, well, I guess that's my framing.
	The only one that I can think of that it's actually kind of worked for is meritocracy.
	Meritocracy as a term was meant to be an attack on the idea of the sort of Western liberal tradition.
	And everyone's like, no, that sounds like a great idea.
	It's like, yes, it does.
	And because this is the culture of the sort of Protestants and their work ethic that happened to be the dominant sort of ethic of the English-speaking world.
	And so naturally, it became a positive trait.
	Oops for the communists, I guess.
	But it's the same thing with capitalism.
	So let me get a few things up.
	Hang on a second.
	So this is an article on the Atlas Society by Dr. Stephen Hicks, a man whose intellect I respect greatly.
	And so when he says, look, I here have 12 different definitions of what capitalism is.
	I was like, right, okay, well, the hell are we talking about then?
	And that's one of the problems with the term capitalism.
	No one seems to know.
	It's absolutely insufferable.
	I mean, look at this.
	Encyclopedia definitions, anti-capitalist definitions, Noam Chomsky and various others.
	And then five pro-capitalist definitions.
	And you've got, okay, fine, you've got quite a few, you know, theorists there talking about it.
	And they've all got their view.
	But the term capitalism was coined by just sort of proto-French revolutionaries, basically, and popularized by Marx.
	In the English language, apparently, it was very poorly known, the term capitalism.
	And Adam Smith never used it once.
	He's called the father of capitalism.
	So an ideology that he didn't espouse is being attributed to him.
	And this really bothers me because, okay, well, this is, again, an enemy position, an oppositional position that is ascribing negative content and intent into your term.
	And so there's a kind of like a kind of taintedness to it.
	Even if you can find virtues within them, polish those, so it kind of has a bit of a shine to it.
	It's always going to have this sort of taint of the sinister about it.
	And I don't really understand why people use it because it sounds distant and unrelated to real life.
	Whereas if you say, well, okay, well, I'm a liberal, I'm for private property, that's quite concrete.
	Everyone can think of their own private property and how and the relationship they have to the private property, what they can do with it, how they can operate it, how they can sell it, how they can modify it, things like this.
	Like then, then you're not talking about some abstract capitalist class.
	You can talk about property owners as individuals and you can point to them and you can actually measure them.
	You can weigh them up and you can actually see why they're invested in things.
	This is tangible.
	And it's also not the term the communists coined.
	So it doesn't have that kind of sinister undertone, which is why everyone and their mother still, after 300 years, hides behind the term liberal.
	And it really, again, like I see so many socialists or people who are basically socialists hiding behind the term liberal.
	And it's because they think that rights come from the state.
	And so I don't consider that to be a liberal position at all.
	I think our rights are innate.
	If you're a God-fearing person, you think God gave them to you.
	If you believe in Darwinism, then you believe that evolution and nature have imbued you with these things.
	And that's actually my position.
	I think these are just the natural things that we inherited from our evolutionary past.
	And they're useful.
	The next point is the word reactionary, which, I mean, like, I've been called this, but I can't see why, because I've got no interest in going backwards at all.
	I don't think there is going backwards.
	I think it's a totally silly, false premise.
	I think there is only going forwards.
	But I see lots of people who I view as intelligent, even if, again, I don't really, I don't necessarily agree with all of the things that they say.
	Maybe, you know, in some ways they're right about some things, and I think in some ways they're wrong about others.
	But I can't stand the fact that they call themselves reactionaries.
	This is the French left, the left, the French Enlightenment sort of left that was originally against the right, which was the monarchists.
	And these were absolute monarchists.
	These are people who want the divine right of kings and the king's rule over society.
	Again, not something I believe, obviously, but I get called a reactionary all the time.
	It's like, okay, well, I just don't think I want those things.
	But in the left, you have packed in sort of moderate Republicans, quite revolutionary Republicans, and then basically proto-communists.
	And these are the left, and they are characterizing anyone who isn't further attempting to go to the farthest outreaches of the left-wing philosophy as being reactionary.
	You can, from that position, from the most radical position, paint anyone towards the right of you as being a reactionary.
	And so it's like, why would anyone on the right adopt this term?
	Because again, because it was coined by radical left-wingers, it has this sinister undertone to it.
	Don't do it.
	And this thing, even the term conservatism itself, it's kind of tainted in that kind of way.
	What's worse, though, is that conservatism is tainted with this layer of inaction, which I can't stand.
	I absolutely despise the sort of torpor that conservatism puts over a person.
	Like, well, I'm a conservative.
	You know, I don't do anything.
	And the best I can do is just hope for another day to fend off the rabid hordes of leftists as they try and break down the next barrier in their way.
	What's the problem that leftists have got today?
	Oh, what?
	Too many people condemning incest.
	We need a campaign to normalize incest.
	Oh, brilliant.
	Conservatives leap to action.
	No, please, please don't make a shagger on family members for the love of God.
	You know, it's just, it's so pathetic.
	It's like, why are there people in your society being produced that actually like, yeah, incest is great, guys?
	Why are there people like that?
	You know, why can't you go out and take territory from the left?
	Why can't you seize back institutions?
	but things the Conservatives seem to have nothing.
	They seem to have no way of doing it, no way of forming a proper thought, a proper sort of, no, that's not the right word.
	What I mean is like the moral justification for their own existence and the expansion of their own existence is totally gone.
	The fire is out.
	This thing that is supposed to be passed down through the ages or whatever, what is it that you think you're preserving?
	What is it that you think you're doing?
	It just seems to be the slow, gradual, managed decline against the left.
	And I'm just like, right, okay, you have to find a way of persuading people in a positive manner for something.
	What are you for?
	And all I ever hear from conservatives is what they're against.
	And it's really insufficient.
	I mean, at least with the Whigs in America, the Republicans in America, which, to be honest, my kind of guys, at least with them, they're like, no, we are for something.
	We can tell you when you give us power, we're going to do this, this, this, this, and this.
	And that's, and it's going to be great for everyone.
	Trust us.
	You know, this constitutionalism, individual rights, which is a, you know, it is a good idea.
	You know, I'm selling it to myself.
	You know, we're going to do something.
	It's like, yeah, great, let's do something.
	And the conservatives are just stood there, like the virgins at a party, just holding their drinks and just going, oh, I don't want to talk to anyone.
	Like, what do you, where you can't get a thing called a Chad conservative?
	I'm sure of it like it's so weak and it's so like I mean where are the conservative theorists right.
	I can name dozens and dozens and dozens of leftist theorists.
	They're everywhere.
	University is just pouring them out.
	They're all over Twitter and Tumblr.
	And yeah, look, I've got theories about leftism and oppression to share with you.
	Oh, good.
	That's what I need.
	Another half-educated teenager or 20-something educating me about life.
	You know, like these people are spilling out everywhere.
	And there are quite a few classical liberal thinkers.
	I mean, Stephen Hicks' got like five different ones just lined up here.
	It's just, you know, you can think of probably a couple of dozen, you know, classical liberal thinkers.
	But I can think of hardly any like modern conservative thinkers.
	Notice how here these are all people who died hundreds of years ago, right?
	Like the most, who are we talking about here?
	Peter Hitchens, Roger Scruton, dead now.
	He obviously passed away.
	So, you know, Peter Hitchens, living.
	Yeah, see, Screw.
	See, some of the chat is Sargon becoming NRX.
	No, fuck off.
	You know, why are you using left-wing language to characterize yourself?
	You are making them paint you.
	You are allowing them to paint you as sinister.
	It's really despicable.
	It's pathetic, you know?
	But yeah, Scruton is pretty much the only really influential modern conservative.
	I think Pete Hitchens is as well.
	But like, what else is there?
	Where are they?
	Why aren't they existing?
	You know, why just if conservatism is so rich with tradition, where are they?
	Why aren't they everywhere?
	Why aren't we hearing about them everywhere?
	Why can't they sell something?
	And I find it really, really frustrating.
	And so I was like, right, okay, I assume by conservativism, they mean if they would say, look, our animating principles, right?
	If left alone in a vacuum, if there was no such thing as the Enlightenment and the left, what would conservatives do?
	And they must have some positive vision of civilization to put forth.
	So what would they do?
	And I assume that's traditionalism, as in they would follow some kind of what is called traditionalism.
	Now, I was looking around just to see what that could be, and I found an article written by a leftist where they just called traditionalism a fascist feudal nightmare, which means they don't know what a fascist is or they don't know what feudalism was.
	Or both, of course, which is probably true.
	But the fact that a leftist would view traditionalism as a form of oppression is inevitable, right?
	In the same way the traditionalist views the leftist and communism, whatever it is they're promoting, itself as a form of oppression, because it is.
	You know, you've got two different views of the world of what creates a good and decent place.
	So he in this goes after calling everyone a fascist who's into this.
	I don't know anything about this, by the way.
	I haven't even read this entire article.
	I just read through this.
	It's like, oh, look, everyone's a fascist.
	Okay, great.
	So what are traditionalists about?
	Traditionalism is not dissimilar in its adherence and advocacy of the old ways.
	That's very useful, isn't it?
	The old ways.
	Well, what are they?
	Don't know.
	Traditionalism blames all modern progress for the woes of the world.
	Okay.
	What else would you blame the woes of the world on?
	What would you blame on?
	We've been a democracy, like America has been a constitutional republic 250 years.
	If the woes of America are not somehow rooted in the constitutional republic and what it leaves out of human, like the human experience, then what could it be blamed on?
	Like, who are you going to blame?
	You know, this has been the system for hundreds of years.
	If parliamentary democracy is like, I suppose only like 100 years old in Britain, but if parliamentarianism is not to do, you know, part of the sort of modern tradition, that's kind of the ancient tradition, really, as well.
	But whatever modern democracy, parliamentary democracy is in Britain, again, been the status quo for 100 years.
	So what's the problem if not that?
	You know, things have changed tangibly and they are declining, obviously.
	And so if it's not modern parliamentary democracy to be the problem, what is it?
	But anyway, much of traditionalist thinking is that insists that non-modern forms, institution, and knowledge are where the world should be heading in order to return to a golden age.
	This is the mystical, ordered world from which our societies have fallen, a way of life in which the hazy past was in where society was holistic, people were satisfied, and the world was stable and made sense.
	Well, I mean, that's not wrong at all, in fact.
	There is definitely a sort of touch of the mystical about the idea of tradition.
	And I think that is actually the thing that leftists end up fetishizing when they look at non-Western cultures and say, oh, look at their precious, amazing culture.
	Isn't this magical?
	Yeah, it is.
	It's magical thinking.
	It literally is.
	Like, you know, there is a God involved or there are spirits and whatever, rituals, all these things that do create a kind of, you know, subjective, mythical view of the world.
	And that's their tradition.
	Yeah, that's true.
	That's not always bad.
	It's just bad when it's in the West, right?
	That's how the left views it.
	They fetishize it otherwise.
	But the non-modern forms, institution, and knowledge, right?
	Okay, so are traditionalists advocating a monarchist revolution?
	Do they want to overthrow the republic and instill a king?
	Is that what we're saying?
	Doesn't sound very likely, but I mean, maybe it is.
	Maybe that's what's going on.
	But why?
	Why would we do that?
	Because I mean, if it's a good idea, if it makes sense, I'm open to it.
	I just don't see how that could be a good idea.
	And nobody's making the argument.
	Apart from the libertarians, incidentally, which is really interesting.
	A lot of the libertarians, a lot of them seem to have come around to be like, yeah, maybe an absolute monarch who just had a really small government would be great.
	It's like, I can see the appeal.
	But anyway, the Golden Age covered all aspects of society, including religion, politics, social strata, gender, when the individual's relation, and the individual's relation to his or her society.
	The traditionalist blames our abandonment of these traditional forms for each and every ill of the world.
	Okay, but again, how could it not be that that's the case?
	Because if the Enlightenment has completely remodeled society, displaced religion, changed politics, altered the social strata, altered the concepts of gender and the individual's relation to society, and I think we can agree it's done all of those things, then you're saying the traditionists are right about the Enlightenment.
	Because in each one, right?
	So Locke's letter of toleration opens the door to plurality of religions.
	And his essay on human understanding opens the door to atheism, as Berkeley so aggressively attacked him on.
	Despite the fact that Locke himself wasn't an atheist, it was just about the fact that he could conceive of a material world that was kept operating in the absence of God.
	So, and then when it comes to politics, well, where is the monarchist party?
	I don't see it around much, right?
	It's like Yannis Cohen-Mickey and the libertarians, who himself is a libertarian.
	The monarchist parties are very, very fringe, in my opinion.
	So, it seems that the Enlightenment dominates politics.
	The conservatives seem to be labor in this country.
	The Republicans are busy selecting trans representatives for California and things like this.
	It seems that the Enlightenment has completely displaced traditionalism in the realm of politics.
	Social strata, well, obviously, we're egalitarian societies.
	There's no getting around that.
	Gender, well, yes, we now have one billion and more genders, probably as many genders as there are people at this point.
	We will eventually arrive at that point.
	I mean, we've arrived at the abolition of gender.
	So, yes, the Enlightenment has definitely changed gender, and it has changed the individual's relation to his or her society by changing the nature of what society's and the state's relationship is.
	Because previously, the idea was that rights came from God, and now rights come from the state, and therefore the individual's relationship with society has indeed changed.
	Because this means that the individual can claim entitlements to be rights.
	As in, I have a right to a house, I have a right to food, I have a right to water.
	Well, okay, if those things are in short supply, someone will be forced to provide you with this right.
	Changes the nature of what rights are.
	Rights are normally, in the sort of classically liberal Lockean English tradition, inherent.
	So, anything that is external to yourself is not a right.
	And a right is essentially anything that's intrinsic to yourself.
	But the French view, and you can see this in the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen, where the Americans have rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, again, all things that they could do if they were stranded on a desert island.
	The French one has it, life, liberty, and property.
	Much more Locke in actually.
	Locke was wrong when he said, and when he said property, he meant like the ability to own property, not that you would be provided with property, but I think that distinction was lost.
	But anyway, without getting too much into the weeds on this, what I'm saying is you can't say that the Enlightenment didn't displace tradition because it did.
	Absolutely.
	And so the problems that we have with the modern world cannot possibly come from any other source than the Enlightenment.
	Now, does this make the Enlightenment bad?
	No, obviously not.
	The Enlightenment has produced many great things, but the problem with the supremacy of reason, we could call it, is that it actually means that people can literally grow up on a farm, go away to a university or something for a year or two, and then come back, you know, thinking that they go away to university, thinking, I'm going to use my brain to solve all the world's problems, and then come back to that farm with a gun and then tell their fellow farmers to get in line or else they get shot.
	And that doesn't really happen with traditionalism, does it?
	You know, it's not quite the sort of grand world-ordering plan that the Enlightenment claimed to be.
	And I think that we should recognize the failures of the Enlightenment in the aesthetic realm.
	And this is where I think traditionalism really lies.
	But if this is what traditionalism is characterized by its enemies, and I don't know where the, I don't really see why I don't think they coined the term traditionalism.
	And I think that's the reason why it doesn't, in my view, have this kind of undercurrent of sinister intentions, right?
	Traditionalism actually sounds quite wholesome, really, when you think about it.
	And it sounds not like fascism or feudalism or anything like that.
	It sounds more family-oriented, hence the thumbnail of this stream.
	And this is the only thing I can think of that conservatives are meant to be, right?
	You're meant to be promoting this.
	This is meant to be the animating principle, the organizing principles.
	Like, so if left alone, what do conservatives do?
	Right?
	Well, they promote families.
	They promote going to church.
	They promote, you know, local gatherings of communities.
	They promote like Morris dancing or whatever else your local traditions are.
	And I always thought these things were embarrassing and quaint.
	But looking back at it, if it's about actually instantiating a kind of civilization, then that suddenly becomes like a bit more of a high-minded goal than just merely trying to fend off the left from taking whatever it is we happen to have grown up with.
	Right?
	If it's actually about look, producing a certain kind of person, you know, a kind of self-reliant, mature adult who reaches stations in life, you know, speaking very much on an individual sort of level to what you personally can do.
	I would have thought that would be a much stronger thing, a much stronger message to put out into the world.
	But I'm putting words into the mouths of conservatives as far as I can see.
	You know, it just seems to me that like nothing is really being done theoretically in this regard.
	And the people who are engaging with this sort of stuff theoretically are just taking on the faces of their enemies.
	It's like, why?
	Don't do it.
	Don't do it.
	Anyway, let's have a quick natter to the chaff for 20 minutes.
	What a load of waffle.
	Yeah, I'm not trying to attack or be divisive.
	I'm just telling you that, you know, as someone who's come to look at this thing from the outside, I'm just not impressed with the lack of public relations from the people involved in it, right?
	That's the main thing.
	And it's insufferable.
	because the left is doing so badly right now the left is is just it's in control of everything and it doesn't know what to do So it's like a mad giant that's just wrecking things.
	And this should be a prime opportunity.
	It should be prime turf to come out and absolutely smash them on the, on the floor of the debates, you know, the, in the public sphere, on the BBC.
	And what, you know, I just can't think of a conservative in the mainstream that can even, I like, I would just call them all, you know, leftists basically.
	Like, you know, like soft leftists, reluctant leftists.
	The progressives driving the speed limit.
	But the thing is, the question is, progress to what?
	You know, why aren't the conservatives like, okay, well, look, if like Bacon's proposition that, you know, we need to relieve the estate of man was the driving force forward for the Enlightenment, then at what point do we consider man's estate relieved?
	You know, ask them, ask them to vote.
	What were you looking for?
	Because if literally liberating the will from the human body was what you were going for, we disagree that's too far because that is too far.
	That's crazy.
	You know, like, you know, there's something to being a human that requires you to be in your body.
	And it requires you to recognize that your body is, you know, the arbiter and origin of your will, not something that's just directly subject to it.
	But anyway, yeah, well, Lauren Southern is woke on capitalism.
	Sure, but I imagine she's probably in favor of private property, right?
	So she probably has the liberal position on private property.
	Thomas Sowell, yeah, Thomas Sowell is one of the few.
	I should have brought him up.
	Thomas Sowell is good, but he, again, like, he's only one man.
	And like, for every Thomas Sowell, the left has a dozen Robin D'Angelos.
	And they're everywhere.
	They're constantly doing things.
	And the right has none of this.
	And it's like, okay, well, where is it?
	What can the Conservatives push for?
	What do I think about the Amazing Atheist and how he views conservatism?
	Honestly, he's a very skewed, warped and myopic view of conservatives.
	Yeah, I don't really understand his view on the conservatives, to be honest.
	I think it's just tainted by his hatred of religion.
	And the conservatives are obviously mostly religious, but they don't exactly put their case across well, in my opinion.
	And so I don't know what else to say with them.
	Yeah, Plerome here has got a good point.
	Because hierarchy, discernment, exclusion, purity are totally taboo as a result of the outcome of World War II and how said outcome was instrumentalized.
	Yeah, that's a great point.
	So hierarchy, I think Jordan Peterson made a very competent and morally justifiable and proactive argument for hierarchy.
	Hierarchy is something that's innate to humans and we can't get away from it.
	And every anarchist attempt has ended up with a hierarchy of some form anyway.
	So it's a complete delusion.
	And he frames it in the right way.
	So it's not just a hierarchy of power.
	It's a hierarchy of competence.
	It's not just the strongest should be in charge.
	It's the most competent should be in charge.
	Because that's a morally legitimizing factor.
	The next one, he says, discernment, exactly.
	That's a great point.
	That's a very easy, very easy thing to argue from from a conservative position.
	And again, you've got to make sure that if you're a conservative, right?
	Advice, you've got to check your language, right?
	Discernment, Le Plerome there is given is not a scientific term.
	It's a thick concept.
	It's a concept that has a great deal attached to it.
	And it tethers on to other concepts rather than the sort of thin concept of discrimination.
	And like this, this discernment includes a judgment on the part.
	So as Aristotle might have put it, a man of practical wisdom shows discernment.
	And already you can see we're on ground that the leftists can't argue from, right?
	Well, they don't know anything about practical wisdom or discernment.
	They believe that everything can be described a priori from absolute moral truths, Kantian style, and they're wrong.
	But exclusion.
	Now, this is the next one that I have been thinking about a lot.
	So discernment is great because of the moral character by which you're approaching a question, right?
	It's not about something that can be scientifically decided.
	And the concept of exclusion and exclusivity is very, very good because exclusivity is what makes anything worthwhile, right?
	Exclusivity is the essence of standards.
	I've been thinking about the concept of standards a lot recently as well.
	And it's something I'm going to write something on to make sure I get everything hammered down properly because I don't want to be sloppy about it.
	But standards are an important part of life, I think, an important part of civilization.
	And purity.
	Now, this is interesting because, again, with the concept of exclusivity, purity kind of goes hand in hand and with a sort of sacralism about something which implies a kind of metaphysical overlay of the self, right?
	So you view yourself as a kind of, you know, there's a kind of projection from your own mind onto what other people as well.
	You know, how you like you project onto your children a kind of sacredness.
	You know, you project onto them a kind of emotional view.
	Like, I don't even know how properly to describe it, but it contains in it certain kinds of attitudes and behaviors and the ways you feel about that thing.
	And it's kind of relational.
	And this, I think, is important and something conservatives have really kind of dropped the ball on because breaking relationships is one of the worst things you can do to a person.
	It's really horrible to deliberately break a person's relationships.
	And that's one of the things that's most pernicious about deplatforming.
	It's when the third party gets to come along and go, no, you guys, you can't have that relationship.
	You know, you may have enjoyed watching Donald Trump on Twitter or YouTube or Facebook or wherever, but no, the powers that be in Silicon Valley have decided you're not allowed to do that.
	That relationship is haram.
	It's forbidden.
	It's sinful.
	And anyone who goes around breaking relationships like that, you should probably be suspicious of.
	Because I would have thought that the traditionalists would have been like, no, relationships are the essence of the human condition.
	You are nothing without your relationships.
	That's why it's the worst punishment we can think of, bar death, to ostracize someone.
	That's what you do.
	You put them in solitary confinement.
	You kick them out of society.
	That's the worst thing.
	It's a horrible thing to do to people.
	And it makes them weird.
	It makes them turn strange.
	It does bad things to them.
	And so the conservatives should surely, again, not a scientific concept, but should surely be able to make a very strong moral argument from these sort of deep and thick, tangible things that human beings can't deny.
	You know, apart from the left, which, of course, finish that sentence as you like.
	But anyway, I think these are genuinely good, good things.
	But I was hoping to get answers from you guys.
	I did post this on Gab as well.
	Let's have a look at some of the comments.
	If I can get the comments up, can I get what?
	Oh, I've got a sign.
	I'm not signed in on this browser.
	Okay, well, I can't get the comments on this.
	Let's have to use my other browser.
	Right.
	So I put, I've recently been mulling the question, what's the point of a conservative?
	What are your thoughts?
	And so these are the responses I got.
	So Cape Diem, one of the earliest mental exercises I developed was to think liberally.
	I creatively and act conservatively, slowly with grave consideration.
	So any combination works.
	To conserve is not to be concrete and unmoving.
	It is to parcel out change, which is inevitable in the most effective and useful increments possible.
	Modern conservatives are largely lost because the speed of things outpaces their ability to conserve anything except small pockets or individual arenas.
	But again, I still feel that this is on the defensive, right?
	Like, I don't feel that the conservative here can go on the offensive.
	It feels like the conservative can never truly build anything.
	It can just manage the decline.
	And I don't.
	There's no fire there, right?
	And the next one, tradition is not the worship of the ashes, but the preservation of the fire.
	I've heard this before, and I think that there is something to it.
	The conservative worldview should fundamentally see itself as the instantiators of a certain kind of sacred fire of tradition.
	And I think, you know, because you need a way of selling it.
	You know, why be a conservative?
	What's the point?
	Well, you could be upholding what it is to be an Englishman or a Frenchman or a Dutchman or whatever it is.
	You know, it's a way of preserving it, a way of spreading it, a way of making it appealing, I would have thought.
	But because this would be like an essential definition, I would have thought, because everything else appears to be like an observant thing where you're saying, well, they do this, they do that, they do the other, they do this.
	It's like, yeah, okay, but that doesn't tell me about the organizing principles of the thing.
	And that's what they have to get at.
	But yeah, again, like, you've got a lot of people.
	Well, in practice, they seem to be getting to the same goal as the left-wing people, but at a more leisurely pace.
	Yeah.
	That's honestly a problem, isn't it?
	You know, if you want to actually not become communists eventually, because it looks like the way things are going, you know, how are the communists going to be stopped?
	Ash Catrim, you're English by actually being English.
	Yeah.
	And but the but to be an Englishman is a kind of station in life.
	You don't just fall into it.
	And you get people who are terrible Englishmen.
	Like an Englishman, there are boundaries.
	So what is and isn't an Englishman through behavior?
	You know, what is proper, what is appropriate to be considered an Englishman, as well as any other kind of cultural construct like that.
	And they are cultural constructs.
	But they do have a kind of essence that comes with its own set of animating principles that, again, if left alone, will create something big and interesting.
	And this is what we see.
	You know, this is what the heritage and the tradition had produced.
	And so there must be something that comes and blooms from this sort of sacred fire at the base of it.
	But I mean, again, I'm not the conservative thinker, right?
	I'm just trying to figure out what it is that they're trying to argue for.
	I don't think I'll ever change my opinion on the nature of the relation between the state and the individual.
	I don't think the state should have absolute power of the individual.
	And I don't think I ever will.
	I don't see why I ever will.
	Jesus.
	If you guys have got any solid ideas on this, let me know.
	Trad is Chad.
	Well, honestly, right?
	So I'm thinking as a father and the prophet of daddism, it's very interesting.
	On the decisions that you have to make, and so I was talking, I and the the way that you want to see the world right, because a lot of being a father is about passing down your own experiences.
	And when you see uh, the dilemma present itself.
	You are in a position where you have to agree or disagree and you have to be able to argue your case quite strongly.
	Because, for example, a friend of mine, the uh, the friend I mentioned on Joe Rogan podcast instantly about him uh, him being uh, he's only like five five five six, something like he's a little little guy, but he's a martial artist and he's very uh, physically active and he's, he's a man.
	You know, there's no question of it.
	Obviously uh, he's just small uh, but you know it's fine um but uh, his son is, because his son not also very tall and he's only about five uh, six or seven I think.
	But he was getting bullied at school by a kid like twice his age and he'd reported it to the teachers and the teachers did nothing.
	And then a few weeks later uh, he gets called in by the um, by the, by the teachers at the school and his son's there with his, you know, downcast and the teacher's like, your son punched a boy.
	Oh well, who was it?
	It's the boy who was bullying him a few weeks prior and he'd given the boy a black eye or something.
	And it's like bloody good, because my friend uh, being a martial artist, had taught his son how to throw a punch.
	And so his son, when he was being bullied, told him, look, you stand up for yourself, you throw that punch and the bully will leave you alone.
	And lo and behold, that's exactly what happened.
	It's exactly what happened.
	The bully kept going, he got punched in the face, no problem since right, but the school weren't happy with this.
	Suddenly, the son was the problem you, obviously.
	It's women who dominate this school, just for that.
	Just throw that fact out there.
	Um, that they're all like no no, violence is never the answer.
	And so my friend stood his ground on this.
	He's like no, sometimes violence is the answer.
	If a bully's attacking you, you're entitled to defend yourself and you should defend yourself.
	And he was just in front of the teacher saying, don't worry son, they're wrong, i'm right, which means you're right because you did what I told you.
	And after this, we're going to go get ice cream, you know, and by the end of it, like he had this amazing like they were, apparently they were giving him evils, absolute daggers, and uh, and he was just no, i'm not backing down this.
	I'm right, you're wrong, and I don't care what you have to say about it, because this is the case.
	And uh and he, he was just like his you know proudest day of his life with his son.
	I'm like yeah, it would be.
	You know, you're absolutely, absolutely entitled to it and that that's the, that's the sort of thing that you realize that you have to do as a father.
	Right, there will be idiots, absolute midwits and people who have competing Ethical systems, because they may have, you know, just vastly different views on life than you do because they don't have the same life experiences as you.
	I'm sure, I'm sure, too, you know, a mother, it seems totally valid and sensible to say, well, we don't solve our problems through violence because women don't like fighting much.
	But that's not the truth for boys.
	And boys tend to settle things through fighting sometimes.
	And that's just nature's way, it seems.
	And so if someone's attacking you, you're morally justified in defending yourself.
	And that will definitely put the bully out of the picture.
	It'll stop him from being a bully.
	And so you've solved your problems like a man.
	And that's right.
	It is right to solve your problems like a man if you're a man or you're a young man, going to become a man as you're older.
	And this, this, this, and this is just one, this just happens to be an example that he told me today when we went climbing.
	But I've seen examples of this in my own life where my son has come home and he's been in trouble.
	No, he wasn't in trouble.
	He was just, you know, some of the boys are being mean to him.
	They were fighting with him.
	And I think they were not picking on him, but you know what the sort of, you know, the stages leading up to it.
	And so basically what we did, what we do is just in the kitchen, we just have play fights, you know, where it's just like, you know, put your dukes up and I'll give him jabs to his belly and a couple of cuffs around the head.
	And it is his job to like duck and dodge and block, but also to come at me.
	And because I'm a lot bigger than him and I like the, you know, the sort of playground fighting with him, I let him punch as hard as he wants.
	And he's got a surprisingly hard punch for a six-year-old.
	And I teach him to be very, very aggressive.
	And like when he's play fighting.
	And, you know, not in every other realms of life, he's an incredibly polite, well-spoken, very gentle young man.
	But just when you get him, you know, when the mindset of right, this is now the consensual competition, then he's then he's, you know, eager for it.
	And it's good.
	He's very boyish in that way.
	I'm very proud of that.
	And he recently kind of got a bit in trouble with the ladies at his school because him and the other boys were play fighting out in the quad in their school.
	Now, I asked him about this because my wife had brought this up.
	And I asked him, Look, were you, you know, did you, you know, start something?
	Were they bullying you?
	What's going on?
	And he was just like, no, no, no, they were all just playing.
	And it seemed from the account that I got from my wife and the women that it was that it was just the boys play fighting in the school.
	And my wife was disapproving, the women at the school was disapproving.
	And I just absolutely held my ground and said, no, you did nothing wrong.
	So absolutely, it's fine.
	It's absolutely fine.
	100% fine for boys to play fight.
	And if you think differently, you're just wrong.
	And I'm never going to change my position on this because I was a boy.
	You know, you ladies, I'm afraid, are speaking from a position of total ignorance and you don't know what you're talking about.
	You're wrong.
	I don't even know how I got onto this now.
	I was just proud of these stories because I think they're important.
	And I think this is the sort of thing that is informing this inquiry into why conservatives are failing to produce something positive.
	Because this, this is like, I could tell both my friend and I, you know, we're both drawing on like, you know, the sort of deep experience of being men.
	And so I know, look, the women are not right about this.
	They don't understand it.
	They didn't go through it.
	We will teach our sons, right?
	We don't actually need the women's input on this.
	And I tell you what, I don't doubt that, and it's totally fair for women to do the same thing with their daughters.
	Say, look, your father does not know what it's like to be a woman, and you need to watch out for this and that and the other, blah, blah, blah, when it comes to men and or other women or whatever it is.
	And I completely accept those criticisms, you know, that I'm doubtless not going to be the best Arbiter of what it is to be a woman from a woman's point of view.
	But I think that the conservatives could be arguing from this position because what we were arguing from is what is proper for a man to do when confronted with a particular situation.
	When you have another man aggressing on you, it is proper for a man to stand up for himself.
	That's the right thing to do.
	And we are not drawing on reason, enlightenment, science.
	We're drawing on something that's essential, something in the lizard brain, something that's ancient, truly ancient, that's baked into us in a Petersonian lobster kind of way.
	I bet this instinct goes back, and the rightness of this goes back before there were even human beings.
	So if that is the sort of thing traditionalism is, then you can actually win arguments from that.
	But you've got to think of it about it, I guess, is what I would say to the conservatives or the traditionalists.
	But again, I'm just waffling now.
	But yeah, it's interesting watching how these things play out.
	It is an obligation to stand up for yourself.
	Have I commented on Marvel's Falcon and Wind Soldier?
	No, I don't want Marvel.
	Sorry.
	Never liked Marvel very much, to be honest.
	Take the anti-democracy pill, make Plato proud, make Edward I proud, make Franco proud.
	I don't want to make any of those people proud, really.
	I don't, maybe Edward I, but I know, I don't, I don't disagree with democracy.
	I don't disagree.
	As a way of managing power, I think democracy is the best way.
	And I think it produces the most preferable results.
	The question is really one of who should vote.
	And I do think that a restricted franchise is an idea who has, is an idea that has roots and an intellectual base from which to push out from.
	Heinleinian.
	You know, I'm very much Heinleinian in this regard.
	I do think that the franchise is something that should be earned because then it has value and you won't just vote for the Labour Party, presumably.
	Because I just hate this voting for Gibbs.
	I hate it.
	There should be some kind of law, some kind of restriction on politicians just saying we're going to give people money.
	It's so wrong, man.
	It's not the way that anything becomes prosperous.
	It's just not.
	How about make Attila proud?
	Oh, God.
	Make Henry V proud.
	getting closer, I suppose.
	Peter Hitchens, another stalwart year.
	Yes, yes.
	Worth voting for Lawrence Fox?
	Yeah, I mean, it's worth voting for any of the non-conservative non-labour alternatives.
	On Lotus Easters, we've got interviews with Lawrence Fox and David Curtin through the Reform, Reclaim, sorry, and Heritage Party.
	Both both seem, honestly, they're both very similar, frankly.
	They just seem sensible.
	But again, people going neo-reaction.
	I would never, never accept a left-wing label on myself.
	I would never accept the term reactionary.
	And the thing is, I don't even think of myself as a traditionalist.
	I still am a classical liberal.
	Give me a blank slate and I'm going to create a classically liberal society.
	I would just create it in a more Heinleinian mold because I like the confidence that it imbues itself with.
	And I do think that there are limits.
	When we already have restricted suffrage, obviously, children can't vote.
	Criminals can't vote.
	But I also think there needs to be an active amount of participation in that.
	There's no need, there's no need to have such a wide franchise as long as the ability to gain the franchise is open to all.
	I think that would be more sensible.
	I think it probably makes society a damn sight more conservative as well.
	But then maybe, maybe it wouldn't.
	Maybe it'd be the opposite.
	Maybe it'd be a terrible mistake.
	Maybe all the leftists are like, right, we'll get him.
	We'll become citizens then.
	And then everyone should be watching leftist death squads walking through the countryside going, well, it's constitutional that we have these now.
	Sorry.
	Like, damn, you know, that was a mistake.
	What was I thinking?
	You know, yet another failed idea from the Enlightenment Czech.
	American founders respected Cincinnatus for a reason.
	Yes, they did.
	Yes, they did.
	I like Cincinnatus.
	There were two generals that shot.
	Oh, no, he wasn't Cincinnatus that shot his own son for disobeying or shot executed his own son for disobeying orders, was it?
	It was someone else.
	since an artist was given dictatorial power and then willingly resigned it.
	George Washington style.
	How and who do you hold responsible for anything?
	Well, that's the eternal question.
	But one way of putting it is kind of stations in life, I think, is how a traditionalist would probably view it.
	You know, there are stations in life that people attain, they're not born into.
	Fatherhood is one of those things.
	And they come themselves with obligations and expectations and responsibilities.
	And this is what Jordan Peterson is talking about.
	And I think that these relational views of the world are real.
	Obviously, no one's going to say that fathers aren't real, mothers aren't real.
	Apart from insane leftists.
	And these have power.
	They have meaning.
	They have weight.
	They can actually resist left-wing thought.
	But it seems that conservatives don't weaponize them.
	It's frustrating.
	Well, never know what Caesar would have done.
	We do know what Caesar would have done, actually.
	He would have gone east.
	He was planning to go east, come back around through Germania, and have essentially a giant empire of everything because Alexander had gone one better.
	Clorox Bleach, you are pro-fascist.
	That is dumb.
	I am anti-fascist in exactly the same way I'm anti-communist.
	I don't want a totalitarian state.
	End of story.
	And again, I don't see myself ever changing on that position ever.
	I just can't see an argument for why I should let the government have control over my life, absolute control.
	Like, that's a horrible notion.
	It's horrible.
	I'm so glad your politics of Starship Troopers Vid is back on YouTube.
	Yeah, me too.
	Me too.
	I'm glad that it's just, you know, the claim was released, so now it's available again.
	So I watched it the other day because I haven't watched it in years, obviously.
	And like, I was going to go, I actually really did put a lot of work into this, didn't I?
	Because it's been like four years or something since I did it.
	And I can't really remember exactly all the details.
	But, you know, I'm very, very proud of the work I did for that.
	Do you think traditionalism can take back the culture at this point, or do we need to create our own?
	Well, you need to create your own all the time.
	And it's in the creation of new culture that the old institutions would presumably be taken back.
	Because if you're producing new culture, you're producing a new worldview or a restoration of an old worldview.
	But again, I don't think you go backwards.
	I think you need to, you know, examine the fire and draw strength and energy from that, right?
	And then this is what the leftists do with their view of revolution.
	You know, the revolution is a fire that never burns out.
	It's always there.
	And even if they win, they're still burning.
	Like, George Floyd, oh, conviction, conviction, conviction.
	Great.
	Okay.
	He's guilty on all charges.
	What now?
	Oh, that's not justice.
	Girl, it's like, well, what more could you have done?
	You know, but the burning fire of revolution is always going to be there for the left.
	And the traditionalists need to find their own burning fire and understand why they do what they do.
	Because they seem to be the only other game.
	Like, what else is there?
	What else is there?
	You know, if not conservatives, which I guess I'm just going to call traditionalists, because again, conservatives, the name that the left gave them in the French Revolution.
	What else is there?
	Talk about starship troopers as much as you like, but Denise Richards back in the day, OMFG.
	Man, if you're not a dizzy simp, you can get out of my chat.
	No culture has ever pulled back from the leftist moral slide.
	I think there probably has been.
	I mean, though, like, I think that the French Revolution is actually a pretty good model for what we can expect to see.
	And so there probably will be some Thermidorian reaction.
	I don't think Trump was it, incidentally.
	I think that the Thermidorian reaction will come after.
	I think that, you know, what's been happening is we're entering into a kind of digital reign of terror that I think we're living under at the moment.
	Because the reign of terror is a product of weakness, right?
	The weakness of the left and their fear of being overthrown.
	And so all of these just horrible purges, thank God, are acting digitally rather than physically like they did in France.
	But I think the Thermidorian reaction is due to come.
	And that's like, you know, the rule of the Chads, the Chad traditionalists who swat around purging the left.
	It's like, okay, well, the question, I suppose, is how does this end up coming about?
	Nationalism is more Enlightenment-ism.
	Yes, exactly.
	That's very true.
	That's absolutely right.
	This is why it's insufferable when someone says, oh, traditionalism is fascism.
	No.
	Fascism is a product of the Enlightenment.
	Fascism is a direct corollary of socialism.
	And it's just, again, essentially just honest socialism.
	Socialism is like, oh, we can collectivize the means of production.
	Everyone can have all of these things as a right.
	And it's like, fascism is like, right, you're right.
	That's correct.
	You know, the state is God.
	And the state is where rights are constructed.
	That's absolutely right.
	And now that we've adopted that premise, let's move on to our totalitarianism that you have already set up.
	You know, you've already, as a socialist, set up a totalitarian state.
	And the fascists just embrace that.
	And you can see you're a million miles away from like anything that can be considered like home and half traditionalism.
	You know, anything that's like rooted in like family values and hard work and good work ethic, being a good family man, the positive role model.
	Shut up.
	You know, stop talking about fascism.
	We're not talking about any of these things.
	We're not talking about the Enlightenment at all.
	We're talking about the sort of eternal condition of the human family and the human man and woman and how they should interact and the relations between other things.
	It's not everything's dependent on the state.
	You know, it's ridiculous.
	How far should we go back?
	Well, we shouldn't be going backwards.
	We should be going forwards.
	There's no choice.
	There's nowhere else to go.
	You know, we're in the moment and the next moment's coming.
	You can't go back to the previous moment.
	Just get used to it, right?
	But the question is one of behavior.
	And I think that what we need to be asking ourselves when we analyze a situation is the question essentially, who's demonstrating the virtue?
	And it's unpopular to talk about virtue and vice.
	But I really think if we do have a conversation, if we can somehow get the left to have that conversation, force it somehow, then they'll have to essentially just admit, you know, we are vicious people.
	We like vice.
	I mean, we read a magazine called Vice.
	We go around promoting things that are not good because the vices aren't.
	A vice is basically something that makes you weak, but it's seductive because it's pleasurable.
	It's got an immediate pleasure to it.
	It's satisfying in some way.
	And virtue is always the deferral of immediate gratification, but it makes you strong.
	That's the point of virtues.
	Virtues make you strong.
	And these are very interesting moral ways of looking at the world.
	And if we can frame the conversation in this way, I don't see how a traditionist could lose that conversation.
	And that seems, in my opinion, to be like an academic agent did a video going, look, the libertarians are forever going to lose to the socialists, and here's why.
	And I think he's right.
	I think that's why socialism comes after classical liberalism because it essentially adopts the same framework.
	And, okay, well, then we can't go down that road because then we end up at fascism and then we end up at communism and various other awful isms of autists who think they can solve every problem.
	And so we need to look somewhere else.
	And there has to be somewhere else that has an answer for what we should do.
	Because that's the question that really every person is asking.
	What should I do?
	And that's something you have to have an answer for as a dad, you know, as a parent.
	You absolutely have to have an answer for what we should do.
	And the left's answer to what we should do is just anything that feels good.
	And that produces debased people.
	People who don't know how to control themselves, don't know how to control their emotions, don't know how to control their eating habits, don't know how to control the way they treat other people, don't adhere to the standards.
	And that's not acceptable, is it?
	You know, it's the standards that make the civilization, the exclusivity of the standards makes the civilization.
	And this, but I feel that this is a very positive way of putting things across.
	Like, it's empowering.
	You know, it's like, hang on.
	You can get a grip on the world by just getting a grip on yourself.
	And we're miles away from talking about left-wing concerns.
	Like, we're not talking about racism or sexism or systemic oppression or any of these other fucking leftist terms.
	We're talking about personal responsibility and what a person can do and how a person can individually make the world better.
	And I think that's what we should be doing.
	Conservatism has failed to address climate change and has lost votes because of it.
	Yeah, and it's weird as well, isn't it?
	Because you'd think, well, I mean, if you're a conservative, you could be looking around at the countryside and going, well, we need to preserve this.
	Like, this is good stuff, right?
	And I tell you, I live in England.
	The countryside is one of the best bits about it.
	So if we can't make an argument against pollution, how do you win anything?
	The leftist worldview is maximize pleasure and minimize pain.
	Yeah, it's purely utilitarian.
	Yeah, this is exactly right.
	The leftists, they go straight from can't to mill and it's insufferable because there's Aristotle in the way and they act as if that doesn't exist, as if the means don't matter.
	And I'm sorry, but I think the means do matter.
	The means are the standards in action.
	And if you abandon the standards, you can do anything.
	That's terrible because they did.
	And we know how many people died, roughly.
	In fact, we'll never know exactly how many people died because there's just so goddamn many.
	God, I wish people eco-fascism.
	Why would you want to be a fascist?
	Like, what's appealing about fascism?
	I just don't understand why anyone finds fascism appealing.
	Like, why would you want some guy putting his boot on your neck and telling you, do this or I shoot you?
	Under no circumstances should that be happening.
	It's so bent.
	I'd love St. Augustine.
	I've read about St. Augustine.
	I've never read his own stuff, though.
	I should, really, because this thing, like, this is why I get, oh, are you taking the Christ pill?
	No, I'm not taking the fucking Christ pill.
	All right.
	I don't believe in God.
	I don't believe in Jesus.
	I don't, you know, but you can't say that Christianity is bad, right?
	It's not morally wrong, fundamentally, what Jesus is promoting.
	It's the right thing to do.
	But the, and it's entirely to the church's credit that it took Aristotle as being its kind of guide for individual action.
	And I don't see why that modern philosophers, right?
	What they say is, well, Aristotle's view of the world, the teleological view of the world, the will that's imbued in the nature of the world around us.
	That's an assumption we can't accept anymore.
	It's like, okay.
	But he's basically right on everything, isn't he?
	And it's like, yeah, yeah, I mean, people need, you know, family, friends, a bit of time to themselves.
	They need to think of themselves as being good.
	They need to enjoy doing the right thing, you know, because then they'll do it by habit.
	And we're habituated into being virtuous people.
	And, you know, this creates a better world.
	And it means that we are engaged in civic society.
	We are responsible to our friends and family.
	We feel better and we achieve eudaimonia.
	Yeah.
	Then fuck the ass.
	I don't care if the assumptions are bollocks.
	Like, let's just be purely, if we're going to be utilitarian about everything else, why can't we be utilitarian about Aristotle?
	Fuck your assumptions.
	Aristotle was right about what it is to be a human.
	That's what it is.
	You know, there is a purpose of being a human, and Aristotle got it right.
	I will defend this.
	And even then, maybe, I think I can probably, and this is, I'll at some point do one of these sort of ramble streams about atheism.
	Because I think I got called out by Stephen Knight the other day or one of his guests, Atheists for Liberty.
	And the thing is, I love Stephen Knight.
	I love Atheists for Liberty.
	I agree with everything they're doing.
	But I think there is a key that they're a key point that they've missed as to why people aren't bothered about atheism anymore.
	Like, no one wants to talk about it.
	But I'll talk about that another time.
	But, yeah, I'll probably wrap up in a minute.
	Here's a good one.
	Conservative thinking is evolutionary, while left-wing thinking is revolutionary and utopian.
	That's correct.
	That's exactly right.
	And the thing is, this puts the traditionalists in a quite strong place when it comes to Darwinism.
	You can say, well, look, we're not, you know, this, I guess what I'm trying to suggest is that we need a kind of secular traditionalism.
	And a secular traditionalism, I think, should be rooted in Aristotle's view of what a human should do.
	So whenever, you know, it's like, oh, what should I do with my life?
	What should I do?
	You know, we've got answers.
	And they're good, solid, tried and tested ones.
	And from the sort of modern external problems that a person faces, there's no reason why you can't appeal to the kind of emergent nature of what society is.
	And the appeal to the relational view of traditionalism, saying, look, this is where the good in mankind actually lies.
	You can promote this.
	But I do think that the number of people who have become irreligious, again, like myself, Means that you, I don't think you can just proselytize Christianity and expect, boom, done, problem solved.
	I don't think it's gonna work.
	I think there are too many people who have been disenchanted from religion.
	And I mean, I just can't ever see myself being religious.
	But I don't condemn, you know, all religions anyway.
	In fact, most religions have got some virtues themselves.
	So I think the new atheists were kind of wrong to ignore those.
	And this is where they failed.
	You know, they failed to provide a constructive alternative.
	And this is why nobody cares about atheism anymore.
	Yeah, Chuck Norris based in Greek pilled.
	Yeah, exactly.
	Exactly.
	What books from Aristotle would I recommend?
	Nicomachean Ethics, I guess.
	But to be honest with you, right, I wouldn't actually recommend reading Aristotle directly.
	I would actually recommend reading someone who has written a good book about Aristotle.
	Because, like, it's, you know, it's compiled of like two and a half thousand years ago from his notes from his students as they're walking around just listening to him waffle on about things.
	So it's not in any good order or anything like that.
	And so it would be, it would be easier for you to just get a book about Aristotle by someone good.
	Yeah, I think that's that's the best thing to do.
	Does Islam have any virtues?
	Yeah, absolutely.
	I mean, you can't conquer and indoctrinate such a large swathe of the globe without having any virtues.
	It's just not possible.
	And it's ridiculous to claim it's not.
	Islam is brilliant.
	As Churchill said, it's raising fearless soldiers and tireless families and an adherence to a certain kind of worldview, which I, you know, I've been, I really recently went back and watched a few videos about Islam.
	And I find it very interesting how when Muhammad dies and people revolt, the people who revolt call themselves prophets and things like this.
	It's very interesting how it seems to be a way of kind of politically uniting the Arabs against the Byzantines assassinates, who themselves had their own religious identities, the Zoroastrian and Christian, respectively.
	And it seems to be a way of essentially making the Arabs be able to compete in the same political sphere.
	And so Islam looks more to me like politics rather than just rather than actual sort of transcendental feel of theology.
	Let's get Tom Holland on.
	Yeah, I should.
	I will definitely try and get Tom Holland because I think he'll know what I'm talking about.
	Do you use an English bow?
	I did order a bow, but I broke it a while ago, and I haven't ordered a new one.
	But when my son gets a bit bigger, maybe I will order a new one.
	I have read Aquinas' five proofs of God's existence, but it was a long time ago, and I think I probably came away with a new atheist view on it.
	The prime directive of communism is to deny God.
	Well, the problem, honestly, the problem with all continental Enlightenment thinking is that it believes in materialism fundamentally.
	I mean, in the French Revolution, they had the cult of reason that lasted for about a year until Robespierre put a guillotine that.
	Because it's so funny, right?
	Going through Robespierre's view of the cult of reason.
	He was a deist, right?
	He was obviously like that there's a cult, there's a supreme being, there's also a supreme being.
	You are the biggest cringe in the world, like the cult of, you know, like creating a statue of reason, the personification of reason.
	He found it so cringe.
	And he wasn't wrong.
	And the Soviets did the same thing.
	It's all a part of the sort of continental enlightenment, the materialistic aspect of it.
	All things are material.
	Fundamentally, that are the origins of everything, like the origins of rights and material.
	And so it's like, okay, that's not good.
	Anyway, what are the main problems that libertarians have fighting against socialists from AA?
	Essentially, the libertarians are fighting for the same goal as socialists, which is freedom, whatever that means.
	And the problem is that the socialists have actually got a much broader definition of what freedom means.
	Because the libertarians have the definition that it means the freedom of the agent to be free of coercion.
	And that the agent being the body, the mind, the property that relationally is attached to the agent, the agent should be free to operate.
	And I agree with that view of libertarianism.
	I agree with that.
	But the problem is the socialists will say, ah, freedom means freedom from the material world.
	Freedom means freedom from obligation.
	It means freedom from requests of you, made by nature, made by family, made by anything.
	And because we've made the state God, the state is powerful enough to deliver it all.
	You know, we have absolute power.
	Do you know how we know we've got absolute power?
	Because we are totalitarian.
	We don't care about your constitution.
	We don't care about your rights.
	We create your rights.
	We tell you what your rights are.
	We're that powerful.
	And that's the problem.
	The irony of Robespierre calling anyone else cringe.
	Yeah, I know it's funny.
	But he really hated.
	He really hated it, apparently.
	So which party or parties would be voting for in the elections on Thursday?
	I don't know.
	I don't know.
	I'll see what's on the ballot.
	But I really don't like any of the options.
	How's Alexander doing?
	He's very fat and very happy.
	Actually, no, he's not very happy.
	He's got a sniffle.
	So he's kind of red-rimmed eyes and like sneezing a bit.
	But I mean, he's fine.
	But otherwise, he's very good.
	Thank you.
	Freer market, free market, smaller state, socialism, status, religion.
	Yeah, it is.
	They all are.
	This is the thing.
	They genuinely are kind of religions around the state.
	Socialism and fascism.
	And they're just awful.
	And even sort of like continental liberalism, you could frame that way.
	Like, they genuinely think that rights are constructed by the state, and that's just wrong.
	It's immoral.
	We libertarians just don't believe in state coercion.
	Yeah, I wish it went a bit further than that and it was against social coercion as well, to be honest.
	But imagine if Dank won the Scottish election.
	Oh, yes, that's right.
	Vote Dank 2021.
	If you live in Scotland, in Lanarkshire, I think it is, South Lanarkshire.
	Yeah, no, I mean, he won't.
	The SNP will win.
	Because the Scots are a bunch of commies.
	There, I fucking said it.
	All right.
	The boy, he's in bed.
	They're all in bed.
	Oh my God, it's half 12.
	What kind of father would I be if I allowed my son to stay up at half 12?
	You know, I'd be a terrible father.
	Rights are inherent in the individual, exactly.
	Your rights are intrinsic.
	There is never an expansion or contraction of rights.
	It's always exactly the same as the number of humans.
	Any more questions?
	I'm probably going to go to bed in a minute.
	Yanis Cohen Mickey wrote the book on daddism 30 years ago.
	Yanis Cohen Mickey set the stage.
	He was the example from which I'm drawing to write the book.
	Am I proposing some sort of virtuous tribalism?
	No, no, no, I'm not promoting any kind of ism, really.
	In that way, I'm promoting.
	I don't know.
	I've been thinking very much about the concept of particularism.
	Like, I'm really becoming sour on universals.
	Like, everything has to be when something's universal, it can be interchanged.
	So readily, it's just like, oh, I'll just get another one, a new one, and a new one.
	It's like, yeah, but the magic of the thing.
	And I think there can be a sort of magic that we can understand in the world that we project onto it, right?
	But the magic of the thing.
	Like, if I just gave you a guitar, you'd be like, oh, I don't care.
	Thanks.
	That's nice.
	But if it breaks, I'll just get you a new one.
	But if I gave you Elvis Presley's guitar, you know, you could never replace that.
	And that's the point.
	You know, it's a part of a narrative.
	The narrative spins the magic around it.
	And it becomes something irreplaceable.
	And this is particular.
	It's always going to be Elvis' guitar.
	And you can't, you know, this is what makes it precious.
	And that's something important.
	You know, because my uncle, one of my uncles before he died, he was a huge Elvis fan.
	And if I could have given him one of Elvis Presley's guitars, it would have just made his world.
	You know, obviously I couldn't, because before he died, I was poor.
	But it would have absolutely made his world.
	He would have been thrilled with that.
	And it would have just been a guitar to me.
	It wouldn't have meant anything to me.
	But yeah.
	Oh, you couldn't see the stream of shadow band yet, no doubt.
	No doubt.
	I haven't looked at any of it.
	But yeah, no doubt on my shadow band.
	Review Project Veritas.
	I'm sure they will on the podcast.
	Again, I'm on holiday, so I was just doing this for a bit of fun.
	Fungible.
	Yes, exactly.
	Exactly.
	That's the problem with the industrialization of society.
	Everything becomes fungible.
	Carl confirmed Gollum.
	Yeah, right.
	Yeah.
	That's interesting.
	I've read about it.
	Ever read Camus?
	No, I haven't.
	I'm working my way through a bunch of stuff.
	I will get to all of this stuff.
	I'm currently knee-deep in the 17th and 18th centuries.
	It's terribly tedious.
	And it's amazing how just nose to nose these people are.
	Like, you know, like the empiricist rationalist distinction isn't very much of a distinction when you're 300 years away from it.
	They're just nose to nose arguing about, well, you know, where does this end up?
	Well, you know, God did all of this and we can conceive this all our minds.
	No, there's obviously in a material world, but in those parts I can't explain.
	Obviously, God did that.
	So essentially they come down to the same position.
	So yeah, anyway.
	Your company has returned to bread.
	How do you deal with this haram?
	Oh, there'll be a reckoning.
	Trust me.
	Bread review tomorrow.
	This is...
	Oh, my God.
	I'm going to message him a second.
	This is not on.
	This is not on.
	Ever read Gibbon, or Edward Gibbon?
	The decline and fall of Roman Empire?
	No.
	Because it's enormous.
	I've just read about it.
	Are Sikhs based?
	Because their military record would support the notion?
	Yeah, I mean, every Sikh I've met has been relatively based.
	They seem to have their shit together, don't they?
	Ever heard of the two-level three-dimensional ethic framework?
	I was introduced to it rather recently.
	It's pretty fascinating and common sense approach.
	No, I haven't.
	I have been thinking about just the way we frame ethics in general.
	It's very bizarre because we seem to think that we, oh, we can have, oh, I'm a Kantian.
	What does that mean?
	Well, I decide all my decisions in advance of in theory and then apply them to the world.
	And if the world isn't correct, then the world is wrong and my theory is correct.
	Okay.
	I guess we all do have some degree where we're kind of moral legislators and we decide what right of wrong is from our own position.
	So, okay.
	And then, you know, how do you put that into action, the virtue ethics of the thing?
	Well, I guess everyone has a view of right and wrong action, you know, in some way.
	Whenever you make any kind of moral ethical action, you are thinking of that.
	And then, of course, everyone's got an eye to the consequence.
	You know, what's going to happen at the end of this?
	And it could be that, you know, you get a good or bad consequence.
	So everyone is in some way giving some kind of utilitarian calculus.
	And so it's like, why would we ever say, oh, I'm a this, I'm a that?
	No, everyone's all of it.
	You know, you all make those thoughts and decisions.
	And that's basically the way I'm viewing these things now.
	I don't think anyone, like, you know, putting a hyper-focus on one bit and blowing it up and being like, yeah, look at all this depth and interesting.
	Okay, but what happens at the end?
	You know, that's that's also important.
	You've put very little thought into that.
	So I don't know whether that's anything like what you're talking about, but that's where I'm where I've been thinking at the moment.
	Ever gone through a logic textbook?
	Yes, unfortunately.
	Many of them.
	Maybe the question libertarians should ask is, how do I preserve liberty and uphold it past myself?
	Yes, it is.
	But anyway, I am going to go to bed because it's half 12.
	I'll try not to boom in the end of the stream, but I probably will.
	I hope you found this interesting.
	I'm sure I'm going to get called a reactionary now, but I don't think that we should adopt terms of the left.
	And I don't even know if I call myself a traditionalist.
	I don't really know what I am at this point, you know, when it comes to the sort of social should.
	I just think on the individual level, like I just think Aristotle was right about what a person should do with their lives, how they should think of themselves.
	And, you know, I'm an Aristotelian classical liberal if I were to define myself because that's what I think I should do as a person.
	And that is also a description of what I want my relationship to the state to be.
	And keto traitors are indeed the work, my work.
	Yeah, I know I have to do something about that.

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