Interesting. I was caught in what I call the loop of liberalism. That loop is that you accept that we all must have fealty to the ideas. The system isn't working and so instead of exiting you stay in the loop. The first re-entry is studying more and getting better at explaining the ideas as you understand them better. The next re-entry is evangelizing the ideas. If they only understand them properly, they will behave optimally in accordance with the ideas. The next re-entry is becoming the "ownster." An ownster is the person who thinks himself so clever as he owns the libs by repeating the most obvious and inane of memes and critiques. He holds the high ground, surrounded, more badly outnumbered, more perilously besieged at twilight with every own.
'See', he says. 'You are a hypocrite. You are not adhering to the ideas.' He is trapped. The idea is sacrosanct, and so he cows himself by refusing to give up on the ideals his enemies have put into his head. He embraces the purity of self-defeat. He looks to the right at those who have exited the loop. "You sound just like them", he says with scorn and spite. He is like a pacifist whose village and people will burn refusing to take up arms, all to adhere to an idea that says it is a sin to mount an effective defense. He does this even as reality hits him with the full force of the savage and brutal contempt it holds for those who lack the will to survive. The loop of liberalism is fatal.
Leonidas halted the rites so he and his people would live to perform them another day.
The question in my mind is how we handle, e.g., an absolute leader who rejects or dishonors the folk/volksgeist. We are always left asking (asking OURSELVES! of course) how to answer this, which, as you say, is a problem, that reversion to personal preference and liberal principles. But does power always determine folk, no matter how twisted or seemingly deranged?
I would like to think that all the thoughts in our minds are not necessarily our own, and that a people can know what its volksgeist demands, a sort of collective folk-consciousness, and that this is not necessarily populism or liberalism. But how is the nature of a people determined, by voting? Lol
Re: the tyrant who dishonours the folk, the king is bound by his forefathers' commands, as are the subjects. If the king's command contradicts the forefathers', the subjects should follow the latter. (The Ancestral Principle, which I've set out here: https://imperiumpress.substack.com/p/the-ancestral-principle)
Is this rule of law? I would say not, because the principle of absolutism (the sovereign is above reproach) still obtains, with the sovereign being the forefathers, and the king their representative. Also the ancestral imperatives are nothing like abstract natural law.
ok, but it seems to me like we are sort of back where we started: if you personally must *interpret* the fidelity between the commands of your Sovereign and the commands of your ancestors, you have become a Sovereign yourself, no?
It's worth looking at what a historical absolutist (Filmer) thought in a similar, in fact a more dire situation—where the subjects are commanded by an actual usurper. He says:
"If [sovereignty] be usurped, the usurper may be so far obeyed as may tend to the preservation of the subjects, who may thereby be enabled to perform their duty to their true and right sovereign when time shall serve. In such cases, to obey an usurper is properly to obey the first and right governor, who must be presumed to desire the safety of his subjects. The command of an usurper is not to be obeyed in anything tending to the destruction of the person of the governor, whose being in the first place is to be looked after." (Directions for Obedience, 1652)
He's saying substantially the same thing: the usurper is to be obeyed where his will does not directly conflict with that of the true sovereign, specifically in cases where salus populi is at issue. I would agree that granting the son the right to judge any and every decision of the father per the will of the grandfather destroys sovereignty, but in cases where the father's will obviously and unambiguously contradicts that of the grandfather (e.g. in harming the family), the son has a duty to obey the higher command. In any case the son must interpret the will of the father in obeying his commands; this is true of the grandfather too, who is the higher authority.
Some folkish theorists attempted to deal with the problem of how to determine the will of the folk.
Wilhelm Stapel wrote, in his essay Volk und Volkstum in 1922:
"[...] the will of the folk, which necessarily arises from its essential law, cannot be expressed and explored through random individuals, nor through a random sum of individuals. For such a sum—for instance of 'persons entitled to vote'—easily results only in an accidental 'majority will', not the necessary 'will of the folk'. The coincidental majority will is determined from the outside: by 'interests'. The necessary will of the folk is determined from within: by the nature of the folk. This will of the folk does not reveal itself through 'elections' but through 'prophecy', i.e. through the feeling and realisation of what is fatefully necessary, which is granted to ingenious personalities. These leaders, called by nature, i.e. by their 'disposition', and not the leaders who reach the 'top' through partisan lies and deceit of an unsuspecting mass which is naturally caught up in its personal needs, are the true leaders of a folk. A folk is only healthy when the true leaders, not the interested parties of certain party and economic policy camps, have the decisive influence. The best political organisation for any folk is that which brings out the leaders who are 'predestined' by their dispositions. A folk perishes as soon as the interested parties, not the 'prophets', rule in it."
Ernst Rudolf Huber said, in Verfassungsrecht des Großdeutschen Reiches, 1939:
"The folkish Führerreich is based on the realisation that the true will of the folk cannot be found through parliamentary elections and votes, but that the will of the folk is only emphasised purely and unadulterated by the Führer. A distinction must therefore be made between the supposed will of the folk of parliamentary democracy, in which only the conflict of social interests is reflected, and the true will of the folk of the Führerreich, in which the overall will of a genuine political unity is manifested."
In my view, power is a relationship between the Lord and his subject. A marriage is one sample of power in which the husband is the lord and wife is his subject. When both lord and subject serve the relationship over each’s private interest, a marriage can grow strong. When either a lord or a subject put his private interest first, the relationship suffer, becoming unbalanced which needs correction. The pursuit of Arete enabled both parties to address the harm in a civil manner, if possible, and make reform possible.
One of the biggest problems with the idea of liberalism and any ideology really is that there is no real attempt to measure the results. “Real communism hasn’t been tried yet” or “real liberalism hasn’t been tried yet”, and that sort of rot.
If we must have some standard, then it must be the pursuit of Arete in both individual and collective meaning. Good morality is what increase strength, wisdom, temperance, and fecundity of a man and his nation. If some ideology or a moral belief degrade one or all of these attributes, then it is bad morality. It is a salt that lost its saltiness and must be cast away. The New Testament saying “Sabbath serve man, and not man Sabbath” may be the most arachic statement of Arete written. Anyway, now we have something to measure belief and practice with.
So, what does the pursuit of Arete implied? It imply that the elements of both Tradition and modern innovation can be used to increase our Arete. Since there are many ways to mix and match the elements , we can discover the best Arete through competition. This imply a strong need for localism to allow this competition. In this contest, the Gods will express their preferences through gifts of power, glamour, and fecundity to a group or culture, allowing this group to expand and displace the failures. This truth is what frightened the powerful, because it means that they are replaceable. They will try to evade this fate with universalism. They’ll try to be the End of History.
Interesting. I was caught in what I call the loop of liberalism. That loop is that you accept that we all must have fealty to the ideas. The system isn't working and so instead of exiting you stay in the loop. The first re-entry is studying more and getting better at explaining the ideas as you understand them better. The next re-entry is evangelizing the ideas. If they only understand them properly, they will behave optimally in accordance with the ideas. The next re-entry is becoming the "ownster." An ownster is the person who thinks himself so clever as he owns the libs by repeating the most obvious and inane of memes and critiques. He holds the high ground, surrounded, more badly outnumbered, more perilously besieged at twilight with every own.
'See', he says. 'You are a hypocrite. You are not adhering to the ideas.' He is trapped. The idea is sacrosanct, and so he cows himself by refusing to give up on the ideals his enemies have put into his head. He embraces the purity of self-defeat. He looks to the right at those who have exited the loop. "You sound just like them", he says with scorn and spite. He is like a pacifist whose village and people will burn refusing to take up arms, all to adhere to an idea that says it is a sin to mount an effective defense. He does this even as reality hits him with the full force of the savage and brutal contempt it holds for those who lack the will to survive. The loop of liberalism is fatal.
Leonidas halted the rites so he and his people would live to perform them another day.
Great post, a lot to think about.
The question in my mind is how we handle, e.g., an absolute leader who rejects or dishonors the folk/volksgeist. We are always left asking (asking OURSELVES! of course) how to answer this, which, as you say, is a problem, that reversion to personal preference and liberal principles. But does power always determine folk, no matter how twisted or seemingly deranged?
I would like to think that all the thoughts in our minds are not necessarily our own, and that a people can know what its volksgeist demands, a sort of collective folk-consciousness, and that this is not necessarily populism or liberalism. But how is the nature of a people determined, by voting? Lol
I’m in a loop on this one.
Re: the tyrant who dishonours the folk, the king is bound by his forefathers' commands, as are the subjects. If the king's command contradicts the forefathers', the subjects should follow the latter. (The Ancestral Principle, which I've set out here: https://imperiumpress.substack.com/p/the-ancestral-principle)
Is this rule of law? I would say not, because the principle of absolutism (the sovereign is above reproach) still obtains, with the sovereign being the forefathers, and the king their representative. Also the ancestral imperatives are nothing like abstract natural law.
ok, but it seems to me like we are sort of back where we started: if you personally must *interpret* the fidelity between the commands of your Sovereign and the commands of your ancestors, you have become a Sovereign yourself, no?
It's worth looking at what a historical absolutist (Filmer) thought in a similar, in fact a more dire situation—where the subjects are commanded by an actual usurper. He says:
"If [sovereignty] be usurped, the usurper may be so far obeyed as may tend to the preservation of the subjects, who may thereby be enabled to perform their duty to their true and right sovereign when time shall serve. In such cases, to obey an usurper is properly to obey the first and right governor, who must be presumed to desire the safety of his subjects. The command of an usurper is not to be obeyed in anything tending to the destruction of the person of the governor, whose being in the first place is to be looked after." (Directions for Obedience, 1652)
He's saying substantially the same thing: the usurper is to be obeyed where his will does not directly conflict with that of the true sovereign, specifically in cases where salus populi is at issue. I would agree that granting the son the right to judge any and every decision of the father per the will of the grandfather destroys sovereignty, but in cases where the father's will obviously and unambiguously contradicts that of the grandfather (e.g. in harming the family), the son has a duty to obey the higher command. In any case the son must interpret the will of the father in obeying his commands; this is true of the grandfather too, who is the higher authority.
you have become liberalism's "watchdog"
Some folkish theorists attempted to deal with the problem of how to determine the will of the folk.
Wilhelm Stapel wrote, in his essay Volk und Volkstum in 1922:
"[...] the will of the folk, which necessarily arises from its essential law, cannot be expressed and explored through random individuals, nor through a random sum of individuals. For such a sum—for instance of 'persons entitled to vote'—easily results only in an accidental 'majority will', not the necessary 'will of the folk'. The coincidental majority will is determined from the outside: by 'interests'. The necessary will of the folk is determined from within: by the nature of the folk. This will of the folk does not reveal itself through 'elections' but through 'prophecy', i.e. through the feeling and realisation of what is fatefully necessary, which is granted to ingenious personalities. These leaders, called by nature, i.e. by their 'disposition', and not the leaders who reach the 'top' through partisan lies and deceit of an unsuspecting mass which is naturally caught up in its personal needs, are the true leaders of a folk. A folk is only healthy when the true leaders, not the interested parties of certain party and economic policy camps, have the decisive influence. The best political organisation for any folk is that which brings out the leaders who are 'predestined' by their dispositions. A folk perishes as soon as the interested parties, not the 'prophets', rule in it."
Ernst Rudolf Huber said, in Verfassungsrecht des Großdeutschen Reiches, 1939:
"The folkish Führerreich is based on the realisation that the true will of the folk cannot be found through parliamentary elections and votes, but that the will of the folk is only emphasised purely and unadulterated by the Führer. A distinction must therefore be made between the supposed will of the folk of parliamentary democracy, in which only the conflict of social interests is reflected, and the true will of the folk of the Führerreich, in which the overall will of a genuine political unity is manifested."
In my view, power is a relationship between the Lord and his subject. A marriage is one sample of power in which the husband is the lord and wife is his subject. When both lord and subject serve the relationship over each’s private interest, a marriage can grow strong. When either a lord or a subject put his private interest first, the relationship suffer, becoming unbalanced which needs correction. The pursuit of Arete enabled both parties to address the harm in a civil manner, if possible, and make reform possible.
One of the biggest problems with the idea of liberalism and any ideology really is that there is no real attempt to measure the results. “Real communism hasn’t been tried yet” or “real liberalism hasn’t been tried yet”, and that sort of rot.
If we must have some standard, then it must be the pursuit of Arete in both individual and collective meaning. Good morality is what increase strength, wisdom, temperance, and fecundity of a man and his nation. If some ideology or a moral belief degrade one or all of these attributes, then it is bad morality. It is a salt that lost its saltiness and must be cast away. The New Testament saying “Sabbath serve man, and not man Sabbath” may be the most arachic statement of Arete written. Anyway, now we have something to measure belief and practice with.
So, what does the pursuit of Arete implied? It imply that the elements of both Tradition and modern innovation can be used to increase our Arete. Since there are many ways to mix and match the elements , we can discover the best Arete through competition. This imply a strong need for localism to allow this competition. In this contest, the Gods will express their preferences through gifts of power, glamour, and fecundity to a group or culture, allowing this group to expand and displace the failures. This truth is what frightened the powerful, because it means that they are replaceable. They will try to evade this fate with universalism. They’ll try to be the End of History.