The Conservative critique of modernity is by no means a recent phenomenon; it begins rather with the responders to Jean-Jacques Rousseau and his Jacobin followers in the late Eighteenth Century.  It is sufficient in this regard to mention the names of Edmund Burke (1729 – 1797) and Joseph de Maistre (1753 – 1821) and of their successors, S. T. Coleridge (1772 – 1834) and François-René de Chateaubriand (1768 – 1848), to suggest the range and richness of immediately post-revolutionary conservative discourse.  In the Twentieth Century, José Ortega y Gassett (1883 – 1955), Oswald Spengler (1886 – 1936), and T. S. Eliot (1888 – 1965), among others, continued in the line established by French réactionisme.  In Ortega’s case and in Spengler’s this continuation entailed incorporating the iconoclastic skepticism of Friedrich Nietzsche into the discourse qualifiedly.  In Eliot’s case, it meant rejecting Nietzsche’s atheism and taking up from Chateaubriand and Coleridge the apology for Christian revelation and for a theological, as opposed to a secular, view of existence.  René Guénon (1886 – 1951) belongs by his dates with the generation of Ortega, Spengler, and Eliot; like Eliot, Guénon is a theist, but despite his favorable treatment of Catholicism he is less identifiably Christian than Eliot.  Guénon sees Catholicism as the vessel of tradition in the West, but elsewhere tradition has other forms that are valid in their own contexts.[i]

 

Spengler’s Decline of the West undoubtedly made an impression on Guénon, much as it did on Guenon’s younger contemporary Julius Evola (1898 – 1974).  Guénon and Evola knew each other and mutually influenced one other.[ii]  Both Guénon and Evola together exemplify a branch of modern critical anti-modernism affiliated much more than casually with the Twentieth Century occult revival.  Guénon at one time, in the 1920s, edited the chief French-language occult periodical, La Gnose or “Gnosis.” Yet Guénon, a fierce un-masker of religious mountebanks, can hardly be accused of employing mystic obscurantism to push a doctrinaire agenda.  Guénon’s interest in occult topics, even more than Evola’s, strikes one as rigorous and objective.  As for Guénon’s awareness of ideological deformations of reality, it ran to the acute.  The driving force of deformation, in Guénon’s analysis as in Evola’s, is the stultifying massiveness of modern society, with its conformism on an unprecedented scale, and its receptivity to oratorical manipulation.

 

By now, it has become obligatory to present a comment regarding WikiLeaks. To some extent, the unstated primary effort of the firecracker to damage the US creates more sound than destruction. The leaks show that, privately, some critics of the USA during daylight, approve in the shadow of the policies they officially castigate. Iran’s Arab neighbors place ethnicity and the reason of state above the commands of the (nearly) common religion. Going beyond that, they even egg on the rather hesitant USA. They want Tehran’s nuclear threat eliminated before the Near East has to live with the facts the Mullahs are set to create. This is hardly a shock –unless one sees an advantage in feigning outrage. Everybody with a dearth of knowledge of how interstate relations work, knew that there is a considerable difference between the official policy of states and the real pursued objectives.

 

Paying for expanding without due diligence. China’s virtues and their buyer’s weakness. “Plastic education” and unemployment. Pirate protection: decadence at work?
 
1. The economic crisis. Through its impact on the national economies of indebted countries, the Euro is increasingly becoming a problem. Beyond that, the common currency is not proving to be a solution. Much rather it is appearing as an impediment to the recovery. At the same time, it is becoming a proper subject of discussion in polite society that the EU and the Euro rank among the major causes of the crisis.

An anachronism leaves the losing Democrats in charge of the US Congress for another month. This last session of the Congress is called the ‘lame duck’ session, because it was generally considered as not able to do anything. But this time, the Democrats try to change this perception. They attempt to vote into law a maximum of the Obama agenda while still in the majority. But they may not succeed, because (1) time is running out (only 2-3 weeks left); (2) the Republicans who won so overwhelmingly in November are slowing down the legislative process in the Senate as much as possible; (3) a number of reelected Democrats are scared to upset their voters again. 

A quote from Eric Edelman, U.S. ambassador to Turkey, 30 December 2004, published by Wikileaks:

"We have also run into the rarely openly-spoken, but widespread belief among adherents of the Turk-Islam synthesis that Turkey's role is to spread Islam in Europe, 'to take back Andalusia and avenge the defeat at the siege of Vienna in 1683' as one participant in a recent meeting at AKP's main think tank put it. "

History in the making: Russia, America and NATO connect. Rich enough to be left of everything. Media, the Left and integrity. Violently for freedom. Saving the pigs. An EU dividend.
 
1. Russia, America and NATO. In terms of its potential, the agreement to pursue the creation of a joint system of missile defense and to handle Russia as an associate of NATO is truly of historical significance. The confirmation of success is still pending. Whether the actual performance in the general realm of cooperation will develop harmoniously, will determine whether what we saw has been a staged photo op or a genuine turning point.
 

As the divergences between the Flemish (Dutch-speaking) and Walloon and French-Brussels politicians have become so big that it is nearly impossible to form a federal government, opponents of a separate state of Flanders have become more aggressive in their arguments; some of these clearly amount to some form of blackmail or consist of scaremongering. One of the arguments regularly invoked in recent times against advocates of a Flemish secession is the thesis that if Flanders secedes from the federal kingdom of Belgium, it would automatically be out of the European Union; if Flanders wishes to enjoy the benefits of being part of that Union, it will have to ask for admission as a new Member State and French-speaking politicians and their allies will be able to impose draconian conditions.

Those who are determined to resist the moral and civic corruption of their age – those who refuse to participate in the flouting of decorum and the degradation of bodies – must also resist the sophistic apology that seeks to excuse the very same moral and civic corruption. This apology typically articulates itself as a form of dogmatic determinism. The apologist denies freedom of will so as to exculpate moral lapses generally, or perhaps those of the enunciator himself specifically; determinism seeks to redefine moral consequences as non-causal outcomes that have somehow happened to people, as it were, at random. We can discern such attempts at spurious exoneration in the oft-heard counseling claim that obnoxious behaviors like dipsomania or drug addiction stem from the dumb proclivity of the organism rather than from witting declensions of a particular character; and in the sociological tenet that crime emerges as a “consequence” of “poverty” or of “oppressive social structures.” Thus a well-known movie actor blames his philandering on his “sex-addiction,” as though his proclivity to fornicate with as many women as possible impinged on him from outside himself so that no personal agency could be discerned in his transgressions. Thus a school board rejects a sex-education curriculum based on the concept of chastity with the argument that abstinence defies nature and is therefore fabulously unrealistic.

Thirty years ago first lady Nancy Reagan withstood a torrent of public abuse for her suggestion that schools teach children simply “to say no” to temptations. Mrs. Reagan’s critics did not say what else people are supposed to do to avoid temptation; they were merely certain that the will is powerless and they were outraged at the idea that the possibility of self-control might be entered as an item in the school curriculum.

 

How the US saved China from nuclear war. The UN,  North Korea, Iran and the nukes. The General’s stars. The Tea Party’s critical test is still ahead. Be a woman, support Pelosi who is also one.
 

1. According to Russia’s Izvestiya, which is a “Putin-paper”, the Chinese Party’s central organ has published what is classed  as “sensational” material. The reported event took place a bit after the “mini  war” on the Ussuri, that is along Chinese - Soviet border. Moscow was provoked,  but also frightened by the resolution exhibited by her at the time still weaker  rival. The enemy in the West, albeit militarily an equal but in matters of  conviction under-supplied, has never summoned anything reminiscent of the stiff  resistance shown by the Chinese. Aiming to exploit the window of opportunity  created by the Mao-state’s weakness, the USSR prepared to put an end to “Chinese  revisionism”. This proved more difficult than the application of “Panzer  Communism” in the case of recalcitrant Eastern Germany, Czechoslovakia or even  Hungary.

At the end of last week, during the G20 conference in Seoul, the world delivered Obama a stunning defeat. He had the arrogance to accuse China of currency manipulation, while he himself is engaged in a big devaluation of the US dollar. The world leaders told him flat out his policy of huge government debt while debasing the value of the dollar, will not work to strengthen the US economy. They called Obama’s policy also highly damaging to the economies of the other countries, and to world trade.
 
While he was now in Korea anyway, Obama wanted to dominate the Koreans. Three years ago President Bush negotiated a trade pact with South Korea. As a Senator Obama opposed this deal, and the Democratic Congress refused to ratify the treaty.  Last week Obama counted on all his personal charms to sign a new trade deal. He had already sold in the US his big coming success. Hubristic as he is, he added a bunch of new conditions to the trade accord, without giving the Koreans ample time to evaluate his new demands. Obviously the Koreans sent Obama home empty handed.