Ask a Reactionary

[Tahuti]

As compared to monarchy's unpopularity contest? While an idea is not automatically correct because it is popular, neither is it right because it is unpopular. How is your system any better in that regard?

Your first mistake is to regard being a reactionary as a supporting a certain system which it isn't. We don't have revolutionary programmes. We simply self-consciously adopt a chronocentric view of a certain past and live by its values.

I see. What about queens? (The QE II type, not the other kind)? Are they gender confused or magically protected from this by being monarchs?

You could say they are magically protected from this by this from being monarchs. Being one requires skills that often men are better in than women but the reverse is true as well.

So not tradition then. What gender roles should transsexuals have, in the reactionary view? And gays? Besides not marrying.

Transsexuals are a tricky one, though overall, one might say they are now stuck-in-the-middle.

Overall, I don't view LGBT people as men and women that should have a separate identity demarcating themselves from non-LGBT people, even if they may view that way. If they insist on it, I guess we have to tolerate it, though it is perhaps quite telling of modern society how people's non-familial identities play a larger role than their local and familial identity.

 

[Agent327]

You could say they are magically protected from this by this from being monarchs. Being one requires skills that often men are better in than women but the reverse is true as well.

You are saying men are better at being monarchs but women are better than men as well?

That monarchy has a magical aspect is a very ancient concept, by the way. But even in medieval France the king was attributed healing qualities, sort of like a saint.

Transsexuals are a tricky one, though overall, one might say they are now stuck-in-the-middle.

Overall, I don't view LGBT people as men and women that should have a separate identity demarcating themselves from non-LGBT people, even if they may view that way. If they insist on it, I guess we have to tolerate it, though it is perhaps quite telling of modern society how people's non-familial identities play a larger role than their local and familial identity.

So, LGBT people should have families?

What about monks, nuns and non-marrying priests? Are they bad for society?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Btw, do you mean by 'liberals' classical liberals?

The old-school constitutional monarchist liberals aren't really around any more. By liberals I mean the centrist (or supposedly so) pro-capitalist folks who support a larger role for the state in society and social rights for minorities and marginalized parts of society (LGBTQ, atheists, immigrants, etc.) but still cling to the liberal individualist values of property and such.

Reactionary thought is more of an attitude than a movement. And as noted earlier, isn't as much about resurrecting institutions as resurrecting values. While resurrecting certain institutions - such as aristocracy, the family and monarchy - will help nurture values reactionaries hold dear, like courage, fortitude and erudition, it are the values that make the premodern world good and better than the status quo, at least in the countries that one can consider to be part of Western civilisation.

Reactionism seems to be a highly specialized attitude, then. A reactionary today might be seen as a centrist or even progressive, depending on how far back in time one goes. How does this affect your self-perception, or shape the nature of your goals? If you were to be magically transported back to any given point in the past, do you think you would be equally reactionary, or more satisfied than at the present, or something else entirely?

Also, the idea of reactionism suggests a steady march toward something else by society, to which you object. How does this color your attitude toward historical analyses which posit such a march; either dialectical modes like Marxists (which isn't necessarily a "forward" march, just a steady movement) or teleological ones like Whigs and Hegelians (which really do posit specifically "forward" marches of improvement in human society)?

I ask this because it seems, between your views on history, society, and the relation of human consciousness to one's society, suggest a similar approach to Marxism; but where we embrace these conclusions for a progressive cause, you explicitly reject them - rather like the young Metternich perceiving the students' revolutionary fervor in 1789 Paris and being repulsed instead of inspired by them. Would you say this is so?

 

[Tahuti]

You are saying men are better at being monarchs but women are better than men as well?

Both have their strengths. However, I also stand by my view that men usually have more political aptitude than women. Historically, many cultures had various safeguards and customs in place that limited or eliminated likelihood of a state getting a female ruler, and I don't view such as necessarily prejudicial or irrational.

So, LGBT people should have families?

It would be more accurate to say that heterosexuality is the only way to have a family. If you are homosexual and do not wish to have a family, and your family is okay with it, I see no reason to make a point of it. However, to be solely homosexual and then demand the right to have exactly the same capabilities to have a family as those that are heterosexual is like asking to eat to be able completely eat the pie and then keep it too.

What about monks, nuns and non-marrying priests? Are they bad for society?

They have made a sacrifice by choosing to forsake family life for a greater spiritual good. That's very commendable.

Reactionism seems to be a highly specialized attitude, then. A reactionary today might be seen as a centrist or even progressive, depending on how far back in time one goes. How does this affect your self-perception, or shape the nature of your goals? If you were to be magically transported back to any given point in the past, do you think you would be equally reactionary, or more satisfied than at the present, or something else entirely?

Well, societies idealised by reactionaries are often reactionary by ideology. For instance, Pre-Revolutionary France formally allowed political change if it could be proven it was a lost custom. There was absolutely no notion of novelty in politics, even if it in fact was. If you would transport to the age of hunter-gatherers, I might be labelled extreme-left for wanting to transform hunter-gatherers into settled cities with monarchies. A reactionary usually has some notion of a certain golden period that is more sophisticated than all the other periods that went after or before. This may take highly particularistic forms, limiting views of history to certain civilisations, ethnic groups even.

Also, the idea of reactionism suggests a steady march toward something else by society, to which you object. How does this color your attitude toward historical analyses which posit such a march; either dialectical modes like Marxists (which isn't necessarily a "forward" march, just a steady movement) or teleological ones like Whigs and Hegelians (which really do posit specifically "forward" marches of improvement in human society)?

The common thread of all reactionaries is the disdain of democracy, which is central to their view of history. Democracy makes it increasingly hard for individuals to leave their mark on history, so our way of life becomes systematised. In my personal view, Hegelianism is more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy in that its view of progress about humanity, history becomes highly systematised by the changes brought about its very ideas. It ultimately corrupts into a machine that will go into a predictable trajectory - until it breaks down.

So reactionaries are intrigued by monarchy and decentralisation, precisely because it allows us to take full advantage of our humanity and to some extent, even transcend it. It brings the centre point of everything back to personalities instead of machines, which also underpins the reactionary disdain of democracy, socialism and capitalism.

I ask this because it seems, between your views on history, society, and the relation of human consciousness to one's society, suggest a similar approach to Marxism; but where we embrace these conclusions for a progressive cause, you explicitly reject them - rather like the young Metternich perceiving the students' revolutionary fervor in 1789 Paris and being repulsed instead of inspired by them. Would you say this is so?

Not necessarily. Do note however that some Reactionaries embrace Antonio Gramsci and that Pre-Marxist Socialism was influenced - positively - by the writings of Joseph de Maistre.

 

[Tahuti]

What will you do if your son or daughter turn out not to be cis and/or heterosexual and want to marry someone of the same gender or get a sex change?

I would oppose it. Though I also would have considered my parenthood to be a failure if it would ever get that far: It is a refusal to accept yourself as you are, and that is something highly important to instill as a parent.

 

[Senethro]

I would oppose it. Though I also would have considered my parenthood to be a failure if it would ever get that far: It is a refusal to accept yourself as you are, and that is something highly important to instill as a parent.

This is the kind of attitude that ends in trying to beat it out of them rather than accept failure.

 

[Tahuti]

Wait, so if a gay person tries to marry someone of the same sex, they're not "accepting themselves for who they are"?

Since marriage will be implicitly always between a man and woman, gay marriage will make them fulfill a different gender role than they biologically endowed with. So yes, that's not acceptance of who you are.

Isn't that backwards?

Reactionaries do not view history as linear progression from point a to b, with everything new automatically being better. The first step towards becoming a reactionary arguably is coming to the realisation that new and old do not necessarily correlate with respectively good and bad.

 

[Tahuti]

Why do you think marriage should only be between a man and a woman?

Aside from a couple of African tribes that permit lesbian marriage - and arguably have peculiar circumstances that has made this into a tradition - marriage that isn't between a man and a woman has virtually no precedent. It may weaken the institution to the point of dissolution, and so doing weaken the family as well.

I meant backwards in the sense that NOT allowing them to marry a same-sex person would be not accepting them for who they are.

Homosexual attraction is not a choice, it is something you are born with. I can understand why persons give in to such urges, and I have little trouble with it. It becomes problematic when one demands to circumvent heterosexuality entirely to claim its benefits.

 

[Tahuti]

Monarchy had no precedent in ~5000 BC. So? Why do you love committing logical fallacies?

I believe Monarchy is more sophisicated than democracy, since hunter-gatherers are indeed more democratic, yet being democratic in this case also means we are becoming more like hunter-gatherers - less able to overcome our most base instincts. I don't think these are fallacies at all, and you have not yet managed to point out how this is exactly a fallacy. I'm well aware that you asking loaded questions, though to the interest of those reading the threat, I will answer those regardless.

As for the notion that it would weaken the institution or the family, what does that mean? How do we measure such a weakening? Has anyone done such a thing, whether in the context of gay marriage or not? And further, has anyone measured the weakening of marriage and the family because of gay marriage?

We believe it will weaken the definition of families to the point that it carries no meaning, which is a bad thing since we humans are hard-wired for it.

Also, do you believe divorce should be legal?

Only in extremely limited circumstances.

Doesn't society define those benefits? So isn't your argument essentially, "This is how it's always been done"?

Modern western society is effectively decapitated, due to the pernicious influences of democracy and capitalism.

For example, couldn't your argument work like this in the context of an Afro-supremacist society?

Seperatism is not really the same supremacism, and frankly, I do not consider your "Afro-supremacist" argument flawed. That being said, I put little importance to race. Race is culturally embedded. Neat racial categories do not exist in my view.

 

[HannibalBarka]

do you think it would be justified to get this kind of government set up by force? would you support it? or do you think it should only be installed through a democratic vote? or at least validated a posteriori that way?

 

[Tahuti]

do you think it would be justified to get this kind of government set up by force? would you support it? or do you think it should only be installed through a democratic vote? or at least validated a posteriori that way?

For governments reactionaries approve of to stand up, current democratic governments of the west need to collapse. Whether or when it will happen I cannot say, though such government do make decisions that threaten their own survival. For starters, imagine Greece-like circumstances in countries that currently are helping Greece.

 

[HannibalBarka]

For governments reactionaries approve of to stand up, current democratic governments of the west need to collapse. Whether or when it will happen I cannot say, though such government do make decisions that threaten their own survival. For starters, imagine Greece-like circumstances in countries that currently are helping Greece.

That does not really answer my question

Would you support a regime change of the kind you like (Monarchy/Aristocracy) installed by force (whether a "popular" revolution or a military coup or any other mean) and not validated afterwards by popular vote? or do you think that is not OK and the only valid regime change process to get to "Monarchy/Aristocracy" is through a universal vote?

 

[Tahuti]

That does not really answer my question

Would you support a regime change of the kind you like (Monarchy/Aristocracy) installed by force (whether a "popular" revolution or a military coup or any other mean) and not validated afterwards by popular vote? or do you think that is not OK and the only valid regime change process to get to "Monarchy/Aristocracy" is through a universal vote?

I do think it is justified to install such governments by force, but it is unlikely to have success. By popular vote, it has zero chance of success. As I mentioned earlier, the only viable way for reactionary to take hold is to have it outlast democratic regimes - i.e. they collapse by their own weight after which reactionaries simply fill in the void without either violence or a popular vote.

However, this will probably not happen within my lifetime. The intellectual climate is currently too hostile for reactionary thought to take hold.

 

[HannibalBarka]

I do think it is justified to install such governments by force, but it is unlikely to have success. By popular vote, it has zero chance of success. As I mentioned earlier, the only viable way for reactionary to take hold is to have it outlast democratic regimes - i.e. they collapse by their own weight after which reactionaries simply fill in the void without either violence or a popular vote.

However, this will probably not happen within my lifetime. The intellectual climate is currently too hostile for reactionary thought to take hold.

Understood. So you are OK installing and/or maintaining such kind of government against popular will. thanks for you answer and "God" forbid such thing happens

 

[Plotinus]

However, I also stand by my view that men usually have more political aptitude than women.

But don't you see that this view is self-defeating? If you claim that men and women have different political attitudes and different views on what is best for society (as Jehoshua did, at least, and you didn't distance yourself from this view), then you must accept that there's no way to get an objective sense of what's best for society, because anyone commenting on it is either male or female and bound by their own gender-determined outlook. (Unless, that is, they don't conform to gender duality, but your comments on this page make it pretty clear that you don't have much truck with that.) If you as a man say that men generally have better political sense than women, your view is - by your own principles - coloured by your own maleness. Of course you prefer men's views to women's, because you're a man yourself. A woman would say the same thing about women. So your strong insistence on the difference of the sexes on political matters leads to a kind of relativism: either there's no truth about what's politically preferable (e.g. left-wing or right-wing policies) or we can't reliably know this truth because we're all influenced one way or the other by the masculinity or femininity of our brains - you included. How can a reactionary with this view of the sexes consistently hold any political view at all, let alone prescribe it for an ideal society?

I would oppose it. Though I also would have considered my parenthood to be a failure if it would ever get that far: It is a refusal to accept yourself as you are, and that is something highly important to instill as a parent.

I find this very worrying given that the question was also about transsexuals, and on a day when we hear about the continued demonisation of transsexuals in cases such as this.

A transsexual is not someone who "refuses to accept themselves as they are", because a transsexual is someone who, inside, is not who they are on the outside. Forcing those people to continue with their birth biological gender for their whole lives is precisely the failure to accept who they are. Do reactionaries disagree with this?

We believe it will weaken the definition of families to the point that it carries no meaning, which is a bad thing since we humans are hard-wired for it.

Surely this is inconsistent. If human beings are "hard-wired" for families then it doesn't matter what you do to "weaken the definition of families", assuming that such a thing is possible or indeed coherent - human beings will go on having families as they always have, because they're "hard-wired" for it.

If you really think that societies can stop believing in the importance of families then you must think that a concern for family is just a cultural construct, something that can come or go given enough cultural pressure. You can't have it both ways.

 

[Tahuti]

But don't you see that this view is self-defeating? How can a reactionary with this view of the sexes consistently hold any political view at all, let alone prescribe it for an ideal society?

We humans have evolved this way to favour males in position of power over females. To attempt to change this is to effectively attempt to change the very nature of our specie. Maybe they are proven correct, and we are changed for the better. We may as well fall, lose everything that has made us great, and die out if fails. Considering female emancipation has coincided with what we view as a decline of civlisation, we consider it a safer move to turn back than stay were we are or "progress" further, which may very will be into an abyss.

Do reactionaries disagree with this?

I actually think the outside world pressures them into thinking this is the right way. There is no such thing as a sex change. By changing yourself into a woman, or a male, one has effectively chosen to become remove all your masculinity or femininity, without truly becoming more of the other, other than by hormone changes. When one is born to one gender, you will be raised to that purpose. Everything will go lost upon performing a "sex change" operation and futhermore, you will never get to the same level of masculinity or femininity as your natural born counterparts.

In other words, being masculine or feminine confers you and your environment certain benefits, and these are basically put to 0 upon undergoing a sex change. So we find this concerns society as a whole.

 

[Senethro]

We humans have evolved this way to favour males in position of power over females.

Says who? (emphasis on the word evolved)

 

[Plotinus]

I actually think the outside world pressures them into thinking this is the right way. There is no such thing as a sex change. By changing yourself into a woman, or a male, one has effectively chosen to become remove all your masculinity or femininity, without truly becoming more of the other, other than by hormone changes. When one is born to one gender, you will be raised to that purpose. Everything will go lost upon performing a "sex change" operation and futhermore, you will never get to the same level of masculinity or femininity as your natural born counterparts.

So you're saying that someone who is born biologically male, but who knows inside that they are female, should just deny who they are deep inside?

You talk about "changing yourself into a woman, or a male", but you have to understand that for a transsexual, it's not a change. They've always been that gender. The physical changes simply reflect who they've always been.

You talk about how important it is to bring children up to accept who they are, but "who someone is" is not dictated by the contents of their underpants. Who they are inside is far more important, and what you say here ignores that.

Also, it's now known that gender identity is a far more complex thing than the simple binary opposition of "male" to "female". In addition to transsexuality there are people who do not identify with either. Gender identity is partly biological but also partly cultural. It seems from what you're saying here that reactionaries are simply unaware of the vast field of gender studies. Is this correct?

In other words, being masculine or feminine confers you and your environment certain benefits, and these are basically put to 0 upon undergoing a sex change. So we find this concerns society as a whole.

I don't see how the second sentence follows from the first. Why does it concern society as a whole?

 

[HannibalBarka]

We humans have evolved this way to favour males in position of power over females. To attempt to change this is to effectively attempt to change the very nature of our specie. Maybe they are proven correct, and we are changed for the better. We may as well fall, lose everything that has made us great, and die out if fails.

This argument does make zero sense because:
1. If we follow your logic, than the "very nature of our specie" is to evolve to women emancipation
2. I don't see any causal link between the "greatness of our specie" and the "males have more power than female" since "gorilla males also have more power than gorilla females".

Considering female emancipation has coincided with what we view as a decline of civlisation, we consider it a safer move to turn back than stay were we are or "progress" further, which may very will be into an abyss.

You need to be more specific: What did "female emancipation" triggered that you see as a decline of civilization?

I actually think the outside world pressures them into thinking this is the right way. There is no such thing as a sex change. By changing yourself into a woman, or a male, one has effectively chosen to become remove all your masculinity or femininity, without truly becoming more of the other, other than by hormone changes. When one is born to one gender, you will be raised to that purpose. Everything will go lost upon performing a "sex change" operation and futhermore, you will never get to the same level of masculinity or femininity as your natural born counterparts.
In other words, being masculine or feminine confers you and your environment certain benefits, and these are basically put to 0 upon undergoing a sex change. So we find this concerns society as a whole.

I am not even going to discuss the rest of your argument, but I think you are at least wrong about the bolded part as the outside world does usually the opposite: the norm is still to keep the gender "you're born into" and doing the opposite is always the difficult road to follow as it is "swimming" against the "outside world"

 

[useless]

I wonder what Kaiserguard would make of matriarchial societies given they disprove his belief that humans "evolved to favour males in position of power over females".