“A man dies not for the many wounds that pierce his breast, unless it be that life's end keep pace with death, nor by sitting on his hearth at home doth he the more escape his appointed doom.” – Aeschylus
The Right cannot face itself. Therefore, it fails.
In my last editorial piece, I partially concluded by claiming that Centrist Liberals, and really the Centrist Right, “cannot acknowledge what they are, what they want, and instead project all the things they want on the Left as pathologies of the Left.” As I stated before, this point needs further elaboration.
The Right has been criticized for failing to have a coherent worldview, a philosophy to perceive the world by, principles or effective theoretical generalizations upon which to operate; think the likes of Jordan B. Peterson, etc. It has also been criticized for larping, pretending to be ‘trad,’ living a double life as a cope for the fact that it has no sound or principled worldview. One critique is predicated on the recognition that a worldview, or gestalt theory of existence, is necessary to prudently engage with the world. The other is predicated on the prudent observation that wisdom is an embodied form of knowledge that gives rise to an emergent gestalt theory of existence.
The principled worldview, as far as Centrist Liberals and Conservatives are concerned, might focus on ideals such as equality under the law, liberty from tyranny, and the pursuit of truth. The latter focuses on the traditional, believing that perhaps it can preserve through performance, and for posterity’s sake, the lifestyle worth preserving; such a lifestyle’s worth is inherent in its power to preserve, maintain, and remain grounded; it’s the Hobbit’s life, the traditional way.
Where the former defines the good axiomatically and allegedly acts out its position once it understands the good for what it is, once its principles are fleshed out so that they may rightly act as presuppositions, the latter acts out what it is attracted to, and it is attracted to it because it is good, because it is beautiful, and that which is beautiful remains and, thus, must be true.
Yet, to what end?
This is a question I posed: why ultimately act in a principled fashion; why ultimately live truthfully and beautifully? These questions may seem entirely irrelevant, but they get to the core of what the Right, even the Centrist Liberals, utterly fail to grasp about themselves or only whisper when around themselves or those they trust.
Power, control, authority: at the core of our desires, this is what we want.
We yearn for the honey of life because it pleases us, and in pleasure, there is power; the sense one is top ape, top monkey, the dominant and dominating lion. We recoil from life’s pains because they remind us of our finitude, that there’s always something bigger, meaner, nastier, and more dominant than we are. We like control because, with it, we may see the world coherently, the Cosmos is rightfully named, and the stars guide us as they ought. Without control, the World is chaos, strife and discord become Man’s ruination, and the stars fall to the Earth, engulfing it in a torrent of flame and smoke till naught remains. Yet we also like authority, to dominate the world around us, because in it we may find both pleasure and control, cosmic significance and otherworldly delight, and our true position in the ordering of things.
But what if authority, control, and power are usurped by our enemies; by those whose very name evokes embittered grimaces upon our visage? Power becomes a thing to limit, to chastise, to scorn, for it – so it is claimed – is wielded improperly. Control, too, becomes an object to obliterate in an iconoclastic fury, for it is overwrought, hard, and mindlessly yoked upon its subject’s back. And Authority, being the seat of these improper powers and this all too harsh whip, an idol for treasonous vengeance. Under such circumstances, right authority is a thing to delineate evenly, equally if you will; right control is a thing to be used only in moderation, to let more liberal and reasonable tendencies prevail; and lastly, right power is a thing, not to be placed in Man, but to be fairly raised up as emanating from the truth, which no man may have a full say of. And yet, to what end?
To our ends. This is the quintessential issue. In his book, War and Peace and War: The Rise and Fall of Empires, Peter Turchin describes how group identities emerge from frontier conflict; for example, the Republican Romans against the Gauls, or the Alemanni against the Imperial Romans, or the Colonial Europeans against the Indians. Identity is forged in conflict, being is defined under pressure, what remains is resilient and what is lost is detritus, fuel for the fire. It is through conflict, through the forging of identity, and through this proven being that we recognize and embody who we are.
The idols of liberty, equality, and truth were forged out of such conflict for Americans and Europeans, yet their quality need not be preserved, nor need they. New idols, new necessary focal points for the purposes of coordination and cooperation may yet be discovered or uncovered. But they too hide the true telos of the task at hand: they hide our desire to go forth into that wilderness and to thrive, not to merely exist, or survive, but to thrive, to conquer, to dominate.
It is this that we fear, for we still unconsciously identify with our enemy’s frame: we are the conquerors, the baddies, the colonizers, the racists, the fascists, the Nazis, or really so we’re told. We’re so afraid of being scolded by these fiends, canceled, deplatformed, disenfranchised – we suffer under their yoke so harshly – that we fail to grasp that we desire to wield that goad for ourselves; it has become our shadow, our antithesis, for it cannot be ours. It cannot be destroyed, it cannot be annihilated, only given its proper place; synthesized into the form that best enables us to dominate the world and to give it the shape we desire.
But our desires, what we desire, are held by our enemy, by our tyrant, our overlord, our overbearing and all-consuming Mother. To desire it is to reflect that nature in ourselves, and if we desire that which emanates from that which we hate (so the logic goes), we must hate it, too. But its disdainful quality is not essential to it, only relative to its condition. The ability to dominate, to have authority, control, and power are not pathological in themselves – Aragorn still became King. Our desire is only seemingly pathological because it is held by a pathological tyrant.
And so, if not sincerely than as a mere mime, we claim that the desire for power is pathological, control by its very nature overbearing, and the seat of authority, less than the man who’s the salt of the Earth. In doing so, we forge an identity of weakness, an idol of submission, and, ironically, we do so because we believe it gives us power – it’s a cope for one’s inability to be the King.
This is why the Right fails, why the Centrist Liberals fail – they forge an identity out of their inability to be in control, to be powerful, or to have authority over the world around them, even themselves. This identity doesn’t lack example, but I find a fascinating one in Dentan’s examination of “Refugee” culture, which can be found in Aggression and Peacefulness in Humans and Other Primates.
So where does that leave the Right, the Centrist Liberals, and the Centrist Right? The critique of pure power, authority, and control is valid. If the ability to use power and direct it so that one can dominate the world around them is undirected or uncoordinated, then nothing but chaos will result. Yet if everything is so excessively constrained that one is prone to adopting a submissive position, then one will lack the capacity to dominate the world around them. Also, if one directs their coordinating power at false idols and gods, then they will likely be conquered by those who are better at grasping the world around them, and if they are conquered, constrained, and adopt a submissive position due to the power of the new tyrant, then they too will lack the capacity to dominate the world around them.
Discovering or uncovering new gods, new focal points of coordination, through philosophical analysis is insufficient. Living a good life that is beautiful and true because it is beautiful and thus true and good is insufficient. The former position is insufficient because idols of the mind have no power over those that are forged in celestial fires, while the latter is insufficient because those same fires can burn the beautiful and turn it into nothing more than a desolate hellscape; the latter is prone to change, capable of being transformed into a grotesque abomination, and thus not a thing to be desired in itself. A father cannot protect his children unless he understands violence and is capable of deftly wielding it, yet if his life is entirely violent or driven by the desire for violence, he can forge nothing capable of preserving itself. For one identity to deny the other means both will fail. Then what is the solution?
The Earth must touch the Sky, and the Sky the Earth. The Seas must be kissed by the Sun’s Flames, and his Flames quenched by the Sea’s effervescent mist. In this unification of the heavens and the core, a new identity may be forged, capable of wielding power against those who would wield unseemly powers against us. This will require the Right to come to terms with itself, from the bottom to the top, and from the top to the bottom. The Right must recognize that it cannot simply build but also that it has a desire and a need to destroy if it wants to survive. This will require the Right to come to terms with what it desires, what it really desires, not just what it mimes as a desire to avoid the wrath of its overlord. This will force the right to look into the mirror, to face its past, and to use that past as a vehicle to transform the present and thus future. Out of this proving, against its enemy and itself, it will surely form a new self, or it will die. Against this last terror, only trust and faith can preserve the bonds of such a unification. All else, including that which is to be desired, will dissolve the spirit of that holistic medium; of that single, unified, and proven identity.
The right can win, if they will it to be so.
