The Rotting Foundation That Is Democracy

Many on the right attack individual symptoms, problems (feminism, crime, growing entitlement spending) without addressing the underlying disease: democracy and the liberal state.

The solution lends itself to NRx, which rejects the post-WW2 ideal of democracy and social liberalism, as quoted by Amerika’s NRx guide:

But as Evola observed, all of us in the post-war period are men among the ruins, because with WWII liberalism achieved its final victory over conservatism. In Europe, states became what we might call 60% liberal, in contrast to the 100% liberal of pure Communism in the Soviet Union. The United States, hovering at 50%, shot upward such that in the present day it hovers in the 90s somewhere.

Also interesting Evola’s Critique of Modernity – Bertonneau:

In words reminiscent of Spengler’s diction, Evola describes the United States “a soulless greatness of a purely technological and collective nature, lacking in any background of transcendence.” Whereas “Soviet communism officially professes atheism,” Evola remarks, and whereas “America does not go that far”; nevertheless, “without realizing it, and often believing the contrary, it is running down the same path in which nothing is left of… religious meaning.”

But the problem is not so much with feminism, but with too much freedom, that I think some mistakenly present as some unalloyed ‘good’, which ultimately gives rise to feminism, excess entitlement spending and other other forms of social liberalism. It’s like building a house of wood and then complaining about termites and rot. Even if the house is structurally sound initially, after many decades things eventually fall apart, and the house has to be rebuilt or town down. Better to just built it out of stone. The ‘liberal democracy’ is a relatively new concept in the history of Western civilization, and for good reasons.

However, in disagreement with Spengler and Evola, this does not mean we have to regress and abandon technology, nor do I share Evola’s detain for the bourgeois, a detain that is also shared by the left. Hating the elite is just another form of populism, this time from the right. If anything, technology is hastening the decline of democracy and egalitarianism, as evidenced by recent trends of growing wealth inequality. Technology does not have to lead to liberalism; in fact, the biggest critics of technology are leftist primitivists like John Zerzan, who argue that the world was ‘nicer’ and ‘fairer’ before agriculture. The left also complains about technology destroying jobs and creating income inequality, in agreement with their affinity for anarcho-Marxism and other leftist ideologies. If so many on the left blame technology and Western civilization for imagined social problems, why do we want to follow their heed?

Perhaps the political spectrum is locally linear (6 o’clock), but when you take higher-order approximations it becomes circular with both the far-left and far-right meeting on the opposite side (12 o’clock). The right-wing anti-populist status-quo is at 3 o’clock; the left-wing variety is at 9 o’clock. Going too far to either the left or the right may lead to disorder, upheaval. Related to my criticism of populism , the French Revolution, which epitomized the populist up-ruling, lead to Napoléon and the Reign of Terror to fill the void, which lead to French First Republic and planted the seeds much later for democracy.

The United Arab Emirates could be an example of a reactionary-style of government given that democracy is rejected and traditionalism and private property are enforced. However, the labour force of the United Arab Emirates is primarily made up of foreign temporary workers, most of whom come from the Indian subcontinent and other parts, which runs afoul of the entho-nationalist elements of NRx.

Related:

NRx and Modernity
Embracing Modernity, Part 2