More on this book
Kindle Notes & Highlights
Read between
February 24 - March 26, 2022
The retrograde knows that he can do no evil so that good may come of it, that ends never justify means.
Beyond these abstractions, there is a simple and gritty fact that the retrograde should take time to digest: in the long-run, coalitions don’t work. While fellowships are, by nature, relational, coalitions are mechanical. Coalitions are prone to factiousness and infighting, since maintaining order and cohesion in a body made up of a motley assortment of ideological actors with deviating interests is an exercise in futility.
Since fellowships are predicated on friendship and ideological harmony, they’re more difficult to form, in that it takes time to locate a group of substantially like-minded men, but they have staying power and indomitable strength.
All adults of sound mind—yes, technically even radicals qualify—fit into one of the following ideological categories: retrogrades and radicals sit on the two opposite poles (sadly for now, the latter is a much more capacious group than the former). Between them are two kinds of moderate: militant mods are usually lukewarm liberals with some extrinsic reason for not calling themselves such, or for militantly clinging to a false middle; mod-cons are fainthearted but goodhearted people who sometimes call themselves “conservatives”—sometimes not—comprising the more or less decent folk who simply
...more
The development of a militant mod into a radical is merely a question of when, not if. That is, militant mods are typically radicals in training. They’re waiting for something.
Conversely, the resentful, cowardly militant mod always blames the retrograde and never the radical.
“The man who is a pessimist before 48 knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little.”
In the past half-century, we’ve witnessed, among other things, the universalization of abortion, the redefinition of marriage to include perverse sodomitical unions, the proliferation of drag-queen story hours (for children) at public libraries, the pornografication of movies, television, and music, a mass exodus of mothers of minor-age children out of the home and into the workplace, a divorce rate that has spiked to over 50 percent, an out-of-wedlock birthrate that has spiked to 40 percent, a trend towards legalization of euthanasia, a steadily declining birthrate, a pop-culture that extols
...more
Optimism is every bit as much an offense against truth as pessimism; it just happens to be better tolerated because it’s couched in upbeat diction and because it’s mistaken for charity by people of low intelligence.
See the world as it is instead of how you want it to be, and you can make it as it ought to be; see the world how you want it to be instead of how it is, and it will remain how it shouldn’t be.
the retrograde spirit must be half-revolutionary (Dionysian) and half-establishmentarian (Apollonian).17 The first part invokes that wherever despotism shows its ugly face, dauntless men sever ties with tyrannical old regimes; the second part requires that those same bold men—retrogrades to be sure—construct a just, stable, lasting regime upon the same principles over which the prior regime was abrogated.
As long as a republic stays true to its righteous foundational principles, stasis remains the watchword; when it strays from such principles, daring men must work drastic change through either revision or revolution.
This is a modification of President Reagan’s rule: “Never say anything negative about a fellow conservative.”
Yet the average Christian today is thrice as likely to cry out, “charity, charity,” when he hears his fellow Christian dialoguing with the enemy. And he’s thrice as likely to call down the thunder upon that grouchy Christian who might have darkened his tone of voice in dialogue with that anti-Christian. This rule enjoins retrogrades to reverse this perverse trend!
It’s worth remembering that radicals selectively target the most effective and intimidating retrogrades for political hit jobs and character assassinations.
All things equal, the word of a retrograde should vastly outweigh the word of a radical.
As such, when a preponderance of evidence suggests that a fellow retrograde has, indeed, committed grave transgressions involving moral turpitude or felonious breaches of criminal law, then it is appropriate to quietly withdraw one’s support for the embattled retrograde or to even discretely counsel him to take leave of the public eye, repent of his misdeeds, and, if applicable, resign his position of public trust. Unless the disgraced retrograde has given rise to a public scandal, there is no moral impetus to rebuke him publicly.
An early start, in turn, mandates purposeful courtship. To initiate courtship, young men should clearly, plainly, directly ask young women for one-on-one dates.
Nature mandates that the young learn by immediate access to wise leaders close at hand. Somehow in this generation, we must triumph over the additional cross of a largely bankrupt generation of elders: the only conceivable way of recovery inheres in looking to the One True Man, Jesus Christ, and the saintly disciples he inspired over the course of two Christian millennia.
General Patton once observed, “If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn’t thinking.”
Twenty years’ time gave us no-fault divorce, abortion on demand, ubiquitous contraception, mainstream feminism, the working mother, religious indifferentism, the welfare state (in the form of the Great Society), draconian environmentalism, destigmatized drug-use and fornication, and a watershed federal piece of gun-control legislation (the Gun Control Act of 1968).
They insist that retrogrades must use a sanitized speaking style devoid of passion, devoid of flair, devoid of any hint of righteous anger about the iniquity of the left.
We were breathlessly told by conventional pundits during the course of the election that Trump would have to soften his tone to win the general election because “suburban women don’t like negativity.” In the wake of Trump’s resounding victory, have the talking heads recanted their flawed advice?
But as Christ himself tells us, peace isn’t to be embraced at the expense of justice—it is for this reason that he announced that he came to bring not peace but a sword.
Don’t be deceived. Fighting isn’t inherently sinful. Sometimes it’s sinful not to fight.
culture in a just direction and to care for the souls of our fellow men. One must affirmatively
To deliberately abstain from making moral judgments about agents and actions is to embrace moral relativism (the arch-heresy of heresies), the denial of objective truth itself.
Think critically and stay sharp. Never be content to be part of the herd.
So fearful are the mod-cons—especially those empty suits holding elective office in legislative bodies—of potential backlash at the ballot box in the event that they act too decisively in bringing to fruition a conservative policy, that they succumb to what’s fairly characterized as political paralysis.
In spite of the chest-puffing and manipulative antics of a disgustingly biased media, the ballot-box retribution that we’re told is looming right around the corner is nothing but a specter, a chimera devised by radicals to stymie retrograde progress by stealing the already-scant courage of our wishy-washy representatives.
The average voter is embarrassingly ignorant about current affairs, and his political memory is slightly shorter than the average news cycle and slightly longer than a goldfish’s.
voters have tragically short memories, memories which would rival those of clinical amnesiacs.
And the primary reason for their failure to act and secure these victories was fear of voter retribution—fear of losing their power and majorities. Due to their baseless fear, cowardly Republicans squandered this generation’s best chance at making significant strides towards a more just and conservative America.
The retrograde must reclaim classical magnanimity for himself and for his people. He must learn to emulate both the great-souled man’s virtue and his contempt for the mob.
As the family goes, so goes society.
This is why Vladimir Lenin boasted, “Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world.”
feminism is to achieve “equal rights” for women. That’s merely the party line fed to the ignorant and the bitter.
Feminists have also taken to attacking motherhood, shaming housewives for being “lazy” and “unambitious” and pressuring them to take up needless glamor-careers for the sake of “empowerment.”
As Pope Pius XII once lamented, when the mother is absent from the home, it becomes “desolate for lack of care,”
Studies show that “a father’s absence increases antisocial behavior, such as aggression, rule-breaking, delinquency and illegal drug use—especially among boys.”
Central as it is to the health of the culture at large, the family simply cannot be overlooked as the primary locus of the battle for the soul of society.
he will have to do so by purifying and reinvigorating the family, the most noble and ancient of institutions.
Hold fast to your wedding vows; love your wives; teach your kids diligently; but flee from any temptation to cede your rightful authority, giving way to a practical matriarchy.
radical impunity against Christians—in the name of equality—violates justice.
He must do this by showing that—one way or another—an immoral application of one of the “rules for radicals” against a Christian can easily be weaponized by that same Christian.
The talking-points of radicals, their issues of the day, are always mere trojan horses for accomplishing a deeper agenda.
Mod-cons would be well-served to understand, for example, that the debate over gun-control isn’t about reducing deaths; it’s about making people more dependent on government by depriving them of self-sufficiency. Likewise, the debate over abortion isn’t about “a woman’s right to choose”; it’s about “freeing” women from the home by enabling women’s careerism. The debate over unfettered immigration isn’t about relieving the world’s poor, tired, huddled masses; it’s about ushering in globalism and undermining the sovereignty of the nation-state. The debate over raising taxes isn’t really about
...more
Becoming bogged down in the morass of policy minutiae with radicals is a fool’s errand, since their mania for the utopian state moves them to ignore the illogic of the many planks of their platform, just as the tail wags the dog.
Radicals love crises because every crisis provides them with leverage to fast-track their agenda under the cover of an exigency and its corollary hubbub.
even the most jejune political muggle is well-aware that weighty policy decisions should not be made in a hurry, as haste in important matters lends itself to cataclysmic mistakes.
