A Catechism of Cliche

Things have been terribly busy here in the monkey house, with both a woman and a colored attempting to usurp the throne that rightly belongs to good white Christian gentlemen, and I haven’t been able to keep up with lesser repositories of wisdom like RedState lately. More’s the pity, because, as alert correspondent Mighty God King points out, that comes at the cost of missing things like this.

Some minor imp named Paul J. Cella has looked to the theologians and Paul Elmer More (founder of the rightly forgotten school of literary crtiticism known as neohumanism) to create the pompously titled 'A Reactionary’s Shorter Catechism', stating that “it is only sane to react against madness”. It is also only reactionary to call sanity madness, but that’s a different essay, so Cella and his collaborator 'Maximos' (Magneto having been unavailable due to a prior mashed-potato-circuit speaking engagement) composed these rules for living whereby they “contradict the world” by saying things a lot of people agree with.

Human nature is not elastic, but rather constant; and the corrupt aspects will always be with us.

They start out strong, I admit, by claiming against millennia of history that human nature is constant. No evidence is offered, but when is it ever?

There is great peril in the reckless use reason to pry into the nonrational aspects of our history and traditions: like Noah’s son looking upon his nakedness, the brazenness of reason my issue in ruin.

I’d like to address this point, whatever it is, but I’m pretty sure that the sentence is missing at least two words.

The misuse of the label progress has concealed some of the most terrible political calamities in history; the very word has been rendered untrustworthy.

We really shouldn’t even bother to do anything progressive, in other words, because people claiming to be progressive have sometimes done bad things.

The institution of the State emanates from the nature of man, who is a political animal, organizing collectively to shelter his tradition and community.

The last part of that sounds suspiciously like Communism, sir! What monkeyshines are these?

There is a presumption in favor of Free Speech, but it is hardly absolute. Few clauses of the Philadelphia Constitution have been more abused, and twisted from their original meaning, than the First Amendment.

Details of the nature and limits this abuse are, surprisingly, not forthcoming, presumably because we all know it when we see it.

Disloyalty is a permanent political problem, and historically has been a particularly ruinous one. There is no facile solution to it. Excesses on either side of it have issued in catastrophe.

Disloyalty to whom? To what? In what way? The use of three-dollar words in Cella’s writing is like that of a half-clever eighth-grader: it conceals a lack of detail, of substance, of explication.

There no presumption of protection for political discourse ranging over questions of the violent replacement of the Constitution, as the latter not a suicide pact. Sedition is a crime and ought to remain one.

Conservatives of late have been quite fond of this “the Constitution is not a suicide pact” line. It allows them to excuse the soiling of it by the existence of Camp X-Ray and other expressions of the Bush Administration’s push for police-state powers. Unfortunately, it only works when there’s a preponderance of evidence against the accused that suggests their guilt, which, in the case of Guantanamo, there is not.

A healthy polity will have a majority population and culture; contemporary orthodoxy on diversity tends towards anarchy and strife.

Which, I suppose, is why America today is so plunged into anarchy and strife. This is self-evident nonsense; almost every power in history, antique and contemporary, has been one of rich diversity. Diversity and multiculturalism spreads ideas, increases knowledge, promotes toleration, and reduces conflict. Majoritarianism does none of these things.

The right of a community to maintain its identity, autonomy, and independence is among the first principles of a free polity.

Doesn’t this contradict the majoritarian urge of the previous point? What if you want to maintain your autonomy against the rule of the majority culture?

A government may become destructive of these ends, calling forth resistance from the community. Revolt, like war, should be analyzed through the two-tier method of traditional Just War doctrine: jus ad bellum and jus in bello. A just cause for revolt may be dishonored by its conduct; and even an unjust cause may be conducted honorably.

In other words, those with a legitimate complaint must be condemned if they do not fight by our rules, and we may conduct an unjust war as long as we do it like gentlemen.

Cultures and civilizations vary widely and profoundly, not only in customs, but in terms of mindsets, ways of seeing the world, and potential for humane achievements. Indiscriminate blending of cultures is thus undesirable, and more often than not an at least implicit act of aggression against the existing majority culture.

That last sentence, good grief. It’s just…it’s just nonsense.

The Liberal compact, by which questions of ultimate existential import are bracketed, and questions of temporal prosperity and the adjudication of rights-claims pursued, is an act of violence against human nature, a displacement that occasions the rise of messianic political doctrines.

What he’s saying here, if you can’t find your way through the pompous argot, is that liberalism, because it attempts to address economic and social inequity, is a crime against humanity. Lovely.

Science, like economics, must learn its place — subordinate to the higher values of civilization, and not master of them.

Pipe down, brainiacs.

The traditional family — mother, father and children — must be privileged in law and in society; no other relationship is permitted to assert equality or parity with it.

Why? “PROVE”, Cella’s professor would scrawl in the margins if he hadn’t dropped out to follow Victor Davis Hanson around in a VW microbus.

Voting is not a right but a privilege. Its abuse is rampant, and to contain it is a valid object of public policy. More damaging to a republic than corrupt politicians are corrupt voters.

Fuck the American principle of the universal franchise; you fuckers better vote the RIGHT way, or you won’t be allowed to vote at all.