Life outside the padded walls
September 25, 2015 § 85 Comments
Understanding our sociopolitical life as more of an ‘inside-outside’ thing than a ‘left-right’ thing changes our perspective significantly. Living inside or outside of a lie isn’t a matter of left versus right; it is a matter of the evil, false, and ugly versus the good, the true, and the beautiful. Or, perhaps more accurately, it is a matter of something known to be evil, false, and ugly versus … something else.
The Overton Window forms the soft comfortable center of the modern mind trap, in which all political debate involving all socially acceptable points of view takes place. All of these points of view take liberalism as a metaphysically basic background, and within the padded walls it makes sense to talk of left versus right; that is, left liberalism versus right liberalism.
Outside of the Overton window is where all of the overt sociopaths live. Some people are driven to overt sociopathy by the insanity of life inside the mind trap and its padded walls. Others are endogenously sociopathic (HT: Bonald) and just happen to live outside of the padded walls for that reason. I don’t venture to guess how it is that I ended up just where I am: I’ll leave that to others.
But there are all sorts of sociopaths; and just because someone is sociopathic enough to live outside of the padded walls doesn’t mean that he is my friend, or that his views and mine are any more compatible than my views and those of some of the people inside the padded walls. Someone who was lured outside of the padded walls by a promise of easy fornication, for example, is going to have different metaphysical baggage from someone who is outside of the padded walls because he ran in horror from the human sacrifice cult of modernity. All we really know upon encountering someone outside of the padded walls is that he is a sociopath.
So when I object to the idea of “no enemies to the right” what I am really saying is that just because someone is a sociopath who overtly rejects (some of) the comfortable pieties of liberalism, that doesn’t make him any more suitable as a friend or ally than someone inside the padded walls. The only thing that overt sociopathy guarantees is overt sociopathy.
Zippy Catholic 
Your view of sociopathy, overt and not, is not compatible with the term’s clinical meaning. And this is the only meaning that matters, since it is a well-defined psychopathological condition.
Those idiosyncratic distinctions you make (overt vs. endogenous sociopaths) have no representation in reality, and obscure whatever point you are trying to make.
You may want to look up a definition of sociopathy; or, if you insist on your own idiosyncratic interpretation of the term, make it clear to the readers.
Thanks for the input.
Pretty much all of the distinctions I make in my blogging are idiosyncratic. If they weren’t, I probably wouldn’t find them interesting enough to talk about. Regular readers are used to this, and in fact we’ve had lengthy discussions here about the use of language, symbols, etc.
And since I consider the DSM-5 to be of considerably less value, pound-for-pound, than toilet paper, I am unlikely to consult it for poetic inspiration.
[…] Source: Zippy Catholic […]
What do you mean by sociopathy then?
“of, relating to, or characterized by asocial or antisocial behavior” is a perfectly serviceable definition, right from Merriam-Webster – particularly when measured against the pieties of the actual society we live in.
So when I object to the idea of “no enemies to the right” what I am really saying is that just because someone is a sociopath who overtly rejects (some of) the comfortable pieties of liberalism, that doesn’t make him any more suitable as a friend or ally than someone inside the padded walls. The only thing that overt sociopathy guarantees is overt sociopathy.
You must be reading my mind, as I was planning on doing a post on this for awhile.
I read Vox Day a lot. He has a thing about not pushing away extremists, as they act as “shock troops” for your side. His go-to example was Roosh, who was getting attacked (sometimes literally) by feminists when he went on tour in Canada.
I’m not sure I buy it. Just because Roosh shares some of my enemies, doesn’t mean he’s not an enemy. Roosh’s goals involve potentially damning souls.
I think it was Cane Caldo who once said that we should be looking at things from the viewpoint of Jerusalem, not Athens.
@malcomthecynic
I was thinking of VD as well. As intelligent and historically literate as he claims to be, he is insane and deluded. Apparently in Voxland sabotaging an award nobody cares about and teasing C-list leftards on Twitter equals “saving Western civilization.”
For someone who reads a lot of history, his quoting Churchill about putting a good word in for the devil if Hitler invaded hell is horribly inapt for his current “support your extremists!” kick. Churchill put in a good word for the devil and half of Europe was enslaved as a result.
Apparently in Voxland sabotaging an award nobody cares about and teasing C-list leftards on Twitter equals “saving Western civilization.”
This is unfair. For one thing, he’s not stupid. He’d never say that full stop unless it was to make a rhetorical point.
For another, there’s a lot of background going into both of the things you’re talking about that you’re not giving proper credit.
Let me ask you this: What happened in this instance that made it possible to have a proper pushback against the SJW’s in the sci-fi field?
For someone who reads a lot of history, his quoting Churchill about putting a good word in for the devil if Hitler invaded hell is horribly inapt for his current “support your extremists!” kick. Churchill put in a good word for the devil and half of Europe was enslaved as a result.
Otherwise most or all of Europe would have been enslaved, or the war would have been longer, Europe weaker, and Russia ultimately more powerful.
I’m not going to pretend that we didn’t have to ally with the Russians to beat the Germans.
I had to google Overton Window.
At the bottom of “no enemies to the right” is garden variety consequentialism. “Will you do whatever it takes to win or lose as nobly as possible?”. I’m reminded of Zippy’s post about how an immoral person always has more options to “get the job done” than a moral one. So if your top priority is to get the job done, you won’t balk at embracing immoral allies.
So if your top priority is to get the job done, you won’t balk at embracing immoral allies.
I don’t disagree with this, and I actually generally agree with the criticism. I’m only disagreeing with the specific case of WWII. We were allying with them to fight the war, which was no more immoral than what we were doing. After it ended, we properly opposed them, and eventually secured their downfall.
Alliance with the Russians in WWII is something I haven’t analyzed closely from the standpoint of moral theology. But that is partly because there are plenty of more obvious problems with our conduct during that war, e.g. firebombing and nuking civilian populations.
I am not suggesting that Malcolm or anyone else is doing this, but it is important not to fall into the “Good War” trap set by the standard right-liberal narrative. In the “Good War” trap we start with the premise that WWII was a justified war (which I think is probably true under jus ad bellum). We then steal the jus in bello ball and conclude that everything or most things we did in WWII which was/were causally connected to victory, were justified.
One of the effervescently evil results of WWII is that winning it turned the bulk of the ‘predispositionally conservative’ population into moral consequentialists.
(Apologies if my use of the term “effervescently” strayed a bit from its official clinical definition).
Malcolm – I think we agree. You may find yourself on the same side as some morally questionable allies. It doesn’t mean that you adopt their immoral tactics, much less those of the enemy you’re fighting. Even if that’s what “works.”
The thing that “respectable conservatives” fail to understand about the extremists is that you don’t have to get too deep into why the guy fighting next to you is fighting next to you unless you have reason to believe he’s got a goal as evil or more so than that of your enemy in mind or you suspect he’s going to turn on you at some point. In many respects “respectable conservatives” are cowards and cretins because they have more respect for the opinions of their enemy toward them than they have respect for people willing to fight next to them and drive that enemy back. To that end, they’re mostly backbiters.
It’s also imperative to remember that when your enemy demands you denounce someone, you realize that it is a power play to make you carry out a ritual denunciation. With SJWs in particular, they care little about the true, good and beautiful. If Roosh mouthed the right platitudes, they’d be singing his praises. That is why you should never denounce anyone they want to be denounced even if you would freely denounce that person’s conduct before a good pastor or priest.
Mike T:
So… I should refuse to let SJW’s control me by taking their desires as a filter on what I say publicly about my own views?
This is how liberalism perpetuates and protects itself. It isn’t merely a matter of the left-right wings, the Hegelian Mambo / Cthulu swims left, the long march through hopeandchange-based unprincipled exceptions, etc.
That’s just the inner part of it, the Overton-comfortable zone.
The outer hard shell, outside of the Overton window but still part of the Big Lie, consists of people genuinely alienated from liberalism (e.g. NRx, Alt-Right, left-anarchists, etc), and their inconsistent insistence on being its opposite in every particular — on being a mirror image of what they supposedly oppose.
But a perfect reflection of a lie is still a lie.
For my part I’ll denounce the wicked, false, and ugly because they are wicked, false, and ugly. Nobody is always perfectly wrong about everything all the time. It follows that if we insist on acting as if SJW’s or Communists or comfortable left and right liberals or Nazis or whomever are always wrong about everything, we will necessarily in some cases exchange the truth for a lie.
Other sociopaths are welcome to be liberalism’s abused bitch, conforming their actions to the frame established by the very things they propose to despise. But I don’t recommend it.
Well, I’ve been attacked for opposing the atomic bombs, for one thing, so I’m not exactly a rah-rah guy on this.
With SJWs in particular, they care little about the true, good and beautiful. If Roosh mouthed the right platitudes, they’d be singing his praises. That is why you should never denounce anyone they want to be denounced even if you would freely denounce that person’s conduct before a good pastor or priest.
This would be fine if his actions weren’t publicly harming the world. But they are.
I agree with the whole “left-right” divide is BS, what matters is Christ and nation. Enoch Powell once said to Thatcher that if communism were to have been good for Britain he would have supported it.
In the same vein, my ideology is basically “what is good for the Union?”. I just happen to believe that strong national and local communities are the fertile soil upon which faith in Christ grows so it ties into my belief that Christ and nation are most important.
As for what Malcolm said about Roosh, I agree. The man is a degenerate and a weakling, he is no friend of the West.
This would be fine if his actions weren’t publicly harming the world. But they are.
There are plenty of Christians who are publicly harming the world with their antics and teachings in the media as well. Some of them are doing so in ways that make Roosh look like nothing. Heck, one could even point at this Pope who is more concerned with global warming and opening up the southern border than defending the moral teachings of our shared Christian faith because heaven forbid that the youth be turned off by hard teachings on marriage, sex and homosexuality. And then it’s no wonder why when they look for a religion to fill the void many turn to Islam which is unabashedly counter-culture.
As for what Malcolm said about Roosh, I agree. The man is a degenerate and a weakling, he is no friend of the West.
He is closer to Mark Steyn in terms of having balls in the face of the SJWs than he is to most mainstream conservatives. He actually stood up to the establishment in Canada and won. I would rather have him in the trenches with us than 1,000 country club “conservatives” who get the vapors at the first accusation of being teh racist/sexist/homophobe.
So… I should refuse to let SJW’s control me by taking their desires as a filter on what I say publicly about my own views?
No, you should recognize that their actions are almost invariably wicked and whatever they want you to do is almost assuredly either immoral on its face or immoral due to their motivations. If they were to demand that you render medical aid to an old person, you should check the pills for poison.
Mike T:
Is someone suggesting that we shouldn’t publicly criticize them, as you suggested that (e.g.) Roosh shouldn’t be publicly criticized (because SJW’s criticize him, which in your view confers immunity from public criticism for wicked acts and espousal of wickedness)?
Apparently SJW’s have the power to turn evil into good, simply by publicly condemning it.
Is someone suggesting that we shouldn’t publicly criticize them, as you suggested that (e.g.) Roosh shouldn’t be publicly criticized
I never said he shouldn’t be publicly criticized. I said that you should never give the SJWs the pleasure of seeing you bark on command when they demand you denounce him. I thought I made it clear that their demand for criticism and denunciation is a totalitarian tactic divorced from anything good. You shouldn’t give them what they want because it is quite clear that they are evil people making evil demands.
The point I made about a pastor or priest was to draw a distinction in the nature of the demand. If you were to be called out by your priest who suspected you of supporting Roosh’s moral issues, the man would be calling you to denounce Roosh’s lifestyle out of piety and commitment to the true, good and beautiful. He would likely also try hard to draw a distinction between denouncing the lifestyle and the man.
The SJW denunciation is a Stalinist tactic. It is pure ad hominem with no commitment to the true, good and beautiful. They want you to despise the man as a man, not what he stands for and even their reason for hating what he stands for is not aligned with truth or goodness. There is no profit in giving them what they want and much to lose in setting an example for others in going along with their totalitarian game.
Mike T:
Frankly it still sounds like you’ve bought into the very frame you are so determined to reject. I agree that self respecting adults shouldn’t denounce on command like a dog commanded to perform tricks, though it doesn’t much matter to me whether it is an SJW demanding denunciation of homophobia or an NRx tomfool demanding that I denounce the term “racism” as an anti-concept.
On the other hand I’ll usually answer questions that people ask, especially when they do so respectfully.
A broken clock is right twice a day and SJWS are right about Roosh. They both must be removed as the destructive forces they are.
A clock as broken as the average SJW doesn’t deserve to be told that it has been right twice a day. If there is any group that probably should be treated like the “Low Man” by the rest of society in self-defense, it would be them. There will hopefully be a day when being identified as one will be akin to how being identified as a neo-Nazi gets one regarded by the rest of society today.
Mike T:
Again, your rhetoric seems to be at best unclear, and at worst simply confirms that the sort of ‘reaction’ you are talking about is still liberal intramural conflict and has not transcended and escaped from liberalism.
Given a true proposition (e.g. “Roosh promotes hedonism and self destruction, and should be opposed by people of good will”) you seem to be saying that we should pretend that it isn’t true simply because SJW’s also oppose Roosh.
IOW, we should adopt whatever lies are necessary in order to oppose the great oppressor-untermensh, the Low Man, the SJW.
The SJW is just the modern incarnation of the Cultural Marxist and Cultural Marxism is the fruit of the Frankfurt School via the combination of Marxism and Freudianism.
Best not to miss the forest for the trees.
That being said, Roosh at the very best can only be a useful idiot never a full ally.
Given a true proposition (e.g. “Roosh promotes hedonism and self destruction, and should be opposed by people of good will”) you seem to be saying that we should pretend that it isn’t true simply because SJW’s also oppose Roosh.
No, I am not saying that. In fact, I explicitly said above that you can and should make it clear to people of good will that you don’t agree with him on those areas. And as I said above repeatedly, you can be situationally aligned with the man where it makes sense against a common enemy. If he’s fighting them, it makes no sense to fire on him at the same time instead of closing ranks and fighting with him against them.
That being said, Roosh at the very best can only be a useful idiot never a full ally.
And yet the man did more to stand up for freedom of speech in Canada than most “Right Thinking Conservative Christians” in Canada ever will. It’s easy for us to beat our chests about how bad ass we are while he, Vox Day and others who are not “respectable” actually put their real identities out there and get into real fights with leading SJWs.
Unrelated, but what do you make of this?
Mike T:
I would change “people of good will” to “everyone”. If I am going to say anything at all I always say what I really think is true to everyone, and I think you should too.
Nonsense. Roosh is treated as some sort of leader rather than as a leering pervert, and is corrupting the weak minds of those who treat him as some sort of leader.
Furthermore, I reject the whole melodramatic framing here. Again, I am on the ‘side’ of the good, true, and beautiful; not on the ‘side’ of perverts, whether they are perverts of the left or perverts of the right. Folks are welcome to walk beside me or to do their own thing, but don’t expect me to treat lies and perversion as anything but lies and perversion.
So his support for a derivative liberal political principle is supposed to get me to cheer on the weak minded in following him? Why would I support someone pulling people back into the mind-trap dialectic of liberalism?
I don’t know what exactly it is that you want, because on the one hand you agree that it is right to denounce Roosh’s activities as those of a self-serving low-life pervert mired in the very liberalism he makes feints toward rejecting, while on the other hand you seem to want that to be soft-pedaled in some way or other simply because SJWs hate him.
All this “pick a side” nonsense in the intramural dialectic between different kinds of modernists just perpetuates the lies of modernity. If you want me to pick your side, you have to unequivocally stand up for the truth — independent of who is uttering it or of what self-important video game battle drama for civilization is taking place in the heads of all of the keyboard warriors and youtube audiences on the Internet.
This situation is often compared to the allies fighting alongside the Soviets. Perhaps Zippy agrees with the (apocryphal) quote attributed to Patton that if he were caught between the Russian and German armies he’d attack in both directions.
As Zippy mentions above, it’s a mistake to assume that we’re on the same side as people like Roosh just because he opposes SJWs. Aren’t we opposed to hedonism and sexual incontinence too? There’s lots of weeping and gnashing of teeth over the declining birth rates in the West. Will Roosh’s teachings lead to more abortion, contraception, and non-marriage or less? John Scalzi and Roosh (and you and me) have the same sickness with different symptoms. The cure is same for all of us and it doesn’t have a damned thing to do with doxxing progressives or learning how to sleep with more sluts.
[…] because some particular person or group opposes the current configuration of the Overton window, it does not follow that that person or group is advocating better aligning it with the good, the true, and […]
Will Roosh’s teachings lead to more abortion, contraception, and non-marriage or less?
Actually if you read some of his posts, he’s actually been pretty open about how he’s starting to come to grips with the nihilism of his lifestyle and how it’s poisoning him. In fact, I would say that him finding religion in the next five years is not at all that unlikely given what he’s written about how his lifestyle is impacting him even on a spiritual level.
I support Roosh in getting religion, taking a vow of celibacy and poverty, making a public statement of unequivocal repentance every bit as public as his views on fat shaming, deleting all of his web sites, and living out the rest of his life in prayer in a monastery or helping the poor.
I also support SJW’s in taking that path. I am sure someone could point to some notorious SJW or other and make the same prediction. People come to repentance along all sorts of different paths.
St. Augustine was also a player; his repentance was total, public, and unequivocal.
I don’t support what Roosh is actually doing right now in this place called reality, though.
Mike – That’s potentially good news, and I hope Roosh finds Christ (not “religion”) sooner rather than later.
Anyway, rather than personalizing it to one guy, I’ll reiterate my point by saying that anyone who lives by a PUA ethic is contributing to a culture that is doing more to undermine Christian morality than all the trigger warnings, safe spaces, and speech codes combined. It’s myopic to say that we must be on the same side as PUA’s because they’re against SJWs.
Yeah, good luck to Roosh with that, sincerely. That doesn’t mean I’m supporting him now.
I’ll reiterate my point by saying that anyone who lives by a PUA ethic is contributing to a culture that is doing more to undermine Christian morality than all the trigger warnings, safe spaces, and speech codes combined.
If it were only those things I would agree. However, it is not and you would do well to understand that most PUAs are not even remotely as hostile to traditional Christianity as SJWs. That has some very important practical implications. The first of which is that those things you cited are used very aggressively to institutionally drive out Christianity. Where the PUA lifestyle may be an alternative, it exists with no particular organized and intentional effort to drive Christianity underground. Furthermore, even if they did, they don’t have the institutional backing to effect that change. There are no power players in our society that moonlight as PUAs, but there are legions of them who are SJWs.
Furthermore, most SJWs are themselves sexual libertines when they are not being puritanical on certain aspects of sexual behavior. This is a matter of “the libertine who will leave you alone” and the “libertine who will destroy your career, shutter your church and take your kids away for holding to orthodox views.”
In general, SJWs are “everything you dislike about PUAs with not a single thing that might be good.”
It’s myopic to say that we must be on the same side as PUA’s because they’re against SJWs.
You don’t have to be on the same side as them to fight with them when that makes sense. By your logic, if the Chinese invaded in force and illegal immigrants fought to drive them out of town to protect their families, nativists should sit back and watch them kill each other instead of making a situational move to side with them against the Chinese.
CJ,
Let me put to you this way. There is no doubt in my mind that most of the SJWs at the SFWA would love to have and actually use the power to send most Christians to a concentration camp for their views. I very much doubt the average PUA would feel that way and would probably even react in horror at the level of tyranny most SJWs would love to impose on those that don’t agree with them.
Mike T:
Suppose that you are the Amish. The Chinese are invading, and are planning to pave over Pennsylvania and turn it into sweatshops. They are opposed by an army of Jersey Shore hedonists and the San Francisco S&M brigade, who plan to raze it and turn it all into whorehouses. Which side should the Amish choose?
The point is not that either analogy is especially good. The point is that the strength of the “pick sides and fight!” bullshit slogan depends upon the particulars, which cannot be swept away by bad analogies.
And in particular, it is moronic and self-destructive for Christians to ally themselves with sexual hedonists – or white supremacists, for that matter – in a culture war.
I understand alliances of convenience. But it seems to me that those on the right who make common cause with PUAs go far beyond that. Again, not to make it about one guy, but remember this from Vox about Roosh’s seminar in Canada?
“Heroes are seldom the fine upstanding well-respected individuals we wish them to be. Such people are usually too concerned with going along with the crowd and winning the good opinion of the world to speak the truth when the truth is despised. But when a man speaks the truth despite being condemned for it, he is more truly walking in the footsteps of Jesus Christ than many a decent, church-going Christian man.”
http://voxday.blogspot.com/2015/08/a-hero-for-men.html
And if you don’t agree, the same folks who hate circular firing squads will come up with a vulgar neologism to deride you. Remind them that it’s a fool’s bargain to gain the world and lose your soul? Churchianity.
As I said earlier, the problem with this right-wing/neomasculinity alliance is that it is willing to do evil so that good may come from it. “The SJW’s made these rules” they tell us. So you allow moral degenerates who supposedly always lie to define what you will or won’t do?
Suppose that you are the Amish. The Chinese are invading, and are planning to pave over Pennsylvania and turn it into sweatshops. They are opposed by an army of Jersey Shore hedonists and the San Francisco S&M brigade, who plan to raze it and turn it all into whorehouses. Which side should the Amish choose?
A fine rebuttal with the one exception that most guys like Roosh have no desire to actually come into our communities and force their ways on us. Well that and the fact that the Amish are such extreme pacifists (unlike even the Mennonites) that they wouldn’t take up arms to defend themselves from an Aztec-Moloch worshiper alliance aimed at sacrificing and barbequing their children.
I’ll repeat myself and expand, since it didn’t register the first time:
‘The point is not that either analogy is especially good. The point is that the strength of the “pick sides and fight!” bullshit slogan depends upon the particulars, which cannot be swept away by bad analogies.’
The war analogies are just wrongheaded. Real life is not a video game or sci-fi novel, and Mr. Roosh goes to Canada is not a cultural watershed.
The first rule in a gunfight is to bring a gun. And the first rule in a spiritual/cultural war is to bring [fill in the blank here].
A libertine culture does not have to be hostile to Christianity to be destructive of it. Easily available, consequence free sex is always going to appeal to people in our fallen state without strong, consistently enforced social disincentives. That’s exactly why God didn’t want the Israelites mixing with the pagan cultures around them. You get more adherents with animal sacrifice and temple prostitution than with just animal sacrifice.
The entire culture is libertine to one degree or another. That’s why I said that there is no easy divide on sexual issues between PUAs and SJWs. They both exist in the spectrum of mainstream sexual mores. Where I think you are making a mistake is in failing to see that many who are associated with “game” and “neomasculinity” are at least somewhat open-minded to traditional society. In fact a number of times I see on Return of Kings a longing for a return to a true patriarchy, with strict marriage standards including the “marital debt” being restored in culture and law.
I think Dalrock’s favorite Baptist whipping boy, Albert Mohler, is a great example of how Christians can be just as dangerous or more so than guys like Roosh. That guy has a potential audience of about 20M in the SBC. He makes Roosh look like nothing. Not only does he reject the concept of the “marital debt” outright, but claims that husbands must reearn daily their sexual access to their wives. If a man fails to live up to his wife’s expectations in her own eyes, there’s no objective authority to tell her that she’s sinning by violating 1 Cor 7:5. This is a mainstream belief among a staggering number of Christians.
Now let me ask you this, what good is marriage for men “who burn” if the church is teaching them that they must be chaste outside and be subjected to the tyranny of their wife’s emotional state within marriage? That is to say, what good is it for men if there is no church-backed bidirectional obligation between the two to take care of those issues?
There are plenty of ways marriage and sexual morality can be deeply undermined. Some of the most pernicious are the ones that actually have a false covering of righteousness and scripture/sacred tradition to them.
[…] And from Life outside the padded walls: […]
Roosh in particular and NRx in general are at best promoting a kind of patriarchy lite which is, as I have already explained, simply liberalism itself spinning another Hegelian cycle.
But each new generation of conservatives has to find its own way to get neo-conned.
The guy is teaching false doctrine and should be opposed. But then, I don’t have a problem with calling out those on my “side” who are in error. But by “pick a side and fight” logic, shouldn’t you back off of Mohler? I mean, he opposes homosexuality, so you don’t want to shoot at the guy in your foxhole, amirite?
A fine rebuttal with the one exception that most guys like Roosh have no desire to actually come into our communities and force their ways on us.
And that’s why they write books, get TV shows, go on speaking tours, and run websites where they teach their techniques as a science. Because they don’t want to make more men like them. That’s also why Roissy picks betas every month to publicly shame – because he doesn’t want the rest of society to become more like him.
I think Dalrock’s favorite Baptist whipping boy, Albert Mohler, is a great example of how Christians can be just as dangerous or more so than guys like Roosh.
But how does this make Roosh not dangerous? Who here has said that we shouldn’t be condemning Christians who are harming the Church or society.
Don’t you think we’ve reached something of a reductio ad absurdum when we start comparing Roosh to Jesus because he’s teaching men how to become successful perverts?
But by “pick a side and fight” logic, shouldn’t you back off of Mohler?
I never got hard on his case, aside from that issue. That’s the point. He and Roosh are equally screwed up in their own ways from my point of view. To me, there’s no difference between a PUA who preaches promiscuity and a pastor who can’t/doesn’t/won’t understand Ephesians 5, 1 Cor 7:5 and similar verses. They’re both teaching serious, immoral behavior and I would say that both should have an idea that it’s wrong.
Contra Zippy, I think a war mindset will ultimately be necessary because at some point the SJWs are going to start using naked force to push their agenda. They’re already flirting with that on gay marriage. I would not be surprised if, within my lifetime (I’m 32), the SJWs turn the culture war into a shooting war between those aligned with them and those factions aligned against them.
If someone believes that we’ve gotten where we are because too many good people refuse to set aside their principles and compromise with secularist evil, it makes sense that he would promote cooperation with his favorite secularist evil. The nice thing about that view is that it allows you to pick your favorites from the big modern buffet of wickedness.
If on the other hand you believe we’ve gotten here precisely through good people compromising with evil in order to “win”, you’ll see the desire on the part of so many Christians to become Roosh’s bitch as at best another case of being neo-conned, and more likely as them treating him as a leader because his pimp-daddy side has gotten the attention of their genitals.
If on the other hand you believe we’ve gotten here precisely through good people compromising with evil in order to “win”
If you’re up for it, this might be worth its own post. With historical analogies being all the rage, it could be helpful to illustrate how doing whatever it takes to “win” actually leaves you worse off.
CJ:
The neo-conned are always singing the praises of Saint Compromise.
If on the other hand you believe we’ve gotten here precisely through good people compromising with evil in order to “win”
Or you realize that many “good people” in fact hold views that are deeply problematic one way or another. For example, it matters not how pious on most moral issues a man may be if he’s for mass migration. His piety is negated by his treason to his own nation by favoring the foreigner over them. It matters not one bit if a man rejects promiscuity if he agitates for rebellion in marriage. The number of people who hold to a consistent set of objectively true and good beliefs is quite small. Most hold to views that are wrong-headed to the point of being evil. So it becomes a case of pick your poison.
Mike T;
Yes, because great things can be accomplished by otherwise insignificant people who are willing to compromise their principles.
Mike T: My thing is that when the alt-right picks their poison, they’re really only protective of certain morally compromised allies. Do you really think there’s anything like parity between the number of times Jeb Bush is called a “cuckservative” vs. Roosh or Roissy being called a “pervert” or “degenerate” by the alt-right?
CJ,
I think the alt-right perceives open borders advocates as being much more existentially dangerous to their country than perverts. That’s because you and Zippy are focused primarily on the eternal whereas they are not. From their perspective, a degenerate nation can be fixed over time by its own people but if the country is flooded with people who don’t even share the values of their country then the culture will be diluted beyond repair.
And from their perspective, they are correct. Any pastor or priest who preaches orthodoxy on sex, but open borders toward foreigners is guilty of a sin that is at least fungible with treason if not actual treason (in the ordinary, non-American traditional understanding of the concept). The Pope himself is flirting with treason against Christendom by urging Christian nations that have been battered and lost their confidence in their own religion and values to accept hordes of Muslim refugees who have not lost their values nor their tendency to have more kids than the native population.
In that sense, Roissy actually is on the right side of the issue that many Christians are not when he advocates closed borders, solid ethnic and culture identity and other things that would help in secular ways to bind up those wounds. And that’s why I maintain that if/when the ultra-nationalists in Europe rise up and start defending Europe, I will shed no tears for any Christian who stands against them in defending multiculturalism and the destruction of nations in the name of misguided mercy.
Yes, because great things can be accomplished by otherwise insignificant people who are willing to compromise their principles.
And see this is where you and I will not agree on Roosh. I simply don’t see his perversion on sex as being more significant of a failing than some of the other things I’ve pointed out that others are guilty of doing and advocating. I personally have far more loathing for sexually continent multiculturalists than a guy like him. That probably has to do with the fact that I am not tempted to follow his example on sex and I don’t know any reasonably Christian individual who would be.
Mike T:
Nobody actually said “more significant”. It is you who keep trying to force the issue of elevating Roosh to the status of some sort of hero – sure, he’s a bad boy and all, and we can agree about the naughtiness in how he behaves sometimes; but we love him and can work with him and anyway he’ll eventually come around on the things that drive us crazy.
This is an example of a phenomenon I’ve described before. Roosh is gaming young men with conservative dispositions. He abuses them, but they love him anyway because he is their bad boy. He is really on their side, even though he frequently betrays everything they supposedly stand for.
Alt-right/NRx types actually like being bitches in Roosh’s and Roissy’s harems. It feels like home.
And see this is where you and I will not agree on Roosh. I simply don’t see his perversion on sex as being more significant of a failing than some of the other things I’ve pointed out that others are guilty of doing and advocating.
It all leads to Hell; we’re just negotiating on the level.
Malcolm:
It isn’t just that it leads to Hell. Fusionism is also a demonstrably failed tactic which ‘conservatives’ have attempted to follow for generations. But despite one spectacular failure after another, conservatives keep on playing their role in the Hegelian dance. They never, never, never learn.
It is weird that there’s more support for talk about traditional things like closed borders and various kinds of patriarchy than actually trying to live that way. A sexually continent multiculturalist vs. a sexually incontinent nationalist are not the only two choices for the Christian who wants to serve God and home and country in that order.
Roosh and Roissy are deracinated, atomized, hedonists with the occasional nihilistic flare-up. That they sometimes talk about how it’s better to not be that way doesn’t mean much since they haven’t given up their vices in favor of trying to live a more racinated, hierarchical, interconnected with their town and neighborhood, continent life.
It’s hard and not very satisfying emotionally since people only want to give out brownie points for the talking bit. But unless people put up more than talk, Zippy’s right, there’s nothing but failure and loss of the very things the talkers claim to think are good and true.
For all the lionizing Roosh gets, he doesn’t actually get that much action. I think his whole “seeing past hedonism” shtick is less about him drowning in casual sex and more about the fatigue of maintaining his persona as an online sex god.
He’s more successful at seducing putatively conservative males than he is women.
With that in mind, it makes conservatives who support him even more ridiculous since he’s a Dagon-style idol.
I’m not advocating fusionism, I’m advocating an open mindset about working with people who don’t share our values when the situation merits it. I know bona fide liberals who hate SJWs with a passion. Does it make sense to not work with them against a common SJW-dominated target if the situation could redound to our benefit?
Mike T:
No, it doesn’t. Nothing good can come from “working with” someone who “hates SJWs with a passion” and is a “bona fide liberal”, in the sense of soft-pedaling differences.
Either it is a group effort on some sort of societal scale, in which case it is another ‘fusionist’ neo-con; or it is an individual-level thing, in which case the only available ‘win’ is for them to come around to the truth, and there is no benefit in me soft-pedaling the truth to make such a person like me.
Furthermore, Roosh/Roissy/Rollo fanboys are not the equals of their PUA heroes, working “with” them. They are sidekicks and followers of their PUA heroes, lapping up wisdom and approval and favor from the big dog who holds the keys to the harem.
If Roosh or Roissy or Rollo wanted to follow along with me they are, like anyone else, welcome to go where I go (or not), as long as they stay out of my way. But there is no benefit in me “working with” them, a.k.a. following them around like a puppy, becoming a fawning fanboy, or encouraging fawning fanboyism.
Like I said, I hope for their conversion but I’ll believe in it when I actually see it. All I see now is the same old rope-a-dope fusionism, dressed in slutty clothing to attract sex-starved young men — where “sex starved” doesn’t just imply lust but includes the smoking hole in the world left by liberalism’s ruthless suppression of both masculinity and femininity.
Mike T., there are far better nationalists/nativists to support and most of those nationalists, even if secular are not absolute perverts.
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