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PaperclipPerfector  4d ago (text post)   25702 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 8, 2025

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Good morning! Hope your week is off to a good start fellow Mottizens. I was tickled pink to find that the Motte just went through it's fourth birthday, apparently, and I strongly agree with nara that this place is one of the best, if not the best, places to find genuinely open political discourse on the internet.

Anyway, I want to talk about religion & modernity. The so-called 'RETVRN traditionalists' and neo-reactionaries, and how some insights from them play into the broader culture war. I was reading a post from a friend of mine on Substack, and he makes a great point with regard to religious folks trying to turn back the clock, so to speak:

The traditionalist response (reaction, more properly) is simply to deny that modernity ever happened, to summon us back to a world where we believe “what the church teaches” (whatever church the given traditionalist may have decided to adhere to), where we simply accept late ancient (or medieval) metaphysics and morals and social structures, where we simply pretend that we can exist as a beseiged outpost of this kind of religious revanchism, a faithful remnant, and make a little world for ourselves.

It’s a lie. We don’t believe it. I certainly don’t, and I don’t think anyone else really does either. We are all still moderns. Our instincts are modern. Our instincts are, by any reasonable description, liberal. The effort to force ourselves into the thoroughly pre-modern mindset is just like my hopeless attempt to inwardly resuscitate a Ptolemaic cosmology. It can’t finally work. We are who we are, in the context we are, and very fundamental elements of our understanding of and feeling of the world are inescapably at odds with the past we say we want to reanimate and reinhabit.

I am sorry to be the bearer of these bad tidings to the young people coming in droves into the traditional churches, desperately seeking some kind of firm foundation that’s been stolen from them. They feel cheated and abused, because they have been.

However, our inescapably modern and liberal instincts, are, in many cases, actually very good. I think my fundamental regard for the mystery of the human person and human liberty is indeed very good. I will die on this hill.

I strongly agree that we live in a liberal time, and have deeply liberal instincts. We can't just pretend that we don't live our lives in a liberal way, and I suspect most people talking about a return to traditionalism are, as @2rafa has (perhaps uncharitably) opined on before, simply LARPers.

This relates to the culture war for the simply fact that I think just like the religious piece, most conservatives that ostensibly want to tear down the liberal establishment, actually don't want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy. It's all well and good to make arguments about tradition and the importance of paternal authority etc in the abstract, but personally submitting yourself to someone else's rule (in a very direct way, I understand that we are ruled indirectly now anyway) would, I suspect, be a bridge too far.

In addition though, I simply think that modern liberty is good. I'm a sort of reluctant conservative I'll admit, but even in the traditional conservative picture of the world, I think that personal freedoms from the state and even to a certain extent within traditional communities are great. To me, the project of the conservative in the modern world is not to sort of force us via governmental apparatus back into some halycon pre-modernity days. Instead, the conservative impulse should be focused towards explaining and convincing people in a deep and genuine way that living in a more traditional way is better for society, and better for people in particular.

Going off that last bit - once you get some years under your belt, it becomes clear from a personal standpoint that a more controlled lifestyle is just better. That saying that you have no head if you aren't a conservative in your 30s rings true in large part, in my humble opinion, because of this personal understanding. If you drink all the time, eat unhealthy food, smoke constantly, etc, you will very quickly find that your 'personal freedom' isn't worth much when you constantly feel terrible.

While convincing people may be much harder, I am convinced (heh) that it's the best way forward. As someone who changed my mind on the more traditional lifestyle largely through argumentation and personal experience, I am living proof that changing hearts and minds is possible on this front. Ultimately if conservatives try to force a return to pre-modern times, not only may we lose technological advances, we also don't even have the living traditional to fall back to anymore.

I won't deny that modern liberalism has a lot of flaws, especially when it comes to the religious context. However, as I've argued, going back seems foolish and not that desirable even if we could. I'll end this with a further quote from the article I quoted above, as I think it ends better than I could:

And here I am: a post-traditionalist, in the sense that, although my heart burns when I enter into the depths of traditional religion, I also see that traditionalism as a movement is ultimately false and bankrupt, it is a hopeless and deceptive rearguard action, a denial of reality and a denial of so much concrete, theoretical, and mystical good that people have created when they have striven as moderns to free themselves from tradition, from what has been merely handed down. As the early Quaker Margaret Fell said, “You will say, Christ saith this, and the apostles say this, but what canst thou say?”

Indeed — what canst thou say? This is what I want to hear, what I want to discover, both in freedom, and in the deepest love and gratitude for our forebears in the faith. Because above all, I want to do this for the sake of cleaving to Jesus. What is the anchor, what is the center, when criticism turns everything upside down, when a mere formal, outward return to ancient faith is impossible, and where inwardly and existentially conforming myself to that ancient faith is also impossible? Where a thoroughgoing modernity, on the other hand, leaves us lost in a land barren and untrodden and unwatered?

Edit: ended up writing this into a more full Substack post, if anyone is interested.

This relates to the culture war for the simply fact that I think just like the religious piece, most conservatives that ostensibly want to tear down the liberal establishment, actually don't want to give up their liberal freedom and personal autonomy. It's all well and good to make arguments about tradition and the importance of paternal authority etc in the abstract, but personally submitting yourself to someone else's rule (in a very direct way, I understand that we are ruled indirectly now anyway) would, I suspect, be a bridge too far.

No conservative I've ever met has said he wants to tear down liberal institutions. But individual liberty doesn't perform very well when it comes to producing and sustaining constructive, civilizational habits. It has little to provide when it comes to guiding the broader optimality of society and optimizes solely for individual preference. Most of the western legal system over the course of centuries has been nothing short of codified tradition (which is exactly what 'law' is and is inherently what established tradition is). And no one person's personal experience will overturn the collective experience and collected wisdom of the millions among the generations that came before them. To quote a halfway intellectual idol of mine:

Man is instinctively conservative in the sense that probably millions of years of experience have taught him that a stable environment is the best for peace of mind, present and future security, automatism of action, and a ready command of material and artificial circumstances. It is the repeated introduction of new instruments, new weapons, new methods, and needs for fresh adaptations, that makes automatism impossible. And it is the complication of life by novel contributions to life's interests and duties that makes a ready command of circumstances difficult.

To this thesis I have never seen what I regard as an adequate refutation or substantial challenge to conservatism, defined as such.

In addition though, I simply think that modern liberty is good. I'm a sort of reluctant conservative I'll admit, but even in the traditional conservative picture of the world, I think that personal freedoms from the state and even to a certain extent within traditional communities are great. To me, the project of the conservative in the modern world is not to sort of force us via governmental apparatus back into some halycon pre-modernity days. Instead, the conservative impulse should be focused towards explaining and convincing people in a deep and genuine way that living in a more traditional way is better for society, and better for people in particular.

I enjoy my liberty too, but it's a constrained liberty that exists within a very specific and particular context that's defined and guided by our traditions. I would in no way enjoy the unconstrained, every man for himself liberty that a local Somali warlord would have enjoyed decades ago. And most people generally overstate their love for freedom and liberty. If freedom entails responsibility, most people don't want to have 'anything' to do with it. Conservatism has never rejected the importance of liberty. It just doesn't regard it as the highest value and neither do I.

But individual liberty doesn't perform very well when it comes to producing and sustaining constructive, civilizational habits. It has little to provide when it comes to guiding the broader optimality of society and optimizes solely for individual preference.

Individual liberty, as implemented by the United States, has been a lot more successful than any other system. There are others which have lasted longer (though I note the US system, battered and beaten as it is, still exists), but long periods of stagnation under the Malthusian condition with most people in grinding poverty isn't really something to strive for.

Modern collectivism of the sort that tends to make complaints like liberty "optimizes solely for individual preference" has the worst record of all -- the many skulls piled up by fascist and Communist regimes.

I don't know what barometer you're using to call the US a success in detail so I can't effectively comment on it. And unless you think the US in 2025 is the only example of a successful society out there such that it merits setting it categorically apart from other nations, there are plenty of other successful societies out there. China has a more effective governance system (it's why even scholars of the right-wing like Paul Gottfried have taken to admire it and refers to himself as a "right-wing Leninist"). Japan has a better transportation system. Singapore has a better drug policy. Finland has a better educational system. Many European countries have a better healthcare system. Even North Korea has a better border policy than we do. What’s the superior individual liberty policy prescription for these domains?

A lot of times I see this way of thinking omnipresent in almost every argument left-wingers and progressives alike make in policy circles when it comes to taxing everyone and everything to fund their utopian social programs (and no amount of money will ever be enough to see them achieve their goals). And this is a problem Americans have more generally with the way they look at things; because Americans are a group of people that money will solve anything. I think most people will find it shocking that there are other qualitative aspects to life that are at least equally if not more important to them because believe it or not, money isn't everything.

If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.

Modern collectivism of the sort that tends to make complaints like liberty "optimizes solely for individual preference" has the worst record of all -- the many skulls piled up by fascist and Communist regimes.

I didn't cite communism in my prior example because there's no disagreement I have with the people who make this argument. I'm about as far right-wing on this point as you can get. But there's a reason most civilizations who have flourished over the long run or at best or withstood the test time of time have been ran by highly illiberal regimes, whether democratic or not. I think historians of the future will in a way look back on America with a similar view.

China has a more effective governance system

If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.

Japan has a better transportation system.

If you don't mind tsukin jigoku (commuter hell). I for one do not want to be pressed into commuter paste in order to get to work.

Many European countries have a better healthcare system.

A less expensive one, certainly. But the existence of medical tourism from Europe to the US suggests it's not better on all criteria.

If all you're talking about is material wealth the US is the richest country in the world. Calling that a product of individual liberty leaves a massive hole in the argument that I haven't seen filled by anyone. The article I posted earlier for instance lends credence and empirical evidence to the argument many intellectuals in Southeast Asia made, namely that a social system which adopts a collectivist attitude such as 'Asian Values', dramatically increases the overall amount of human and social capital in society. I don't see how a similar argument could be made for 'Individual Liberty' in western societies.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?

If you do not value liberty, perhaps. If you do value liberty, the phrase "effective governance" sets off alarm bells. Having a government that is more effective at directing the activities of its people is not an uncontroversially good thing. This is a difference in terminal values, not a matter of "better" or "worse" according to any values shared between you and most Americans.

Well if I look at the Democracy Perception Index 2020, which measures the public perception of a country's governance. 52% of respondents think France is democratic. 73% think China is democratic. They may not value your personal conception of liberty, but that doesn’t mean they don’t value liberty. To quote Alasdair MacIntyre’s “Whose Justice, Which Rationality?,” so too is the case with your Liberty. Maybe they’re brainwashed fools who don’t understand the true concept of liberty, but I’m doubtful.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. If those Asian countries have all that human and social capital, why is the US the wealthiest and it isn't even close? If Asia has some other ineffable superiority, why do US anti-immigration people have to beat off that Asian human capital with a stick to keep it from relocating to the US?

Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.

Incidentally is immigration something I’m supposed to be impressed with here? Even most Afghans aren’t clamoring to come to the US and of those that are and desperately want to attach themselves to jet turbines and escape, I say let them. People immigrate all the time. So what? I wouldn’t want to be on the receiving end of any country the US is actively bombing, and it shouldn’t be a surprise that people are trying to escape it. They don’t envy American liberty. They envy American wealth. And unless you can explain to me how the latter is causally explained by the former, I’m not going to buy that argument. I’d argue you care as much about the terminal as well as instrumental values of your liberty, because you don’t place the same value on alternative conceptions of liberty. And the reason for this is because it doesn’t produce outcomes that are agreeable to you.

Also don’t know what your link has to do with my argument.

Democracy Perception Index 2020

Don't. Democracy is not the same as liberty. And a "Democracy Perception Index" that puts China at 73% is obviously garbage, it's like a "Skiing Perception Index" that puts Haiti at #2.

Because as I said earlier if GDP and wealth is your sole barometer for measuring the success of a society, then your conclusion is built directly into your assumptions: the US is the wealthiest country in the world. I don’t buy that framing of the argument however. You and I aren’t having the same conversation.

It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.

I think this is a good place to leave this discussion. If liberty is an idea so sacrosanct that it can’t be discussed in a meaningful relationship to the rest of the world in all its friction, I see little utility to it in any sense. Someone can hug the idea to them if they like, but it’s not for me; nor do most people care about it in that way.

If you don’t want to read in greater detail the information I want to present to you and simply dismiss it out of hand, that’s fine. The data itself is about “perceptions,” not how you may feel about the idea in private abstract.

It's not an assumption that the US is the wealthiest country in the world, it's an observation. And that's not the only barometer I mentioned -- another is the revealed preference of immigrants.

I didn’t say it’s an assumption that the US is the most wealthy country in the world. I said the assumption lies with thinking that that’s an important barometer for gauging liberty. Which I reject. 10 fish in a bucket is quantitatively the same thing as 1 fish in 10 buckets. The latter is a ‘wealthier’ society measured by its health as a whole, because the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

Conservatism includes a “place” for personal liberty in the lives of ordinary individuals. I completely buy that premise and reject any one of them that postulates the totalitarianism of liberty over anything of equal or greater importance.

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