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Notes -
On John Senior
John Senior- the one I'm talking about, not the British one- is one of the more influential figures that you've probably never heard of. On the face of it, he was an obscure academic at a state school in flyover. But his Integrated Humanities Program was shut down by the university of Kansas for producing hundreds of converts to Catholicism, despite a thorough investigation debunking allegations of proselytism. One of those converts is the current president of the American bishop's conference. Another one is the abbot of Our Lady of Clear Creek Abbey; there are a handful of somewhat less broadly influential bishops as well. This was when Catholicism was at a low point, in the seventies, when no one knew what it was really.
So what was the integrated humanities program? Well it would probably look quite familiar to those of you who follow classical education, but with an emphasis on the ability to occupy the mind with understanding. To do this, the courtly graces were emphasized as a means of practice, alongside spending time with nature, avoiding the television, stargazing, singing folk songs(not pop songs), and other things of the like. I think we have a couple of homeschoolers here- if you're aligned with the classical education school, this guy was the ideologue who developed your curriculum. It's been watered down for younger grades, but it's fundamentally his project.
After his program was shut down, Senior wrote two books- The Death of Christian Culture and The Restoration of Christian Culture- and drifted into the burgeoning traditionalist movement. He then went on the speaking circuit, and his followers moved around creating a network of conservative Catholic universities which embraced his methods and teachings. Senior died a pessimist, more or less affiliated with the SSPX(and this was in the 90s, when traditional Catholicism was more or less a game preserve for reactionaries and the SSPX was officially schismatic). But his ideas were gaining in popularity; shortly after his death the 'Newman guide' list of universities for conservative Catholics became a normal feature of orthodox Catholic life in the US. The model is now under threat due to the extreme cost of private college education, but it's trickled down. Classical schooling is fairly common. Florida is now allowing a special standardized test for classical educators to be an SAT/ACT equivalent for state colleges, and they're unlikely to be the last.
But you're motteizeans and you want the culture war relevance. Ok. We've had posts about the Trump admin being full of Catholics- one of which I'm not quite sure if it's a satire of Jewposting or not. You wonder why that is? It's because you can't run a society with all stemlords. Look at western society's literati- you will find, almost literally, conservative Catholics and SJWs and no one else. The conservative intelligentsia converts to Catholicism so often it's nearly a 'personal life check' on wikipedia, and the few noncatholics are mostly Anglicans with self-interested reasons or suspiciously Catholic-inflected Orthodox. Republicans put Catholics on the supreme court because they won't Sandra Day O'Connor, all due to John Senior. Yes, the pro-life movement provided money and alignment, but Senior provided something even more important.
That thing is elite formation. Every society, including ours, is led by an elite. Senior built a counter-elite, and you can't have conservative policy successes without it. This counter-elite staffs the republican party, it holds a majority on the supreme court by itself, it's most of the staffers at conservative think tanks- in short, it's why US conservatives are less singularly useless than their Canadian and British counterparts. The 'rise of christian nationalism' is because his elite stratum has been taught to think in terms of Christian culture(see their founding ideologue). The legitimate sociological term for this is the American Conservative Catholic renaissance, of which John Senior is the leading ideologue.
What we can learn from this is 1) you need an elite stratum 2) that elite stratum needs customs and ideology to sustain itself. What's your plan? Because Stemlording isn't one. Complaining about woke casting in movies isn't one(you'll notice the one director who avoids this is... Mel Gibson, a[n insane] member of the elite stratum I've just described). Being reflexively anti-woke isn't one. Are you going to form a pro-white elite(I have bad news for you about the skin colour of those attempting to join)? At the moment, we're very slowly winning, simply by being indispensable to the dominant party.
Islamists stage huge shows of force in public, harassing and intimidating. And then there's the raping and killing and waging holy war.
SJWs impose new speech codes, new rites, censor and suppress media, import tens of millions of migrants, siphon state resources directly into equity and their own NGOs.
Nationalists deport these migrants, directly confront SJWs at rallies and fight them. Nationalists are on the front lines of just about every war, including the culture war.
Zionists make settlements, wage war and get others to wage war for them.
Stemlords are deploying trillions in capital, reshaping the whole world economy to create a machine god. It may come in one of three flavours: Chinese atheist, San Francisco atheist or direct worship of Elon Musk.
Catholic conservatives write two books (one even got 56 reviews on Amazon!) and go on the speaking circuit. Catholic conservatives get a majority on the Supreme Court and... devolve abortion to the states. There are no fewer abortions than before, no effective change. By some measures abortion figures actually rose, breaking a decade-long downtrend. Every ideology is doing something substantial and overt to advance their goals but the Catholic conservatives.
Even complaining about casting in movies or review bombing games on Steam is more effective and vigorous than what these people do in high office. It imposes active pressure, however insignificant.
Pure defence, no bite. Never has an elite done so little with so much!
Catholic big wins are in immigration, especially in europe they have succeeded in greatly increasing immigration as well as legalizing existing illegal immigrants.
Isn't that catholic progressives, rather than catholic conservatives?
It's both. Progressivism would be about recognizing gay marriage and women priests. There's really no dobut that the catholic church is pro immgration except in the minds of some online tradcaths that have projected their policy wishes on an organization because they like their buildings.
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