All posts filed under: Political Discussion & Analysis

More on Regime Fragility—My Conversation with Brandon Van Dyck

Published by Charles Haywood

Now available is my discussion with Brandon Van Dyck. Brandon is a scholar of comparative civilizational analysis and of our ideological regime, both interests of mine. We make quite a few distinctions and refinements to analysis of our current regime, tied to my recent piece on the fragility of our current Regime. These include discussions of related topics such as legitimacy (procedural and substantive), and as I often do, I throw in bonus praise of Francisco Franco. You can find the episode here on YouTube, or embedded below.

On the Fragility of the Current Regime

Published by Charles Haywood

You are the good guy in a Western movie showdown. You stand in the dusty street, facing your opponent, a black-clad gunslinger with a fearsome reputation. You have seen signs he’s lost his touch—he drinks too much, and sometimes his hands shake and his eyes turn cloudy. But you also know that he’s killed dozens of men. As you hand slides toward your gun, because it must, you wonder: which man do I face? The competent killer, or the hollow shell? We on the Right, and more broadly all Americans based in reality, ask ourselves this question as we square off against our increasingly vicious and unhinged rulers, aptly collectively called simply the Regime.

The Concept of the Political (Carl Schmitt)

Published by Charles Haywood

This, Carl Schmitt’s best-known work, first published in 1932, is a crucial book for our present moment. The clear-eyed Schmitt, who stands far above any modern political philosopher, writes here of timeless principles that lie behind political action, and he slices through the ignorance, doublespeak, and confusion that surround any discussion today of the “why” of politics. As always, he offers a crisp analysis of reality, with implications and applications for all times and moments. And for Christians in today’s America, this book has extra value, because reading it restores the proper Christian understanding of “enemy,” something that has been (quite recently) lost, to our great detriment.

“Caesar & Beyond”—My Appearance with Auron MacIntyre

Published by Charles Haywood

Now available is my discussion with Auron MacIntyre. We talk about Caesar, of course, but also much more, including the (likely limited) role of people such as ourselves in the new society. You can find the episode here on YouTube. You can follow Auron on his very popular YouTube channel, at his Substack, or on Twitter and Gab. You can support his work on Subscribestar, as well.

Breakfast with the Dirt Cult (Samuel Finlay)

Published by Charles Haywood

In 1952, Ralph Ellison published, to great acclaim, his first and only novel, Invisible Man. The book narrated how Ellison’s protagonist, a black man, suffered social oppression. But that was long ago, and one thing black people definitely don’t suffer anymore is oppression. Rather, many dish it out, aided by their allies of other races, as seen most dramatically in the terroristic Floyd Riots, but it happens every day in every organization in America. The targets are, most of all, those at the bottom of today’s social hierarchy—heterosexual (that is, normal) white men outside the professional-managerial elite. And Samuel Finlay’s Breakfast with the Dirt Cult is, one might say, the new Invisible Man.

The Populist Delusion (Neema Parvini)

Published by Charles Haywood

What is populism? The snap answer is rule by the people. The more accurate answer is rule by an elite who strongly claim that they govern on behalf of the whole people. That claim is sometimes true and sometimes false, but as Neema Parvini’s The Populist Delusion, a compact summary of what is often called elite theory, pithily shows, it is always an elite who actually rules. Thus, the key question for a society’s flourishing is whether it is ruled by a virtuous elite, who rules for the common good, or by a rotten elite, as America is ruled by now. Embedded in this question is another question, however—how an elite can be removed and replaced. This latter question is the most important question in 2022 America.

What to Do When Caesar Comes

Published by Charles Haywood

Is a Caesar, an authoritarian reconstructor of our institutions, soon to step onto the American stage? A betting man would say yes. The debilities of our society are manifold and will inevitably result in fracture and chaos. History tells us that such times call forth ambitious and driven men, who in the West usually aspire to reconstruction and dynasty, not mere extraction, what is usually featured in primitive societies. As Napoleon said of his accession to Emperor, “I came across the crown of France lying in the street, and I picked it up with my sword.” In human events, past performance is always a key predictor of future results. But neither you nor I is going to be Caesar, so this truth raises the crucial question for us—what to do when Caesar comes?

First Do No Harm (Paracelsus)

Published by Charles Haywood

A review by me of this book has been published in the excellent journal IM-1776. The first paragraph, and a link to the entire review, and the journal itself, can be found below. America is already a low-trust society, and with good reason societal trust is rocketing further downward. Yet Americans still, by and large, trust medical institutions — perhaps more than any other set of entities. The pseudonymous Paracelsus, a practicing physician, in his book with the deliberately ironic title First Do No Harm, narrates how we are foolish to trust the medical profession, what is really the medical industry. Published by Calamo Press, First Do No Harm tells us, in short, that the two words that characterize American medicine are not “health and healing,” or even “science and rationality,” as one might think, but rather “corruption and oligarchy.” . . . Read more at IM-1776!

The Managerial Revolution: What is Happening in the World (James Burnham)

Published by Charles Haywood

Who rules? That’s what we all want to know. The Managerial Revolution, James Burnham’s still-influential 1941 book (the subject, for example, of recent pieces by Aaron Renn and Julius Krein), gave that eternal question a fresh answer. Broadly speaking his was, we can see eighty years later, indisputably the correct analysis. Burnham agreed that capitalism, private enterprise as the engine of the ruling class, was dying, the usual opinion in that tumultuous time, but made the entirely new claim that what would replace it was not, as most assumed, socialism, but a new thing. Namely, the ascent of managers, a new ruling class, who would hugely expand government and use it to mold society into new forms for their own benefit.