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“To the conservative, power in repose is power in decline. The “mere husbanding of already existing resources,” wrote Joseph Schumpeter about industrial dynasties, “no matter how painstaking, is always characteristic of a declining position.” 83 If power is to achieve the distinction the conservative associates with it, it must be exercised. 84 And there is no better way to exercise power than to defend it against an enemy from below. Counterrevolution, in other words, is one of the ways in which the conservative makes feudalism seem fresh and medievalism modern.”
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
“Even the most biologically inclined and deterministic racist believes that the members of the superior race must personally wrest their entitlement to rule through the subjugation or elimination of the inferior races. The recognition that race is the substratum of all civilization must not, however, lead any one to feel that membership in a superior race is a sort of comfortable couch on which he can go to sleep … the biological heritage of the mind is no more imperishable than the biological heritage of the body. If we continue to squander that biological mental heritage as we have been squandering it during the last few decades, it will not be many generations before we cease to be the superiors of the Mongols. Our ethnological studies must lead us, not to arrogance, but to action. 87”
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
“As Karl Mannheim argued, what distinguishes conservatism from traditionalism—the universal “vegetative” tendency to remain attached to things as they are, which is manifested in nonpolitical behaviors such as a refusal to buy a new pair of pants until the current pair is shredded beyond repair—is that conservatism is a deliberate, conscious effort to preserve or recall “those forms of experience which can no longer be had in an authentic way.” Conservatism “becomes conscious and reflective when other ways of life and thought appear on the scene, against which it is compelled to take up arms in the ideological struggle.” 60 Where the traditionalist can take”
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
“Greg Grandin, The Last Colonial Massacre: Latin America in the Cold War (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), 56–57. The outbreak of political speech among those without power was also, according to a disgruntled Democrat writing to liberal Senator Paul Douglas in the 1960s, the great evil of the Great Society: “I feel Mr. Johnson is much responsible for the present riot by his constant encouragement for the Negro to take any measure to assert himself & DEMAND his rights.” Rick Perlstein, Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America (New York: Scribner, 2008), 117.”
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
“Liberty is a conquest,” wrote William Graham Sumner. 90 The primal act of transgression—requiring daring, vision, and an aptitude for violence and violation 91—is what makes the capitalist a warrior, entitling him not only to great wealth but also, ultimately, to command. For that is what the capitalist is: not a Midas of riches but a ruler of men. A title to property is a license to dispose, and if a man has the title to another’s labor, he has a license to dispose of it—to dispose, that is, of the body in motion—as he sees fit. Such have been called “captains of industry.” The analogy with military leaders suggested by this name is not misleading. The great leaders in the development of the industrial organization need those talents of executive and administrative skill, power to command, courage, and fortitude, which were formerly called for in military affairs and scarcely anywhere else. The industrial army is also as dependent on its captains as a military body is on its generals…. Under the circumstances there has been a great demand for men having the requisite ability for this function…. The possession of the requisite ability is a natural monopoly. 92”
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
― The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin
Political Philosophy and Ethics
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Study and discussion of the important questions of ethical and political philosophy from Confucius and Socrates to the present. Rules (see also the ...more
Jan M Arnold’s 2025 Year in Books
Take a look at Jan M Arnold’s Year in Books, including some fun facts about their reading.
357 books
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344 books
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65 books
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6 books
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1 book
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144 friends
3 books
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