Owlseyes ’s Reviews > Moldbug on Carlyle > Status Update

My own grandfather was a CPUSA member, and this was certainly not his intent.

Alas, socialism can be explained in one sentence. Socialism is the last stage of democracy.

So Carlyle said to his readers: England is going to the dogs.

The Left is the faction of the professors, the scientists and the scholars, the cognitive elite. It is the faction of the true ultra-rich, the old money, the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts and Fords, and their trustafarian hipster junkie grandchildren.

Quite simply, the Carlylean likes a strong hand at the tiller. And a strong tiller, too. This taste he shares with the socialist and the fascist—his fellow enthusiasts of government power.

We are all Horatios*; this world is not in our philosophy. When we judge it without seeing it or knowing anything about it, we only reveal ourselves as fools.

*like in Hamlet

Here we start to see the prophetic powers of Carlyle.

A reactionary is not a Republican, a Democrat, or even a libertarian. It is not even a communist, a fascist, or a monarchist. It is something much older, stranger, and more powerful.

First, it is no daring literary act to exalt Carlyle as superhuman. Like Johnson, he was exalted as superhuman in his own time.

As a royalist, I take it for granted that a good King will pursue libertarian policies, if of course they are called for.