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.

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.

I feel I have done a reasonable job of advertising Carlyle—or, at least, explaining Carlyle.

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