Added on the left at 'Blogs& Websites' is that of the Distributist Review. They are not economic-nationalists and I find some of their social and religious views a bit daffy, but they are earnest anti-globalists and love to bash laissez-faire. So, this here agnostic from Protestant/ confessional-Lutheran background unilaterally finds allies in traditionalist RC's. Strange realm, this anti-globalist movement. All in all, I have curiosity of some aspects of Distributist economics and it is a valid alternative to the current state of affairs; the Distributist's spiel sure beats the Catholicism coupled with Predator-economics that one will read at Bill Buckley's, The National Review...
I believe in Meme- building; get the various information out of the anti-globalist movement under an umbrella, even when lots of details of the meme I don't particularly jive with. Oh yes, I do have a threshold: I wager that the Communist Party USA and the Ku Klux Klan are against globalism too, but I won't let those PukeStains out of the rain.
My goal is to find economic protectionist Greens to include them here in 'Blogs &Websites', but all searches for virtual pages directly endorsing this has come up empty, or they thump other things that I find too wacko to bring them on-board with a good conscience. It is needed to spirit the Greens away from Al Gore& the Davos Group; witness that some Free-Market Bolsheviks are making a play for them with 'Green-privatization', 'Eco-market', hooplah. The Green angle is up for grabs and economic-nationalists need to cultivate them. Personally, I would love to see a Third Industrial Revolution commenced with clean energy as the principle for it, if possible(don't like Our Planet looking like a shit-trap either and I hate smog). I do believe that the notion is worth some good R&D from the Top on down, and wish that the Greens thought the same way. Nevertheless, we have to re-industrialize asap.This sounds alarmist, but I think that time is running out for the USA. Stinging globalism on the margins will not get it done; when/if the window cracks open - slip through it and go for the jugular, shoot for the late Round KO like in a Rocky movie....."Yo, Free Traitors!... youse goin' down."
The Old Ravi Batra demonstrated that tariffs are ecologically friendly, and 'tis a pity that he didn't follow up and pursue this angle better thereafter. He once perhaps had the ticket to ride for American Greens. However, too many Greens are formerly 'Reds' & remain Luddites, and they have an abiding hatred concerning anything smacking of technological industrial capitalism of any type, even the dirigist/mixed national system that Left-Federalist spews out, at times daily. This - they need to work on.
******************
One of Oswald Spengler's themes is second religiousness; when a civilization is about to collapse, a super-nova of traditional religion explodes, a call to return to the 'True Faith' comes into vogue. Entertaining the prospect that Spengler was a sharp -customer with his organic/cyclic theory of history(I'm a doubting Thomas), indicators are here today in circa 2007 that this 'second religiousness' is manifesting: Pope Benedict endorses a return to the Latin Mass and has all but 86'd the ecumenism of Vatican II;Protestant fundamentalism still rages in the Americas despite recent scandals with their gurus, like Ted Haggard(LMAO!). America, the 1st Modern Nation/state, has made a plunge into the Middle Ages as we witness in pop culture with Fantasy oriented stuff, the assault on Evolution, the quenching of biological research of human beings and their diseases('let's not play God, now!'). But part of me understands why Fundies would think certain things with these activist-lawyers from the cultural-Bolshevik ACLU wanting to take away Christmas trees from their kids in public settings(but the X-mas tree is a pagan thing, I know.)....Left-Federalist is against Bolshevism in any form even when they trample on the Fundies. The real truth is that I ordinarily like virtually slapping them both around, role- playing Moe Howard on The Three Stooges. Why, pray tell? Well, I think it is needed...
..and it is also - fun:-)
Given that I had to stop running over midgets in my truck(I heard somewhere that it is against the law - even vehicular homicide on midgets. Can you believe that stupid law?!?), I need some other outlet that is physically non-violent to manage my 'anger issues'...
Right....to take a broad interpretation of second-religiousness, perhaps my own plea for a return to the Federalist-American System is a symptom of this? I do possess a near- religious devotion to protectionism...or rather, Spengler was full of shit. I hope so. If he was right, we are toast in the United States of America & EU...
3 comments:
As usual, I have read the whole post carefully with interest. Let me comment here on the Green point.
It is too soon to be sure, but the historic Goldwater-Reagan Republican coalition may today be fracturing. If so, one of the shards of the coalition, comprising (if I may pull an unsubstantiated number out of my hat) perhaps three percent of the total U.S. electorate, is what Paul Weyrich calls by the corny but somehow fitting name of granola conservatives or, cornier yet, crunchy cons. The substance of crunchy conservatism is practically impossible to articulate, but not really so hard for Americans outside the big cities to understand. Typical of the type is the home-schooling mom with the big vegetable garden, flat shoes and no TV, who takes her several kids over to the church-house each Thursday morning to clean the washrooms, to mop the foyer and (less quietly) to practice on the chuch-organ, who back at home hangs a framed print of George Washington in prayer in the snow at Valley Forge on her living-room wall next to a print of the Sermon on the Mount. Her husband wears jeans to church and sings in the back row of the choir. Of course not all of them fit this exact portrait, but the crunchy cons are people of that general kind. The elements of crunchy conservatism have been around forever, but its self-conscious practice as a distinct American counterculture has seemed to emerge only following the end of the Cold War.
The mainstream media (concentrated in the big cities) still seem almost totally unaware that those people exist, but though distinctly right-wing the cruncy cons seem far less sceptical of modern environmentalism than other conservatives have been. They're not especially keen on economic laissez-faire, either (it's not a big deal to them, one way or the other); and they are ardently anti-consumerist. You can put the crunchy cons and the Greens together, I think---not on every point but issue by issue. So, if so, then there's three percent.
It's not much, but, add three percent here, three percent there, and sooner or later you'll have a real majority.
Howard
There is something Chesterton said in reference to Distributists being of all persuasions. Some will be Protestants, others Catholic, and of course even Moslem.
Chesterton said anyone can be a Distributist because Distributism only attempts to follow the natural law (which he would claim leads to common sense).
What Chesterton disagreed with is any system that requires any of us to place our beliefs in the closet. We cannot have freedom of religion and yet agree never to discuss it.
It may seem odd to find both liberals and traditionalists in agreement but I believe it is because maybe you are not as liberal as you think or perhaps we are both classical liberals who wish to liberate those who have been "liberated" from nature in order to 'save a buck'.
The truth is perhaps we might consider two labels outside of the 'traditionalist'. Those two labels are the 'progressive' and the 'conservative'. Chesterton would argue that the progressive was the conductor of the steam train while the conservative worked the coal. One steams ahead and the other decides how fast.
What the Distributist, Agrarian and the Georgist ask is whether we want to be on this train or not.
Pax Tecum,
Gen
Gen,
Do not have much knowledge of Chesterson and Belloc. However, I am aware of the Distributist/progressive sythesis especially when it comes to Mondragon - market& libertarian-socialists, many of them atheists, can't sing odes to Mondragon enough it seems.
True enough that I do not have much in common with most of those who dub themselves *liberals* in the 21st Century(they let their pet social issues wag the dog). I'm kind of 'conservative-liberal',meaning that I want to resurrect the old National Liberalism of both the Roosevelts. Todays liberals sadly do not think in terms of 'nation' as they used to. But a 'classical liberal' in the post-Adam Smith sense I definitely am not given that I am a unabashed defender of the federal government playing an essential role in the economy, something that I take that Distributists aren't keen on(?).
Without Distributists boarding the 'train', or thinking 'national', how can their economic views(which deserve more publicity) be heard more and just possibly have some of their policies become a reality? Even in the Roman Catholic ranks their numbers are quite small.
Post a Comment