Sunday 1 September 2019

Quotations

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There are only nine meals between mankind and anarchy.

Alfred Henry Lewis


MI5’s maxim is that society is “four meals away from anarchy”.

Will Iredale and Jack Grimston, Sunday Times, October 10 2004

The religion of another man neither hurts nor profits any one.

Tertullian


And if a man consider the original of this great ecclesiastical dominion, he will easily perceive that the papacy is no other than the ghost of the deceased Roman Empire, sitting crowned upon the grave thereof: for so did the papacy start up on a sudden out of the ruins of that heathen power.

Thomas Hobbes

Among all the Diversions you mention among you, I desire to know whether a Man may be allowed to sitt alone among his Books, as long as he pleases.

Jonathan Swift, letter to Charles Ford (March 8, 1709)


I am especially bothered by the reductionist argument about racial IQ made by some Alt- Righters. Like them, I recognize that high intelligence is useful to a society or civilization; and it’s also possible that in some parts of the world this cognitive advantage may be lacking. But the g factor, or general intelligence, is only one of many preconditions for sustaining human development. Too often, the view of the social good that I extract from Alt-Right authors is that of a society made up exclusively or predominantly of those eligible for MENSA membership. Let me stress once again that high native intelligence is a desirable trait. But in the U.S., my major concern is not a paucity of Americans with above-average IQs. It is rather the social and cultural damage being wrought by the “high achievers,” who seem determined to destroy the moral foundations of Western civilization.

.... a onetime follower of mine, Richard Spencer, was correct when he observed on Twitter in March 2018, “Paul Gottfried does not endorse race-conscious conservatism. He never has nor likely will.” True enough! I’ve never stopped believing that the Old Right tradition, or paleoconservatism by any other name, is the only appropriate doctrine for the right, to whatever extent the right is still concerned with social morality, a sane non-interventionist foreign policy, and the taming of the egalitarian madness that is now subverting most Western societies.
Paul Gottfried, writing an article in Chronicles magazine August 1 2019 

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