Lawrence Auster asks, Where is Moldbug really at?, and Mencius replies with a brief discussion of Evelyn Waugh’s Robbery under Law (available in Waugh Abroad):
Maybe one way to answer is to quote the closing words of Evelyn Waugh’s Robbery under Law, written about Mexico in 1939. Waugh describes the destruction, already apparent by 1939 but trivial in comparison to the chaos of Mexico today, that American secular liberalism wreaked on Mexico’s old Catholic polity. Since WWII this tragedy has been replicated around the planet, creating the horror we now know as the Third World.Waugh concludes:
A conservative is not merely an obstructionist who wishes to resist the introduction of novelties; nor is he, as was assumed by most 19th-century parliamentarians, a brake to frivolous experiment. He has positive work to do, whose value is particularly emphasized by the plight of Mexico. Civilization has no force of its own beyond what is given it from within. It is under constant assault and it takes most of the energies of civilized man to keep going at all. There are criminal ideas and a criminal class in every nation and the first action of every revolution, figuratively and literally, is to open the prisons. Barbarism is never finally defeated; given propitious circumstances, men and women who seem quite orderly, will commit every conceivable atrocity. The danger does not come merely from habitual hooligans; we are all potential recruits for anarchy. Unremitting effort is needed to keep men living together at peace; there is only a margin of energy left over for experiment however beneficent. Once the prisons of the mind have been opened, the orgy is on. There is no more agreeable position than that of dissident from a stable society. Theirs are all the solid advantages of other people’s creation and preservation, and all the fun of detecting hypocrisies and inconsistencies. There are times when dissidents are not only enviable but valuable. The work of preserving society is sometimes onerous, sometimes almost effortless. The more elaborate the society, the more vulnerable it is to attack, and the more complete its collapse in case of defeat. At a time like the present it is notably precarious. If it falls we shall see not merely the dissolution of a few joint-stock corporations, but of the spiritual and material achievements of our history. There is nothing, except ourselves, to stop our own countries becoming like Mexico. That is the moral, for us, of her decay.While obviously I agree with this and I suspect you do as well, it has little to do with the word “conservative” as used by most Americans today. Even Waugh in this passage is trying, obviously without success, to redefine “conservative.” Therefore I prefer the word “reactionary,” meaning one who hopes to see the decay not just stop but reverse.