In The Brotherhood of the Ring, Frodo tells Gandalf that he wishes the Ring had not arrived to him. It’s a beautiful landscape. Gandalf answers,” But do all who live to see such days, but that is not for them to consider. What to do with the day allotted to us is up to us. After reading Auron MacIntyre’s latest launch, The Total State, I found myself feeling a little like Frodo.
MacIntyre, who is a BlazeTV variety and interesting tweeter, makes an expanded case that our democratic democracies— which we are constantly told are the freest societies in human history — are in fact forms of gentle totalitarianism, a” full state”. Like so many, Covid was MacIntyre’s “red supplement” time. He watched as constitutional safeguards were tossed off under the pretense of “public health.” Despite mounting mounting evidence that Covid was n’t nearly as dangerous as it initially appeared, this” state of emergency” lasted three years. After all the rests and abuses, there were no apologies, sanctions, or fees. Only a desperate attempt by rulers to forget everything.
A Unique Social Heritage
The Total State makes some common, almost indisputable claims. Our managerial state has become sluggish, inexplicable, and self- interested. Social ambiguities and fraud can be caused by the revolving door between the public and the private sector. Tastemakers at wealthy institutions — Hollywood, Harvard, Yale, The Washington Post, The New York Times — do not participate in Marxist competition where only the best arts and thoughts survive.
Alternatively, they march in cahoots, promoting similar messages and policies. The moral and social material is in disarray, the heavy state is entrenched, but society’s supposed eternal development and growth are sputtering.
This notion that liberalism is unraveling is well- settled country ( see Patrick Deneen and some ), and Rod Dreher’s 2020 book, Live No By Lies, drew explicit similarities between the Soviet Union and our modern” soft authoritarianism” in the West. However, MacIntyre distinguishes himself by how far his criticism goes. During the Covid lockdowns, some people experienced instinctive pain as a result of government growth, but MacIntyre makes the case that Covid defended social theorists who were recently viewed as fringe or repulsive.
This includes Carl Schmitt, a member of the Nazi Party, as well as contemporary neo-revolutionary theorists like Curtis Yarvin and Nick Land. Although MacIntyre acknowledges that Schmitt had “very serious flaws,” he finds Schmitt’s outsider status to be helpful in his criticism of the liberal understanding of politics. Whether or not you believe these thinkers are convincing or not, MacIntyre is willing to go beyond the typical talking points. One of Yarvin’s slogans is RAGE — Retire All Government Employees.
The concept of” the cathedral,” which is” a decentralized network of organizations and individuals responsible for creating a cultural consensus,” is another foundation of neo-religious thought. The media, the deep state, and the universities all share a belief in progressive liberalism, forming a sort of “atheistic theocracy”.
So there’s no secret cabal making decisions — because there does n’t have to be. When someone goes against the law, they are shown how to live, and those in power continue to act in their own interests. As George Carlin says in that famous clip,” You do n’t need a formal conspiracy when interests converge”.
To MacIntyre, this rot at the heart of American society is irremediable. In contrast to some post-liberal critics, MacIntyre does not support the resumption of the rule of law or the establishment’s use of force. He makes the argument instead that we are living at the height of an empire, and that it is most likely going to take slow turns shifting our authority to competent regional authorities and reduce our standard of living.
Hanlon’s Razor
There’s a saying attributed to Robert Hanlon:” Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by stupidity”. While many people will nod off as MacIntyre describes American culture collapse and government overreach, his attributions of motive will annoy some readers. Because” the cathedral” is a “decentralized” network operating without coordination, there can be no smoking gun. But by the same token, some of MacIntyre’s claims are unfalsifiable.
For instance, MacIntyre points out that “every institution of power in the United States seems obsessed with introducing sexual and gender identity to children.” He goes on to claim that this is because the state wants to end the parent’s authority, which is in conflict with the state’s. The regime can use” an incredibly useful tool” to promote” the autonomy of the child,” because it can effectively juggle children and their parents. One might wonder whether trans activists are state actors or just misguided heirs to a morally hollow society from the beginning.
In order to gain more power, MacIntyre portrays the elites as waging war against all competing social spheres, including church, family, and middle-class property ownership. And here one too might resort to Hanlon’s razor as well. How much of America’s breakdown is the result of elite scheming compared to the moral vacuum left by Christianity’s decline?
What Should We Do Next?
Indeed, one of MacIntyre’s most intriguing threads is viewing America’s decline through a spiritual lens, as an almost demonic plot:
A new animating spirit rushed in and filled the void as the nation’s metaphysical foundations were now reliant on a dry and dusty document instead of a alive and vibrant tradition. This was the progressive spirit many call “wokeness”.
Conservatives adore John Adams ‘ ode,” Our constitution was only made for a moral and religious people.” It is completely insufficient for any other government. This argument can be made to support the restoration of proper constitutional government, but according to MacIntyre, this approach causes the causality to fall. It is our lack of moral and religious life, not our lack of constitutional fidelity, that is the problem. Our dysfunctional government is merely a sign.
If you find” the cathedral” far- fetched, there are some who would argue the breakdown of society is more easily attributed to spiritual forces. We have created a society that is incredibly comfortable but also appears to be in a state of perpetual crisis. Nuclear war, AI extinction, civil war — we seem to have quite a few credible existential threats, and that’s not even mentioning the national debt, birth dearth, and other quotidian crises.
The good news is that the answer is essentially the same regardless of whether you think MacIntyre is hysterical or dead-on. The most crucial task for the majority of us will be rebuilding our neighborhood, church, and family as a counterweight to modern society’s atomizing forces. In the end, MacIntyre thinks that the entire state is doomed to fail because its premise of never ending expansion and replacing all natural bonds with state dependence is flawed.
In light of the complexity of our time of seemingly unsolvable problems, Gandalf once again offered some other wise words that are worth considering.
It is not our responsibility to control the tides of the world, but rather to carry out what is necessary for those times when we are set, removing evil from known fields so that those who die after have a clean earth to till. It is not our responsibility to control how they will be weather.
The Total State’s cover has the appearance of a mechanized Eye of Sauron. For those who feel stifled or saddened by America today, we should remember Gandalf’s counsel, lest we succumb to despair. Tolkien’s term for a decisive, unexpected break toward the good was a “eucatastrophe“. We could use one of those. Until then, we must endure.
