The General Eclectic

Rod and Kale have Yoram Hazony on to talk about his just released book "Conservatism: A Rediscovery." They discuss: - Can Conservatives learn to Conserve? - Post-fusionism and Cultural Transmission - Public and Personal realms - No real "Neutrality" - Honor creates a world - Freedom above all and the dissolution of Family - Woke as a placeholder for the loss of tradition - Post WW2 cultural trauma - The Bible's centrality - The successes of Enlightenment Rationalism - Institutional capture - False nazi smears and "postures versus arguments" - Fight for restoration not revolution - Yoram's personal turn to Conservatism through lived tradition Read Rod at his blog at The American Conservative More from Rod at roddreher.substack.com More from Kale at kalezelden.substack.com

Rod and Kale return after a 6 week sabbatical to cover what has been going on politically, culturally, and personally in the past six weeks. The talk: -Jerusulem -Russia and Ukraine -Orban -Media Class Blindness -Enemies as Parasites -our New Media Disinformation Tsar -Roe v. Wade -Spanish Civil War -Statecraft -Purity Politics -Pilgrimage and physical reality Kale has started "The Underneath," a new Substack at: kalezelden.substack.com Links: Prelude to a Tragedy: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lu5f9hp0IP4 The Subversive Podcast: https://alexkaschuta.com/subversive-podcast

In their warm up, Kale and Rod talk about the Slap Heard 'Round the World at this year's Oscars and the snoozefest it has become. They move into a discussion of the deeper implications of the question: "what is a woman?" Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson professed her inability to answer the question at the confirmation hearings, and they talk about the deeper implications of why this matters, especially in our current moment. They then talk about the NatCon Conference in Brussels, and especially the bold speech of Eva Vlaardingerbroek as well as Alex Kaschuta, host of The Subversive Podcast and their critiques of Western Liberalism. The question is serious: will it hold? Have we lost Western Civilization's "default settings"? Or are we doomed to continue to toil in the world of Crowley? They move on to discuss Iain McGilchrist and his vision of purpose encoded in the natural world. Can we rediscover our purpose, or are we simply waiting for the barbarians to take us? Are we stuck in Necropolis? They finish up on a conversation about the prophetic role of the church, and the need for moral leadership. What do we do when these, too, are captured? Links:

• KJB and What is a Woman?: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/woman-man-ketanji-brown-jackson-woman-gender-ideology-fight-against-evil/
• The Vicar's Wife's Lament: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/frustrated-laywoman-to-anglican-leaders-find-your-spines/
• Subversive Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AORn2H3hCSs
• TGE Show with Helena: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52WFFekjcSc&t=4s
• The City in History: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_City_in_History

In this episode of The General Eclectic, Rod and Kale talk about the spreading and manufacture of cultural confusion on several fronts: gender ideology and the culture war, surrogacy and the gaming of procreation, the corruption of institutional churches, and the confusion over the war in Ukraine. Rod attended a seminar with Eric Kaufman who argues that all conservative energy must be directed towards the culture war, as the demographic reality is staggeringly grim. The capture of "the kids" proceeds apace and there is no time for version of that old lie: "the kids will grow up when they enter the real world." Complacency is abnegation. Links:

• Swim Not By Lies: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/swim-not-by-lies-lia-thomas/
• Woke at Disney: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/walt-disney-conservative-employees-closet-dont-say-gay/
• Eric Kaufmann speech: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/eric-kaufmann-peril-of-culture-war-complacency/
• Judith Rich Harris: https://www.amazon.com/Nurture-Assumption-Children-Revised-Updated/dp/1439101655
• Mary Harrington: https://unherd.com/thepost/where-are-dave-rubins-babies-coming-from/

Kale and Rod are joined by Helena, a young woman who has gone through a harrowing personal journey. Her testimony takes us into the world of Tumblr and the alternate reality of fandom, social justice ideology, and transgenderism. At 15 she begins the process of becoming a trans person online and decides to become trans in "meat space," fighting with her parents and making the decision through "informed consent" to begin a regimen of testosterone. After a drawn out spiral she acknowledges that she's made a terrible mistake and begins the process of making sense out of what happened. She's a witness and a prophet. Links:

• Helena's By Any Other Name: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name?s=r
• Our Episode on "Liturgies": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2PpKbx5k3es

Rod and Kale talk about the war in the context of the Anglo and Chinese polarity and the West's demand to be moral versus the Chinese demand to be obeyed. Why does the West have Billionaires, but Russia has Oligarchs? They go on to discuss the fragility of civilizational networks and the fragility of global economics. Will Twitter spark World War III? Lindsey Graham's takes to twitter and calls on a would-be Brutus. They go on to discuss technology and a post-human future, the logic of transhumanism, and John the Savage. They close on a discussion of Russian art and moral panic, and the simplified scripts we use to make sense of the complex world. Links:

• Orban Interview: https://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/viktor-orban-interview-mandiner/
• Fifth Column Taibbi episode: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/348-w-matt-taibbi-richard-perle-in-new-jersey-putin/id1097696129?i=1000552854933
• Aaron Renn on Gen Xers: https://aaronrenn.substack.com/p/generation-x-finally-steps-into-the?r=57as1&s=r&utm_campaign=post&utm_medium=email
• Matthew Crawford: http://www.matthewbcrawford.com/new-page-1-1
• Helena's Substack: https://lacroicsz.substack.com/p/by-any-other-name?s=r
• Paul Kingsnorth: https://emergencemagazine.org/fiction/the-basilisk/
• Kale's article "Things Are Broken": https://onepeterfive.com/things-are-broken-we-need-to-upgrade-our-sense-making-apparatus/
• Scruton's Video Essay: https://vimeo.com/549715999

Rod and Kale are joined by Paul Vanderklay, pastor and YouTuber, to discuss Rod's latest project on Enchantment. Rod starts off with his story of Saint Galgano and the sword in the stone as a way of laying out his new project. These fantastic stories are the living testimony of the very strange God and the stories of those men and women called to bear witness. In Modernity, we have lost our ability to see fully and as a result we live in the disenchanted world that delimits and occludes the spirit. Any move towards re-enchantment must somehow include the enlightenment, and thinkers like Iain McGilchrist provide us a path back. In part, the recognition that "the whole story" or the "subtraction story" of Charles Taylor is, too, a myth. They talk about Jordan Peterson as "the unauthorized exorcist of the Gospel of Mark", Charles Taylor, Tonya Luhrman, Blaise Pascal, Sam Harris, Dallas Willard, Michel Houellebecq, BJ Campbell, Steve Skojec, and others. Links: Paul's YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/c/PaulVanderKlay

Kale is joined by Paul Rossi, independent school teacher turned activist. They discuss what is going on in our nation's most elite schools, and their radical transformation through critical race theory praxis. What is "religious" about the DEI training? Paul offers an insight from the inside out. As he says toward the end, "I want to start a revolution" in order to save the schools from capture. In between this conversation about schools and DEI, Kale and Paul talk about liberal learning and what schools are for, and how a solid education in the wisdom traditions can be a kind of inoculation. As Paul admits, "there are no secular solutions" to what we are going through. We hope you enjoy.

• Paul's piece on Bari Weiss' Substack: https://bariweiss.substack.com/p/i-refuse-to-stand-by-while-my-students?utm_source=url
• Paul's exposure of the People of Color Conference through NAIS: https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/project-launch-unmasking-national-association-of-independent-schools/
• https://legalinsurrection.com/2022/02/project-launch-unmasking-national-association-of-independent-schools/
• Communism Doesn't Know How: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b5HZvOSvLzM
• students learn to lie
• Polyanna curriculum: https://pollyannainc.org/
• from the Golden Rule to the Platinum Rule
• private schools are not immune
• will the bill come due?
• meaning trumps non-meaning

In this episode, Rod and Kale discuss the underlying issue of "telos"—the end or purpose of a thing—as a necessary guide for action, whether in the context of the military or schools or any institution. What can you ground a culture or civilization upon? Is self-definition enough? Is desire sufficient? They move into a discussion of curated narratives and then into Sam Brinton, the BDSM enthusiast and new Biden appointee. What are the grounds for us to object? They end with a discussion of liturgies. We all have liturgies—modes of scripted and often unconscious behaviors that "create" us or form us. What do our own personal and public liturgies create in and through us? Topics:

• War and Perspective
• "Critical Military Theory"
• Fog of War, and the myth of administrative control
• "We create our own reality"
• When ideals clash with the telos
• What is a School for?
• Sam Brinton
• Narrative Suppression
• Pageau and the Liturgies of Sin
• Liturgies form and imply telos
• Normalizing Kink
• Auden watches a movie with Germans
• Liturgies of the death works and classical liberalism
• the long spirits that form us

Links:

• https://taskandpurpose.com/opinion/critical-military-theory/
• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fog_of_War

In this episode of the podcast, Kale and Rod have a conversation in three parts: Russia and Ukraine, the use and abuse of Dialogue in Church and culture matters, and Rod's work on Enchantment. The first section is a discussion of the escalation of war rhetoric surrounding Russia and Ukraine, and the chorus of foreign policy voices seeming to cheerlead another conflict. It always seems to be Munich for a certain type of D.C. pundit. Kale presses Rod to discuss his loss of faith in foreign wars twenty years ago with the Iraq debacle. What are we left with when narratives collapse? Can we see outside of our own bubbles? The second section focuses on dialogue done in good faith versus dialogue with bad faith actors. Why does dialogue mask actual and important differences of not just policy, but arguments over the very basis of reality? In the third section, Rod discusses his work in enchantment, his reading of Hartmut Rosa and the idea of "resonance", and a podcast between Jordan Peterson and Chloé Valdary.