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“It is a fact of history that no king could push his people into war as rapidly and as fluidly as George Bush or Barack Obama. And this cannot be dismissed as a technological issue brought about by progress. It stems directly from the configuration of power structures. Here we must emphasize the difference between a stratified society and the modern egalitarian regime. In the latter, the state has direct authority over each individual or group, and this is true primarily because all have been reduced to one dead level. Access to one member on any single level implies access to all. In the stratified framework, however, the authority of a man at the uppermost level does not imply access to any other level beyond that which happens to be immediately adjacent to his own. He does not subsume command of all that falls below him in the vast hierarchy. He sits on the top rung, indeed, but his arms aren't any longer than yours or mine, and so he can only grasp at the next rung down from his own. The medieval king could command his dukes, but he could not command their knights. He could draw taxes from the peasants who lived on his own estate (which was not much larger than a duke's), but he could not draw taxes from the peasants who lived on his dukes' estates. In this way the monarch had no effective way of exercising direct dominion over anyone but the dukes themselves. Any influence on the peasantry was indirect, as a result of convincing the nobility of the justness of his cause. It was open to them to refuse in a way that no American governor can refuse mobilization of his population for a military engagement.”

MonarchyFeudalismStratificationSubsidiarity
Book:The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought
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“Contemplation will not bring you peace. Or, if you receive peace you will also receive new sufferings and new conflict. It involves opening the Eye of the Heart, and while this allows us to perceive ourselves in Christ, it also allows us to see Christ in the world, and in the world Christ is everywhere Crucified. It is a terrible thing to behold.”

ReligionSpiritualityPrayerChristianityContemplation
Book:This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 6: Counsels
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“To call a people ‘barbaric’ is, in one sense, to describe the state of their soul, condemning their mentality or philosophy as godless. It may have nothing at all to do with superficial material conditions. A rich man can be a barbarian as easily as anyone else.”

WisdomCultureSpiritualityCivilizationManners
Book:This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 1: Introduction to the Modern World
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“Free speech, rightly understood is a lesser form of combat intended to preserve peace, which is to say, a form of invasive coercion that cannot be otherwise. It is combat with purpose, with social utility, and its value is social. In other words it is a contingent liberty designed to have a social benefit. But in the modern context it is reinterpreted individualistically, so that it becomes a special prerogative of individuals which they claim for themselves alone without regard to any social good. Free speech is ‘my right’ and is defended not because it is better for everyone in the long run but because it is something I am allowed to do and no one can stop me.”

IndividualismFreedom Of SpeechConservatismModernityModernismNatural Rights
Book:This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 2: The Confrontation Between Man and Evil
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“Modern man is an island, in a historical sense. Every society born of revolution is an island, and it is an island that floats, like a thin film on the surface of history. He is always moving, disconnected from all that came before him, and never holding still long enough to strike the roots necessary to pass something on to those who will come after.”

RevolutionTraditionModernityRootlessness
Book:The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought
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“Universal suffrage enfranchised everyone and, in doing so, reduced everyone's power to the smallest share possible. While this was acceptable when it was conceived as impotence over others, it becomes intolerable when we realize that our power over ourselves is included in the bargain. The individual in a regime of universal suffrage has an absolute minimum of influence.”

DemocracyVoteUniversal Suffrage
Book:The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought
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“Whether we are speaking of the philosophical history of the concept (universal suffrage) or the contemporary reality of its application, everyone stops somewhere. They all set a limit, even if that limit is the requirement of adulthood (a completely arbitrary classification if there ever was one). This unwillingness to apply the principle completely tells us something: First, it tells us that almost everyone knows that there ought to be some sort of qualification for electoral participation; and second, it tells us that no one knows exactly what this qualification ought to be. Because everyone agrees, even if unconsciously, on the first point—that qualifications there must be—then we can consider this an implicit acknowledgment that universal suffrage, even where it is preached, must be considered a purely sentimental notion which no one is actually willing to implement. We may then set about examining the second point, concerning the necessity and nature of the qualifications that ought to be set before the voting citizen.”

DemocracyVotingUniversal Suffrage
Book:The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought
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“Love does not pursue pleasure or enjoyment or wealth or even happiness. If these are experienced as byproducts of the pursuit of love, we may be grateful, but true love of the highest order yearns for the spiritual perfection of ourselves and others. Spiritual perfection is often acquired at the cost of happiness, at the cost of comfort, and in spite of suffering and inconvenience. In other words, it is possible to cause someone suffering out of love for them, and it is possible to make someone very happy while degrading them. We do not wish suffering on anyone, and we live in fear of the possibility that those we love might suffer, but fear of their spiritual debasement must always be stronger than the fear of their suffering.”

Love QuotesPhilosophy QuotesReligion Quotes
Book:This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 2: The Confrontation Between Man and Evil
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“Spiritual love will not resemble worldly love since it desires first and foremost the spiritual perfection of the beloved. Spiritual love wants the beloved to live free—which is to say, free from sin, since virtue is the only true liberty. This is the opposite of the liberty the modern world would have us pursue, which amounts to the freedom to live in whatever sin we feel like. This is a loveless pursuit of liberty, liberty in the context of spiritual blindness.”

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Book:This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 2: The Confrontation Between Man and Evil
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“The problem that faces us today is that contemporary political systems deny the universal responsibility (of persons and of public authorities) to pursue the good. Rather, they propose to limit the purpose of government to the enforcement of certain liberties, which is just as contradictory as it sounds. This reduces the whole purpose of government to that of ‘rights referee’, and how terrible it would be to play referee in a game wherein the rules are always changing and with players who each think they are playing a different game.”

PhilosophyGovernmentPoliticsTraditionalist
Book:This Dark Age - 2024 Edition - Volume 2: The Confrontation Between Man and Evil
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“The common man was aware of the king, or the emperor, but the more distant the ruler the further removed was he from the peasant's own life. In short, his relationship to his authorities was the inverse of what ours is today, where those who impact our lives the most are those furthest from us. The peasant and his patriarch formed a more or less autonomous sphere, although this sphere existed in conjunction with concentric or intersecting circles. Because of this subsidiarity, what little sway the peasant had in the eye of his superior had more in common with that of a son to his father, and it would be anachronistic to imagine him to be as impotent as a modern American would be if deprived of voting rights. The peasant's voice was incomparably louder because the ratio of ruler to ruled was so much smaller within in the jurisdiction where he fell.”

GovernmentRoyaltyMonarchySubsidiarity
Book:The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought
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“Instead of a President whom he'd never see and or representatives he'd never meet, the peasant had a single lord. This lord was a local master whom he knew by sight even though he had no television or newspaper. This proximity allowed for an organic familiarity between ruler and ruled. They were not "on a first name basis," of course, but they were acquainted in the sense that they could be rightly considered "neighbors," even if they were not equals. This organic familiarity meant that the peasant paid his taxes in person, complained in person, and if need be he hung the lord from a local tree in person.”

GovernmentDemocracyPeasantry
Book:The Case Against the Modern World: A Crash Course in Traditionalist Thought
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