The boys at Taki’s Mag are sniping and griping about FPR (how could they have missed our passing case of feminism!?). That’s fine, I suppose, and many of the critiques of the statism implied or expressed by various pieces here on the Porch is well taken, and has in fact been made by others on the Porch already. Thus, it seems lazy to dismiss the entire publication as statist while ignoring contrary evidence. On the one hand, speaking as an editor of FPR, we have never been or intended to be, doctrinaire. For all Taki’s hot air blasts against the neocons, sometimes I wonder if they don’t still have Buckley envy — the need for someone with a strong whip hand to keep the marchers in lock step — and while this strikes me as appropriate in a political context, in a journal of opinion, it just makes everything boring. On the other hand, speaking for myself and as a contributor, I can agree entirely with Spencer when he says: “I think getting the bureaucrats involved is the worst possible way of reviving this lost world.”
Let ’em snipe. At least the Front Porch isn’t underwritten by a globe trotting, filthy rich, playboy son of an industrialist. I think their real complaint is that FPR reeks of dirty hands, work boots, and populism. They have some great writers, and terrific minds over at Taki’s mag, but it must kill them to have to look in the mirror each morning.
The sharpies and swells do so enjoy condescending toward the rustics. Some of Spencer’s assertions hold more than water but this web site, unlike Taki Mag at least tends not to provide but another platform for the carnivalesque proceedings of popular culture, that roving coliseum of the State. This web site also embraces some fairly divergent viewpoints and in the sometimes clear, sometimes addled debate about them, I would say there is a lot more suspicion of the State than there is support of it. It is ridiculous and self-serving for the Taki Cocktailers to assert that the FPR is another neo-con statist organ.
But, I’m missing another year of the HL Mencken Club Dammit and wish Deneen well as he fends off the Gstaad Brickbrats of the Metro-Cons. Spencer asserts big things for the Club and I would wish it well and hope that there might be someplace we can enjoy what goes on there besides traipsing down toward the belly of the beast and its beltway. I hope the “big things” include the kind of arch humor Henry practiced…pricking the balloon of all lock-tight ideology…and doing it with an eye for human detail and cigar smoke worthy of the name Mencken. Patrick, I suggest that you might want to slap the perfumed faces of the Taki Gatekeepers with a dusty dirty glove and challenge them to a Menckenesque Debate next year between the Rubes and the Metro-ragazzone. Perhaps we can quote Bennie DeVoto, one of Menckens friends and suggest a debate, like Bennie did in a challenge to J.Edgar Hoover….. “anytime, anywhere”. J. Edgar declined. The only condition I’d suggest is to do it well out into the country because after all, nothing so frightens the metropolitan than the countryside that keeps their larder full.
[…] After trying, very briefly, to keep up with it regularly for a (very) short period of time, I fell back on only reading TakiMag when links were sent to me by friends. Today I was directed to a bit by Dylan Hales by a short retort from Caleb Stegall on FPR. […]
The impoverished imagination that must fit everything into “statist” or “non-statist” is increasingly tiresome.
I whole-heartedly second Thomas G. and forestwalker.
Gentlemen, what is tiresome is the notion that anyone who decries the current sideshow of unbridled and absolutist statism is an absolutist anti-statist. But maybe thats what you already said.
Yikes! I suppose I’d be grumpy if I only saw a couple select FPR posts as well. They should get out to the Porch more often; texture’s nice.
Thomas G., forestwalker, Mark and Albert are all completely correct. D.W. Sabin is completely D.W. Sabin, which is even better.
Would that be the same TakiRag funded by the self-proclaimed playboy? The one that had to turn off its comboxes to isolate their authors from any critique? The same TakiRag praised by the Occidental Review for its “race realism.” http://www.toqonline.com/2009/05/faileocons-no-more/
Well, I suppose you can’t be blamed for your friends. But I am not surprised that they are offended at an attack on St. Ludwig of Mont Pelerin.
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