Today is Publication Day for The Reactionary Mind, so I thought I’d share my own favorite excerpt with all of you. Here’s the crux of the book, from the conclusion:
Above all, though, be happy. Live well, and go to Heaven. If you can do nothing else, do that. The reactionary is one whose whole existence is a constant revolt against the modern world—its banal, cheap, ugly, heartless futility.
Fall in love, get married, and be faithful to your spouse. Have as many children as you possibly can. Your family will bring you more joy than anything else in the world. It’s worth every sacrifice you make, of which there will be many.
Homeschool your kids, but don’t over-school them. Let them pay a little more attention to topics that interest them. Let them take long lunches. End their studies while there’s still daylight so they can play outside. Start or join a co-op so they can be around other children of all ages.
Build a community. Find a parish that will nourish your faith. Make friends who will strengthen you in virtue. Have fun together. Exercise together—mind, body, and soul. Sing good songs. Read good books. Start a branch of the Chesterton Society or a smial of the Tolkien Society. Hunt, fish, and hike. Drink beer. Smoke pipes. Laugh.
Stay away from cities. Cities are where souls go to die. Extricate yourself from the ugliness of modern life as best you can. Go out into the country. Go up into the mountains.
Don’t worry too much about your career. Your priority should be keeping your family fed. But, if you can, find a useful occupation. Farm. Make furniture. Unclog toilets. If you’re doomed to a life of white-collar labor, try to find a job that lets you work from home. Minimize your commute. Never take a promotion that forces you to move away from your community.
If you can’t buy a farm, plant a garden. Spend a little time every day with your hands in the soil. Eat fruits and vegetables you’ve grown yourself. Raise chickens and eat their eggs. If you can, buy a few goats or cows. Keep your family in good, raw milk. At least once in your life, go in on a pig with some friends and slaughter it yourselves.
Minimize the amount of technology you use for work. Don’t use any technology recreationally. Avoid social media like the plague. Never read the comments on an article. Remember that nobody in the history of the world has ever changed his mind after arguing with a stranger online. Get a dumbphone or a landline to keep in touch with friends and family, but find better things to do with your free time. Practice real leisure. Learn to play an instrument. Paint. Whittle. Write poetry. Play chess. Be strenuous, and be useful.
Throw away your television. Turn off the talk radio. Get your news from a local newspaper. Better yet, don’t get the news at all. If the country goes to war, you’ll hear about it. Otherwise, it’s none of your business, and nobody cares what you think.
When you go out in public, put on a tie. It doesn’t matter who you’re going to see: they’re worth it. Comport yourself with dignity, and with respect for the dignity of others. You wouldn’t throw rubbish in your front yard for all your neighbors to see. So, don’t go outside looking like a slob. They deserve better. So do you. And so does your family. A true reactionary wears a tie at home.
Buy a few dogs and work alongside them. Find a sense of purpose together. Let them retrieve the birds you shoot and watch over your livestock. Then, let them run around and play together.
Shop local. If you can’t buy it locally, ninety-nine percent of the time, you don’t need it. Spend less money, period. Don’t create waste. Recycle and compost. Don’t throw clothes away: patch them.
Washington is a lost cause. It’s the seat of a dying empire. Get involved in local politics. Register as an independent and work with politicians of any party to build the common good. Use prudence, of course. Never vote for a “pro-choice” politician who could feasibly change abortion law in a “liberal” direction. But if the Democrat running for city council wants to plant a thousand trees and the Republican wants to tear down a park to build a strip mall, vote for the Democrat. For larger executive offices, like mayor or governor, remember that you’re not just electing a man (or woman), but an administration and vote accordingly for the administration that would do the least harm through executive orders and appointments.
Go to church (or synagogue or whatever your house of worship happens to be) once a week. If you’re Catholic, go to daily Mass. Lead your family in prayer every evening. Tithe: give ten percent of your income to your church, a religious order, or to worthy, reactionary causes. Don’t get dragged into “church politics”—local, national, or international. It will kill your faith at its roots. Just focus on what you can do, personally, to spread your faith.
Examine your conscience every evening. Don’t be afraid to confront your sins, or your mortality. Be brave. Think about them, but not too much. Make it your resolve every night to be a better man the next morning, and then do that.
This is how the reactionary wages his war against modernity—with his whole being. He doesn’t depend on new-fangled things like parties or “movements.” He has no use for factions or sects. By definition, one party or faction must defeat the other. That’s the point. The reactionary isn’t interested in beating his opponents, but in winning them over. He has something that they need, and he wants to share it with them: happiness. A good life. Reactionaries don’t argue, they act. They lead by example.
Thanks also to The American Conservative for publishing the first review of The Reactionary Mind yesterday. A special thanks to my friend Declan Leary, the reviewer. Here’s an excerpt:
[Davis] makes his case with a startling simplicity, recasting modern humanism as anti-humanism, and holding up the modern state in contrast to medieval government—a comparison that reflects none too kindly on our own temporal rulers. What good have these centuries of revolution done, besides strip men of their religion and their land and substitute the iron fist of the liberal state for a free life under a Christian king?
Though I must admit I am predisposed to agreement, it is hard not to be struck by just how obvious the book’s lines of reasoning appear.
Of course the reorganization of society around the individual at the expense of mediating institutions necessarily leads to increased state responsibility, and thus increased state authority. Of course social contract theory legitimizes the expansion of governmental power in a way medieval theory never could. Of course a modern bureaucratic leviathan is both more vulnerable and better suited to the development of tyranny than any old feudal system. Of course the transformation of the taxpaying small farmer into a deracinated wage slave made him less free, not more. Of course the abolition of public religion has done exactly what any sensible person before about a century ago could have warned you it would do.
That’s high praise, and I’m grateful for it. So we’re clear, though, The Reactionary Mind isn’t a book about politics. It’s about happiness, and how the modern world conspires to make us unhappy. The government is part of that conspiracy, sure. But it’s a relatively small part. And politics is part of the solution—but, again, it’s rather a small part.
You probably got that from the conclusion. I just want to make sure we’re all on the same page here.
One last point. In his review, Mr. Leary seems disappointed by the lack of solutions given in the book. After mentioning my calls for tariffs and other protectionist measures, he writes:
These are all sound ideas, and well worth implementing. But I hardly find myself convinced that they will succeed in conquering either Mammon or Leviathan. This may be an indelible problem of the reactionary mind. The person whose natural tendencies incline him to recognize the failures of modernity does not, as a rule, have also the ability to meet system-level problems with system-level solutions. The kind of thought and action required to reshape society is, in the end, antithetical to the reactionary’s character.
My only response to this is a quote form Charles Péguy:
It is the mystic who is practical, and the politically minded who are not. It is we who are practical, who do something, and it is they who are not, who do nothing. It is we who accumulate and they who squander. It is we who build, lay foundations, and it is they who demolish. It is we who nourish, and they who are parasites. It is we who make things and men, people and races. It is they who wreak ruin.
Nobody who has ever tried to confront “system-level problems with system-level solutions” has succeeded. The empires built by men like Cecil Rhodes, Adolf Hitler, and Joseph Stalin are gone. The empire built by Franklin D. Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson is on its last legs.
Meanwhile, Jesus of Nazareth was executed after just three years of public ministry. Gautama Buddha abdicated his princedom to become a wandering ascetic. Mohammed ibn Abdullah was a desert warlord. Today, sixty percent of the world’s population follows one of these three men.
Jesus and Buddha and Mohammed will be remembered long after history has forgotten the names Joe Biden, Vladimir Putin, and Xi Jinping.
The Reactionary Mind is a call to be practical—that is, to be nonpolitical. The 20th century is a tale about the failures of “systems-level solutions.” (So is the Age of Revolution, and the Enlightenment, and the Protestant Reformation.) But “systems-level solutions” don’t exist. In fact, there are no solutions at all. T.S. Eliot said it best:
If we take the widest and wisest view of a Cause, there is no such thing as a Lost Cause because there is no such thing as a Gained Cause. We fight for lost causes because we know that our defeat and dismay may be the preface to our successors’ victory, though that victory itself will be temporary; we fight rather to keep something alive than in the expectation that anything will triumph.
There are no solutions on this side of Paradise. There’s only struggle—the struggle against tyranny, ugliness, fear, doubt, and sin. Anyone who promises you an end to that struggle within your lifetime is lying.
Don’t allow yourself to be deceived. You have to spend every moment of your life striving against the evil. Donald Trump and Viktor Orbán can’t do it for you. Of course, vote for a Trump or an Orbán when you can! But it’s not all about politics. It’s not mostly about politics. It’s barely about politics. It’s about living a good life, and then going to Heaven.
I’ll promise you this, though. When you think like a mystic instead of a politician—when you live for God, your family, your friends, your neighbor, your country—you will change the world.
Men have tried before to end the war with one fell swoop, and they’ve always failed. Victory belongs to those who put on their armor, pick up their sword, and fight the Enemy day by day, battle by battle, blow by blow. That’s the reactionary imperative.
Anyway. If you preordered the book, I’m profoundly grateful to you. If not, please consider ordering a copy. My family and I would be more grateful still for your prayers.
Peace and the Good!