Yikes. Thought the one in the NYT was bad?
Given Deneen’s influence, the incredible sloppiness of the writing in Regime Change is a surprise. Many of his sentences are ambiguous if not incomprehensible, many of his paragraphs internally contradictory. There are places where the literal meaning of the words on the page are precisely opposite to what he plainly intends to convey. (When he says that it was “not uncoincidental” that two related things coincided, I doubt he means they happened together merely by chance.)
Even going to great lengths to puzzle out the strongest versions of the arguments Deneen seems to be making will get the reader only so far. Every one of his major claims disintegrates under scrutiny. You’re left with the impression that he barely understands his own ideas, and that he misunderstands entirely the thing he’s arguing against.
… Yes, people are ticked off about woke overreach by the progressive left. But the idea that most Americans favor a crackdown on pornography or a reintroduction of Sabbath laws or any of Deneen’s other post-liberal fantasies is comical.
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Yeah, but when Deneen and his monk take over, this reviewer will be the first heretic burned at the stake.
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To make matters worse – taken to task by two lady reviewers in the NYT and Reason.
Post-monk, they’ll only open their mouths to sing the Cathophate’s national anthem, Get Your Biscuits in the Oven and Your Buns in the Bed.
June 9th, 2023 at 10:42PM
Now getting hammered by Barton Swaim in The Wall Street Journal. Conclusion is derivative but on point: “If progressivism, both in its early-20th-century and present-day varieties, can be distilled into a single belief, it is that the way to solve any social or political problem, however tangled, is to put us [for arbitrary values of us – SHK] in charge. For my own part, I would rather be ruled by the first 2,000 people in the phone book than by Patrick Deneen and his pals.”
I left the link out so as to not irritate your comment section’s firewall. The title is “regime change review.”
The ladies of Reason and New York’s Times and Mr Swaim are all in agreement on Mr Deneen’s inability to consider counterarguments.
June 10th, 2023 at 6:27AM
Stephen: Thanks for the WSJ mention. What I have always found shocking about people like Vermeule and Deneen is that they actually gave in to their overpowering desire to force the world to be completely what they happen to want it to be. It would be like a Mormon political theorist writing a book arguing that the US must be taken over and run by Mormons, all Americans must be Mormons, all ethical and legal realities in the US must be based on Mormon tenets. It exposes a humiliating, infantile (I’m king of the world!), fanaticism/grandiosity that is so at odds with a person endowed with a modicum of intellect/character/self-awareness that you simply have to marvel at the sight.
June 10th, 2023 at 7:35AM
[…] The Order of Deneen calls for a crackdown on pornography. […]
June 10th, 2023 at 11:47AM
UD: And yet fanaticism and grandiosity are the lepers bell of any approaching High Modern Authoritarianism, aren’t they? Isn’t that a truth universally accepted, if one is honest, irrespective of the specific tenets of the particular grandiose fanatic, intellectual aptitude notwithstanding?And thanks again to Mr UD for that Seeing Like a State reference, I keep going back to that well on my own site!
June 10th, 2023 at 3:31PM
Stephen: Absolutely.
And I’ll send along your thanks to Mr UD.