Best contrary argument I’ve come across is that the Obama-as-C-in-C bonus sets a three year adventure window. (I don’t think even this is enough to provoke a reckless gamble.)

Attack with what ? It’s suicide for them to attack our Fleet and bases in the Pacific.

The saber rattling may indicate domestic problems, perhaps Admin knows. Unless they’ve got a secret fleet however, one that’s caught up to us doing it for centuries..we are after all a Sea Power…

The end of the petro-dollar is more serious. However I don’t like the petro-dollar or the Empire it props up. Not because I give a damn about foreigners – kill them all or leave them alone – but the Empire over my people is quite Mad. I would chafe but could live under a Sane Empire.

But that’s not what they are.

Forget Defense. The Defense is the attack, you are pointing out their ridiculous contradictions, the horrid consequences, and the sum of neo-reaction is a preference for truth over lies.

You defend by attacking. It is an attack.

Truth and Beauty to the Victors. Win first, then worry about what next. If what’s next is a preference for truth over lies, beauty will eventually follow truth. We may not live to see it, for we are all now living guilty of Shirking. A mortal sin in original Islam you know, and the Man knew what he was doing. Beauty is for our Daughters. We must first stand for them.

Truth is for Men.

Beauty for Women.

Be Men, and the Sun will shine again.

For NR to be persuasive it has to criticize the mainstream. Government, science, art, everything.

How do you criticize a critique? With a defense of the status quo? If the status quo was defensible then NR wouldn’t be persuasive at all.

I think the best critic of NR is someone like Megan McArdle. She writes about how you can tweak the status quo in a few ways here and there and get huge benefits. If she’s right then the progressive structure isn’t doomed and falling apart. If the tweaks she favors are impossible because of the structural flaws in progressivism then the NRs are right.

You’re not going to successfully persuade anyone who was open to the NR critique of progressivism that actually things are pretty good. You can only hope to persuade them that things don’t have to get worse and that progressives are capable of sanity.