When it comes to the libertarian suicide race, Bryan Caplan leaves Don Boudreaux in the dust. Caplan takes the Non-Aggression Principle and runs with it, all the way into a maximum-velocity self-directed death cult. (Self-directed, solely in the ideological sense, of course.) Given the considerable merits of this book, in particular, it’s a sad thing to see.

American libertarianism has always been vulnerable to neo-puritan spiritual extravagance. Caplan systematically pushes this tendency to its limit, divorcing its arguments from any realistic estimation of consequences, and transforming it into a form of deontological moral fanaticism, in which self-defense, retaliation, and boundaries are strictly prohibited. He envisages a world of games in which only unilateral altruism is permissible to the libertarian player. It would be fun to go a few rounds of prisoner’s dilemma with him.

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To translate ‘neoreaction’ into ‘the new reaction’ is in no way objectionable.  It is new, and open to novelty. Apprehended historically, it dates back no more than a few years. The writings of Mencius Moldbug have been a critical catalyst.

Neoreaction is also a species of reactionary political analysis, inheriting a deep suspicion of ‘progress’ in its ideological usage. It accepts that the dominant sociopolitical order of the world has ‘progressed’ solely on the condition that such advance, or relentless forward movement, is entirely stripped of moral endorsement, and is in fact bound to a primary association with worsening. The model is that of a progressive disease.

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Despite the left slant, this examination of Hayek’s involvement with the Chilean Pinochet regime is calm and informative enough to be worth reading (via).  Its relevance to numerous recent discussions on the extreme right is clear.

Given everything we know about Hayek—his horror of creeping socialism, his sense of the civilizational challenge it posed; his belief that great men impose their will upon society (“The conservative peasant, as much as anybody else, owes his way of life to a different type of person, to men who were innovators in their time and who by their innovations forced a new manner of living on people belonging to an earlier state of culture”); his notion of elite legislators (“If the majority were asked their opinion of all the changes involved in progress, they would probably want to prevent many of its necessary conditions and consequences and thus ultimately stop progress itself. I have yet to learn of an instance when the deliberate vote of the majority (as distinguished from the decision of some governing elite) has decided on such sacrifices in the interest of a better future”); and his sense of political theory and politics as an epic confrontation between the real and the yet-to-be-realized—perhaps the Pinochet question needs to be reframed. The issue is not “How could he have done what he did?” but “How could he not?”

(I agree with Corey Robin that the ‘Schmittian’ element in Hayek’s thinking remains an unresolved theoretical problem, but his concrete judgments — as detailed here — strike me as consistently sound.)

The bad news: Rolling back democracy is really hard. (It’s a stimulating pursuit nevertheless.) What are the chances of this happening before this? Not high, in my estimation.

The good news: The ‘task’ of spruiking evangelical democratization is supported by the historical tide, and has already reached a quite remarkably level of maturity. If people are looking for a near-term goal, this surely gets jostled to the front of the queue. It’s not hard to foresee a time, only a few years out, when the very idea of pushing the Cathedral on politically ‘under-developed’ societies will look like sabotage pure and simple. This is already how much of the world sees it (including all honest observers).

Looking back, the ‘Arab Spring’ will be seen as the decisive moment when democracy promotion became indistinguishable from ruinous coercion. ‘Sprung’ societies are devastated. They are triumphalist democracy’s Russian Winter. Once the enemy’s advance has ground entirely to a halt, the push back can steadily, relentlessly begin.

In the end, it’s all comes down to harsh realism.

Socialists imagine there are no wolves, so democracy is easy.

Conservatives imagine democracy as a way for wolves to apologize.

Libertarians imagine democracy as two wolves and a sheep deciding on the main course for dinner.

Neoreactionaries see democracy as two sheep and a wolf deciding on the merits of mandatory vegetarianism.

ADDED: Survivingbabel anticipates (6 months ago, no link available):
Democracy is closer to two sheep and a wolf voting on what’s for dinner. The sheep unite in collective action to fight off the wolf. The wolf, stripped of its natural power, must graze alongside the sheep. Eventually it dies from malnutrition, and the sheep, having lost their natural predator, soon overpopulate and overgraze their land. Then they die too, usually replaced by another species entirely.

Joseph Chamie has a bridge to global harmony to sell you:

… with US immigration increased to 10 million per year, the enhanced America with a population of 1.6 billion by century’s close would mean a more secure and flourishing world. As the world’s most populous nation by 2100, America would strengthen its capacity to continue promoting democracy, freedom and development, thereby ensuring peace, stability and prosperity for every region of the world.

What could possibly go wrong?

ADDED: How (oh how) could this happen? Sailer’s genius on full-burn: “It’s funny how the refugee system works. It’s almost as if foreigners who are really good at getting their neighbors to hate them seem to wind up as refugees in America more than foreigners who are good at getting along with their neighbors.”

Peter A. Taylor contributes this gem to the comments thread of Foseti’s recent democracy round-up:

Washington is not the dark heart of a pure nation. It is the dark heart of a rotting nation. That’s why the Dark Enlightenment is so dark.

A democracy cannot survive as a permanent form of government. It can last only until its citizens discover that they can vote themselves largesse from the public treasury. From that moment on, the majority (who vote) will vote for the candidates promising the greatest benefits from the public purse, with the result that a democracy will always collapse from loose fiscal policies, always followed by a dictatorship. — Macaulay [or the ‘Tytler Calumny‘ (thanks Matt)]

From the Urban Dictionary, Democracy:

1) A common system of government directed by the whims of mobs and marked by a low tolerance for basic human rights and common sense; primarily used to incrementally transition a government ruled by common law (Republic) to a government ruled by the political law of a few elite (Oligarchy).

As the slide continues, the perennial understanding of anti-demotic statecraft (and initiatory insight of the new reaction) appears to be going mainstream. Alex Berezow writes at Realclearworld‘s The Compass blog:

It’s been a rough few years for democracy. Despite that, Westerners always seem to assume that the most highly evolved form of government is democratic. The trouble with that notion is that, at some point, a majority of voters realize they can vote for politicians who promise them the most stuff, regardless of whether or not it is good policy or financially sustainable. And once that occurs, the country is (perhaps irreversibly) on a pathway to decline.

Whilst glibly insubstantial by Moldbug standards (of course), the article never retracts this initial premiss, and concludes with the suggestion that the whole world could profitably learn arts of democracy inhibition from China. Interesting times.

[Note: the two articles immediately below Berezow’s at the RCW site are ‘Is Cameron’s EU Strategy Unraveling?’ (by Benedict Brogan) and ‘Libya Is Still Unraveling’ (by Max Boot) — just noticed (consciously). Contemporary news: all unraveling, all the time.]

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If it were never necessary to adapt fundamentally to reality, then fascism would be the truth. There could be no limit to the sovereignty of political will.

If — pursuing this thought further into vile absurdity — even tactical concessions were unnecessary, then nothing would obstruct a path of joyous degeneration leading all the way to consummate communism. That, however, is several steps beyond anything that has been seriously advocated for over half a century.

Since the 1920s, communism has been the ideal form of socio-economic impracticality, as evidenced by that fact that whenever communism becomes practical, it becomes — to exactly the same extent — fascist (‘state capitalist’ or ‘Stalinist’). Fascism on the other hand, and as everyone knows, makes the trains run on time. It represents practical subordination of reality to concentrated will.

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Sheldon Richman seizes upon the senseless sequester squealing as an opportunity to make more general points (via Cafe Hayek). There’s nothing strikingly original, but it’s all impressively sound. The point of departure is Bryan Caplan’s analysis, which Richman summarizes as the question: “…if the ‘informed voter’ is a chimera, how can we expect democracy to yield desirable outcomes?”

Since democratic large numbers drown out both the effectiveness of any vote, and the private consequences of subsequent policy …

… it’s costless to vote for the candidate who makes you feel good about yourself. As Bryan Caplan has shown, given these incentives, people tend to vote according to their biases, which for most people embody economic fallacies.

Here’s a better idea: let people cooperate with one another in the free market, and leave as few matters as possible to the overrated democratic arena.

Good luck with that.