An Option to the so-called Benedict Option?

While Dreher has spilled a tanker-load of virtual ink over at his blog about his so-called eponymous "Benedict Option", he hasn't yet figured out what he means by it.  OTOH, our discussions have identified at least two salient characteristics:  it's self-promoting if not self-aggrandizing (Dreher being the "self"), and it is essentially rolling into a ball and letting others do the fighting.

But just like the question of what the Repubs in Congress are going to propose in place of Obamacare should the Supreme Court (rightly) drive a stake into Obamacare, it is a fair question to wonder whether there are any options to the utopian Dreher Bunker Option.  Only here at EQE, unlike the weak-kneed GOP leadership in Congress, we're going to try to answer that fair question.

Some time back I linked to a blurb of a new book by Charles Murray, author of Coming Apart (which I highly highly recommend) and co-author of the much-discussed The Bell Curve.  The new book is By The People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission:

In last Saturday's Wall Street Journal, Murray contributed the Saturday Essay (read the whole thing, as they say -- no paywall) in which he summarizes this promising concept. Here are a couple of pull quotes:

It was our boast that in America, unlike in any other country, you could live your life as you saw fit as long as you accorded the same liberty to everyone else.... Americans were to live under a presumption of freedom.... 

We now live under a presumption of constraint....The number of federal crimes you could commit as of 2007 (the last year they were tallied) was about 4,450, a 50% increase since just 1980.  A comparative handful of those crimes are "malum in se" -- bad in themselves.  The rest are "malum prohibitum" -- crimes because the government disapproves....

Whether we are trying to raise our children, be good stewards of our property, cooperate with our neighbors to solve local problems or practice our religious faith, the bureaucrats think they know better. And when the targets of the regulator state say they've had enough, that they will fight it in court, the bureaucrats can -- and do -- say to them, "Try that, and we'll ruin you." 

For example, see the sub-headline here :

"relatively unregulated, but that could change".  I bet it could, and I bet it will.

So what to do?  Here's his proposal:

And so my modest proposal:  Let's withhold that compliance through systematic civil disobedience. Not for all regulations, but for the pointless, stupid and tyrannical ones....

The risk in doing so, of course, is that one of the 70-odd regulatory agencies will find out what you're doing and come after you.  But there's a way around that as well:  Let's treat government as an insurable hazard, like tornadoes.

Sounds promising.

At the nudging of others (thanks!), I'm about to start reading Murray's book on the subject.  I'll drop a post here every so often during the process for comment if you are so inclined.  No, not in Dreherian canto-by-canto-Dante style so you can tell me how awesome I am.  Nor will I be fishing for a publishing deal on my book about how someone else's book helped me deal with (sorta, kinda, but not really) my peculiar problems that others caused me.  But maybe, if this makes sense, we few -- we happy few -- can find a way to take action instead of heading to the bunkers.

Stay tuned.

UPDATE (already) :  Great minds ... etc.  Pauli's contemporaneous post immediately below hits this very same point at the very same time.  This passage he quotes is right on point with the above:

...the Catholic enclaves will have to be defended by Catholic lawyers and political activists.

The reference to Catholics is because the piece quoted was written to Catholics.  But as we of course know from history and as Murray notes above, it isn't just the Catholic enclaves that will have to be defended, but the founding idea of the Nation.

UPDATE 2nd:  Thanks, Pauli, for pointing out that I omitted the title of the Murray book.  Fixed that above.

My Upcoming Decision

I wanted to highlight an extended comment made recently by commenter Art Deco.

The American Conservative and the dispositions and remarks of its editor, Daniel McCarthy, are the purest source of all that renders the 'alt-right' project problematic. The ongoing conceit is that they represent something true and authentic and sublime in contrast to the vulgarities of 'movement conservatives'. Really? 

There's nothing that's published in Chronicles by anyone not named Fleming, Rockwell, or Francis that might not find a home in some other publication. (As for the stuff published by these men, do you really want recycled copy from the Radovan Karadzic press agency or the White Citizens' Council?). The v Mises Institute is a collecting pool for purveyors of fringe (read crank) social theory and research ("Austrian" economics and neo-confederate historiography). The Rockford Institute is a remnant, just a corporate shell for Chronicles, the "National Humanities Institute" has two salaried employees (Claes Ryn and one other) and issues an absolutely soporific annual. The Unz Review is issued by amateurs whose big idea is that social research is reducible to psychology and anthropology which is reducible in turn to biology and that Science demonstrates this but ideologically driven social researches are dedicated to Not Noticing things. They collect as their acolytes a mess of disagreeable people who are obsessed with blacks and Jews and despise both. (Who also seem to enjoy Steve Sailer's gig as volunteer press secretary for Vladimir Putin and his minions). Their idea of a popular movement is Ron Paul - a conceited goof who trades in historical fabulism (and goldbuggery).

And Daniel McCarthy is a fine example of a type that Samuel Francis and Stephen Tonsor took to task, the 'career conservative'. Except, in his case, he presides over a publication that's always been a cesspool of idiosyncracies: Philip Giraldi's hatred of Jews, Andrew Bacevich's resentments of his former employer and military officers more accomplished than he (Petraeus in particular), Steve Sailer's obsession with a tests-and-measurements psychology that he never studied in an academic setting, Conor Friedersdorf's Miss Manners campaign, and Scott McConnell's sundry aperçus (and contempt for Jews). The whole thing was a train wreck from the get go, and yet they persist in this illusion that they are the 'legitimate' heirs to Robert Taft (who manifested a dispensation in the Republican Party that was non-existent from 1959 to 1990 and has only Russell Kirk as a thin filament of genealogy between then and now).

Then Mr. Deco ends with "rant off". Which caught me by surprise. I think that it's probably a feature of someone who is conservative but not an alt-conservative that they are sensitive to ranting. Antithetically, many alt-con pundits don't realize they are ranting as a normal course of their alt-con punditry. That can be problematic for your argument and your readership numbers. I mused long ago that Dan Larison was king of the exclamation point, and although he has settled down over the years, he still blurts multiple invectives (insane, deranged, ridiculous, absurd, etc.) whenever dealing with mainstream conservatives in his writing when they espouse the slightest hints of hawkishness. And, of course, the Ted Cruz kerfuffle is a great recent example of an alt-con hive-mind rant.

I rather thought the characterizations in his comment were commonsensical and to the point. They were meant to be summaries, obviously. Ron Paul is a historical fabulist; the lily needs no more paint. The von Mises institute is fringy and cranky, and related to that, the word "Austrian" belongs in scare-quotes when modifying economics. Steve Sailer is so obsessed with, well, what he is obsessed with that they should change the saying to "one-note Stevie". (No doubt he would then immediately respond with a long article about why George Shearing wasn't as famous as this blind guy since he had a higher IQ.)

I like summaries when they save me time. I've got a lot of stuff to get done. They might also save me money. Explanation: I was toying with the idea of subscribing to Chronicles Magazine which, as far as I can tell, is much more sensible than TAC and is $45 for a year, 75% of TAC's subscription price. This idea came to me while talking to one of the editors at the Chesterton event I went to last Sunday. He is a pretty good friend of a pretty good friend, and I've appreciated his blog posts in the past.

So maybe Mr. Deco can further weigh in on the proposed decision. It seems that he respects the publication more than TAC from the comments in his "rant". Someone recently reminded me that Aristotle said "It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it." So although I'm more of a Weekly Standard type of conservative, I think it might be good to imbibe some sensible material from other perspectives. Thomas Meehan is welcome to weigh in also, or any of the regular commenters.

What a best-selling book by a conservative looks like

LOL. Don't be ridiculous.

No, I mean this:

Number one on Amazon under the category, uh, yeah: books. Take a closer look at it here.

Why, you may ask, is Charles Krauthammer an actual Pulitzer Prize winner rather than merely a self-promoting nominee? Why is his book number one under "books" rather than number 60 under "category/sub-category/sub-sub-category/an even lower category/no, even lower/is the temperature rising?/how deep are we now, exactly/oh, God, please, let's go back up now while we still can/"?

The answer is almost certainly because liberal psychiatrist-turned-conservative columnist Krauthammer is a genuinely thoughtful man, but more importantly, an intellectually honest one, to the core. If you disagree with him, be prepared to bring your A argument game, because you can be sure that what you may want to contest is something he's already tested and re-tested himself a hundred times before, not merely the first impulse that may have come to his mind before being slapped on a page.

For any who may be reading this before 9:00 PM CDT/ 10:00 PM EDT tonight, October the 25th, Bret Baier will be hosting an hour-long interview with Krauthammer on your local Fox news station. Oh - did you know he's been in a wheelchair for 32 years? But you won't hear him whining about that.

If you miss that interview, console yourself with this instead.