Debates

Ben Burgis vs Curtis Yarvin

Despite being very Post Modern Thaddeus Russell is one of my favorite podcasters. Unregistered is one of the weirdest podcasts out there, he will interview just about anybody. He’s been a big supporter of one of my favorite political bloggers, Curtis Yarvin, who was known as Mencius Moldbug for a long time. I don’t agree with Yarvin on everything but I almost always learn something when he talks.

And what I learned during the recent “debate” between Yarvin and Ben Burgis hosted by Russell on Unregistered was that Yarvin isn’t a very good debater. I think his uber fans probably find this part of his appeal, because Yarvinites kinda get off on failure. And being a Conservative myself…I kinda do too. Though I don’t think I wallow in political failure the way his lap dogs tend to.

This isn’t really about Yarvin’s political philosophy, or even Burgis’ I’m just pointing out that this was a “debate” worth listening to. It really wasn’t a debate, more of a free flowing discussion sort of circling around whether or not democracy is a good thing. For the record I don’t think it’s a good thing, but I’m willing to concede that democratic systems tend to lend themselves to stability (which is mostly a good thing). I’ll write more about this at some point in the future, but for now go check out this debate. It was quite entertaining.

Really the only further commentary I’ll add is this: there really isn’t a Christian voice in this debate. At one point belief in angels is used as an argument against democracy, and everyone gets a good laugh in. This is part of why I find democracy disturbing, not that people believe in angels, but that so many people do not. This is one of the reasons I don’t vote. To quote Treebeard “I am not altogether on anybody’s side, because nobody is altogether on my side, if you understand me: nobody cares for the woods as I care for them, not even Elves nowadays.”

The truth is that Christians really don’t have a dog in the political fight nowadays, contrary to what your Facebook feed might indicate.