Throne and Altar

Welcome to Throne and Altar, a webpage defending the legitimate authority of God, tradition, fathers, and kings against the diabolical partisans of freedom and equality. This blog is part of the Orthosphere.  The author is an actual Catholic monarchist.  The most mature statements of my beliefs are given here, here, and here.  To learn more about me and how I came to these beliefs, see here.  However, I strive to maintain a noncombative tone and hope this site can serve as a resource for those simply curious about illiberal and premodern political belief systems.

Given that liberal democracy has seemingly vanquished all its competitors, why should one be curious about radical alternatives?

• As liberalism progresses, its demands become more and more radical.  Democracy, feminism, and non-discrimination sounded nice when it was sold to us as meaning just being respectful of others, but now we learn that they require radical restructuring of the family, erasure of cultural distinctiveness and national boundaries, repudiation of the Christian religion, and aggressive indoctrination of children in disregard of the authority of their parents.  If the principles are true, then we must accept the conclusions, no matter how discomforting we initially find them.  But has liberalism really proved its case?  Have the alternatives really been given a hearing?
• As liberalism progresses, the range of publicly acceptable opinions (those not dismissed as “hateful”, “ignorant”, and “bigoted”) continues to narrow.  We simply assume that anyone not on board with 21st century elite American beliefs is stupid, evil, or mentally ill.  It is no longer even allowed that dissenters have inferior arguments for their beliefs; we do not allow that their beliefs can have any arguments at all.  Thus we cut ourselves off from the entire past of our civilization (everything before about ten years ago) and from every other civilization (except for small Westernized elites who will parrot our ideas back at us).  Even if we’re right and the mass of past and present humanity is wrong, we should at least want to understand these other perspectives for the sake of history and anthropology.  Even a committed liberal can desire not simply to condemn but to have a genuine encounter with historical and non-Western peoples, which requires trying to understand their beliefs on their own terms.

This web site has three features.

• I have book reviews on the topics of history, political philosophy, religion, and society.
• I lament current events at my weblog, called “Rants“.
• I explain and defend the main positions of European counter-revolutionary political philosophy in several pages (see the links to the right, and the links therein).  In particular, explain conservatism and its attitude toward tradition, and I defend the authoritative institutions of the patriarchal family, the monarchical state, and organized religion (including theistic belief, the practice of ritual sacrifice, and the Catholic ethical tradition).  I also defend the right of regional cultures to exist without pluralizing themselves to death and to their right to defend themselves using censorship.  Finally, I apply these principles to the United States of America and show how American conservatives can be devoted to their national community while rejecting its alleged founding principles.

In addition, there is my Preliminaries to Catholicism, aimed at non-Catholics who are curious about Catholicism, not wanting a sales pitch for conversion, but interested in a sympathetic insider’s account of the religion’s distinctive beliefs and intuitions.  Of course, I would be very happy if you do convert, but even the simple desire to understand the Church is something I admire and wish to facilitate.