RadixJournal - Nominalism Triumphant

00:00:00.000 i'll just read what i uh what i wrote here this is sort of funny

00:00:08.960 does anyone know the quincy institute

00:00:13.260 the institute for responsible statecraft or something yes i'm familiar with it the first

00:00:23.500 i heard of it was when if you recall um if you recall dr anel she line she was a biden state

00:00:32.800 department official who resigned in protest over gaza and she went to work for the quincy institute

00:00:38.600 that was interesting spot um so it's sort of an anti-neocon thing so uh i wrote this i'll just

00:00:48.680 read this um if i'm honest i probably would have danced on lindsey graves lindsey graham's grave

00:00:56.680 20 years ago when i defined myself as anti-war but today i have a measured respect for him i now

00:01:03.380 understand that neoconservatism is one of the handful of ideologies capable of maintaining

00:01:08.200 the world order and taking responsibility for america's power yeah totally i've come to appreciate

00:01:15.260 this, not so much through Trump's actions as president, as through critically examining all

00:01:19.840 those anti-war geopolitical ideologies that formed on the right and among America's enemies, which I

00:01:25.720 might have been sympathetic to years ago. You're a two cheers for Lindsey. You were on the wrong 0.79

00:01:31.020 side of things so often, but on the right side when it mattered for Europe. You were a man.

00:01:37.020 And then Hanania, it's funny about Hanania when he writes it, it's almost like he's being sarcastic.

00:01:43.060 he's not i don't know it's like your maturity and growth are inspiration i think his tongue

00:01:50.300 i think his tongue is in his cheek but i also think he agrees with me uh so i wrote that and

00:01:57.800 i don't maybe i do have a contrarian instinct but just uh i i didn't like the dancing on lindsey's

00:02:04.880 grave um so this is a guy somewhat associated with these the quincy institute and the skull

00:02:12.360 measuring guys have reached the logical conclusion of their worldview neoconservatism and i just 1.00

00:02:20.160 half jokingly said thank you i guess then he said truly get lost and get fucked you nazi loser freak 1.00

00:02:27.420 uh oh he can't take a little banter i don't it seems like an overreaction 1.00

00:02:36.580 um i i just remember all these groups uh from back in the day when i was involved with these

00:02:45.820 paleo cons and i i guess i was out of sorts with them on some fundamental level and that i was

00:02:54.020 a nominalist i i i half joking on that i i think that the nominalism realism in a very different

00:03:03.380 sense of the word or natural law a very different sense of the word nature uh was the sort of

00:03:09.840 differentiation um i i i don't know i i didn't agree with them in fundamental ways yet i sort

00:03:19.400 of agreed with them on superficial ways like the war is bad but i didn't share their worldview and

00:03:28.140 uh now i guess i i just have a different perspective even on superficial issues

00:03:34.560 but because because you would criticize lindsey graham for like the amnesty stuff

00:03:40.380 now that makes you like a nazi freak yeah exactly that's actually a very good point

00:03:46.460 i'm sure that's why they're that's where the critique comes from right yeah like the institute

00:03:52.320 would be in favor of the amnesty stuff that lindsey partook in i would imagine there's

00:03:59.340 actually a lot here that we can go into um yeah he exactly they agree with lindsey on domestic

00:04:07.400 at least on one critical domestic policy and they but he's a you know evil warmonger because we

00:04:15.420 could live in peace this is how i would sum it up is that i can remember the ron paul years

00:04:22.900 and i was though on the margins of the ron paul movement i was in the ron paul movement

00:04:31.060 at least as an attendee and you guys have probably seen those things where i set up a meeting with

00:04:36.740 or a event with ron paul that was actually uh wildly successful it was a free event

00:04:42.480 in 2007 i believe wasn't quite 2008 but it was just like wildly sold out and crazy and stuff

00:04:51.320 like this and um you know it's you know bring them home bring the troops home now in the wars

00:05:00.840 okay and look i don't also want to dunk on ron paul because i think he's a genuine guy um now

00:05:08.020 There are a lot of people surrounding Ron Paul that are Russian agents, in my opinion.

00:05:12.580 But Ron Paul is maybe too old to be like that.

00:05:16.800 I think it gets to a sort of worldview.

00:05:20.800 And if you want to call my worldview Hobbesian, you can.

00:05:24.360 Maybe that's a good heuristic to understand it.

00:05:26.780 But Ron Paul genuinely believed that if we would have peace, peace is sort of the natural state of affairs.

00:05:37.220 and if we removed military bases from abroad and we were no longer threatening people you know with

00:05:45.160 like military men and nukes and shit and we would just start to trade with one another and we would

00:05:53.060 probably create a sort of multi-polarity uh a little a lot like in fact the multi-polarity 0.75

00:06:01.200 promoted by Alexander Dugan, that you'd have your place, we'd have ours. We do things a little bit

00:06:07.880 differently than you do, but we can trade for commerce and trade of ideas and just the world

00:06:14.380 would be at peace. That's sort of the de facto state of things. And I think it might even get

00:06:23.640 down to some libertarian fantasy that man is good you know like on his basic level man wants to

00:06:37.080 freely trade there are a few bad apples out there but they don't spoil the bunch in fact

00:06:45.440 man is good and this is something that you really see with tucker hassan i've noticed

00:06:53.060 Hassan is also calling Lindsey Graham a demon in the sense of he's like irrationally, sadistically evil. 0.98

00:07:02.380 He wants to bomb Palestinian children for the sake of killing them or just some like radical evil. 0.96

00:07:10.940 I don't believe any of these things. 0.98

00:07:12.800 i think man is bad and that the state of nature is a war of all against all that

00:07:22.200 i mean i i also think we naturally cooperate into groups but that just means that once we're in

00:07:30.900 groups we get to kill the other group so cooperation has a dark side let me say that

00:07:38.300 i mean isn't ron paul a devout christian he is yes i mean doesn't that wouldn't you say that

00:07:44.340 probably informs yes and no because you know there's one aspect of christianity which is sort

00:07:52.940 of you're inherently bad due to eve's curse in effect like due to the fall that's sort of the

00:08:02.020 schmidian catholicism but i agree it's sort of it's complicated because obviously there is

00:08:09.960 something jesus-like in treating everyone as good even the centers especially the centers

00:08:16.300 we're all sort of good and we all miss the mark but we can all love one another and cooperate i

00:08:24.860 think there's sort of a duality whereas there's a kind of schmidian or even catholicism of like

00:08:31.240 man is totally bad and that's why we need to censor and control things and a little bit of

00:08:37.500 both i agree the overwhelming message of the gospels is that man is good um but

00:08:46.460 yes i think man is bad um we cooperate we naturally cooperate and in that to that extent

00:08:58.380 the good guys do finish first sometimes in the sense that groups that naturally cooperate

00:09:06.260 are able to kill other groups and thus take their women and dominate society or dominate land space

00:09:14.600 i use this when i was talking about uh is morality subjective or objective

00:09:20.420 um i was talking about this in terms of the piranha in this weird way piranha are moral

00:09:28.560 a piranha would never even consider eating another piranha they have a non-aggression

00:09:36.360 principle so to speak among themselves but uh if you're a wounded animal wading into the stream

00:09:45.340 they are going to eat you alive in fact they are so vicious uh utterly ruthless 0.93

00:09:54.080 so it's kind of like the japanese where you know like when they're in their own domestic sphere 1.00

00:10:01.620 at least you know for for decades upon decades they're they're almost boring a little too

00:10:07.960 efficient and lifeless and so on but then uh when they go to war they do so with a vehemence that's

00:10:16.820 unsurpassed and they they go into china and start engaging in bizarre human experimentation and

00:10:24.080 new methods of torture kind of like that it's the in group group dynamic but this is what i would

00:10:32.500 say in terms of Lindsey Graham, neoconservatism, etc. Ron Paul assumes that the essence of the

00:10:43.900 world is peace and free trade and cooperation. There's some bad apples, but they don't spoil

00:10:50.260 the bunch. That's how I would sum up what he believes. I would state that man is bad.

00:10:57.500 They're all rotten apples. But you can create a system through politics. You can create an economic system of free trade. So politics come first and economics, commerce, freedom of ideas, exchange that comes second. And it's built upon politics. 0.98

00:11:20.400 So basically, the post-war order of globalism, liberalism, et cetera, is built on the bones of those societies that were defeated in the Second World War.

00:11:36.060 And it really can't be otherwise. And also, if the United States were to throw away the empire share power or whatever they multipolarist say or something like that, we would quickly devolve into a state of anarchy and there would be pushes by other competing powers to become the hegemon and take up more and more space.

00:12:06.060 So, thus, neoconservatism, whatever faults it has, and however much we want to criticize it rightly, is a method of maintaining this global order.

00:12:24.920 And neoconservatism here, I mean, it has an interesting history.

00:12:30.500 And this is the stuff that I would say like 15 or 20 years ago.

00:12:34.480 They're a bunch of Marxists. They're a bunch of Trotskyists. They were in alcove A while the Stalinists were in alcove B at the City College of New York, and they're arguing with each other. And the Stalinists sort of became irrelevant and the Trotskyists, or maybe joined the DSA, and then the Trotskyists became Reaganites and conservatism.

00:12:56.080 But they maintained that notion of a global revolution, not socialism in one country, national socialism, Nazism, in effect, but a continued revolution around the world.

00:13:10.000 that's a critical view and it's geneal genealogically correct

00:13:18.560 irving crystal norman potterets etc they were coming from a sort of marxian left

00:13:27.200 although not necessarily pro-soviet left

00:13:32.760 and i think that is important to remember but the only thing i would say for neoconservatism

00:13:42.540 is that it is a way of calling upon ideals within america's founding which are authentic

00:13:53.680 the Declaration of Independence, et cetera.

00:13:59.220 And America is an ideological nation,

00:14:01.960 much like the Soviet Union was,

00:14:04.140 in the words of Irving Kristol.

00:14:06.820 And you can call upon those heady ideals and energies

00:14:13.800 in order to motivate people

00:14:16.980 to maintain Pax Americana around the globe.

00:14:20.400 So there's an idea system, and then there's the hard power system of maintaining this.

00:14:27.980 So we might need to tip over some apple carts. We might need to grab a country and shake it and throw it up against the wall on occasion. We might need to directly expand liberalism, parliamentary democracy and capitalism in order to make sure we don't have some competing block against us or some really bad apple that might spoil the bunch, Saddam Hussein.

00:14:57.980 And again, I still think that the Iraq war was a bad idea. 0.86

00:15:04.900 I would not have gone into Iran more recently, et cetera, et cetera.

00:15:09.120 The only thing I would say is that neoconservatism is a way of maintaining the global order.

00:15:18.840 It's a way of taking responsibility for America's power, which is a gift from the gods in many ways.

00:15:26.340 It's due to our natural resources, our geographic isolation, our waterways all over the place, the outcome of the Second World War.

00:15:35.260 We lucked out in this just immense way.

00:15:39.820 And we have to sort of take responsibility for that.

00:15:44.780 We became the big kahuna in many ways due to luck, if we're honest.

00:15:54.060 But it doesn't matter.

00:15:56.340 It's like you could be born with a silver spoon in your mouth.

00:15:59.200 And that does mean that you have more responsibilities to the world than the guy who was born working at McDonald's.

00:16:10.420 And so I don't know what to say.

00:16:13.900 All of these people, I don't even know enough about the Quincy Institute.

00:16:18.000 But if they're promoting Trita Parsi and people like that, they are apologizing for Russia.

00:16:25.840 They're talking about NATO encroachment and how we're to blame for the Ukraine war or whatever.

00:16:33.200 My guess is that at best, they're simply wrong.

00:16:37.320 And at worst, they are operating on behalf of competing world powers who want to take up more space and want the American zone, which is largely planetary, to fall away.

00:16:51.900 and maybe that's natural to some extent i mean crowd hammer uh i would have to go back and look

00:17:02.140 at this but a crowd hammer believe that a unipolar moment could maybe last a generation 25 to 30

00:17:08.260 years it's go there's going to be some competing force at some point and at that point you might

00:17:15.300 have to become more of a hard power than a soft power can be a soft power after victory is one

00:17:20.200 You need to become a harder power. And maybe the American public is just so kind of decadent and zonked out of their mind that we're not up to the task of enforcing this world.

00:17:33.380 But those realities don't, in my mind, discount the coherence of neoconservatism and the coherence of the views of Lindsey Graham as this unlikely southerner who went along with this largely Jewish neoconservative project.

00:18:03.380 because it's not just all about Israel neoconservatism if it were just this like

00:18:11.720 conspiracy to attack the enemies of Israel now I agree it sort of conveniently ends up like that

00:18:19.320 to some degree to an important degree but if it were simply a Jewish plot it wouldn't have 0.93

00:18:28.260 been as coherent as it was, and it wouldn't have been

00:18:32.360 basically an operating paradigm that

00:18:36.720 stretches back to the end of the Soviet Union.

00:18:41.520 I mean, Bill Clinton was a sort of

00:18:44.640 neocon when you think about it.

00:18:52.220 If Al Gore had been elected president,

00:18:54.980 I imagine we could have had a wiser and a little bit more cagey and restrained foreign policy, but I think we would have had much the same foreign policy. 0.86

00:19:09.060 Neoconservatism was a paradigm that could rationally and properly address this crisis or opportunity of the end of that older, big, bad, competing global power that is the USSR. 0.58

00:19:28.600 are so even if i disagree with lindsey graham on many things i am not going to 0.84

00:19:40.140 just like cheaply attack him as oh he was secretly gay and thus the jews had compromise on him and 0.90

00:19:53.280 forced him to be their shill for israel and the american empire is gay as well the global american 0.90

00:20:03.720 empire it's all about supporting jews and spreading the rainbow flag i think that kind of stuff is just 0.96

00:20:11.320 dumb and i didn't say those things exactly but i thought in that way for a period of time in my

00:20:21.940 20s and I got over it and I see people many of whom are older than I am now kind of adopt this 0.97

00:20:34.160 retroactive in many ways outmoded criticism of the neocons at the point when the neocons are

00:20:44.260 in a way no longer a threat I mean there's Lindsay there are very few like true neocon

00:20:50.960 ideologue intellectuals in power they might they might be in some conservative institutions still

00:20:57.880 or in some like never trump media outlets like bill crystal irving sun etc etc they're not

00:21:04.360 really on the horse trump's on the horse you have a front porch republic trad cath in the white house

00:21:13.740 in the, in the, in the, under the guise of JD Vance. And so attacking neoconservatism

00:21:22.740 is ridiculous at this point. And you need to be, you need to start thinking in terms of why 0.60

00:21:29.100 is Trump jeopardizing the American empire through his mishandled tariffs, through the Iranian

00:21:37.520 campaign etc why is he sort of why is he doing these things because he did these things

00:21:44.260 staffed by his own people the neoconservatives are dead or working at the bulwark webzine

00:21:53.160 or whatever he did this yet you always want to attack the neoconservatism

RadixJournal - July 15, 2026

Nominalism Triumphant

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