I’ve had these ideas for about 6 years now but felt I should publish them after reading the execrable article from National Review on how white communities should go ahead and die.
- Neo-Cons, exemplified by National Review, are interested in commerce, not culture.
- As such, they cannot hold to Augustine’s definition of a community: an assemblage of rational beings bound together by agreement in the common objects of their love (Civ. Dei. 19.24). The problem for National Review is that these “common objects” for Augustine are immaterial, not spiritual.
(2*) Shucks, they no doubt reject Augustine, too.
- Unrestrained commercialism erodes the virtues.
(3*) This doesn’t mean commercialism or technology is bad, per se.
Rather, it’s current champions, who are also the harshest critics of traditional communities, who are also labeling themselves conservatives, do not have the virtues necessary to keep commercialism from eroding its traditional communities.
(3′) Which is probably why they don’t give a damn about communities, anyway.
- Can one have knowledge of immaterial concepts like “virtue” if one holds to empiricist and commercialist epistemologies?
(4*) Commercialist epistemologies: anything that isn’t quantifiable in market-terms does not count as knowledge.
(4′) As such, it can’t be a “common object of love.”
These will be running theses, for which I will set up a page.
Outlaw Huguenot 
William Cavanaugh gave a talk on the implications for economics depending on whether one starts with Augustine or with Milton Friedman when considering “freedom” and “desire”. It’s on Youtube if you ever want to check it out.
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Thanks. I read his pamphlet on economcis some years back and enjoyed it.
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