When I linked to Andrew Sullivan’s New York article about neoreaction last week, I hadn’t realized that it was just one piece of a much larger Festschrift the magazine had thrown together for its April 30th edition. I’ve just had a look at the rest of it.

The collection is, like the modern West itself, large and weak; it is really nothing more than an extended “point-‘n’-splutter”, with scarcely an attempt at rebuttal. The editors clearly think that the core tenets of reactionary thought — e.g., that the West is in serious trouble, and that central aspects of modernity such as democracy, secularism, universalism (and the doctrine if human uniformity that universalism entails), and radical skepsis regarding every tradition and natural category, are at the root of the problem — are so obviously absurd that mere mention of them suffices to discredit the movement. The shallowness, and smug confidence, on display here are impressive; that an editor of a major publication could, for example, completely dismiss the profoundly cultured and erudite Julius Evola with the sentence fragment “Quasi-fascist esoteric weirdo who pretended to be a baron and sported a monocle” betrays a blithe and unreflective ignorance so stupendous that it startles even me.

Imagine, readers, that the West is the Titanic. On the one hand, you have a group of passengers who felt a heavy impact in the night, and have noticed the deck beginning to tilt. They have realized that the situation is dire, and are trying to wake the others.

Among these vigilantes are sailors and engineers with expertise in both the ship’s design and the particularities of the local waters. While calling for the lifeboats, they have also arrived at some well-informed opinions about how this slow-moving disaster happened, and how such things might be avoided in future. They will point out that this part of the North Atlantic is full of icebergs in April, and that the ship had been moving too fast to be able to see its way ahead. They will also point out issues with the design of the ship (below-decks compartments that can fill with water like an ice-tray), and with insufficient caution on the part of the captain and crew (leaving watertight doors open that ought to have been sealed). Those who survive will also remark upon the overweening confidence of the ship’s designers, and of the owners of the White Star Line, in the vessel’s “unsinkability”. As we all know now, the Titanic was very sinkable indeed.

On the other hand, you have the editors of New York magazine, munching hors d’oeuvres and enjoying the band. Their comments are here, if you’re inclined to bother.