I miss Ioz too 🙁

I would describe Ernst Juenger, whose novel I quote in this post, as profound but not necessarily always and absolutely consistent and coherent. His real objection to the anarchist in whose place he presents the anarch is grounded more in Max Stirner, whom I think you might find congenial. I don’t think Juenger through his novel’s narrator is echoing the common and stupid objection to anarchism which argues that because men are evil we need the State as a remedy for that evil. He surely understands, as one who experienced the Third Reich first-hand, that the State can be made up of nothing but evil men, and that such men are the greatest perpetrators of evil. Rather, he is saying that the anarchist’s desire to reform man and society and eliminate the State is hopeless, because men are not good. They won’t listen. They’re too stupid. Therefore, better to be about our own business.

I don’t know what you mean by saying I’m a royalist. My stories are my own.

It’s easy to dismiss the anarchist as a non-realist, which is what you mean when you complain that the anarchist errs in believing people are good. And the anarchist isn’t a realist. Sure. She doesn’t accept the real, the royal determination of true and untrue about nature and everything.

You, being a royalist, a realist, do. That is where you err. You accept other stories, and they tell you that because people are short sighted, venal and capable of cruelty, they are also equally and exactly bad.

(And no, the gods were never at out sides…)