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If an open-minded atheist were to ask you about the practical benefits of religion (whichever it may be) in the here-and-now, how would you reply?

I'd reply that if his concern is with practical benefits in the here and now then he isn't ready to become a Christian.
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Liked by: Skylark

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Speaking of Red Dwarf, any favourite episodes?

Most of my favorites come from Series 5,6, and 7 because they involved more semi-serious science fiction (which I think Red Dwarf does pretty well) rather than just slapstick comedy. Gunmen of the Apocalypse, White Hole, Quarantine, Thanks for the Memory, Ouroborous, and The Inquisitor score particularly high with me.

Thoughts on Singapore? Never been there but from a distance seems to be an artificial state. Do its citizens have a connection to the land?

No city dwellers can or do have a real connection to the land - that's what cities *do* to people.
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Liked by: Greg from 108 Ian

How should the US be partitioned when it breaks up? Should places like NYC, Silicon Valley, Boston become independent city-states?

This, too, will be part of that same upcoming blog series.
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Thoughts on SCALE?

My extended thoughts on it will form a major part of my upcoming multi-part blog post series on why abandoning the cities, which are beyond salvaging, and returning to a society centered on the country gentleman, is the way forward.
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Why is magic. That is using scrolls and incantations to cast a spell or weave spiritual forces to achieve a result forbidden in Christianity? Why is the above magic not so good?

For the same reason that magic is forbidden in a physics laboratory - because before people can accept the truth, they need to stop believing in crazy bullshit.
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Liked by: Skylark

Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism Totalism... Blah blah

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Liked by: ratiomon NO NAME

Can populism be a good thing? Or does it always go leftward?

It's impossible to tell because populism isn't stable enough to have been able to provide us with a usable number of historical examples by which we can track where it ends up over time, ideologically speaking.

Thoughts on HRx?

I think that schism is always a bad thing, even where it is inevitable. When believers tear their holy book in two, with one half of them taking a part of it and going one way, and the other half taking a part of it and going the other way, it always makes the message weaker.
Yes, there were some things in Moldbug - especially early Moldbug - that I thought were a little shaky. Some of it is stuff that I know even Moldbug himself doesn't really hold to anymore. I always thought that neocameralism was a little too far into AnCap LARP-land, and some of the tech-comm stuff got way too far into what Jim Kunstler calls "techno-grandiosity". I guess if there was a real HRx/NRx split, I'd be more inclined to fall on the HRx side of it. But you have to understand that you'll never agree with anyone 100% of the time, even friends and allies. Sometimes differences really do end up being irreconcilable, but people have a nasty tendency to rush toward things like purity tests, purges, and schism way, way too quickly.
Long story short, I like what HRx has to say, but I'm not sure what splitting a broad movement like the alt-right, which has a lot of overlap and fuzzy edges to it, into a series of narrow categories gains us.

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Liked by: Preston S. Brooks

To be fair to today's China, at least it's not Sweden/Germany. They do shit like this, after all: https://bloodyshovel.wordpress.com/2015/10/02/communism-appreciation-post/.

Like the Maginot Line in France during WWII, classical liberalism - which is the basis for both libertarianism and modern conservatism - has all its defenses pointed in only one direction; that is, rightward. All of its philosophical guns are aimed against anything to its right - monarchism, aristocracy, Christian theocracy, even populist fascism. This is because, in a massive failure of imagination, the Enlightenment philosophers and revolutionaries who came up with, and acted on the ideas of, classical liberalism simply could not conceive of anything further left than themselves. Thus, they built no defenses against anything further left into either their philosophy or the systems built upon them. This is what permits (as Moldbug put it) Cthulhu to forever swim left in a slowly creeping Whig/Puritan holiness spiral that has unfolded over centuries.
Ironically, then, outright Marxism actually has more leftward-pointing defenses built into its system than classical liberalism does. Moscow in the 1920s was hedonistic, libertine, full of all manner of freethinking dreamers - and ironically, it was Stalin who put a stop to all of that, sending the libertines to gulags and reigning in their excesses (which he understood would undermine his society in short order). Similarly, it was Mao who sent the PLA to massacre the Red Guards after their holiness spiral got out of control (One wonders how many young Red Guards, their bodies riddled with PLA bullets, died with a slogan praising Chairman Mao leaving their lips with their last breaths).
This is why none of the trappings of classical liberalism - elections, pluralism, free speech, capitalism, public education - none of that will save you from seeing your society pulled into a hellish nightmare of libertinism, atheism, egalitarianism, and degeneracy. The Constitution won't save you. The spirit of the Founding Fathers won't save you. With apologies to Alex Jones, the answer to 1984 is most definitely *not* 1776. Only once the last Harvard professor is strangled with the entrails of the last member of the New York Times editorial board will we be returned to decent, sustainable governance.

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Liked by: Preston S. Brooks Skylark Cato Charles Hoskins

Baron Evola was tough on Christianity. He insisted not even Catholicism escapes from Judaic spirit of primitive Christianity. Yet, he acknowledged some Christian chivalric orders displayed masculine, solar type of spirituality, characteristic of pre-Christian Europe. Your defense of Catholicism ?

I don't have to agree with every single sentiment that a man ever uttered in order to find his insights generally useful. Maybe Baron Evola thought that Europe was weak under Christianity - but then again, he didn't live to see what it became without it.
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Liked by: Cato NO NAME Sir Piragon The 3rd

Why don't you just plain say why China's gov't is evil?

If you can't figure out by yourself why China's government is evil, you have a long philosophical journey ahead of you indeed.
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Liked by: Skylark

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