RealClear is vacationing in London this June, and we invite you to join us.
When? June 23-25.
Why? London is being overtaken by over four thousand civilized souls, from over one hundred western countries.
They are coming together in the service of growing a new international society—the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC)—that was self-consciously conceived and constructed as a stand-up alternative and check on the Davos crowd and mental infrastructure that surrounds it, and the spiritual and material detritus that it produces.
Replacing Davos as the spiritual and policy center of Western European and American civilization is an ambitious and needed project to say the least. We've signed RealClear up for a taste-and-see visit.
ARC is a bold idea of a bold visionary of a man—Jordan Peterson, and the stable genius of a woman who saw the possibility of a cultural counter-revolution and brought the connecting aptitude to make a bold idea a bold reality—Baroness Philippa Stroud.
The international success of Peterson’s 12 Rules for Life tour showed a global hunger for reconstructive “Maps for Meaning” in an age of rising deconstructive, diluvian, Davos tides, and their drowning of everything western and real, in their brackish, nihilistic riptides.
In case you have not noticed it, our shared culture has been painfully and quietly marinating in a God is Dead, Worship the Planet over Mankind pantheism, Western Civilization is a rising tide of Patriarchy, Colonialism, Apartheid, Structural Racism, Hetero-normativism, sexuality is oppressive construct, bla, bla, bla.
These ARC folks had a dream to cure this unfolding, seemingly inexorable nightmare by simply standing up a vital rival to the leveling Church of Suicidal Empathy. They rightly understand that the only way to overturn bad ideas and institutions is to stand up better ideas and institutions in their place.
Lucky for us, those better ideas have already been written by the West's great minds and statesmen. Unlucky for us, it seems as though we have forgotten them. In his forthcoming book, The Age of Reconstruction, ARC's Chief Ideas Officer Johnny Patterson writes that we have "contracted a dose of cultural amnesia: we do not know where we have come from or understand the nature of the ideas that have formed us."
It is well past time that we awaken from our deconstructionist slumber.
ARC is in its third year of standing up a reconstructive alternative to deconstruction gone wild. And the good news is that a hungry marketplace is showing up and afterwards branching out and working together in the in-between times to grow their numbers and influence.
I have seen ARC’s Revivalist line-up for this year. It is a star-studded, uplifting, and ennobling roster. Over the course of three days, well over a hundred speakers will take the stage and give a reconstructive, rival counter-narrative to aspects of life that have been deconstructed.
Triggernometry's Konstantin Kisin will speak to the beauty of Western Civilization, and why it is worth protecting and defending; the great Bjorn Lomborg will articulate the vital importance of energy abundance, an issue that RealClear has been the tip of the spear on; our friend Terry Keeley will juxtapose ARC and Davos, explaining what the former gets right and what the latter gets so criminally wrong; Sir Toby Young, whom I knew before he transitioned to Lord, will speak to free speech as a civilizational building block; and so much more. Believe me when I tell you that this barely scratches the surface of ARC's unparalleled, must-see programming.
Foucault, the father of deconstructionism—who took and ran with Nietzsche’s Anti-Christ recipe—is unhappy in hell with this above ground development. This is why I am going to London, and you should, too.
Yes, my fellow Americans, the weather is just okay in the UK in June. And, yes, the climate of opinion and the state of our “special relationship” is not so good in the UK, or in Europe. Truth be told, our present, respective leadership and half of our populations are not that into each other, and for good reason. The UK and much of Europe would love a Declaration of Independence from the United States, and from them us.
That said, these Brits and assembled Europeans like the US—and you can tell by the number of us on their stage: Energy Secretary Chris Wright, award-winning author and journalist Michael Shellenberger, New York Times columnist Ross Douthat, former Virginia Governor Glenn Youngkin, and many more.
It’s good to have an eye for the little big things. Notice that this growing band of reconstructionists did not call themselves the Alliance for Responsible Subjects. Citizenship—not the subject life—is the end and the means of civilizational reconstruction. ARC’s soul is not Magna Carta, but what it evolved into, which is still best captured in the The Declaration of Independence and the promise of citizenship at scale.
Human Equality—“all men are created equal” — is the mother of political liberty and its by product, the citizen. For it's only because “all” are created equal, that we all are born for political freedom and the life of a citizen. And, that turns out to be a pretty big, new order of the ages deal. That is the American contribution to our shared western inheritance—and ARC gets it to the core.
RealClear is showing up as an early-adopter-a little-late to-the-party. We were waiting for an invitation, and, sure enough, we got one.
Get Real—a weekly news program and joint production of RealClearPolitics and Real America’s Voice, hosted by yours truly, will be there with its camera on, and interviewing the conference's best. Come by and say hi.
To our friends at ARC, congratulations for standing up a needed soul within a broad chest and with a strong spine.
Onward and upward!
