I first heard of Henry Sumner Maine and his book Popular Government several years ago, back when Neoreaction was a growing, relevant school on the Right. Indeed, Popular Government was reviewed by such NRx stalwarts as Foseti and Radish, both obscure now but highly regarded in their own niche, not long ago in the grand scheme of things, but in internet terms they may as well have been contemporaries of the presocratics.
I bring up these older blogs because they’re from a time when the Right had a more theoretical focus than now. Much of the discussion in Reactionary circles was on precisely how states operate and how to design a state than functions well – and, for that matter, what it means for a state to be well-functioning. Today there’s much more focus on contemporary events, for better and worse, but it’s still worthwhile to consider the fundamentals of political thought. Maine’s primary value to current readers is assistance in thinking clearly about government, and about democracy in particular. Perhaps the key line in the whole book is something that sounds extremely obvious:
Democracy is a form of government.…
Not that long ago, around 2015 or so, the Right was drowning in blogs and podcasts, but had no books and no art. Now it seems that every Rightist from the most erudite Reactionary to the simplest shitposter has a book they’d like to sell, whether it be political analysis, a novel, or book of essays. A number of broadly Right-wing publishers have also appeared over the last few years. All of this is, of course, a welcome development, as social media and short-form writing, despite certain strengths, are also limited by being short-lived and lacking space to develop any serious ideas. Today, let’s take a brief look at Cultured Grugs: Dispatches From America in Collapse, a collection of essays by John Chapman (a.k.a. “Borzoi” on social media) and published by one of those independent outfits, 