Educating the Ascendant Right
Schooling in Three Parables
I’ve written a lot concerning education. If I have a central niche as a writer, it’s that, which is appropriate considering that in my day job I’m a teacher. I also think it’s important because I think education is the real schwerpunkt of our struggle, that the right will never truly hold power unless it is prepared to upend the liberal system currently in place, both institutionally and ideologically. There are a lot of theorists with notions of ‘elite replacement’ and taking control of the levers of power, but if the brightest youth of today are being taught to hate our works, it will all amount to nothing more than a castle built on a swamp.
In fairness, the fourth one did stay standing.
This essay touches on themes I’ve mentioned before, but I believe that recent events have given new urgency to what I’ve long advocated. Previously, I’ve written about education as a dissident activity, involving building parallel networks alongside new structures of power and patronage. But with the entire government in flux, and with the managerial class suddenly thrust into an unwilling and ineffective defensive posture, it’s possible to speak not of dissidence but ascension- an Ascendant Right. The energy is palpable and morale is surging. Now real, comprehensive change is possible.
What is needed is a new model of education, which is to say a traditional model informed by modern technology where appropriate. I don’t write here of ‘systems’ because- although the term is convenient- it represents a mindset that should be done away with forever. Systems are machines, things to which men adapt themselves, become a part of. They are the key element of the rationalizing impulses of liberalism, and should be dispensed with wherever possible, but especially, necessarily with education. To be educated is to experience not a change in quantity but quality, and reducing learning to numbers expressed as inputs and outputs misses the whole point. Education is a relationship, involving the students among one another, the student and society, but most fundamentally the student and the teacher.
Parents are of course the primary teachers of children, but there will come a time for many when some additional voice is needed, if for no other reason than to accustom the young person to adult counsel and authority from outside the comforts and norms of home. Commonly, before the modern age, young men especially were sent to live with relatives or to boarding schools for that very reason, not to mention those not destined for a formal education given over to apprenticeships. This impulse has been co-opted by liberalism in our own society, to the point where today’s young pages are sent not to their mothers’ brothers but into the dubious care of the state, and all its many fun ideas.
Classical myth can illuminate many contemporary phenomena.
Both history and reason incontrovertibly demonstrate that young people benefit from teachers possessing both character and wisdom in their lives, and lacking the authentic they will gravitate to its best imitator, and failing that will mostly passively endure a morbid mockery of it, which is what the public system represents. I’ve written before about the great longing young people have for authenticity, so rare a commodity in our time, and how the Age of the Real dawns once more. This is the time to seize the opportunity to forge a new spirit in the coming generations. If not now, when?
I can hear you saying to yourself, “yes, we know, that’s all great, preaching to the choir, you’ve said it before.” Everyone agrees in the abstract. But teaching is like war; everyone knows someone has to do it, but absent a crisis, it’s a hard sell as a lifestyle. To wit, my whole inspiration for this piece, a tweet from
To be clear, I’m not criticizing him for his individual choice not to teach, a field for which he implies he does not have the personality traits to perform well. Teaching is a terrible idea for those without the temperament for it; as REN notes, they don’t last. REN does great work in his chosen field. But that last part stuck with me. He says, “The real problem is that many young men of talent will face pressure and lack the confidence and opportunities to refuse. There are, quite literally, men of great vision and ability who simply need moulding to reach greatness but instead of being moulded they’re being pressed into conformity by becoming latter-day tinkers and purveyors of commodities.” All very true. So who’s going to do the molding, with or without the weird English ‘u?’
I suppose a lot of people on the right think this way, that some passive-voice-implied-someone should be shaping the future, but not, you know, them. It’s not a mystery why. Teaching is extremely demanding and low-status in the eyes of the world. Much like getting shot in a trench, it’s good for society but not so rewarding as a personal choice, at least in material terms. REN’s life is certainly more exciting than mine; people don’t even bother trying to doxx me.
And yet, without teachers, everything we are doing- his grand contribution and my small one- will ultimately come to naught. The great work of a diverse range of authors and publishers,
, , , among others, represent efforts to attract and retain mostly adult converts, people who generally had to overcome the negative (or positive- I don’t know physics) gravity of a hostile society. And the elite of that hostile society doesn’t depend on random free-thinkers to sustain itself. It comes armed with near total systemic dominance such that it can expect and demand offerings of children from the masses like Moloch himself. So long as those people can control and compel obedience to that system they will be able to replace any defectors with ten each more pliant NPCs. For all the value of the discourse online and in real life among thinkers on the Ascendant Right- and I strongly believe in it- it amounts to knocking the heads off that feminine, serpentine swamp monster and then waiting for them to regrow. The very stumps must be burned; Hercules needs his Iolaus.My hope in writing this is to encourage people on the right to consider the proper role of education in the emerging new order and their respective proper roles in it. Obviously not everyone is cut out to do the work, and there are a vast number of roles of great value for which one’s individual talents might better suit him or her. However, I think many people who would do quite well in the role avoid it for reasons other than suitability. I want to disabuse those of you doing so of worries and prejudices more proper to the culture of the very recent past, and encourage you to consider new possibilities.
Apropos those attitudes- many will want to stop me here and deride the value of what I do, or else of schooling generally. I can already see the comments. “I learned on my own and did fine. School is a racket. Teachers are idiots. You can learn on the internet. It’s not my job to make sure anyone else has an education; I did it, so can they. Back in my day we didn’t even have YouTube. Now there’s AI. I used to skip class and get high all the time and it worked out for me. Just do what I did.”
Tropes like these are a sadly common refrain among those who should know better and as a whole are really just novel takes on typical Boomer discourse that angry young right wingers would otherwise instinctively deride. “Pull yourself up by your bookstraps, anon,” is just as cringe and clueless as some incredulous dotard eye-rolling at the prospect that you can’t pay your mortgage on a waitress’ salary like she did in the 70s. Yes, you figured things out, tossed All Quiet on the Western Front in favor of A Storm of Steel, and traded your Bush-era cuckpolitics (or worse) for based new ideas. But if you’re like me, it was a difficult process, harder than it needed to be, and much pain could have been saved with proper guidance. The task cannot end with tearing down what is; it has to be replaced with something better. Not much is gained by leaving proto-rightists to reinvent the wheel in isolation when all the talent and energy needed to orient them properly exists and needs only to be employed.
No frog gets there on his own. It takes a pond worthy of Aristophanes to make it.
Βρεκεκεκὲξ κοὰξ κοάξ
Paradoxically, if you are a true autodidact, you have something unique to add to someone’s formal education, a spirit of independent inquiry and self-mastery that would be a useful addition to the discipline of traditional models of hierarchical guidance. However, I suspect their ranks are less dense than the internet would have it. In my experience, people tend to overlook or downplay their sometimes extensive formal education in favor of a self-constructed identity as self-taught. Liberalism- egalitarian and individualistic- and that ancient curse of pride make us loathe to feel some debt to others for our character. It’s possible to acquire a traditional education without guidance in the same way it’s possible to learn to drive a car unaided- with a lot of crashing and bruises without much of a clear idea that you’re doing it right for a very long time. Just as the young deserve the material sacrifice of their elders, so too are they owed such wisdom as we have.
Being a traditionalist, I know of no better manual of education than Scripture. By way of illustrating what I mean, I offer three of Christ’s parables. First, the Parable of the Talents:
Matthew 25:14-30
English Standard Version
The Parable of the Talents
14 “For it will be like a man going on a journey, who called his servants[a] and entrusted to them his property. 15 To one he gave five talents,[b] to another two, to another one, to each according to his ability. Then he went away. 16 He who had received the five talents went at once and traded with them, and he made five talents more. 17 So also he who had the two talents made two talents more. 18 But he who had received the one talent went and dug in the ground and hid his master's money. 19 Now after a long time the master of those servants came and settled accounts with them. 20 And he who had received the five talents came forward, bringing five talents more, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me five talents; here, I have made five talents more.’ 21 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant.[c] You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 22 And he also who had the two talents came forward, saying, ‘Master, you delivered to me two talents; here, I have made two talents more.’ 23 His master said to him, ‘Well done, good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master.’ 24 He also who had received the one talent came forward, saying, ‘Master, I knew you to be a hard man, reaping where you did not sow, and gathering where you scattered no seed, 25 so I was afraid, and I went and hid your talent in the ground. Here, you have what is yours.’ 26 But his master answered him, ‘You wicked and slothful servant! You knew that I reap where I have not sown and gather where I scattered no seed? 27 Then you ought to have invested my money with the bankers, and at my coming I should have received what was my own with interest. 28 So take the talent from him and give it to him who has the ten talents. 29 For to everyone who has will more be given, and he will have an abundance. But from the one who has not, even what he has will be taken away. 30 And cast the worthless servant into the outer darkness. In that place there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’
In keeping with the general tenor of God’s Word, men are not equal in the gifts they are given. Some are handed much, others very little. They differ in terms of the resources and authority they’ve received. But whatever genius or strength you possess was handed to you as a trust, with the expectation that it will be put to productive use. It is not enough to avoid harm; one must put in positive effort to build upon those talents issued. What stopped the unprofitable servant from doing his duty was a combination of two things- laziness and fear. He didn’t want to put in the work needed to do right by his master while at the same time being afraid of the consequences of his actions.
It is impossible to know how many of us on the right would make excellent teachers but forgo doing so for those two reasons. Teaching is a grind; REN shudders at the thought of “marking papers.” Of course he and many others are more than physically and mentally capable of work not especially challenging on those terms, but the discipline required to focus on and evaluate the work of children- day after day, year after year- is taxing in ways few people can really handle. If you doubt me, I invite you to try it. Even after over a decade I often find myself distracted and wanting to do anything other that read variations on the same answers over and over and over.
But I think more than anything, it’s the fear that gets people. It really does take a very particular temperament to exercise authority over children, or even young adults. Most people only ever deal with grown-ups at work all day, people who can be reasoned with, who can be motivated by self-interest, and dispensed with if they become problematic or even superfluous. Children can be appealed to or threatened, but ultimately, if you’re not someone they feel like they should listen to, there’s nothing you can do, and your life as a teacher will be, as REN says, a nightmare. The other component of that fear is the social aspect. “Become a teacher? What will people say!?” Such work is low status and offers little in the way of remuneration. There’s no way around it; you will encounter those attitudes, not least among people who otherwise agree with you philosophically.
… in ancient Rome, all the teachers were slaves called pedagogues, and all the real Chads were just conquering people all the time …
-Noted Internet Classical Historian
People are scared to do what I do every day. I’m scared to do it. Left to my own devices, I’d sit in a quiet room in a comfortable chair and read all day. Would that I could. I can teach, so I must teach. I could choose to do otherwise, but I’ll be held to account for that and every other choice I make, and I have enough to repent of as it is. I know what the world thinks of what I do. I know what God thinks about what I do. And I know how to decide between the variant opinions.
Then there’s the Parable of the Sower:
Matthew 13
New International Version
The Parable of the Sower
13 That same day Jesus went out of the house and sat by the lake. 2 Such large crowds gathered around him that he got into a boat and sat in it, while all the people stood on the shore. 3 Then he told them many things in parables, saying: “A farmer went out to sow his seed. 4 As he was scattering the seed, some fell along the path, and the birds came and ate it up. 5 Some fell on rocky places, where it did not have much soil. It sprang up quickly, because the soil was shallow. 6 But when the sun came up, the plants were scorched, and they withered because they had no root. 7 Other seed fell among thorns, which grew up and choked the plants. 8 Still other seed fell on good soil, where it produced a crop—a hundred, sixty or thirty times what was sown. 9 Whoever has ears, let them hear.”
Education is fundamentally a relationship, of rather, a collection of relationships. There’s an emotional dimension to it that I would guess is not quite as evident in drywall installation or regional sales and distribution. On some level, you have to care about your students and they have to care about you. You have to want what is best for one another and loathe the idea of disappointing the other. It represents a great amount of work, much like sowing a field. And as in the practice of natural agriculture, one must accept that returns aren’t guaranteed.
At my school, I teach Biblical Greek as an enrichment activity. It of course attracts the oddballs, and but a handful of them. The very last thing we do at the end of the year is translate this passage together, and it’s never not fascinating to watch them put it all together, what it means to take on something really challenging and grow as result, as compared to the normal fare on offer. They always ask me at the beginning why Biblical Greek isn’t a formal class at the school; by the end, they understand. There are things for the few and things for the many. Education, whether teaching or learning, is decidedly in the former camp.
Some students fall away early. You can see the patterns even in elementary school, a persistent, viscous contempt for education and everything associated with it. The issue is complicated by the fact that most schools really are terrible, and one can hate being there for good reasons as well as bad. This, again, is why so many better people and programs are needed. But some kids, no matter what, never break through that hard wall of irrational self-centeredness into actual maturity, some devoured by the birds of addiction and crime, others blooming too early, successful as children in a child’s world, but then withering in the light of adult expectations. Others are able to push through, but develop habits of thought and action that render them unable to really thrive; they’re the ones who Chat GPT every essay only to pass through adulthood with the vague sense that they’re missing some vital part of themselves, and are choked out by dull consumerism and its attendant perversions. Only a few will ever really get it. They represent that future elite we should want to come into existence. Eagles don’t flock; they must be found one at a time. Liberals will wonder at that, but traditionalists know better. Education, like faith, is a narrow path. It can be quite the challenge to the heart to see it play out in real life, but all the same, the young need guides to walk it.
“And they withered because they had no root.”
Finally, the Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
Luke 13:6-9
English Standard Version
The Parable of the Barren Fig Tree
6 And he told this parable: “A man had a fig tree planted in his vineyard, and he came seeking fruit on it and found none. 7 And he said to the vinedresser, ‘Look, for three years now I have come seeking fruit on this fig tree, and I find none. Cut it down. Why should it use up the ground?’ 8 And he answered him, ‘Sir, let it alone this year also, until I dig around it and put on manure. 9 Then if it should bear fruit next year, well and good; but if not, you can cut it down.’”
At the beginning of this essay I used the term ‘Ascendant Right’ to describe the turn of fortune that has brought to prominence people who only yesterday were on the outside of power looking in. Much has been made of the changes- all salutary- such as the DOGE assault on waste, fraud, and lies, the shifts in foreign policy, a vice-president citing scripture and tradition for reasons other than justifying mass immigration. As good as all of these things are, they will come to naught unless the groundwork is laid for the future. Too many people suppose this merely to be a change in elites or power structures. That we have power is taken to mean such power will endure. But unless the tree we are planting produces fruit, it will prove useless as anything but a wasteful and very temporary ornament.
Our civilization has long been barren. No one ever puts together the fact the modern unwillingness to reproduce biologically is bound up with cultural sterility. We are weighing ourselves in the balance and finding us wanting. But wait, says Christ, there is still time. The fig tree will be given a chance- irrigated and fertilized it might yet bear fruit. It needs both the Living Water and to be covered with dead material which yet paradoxically bears the components of life, which is to say the wisdom of our long-departed ancestors, of tradition.
Or . . . this?
What has been is being torn down, but that something better might arise is still in question. We on the right simply cannot take for granted that a new generation will adapt correct principles because we did. Wonderful success stories like that of the DOGE crew should not blind us that a tremendous amount of potential is being wasted, the fact that, as REN says, young men are “being pressed into conformity by becoming latter-day tinkers and purveyors of commodities.” It is not enough to stop the pressing. We must also cultivate. Men of the right, do not bury your talents. Plant seeds and watch over the field. Tend the trees in the garden so that they might bear fruit. Search your souls and ask yourselves if something apart from a lack of temperament is keeping you from teaching. If not you, then who? You know who; you may have sat under them. Do you want that for your children, your community, your country? If not, well, do something. As I’ve said so many times before, a commie taught a kid today, did you?
May I suggest: for many on the Right the correct career path is to do things and then teach others as one winds down. Myth is full of aged mentors. In a primitive society it is the job of the men too old to hunt and fight to hang out with the boys and pass along tribal wisdom.
Also, unruly students are more likely to respect those who did something outside of academia and then came back to teach future generations. Being able to say "Here's how I applied this theorem sniping jihadists, or building skyscrapers, or raising cattle, or playing in a rock band, or running for office..." gets attention.
Something I've wondered a lot about education is to what extent the history curriculum should be rewritten to focus on the history of the left (possibly via regulation, which is still possible even in a mostly privatized or state run system).
It strikes me that a big part of the sickness of society is that the education system creates left wing children somehow - probably not deliberately - and that maybe we need to just get firmer with fixing that at its root by giving kids a _real_ education in the history of communism, of national socialism, of the Great Leap Forward, of North Korea, the Jacobins, and all the other hard-left revolutionaries that have existed in the past few centuries. Perhaps combined with much more time spent on business simulation and the seeds are sown, as the parable would have it, for kids to become young adults with a much better appreciation of why left wing ideas are wrong and lead so reliably to such terrible outcomes.
But maybe it wouldn't work. Hard to say really what causes all this.