The Uniqueness of Western Law: A Reactionary Manifesto, by Richard Storey
I first came across Storey through a piece he wrote regarding his conversation with Frank van Dun. To summarize: Storey viewed the medieval Church as the biggest hindrance to liberty and the promoter of centralized statism; van Dun set him straight. Just how straight we will find in this book.
Storey has offered an introduction and outline to this work, through a piece published at the Mises site:
The study of Western Civilization has been all but eradicated. This was no accident but, rather, an aggressive policy of leftist academe which has used exclusionary tactics to dominate and pervert the culture and purpose of our universities since the 1960s and 70s. But, for us students, driven underground, Western history is the greatest treasure trove of almost every faculty. Not least of these is natural law.
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I will cover the book over a series of several posts, beginning with this introduction. The book is written in four parts: Natural Law, Socio-Biology, Politics, and Family. You can imagine that one or more of these parts might touch on politically incorrect topics.
There are brief recommendations from individuals that will be well-known to readers here:
Gerard Casey: “Readers…won’t like [this] book – they will either love it or hate it!”
Walter Block: “I take my hat off to this author for his fearlessness and bravery.”
Frank van Dun: “[Storey] makes a compelling case for a conscientious libertarianism, rooted in the basic idea of the Western philosophical and Christian tradition…Storey effectively destroys the caricature of libertarianism as “globalist market fundamentalism” that became prominent in the Cold War era.”
Western civilization promoted, market fundamentalism demoted. Something for everyone to hate!
Storey describes his own journey in his “libertarian beliefs regarding law/politics and their exclusively Western character and point of origin.” Richard Duchesne and Frank van Dun are identified as his greatest influences. Through these individuals, Storey discovered the value of the Middle Ages and Christendom to our Western tradition and law.
Moreover, [van Dun] was crucial in teaching me the nemesis of this order – modernism, specifically in the form of hyper- or Lutheran individualism.
Storey looks not only to historical causes of the decline of Western civilization, but even to more recent events like mass immigration from countries whose individuals do not hold to the same natural law tradition. Such immigration is no accident:
Rather, these are deliberate acts, motivated by leftist ideologies which are dead set against the principles of natural law and justice and the hierarchical natural order – everything I have come to love about my dying civilization.
Conclusion
Like I said, there will be something in this book for almost everyone to hate. Everyone on the left will hate it – including left-libertarians; everyone who views libertarianism primarily through an economic lens will hate it.
Reprinted with permission from Bionic Mosquito.
