Debut author, The American Mind editor, and Daily Wire personality Spencer Klavan shares ancient wisdom for modern problems.
“Both implicitly and explicitly, our ruling classes express contempt for homemaking and motherhood. But this closes off the most primal path to resolving the body crisis. Women, by creating new life, bear witness to the possibility that body and soul can in fact be reconciled: in childbirth, human flesh becomes the medium of the divine. Poets have expressed this as the “eternal feminine,” the strangely luminous power of women like Dante’s Beatrice or Faust’s Margarete to act as physical conduits for the life-giving power of God. “Woman, eternal, beckons us on,” wrote Johann Wolfgang von Goethe in the closing lines of his Faust. This is the meaning of the Virgin Mary’s consent to bring God into the world: her body will become the medium to deliver divine life, God made flesh.”
from Klavan’s chapter entitled “Soul Dysphoria”
In the chapter “Soul Dysphoria” from his forthcoming book How to Save the West, Spencer Klavan clearly and compassionately posits that liberal feminism, transgenderism, and transhumanism connect by a single thread: inordinate hatred of the human body. Klavan suggests that these ideological movements exist on a spectrum defined by the desire to transcend the limitations of the physical body, differing only in the relatively superficial matter of subject.
In this radical thesis, informed by an impressive depth and breadth of knowledge of the classics, Klavan has inadvertently grasped at a third rail of contemporary politics: in a time of great political flux, with nascent political movements still determining proper demarcations between us and them, the long-term political viability of alliances united by a common enemy is thrown into question. Take, for example, “gender critical” feminists and outspoken conservatives. Though temporarily united by a common enemy in transgenderism, many gender critical feminists remain vocal proponents of abortion: an outright denial of the reality of life and the virtue of womanhood. Without men in lipstick invading women’s restrooms, these fast friends immediately become enemies. This tension is mirrored by similar bifurcations in the pro-life movement. There, certain factions advocate for contraception and surrogacy, perhaps unwittingly making themselves proponents of the very ideology, one might say the God-complex, that underpins the abortion industry itself.
When you’re losing the war, you don’t get to be picky about allies. Purity spiraling in the heat of battle is a great way to lose the war. But despite this tactical truism, brushing fundamental differences under the rug entirely is a great way to lose the plot over time. This is the unlearnable lesson of conservative political action: without a positive and coherent political program of one’s own, new principles will be happily provided by entryists, often enough, refugees from the enemy camp.
Instead if responding within the terms the transgender world has used to frame the issue, Spencer Klavan uses his impressive breadth and depth of knowledge of the classics to develop, or rather to revive, a counterpoint to the transgender nonsense that we have simply forgotten: that we are souls with bodies, not the other way around. In doing do, he’s offered a political path beyond the superficial alliances that seem only to move the Right leftward over time. Klavan gives us a roadmap for defeating the new Leviathan.
Pre-order the book now and get it on Valentine’s Day. If you prefer your dates with a serving of deep conversation, this is the one for you.
