Thread by @mcjulie

I'd never heard of this particular dude before, but the overall outlines of this narrative, "I converted to Catholicism as an adult and now think the US should be run as a Catholic theocratic dictatorship" are oddly common thedailybeast.com/new-york-post-…

“My moral opinions were as interchangeable as my clothing styles and musical tastes,” the 36-year-old Ahmari [..] writes in his latest book, The Unbroken Thread: Discovering the Wisdom of Tradition in an Age of Chaos."

Well, guess what, dude, my moral opinions have been pretty solid since I was a little kid, and I'm older than you, and I say "traditional" patriarchal religions can suck it.

It's so weird how conservatives keep discovering and rediscovering the same ultimate secret to life: "just do what WE say"

I don't know if these neo-traditionalists KNOW they're being deceptive, or if they are themselves sincerely deceived, but the idea that you can "redeem" a fallen secular world by returning to some reactionary point in the past is pure fascist fantasy.

Most people know by now, I thought, that there was never *actually* a point in history where people didn't *have* "unauthorized" sex, there were just points in history where there was a lot of social and legal pressure to pretend otherwise.

Authoritarians ACT like they want that perfectly ordered world where everyone is in their proper place and behaving properly, which is bad enough, but you never GET that because people, under any system, remain people.

Authoritarian states aren't more well-behaved, they're simply more deceptive and fearful. They encourage distrust, alienation and cruelty. And they're very inefficient. There's no good there. Absolutely none.

And... looking at his other recent controversial opinions, the common thread isn't "Jesus is great" but rather, "authoritarian states are great, my fave flavor right now is Catholic but I do enjoy others."