Rules for Retrogrades

Forty Tactics to Defeat the Radical Left

Timothy J. Gordon, David Gordon

• Publisher: TAN Books
• Year: 2020
• eBook ISBN: 9781505115956
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Conservatism & Liberalism
• Index: Politics & International Relations

What is a retrograde?

A retrograde calculates, night and day, how to return the world to:

• the Old Order of moral and sexual decency,
• classical masculinity,
• national sovereignty and national borders,
• faith and hope and charity,
• goodness and beauty and truth,
• Christian civic liberty,
• and most importantly, the social kingship of Christ.

In the words of Shakespeare, a retrograde is one of God's spies.

The retrograde has the unique capacity for understanding the stark chasm between the degenerate, socialist-infiltrated world of decay on one side and the well-meaning, good-hearted, but clueless Christian world on the other.

In a time of such profound decay, being one of God's spies is a last resort and a pure necessity: it involves not "deep cover, "—i.e., acting like the enemy—but rather "half cover": acting as a "contra" in the secular arena, a crypto-Christian counterinsurgent willing to fight like a Navy Seal and to think like a counterintel officer.

Retrogrades... to the streets: our aim is to reverse the deliberate, deuced machinations of "radicals" like Saul Alinsky who, by penning the rulebook of radicalism, threw down a challenge that has, until now, gone unanswered. Rules for Retrogrades is the handbook men of good will need to win the culture war! Here is a sampling from the call to action found within these pages:

• No truth is "off-limits"; we must never be ashamed to be candid.
• It is a damnable lie that humility disallows Christians from standing up (for what they believe) in the cultural and political forum!
• Control of language is control of thought; don't let radicals control the language.
• Never trust a man who is unwilling to have enemies.
• Radicals form coalitions but retrogrades form fellowships.
• The root of cultural decay is feminism: end feminism to end radicalism.

Rule 1

Always be on offense.

Generals know it; chess grandmasters know it; left-wing tacticians know it: to win a war, you need to be on offense. If you’re content to rest on your laurels and play passive defense, you’re eventually going to lose. Period. Perhaps General George Patton put it best: “No one ever won a war by going out and dying for his country; he won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”

In the long run, in terms of outcome, offense is always superior to defense. Offense benefits from momentum; defense only benefits from inertia. Inertia is static and can be overcome assuming that an actor summons sufficient force, which he is almost sure to do, given inertia’s alluring static threshold. Offense also benefits from the inherent superiority of action as compared with reaction. In reaction, crucial time is lost in finding the proper response and executing it. Conversely, action, even where imprecisely directed or poorly executed, has the ability to do damage. Where a boxer throws an uppercut and lands it on his opponent, even if the more appropriate punch for the situation was a right cross, the uppercut still hurts and brings the boxer that much closer to a knockout win.

Moreover, offense is effective in increments, whereas defense is only effective in terms of end results. Imagine the game of football if the offense had an infinite number of downs (as opposed to the customary four) to score a touchdown. Eventually, the offense will score, even if it takes two hundred downs. The offense may throw an endzone-to-endzone pass and score in one play, or they may march the ball down the field with a series of choppy run plays, picking up three yards at a time. Either way, the offense is happy, since they get six points, and the defense is still dejected, since they’re now losing the game. When you’re on offense, you set the pace. If you remain on offense, you will (given sufficient time) accomplish your objectives.

It takes a dedicated effort to wrench the initiative away from an attacking opponent and put him on his heels, since humans don’t possess the instinct to meet aggression with aggression. When a boxer is on the receiving end of a flurry of punches, he has the instinctive reaction to step back, put his eyes down, raise his guard, and cover up. However, to succeed at the highest levels, fighters need to learn to counterpunch, seizing the initiative by force. It’s the same in the culture wars and politics. This is why Rahm Emmanuel infamously admonished fellow radicals, “You never want a serious crisis to go to waste. And what I mean by that [is] it’s an opportunity to do things that you think you could not before.” What Rahm was really saying is that liberals must weaponize current events so that the events redound to progressives’ benefit. He’s saying to seize the initiative by force and batter your opponent with an unending salvo of diverse shots. He’s saying to use the environment to your advantage, to enable an attack. Tactically, he’s spot-on.

So we retrogrades need to take back the initiative; we need to make a concerted effort to go on offense. After the next mass shooting, don’t passively defend against the leftist media’s mechanical, choreographed calls for “common-sense gun legislation” by pointing out that the proposed laws would do little to curb violence. Instead, put leftists on their heels by organizing a coordinated media blitz wherein commentators are instructed to hammer home the point that crime rates are comparatively lower in regions where gun-ownership is higher. Go on the offensive by challenging network hosts with questions like “Why are you against gun ownership when all the data suggests that it deters mass-shootings?” and “Why do you promote feminism and single-motherhood when you know that the overwhelming majority of mass-shootings are carried out by bitter fatherless young men?” If we want to end mass-shootings, we should encourage more people to carry firearms so that they can defend themselves. Organize a drive to subsidize guns for citizens in dangerous neighborhoods.

It’s the same thing with abortion. When the pro-abortion lobby asks, “Why do you want to hurt women by depriving them of the right to choose?” don’t give the usual pusillanimous, asinine conservative answer of “I want to help women by showing them that choosing life is always the best option.” Instead, ask the smug leftist why he’s fine with hurting girls in utero by allowing their mothers to have them dismembered and sucked from the womb, or boiled-alive in saline solution. Don’t let radicals take up the mantle of being “pro-woman”; show how leftists hate women, as demonstrated by their indifference toward the millions of baby girls being slaughtered by mothers who are literal infanticidists.

If we want to win the culture wars, we have to craft the narrative ourselves—to content ourselves with passively responding to the left’s cherry-picked and farcical narrative is suicidal. Train yourself to attack, work up your courage, and seize the day.

Rule 2

Conservatism is inherently Christian; intellectual conservatism is inherently Roman Catholic.

In America specifically, conservatism’s guts have been Protestant, but its brains must be Catholic. It is true in Western civilization, generally. This is because Aristotle and St. Thomas Aquinas (together with the Christian Scripture and Tradition) informed the unique basis of all that’s good in ancient and medieval Europe, which created Western culture. The retrograde needs to be aware of this and spread the message: the best of “American values” and “Western triumphalism” reduces to the teachings of Aristo-Thomism.

Aristotle lays out the sine qua nons for Western anthropology, justifying the interaction between man’s free will, habit, virtue, politics, and culture. St. Thomas most aptly shows how Christian Tradition and Scripture perfected these Aristotelian building blocks of culture. “Goodies” like natural rights and limited government emanate uniquely from this source.

But in recent centuries, Aristotle and St. Thomas deliberately have been robbed of their due credit. On the right hand, the Reformation rejected this Aristo-Thomist basis for Western culture at the behest of sola scriptura; on the left hand, the Enlightenment made the same dismissal, except premised upon anti-Christian scientism. In other words, the two movements rejected Aristo-Thomism for opposite reasons.

Things played out interestingly in America. When their Protestant-Enlightenment worldview came up wanting, the American founders—and colonial and antebellum American culture—secretly drew (heavily!) on Aristo-Thomism while unabashedly denouncing Aristotle and Thomas. These two figures are basically the American retrograde’s “dark knights,” gathering all the undue blame and none of the due credit.

All republics live out a three-phase life cycle: first, breaking the old regime, and then making the new regime, and finally staking the new regime in the culture. Aristo-Thomism proves indispensable for all three phases. This is seen in American history specifically and in all republics generally.

Breaking the old regime: In 1776, the Declaration of Independence announced the breaking of the English rule over the American colonies. In the American republic—before it was even technically a republic—founders such as Thomas Jefferson and John Adams secretly drew on a Thomistic natural rights tradition⁵ in the formulation and defense of the Declaration of Independence. Although the young colonies were peopled by Protestants outwardly hostile to Thomism, the natural rights of the Declaration proved to be unimaginable and incoherent without Thomas Aquinas’s arrangement thereof.

Making the new regime: In 1787 and 1788, the drafting and ratifying of the US Constitution memorialized the making of the new American regime, premised upon the violations of American rights enumerated in the previous decade’s Declaration. Framers of the US Constitution like James Madison recognized that natural rights in republics were best secured by localism, a principle derived from the Catholic concept of subsidiarity. Once again, this republican desideratum came from the overlooked or maligned lineage of classical thinkers such as Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Robert Bellarmine, the Spanish theologians of the School of Salamanca, and Montesquieu. Madison and the framers called the concept “federalism,” not subsidiarity, although it proves to be a simple Reformation-Enlightenment reproduction thereof.

Staking the new regime in the culture: All the American founders and framers agreed that a good, new Constitution accomplished nothing without implantation within a virtuous political culture. In other words, the real life of a republic is lived after its foundational documents have been ratified. The baton, as it were, needed to be passed from 1770s revolutionaries and 1780s constitutionalists to the “everyday American” of the 1790s and thereafter. Yet even within a Protestant citizenry, this required all the marks of a Catholic people: virtue ethics in the populace, a Christian humanism based upon a sacramental order, a family economy, and a science and technology sector based upon Aristotelian realism. All these elements of culture required a Thomistic view of the human person, even as the young republic technically rejected the Church’s insistence upon it.

While ecumenical conservative values can be broadly construed as “Christian,” without contradiction, now busted is the tired old myth about the congruity between Puritan political acumen (which denies outright the possibility of liberty and virtue) and American values. The more specifically one wants and labors to ascribe American values to Protestantism, the more vigorously he must be rebuffed. This task falls to the retrograde: as he disabuses misinformed Americans of their political and cultural misconceptions, he replaces Puritanism with Aristo-Thomism as America’s intellectual lodestar.

Finally, the retrograde must understand that small government can’t be accomplished within a morally pluralistic society or over large land masses. Small government requires small spaces with alert, active, virtuous retrograde-citizens prepared to “organize themselves” in an equal and opposite way to the demands of Saul Alinsky.

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⁵ Thinkers like Robert Bellarmine and Protestant political thinkers who drew on Bellarmine and Aquinas.

Rule 3

No truth is “off-limits”; we must never be ashamed to be candid.

Radicals have successfully convinced many mod-cons to self-censor, insisting that some truths are “too offensive” to be spoken in decent society. They’ve thus driven the retrograde message underground, forcing us to whisper in darkness a host of medicinal truths deserving of the limpid radiance of day. Should retrogrades continue to submit to such treacherous advice, we are destined to be routed in our fight for the soul of society. We know, on the highest authority, that apart from being desirable for its own sake, the truth shall set mankind free. And, thus, it is to be pursued at all costs. If sheepish mod-cons neglect to fiercely and openly denounce the perversities that radicals are attempting to usher in, radicals will triumph by default. Darkness can only prevail when men of good will are made afraid to light a candle.

It is of paramount importance to remember that acts of the intellect always precede acts of the will. In other words, before we act for a certain end, the intellect, consciously or not, must decide that such an end is the “good,” the object most worthy of our pursuit. No one sets out to achieve what he views as an inferior or bad end. Thus, in order to win the culture, we must boldly and loudly speak truth so our fellow men can first recognize what is verily good and, subsequently, firmly set their wills on achieving it. If something is true, then we have a duty to say it so that society will be built on a foundation of rock instead of a foundation of sand.

Be reminded that there is no such thing as an intrinsically hateful truth; motive is always a deciding factor in analyzing the morality of a seemingly harsh statement. Sometimes charity and prudence dictate that one should even call his own mother “fat”: perhaps she is a diabetic or has heart disease and hearing such a hard truth will allow her to reformulate her diet and add years to her life. More important yet, perhaps she is a glutton needing chastisement against a habituated mortal sin. Similarly, we do no one any favors when we, out of fear of being slandered as “racist,” “sexist,” “jingoist,” “homophobic,” “intolerant,” or “hateful,” (or any other empty radical scare-words) consent to hide the light of unpopular truths under a bushel basket. When we fail to acknowledge sensitive truths (e.g., that contemporary American black fatherlessness is linked with their disproportionately high crime rates; that single motherhood is ruinous for children; that unchecked immigration is undermining the fabric of American culture; that homosexual relations are vile, depraved, hateful acts; that men can’t actually become women and vice versa), we short-change our fellow man, since we deprive him of the opportunity to reform his life to bring it into harmony with right order. Hard sayings must be shouted loudly, for the benefit of all mankind—damn the consequences. Moreover, if retrogrades band together and resolve to be undeterred in our vocalization of unpopular truths, it will be impossible for big media and big business to ostracize us. The corporate goons in human resources won’t be able to fire all of us. It’s impossible to effectively silence such a significant segment of the population.

The story of the Emperor’s New Clothes serves as an uncannily apropos allegory for modern man’s affinity for shrinking from his duty to proclaim truth. In the fable, the emperor is duped by two shysters into purchasing imaginary clothes so that when he “gets dressed” in his new “attire,” in reality, he’s naked. Despite the fact that the emperor is humiliating himself by strutting around the town square in a full state of undress, none of the emperor’s men or townspeople, for fear of appearing foolish or insolent, will speak out to tell the emperor that his wardrobe is a fraud. The people uniformly tickle the emperor’s ear, complimenting his splendid linens and refined sartorial taste. Except one little boy. One little boy, out of the whole town, sees the emperor and, with umbrage in his voice, exclaims, “But the emperor isn’t wearing any clothes. He’s naked!” In the aftermath of this one child’s naïve candor, the people come to their senses and soberly admit the obvious: truly, the emperor is not wearing any clothes.

The weakness of mankind is such that the majority are content to go along with a lie out of fear of blowback should they stand and fight for truth. It’s a somber realization that most people are consequentialists who would rather pretend a naked emperor is dressed in fine linen rather than risk looking foolish—or worse yet, risk a stint in the dungeon. At the same time, we should take solace that a lone voice (even that of a child) bravely crying out in the wilderness is often sufficient to call men to their senses, to call men away from mass delusion. Be the lone voice in your locale, and soon we will marshal a network of woke retrogrades, ready to turn the tides of a war we’ve long been losing. The only precondition for the death of the Gospel is silence. Never be cowed. Always speak truth, especially when it’s unpopular. Hold fast to the musings of George Washington: “I hope I shall possess firmness and virtue enough to maintain what I consider the most enviable of all titles, the character of an honest man.”

Rule 4

Egalitarianism is evil: the retrograde must loudly announce that Christian teaching and nature are generally anti-egalitarian.

This applies to both marital (sexual) and distributive (economic) relations. Christianity formally rejects all types of utopianism, usually predicated on egalitarianism. In short, it is unnatural—even anti-natural—to expect, as today’s popular culture does, a uniformity of roles and talents among human beings.

Forced equality bears wicked fruits. As such, we should reject the notion of “gender neutral language,” “participation trophies,” ties in ball games, and measures toward perfectly equal incomes among households. Instead, we should insist upon gender-specific grammar, trophies only for champions, tiebreakers in sports, and a meritocratic economy which guarantees to each his due. Only these are truly Christian and aligned with natural law.

Radicals have recently changed the world by crying out “diversity, diversity!” while simultaneously condemning all forms of non-egalitarianism. This is a bold contradiction. But it has heretofore gone unnoticed, or at least unannounced, by retrogrades. Truly healthy diversity is achieved by the widespread cultural acknowledgement of a talented “natural aristoi” (as Thomas Jefferson noted) and its opposite (i.e., a less talented average citizen). The retrograde announces the following economic fact of life: certain sorts are more talented, bigger, faster, and better than others. Along similar lines, men and women comprise natural opposites. Egalitarianism is evil because it denies these basic truths of nature.

Of course, two exceptional forms of modified equality do qualify as Christian: equality of dignity and of opportunity, exceptions in the Christian arenas of matrimony and political economy, respectively. First, let’s examine “equality” in the realm of matrimony. Men and ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Halftitle Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Foreword
• Introduction
• Terms to Know
• Rule 1
• Rule 2
• Rule 3
• Rule 4
• Rule 5
• Rule 6
• Rule 7
• Rule 8
• Rule 9
• Rule 10
• Rule 11
• Rule 12
• Rule 13
• Rule 14
• Rule 15
• Rule 16
• Rule 17
• Rule 18
• Rule 19
• Rule 20
• Rule 21
• Rule 22
• Rule 23
• Rule 24
• Rule 25
• Rule 26
• Rule 27
• Rule 28
• Rule 29
• Rule 30
• Rule 31
• Rule 32
• Rule 33
• Rule 34
• Rule 35
• Rule 36
• Rule 37
• Rule 38
• Rule 39
• Rule 40
• Epilogue