For those of us who take Plato seriously, and are alert enough to see that we could live at any stage of his civilization cycle, it’s clear that we’re in the declining stage. Furthermore, we can see the evidence all around us, as this blog chronicles among other things.

I guess when you wake up and find out that, despite all the happy admonitions from people around you who desperately want to believe what they are saying, your society is in decline you realize you have a choice: either go with the decline, or try to stand against it.

The latter is of course riskier because there’s no guarantee you’ll succeed, while on the other hand, there’s no risk in going with the flow. You’re not trying to do anything but please yourself, and you’ve written off the progress of history. You don’t want kids. You don’t care about the future after your own death. Whatever: they’re all excuses to save you from possibly failing after you declare an ambitious mission, like, say, “resist decline instead of going with the flow.”

So most people are going to wimp out, but some of us are going to want solutions, and I call this “New Realism” because we’re not conservative as much as we are realists who no longer care about the left/right divide because that in itself is an artifact of decay...

http://www.amerika.org/2009/organization/new-realism/
Agreed. The left/right political concept is a false dichotomy because it denies the reality of all the various third position approaches that could push us through. But, left/right is great entertainment fodder for the oblivious voter, plus it keeps the status quo intact as the circus part of Bread and Circuses.