First, they identify what a retrograde is. I'll quote them directly:
In the words of Shakespeare, a retrograde is one of God’s spies. [Who strives to restore]
- 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.
There are 40 rules and I won't go over each one individually. The first 12 are common sense and if you were raised in a two parent Catholic or at least nominally Christian home you already know them. The book didn't get interesting to me until rule 13 where they write about how to deal with mil-mods and mod-cons. This is the best and clearest part of the book. Mod-cons are conservatives, and are usually nice people who can be reasoned with but left to their own devices they will "be the better man," and "lose with grace", to radicals. If they aren't very nice they'll make a separate peace with the radicals by living their values quietly but never standing up for anything or they make a good living in loudly talking a good game but doing nothing.
The militant mod is a slippery character who lives an outwardly respectable life. He would never take his kid to a drag show at the library but is privately supportive of the whole thing. He also despises the retrograde as much or more than the radical and will sell you out if he can hang with the cool kids. Consequently, once identified the militant mod is best left alone.
Some of the rules about the retrograde's personal affairs: get married young and have a family. Avoid feminism. No matter how you sugar coat it or try to Christianize it, feminism is the worship of woman as god and that is not good. Another rule is to never back down when given bad spiritual advice from Boomers. Others are to reject blind optimism and expecting the outrage of the day to finally awaken the American public.
There is a group of rules about how to engage with the radical. The best of them is to remain cool when the radical tries to personalize the general. Don't let this individual re-frame your argument with an appeal to emotion. Always speak the truth and don't allow the radical to tell you that you can not express an opinion about anything that is outside your race or class.
The smallest number of rules are about how to treat fellow retrogrades and this might be the topic the Gordon boys are the most passionate about. They argue that one should never stand silent when a fellow retrograde is attacked. Never launch a sneak attack on a fellow retrograde and only publicly correct a member of the fellowship in public unless he or she has sinned in public.
The book is short but really could have been shorter. It feels like a padded essay. Some of the rules could have been combined and it has five other flaws that ruin it for me.
First, the Gordons err in hanging too much of their argument on Thomas Jefferson's study of Saints Robert Bellarmine's and Thomas Aquinas' writings. Unlike Washington, there's not even a rumor that he showed a scrap of sympathy or understanding of Catholicism.
Second, Their rejection of boycotts seems to be a lazy way of excusing giving money to Starbucks and Disney and Netflix because not doing so doesn't affect the company's bottom line.
Third, the Gordons wallow in California teenager slang. That would be forgivable if they were precocious teens but one of them and I think it's the younger Gordon, is 39. If you've ever watched their videos and rolled your eyes be warned: they way they talk is the way they write. They remind me of a 1980s Valley Girl who found a dictionary.
Fourth, they don't have anything to say about the lay grifters and opportunists who make their money off the Faith but as we've seen in recent days, don't really believe any of what they push to their donors and customers.
Finally, they overdo the he-man act and bring to mind the old saying: If you have to keep telling everyone that you are a lady then you probably aren't.
I found myself having to frequently put the book down because this was all so irritating.
So do I think you should buy the book or run screaming from it? Neither. It's not absolutely horrible but it's not worth the $18.87, I paid. If you can't get it from the library or borrow it from someone, then buy it used or preferably at a discount. If this book makes enough of a stir it might inspire someone with greater style and Catholic scholarship to take a crack at the subject matter. The idea of Rules for Retrogrades is good. This execution needs work.
Some of the rules about the retrograde's personal affairs: get married young and have a family. Avoid feminism. No matter how you sugar coat it or try to Christianize it, feminism is the worship of woman as god and that is not good. Another rule is to never back down when given bad spiritual advice from Boomers. Others are to reject blind optimism and expecting the outrage of the day to finally awaken the American public.
There is a group of rules about how to engage with the radical. The best of them is to remain cool when the radical tries to personalize the general. Don't let this individual re-frame your argument with an appeal to emotion. Always speak the truth and don't allow the radical to tell you that you can not express an opinion about anything that is outside your race or class.
The smallest number of rules are about how to treat fellow retrogrades and this might be the topic the Gordon boys are the most passionate about. They argue that one should never stand silent when a fellow retrograde is attacked. Never launch a sneak attack on a fellow retrograde and only publicly correct a member of the fellowship in public unless he or she has sinned in public.
The book is short but really could have been shorter. It feels like a padded essay. Some of the rules could have been combined and it has five other flaws that ruin it for me.
First, the Gordons err in hanging too much of their argument on Thomas Jefferson's study of Saints Robert Bellarmine's and Thomas Aquinas' writings. Unlike Washington, there's not even a rumor that he showed a scrap of sympathy or understanding of Catholicism.
Second, Their rejection of boycotts seems to be a lazy way of excusing giving money to Starbucks and Disney and Netflix because not doing so doesn't affect the company's bottom line.
Third, the Gordons wallow in California teenager slang. That would be forgivable if they were precocious teens but one of them and I think it's the younger Gordon, is 39. If you've ever watched their videos and rolled your eyes be warned: they way they talk is the way they write. They remind me of a 1980s Valley Girl who found a dictionary.
Fourth, they don't have anything to say about the lay grifters and opportunists who make their money off the Faith but as we've seen in recent days, don't really believe any of what they push to their donors and customers.
Finally, they overdo the he-man act and bring to mind the old saying: If you have to keep telling everyone that you are a lady then you probably aren't.
I found myself having to frequently put the book down because this was all so irritating.
So do I think you should buy the book or run screaming from it? Neither. It's not absolutely horrible but it's not worth the $18.87, I paid. If you can't get it from the library or borrow it from someone, then buy it used or preferably at a discount. If this book makes enough of a stir it might inspire someone with greater style and Catholic scholarship to take a crack at the subject matter. The idea of Rules for Retrogrades is good. This execution needs work.
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