What Is This Substack All About?

Looking behind the curtain

This post is going to be a bit different from my usual content in this newsletter. Because of some real world obligations I probably am not going to have a “real” post for the last half of this week, so I thought that now would be a great time to put up a “quicker” post that I’ve been wanting to write for several weeks. In it, I’d like to basically give a “purpose statement” for this blog and provide a little background information so that you all know what you’ve gotten yourselves into (hah).

So, I am Theophilus Chilton and I’m active both here in the world of blogging as well as on Twitter (@Theo_Chilton). I’m fairly new to Substack, but have operated a site (also called the Neo-Ciceronian Times) on Wordpress, which goes back almost six years. I’d encourage you to go check it out, as there’s quite a bit of content there (I am cross-posting most [but not all] of the new content here over there as well). Over the past decade or so, I’ve evolved from bog standard normie conservative into a neoreactionary monarchist (hope that didn’t just scare you off!), and the Times picks up about halfway through that transition. Think of this Substack as a continuation of the old site, not as a sharp break from it.

Now, I’d like to lay out a few things that you can expect from this Substack newsletter.

First, this newsletter is and always will be free. Maybe I’m not using Substack the way you’re “supposed” to, but I don’t ever intend to monetise it. Mind you, if other writers want to monetise, I don’t look down on or criticise them for it. It’s just not for me. I’m in a place in my life where I don’t really need money and my personality is such that I don’t feel right about asking for money anywise. I would, however, ask you to subscribe below if you haven’t already, and please spread the word as well!

This all being said, I intend to try to give my readers more than their money’s worth with this site. Over the past six years on the Times, my posting was kind of hit or miss. I might have times where I turned out a post a week, but then have dry spells that lasted for months. At the start of this year, I made a decision (I won’t go so far as to call it a resolution…) to try to turn out at least two posts a week, which I’ve thus far been successful at meeting. However, I will do my very best to be consistent about providing high quality content that goes beyond “I don’t like this bad thing that happened in the news” level analysis. Due to the exigencies of the real world, this might not always happen, but I’ll definitely be making the effort. But if I have to either turn out some hasty piece of garbage or miss hitting the two posts a week goal, I’d rather do the latter. In this case, quantity doesn’t really have a quality of its own.

Now, one of the things that is common in pretty much every post I write is that I’ll link back to previous posts - sometimes several in one piece - that I’ve produced over the past six years. My intention for the Times is that it not be an “outrage of the day” type of site. Instead, I try to make it build upon years of accumulated writing, so that it presents a self-reinforcing and consistent record based upon my own intellectual and political evolution. In other words, I want to build on previous foundations and expand on my thoughts in the areas about which I’m writing. It’s incremental growth rather than grand leaps.

I consider myself free to write about whatever I want to, meaning that I don’t consider this to be a one topic “__fill in this blank__ blog.” However, there do tend to be several generalised major themes that will keep popping up. Included in these are demographic-structural theory (drawing from the work of Peter Turchin), ethnicity and culture, localism and political decentralisation, and analysing the progressive Left as a social phenomenon. This isn’t all there is to the blog, of course. Science and society will be discussed. There is also some biblical interpretation as it applies to allied subjects. Some science fiction short stories have made an appearance. It even has my first halting attempt at doing a podcast.

I consciously approach this blog with the design of it serving as a bridge between Right-leaning normies and the general Dissident Right. Some of you might be wondering what a “normie” is. Basically, a conservative normie is one who holds to the sort of conventionally conservative, “classical liberal” political norms held by, well, most people on the Right (hence, they’re the “norm”). I view my purpose as being to expose folks like this to “the next step” rightward, and to do so in a way that actually demonstrates its palatability to the intelligent conservative, thus contradicting the sort of stereotypes that left-leaning and “establishment” sources use to characterise the Real Right. I view this as necessary because as comfortable as “regular American conservatism” might be to a lot of folks, it’s part of the modern world and is also increasingly out of step with the realities that we’re facing now.

So with all of this being said, I hope I haven’t scared too many folks off. Please, go back through the Neo-Ciceronian Times Wordpress site and also sign up for this newsletter (for content moving forward), if you haven’t already done so. I really do want to make it worth your while in terms of time spent reading versus all of the myriad of other things that are probably competing for your time and attention.