Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), Version 2.0: A Post-Mortem

On ARC and its Contradictions

[1.0] On the Nature of Startup Post-Mortems

This post is intended for those who either know of ARC or who have attended it directly – we need not delve into too much exposition. The main goal of the conference, across past and present iterations, is to re-lay the foundations of our civilization; however, there were contradictions in the conference that prevented the venture from truly showing us “a better story.” What we received was a narrative with competing plotlines, reflecting the hands of several authors with unaligned goals – there were too many cooks in the kitchen.

In tech startups, there is an informal tradition of writing “post-mortems” when a venture fails – these are retrospective analyses that seek to perform a root cause analysis on what brought about the foundering of the venture in question. Even suggesting that a post-mortem be engaged in is to suggest that something has failed – I would posit that ARC 2.0 has not met its objectives.

[2.0] Defining ARC

We already listed above that ARC is nominally about re-laying the foundations of “our” civilization. Further, there was continued messaging in the promotional videos that prefaced every themed section about crafting “a better story.” Finally, let’s try to arrive at how ARC conceives of itself in organizational terms.

During the Tuesday evening dinners (18-FEB-2025), I attended one entitled “Can a civilization be renewed?” where all of the speakers extolled the virtues of Christianity in the underpinning of Western civilization. Given this celebration of the centrality of Christian doctrine, I wanted to press them further on the applications of this worldview. I asked a question during the Q&A where I first laid out the foundations of a Political Order, in brief, namely: funders, think thanks, media influence, and political parties (explained in full here). I then asked, given the panel’s focus on Christianity, which Christian doctrines should be advocated as political doctrine at a given party’s policy convention, so to embed Christianity at the political level. To my disappointment, the response was that ARC is to be understood as a purely cultural movement without any political aspirations.

In short, ARC is a cultural movement seeking to formulate “a better story” as it re-lays the foundations of our civilization. This is the definition by which we will assess its success or failure; the key performance indicator against which to track the second iteration of ARC is whether it has truly provided a better story for the West in a civilizational sense. Finally, I will add that “a better story” must at least be a unified narrative with a consistent vision for what “better” means. Any cultural movement engaged in crafting guiding narratives, absent a unifying and consistent vision, is a failure.

[3.0] Exploring the Contradictions of ARC

There were three core areas of contradiction that stood out to me at ARC:

1. Religion,

2. Economic Policy, and

3. Scope of Operations.

[3.1] Religion: Christianity Without Political Clarity

Christianity was a major theme of the conference – even extending into quasi-megachurch rhetoric – and yet it was presented without a clear political agenda or actionable strategy for implementation. Let me crystalize this with another example from my Tuesday evening dinner.

One of the first questions during the Q&A session asked how European nations can have a Christian civilizational renewal when facing an influx of Islam. Again, despite all the speakers having extolled the virtues of Christianity in the underpinning of Western civilization, each panelist was unable to propose any real answer to this question. Without fail, they resorted to the only answer they could safely rely on: simply allowing Islam to lose in the “marketplace of ideas.” The problem with this answer, of course, is that some – by no means all, but a significant enough group – do not play by the rules of the marketplace of ideas, and liberal society thus far has failed to respond to this across Europe. More of the same will not allow a civilization to renew – it will only sign its death warrant, or set the scene for a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, or set off an intra-multiculturalist civil war of ethnoburb against ethnoburb.

How can we craft a better story for the West if we cannot even make a clear defense of its foundational religious narrative – Christianity, as shaped by the tripartite influence of Jerusalem, Rome, and Athens – against Islamic encroachments? A confident story, internally, does not appeal to the marketplace of ideas; a confident story understands itself as foundational, as beyond mere market mechanisms. A foundational story sits at the axiomatic layer – it would be the platform undergirding the civilizational architecture in which a marketplace of ideas could even exist. Finally, a foundational narrative is asserted forthright for its primacy such that the mere inclusion of it into a debate is to signal that its primacy is contested – that the holders of the debate question its primacy. This is not the right stance for a cultural organization positing to offer us a better story.

[3.2] Economic Policy: Free Markets vs Industrial Policy

One of the most pervasive schizophrenic contradictions present at the heart of the conference was the tension between free markets and industrial policy (where protectionism is a core tool). It is here where one could see the hands of competing cooks in the kitchen of ARC. However, let’s take a quick step back. Two key economic themes at ARC consisted of a hydrocarbon energy policy and a plan for reindustrialization of the West.

The hydrocarbon energy policy was anti-net zero and framed the necessity of human flourishing around access to cheap energy. Wherever energy becomes too expensive, life becomes much harder: high energy costs both short circuit industrial production and leave less room in consumers’ wallets for general spending. It also attacked the intermittent supply of renewables in the form of wind and solar, bringing the German concept of “Dunkelflaute” humorously into the zeitgeist. Key to the framing of ARC’s energy policy is the maintenance of a globalist free market, where energy producers can access as many markets as possible. The exoteric narrative through which to sell energy to as many markets as possible – under a free market schema – is the framing of cheap energy as core to human flourishing: cue anecdotes about deaths related to the use of poor energy sources. Nothing is wrong with this policy stance, per se – the entirety of the ARC energy policy, as a standalone module, is coherent. The contradictions come when a free marketeering energy policy comes face to face with a protectionist reindustrialization policy.

The reindustrialization policy has at its core tenet that work matters. It matters whether we’re producing potato chips or computer chips; it matters that we have a fully functioning port instead of scrapping said port for tourism jobs and a new university. Note that there is a little synergy in the energy policy and reindustrialization policy where both are fighting against the green movement. The reindustrialization policy makes note of the irony of offshoring manufacturing facilities to polities that still use coal; the green policies merely achieve the outcome of shifting the location where coal is being burnt, not the total amount of coal being burnt globally. However, a policy of reindustrialization needs elements of protectionism to re-foster industrial production back in Western territories – to offset the subsidies that competitors like China are blatantly already doing in order to dump their goods in a globalist free trade environment. As such, a reindustrialization policy that requires protectionism is going to butt heads with an energy policy that requires free trade. Moreover, what are the limits of the exoteric narrative of human flourishing that is used as the tip of the spear to sell hydrocarbons globally? Does this human flourishing narrative further mean that we enter into technology transfers agreements and set up more production facilities outside of the West? What are the limits here?

In short, one ARC cook is trying to operate a soup kitchen to serve as many mouths as possible, while another ARC cook is attempting to set up a fine dining establishment that primarily feeds Western mouths. I’m not sure how to resolve this tension; a better story is not crafted when multiple authors are developing antagonistic plotlines for the same novel.

[3.3] Scope of Operations: Western Revival vs Globalism

Downstream of the conflict between a free-market energy policy and a protectionist reindustrialization policy is the tension between the scope of ARC’s operations: is ARC really intending to serve the West, or is ARC trying to lean into some sort of soft globalism? Even if these positions are reconcilable, it’s a matter of sequencing. An ARC that is Western-focused would not even sell the global context in the second iteration of its mainline conference. It is only after progress has been made on the front of Western revival that peripheral actors would be invited to say their piece. However, ARC has been doing no such thing; rather, ARC has from its very foundation entertained the global context by inviting the end markets of its free trade energy policy into these conversations. Moreover, a movement dedicated to Western revival would not be pussyfooting about the political applications of Christianity, appealing instead to winning domestically against Islam in the marketplace of ideas. It’s almost like the free market ideology has poisoned the well and prevented ARC from making decisive claims about the hierarchy of values that it wants to uphold and to see disseminated more broadly. The general sentiment that I got from ARC is that it wants to be non-partisan and, as such, will shy away from making decisive claims; non-partisan cultural movements may be able to tell good stories globally but will be structurally unable to speak for the good of the West.

[4.0] Limitations of a Non-Partisan ARC and a Way Forward

While it may be wise for ARC to remain non-partisan, all cultural change can only be achieved if the doctrines one wishes to preserve or to renew can be embedded at the policy level. For example, while the current battle between trans rights activists and women’s single-sex spaces or the battle for historical accuracy are framed as “culture wars,” in reality, the “culture warriors” set the terms of the debate not just via cultural institutions, but in law and policy. Each prison which has a policy on male offenders who can be housed in female prisons, and each corporate HR policy which mandates specific pronoun use standards is a testament to this tactic. For a civilization to be renewed via culture, its culture must become embedded in institutions and in policy. This was sadly not addressed at ARC.

The organizers of ARC had an unenviable and mammoth task – and they should be credited with attempting to do what so many leaders have failed to even talk about. Civilizational renewal across the Anglosphere, and the broader West, is an important and urgent goal. However, for ARC to be the vehicle through which this overarching goal is achieved, its founders and funders will need to narrow down their focus significantly and ask themselves:

• Which civilization should be renewed?

• Which countries are the key focus of this civilizational renewal?

• What is the underpinning of this civilizational renewal?

• What are the values and goals which are required to achieve civilizational renewal, and what is their internal hierarchy?

• Which tools are needed to achieve this renewal at the levels of policy development, media distribution, and political party constituency engagement? How will these tools be funded and made available?

• Which economic, technological, social, criminal and border control policies are required to serve these overarching goals?

Without a more coherent set of answers to these problems, we may not be able to achieve the lofty goal of civilizational renewal. CivilizationStack will aim to address these questions tangibly and directly in the coming months, prior to ARC 2026.