His "Calvinism" thing looks completely baseless and arbitrary to me,
I'm not sure how it looks to you, but looking from an outside perspective, I can certainly see the similarities between Calvinism and Progressivism (specifically the form you seem to belong to).
In a number of places you expressed utter horror at the notion that people should face what they deserve. This reminds me of the Calvinist idea that everyone deserves to get thrown into hell.
Specifically, both strike me as possessing an alief, if not a belief, that being virtuous requires that one constantly feel guilty. What one should be feeling guilty about differs.
In the case of the Calvinist one should feel guilty about original sin, of which one is reminded whenever one experiences sexual attraction, or enjoys one's food, or has fun when one could be doing work. In the case of the Progressive one should be guilty about one's white/male/upper class/straight/righty/etc. (select all that apply) privilege, of which one is reminded whenever one perceives one is receiving the benefits of said privilege.
In the case of the Calvinist one should feel guilty about original sin, of which one is reminded whenever one experiences sexual attraction, or enjoys one's food, or has fun when one could be doing work. In the case of the Progressive one should be guilty about one's white/male/upper class/straight/righty/etc. (select all that apply) privilege, of which one is reminded whenever one perceives one is receiving the benefits of said privilege.
One can be a supporter of mainstream western democracy without having any of those attitudes.
I've seen several people on Less Wrong recommend Mencius Moldbug's writings, and I've been curious about how he became so popular here. He's certainly an interesting thinker, but he's rather obscure and doesn't have any obvious connection to Less Wrong, so I'm wondering where this overlap in readership came from.
[EDIT by E.Y.: The answer is that he's not popular here. The 2012 LW annual survey showed 2.5% (30 of 1195 responses) identified as 'reactionary' or 'Moldbuggian'. To the extent this is greater than population average, it seems sufficiently explained by Moldbug having commented on the early Overcoming Bias econblog before LW forked from it, bringing with some of his own pre-existing audience. I cannot remember running across anyone talking about Moldbug on LW, at all, besides this post, in the last year or so. Since this page has now risen to the first page of Google results for Mencius Moldbug due to LW's high pagerank, and on at least one occasion sloppy / agenda-promoting journalists such as Klint Finley have found it convenient to pretend to an alternate reality (where Moldbug is popular on LW and Hacker News due to speaking out for angry entitled Silicon Valley elites, or something), a correction in the post seems deserved. See also the Anti-Reactionary FAQ by Scott Alexander (aka Yvain, LW's second-highest-karma user). --EY]