Once again, please be reminded that Lorenzo is in Australia and won't be around for several hours (currently 4:12 pm GMT). In the meantime, do play nicely!
Good Lord, this was excellent! A glimmer of sanity in our present day shitstorm of lies and censorship. You listed plenty of high-quality sources and carefully arranged logic and evidence to make an airtight case that shouldn't even have to be made, because it's so bloody obviously true that it should go without saying. It reads like Galileo stamping his foot and muttering under his breath, "Yet it moves." Someday, people will look back on our era and scratch their heads in bewilderment. "How could they have been so ignorant? Why did they follow such obviously stupid and destructive ideologies and ruin the civilization they'd inherited?"
Well, many of us didn't believe that nonsense, but the ones who did had the backing of a psychotic ruling class that invested all of its resources into imposing their luxury beliefs on everyone else.
Thanks so much for writing this! The world may be insane, but it's reassuring to know there are others out there who are not.
Who gives a shit? There are intellectually and physically superior people to be found in every skin tone and in every continent. Using crude racial categories will not help you find the geniuses who are capable of moving civilization forward. Only looking directly at individuals can do that. Resorting to being proud of your racial identity is strong evidence that you are personally NOT one of the chosen few.
I'm finding these days that our measures of intelligence seem to directly correlate with the amount of cognitive dissonance one can withstand. The takeaway, of course, being that I'm not as smart as I thought I was.
I repeat, Warby, you are a genius. I quoted you extensively on X, fwiw.
Please note: the only culture that gets the balance between freedom and justice correctly, insofar as is possible in this fallen world, is Christianity, with its Jewish roots.
And also note: it was Christianity alone that prepared the ground for the eradication of the injustices of slavery and misogyny.
“The rise of national populism is deeply connected to the failure of conventional conservative politics...”
… and to the success and perceived success that the Left has achieved by "breaking the rules" - that is by subverting democratic processes through its march through the institutions, using the government's coercive power to advance its ideas and interests, and using the law to punish political enemies. The populist right has chosen to fight fire with fire by adopting the Left’s tactics.
Much of the work of people like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Amari, Molly Hemingway, Michael Anton, and Rod Dreher are attempts to wrap an intellectual veneer around the right’s tactical shift. The problem is that ends are inextricably tied to means; consequently, the new right’s policies and goals are converging with those of the left.
"Differences in cognitive patterns between men and women is enough on its own to establish that equalitarianism is false." Definitely. Women as a group outperform men in school from gradeschool through college.
The Black-White income gap in the chart noted is artificially small; as we have de-facto quotas here.
A better indicator of the size of the gap can be identified in the wealth gap adjusted for income; as government can take from whites and give to blacks, but it cannot/will not (for obvious reasons) ban them from wasting what’s been given to them.
I’ll add a link to a chart on it here when I get home.
Feb 15·edited Feb 15Liked by Helen Dale, Lorenzo Warby
Has there ever been a more malevolent and dishonest school of thought than the Crit Theorists of Frankfurt? Has History ever seen less grateful refugees than Marcuse et al. who were rescued from the European inferno, given safe and prosperous lives here in America, only to constantly reflexively denounce the country and people who'd saved them and work for their ultimate destruction? (Marcuse even claimed there was more freedom in the USSR than in the USA! And yet he chose California over Moscow for some reason.)
And while these con men refused to explain the contours of their future utopia, at least Adorno may have gotten a glimpse of it when he went back to Germany to teach in the 60s.
His students, the first generation of post-WW2 spoiled infants who lived in unprecedented safety and prosperity, toyed with the old man, mocked him for being a bourgeois geezer, could only express themselves in either fantasies of destruction or lewd innuendo.
"I established a theoretical model of thought," Adorno remarked. "How could I have suspected that people would want to implement it with Molotov cocktails?"
LOLOL Now this tells us all we need to know about the eternal divide between cossetted thinkers who live in the world of the symbolic and actual humans who fight and struggle—not to mention all the sadists, scammers and opportunists who use "theoretical models" to veil their motives and who are a bit tougher than ol' Adorno, who always had a servant nearby ready with his pipe and slippers.
But either way they won and we lost and now we get to see what "liberation" looks like (or as Marcuse called it: "freedom from the established reality"): multiple generations of miserable narcisssists who know nothing but their desires and genitals, who are so fattened on fantasy that the slighest touch of reality causes a jarring ego shock they can only respond to with tantrums and denunciations.
And most hilarious of all: now that all established traditions are mocked, weakened and severed—nation, religion, community, family etc—we can see who rules unimpeded and crafts every brain and soul to its precise specifications: the Market God. Who says capitalism and socialism are opposites? The Crit Theorists and their utopian nihilism turned out to be the greatest gift the ownership class could ever ask for.
Yes but LW - Leftists are well paid to be Silly, and absolved by public declaration of the Official Faith from any sins (although it does leave them open to being toppled by other leftists) *and* Managerialism insulates them from any professional responsibility - in fact you usually can’t find out who made a decision. Also by controlling the school faculties from Kindergarten to PhD they are and will continue to screen for compliance.
OTOH Conservative *politicians* are well paid and selected via the media and their very own opponents and consultants to be not only stupid but more importantly weak. The Chief functions of Conservatives is to contain and betray their voters, since the Tory Party Grain Deals of 200 years ago.
But what is your concept of politics? LW-
You seem to suffer Sir from the long held Enlightenment delusion that reason, facts, truth and God help you fair play matter. This Sir is the core error of the Enlightenment. The Silly party is the Silly party because at the operative level they know this is nonsense, also they being “silly” are infinitely flexible on beliefs, facts, have no problem deceiving and abusing anyone.
> Because Silly or not, they grasp politics is power, that’s all.
>The Stupid party believes the Silly lies and keeps trying to play by rules that change constantly.
In fairness, this is Stupid.
Good news is they wised up.
The modern right, which simply means people who don’t want their kids raped or mutilated by lunatics and fiends - isn’t right at all, it just isn’t crazy.
The modern right are at least as socialist as Sweden in their desire for socialism’s free stuff, as capitalist in person as Clive and the East India Company, in America nearly bereft of leadership beyond PT Barnum Trump, fortunately armed to F All.
Politics is Power, except when it’s money, it was never ideas, and we were never ruled by Law.
Only by Men.
Since the men have been replaced by Harpies, Eunuchs, lunatics and the “Left” welcomed them, we’re having a “rightward” shift. But we don’t need to “penetrate” the ranks of the Fiend Ward of an insane asylum we call “Elites.”
Something else will happen other than the Rule of the Mad.
UPDATE: “equalitarianism has to be abandoned and hereditarianism embraced. For this to happen—as Nathan Cofnas argues—smart people have to move away from the equalitarian thesis ..”
Once again, please be reminded that Lorenzo is in Australia and won't be around for several hours (currently 4:12 pm GMT). In the meantime, do play nicely!
Good Lord, this was excellent! A glimmer of sanity in our present day shitstorm of lies and censorship. You listed plenty of high-quality sources and carefully arranged logic and evidence to make an airtight case that shouldn't even have to be made, because it's so bloody obviously true that it should go without saying. It reads like Galileo stamping his foot and muttering under his breath, "Yet it moves." Someday, people will look back on our era and scratch their heads in bewilderment. "How could they have been so ignorant? Why did they follow such obviously stupid and destructive ideologies and ruin the civilization they'd inherited?"
Well, many of us didn't believe that nonsense, but the ones who did had the backing of a psychotic ruling class that invested all of its resources into imposing their luxury beliefs on everyone else.
Thanks so much for writing this! The world may be insane, but it's reassuring to know there are others out there who are not.
Who gives a shit? There are intellectually and physically superior people to be found in every skin tone and in every continent. Using crude racial categories will not help you find the geniuses who are capable of moving civilization forward. Only looking directly at individuals can do that. Resorting to being proud of your racial identity is strong evidence that you are personally NOT one of the chosen few.
I'm finding these days that our measures of intelligence seem to directly correlate with the amount of cognitive dissonance one can withstand. The takeaway, of course, being that I'm not as smart as I thought I was.
I repeat, Warby, you are a genius. I quoted you extensively on X, fwiw.
Please note: the only culture that gets the balance between freedom and justice correctly, insofar as is possible in this fallen world, is Christianity, with its Jewish roots.
And also note: it was Christianity alone that prepared the ground for the eradication of the injustices of slavery and misogyny.
"rationalise nonsense"
Great concept. Will add it to my tool box.
In fact, reading you gives me joy.
And one final thing, since it’s Lent. In a post Xn world, we have forgotten the deadliest of the deadly sins: pride.
“The rise of national populism is deeply connected to the failure of conventional conservative politics...”
… and to the success and perceived success that the Left has achieved by "breaking the rules" - that is by subverting democratic processes through its march through the institutions, using the government's coercive power to advance its ideas and interests, and using the law to punish political enemies. The populist right has chosen to fight fire with fire by adopting the Left’s tactics.
Much of the work of people like Patrick Deneen, Sohrab Amari, Molly Hemingway, Michael Anton, and Rod Dreher are attempts to wrap an intellectual veneer around the right’s tactical shift. The problem is that ends are inextricably tied to means; consequently, the new right’s policies and goals are converging with those of the left.
"Differences in cognitive patterns between men and women is enough on its own to establish that equalitarianism is false." Definitely. Women as a group outperform men in school from gradeschool through college.
The Black-White income gap in the chart noted is artificially small; as we have de-facto quotas here.
A better indicator of the size of the gap can be identified in the wealth gap adjusted for income; as government can take from whites and give to blacks, but it cannot/will not (for obvious reasons) ban them from wasting what’s been given to them.
I’ll add a link to a chart on it here when I get home.
Lobaczewski had some interesting things to say about this which I covered in a piece on social justice: https://ponerology.substack.com/p/the-social-justice-warlords
Has there ever been a more malevolent and dishonest school of thought than the Crit Theorists of Frankfurt? Has History ever seen less grateful refugees than Marcuse et al. who were rescued from the European inferno, given safe and prosperous lives here in America, only to constantly reflexively denounce the country and people who'd saved them and work for their ultimate destruction? (Marcuse even claimed there was more freedom in the USSR than in the USA! And yet he chose California over Moscow for some reason.)
And while these con men refused to explain the contours of their future utopia, at least Adorno may have gotten a glimpse of it when he went back to Germany to teach in the 60s.
His students, the first generation of post-WW2 spoiled infants who lived in unprecedented safety and prosperity, toyed with the old man, mocked him for being a bourgeois geezer, could only express themselves in either fantasies of destruction or lewd innuendo.
"I established a theoretical model of thought," Adorno remarked. "How could I have suspected that people would want to implement it with Molotov cocktails?"
LOLOL Now this tells us all we need to know about the eternal divide between cossetted thinkers who live in the world of the symbolic and actual humans who fight and struggle—not to mention all the sadists, scammers and opportunists who use "theoretical models" to veil their motives and who are a bit tougher than ol' Adorno, who always had a servant nearby ready with his pipe and slippers.
But either way they won and we lost and now we get to see what "liberation" looks like (or as Marcuse called it: "freedom from the established reality"): multiple generations of miserable narcisssists who know nothing but their desires and genitals, who are so fattened on fantasy that the slighest touch of reality causes a jarring ego shock they can only respond to with tantrums and denunciations.
And most hilarious of all: now that all established traditions are mocked, weakened and severed—nation, religion, community, family etc—we can see who rules unimpeded and crafts every brain and soul to its precise specifications: the Market God. Who says capitalism and socialism are opposites? The Crit Theorists and their utopian nihilism turned out to be the greatest gift the ownership class could ever ask for.
Yes but LW - Leftists are well paid to be Silly, and absolved by public declaration of the Official Faith from any sins (although it does leave them open to being toppled by other leftists) *and* Managerialism insulates them from any professional responsibility - in fact you usually can’t find out who made a decision. Also by controlling the school faculties from Kindergarten to PhD they are and will continue to screen for compliance.
OTOH Conservative *politicians* are well paid and selected via the media and their very own opponents and consultants to be not only stupid but more importantly weak. The Chief functions of Conservatives is to contain and betray their voters, since the Tory Party Grain Deals of 200 years ago.
But what is your concept of politics? LW-
You seem to suffer Sir from the long held Enlightenment delusion that reason, facts, truth and God help you fair play matter. This Sir is the core error of the Enlightenment. The Silly party is the Silly party because at the operative level they know this is nonsense, also they being “silly” are infinitely flexible on beliefs, facts, have no problem deceiving and abusing anyone.
> Because Silly or not, they grasp politics is power, that’s all.
>The Stupid party believes the Silly lies and keeps trying to play by rules that change constantly.
In fairness, this is Stupid.
Good news is they wised up.
The modern right, which simply means people who don’t want their kids raped or mutilated by lunatics and fiends - isn’t right at all, it just isn’t crazy.
The modern right are at least as socialist as Sweden in their desire for socialism’s free stuff, as capitalist in person as Clive and the East India Company, in America nearly bereft of leadership beyond PT Barnum Trump, fortunately armed to F All.
Politics is Power, except when it’s money, it was never ideas, and we were never ruled by Law.
Only by Men.
Since the men have been replaced by Harpies, Eunuchs, lunatics and the “Left” welcomed them, we’re having a “rightward” shift. But we don’t need to “penetrate” the ranks of the Fiend Ward of an insane asylum we call “Elites.”
Something else will happen other than the Rule of the Mad.
Herr Goebbels, what about the Intellectuals?
Goebbels laughed.
“They’ll be with us.”
UPDATE: “equalitarianism has to be abandoned and hereditarianism embraced. For this to happen—as Nathan Cofnas argues—smart people have to move away from the equalitarian thesis ..”
…and so they shall…
…and indeed are…
This seems to me like you are in agreement with Cofnas. There is no disagreement here?