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.
Tell the bureaucracy they’re alone. My name is Soldier, and I’m deserting your ass.
Y’all can fight.
Need help? Call the acting SECDEF, she’s a Karen hiding in Puerto Rico. 🇵🇷
This takes the sting out of deserting lol.
My name is worker. And I’m doing the bare minimum as of yesterday.
You do it.
As for Iron, try soy?
As for Law; LMAO. Which one of my family and friends coming to arrest me? For what? I literally didn’t do nothing, I am doing nothing. Nothing ain’t illegal.
It’s all over. Enjoy the social security while it lasts.
Cuz my name is FINTECH Networks and boy is FIN Over.
Nothing ain’t illegal, if you’ll indulge the double negative.
Every gene pool (tribe, nation, empire, or whatever) sees itself as superior.
Collective intelligence is how evolutionary psychology is measured.
Cultures that are inbred tend to be pre-liberal or ILLIBERAL (low-social-trust).
The NW european gene pool became high-social-trust after it became outbred, after the Church banned cousin marriage and the nuclear family model was established.
DNA tells the scientific story.
When taken to its insane, radical, postmodernist extremes, "woke" "anti-racism" rejects scientific rationalism and the rest of the Enlightenment project.
The banning of cousin marriage came way too late in history to have had much effect on the “racial” gene pool of Europeans. I’m pretty sure European villagers didn’t stray too far from their family tree for mating even in fairly recent centuries.
Actually they did. Though the rates of cousin marriage may never have been particularly high. The Church was sanctifying and extending Roman practices.
The contrast is with the Islamic Middle East, where centuries of cousin marriage is clearly having dysgenic effects.
Not according to the UK birth defect data in the UK (Pakistanis are less than 3% of the UK population and generate 30 per cent of the birth defects). They are also a disproportionate burden on the NHS in general.
Right but that's first cousin marriage, not second, right?
To get even more specific, men from Mirpur in PoK Kashmir were overrepresented in the "grooming gangs" of UK. So it wasn't "Muslim gangs" or "Asian gangs", or even "Pakistani gangs." It was Muslim Mirpuri gangs. Very specific. If you look at their mug shots they do look dysgenic. Mirpuris also have a bad reputation in Pakistan itself. Perhaps the UK should put a lock on immigration from that particular area. Although I don't know if these specific criminals were new immigrants or born in the UK, so such a ban may not work when you consider that Mirpuris have been immigrating to UK since the 1920s and I don't know that prior generations were overrepresented in crime. I wouldn't think so. This predating on non-muslim girls in the UK seems to be a recent phenomena.
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.
Learning or knowing just how smart you are not (or no longer are) is also a measure of just how smart you still are.
To repeat a prior remark: there are probably almost none of us who have not thought, said, or done some various quantity of stupid things in our lives. We should be able to acknowledge that fact (at least to ourselves) but also not dwell on those occasions over much, since none of us are so perfect (or so "privileged") as to never fall below our personal self image.
when a narrative fails in a way that is destructive to the social form built on it, meta-narrative (aka "holistic" or meta-cognitive) capacities become more important to social survival.
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.
A part of the great success of Christianity was in incorporating things well outside the original doctrine. Look at the difference between the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant branches. We tend to be products only of the latter two.
The bull you cite only applied to the indigenous of the Americas - at the behest of the missionaries converting the heathens there, not as some great moment of insight by His Holiness.
There was no injunction against slavery in the early Churches, that would be an aspect of the influence of the Enlightenment on religion. The general abolition movement beginning in the 18th century.
“…notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”
You could own and trade slaves, you could just not enslave them, since by implication it covered all folk with natural rights. Africans did the enslaving. Besides, tropical Africa was so pathogenically dangerous for Europeans, if a European went inland they have a life expectancy of about a year.
The Christian reconquista in Spain (al Andalus) took about 800 years, plenty of time to study the Moorish/Islamic system, including its dependency on a slave economy.
As NW Europe became capitalist and then industrial (due to an expanding urban commoner class), the need for slavery, a large rural peasantry and serfdom (and low-social-trust, clannish, collectivism in general) diminished.
Colonialist Brits morally justified their system of domination by abolishing slavery and sending the Navy to stop the slave trade from east Africa to the middle east.
Starving 400,000 people in India to stop peasant rebellions was the price of being morally superior. (irony intended)
It did not. Not enthusiastically in any case. It was tolerated as a necessary fact of a fallen world. And given its at least as old a prostitution… it was simply a fact of life until some Radical Christians took seriously the scriptural signs of the kingdom of God where slaves will be free. There’s a reason that early Christianity was mocked as the cult of slaves and women. Early Christianity’s tolerance of slavery was rooted in the Jewish tradition which allowed it but circumscribed it significantly, eg slaves had to be offered freedom every seven years, masters were obligated to feed, clothe and shelter their slaves as if they were their own children and limits on corporal punishment. There’s a lot of rules around owning slaves in Leviticus (I think).
Alas, the abolitionist’s task remains VERY incomplete, especially today.
I would read St Paul’s letter to Philemon. It’s a fascinating insight into the early Church’s recognition of the dignity of the human person within the institution of Roman slavery, and speaks to the dilemma of having to operate in an imperfect world while seeking perfection.
As a person with zilch formal religious training or meaningful exposure, but who is now interested in the concept of the Judeo-Christian cultural influence on establishing much of our Western civilization (compared to the others), thanks for the Philemon reference. I will want to check that out. Do you also have a single or few sources from the OT handy, in support of your comments about Jewish tradition concerning slaves or other low caste persons? Thanks.
As far as I know, (which is not a lot to my shame as a Christian) I cannot for the life of me remember exactly where in the Torah the rules around slavery or indentured servitude are. I do know the story of Jacob working for his father for 7 years to earn his daughter’s hand in marriage which is the root of those rules I suspect.
If you’re very new to the scriptures, Hebrew and New Testament, I’d highly recommend the Bible in A Year Podcast. You get the whole Bible but broken into the narrative and historical periods plus some excellent exposition on what you just heard that are grounded in the best biblical and archeological scholarship available. And they do cover those rules around slavery at some point which is why Leviticus sticks in my mind.
I had forgotten that I had recently bought, but not yet read, a book hopefully addressing that question: The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought, by Eric Nelson [2010]. In my copy it looks like the previous owner has marked it up extensively, so it should be even more interesting to read when (if?) I can get to it. Relatively short at 139 pages of real text.
"Early Christianity’s tolerance of slavery was rooted in the Jewish tradition which allowed it but circumscribed it significantly, eg slaves had to be offered freedom every seven years, masters were obligated to feed, clothe and shelter their slaves as if they were their own children and limits on corporal punishment. There’s a lot of rules around owning slaves in Leviticus (I think)."
These are the same rules for slavery that Islam has. Muslims today try to make out that Mohammed created those rules.
There was at least one (religious/heterodox) schism in/from Islam that banned slavery: Bahaism (which in its origins was rooted in Twelver Shiism/Shaykhism and the idea that Christ would return soon to bring world peace, justice, etc.).
Most Muslim societies have accepted "western" (modern rationalist) values about slavery, effectively "eradicating" it. Western military force was used to impose the abolition of slavery in east Africa for instance, so resentment of western meddling persists.
In the West, abolishing slavery was an elite status signal of people that used it to justify colonialism (400,000 people starved in India to maintain colonial control) because the invention of steam engines (and related machinery) made most slavery unnecessary, or less profitable.
Elite social status signaling now, by the cultural-left ("woke"), was preceded by elite social status signaling by Victorian-abolitionist status signaling in the 1800s.
Is Genesis 1 a reference to renunciate purity myths?
Good that we recall that such inventions and the use of wood or other fossil fuels led to the replacement of human slaves with Buckminster Fuller's energy slaves.
Unfortunately, another invention, the cotton gin invented in 1994 (I believe) led to reinvigorating the cotton industry in the US South, and retaining the ability to be profitable with human slave labor.
This is perhaps a subset of the (cultural?) evolution from a high labor/low capital economy to an increasingly low labor/high capital one. This may now have almost reached the point that no labor is needed. This in turn means we are now looking at UBI or some other scheme to provide "joint ownership" of that capital as such return to capital will be the only viable economic income mode going forward?
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
Islam accepts the Bible myths, including Adam/Eve. Any myth can be interpreted in a number of ways, largely dependent on the context it is seen in. Before industrialization (which mostly eliminated the perceived need for slavery) most people could not imagine being able to sustain civilization without slave labor. The hypocrisy was as evident to some as was the need for slave (or peasant) labor to most.
There was some abolitions before industrialisation: typically where slavery was marginal and so, for instance, Buddhism could be mobilised against it.
Also, Islam has the extra problem that Sharia — the rules of the Sovereign of the Universe — explicitly sanctifies slavery, hence you get various contemporary re-impositions of slavery by the more virulent Salafis.
Well...it seems Christianity placed too much emphasis on equalitarianism.
There needs to be a better incorporation of the realities of Biology, that grant different groups with different aptitudes of leadership and social contribution.
1000 Pharaohs can't build a pyramid, one million slaves cant build a pyramid....they need each other
Not sure what you mean. Genesis 1 says male and female are equally in the image of God, but they are not interchangeable. Christianity does not deny the realities of biology.
I think you missed the point of the article. It was speaking of progressive equalitarianism. Which is in fact bs. That is, women and men are different, yes. But Xty says they are equal before God, since both equally in the divine image.
And of course there are differences between people. Some are stronger, smarter, etc. But only Xty says the strong must not exploit the weak. Might does not make right. Or don’t you believe that?
I actually do believe might makes right under the logic that in a competitive world there is always land disputes and the culture that can best protect its borders and create a safe environment for women and children is the culture that is morally correct.
Similarly...what makes Christianity "correct" or not compared to Islam, and Judaism is how strong it is. It is not currently strong. People are happy to be Islamic or Jewish and they are embarrassed to be Christian.
How do you explain that? What went wrong?
I'm saying that Christianity was too egalitarian giving social critics too much opportunity to weaken it.
Do you have an explanation for why Western world and Christianity is in such rapid decline?
The explanation is found in Scripture. Xty never said things were going to get better and better. In fact, the Church is undergoing the “long defeat”. Many of us believe it may be end times. It has to do with both enmity without and enmity within the church.
I also believe in strong borders, but that is completely consonant with Xty.
What makes Xty “correct” is Jesus Christ. I’m not embarrassed to be a Christian.
The Western world is in decline bc liberalism has failed. Not Xty.
"Similarly...what makes Christianity "correct" or not compared to Islam, and Judaism is how strong it is. It is not currently strong. People are happy to be Islamic or Jewish and they are embarrassed to be Christian."
--- Don't let the internet fool you! Most Jews are non-practicing. I think most don't even believe in God. And Islam has a huge turnover rate of people who easily convert, but then leave within a few years, quietly. On top of that born Muslims around the world are leaving in droves. Depending on their location, culture and family situation, they have to keep it a secret that they no longer believe, but there is a growing number of them speaking out online about it, sometimes using aliases and hiding their faces, and some just coming straight out and declaring their "ex-muslim" status. It's actually a fast growing movement, the Ex-Mulim Movement.
Where did you get that notion about Xty? There is always a need for government. See, e.g., Romans 13.
It’s more than a nice sentiment. As I said, without Genesis 1, there is no basis for eradicating slavery or treating women as equal in dignity with men. Paganism and Islam, the pagan monotheism, are notoriously misogynistic.
“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.
Whence the emergence of Mutually Assured Cancellation, as I've written about in various places. The right has found a way to return service like Rafa and it's getting pretty grim.
Please elaborate how the right has used the same strategies as the left with any success.
People like you would rather lose honorably and let your opponent win dishonorably so you can claim the moral high ground. An army who refuses to use the guerrilla warfare tactics they are being pummeled with is stupid, not some moral hero.
At this point I think that it’s mostly aspirational. According to John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, Trump wanted him to sic the IRS on James Comey and others. I doubt that Donald “I am your retribution” Trump will allow himself to again be talked out of weaponizing the IRS or the DoJ should he be reelected in 2024.
Catholic integralists like Adrian Vermeule want to use the government to support “substantive moral principles that conduce to the common good.” Nationalists want to institute a muscular industrial policy.
The idea of using the Left’s illiberal and illegal tactics against them is alluring but, in the end, self-defeating. Better, I think to enforce the law rather than to join the lawbreakers. If neither party will defend the rule of law under which people are treated equally regardless of party, wealth, race, religion, ethnicity, or position, then we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of tribal warfare. We’ve seen how poorly that works out in the Middle East and Africa.
You mean NGO laundering? Sure, that would be great but the fact remains that in America, NGOs are primarily funded by private persons and organization? How do we withdraw tax funding of activism in the US? We cannot without totalitarian methods.
If tax funding was withdrawn from all educational institutions that employed activist scholars (Marxists, Critical Theorists, etc) and no organisation receiving such funding could have any form of DEI officers, courses, training etc, most of this nonsense would dissipate with remarkable speed.
In the US, charitable donations are tax deductible. You cannot end "tax funding" without either eliminating the charitable tax deduction or limiting deductions to certain enumerated groups (e.g.,progressive/liberal/leftist organizations). Both are non-starters.
Efforts to make DEI illegal runs into free speech and other constitutional concerns in the US. Even people who agreed that CRT was being taught in colleges and schools defended it saying it was just a viewpoint that was being taught (no indoctrination, just conservative conspiracy!). Of course, only leftwing/progressive viewpoints are allowed to be taught. If college campuses were teaching about the "replacement theory" just as theory, there would be hysterical meltdowns in the US.
My point is that sometimes you must give how you get and liberals neuter the counterrepsonse before it's even happened.
Separately from all this, we are stuck with cancel culture on both sides for the foreseeable. And no, I don't blame Tories for deciding to return service in those circumstances.
If I understand his story correctly, Warby was cancelled by the "right".
So was Musa Al Gharbi.
Depending on how broadly the "right" is defined as to historical origins, there were 100s/1,000s of years of pre-modern, pre-liberal, or anti-liberal Absolutism and Oriental Despotism to pick examples from.
Some social scientists see the radical-extremist (and "woke") Left as the re-animation of traditional rejections of Enlightenment values, a "Christian" heresy.
The postmodern left's anti-democratic rejection of classical liberalism borrows and reanimates ideas from the anti-democratic, pre-modern "right".
A simple explanation is that the social perch of the medieval intellectual and artistic classes was dependent on their servitude to the Ancien Regime, the Alter and Crown. As the urban commoner classes expanded via river and sea trade (etc.) and increased literacy and numeracy, the old intellectual classes took fright at the competition.
The "woke" PMC, also known as the New Clerisy, are in a similar position as the medieval intellectual classes, dependent on the new "woke" globalist elites, digital capitalists.
Everyone always goes back to Trump. He's the symptom, not the cause. You've provided no concrete examples of the right using the same tactics as the left and having success with them.
The IRS and DOJ were already weaponized before Trump. Remember the IRS targeting conservative group's during Obama's presidency? DOJ and other civil service people refusing to do what Trump, as executive, required? This was the noble resistance, but the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue gay marriage licenses was a villain for her resistance.
The laws and policies are being weaponized and enforcing them won't do anything to change things. It's pure naïveté. Progressives change the law by "reinterpreting" it so they change nothing and also change everything. Not to mention, social norms and other non-legal policies. A neighbor just told me her husband's financial company started handing out pride flags to everyone in January. It's not even pride month but that doesn't matter. LGBTQIA+++ everyday, every month. DEI as a mandatory part of workplace policies, trainings and promotions. Which specific laws would you like enforced to protect us from these ideologies being rammed down our throats?
Tribal warfare is the way of man. Anything outside this is an anomaly and requires constant vigilance and maintenance of certain social norms.
And here is our escape Mama Bear - DC is slowly deserting their posts. Everything they try to do falls short in farce, usually to the perils of their own choking to death system.
And they’ve lost their force, the faith of the people, take comfort in fantasy, narrative, sycophancy.. and they are all very old.
They have no bench, no muscle, and really no money.
They peaked in 2020 , massive overreach.
Trump has already really done his task. They are fatally wounded, dying of old age , all the talent fled.
Classical liberalism is the rejection of tribalism. Medieval fealty oaths were replaced by Constitutional order, clannish social forms were replaced by high-social-trust institutions.
The problem now is that the high-social-trust system (modern rationalism) is disintegrating because it is "fragile" (Nassim Taleb) and is being disrupted by technological and economic change and postmodern cultural conditions.
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher, more complex level (social form)
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
Trump is a tribalist (Celtic, "clannish" origins) that viciously attacks people on his "side" (defined broadly) that he sees as being disloyal.
That kind of intense clannish-alpha-leader loyalty behavior is ancient, pre-modern, well known (medieval Fealty Oaths), and is only superficially similar to the kind of toxic postmodern/neo-marxist cancel culture seen on the "woke" "left".
Pre-modern tribalism was defeated by classical liberalism in most of the western world 100s of years ago.
Classical liberalism is similarly being defeated by postmodern-relativist "woke" ILLIBERALISM (neo-marxism).
Postmodernism is a feature of evolving culture, as driven by techno-economic disruption (InfoGlut.WWW, globalism, suburban consumer culture) and the resulting CRISIS OF MEANING (John Vervaeke).
Chris Rufo and many others have been calling for something like Conservatism v2.0, which will uphold and reform classical liberalism (which is what most "conservative" ideology is, at least in the USA).
For Rufo's New Conservatism to be effective, he will have to go beyond tweaking the existing conservative paradigm and adopt some kind of plan that is anti-fragile to postmodern disruption, IMO.
The underlying forces resulting in postmodern disruption can't be stopped, but they can be adapted to via psychological and cultural evolution. The superficial pathologies ("woke", cancel culture, ILLIBERALISM, corrupt global elites, etc.) that result from postmodern disruption CAN be stopped to some extent.
But then a long game of wack-a-mole sets in because the superficial social pathologies of postmodern-relativism will re-emerge in new forms over time from underlying evolutionary causes:
1. loss of belief that the renunciation of evil and sin is necessary for order and civilization
2. loss of belief that high-social-trust in institutions that emerged early in the evolution of modern-rationalist, Enlightenment culture.
3. the disintegration of the modern nation-state system (see Martin Van Creveld, 1996)
4. the disintegration of national industrial/manufacturing capitalism and property ownership and replacement by unregulated global digital capitalism and international finance.
5. the failure of the peasant and working classes, including the "lower middle" classes to organize political opposition to globalists and digital capitalists. Trumpism (nationalist, working class populism) is necessary but not sufficient.
“Tribal warfare is the way of man. Anything outside this is an anomaly and requires constant vigilance and maintenance of certain social norms.”
I agree. That’s why I’m advocating that we constantly and vigilantly maintain social norms rather than joining the Left in working to destroy social norms.
I said certain social norms. Many of the left's social norms must be destroyed and replaced with better social norms. It is forbidden to forbid is a terrible social norm.
And what is the “bourgeois obscenity” you wish to exterminate? Bourgeois values such as persistence, hard work, punctuality, tolerance, civility, honesty? You know, all those hallmarks of “white supremacy”?
"civilizations" roughly correspond to meta-narratives that transcend tribalism, usually via (Axial) religion.
a civilization uses violence and war to maintain both narratives and meta-narratives. loss of either could be catastrophic, but especially meta-narrative.
this describes how postmodern culture (consumerism, relativism, globalism) is already far beyond fragmentation into narratives and has become atomized:
The problems we have now: Throughout the twentieth century, from the beginning of the breakdown of the mainstream systems until the breakdown of subcultures, the underlying worry was “not enough meaning.” The atomized mode delivers, for the first time, way too much meaning. It is overwhelming, like trying to drink from a firehose.
Because the shards of meaning do not relate with each other, it’s impossible to compare them. There is no standard of value, so everything seems equally trivial. The collapse of subcultural community has atomized society, and we find it impossible to construct satisfactory selves from the jagged fragments of meaning we’re bombarded with.
Maybe we start by observing that atomized “micro-narratives” can’t survive outside a liberal, pluralistic, rule-of-law framework that allows different narratives to peacefully coexist. Want your ideas to be tolerated? Then be willing to tolerate different ideas.
The ILLIBERALISM (ideological tribalism) of the postmodern "left" (and any other ideologically tribal narrative) is a given.
Such tribalists don't want "tolerance", by definition they are sociopathic narcissists that lie and gaslight constantly. And now, AI is being weaponized to smear (anti-"woke") critics of regime propaganda and censorship:
Let’s start by I don’t accept anyone else’s Frame.
In this case it’s the Civil War the Left chose. In war you accept battle or justly face any fate including extermination for being contemptible.
No one who isn’t fighting with me or against me has any say or purchase. Want a say?
Then take my risks, the enemy’s risks. Or die at our mutual discretion.
Your world never existed Mr. Fulmer, it was simply the rear and safer areas. Decades of being undermined and betrayed by users, cowards, lawyers and the peddlers of “norms” destroyed the fantasy. Now the rest of you can face reality on your own merits. Call it “meritocracy.”
Lol
*here’s an example; the response time for US artillery is one hour, if ever. In WW2 it was 5 minutes.
Why?
Because the pedlars of social norms were outraged by Friendly Fire casualties, so they instituted *norms* to help check this, as it’s bad publicity. The casualties inflicted by the enemy in the ensuing 15 minutes aren’t… bad publicity. So in Vietnam it went to 15 minutes.
In the war on terror Iraq Afghanistan it went up to an hour, because social norms put lawyers - JAG , Judge Advocate Generals- in the loop to enforce social norms n stuff so back to an hour. This is known as JAG poisoning in our little society.
JAG poisoning, or norms if you like.
After Bush lost midterms in 2006, they got real a little again and pulled the poison for a couple of years to get it back to 15 minutes. It shot up again under Obama and Mr COIN McChrystal…. And now we have Privates in JAG who wag their fingers at Commanders, who being the enforcers of social norms cave without protest.
^Rejoice Norm, er Richard ^ this was your victory. Peak norms.
But you lost us, and well everyone who isn’t as Rawls crazy as you are…
But take the field, perhaps you’ll prevail… You won’t have us, except as foes.
First, nowhere did I voice support for the “norm” of letting politicians dictate battle tactics. Second, you seem determined to make my case that by adopting the Left’s tactics and policies, we will eventually achieve the same results - though results that neither you nor the Left intend.
Tearing down the “oppressive” norms by which people peacefully cooperate to achieve their disparate goals has long been the Left’s dream. They “reason” that once free from oppression, they can “socially construct” utopia.
Trump will never be able to weaponize the bureaucracy because his motives for doing so do not align with the motives of the bureaucracy itself. They know they'll be around long after he is gone.
"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.
Feminisation of education? Please elaborate, because as far as I remember everyone had to sit down and be quiet during classes, even back in the prehistoric times I was in school.
Yes, but boys were not much in competition for girls career wise. Expand the competition, and a disadvantage becomes operative in ways it was not before. The feminisation of schooling — teaching becoming increasingly female, internal processes increasingly reflecting female preferences — is a clearer phenomenon. Various schools appear to have got worse at teaching boys, in particular, literacy, for instance.
Having watched my brothers being bullied by teachers in an ALL female staffed primary school… yeah primary school is especially built around a lot of feminine sensibilities and instincts. I don’t see much affirmative action to correct THAT massive sex-ratio skew.
Dr Leonard Sax did an excellent, evidenced explanation of sex differences between boys and girls and how, boys can suffer from female teachers who lack awareness of her feminine biological biases.
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.
The CIA used the Frankfurters, some real dicks, as part of their creation of controlled opposition on the Left. The totalitarianism inherent to the "left" was useful idiocy to the corporate-state/ military-industrial-complex.
Every ideological superstructure has a materialist base and class base (which in the case of ["woke"] totalitarian humanism would be digital capital, the tech revolution, “financialization” of the kind that has emerged from neoliberalism, the expanded technocratic class which is the product of the wider degree of specialization and the division of labor rooted in increased technological sophistication).
Additionally, “wokeness” is rooted in the wider infrastructure of statecraft which can be traced, at the irreducible minimum, to the
[--->] collusion between the Frankfurt School and the OSS during WW2,
followed by the CIA’s creation of the Congress of Cultural Freedom in the 1950s. While elements of the ideological framework of totalitarian humanism may have their roots in the cultural revolution of the 1960s/1970s,
[--->] in its present form “wokeness” represents a co-optation of those cultural patterns
by the liberal wing of the capitalist class ( a specific strategy that was devised by Fred Dutton as far back as 1970). The insurgent sectors of the managerial class (primarily the expanded professional class and rising middle-class sectors among traditional outgroups) became the socioeconomic foundation for this co-optation, which allowed the liberal wing of capitalism to marginalize labor unions while cultivating these rising middle-class sectors as a replacement constituency for the traditional working class [meaning D-party voters].
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.
modern rationalism, the result of a historically outbred gene pool, is not anti-fragile to disruption (postmodern social conditions, managerialism), and thus will be replaced with anti-fragile meta rationalism in the evolution of culture.
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 ..”
I put way more emphasis on cultural differences (which include differences in family patterns) than he does. My version of the hereditarian thesis includes genetic differences but is not focused on them. A particularly good discussion of the complexities is here:
Right, I understand that difference, but here in this final rejoinder to him, you seem to me on the same page as him in re: for conservative politics to succeed, the frank & outright dismissal of the equalitarian hypothesis is necessary.
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.
Reverse affirmative action?
By merit alone?
A sudden reversal away from quotas?
Appeal to fair play?
The most qualified?
Too late.
It worked well enough against us, it can work for us.
Here’s an idea: who shall rule?
The strongest.
The strongest decide what’s just.
Thanks for fatally undermining the system that raised you to the dizzying heights of unworthiness.
Hope you enjoyed the ride.
This clearly isn’t working for we who built, maintained, defended the system.
The rest of you can’t.
You can’t do anything but plagiarize each other, call lawyers, become HR Commissars… but now you have no guards…
(You’re out of money too, lol).
Individual merit? 🤣🤣🤣
Not sure who you think I am…
I’m refuting any retreat from tribalism. Too late.
Merit ? No. Individuals are dead.
The Merit is how strong is your tribe.
That’s what a person says who is unremarkable in his tribe.
Lol , well since you’re remarkable don’t waste your time with me.
Tribe? LMAO.
You’re the one who said tribe? Well yes you’re right, weak minded racist.
"This clearly isn’t working for we who built, maintained, defended the system."
Please refer to Pournelle's Iron Law of Bureaucracy.
Bureaucracy didn’t build it.
However it may now defend it.
Also repair and maintain it.
Also grow their own food and truck it and keep the lights on.
Fuck em. They can learn to take the joke they played on us.
You miss the point of the Pournelle reference.
No, I don’t.
You Sir miss me.
Respectfully;
Tell the bureaucracy they’re alone. My name is Soldier, and I’m deserting your ass.
Y’all can fight.
Need help? Call the acting SECDEF, she’s a Karen hiding in Puerto Rico. 🇵🇷
This takes the sting out of deserting lol.
My name is worker. And I’m doing the bare minimum as of yesterday.
You do it.
As for Iron, try soy?
As for Law; LMAO. Which one of my family and friends coming to arrest me? For what? I literally didn’t do nothing, I am doing nothing. Nothing ain’t illegal.
It’s all over. Enjoy the social security while it lasts.
Cuz my name is FINTECH Networks and boy is FIN Over.
Nothing ain’t illegal, if you’ll indulge the double negative.
I hope I elucidated sufficiently.
Cheers !
Every gene pool (tribe, nation, empire, or whatever) sees itself as superior.
Collective intelligence is how evolutionary psychology is measured.
Cultures that are inbred tend to be pre-liberal or ILLIBERAL (low-social-trust).
The NW european gene pool became high-social-trust after it became outbred, after the Church banned cousin marriage and the nuclear family model was established.
DNA tells the scientific story.
When taken to its insane, radical, postmodernist extremes, "woke" "anti-racism" rejects scientific rationalism and the rest of the Enlightenment project.
The banning of cousin marriage came way too late in history to have had much effect on the “racial” gene pool of Europeans. I’m pretty sure European villagers didn’t stray too far from their family tree for mating even in fairly recent centuries.
Actually they did. Though the rates of cousin marriage may never have been particularly high. The Church was sanctifying and extending Roman practices.
The contrast is with the Islamic Middle East, where centuries of cousin marriage is clearly having dysgenic effects.
What dysgenic effects is it having? I thought centuries of second cousin marriage was safe?
Not according to the UK birth defect data in the UK (Pakistanis are less than 3% of the UK population and generate 30 per cent of the birth defects). They are also a disproportionate burden on the NHS in general.
Right but that's first cousin marriage, not second, right?
To get even more specific, men from Mirpur in PoK Kashmir were overrepresented in the "grooming gangs" of UK. So it wasn't "Muslim gangs" or "Asian gangs", or even "Pakistani gangs." It was Muslim Mirpuri gangs. Very specific. If you look at their mug shots they do look dysgenic. Mirpuris also have a bad reputation in Pakistan itself. Perhaps the UK should put a lock on immigration from that particular area. Although I don't know if these specific criminals were new immigrants or born in the UK, so such a ban may not work when you consider that Mirpuris have been immigrating to UK since the 1920s and I don't know that prior generations were overrepresented in crime. I wouldn't think so. This predating on non-muslim girls in the UK seems to be a recent phenomena.
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.
Learning or knowing just how smart you are not (or no longer are) is also a measure of just how smart you still are.
To repeat a prior remark: there are probably almost none of us who have not thought, said, or done some various quantity of stupid things in our lives. We should be able to acknowledge that fact (at least to ourselves) but also not dwell on those occasions over much, since none of us are so perfect (or so "privileged") as to never fall below our personal self image.
A human brain is not designed to see reality...it's designed to see the narrative that is most in line with it's survival and reproductive interests.
Being able to tolerate cognitive dissonance may be an evolved trait with darwinian advantages
when a narrative fails in a way that is destructive to the social form built on it, meta-narrative (aka "holistic" or meta-cognitive) capacities become more important to social survival.
See William Irwin Thompson on meta-cognition.
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.
Christianity supported slavery, up to and including chattel slavery in the US south.
Yes, but a lot of Abolitionism drew on Christian faith, so it is a mixed story. Even in the C16th, Sublimus Deus banned enslaving folk.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sublimis_Deus
A part of the great success of Christianity was in incorporating things well outside the original doctrine. Look at the difference between the Ethiopian Orthodox Tewahedo Church and the Eastern Orthodox, Roman Catholic and Protestant branches. We tend to be products only of the latter two.
The bull you cite only applied to the indigenous of the Americas - at the behest of the missionaries converting the heathens there, not as some great moment of insight by His Holiness.
There was no injunction against slavery in the early Churches, that would be an aspect of the influence of the Enlightenment on religion. The general abolition movement beginning in the 18th century.
No, Sublimis Deus applied to all indigenous folk:
“…notwithstanding whatever may have been or may be said to the contrary, the said Indians and all other people who may later be discovered by Christians, are by no means to be deprived of their liberty or the possession of their property, even though they be outside the faith of Jesus Christ; and that they may and should, freely and legitimately, enjoy their liberty and the possession of their property; nor should they be in any way enslaved; should the contrary happen, it shall be null and have no effect.”
https://www.papalencyclicals.net/paul03/p3subli.htm
It invokes Aristotelian natural law theory while implicitly rejecting Aristotle’s natural slaves argument.
Yet it placed no injunction on the African slave trade, which was highly profitable for very Catholic countries.
You could own and trade slaves, you could just not enslave them, since by implication it covered all folk with natural rights. Africans did the enslaving. Besides, tropical Africa was so pathogenically dangerous for Europeans, if a European went inland they have a life expectancy of about a year.
The Christian reconquista in Spain (al Andalus) took about 800 years, plenty of time to study the Moorish/Islamic system, including its dependency on a slave economy.
As NW Europe became capitalist and then industrial (due to an expanding urban commoner class), the need for slavery, a large rural peasantry and serfdom (and low-social-trust, clannish, collectivism in general) diminished.
Colonialist Brits morally justified their system of domination by abolishing slavery and sending the Navy to stop the slave trade from east Africa to the middle east.
Starving 400,000 people in India to stop peasant rebellions was the price of being morally superior. (irony intended)
It did not. Not enthusiastically in any case. It was tolerated as a necessary fact of a fallen world. And given its at least as old a prostitution… it was simply a fact of life until some Radical Christians took seriously the scriptural signs of the kingdom of God where slaves will be free. There’s a reason that early Christianity was mocked as the cult of slaves and women. Early Christianity’s tolerance of slavery was rooted in the Jewish tradition which allowed it but circumscribed it significantly, eg slaves had to be offered freedom every seven years, masters were obligated to feed, clothe and shelter their slaves as if they were their own children and limits on corporal punishment. There’s a lot of rules around owning slaves in Leviticus (I think).
Alas, the abolitionist’s task remains VERY incomplete, especially today.
I would read St Paul’s letter to Philemon. It’s a fascinating insight into the early Church’s recognition of the dignity of the human person within the institution of Roman slavery, and speaks to the dilemma of having to operate in an imperfect world while seeking perfection.
As a person with zilch formal religious training or meaningful exposure, but who is now interested in the concept of the Judeo-Christian cultural influence on establishing much of our Western civilization (compared to the others), thanks for the Philemon reference. I will want to check that out. Do you also have a single or few sources from the OT handy, in support of your comments about Jewish tradition concerning slaves or other low caste persons? Thanks.
As far as I know, (which is not a lot to my shame as a Christian) I cannot for the life of me remember exactly where in the Torah the rules around slavery or indentured servitude are. I do know the story of Jacob working for his father for 7 years to earn his daughter’s hand in marriage which is the root of those rules I suspect.
If you’re very new to the scriptures, Hebrew and New Testament, I’d highly recommend the Bible in A Year Podcast. You get the whole Bible but broken into the narrative and historical periods plus some excellent exposition on what you just heard that are grounded in the best biblical and archeological scholarship available. And they do cover those rules around slavery at some point which is why Leviticus sticks in my mind.
Darn, my focus on taxes played with my memory.
I had forgotten that I had recently bought, but not yet read, a book hopefully addressing that question: The Hebrew Republic: Jewish Sources and the Transformation of European Political Thought, by Eric Nelson [2010]. In my copy it looks like the previous owner has marked it up extensively, so it should be even more interesting to read when (if?) I can get to it. Relatively short at 139 pages of real text.
On the matter of Christian influence on what became Western civilisation, I discuss this in this post, drawing a contrast particularly with Islam.
https://www.lorenzofromoz.net/p/hamas-displays-a-muslim-way-of-war
Read the Quran. It's slavery rules are the same as old Jewish rules.
Hardly surprising.
"Early Christianity’s tolerance of slavery was rooted in the Jewish tradition which allowed it but circumscribed it significantly, eg slaves had to be offered freedom every seven years, masters were obligated to feed, clothe and shelter their slaves as if they were their own children and limits on corporal punishment. There’s a lot of rules around owning slaves in Leviticus (I think)."
These are the same rules for slavery that Islam has. Muslims today try to make out that Mohammed created those rules.
Also, even though it took a while, there was nothing in paganism or Islam that would’ve eradicated it. Genesis 1 is the key.
There was at least one (religious/heterodox) schism in/from Islam that banned slavery: Bahaism (which in its origins was rooted in Twelver Shiism/Shaykhism and the idea that Christ would return soon to bring world peace, justice, etc.).
Most Muslim societies have accepted "western" (modern rationalist) values about slavery, effectively "eradicating" it. Western military force was used to impose the abolition of slavery in east Africa for instance, so resentment of western meddling persists.
In the West, abolishing slavery was an elite status signal of people that used it to justify colonialism (400,000 people starved in India to maintain colonial control) because the invention of steam engines (and related machinery) made most slavery unnecessary, or less profitable.
Elite social status signaling now, by the cultural-left ("woke"), was preceded by elite social status signaling by Victorian-abolitionist status signaling in the 1800s.
Is Genesis 1 a reference to renunciate purity myths?
Good that we recall that such inventions and the use of wood or other fossil fuels led to the replacement of human slaves with Buckminster Fuller's energy slaves.
Unfortunately, another invention, the cotton gin invented in 1994 (I believe) led to reinvigorating the cotton industry in the US South, and retaining the ability to be profitable with human slave labor.
This is perhaps a subset of the (cultural?) evolution from a high labor/low capital economy to an increasingly low labor/high capital one. This may now have almost reached the point that no labor is needed. This in turn means we are now looking at UBI or some other scheme to provide "joint ownership" of that capital as such return to capital will be the only viable economic income mode going forward?
This is a pretty good start in understanding the underlying evolutionary forces, even if it doesn't hold up that well to detailed academic analysis:
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher, more complex level (social form)
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
...
It’s a reference to male and female being created in the image of God: the basis for the eradication of slavery and misogyny.
Islam accepts the Bible myths, including Adam/Eve. Any myth can be interpreted in a number of ways, largely dependent on the context it is seen in. Before industrialization (which mostly eliminated the perceived need for slavery) most people could not imagine being able to sustain civilization without slave labor. The hypocrisy was as evident to some as was the need for slave (or peasant) labor to most.
There was some abolitions before industrialisation: typically where slavery was marginal and so, for instance, Buddhism could be mobilised against it.
Also, Islam has the extra problem that Sharia — the rules of the Sovereign of the Universe — explicitly sanctifies slavery, hence you get various contemporary re-impositions of slavery by the more virulent Salafis.
Well...it seems Christianity placed too much emphasis on equalitarianism.
There needs to be a better incorporation of the realities of Biology, that grant different groups with different aptitudes of leadership and social contribution.
1000 Pharaohs can't build a pyramid, one million slaves cant build a pyramid....they need each other
Not sure what you mean. Genesis 1 says male and female are equally in the image of God, but they are not interchangeable. Christianity does not deny the realities of biology.
Christianity does not allow for a ruling class.
All are "equal in the eyes of God"
Nice sentiment but it doesn't work.
I thought that was the whole point of the article
I think you missed the point of the article. It was speaking of progressive equalitarianism. Which is in fact bs. That is, women and men are different, yes. But Xty says they are equal before God, since both equally in the divine image.
And of course there are differences between people. Some are stronger, smarter, etc. But only Xty says the strong must not exploit the weak. Might does not make right. Or don’t you believe that?
I actually do believe might makes right under the logic that in a competitive world there is always land disputes and the culture that can best protect its borders and create a safe environment for women and children is the culture that is morally correct.
Similarly...what makes Christianity "correct" or not compared to Islam, and Judaism is how strong it is. It is not currently strong. People are happy to be Islamic or Jewish and they are embarrassed to be Christian.
How do you explain that? What went wrong?
I'm saying that Christianity was too egalitarian giving social critics too much opportunity to weaken it.
Do you have an explanation for why Western world and Christianity is in such rapid decline?
The explanation is found in Scripture. Xty never said things were going to get better and better. In fact, the Church is undergoing the “long defeat”. Many of us believe it may be end times. It has to do with both enmity without and enmity within the church.
I also believe in strong borders, but that is completely consonant with Xty.
What makes Xty “correct” is Jesus Christ. I’m not embarrassed to be a Christian.
The Western world is in decline bc liberalism has failed. Not Xty.
"Similarly...what makes Christianity "correct" or not compared to Islam, and Judaism is how strong it is. It is not currently strong. People are happy to be Islamic or Jewish and they are embarrassed to be Christian."
--- Don't let the internet fool you! Most Jews are non-practicing. I think most don't even believe in God. And Islam has a huge turnover rate of people who easily convert, but then leave within a few years, quietly. On top of that born Muslims around the world are leaving in droves. Depending on their location, culture and family situation, they have to keep it a secret that they no longer believe, but there is a growing number of them speaking out online about it, sometimes using aliases and hiding their faces, and some just coming straight out and declaring their "ex-muslim" status. It's actually a fast growing movement, the Ex-Mulim Movement.
Where did you get that notion about Xty? There is always a need for government. See, e.g., Romans 13.
It’s more than a nice sentiment. As I said, without Genesis 1, there is no basis for eradicating slavery or treating women as equal in dignity with men. Paganism and Islam, the pagan monotheism, are notoriously misogynistic.
"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.
Whence the emergence of Mutually Assured Cancellation, as I've written about in various places. The right has found a way to return service like Rafa and it's getting pretty grim.
Please elaborate how the right has used the same strategies as the left with any success.
People like you would rather lose honorably and let your opponent win dishonorably so you can claim the moral high ground. An army who refuses to use the guerrilla warfare tactics they are being pummeled with is stupid, not some moral hero.
At this point I think that it’s mostly aspirational. According to John Kelly, Trump’s former chief of staff, Trump wanted him to sic the IRS on James Comey and others. I doubt that Donald “I am your retribution” Trump will allow himself to again be talked out of weaponizing the IRS or the DoJ should he be reelected in 2024.
Catholic integralists like Adrian Vermeule want to use the government to support “substantive moral principles that conduce to the common good.” Nationalists want to institute a muscular industrial policy.
The idea of using the Left’s illiberal and illegal tactics against them is alluring but, in the end, self-defeating. Better, I think to enforce the law rather than to join the lawbreakers. If neither party will defend the rule of law under which people are treated equally regardless of party, wealth, race, religion, ethnicity, or position, then we will find ourselves in an endless cycle of tribal warfare. We’ve seen how poorly that works out in the Middle East and Africa.
Withdrawing tax funding of activism would make a huge difference.
You mean NGO laundering? Sure, that would be great but the fact remains that in America, NGOs are primarily funded by private persons and organization? How do we withdraw tax funding of activism in the US? We cannot without totalitarian methods.
If tax funding was withdrawn from all educational institutions that employed activist scholars (Marxists, Critical Theorists, etc) and no organisation receiving such funding could have any form of DEI officers, courses, training etc, most of this nonsense would dissipate with remarkable speed.
In the US, charitable donations are tax deductible. You cannot end "tax funding" without either eliminating the charitable tax deduction or limiting deductions to certain enumerated groups (e.g.,progressive/liberal/leftist organizations). Both are non-starters.
Efforts to make DEI illegal runs into free speech and other constitutional concerns in the US. Even people who agreed that CRT was being taught in colleges and schools defended it saying it was just a viewpoint that was being taught (no indoctrination, just conservative conspiracy!). Of course, only leftwing/progressive viewpoints are allowed to be taught. If college campuses were teaching about the "replacement theory" just as theory, there would be hysterical meltdowns in the US.
My point is that sometimes you must give how you get and liberals neuter the counterrepsonse before it's even happened.
Totalitarianism it is Madam.
After victory, our turn.
This is the fate of man.
We foolishly forgot the rules.
They foolishly forgot their very real limits, hence the flight into fantasy.
Withdrawal of funds yes.
Any particular process will fail
Hostes and Hostes Humani generis exist for a reason
Separately from all this, we are stuck with cancel culture on both sides for the foreseeable. And no, I don't blame Tories for deciding to return service in those circumstances.
Who is the right cancelling? Even if you could provide a few examples, they would pale in comparison to the left (in scope and consequences).
It seems that traditional lower case liberals are more afraid of the right's reaction that is supposedly coming that than the craziness already here.
If I understand his story correctly, Warby was cancelled by the "right".
So was Musa Al Gharbi.
Depending on how broadly the "right" is defined as to historical origins, there were 100s/1,000s of years of pre-modern, pre-liberal, or anti-liberal Absolutism and Oriental Despotism to pick examples from.
Some social scientists see the radical-extremist (and "woke") Left as the re-animation of traditional rejections of Enlightenment values, a "Christian" heresy.
The postmodern left's anti-democratic rejection of classical liberalism borrows and reanimates ideas from the anti-democratic, pre-modern "right".
A simple explanation is that the social perch of the medieval intellectual and artistic classes was dependent on their servitude to the Ancien Regime, the Alter and Crown. As the urban commoner classes expanded via river and sea trade (etc.) and increased literacy and numeracy, the old intellectual classes took fright at the competition.
The "woke" PMC, also known as the New Clerisy, are in a similar position as the medieval intellectual classes, dependent on the new "woke" globalist elites, digital capitalists.
No, it was absolutely the progressives who came for me.
Everyone always goes back to Trump. He's the symptom, not the cause. You've provided no concrete examples of the right using the same tactics as the left and having success with them.
The IRS and DOJ were already weaponized before Trump. Remember the IRS targeting conservative group's during Obama's presidency? DOJ and other civil service people refusing to do what Trump, as executive, required? This was the noble resistance, but the Kentucky clerk who refused to issue gay marriage licenses was a villain for her resistance.
The laws and policies are being weaponized and enforcing them won't do anything to change things. It's pure naïveté. Progressives change the law by "reinterpreting" it so they change nothing and also change everything. Not to mention, social norms and other non-legal policies. A neighbor just told me her husband's financial company started handing out pride flags to everyone in January. It's not even pride month but that doesn't matter. LGBTQIA+++ everyday, every month. DEI as a mandatory part of workplace policies, trainings and promotions. Which specific laws would you like enforced to protect us from these ideologies being rammed down our throats?
Tribal warfare is the way of man. Anything outside this is an anomaly and requires constant vigilance and maintenance of certain social norms.
And here is our escape Mama Bear - DC is slowly deserting their posts. Everything they try to do falls short in farce, usually to the perils of their own choking to death system.
And they’ve lost their force, the faith of the people, take comfort in fantasy, narrative, sycophancy.. and they are all very old.
They have no bench, no muscle, and really no money.
They peaked in 2020 , massive overreach.
Trump has already really done his task. They are fatally wounded, dying of old age , all the talent fled.
All true MB.
Also true; DC now collapses like the other Green Zones before it.
They’re weak. That’s it.
They overreached.
Classical liberalism is the rejection of tribalism. Medieval fealty oaths were replaced by Constitutional order, clannish social forms were replaced by high-social-trust institutions.
The problem now is that the high-social-trust system (modern rationalism) is disintegrating because it is "fragile" (Nassim Taleb) and is being disrupted by technological and economic change and postmodern cultural conditions.
re: David Ronfeldt's TIMN model of social change
disruption -> disintegration -> regression to ideological tribalism -> reintegration at a higher, more complex level (social form)
https://twotheories.blogspot.com/2009/02/overview-of-social-evolution-past.html
---excerpts---
... At first, when a new form arises, it has subversive effects on the old order, before it has additive effects that lead to a new order. Bad actors may prove initially more adept than good actors at using a new form — e.g., ancient warlords, medieval pirates and smugglers, and today’s information-age terrorists being examples that correspond to the +I, +M, and +N transitions, respectively. As each form takes hold, energizing a distinct set of values and norms for actors operating in that form, it generates a new realm of activity — for example, the state, the market. As a new realm gains legitimacy and expands the space it occupies within a social system, it puts new limits on the scope of existing realms. At the same time, through feedback and other interactions, the rise of a new form/realm also modifies the nature of the existing ones.
...
Monotheism (Axial, renunciate religion and culture) was the first major rejection of tribalism.
Trump is a tribalist (Celtic, "clannish" origins) that viciously attacks people on his "side" (defined broadly) that he sees as being disloyal.
That kind of intense clannish-alpha-leader loyalty behavior is ancient, pre-modern, well known (medieval Fealty Oaths), and is only superficially similar to the kind of toxic postmodern/neo-marxist cancel culture seen on the "woke" "left".
Pre-modern tribalism was defeated by classical liberalism in most of the western world 100s of years ago.
Classical liberalism is similarly being defeated by postmodern-relativist "woke" ILLIBERALISM (neo-marxism).
Postmodernism is a feature of evolving culture, as driven by techno-economic disruption (InfoGlut.WWW, globalism, suburban consumer culture) and the resulting CRISIS OF MEANING (John Vervaeke).
Chris Rufo and many others have been calling for something like Conservatism v2.0, which will uphold and reform classical liberalism (which is what most "conservative" ideology is, at least in the USA).
For Rufo's New Conservatism to be effective, he will have to go beyond tweaking the existing conservative paradigm and adopt some kind of plan that is anti-fragile to postmodern disruption, IMO.
The underlying forces resulting in postmodern disruption can't be stopped, but they can be adapted to via psychological and cultural evolution. The superficial pathologies ("woke", cancel culture, ILLIBERALISM, corrupt global elites, etc.) that result from postmodern disruption CAN be stopped to some extent.
But then a long game of wack-a-mole sets in because the superficial social pathologies of postmodern-relativism will re-emerge in new forms over time from underlying evolutionary causes:
1. loss of belief that the renunciation of evil and sin is necessary for order and civilization
2. loss of belief that high-social-trust in institutions that emerged early in the evolution of modern-rationalist, Enlightenment culture.
3. the disintegration of the modern nation-state system (see Martin Van Creveld, 1996)
4. the disintegration of national industrial/manufacturing capitalism and property ownership and replacement by unregulated global digital capitalism and international finance.
5. the failure of the peasant and working classes, including the "lower middle" classes to organize political opposition to globalists and digital capitalists. Trumpism (nationalist, working class populism) is necessary but not sufficient.
“Tribal warfare is the way of man. Anything outside this is an anomaly and requires constant vigilance and maintenance of certain social norms.”
I agree. That’s why I’m advocating that we constantly and vigilantly maintain social norms rather than joining the Left in working to destroy social norms.
I said certain social norms. Many of the left's social norms must be destroyed and replaced with better social norms. It is forbidden to forbid is a terrible social norm.
Oh hell no, That’s on the graveyard of history.
We’ll discuss this later in context.
The winners decide the rules.
I cannot denounce “social norms” enough, and we’re not joining the Left we’re learning how to fight, win, survive.
… although, we can work with the Left to exterminate the bourgeois obscenity. Just like before.
And what is the “bourgeois obscenity” you wish to exterminate? Bourgeois values such as persistence, hard work, punctuality, tolerance, civility, honesty? You know, all those hallmarks of “white supremacy”?
All of it. The Enlightenment can meet the Elemental and the Trial by arms decides.
None of the above you mentioned has soldiers. Good luck.
"tribes" roughly correspond to narratives.
"civilizations" roughly correspond to meta-narratives that transcend tribalism, usually via (Axial) religion.
a civilization uses violence and war to maintain both narratives and meta-narratives. loss of either could be catastrophic, but especially meta-narrative.
this describes how postmodern culture (consumerism, relativism, globalism) is already far beyond fragmentation into narratives and has become atomized:
https://meaningness.com/meaningness-history
excerpt:
The problems we have now: Throughout the twentieth century, from the beginning of the breakdown of the mainstream systems until the breakdown of subcultures, the underlying worry was “not enough meaning.” The atomized mode delivers, for the first time, way too much meaning. It is overwhelming, like trying to drink from a firehose.
Because the shards of meaning do not relate with each other, it’s impossible to compare them. There is no standard of value, so everything seems equally trivial. The collapse of subcultural community has atomized society, and we find it impossible to construct satisfactory selves from the jagged fragments of meaning we’re bombarded with.
Maybe we start by observing that atomized “micro-narratives” can’t survive outside a liberal, pluralistic, rule-of-law framework that allows different narratives to peacefully coexist. Want your ideas to be tolerated? Then be willing to tolerate different ideas.
The ILLIBERALISM (ideological tribalism) of the postmodern "left" (and any other ideologically tribal narrative) is a given.
Such tribalists don't want "tolerance", by definition they are sociopathic narcissists that lie and gaslight constantly. And now, AI is being weaponized to smear (anti-"woke") critics of regime propaganda and censorship:
https://www.racket.news/p/transcript-america-this-week-episode-695
No.
Fail.
Failed times beyond counting.
Enforce the law 🤣
Sure .
Vae Victas.
Lex Talonis.
DC et Left delenda est.
Silent enim leges intra armas.
Amen.
So, your alternative to trying to maintain the rules by which people with different goals and beliefs can peacefully live together is civil war.
Let’s start by I don’t accept anyone else’s Frame.
In this case it’s the Civil War the Left chose. In war you accept battle or justly face any fate including extermination for being contemptible.
No one who isn’t fighting with me or against me has any say or purchase. Want a say?
Then take my risks, the enemy’s risks. Or die at our mutual discretion.
Your world never existed Mr. Fulmer, it was simply the rear and safer areas. Decades of being undermined and betrayed by users, cowards, lawyers and the peddlers of “norms” destroyed the fantasy. Now the rest of you can face reality on your own merits. Call it “meritocracy.”
Lol
*here’s an example; the response time for US artillery is one hour, if ever. In WW2 it was 5 minutes.
Why?
Because the pedlars of social norms were outraged by Friendly Fire casualties, so they instituted *norms* to help check this, as it’s bad publicity. The casualties inflicted by the enemy in the ensuing 15 minutes aren’t… bad publicity. So in Vietnam it went to 15 minutes.
In the war on terror Iraq Afghanistan it went up to an hour, because social norms put lawyers - JAG , Judge Advocate Generals- in the loop to enforce social norms n stuff so back to an hour. This is known as JAG poisoning in our little society.
JAG poisoning, or norms if you like.
After Bush lost midterms in 2006, they got real a little again and pulled the poison for a couple of years to get it back to 15 minutes. It shot up again under Obama and Mr COIN McChrystal…. And now we have Privates in JAG who wag their fingers at Commanders, who being the enforcers of social norms cave without protest.
^Rejoice Norm, er Richard ^ this was your victory. Peak norms.
But you lost us, and well everyone who isn’t as Rawls crazy as you are…
But take the field, perhaps you’ll prevail… You won’t have us, except as foes.
First, nowhere did I voice support for the “norm” of letting politicians dictate battle tactics. Second, you seem determined to make my case that by adopting the Left’s tactics and policies, we will eventually achieve the same results - though results that neither you nor the Left intend.
Tearing down the “oppressive” norms by which people peacefully cooperate to achieve their disparate goals has long been the Left’s dream. They “reason” that once free from oppression, they can “socially construct” utopia.
Trump will never be able to weaponize the bureaucracy because his motives for doing so do not align with the motives of the bureaucracy itself. They know they'll be around long after he is gone.
True, but that’s the old conservative right. The new right is not conservative, there’s nothing to conserve … except HR cat ladies…
incoherent gibberish.
"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 feminisation of education has exacerbated that, but factory schooling probably inherently disadvantages boys compared to girls.
Because it’s not ‘education’ it’s daycare for older children so their parents can ‘contribute’.
Feminisation of education? Please elaborate, because as far as I remember everyone had to sit down and be quiet during classes, even back in the prehistoric times I was in school.
Yes, but boys were not much in competition for girls career wise. Expand the competition, and a disadvantage becomes operative in ways it was not before. The feminisation of schooling — teaching becoming increasingly female, internal processes increasingly reflecting female preferences — is a clearer phenomenon. Various schools appear to have got worse at teaching boys, in particular, literacy, for instance.
Having watched my brothers being bullied by teachers in an ALL female staffed primary school… yeah primary school is especially built around a lot of feminine sensibilities and instincts. I don’t see much affirmative action to correct THAT massive sex-ratio skew.
Dr Leonard Sax did an excellent, evidenced explanation of sex differences between boys and girls and how, boys can suffer from female teachers who lack awareness of her feminine biological biases.
🤣🤣🤣
Now do something in real life, outside of college, other than grab a guy to do it.
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.
The wealth gap has a lot of features feeding into it. I would be wary of simple causal explanations.
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/cultural-evolution-of-genetic-heritability/9CBEB629203EA430B6EE5549C5E729FC
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.
Damn my wigga !
Yeah.
Well sorta wigga, Italian..
letcha in !
Jumped in !
lolol
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3yon2GyoiM
This explains it all ;))
Walken is the man
Moors = Berbers + Arabs
And Sicilians may have Turk too
… its a nice selling point for the script, not accurate.
Lol
is false yet hilarious
Only a name like Tarantino could safely write those words.
The CIA used the Frankfurters, some real dicks, as part of their creation of controlled opposition on the Left. The totalitarianism inherent to the "left" was useful idiocy to the corporate-state/ military-industrial-complex.
Source?
https://attackthesystem.com/2021/12/06/curtis-yarvin-mencius-moldbug-on-tucker-carlson-today-09-08-21/
excerpt:
...
Every ideological superstructure has a materialist base and class base (which in the case of ["woke"] totalitarian humanism would be digital capital, the tech revolution, “financialization” of the kind that has emerged from neoliberalism, the expanded technocratic class which is the product of the wider degree of specialization and the division of labor rooted in increased technological sophistication).
Additionally, “wokeness” is rooted in the wider infrastructure of statecraft which can be traced, at the irreducible minimum, to the
[--->] collusion between the Frankfurt School and the OSS during WW2,
followed by the CIA’s creation of the Congress of Cultural Freedom in the 1950s. While elements of the ideological framework of totalitarian humanism may have their roots in the cultural revolution of the 1960s/1970s,
[--->] in its present form “wokeness” represents a co-optation of those cultural patterns
by the liberal wing of the capitalist class ( a specific strategy that was devised by Fred Dutton as far back as 1970). The insurgent sectors of the managerial class (primarily the expanded professional class and rising middle-class sectors among traditional outgroups) became the socioeconomic foundation for this co-optation, which allowed the liberal wing of capitalism to marginalize labor unions while cultivating these rising middle-class sectors as a replacement constituency for the traditional working class [meaning D-party voters].
...
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.
modern rationalism, the result of a historically outbred gene pool, is not anti-fragile to disruption (postmodern social conditions, managerialism), and thus will be replaced with anti-fragile meta rationalism in the evolution of culture.
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…
Don’t for a moment think I object to this at all !
Since the alternative is rule by the Mad, who happen to be fiends and cowards.
This seems to me like you are in agreement with Cofnas. There is no disagreement here?
I put way more emphasis on cultural differences (which include differences in family patterns) than he does. My version of the hereditarian thesis includes genetic differences but is not focused on them. A particularly good discussion of the complexities is here:
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/cultural-evolution-of-genetic-heritability/9CBEB629203EA430B6EE5549C5E729FC
Right, I understand that difference, but here in this final rejoinder to him, you seem to me on the same page as him in re: for conservative politics to succeed, the frank & outright dismissal of the equalitarian hypothesis is necessary.
That I completely agree with. All elements of the blank slate have to go, the pernicious equalitarian nonsense has to go.