Past Is The Future

A bad habit dissidents have inherited from conservatives is to instinctively dispute the claims made by our enemies. If a cosmopolitan globalist says X, the tendency is to argue that X is wrong. This has been the habit of mind for conservatives since the birth of Buckley conservatism in the middle of the last century. The motto of that crew should be “well actually” as that’s what they have spent generations saying to every left-winger they can find. Many dissidents have brought this habit with them.

Here’s an example of someone called Dave Rubin making the claim that America is a proposition nation. Anyone can be an America, as long as they fill out the right paperwork down at the right government office. He is echoing an assertion popular with a certain sort of conservative pundit. Unlike a country like Israel, to use a totally random example, America is not a nation that occupies a territory it sees as a homeland, but a land that contains people, who more or less agree not to murder one another.

The responses are all of things that we have come to expect whenever someone promotes the propositional nation assertion on a pubic platform. There’s a call and response quality to this stuff. The guy allowed on the stage, to stand in the spotlight and hold forth on various issues, is accompanied by a chorus just off-stage that responds to what he is saying. The trouble with the model is the responses don’t actually address the intent of the statement. Instead they fixate on theory behind it.

As a practical matter, Rubin is correct. America is a propositional nation, in that citizenship is now entirely meaningless to the native born. It has value to the millions pouring over the border every year, but to the people who hold US citizenship, it is a stock certificate for a company that no longer exists. Stock certificate is really not the right way to put it, as it is more like a debt certificate. Every year that tax on people holding citizenship goes up, as the land gets enriched with the dregs of the earth.

Now, the people who reflexively push back on the proposition nation stuff certainly wish this was not the case. They are correct that American citizenship should count for something and not just be handed out like candy at Halloween. In other words, they are right about the theory, but wrong about practical reality. More important, the people in charge are not going to change their policies and make citizenship count again. That means citizenship, as a practical matter, is now completely worthless.

Dissidents are fond of talking about red pills, which usually means coming to terms with who is the enemy and the reality of so-called allies. In reality, the people busying themselves identifying and describing the enemy are still operating under the assumption that citizenship is still a real thing or at least a real thing that can be recaptured if we can just defeat the enemy. The fact is, that old concept of citizenship is meaningless and will never be otherwise. That’s the ultimate red pill.

It also means any sense of duty or obligation to the country is not only meaningless, it is foolish. Citizenship either arises from a social contract, to which all members are bound for mutual benefit or it arises from a shared identity of the citizens. If anyone can become a citizen, without the consent of the citizenry, then there can be no mutual benefit, no social contract. Similarly, if anyone can join the group, then it has no fixed identity and the members therefore gain no identity from it.

This is what makes the propositional nation stuff so difficult to grasp. In a normal nation, people are either a citizen, a subject or an alien. In a nation of citizens, the people are sovereign, beholden to one another. In a nation of subjects, the people serve a ruler, who is the sovereign. The alien, in both cases, is resident under whatever conditions set by the nation. In the propositional nation, everyone is an alien. The country is just an ad hoc collection of people interacting with one another as economic units.

In this weird, post-national country created for us by our ruling class, all relationships are transactional. This is why anyone can be an American. As long as the newcomers participate in the economy, they are the same as anyone else as far as the people in charge are concerned. The rulers have no more of an obligation to the people than the people have to one another. The ruling and administrative class maintain order, not because it is their duty, but because they gain some benefit from it.

Of course, this is why the ruling class has abandoned so much of what is considered the duties of a ruling class. They have no duties. They enforce the laws as they want, when they want, solely for their own benefit. Where there is no benefit, they have simply abandoned those duties. It turns out that anarcho-tyranny is not so much the result of managerialism, but the inevitable result of post-nationalism. In a world solely governed by material relations, sacrifice becomes just another relic of the past.

In a way, post-nationalism is just a reversion to a more primitive organizational model, one that arose in the late Roman Empire and the early middle ages. Under the Visigoths and Ostrogoths, for example, groups formed up around ethnic, religious and regional affiliations to negotiate with the rulers collectively. The rulers did not feel a natural duty to the people over whom they ruled. They just wanted their taxes and an orderly administration of their lands. That’s the propositional nation.

That what makes accepting post-nationalism the ultimate red pill. Once you come to terms with the fact that there is no convincing the people in charge to respect your citizenship, you realize there is no going back to the civic nationalist model. Instead, the way forward is through the oldest form of nationhood. That’s where a nation is defined by a people with a common heritage, a common set of ancestors. The way forward is to go back to the most basic form of human organization, the nation.


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78 thoughts on “Past Is The Future

    • I would even go so far as to call it inflammatory. We’ve had a long run of relative peace and prosperity. Im really worried the times are becoming interesting. Z-man is really ruffling my feathers.

      • Based on demographics, our likely “landing zone” looks like it’s going to range somewhere from Brazil to South Africa.

        That’s more interesting than I really want.

        But you see patterns of separation: that little white town in South Africa that Globohomo is hungry to destroy. Small white settler communities in Brazil and Argentina. Large-scale formal separatist movements in Quebec. Et cetera.

        I think you’ve got to start by separating in your mind. Then your options look more clear.

      • Given the quality of this posting, I’d first suspect it’s one Zman has been working on for quite some time. Then again it’s seems so effortlessly written that I could also believe he wrote this one night after dinner. I’ve been thinking about the worthlessness of citizenship for a while, been mourning the loss of value I suppose in my own way. This was the glass of water I needed to get this particularly large red pill down my gullet.

        • Once you take this redpill, it actually gets easier. It feels good.

          An analogy I used was that you’re no longer stuck on a sinking ship desperately trying to bail water out with a tea cup.

          You’re now free to focus on the important things.

      • My feelings are hurt too. I yam offended. Maybe we should find a sleazy lawyer and get a lawsuit going. But… wherever will we find one of those???

        Is Hillary still practicing law or has she retired…? 🙂

    • Let’s concentrate on our own people and ignore probable dead-ends. Zman had a segment on Friday’s show that we should take heed of: it was the section on Pol Pot. It reminded me of something one of the guys at the NW Forum had told me 2 years ago. When the “It’s Okay to be White” signs first came out the urbanites in Seattle went into complete meltdown. But in the surrounding areas many of the signs stayed up for weeks, some of them for months. Look up the “Clinton Archipelago vs.Trumpland. It’s by area not population …but keeping the… Read more »

    • Absolutely. And, in typical Z-man fashion, well reasoned in a way that will make so many here squirm, who still hold certain civic nationalist tendencies or profess to cherish some nebulous “liberty” or “equality.” Not only is there no going back to the old morality, or social contract, there’s no going back to any of the old concepts and their old myths and meanings. The only way forward is through, and no proposals about merely limiting the franchise or everyone serving in the military will change this. America is over. Accept it and move on.

  1. Dave Rubin started from somewhere around center-left, but has been drifting rightward. He still earnestly hopes that what he wants to believe can come true, but no longer really thinks it’s so, and he’s honest enough that when he gets mugged by reality, he admits he was wrong before. He’s been mugged by cancel-culture. He hasn’t yet been mugged by proposition citizens. Maybe a walking vacation in Dearborn is in order??

      • AIU, despite being a leftist is pretty good on most subjects we care about. Among leftists, he is somewhat a bit of fresh air. His audience is mostly centrists/cuck types, but unlike Dave, he stands up to his own audience. He doesn’t pretend to be something he’s not. If all leftists were like AIU, we would be in much better shape.

    • Far too many still project their hope of positive signs on (((people))) that will never, ever support the mere concept of an ethnostate. And if your ultimate goal is not an ethnostate for your people and you merely want to tinker with the concept of the proposition nation to make it a little less inclusive, then why are you here?

      • To learn what you think and hear you out. To review and test my own thinking. And I’m sorry to say, to be entertained, TBH. There is good writing, novel (to me) ideas, and fascinating commentary to be found here.

    • Dave Rubin is a grifter trying to be a gatekeeper. He IS a left winger who was financially hi-jacked by centrists pretending to be right wingers. (((Dave))) is pretending to be a centrist because centrists pay the bills. Is SJWs starting writing him checks, his next video would be about the problematic elements of the centrists.

  2. Of course, this is why the ruling class has abandoned so much of what is considered the duties of a ruling class. They have no duties. Which goes hand-in-hand with less and less actual power: they get a script handed out that they have to follow if they want a career in politics, and when your role as a law-maker is thus undermined, the only meaningful activity left is to concentrate on your bank account. This is, of course, much worse in Europe, where you have most of the important legislation phoned in from Brussels. About five years ago, Britain… Read more »

    • Read some past posts here and listen to some pods. “Our own country” is something we have to create, not “fix.” This one hasn’t been ours for well over a century.

      • God yes, THIS. ‘Murrica is gone. There is no repairing it or just restoring muh constitution. We are an economic regional entity, not a nation. The definition of a nation . . . look it up (not on joogle).

    • We must create spaces where our people can be an overwhelming majority.

      Jared Taylor says to accomplish this we must have a space where we:
      * restore freedom of association (repeal 1964 civil rights act)
      * repeal affirmative action and disparate impact laws
      * enforce immigration laws

      That seems like a lot to accomplish in our current system, which motivates others to investigate more unorthodox strategies.

      It’s a long shot, but what are the alternatives?

  3. “The rulers have no more of an obligation to the people than the people have to one another.” In such an amoral world, life is just whatever you can get away with. The spirit of the laws, the spirit of morality–which are the more important part of them–are gone. That’s not really a functioning society at all, it’s just a bunch of lone wolves looking to eat each other. I remember visiting my grandma in a small town in Wisconsin 40 years ago. Not only did people not lock their doors, you could actually walk into neighbors’ houses without knocking.… Read more »

  4. “A bad habit dissidents have inherited from conservatives is to instinctively dispute the claims made by our enemies. If a cosmopolitan globalist says X, the tendency is to argue that X is wrong.” The leftist Establishment insists abortion should be legal and available, so reflexive cucks say abortion is evil. Never mind that without abortion there would be tens of thousands of future feral “youth” spawned every year to single teenage mothers. The leftist Establishment recognizes, sometimes, that overpopulation degrades the environment and quality of life. So reflex-action cucks insist population stabilization or reduction is sinful and anti-life. The Vatican… Read more »

  5. Very strongly worded. Z, we’re going to need a few anthologies of your writings. There are still a few Readers out here, and we need a little shot of something strong when things are looking dark.

  6. I swallowed that pill a few years ago, though perhaps in more grug-brained terms than this sharp exposition. We might have to start thinking in starkly diasporic terms. So I’ll just throw out a though experiment about the Proposition Nation. Imagine if the Proposition itself were tested and enforced via, for example, some sort of lie detector test (don’t sperg me on the technology of lie detection, this is just a “political science fiction” thought experiment.) For example, people had to swear that they really believed in small government, enumerated negative rights, deliberative democracy, and the rule of law. If… Read more »

  7. I think the proposition nation cheapening citizenship is one reason we in the dissident right have been calling America a clown country for a while.

  8. While I agree that America is now a prepositional nation, it still has the trappings of a real nation. The Mayflower, the City on the Hill, even “American conservativism is the defense of liberalism” are hold overs of Massachusetts. If you aren’t the descendant of Puritans, then the actual history of your people is wrapped up in this myth. White Americans will have to excise these ideas to advance forward. This is easier for Southrons, but the worship of St. Reagan makes even that difficult. I have no idea how later immigrant groups like the Italians and Irish will separate… Read more »

    • The deified Alzheimers patient was a product of his time. Most of the people who voted for him are in the cemetery. His politics were nearly identical to John McCain.

      • Reagan’s biggest mistakes were
        1) increasing the Social Security withholding from ~2% to ~ 15%, because it was underfunded, rather than letting it die somehow.
        2) amnesty for 11 million illegal aliens

        Just like Nixon’s biggest mistakes were going off the Gold standard, creating new bureaucracies (EPA e.g.).

        Guiliani? requiring low-flush toilets .. still suffering with that one.

        Ya gotta take the bad with the good sometimes.

          • Firewire, that is not correct. The statement at that time was that SS was “fixed” into the next century—and that statement was correct. It was obviously a concession that the can was being kicked down the road, however, the law that was passed did change/limit the downside outcome. The law now states that should funds run short, the benefits will reduce to match income, i.e., a reduction will occur across the board to come in line with receipts. Currently the best estimate of the payment reduction is 23% taking effect perhaps as late as 2030 or so. In a sense,… Read more »

          • If memory serves, Reagan’s reforms put the Social Security system on permanent sound footing, guaranteed.

            So no worries, young millennial!

          • I’m an old geezer, not a young millennial, thank you veddy much.

            many people would dispute that S.S. is on any kind of “sound footing”

    • Part of the problem is that most White folk are mutts. I can trace my ancestry back to the Mayflower on one grandfather’s side, to Appalachian scotch irish peasants on one grandmothers side, to Germans from the early 19th century on the other grandfathers side, and early 20th century slavs on the other grandmothers side.

      A large percentage of white Americans have similar muttish backgrounds. So mythmaking requires the “melting pot” for them to feel like they have a people at all.

  9. Part of the reason that this got so far out of control is that the direct cost of citizenship is defrayed by the bond market and the Fed. The healthcare for the anchor baby is only half paid for by taxes, the other half is paid for by debt, using that national credit card. it’s been going this way for a long time. Part of this problem is a byproduct of the fiat monetary system, a system now so decrepit that as of late, it needs $100 billion injections into the repo market just to keep it from seizing. If… Read more »

    • Yes. To a globalist, all mass immigration is good, because while it may lower the per capita GDP, it raises overall GDP, allowing the government to put more bills on the Big Credit Card. Look at it this way: a kneegrow living in Somalia is worth, say, $1,000 per year, but for the modest price of a plane ticket, you can suddenly raise his value to allow him a nice home, running water, comprehensive medical care, education for his kids, flat-screen televisions and iPhones – in fact, it is his human right to have these things. This is great news… Read more »

      • In-sourcing immigration and outsourcing production is a perfect pincer-movement for those interested in Western subjugation and auctioning off our social capital is lucrative as well, particularly when the brokers don’t need to live in the social-strip-mine squalor they leave behind.

    • And toss in the ‘merit based’ invasion marketplace. The globalists are selling shares (de facto citizenship) of our united economies of America for $500k. EB-5. So it is worth quite a bit. Yet they are also quietly upping the price of heritage American Citizens to renounce. If you are poor it costs you over $2k. If you have assets, the exit taxes will gut you. So you can’t sell your citizenship, you have to buy it out. We are merely indentured tax livestock. They are diluting our equity while making it illiquid. Immigration should be run like a club. One… Read more »

  10. “…any sense of duty or obligation to the country is not only meaningless, it is foolish. ” I have come not to praise America, but to bury it. Bear in mind this is a play on a eulogy. America’s “ides of March” happened on March 4, 1861. We’re just now Noticing. Unlike Caeasar, America survived the knives in the backs of several million of her dead and maimed sons and their families, but the infection of anti-republican ideas soon finished the job. On some undisclosed day soon after Reconstruction, she succumbed. Unlike Caesar, America was denied an honorable burial and… Read more »

    • “I’ll post something OT on yesterday’s Scandza drama.”

      Yes, please do. How close to home was that hit?

      Ya know darned well it was phoned in to the authorities from a US embassy. The euros know as much about our guys as we know about theirs, that is, next to nothing.

      Honestly, I don’t know any of our players either; what caught my attention was the words “recent Scandza forum”.

      Soon, ‘a knock on the door’ won’t be a joke anymore, not with AG Barr and certain Congressionals proposing Stalinist policing.

  11. Thought-provoking. I’d more or less gone along with the meaning of my youth – that we who call ourselves Americans were those who had chosen to be here, or who had history as an American. Which, was the idea that we would defend her principles to the death. Spending $ makes you American? I didn’t even like that idea when the politicians decided to allow emigration to those who agreed to invest in American business. I grew up in a neighborhood filled with relatively recent immigrants. About 20% of so of my friends were just off the boat a few… Read more »

  12. that there is no convincing the people in charge to respect your citizenship

    Yes, indeed. Look at the monstrous paper-pile required to obtain “Real” ID–which allows entry into airliners and Federal buildings (and that’s all it’s good for.)

    Being born here, paying taxes here, building businesses here, speaking the language here, being able to point out the gravestones of parents, grand-parents (etc.) here–none of that is worth spit.

    And God help you if you enter a courthouse with one of those little nail-file/knife combination tools with a 2″ blade!!

  13. I really wish this post didn’t make sense, b/c it shows how much has been lost. Unfortunately it did. I too hate the barren, sterile view of humans as ‘economic units’.

  14. “The way forward is to go back to the most basic form of human organization, the nation.” — Zman Amen brother, amen. A nation is a community of people who share a common language, culture, values, traditions, ethnicity, descent, and history. A State or the nation-state is that entity who claims a monopoly on the legal use of force in a given defined territory and hence ownership of its subjects. Rothbard pointed out: ‘the “nation,” of course, is not the same thing as the State, a difference that earlier libertarians and classical liberals such as Ludwig von Mises and Albert… Read more »

  15. The Gibbon 5000 models will conclude that citizenship served both the Romans and the Americans well for a long time before it mastered them.

  16. When someone mentions an immigrant acquaintance as an “American” I make the point of asking them, “Do you mean a citizen?” This usually raises an eyebrow as the speaker has no concept of the difference. I usually clarify, “They are a citizen, you are an American.” Strangely enough it doesn’t come off as antagonistic and actually gives me an opening to plant seeds of doubt. In all fairness, I’ve met a number of immigrants that actually do wholeheartedly become Americans. That may tick off the blood and soil folks here, but there it is. Some are more Roman than the… Read more »

  17. Excellent take down of enemies like Rubin and cucks who embraced his line of suicidal crap.

    The problem for our side to get what you say is a nation for heritage whites means war. It won’t happen if we do nothing – we just get exterminated. Voting doesn’t work – the ruling class made sure voting doesn’t work. That leaves our side having to fight for what we want, hell just even to survive.

  18. Thank you, Z. Owning the excitement of what comes next for us feels a strange response to realizing I was embracing a memory of America, not Her true state and likely future (without dissident alternatives). I fly the flag now because it’s been there for so long that taking it down would be a tell. It’s odd to me that I’m not sad about that anymore. It’s mentally freeing to look ahead clearly. Now, the work to rebuild feels overwhelming. I’ve suffered from paralysis by analysis. Many of you are helping me to focus on what and who is local.… Read more »

    • “I/You was/are embracing a memory of America, not Her true state and likely future.”

      MH, that’s a great intro in setting the stage when having a conversation with normies.

    • I was embracing a memory of America, not Her true state and likely future

      There once was a place called La Jolla, California. The sunny vale of my childhood. I don’t know where the hell it went. But I know there’s a pile of garbage where it used to be.

      • La Jolla’s largely resisted outright decay – lots of $$$ buys lots of social insulation. Still San Diego’s Malibu, for now. Noticeably darker though, the La Jolla residents that I know quietly lament the influx of Persian and Han nouveau riche though few will say so in mixed company. As with every affluent CA neighborhood, it seems, it’s also much gayer than when I first moved to Diego in the 90’s.

  19. The US was a blood and soil country, at least of a sort. The first Congress restricted immigration to free white men of good character, and that general rule held for a long time.

    The only thing I would add to Z Man’s thesis is to clarify that the “proposition” of our “nation” has nothing to do with the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, etc. The proposition is the one Z mentioned: economic, and it can involve work or freeloading. Perhaps the correct name for what we have is a “Transactional Nation.”

  20. Once the atheists kill God, we seek his replacement. Humanism! Once biology and history exposes the imperfections of humanity, we seek a replacement. Patriotism! Love of country. “I pledge allegiance…”. Once diversity, multi culti and open borders kills patriotism we seek a replacement. Families! Once feminisms, trans and gays kill marriage we seek a replacement. Apathy. Post modernism. Nihilism. Drugs, booze, video games, porn, suicide, Netflix, football. Ennui. This is where we find ourselves.

    • Fr seraphim rose has a book called Nihilism: the root of the revolution of the modern age. Well worth reading.

      “No sensitive observer is unaware that men, in the Nihilist era more than ever before, have made of earth an image of Hell; and those who are aware of dwelling in the Abyss do not hesitate to call their state Hell. The torture and miseries of this life are indeed a foretaste of Hell, even as the joys of a Christian life–joys which the Nihilist cannot even imagine, so remote are they from his experience-are a foretaste of Heaven.”

      https://www.oodegr.com/english/filosofia/nihilism_root_modern_age.htm

    • Ifrank- Is it possible that the seemingly straight line downward, as you outlined, is turned upward by the buoyancy (force?) drawing people back to family? The greatest destructive period you outlined is Nihilism, IMO. The others do have pain and destruction at personal perimeters but they appear to be societal disruptions. But nihilism affects me personally, physically and deeply. My red-pilled frame of reference is much more myopic toward my family. Thoughts of legacy and their preservation keep me moving, as I’ve divorced myself from a sense of civic duty, patriotism (the modernist version) and “changing my community” (that was… Read more »

    • “… planning to move back to the country of your ancestors?”

      I know I am not planning that. They most likely would not have me. Besides I want to see my new nation (Appalachians) here in America carve out a homeland. I will fight for that.

    • Why a downvote? Z-man has no intention of moving. Indeed, to move would probably be to trouble others in their homeland. He, and others here, are simply asking for a fair division of the “spoils”—which is a reasonable request in a land of competing interests—CivNat being a dead dog.

      Hell, we even divided up the country among the various indian tribes—and still do today. Well, this White “tribe” (dissidents) is organizing and eventually will take it’s place in line. 😉 Details to be hammered out.

  21. Absolutely. But it’s only a paper GDP gain, not a real one. For businesses like McDonalds, Taco Bell, Home Depot and Walmart, it’s a material gain, as there are more mouths to feed and stack cinderblocks, but since these people are merely consumers with negative value, it’s actually a balance sheet transfer, to these businesses, religions and non-profit groups from the governments. GDP paper gains can go for a long time without being questioned. The Soviet Union was showing paper GDP gains as it was collapsing, even when entire hospitals were going without new syringes.

  22. Excellent observations. Now analyze and predict. Where are we likely to be headed? Will the nascent dissident movement right the ship in time? Or is it more likely that a hot tyranny will arise? Will we self segregate, or get culled, or perhaps forced to merge into the herd (see Chinese treatment of Uighurs as an example)? What’s the best use of your time and energy right now? Is it chit-chatting at the local dissident coffee klatch? Or is it making yourself more robust and resilient?

  23. In my undergrad philosophy class back in the 90s the textbook noted that “no real philosopher takes the social contract theory seriously”, with “real philosopher” apparently being defined as commies like the professor.

    • no real philosopher takes the social contract theory seriously

      That statement is correct. You could look up the errors of Rousseau, who invented the “social contract” to find out why. To prove it, merely look at Rousseau’s own life/life-style.

  24. Zman’s excellent article motivates me to post this on-topic comment, which I had previously submitted to CTH but which did not make it through the censors. “Dems … are finished as a party or just about finished.” No, they are not. Demography is destiny. Western Civilization cannot be maintained without a majority of Western people. Birthrates are what the they are. Immigration rates are what they are. The Marxist blank slate theory is incorrect. Dem’s *might* be held off in the short-term (4-20 years) with intelligent and vigorous defensive leadership, but the communist-globalist coalition is in possession of all the… Read more »

  25. Our race is our nation. The false patriotism pushed on moderate to right wing white males is what keeps them trapped in the system – and keeps the system running. There is no point trying to salvage what exists. Voting red team won’t do anything. Yet thousands of white men join the military every year, white men keep paying taxes, and engaging in the consumer culture. They keep watching sportsball and listening to rap music. Once you free your mind of this trap, it’s actually liberating. You are no longer trapped aboard a sinking ship, desperately trying to bail it… Read more »

  26. Well at least you have a theory of going forward. Why I have to accept proposition nation at all especially from a Rubin is less clear. No, Hell no and then we fight for what’s ours. The winner keeps the land.

    Not sure why your path to survival and ethno-state requires nihilism as gateway to survival, but perhaps it’s a matter of taste.

  27. The thing about “going back” is it’s going to be very messy. Once this current system finally collapses, the new system that arises will only be able to sustain a small fraction of the existing population. People in general do not have the survival skills they once had, and could fall back on in times of need.

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