One of the main battles within Western liberal democracies over the last seventy years has been the war between partisanship and objectivity. Those on the side of partisanship see politics as a war between interests, like labor versus capital or minorities versus the majority. Objectivists see politics as a battle about finding the best solution for the problems of society. For them, even their own narrow interests must take a back seat to the truth. Being right counts for everything.
The partisans have always had the advantage, because they correctly understand that the “right answer” or even the “best answer” is a matter of perspective. Your class or identity interests shape your ideology and you will always see as the correct answer that which fits your ideology. Put another way, it is human nature to root for your own team, whether you do so consciously or unconsciously. Those who think they are being objective are just flattering themselves.
Once free of the restraint of objectivity, partisans are free to press their interests through whatever means are available. They are not constrained by the rules, because like all things in politics, the rules are a means to an end. Forcing an opponent to abide by their rules, while you violate them, for example, is perfectly acceptable, as long as it advances your group interests. The most recent election is a great example of partisanship triumphing over objectivity.
A good example of how this clash of world views has been going on for a long time is this post from American Renaissance. A long lost interview of the great IQ researcher Arthur Jensen was discovered on YouTube or maybe re-posted to YouTube. It is from the old daytime chat show called The Phil Donahue Show. Long forgotten at this point, Donahue was the godfather of the modern daytime chat show. He was the first to involve the audience in a town hall style format.
If you watch just a few minutes of the interview, you see Jensen was trying to answer the questions about the facts in his work. Donahue, on the other hand, is not interested in the facts, but how he can use them to further the cause. Donahue was one of the smarmier television liberals at the time. He was the Bill Maher of the 80’s, infamous for tricking guests into coming on his show, only to put them in terrible positions, in which they inevitably looked foolish or disreputable.
Early in the interview, Donahue knows he cannot use the old liberal gag of dismissing an enemy as stupid, so he keeps shifting the focus from the facts in the book to the alleged motivations for writing about him. He wants the audience to come away thinking that Jensen is an immoral person for having an interest in the topic, so good people should therefore dismiss him out of hand. To the partisan mind, all disconfirmation is personalized and the person is then anathematized.
In that American Renaissance post, Jared Taylor adds some commentary about his personal interactions with Arthur Jensen. This comment is illustrative of that gap between partisans and objectivists. “I was struck by his mild and profoundly scientific reaction to his attackers. He wasn’t angry at them; he was baffled. Why couldn’t they just look at the data?” The partisan knows exactly why he is in the fight, while the objectivist is perpetually baffled as to why there is a fight.
The objectivist will counter that facts matter and eventually, factual reality must triumph over wishful thinking. In the case of IQ, for example, the diversity of intelligence and what it means for modern society is immutable. Gather up a bunch of 65-IQ Somalis and dump them into Minneapolis and before long the city is struggling with the sorts of social problems that come with a 65-IQ population. Intelligence is driven by genetics, not environment, so these experiments must fail.
The thing is though, while the results of the current experiments with diversity are certain to fail in the long run, there is no guarantee that the critics will be around to see their predictions proven correct. Another immutable truth is the future belongs to the winners of today, for better or worse. Being right, but losing the fight over who will shape the future simply guarantees you will be proven correct. That makes being right hardly worth the effort, unless you are a masochist.
This has been the story of all opposition to Progressive racialism in America since the middle of the last century. The opponents go on about facts and reason, while the radicals scheme to get around those objections. Maybe it is anathematizing an opponent by calling him a racist, as with IQ researchers. Maybe it is violating the rules, while forcing the other side to obey the rules. At every turn over the last three generations, the partisans have beaten the truth-speakers.
Interestingly, this is the one bit of objective reality that the objectivists always find a way to look past in their analysis. When it is pointed out to conservatives that they have managed to conserve nothing, they have no answer. The best they can muster is the weak claim that playing to win makes you no better than the Left, which is suggests they are not committed to the causes they claim to champion. Instead, it is about their personal honor. They want to lose with dignity.
Taylor finishes his commentary on Jensen with the following sentence. “He was a model of dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness for all dissidents.” On a personal level, this is a fine sentiment, but lousy advise. In this long twilight struggle to save the West, those concerned with dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness must be relegated to the drawing room to comfort the women, while those willing to do whatever is necessary go out and subvert the enemy on the field of partisan politics.
This should not be read to mean that the answer to Progressive radicalism is to ape their tactics. In fact, that is usually the wrong course. The Left deployed their street terrorist this year hoping to draw a response, which they were prepared to use in their election efforts. They can do this because they control the courts and the police, so the tactic is low cost for them. For dissidents, however, such a tactic is high cost and promises a small or even negative return.
Instead, the dissident must learn to view “dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness” as tools in his political toolkit. When they advance the cause, they can be deployed, but when they weaken the effort, use other tools. Like the craftsman, the partisan dissident uses his tools in furtherance of the project. No one cares if the master craftsman is dignified or fair-minded. He is judged on his work. The dissident right will be judged by its deeds, not by its adherence to abstract personal qualities.
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I always go back to what someone said about the Vietcong (sort of related to what you said about defeating the state’s “compound eye”): a people using tire rubber for shoes and shoelaces for tourniquets beat a people who had just put a man on the Moon. Not only is playing fair not going to win it; “rugged individualism” is suicide. We’re termites in the house of someone trying to kill us. Let’s go build some mounds.
They never won a major battle against American forces. They just persisted by staying in the field until we got fed up and went home.
If our side wants to shake off the coils of objectivist defeatism, now is the time to do so. If Trump were to declare martial law and smash the leftist media machine, that would change world history.
If.
If. If Trump would only…
Its now “If Trump had only.
That’s amusing. The same idea crossed my mind this morning at coffee. Why not declare marshal law because of Wuhan and a rigged election and immediately take over all news, social and media outlets? Then we can have a damn “conversation” with us controlling the narrative. Wonder how they’d like that?
Do you suspect that Trump would have the loyalty of large part of the armed forces? I would imagine there would be some ‘top-brass’ who wouldn’t like it very much, but what is the state of mind of the average soldier/National Guardsman?
“…….but what is the state of mind of the average soldier/National Guardsman?”
Muh pension.
Is that your personal experience from talking with enlistees, or are you projecting?
It isn’t clear how many he needs, especially if he uses the various insurrections acts, declaring the states of PA, MI, etc., have denied the civil rights of the people and failed to provide a republican form of government. Then, it’s legal, see? And if you are a soldier on the fence, you would have been given a legal order.
Anyway, how many soldiers would you need to take D.C.?
An armored brigade.
I remember the best soldiers, special forces/ Seabees, etc. constantly used to get visits from CID because they circulated their own homemade newspapers which expressed very un-PC concerns. There is genuine right wing resistance in the military, though it obviously tilts toward the Combat Arms side of the house and away from logistics. Psy-Ops is very left-wing (though the military version of leafleting and mind-screwing can’t compare with the DNC). If Trump made that move, I think he would stand a good chance of winning in a coup . But I don’t think he would do it, because that Trump… Read more »
Yep, despite all the bullshit, Trumps greatest error has been following the law too meticulously, playing by the rules when the other side never did.
The armed forces have been pozzed for a reason. They don’t care about external enemies, but internal, and need their shock troops to take the pozzed side.
Trump was raised in an America that had a more competent legal system and a modicum of due process. He believes in American due process. He talks like a poor man’s Caesar but is really just a boomercon out of his element.
I think everybody is talking this way now. I would approve because our enemies have done us a great service: they have made all of our claims that we aren’t voting our way out of this obvious, ultimately, to us. I’ve been saying we won’t vote ourselves out of our problem ever since Z convinced me of it, yet secretly I hoped – or maybe subconsciously I believed – that was not right. The brazenness of the stolen election has put a stake in that secret hope. I think it has done the same for lots of people.
Trump as Pinochet? Not gonna happen. As for the GOP, they are preparing Amnesty and H1B “reform” with the Rat Party at this very moment. Face it. America is dead.
It died in 1865. So what? We’re still living.
Trump contesting the election through courts and lawyers is worthless and the very American equivalent of “I’m going to tell my mom on you!” That’s the objectivist approach. If Trump and his supporters really think massive fraud happened, then show some f***ing force. Don’t let Rudy G stand in front of minor committees in Michigan and argue the fine points. Anyone with a brain knows that’ll go nowhere. Napoleon didn’t win by getting his legal team involved.
Instead, the dissident must learn to view “dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness” as tools in his political toolkit. When they advance the cause, they can be deployed, but when they weaken the effort, use other tools. That’s just it. Unfortunately, many conservative types I know like to have a solidified foundation of traits. Honour, dignity and the like, to such an extent they’ll just stick with them no matter what – even if the opponent is scum. I see a variant of this in the working world too, particularly with IT where people have ‘tried and tested’ methods they apply to… Read more »
Things get switched around. Meanings get perverted and changed and things that were once beneficial become your undoing. An example is the quote from the Gloria in Excelsis “on earth, peace to men of goodwill” that has been rewritten since King James time as “peace on Earth and goodwill to men. Vastly different meanings. One has you looking in group at people like you and the other has you looking outgroup
OrangeFrog, I think it has something to do with our mis-education. Many of us were never taught what obscure guys like Aristotle said about justice. Instead, we were taught that justice is treating everyone the same and playing by the rules. But that’s a recent and dishonest innovation; justice is treating everyone as they are due. In that framework, let’s talk about what is due a man who threatens to burn your city down, or commands you stay in your home, or shuts your business down, or desires to replace your people, or smashes your monuments. Now that is a… Read more »
In that framework, let’s talk about what is due a man who threatens to burn your city down, or commands you stay in your home, or shuts your business down, or desires to replace your people, or smashes your monuments. Great paragraph. I find this approach handy when discussing laws and justice with Joe Normal. So many have been conditioned to think that it ‘being the law’ makes it just and good. Not so. I recall speaking to a police officer some years back about Americans and their guns: Half-chat Copper: The Americans have so many guns. What do they… Read more »
Pathological honest – the compulsion to open state what and how you are going to accomplish some goal. It’s crazy, and self destructive and embraced as a princi paw by way too many YTs.
Deception has been an integral part of the struggle for survival stretching back to the first multi called organisms in the primordial goo. But some how, it’s beneath some now.
I’m hearing criticism of what didn’t work, and nothing about what would.
Z has pointed out repeatedly that a lot of issues just go away if white people start thinking of their own self interests first. On the other hand, if white people walk around in a “better dead than offend” stupor then they will get their wish no matter what tactics are employed.
Perhaps you are not listening properly.
That’s what the comment section is for, what do you propose.
I could go on, but you get the point – or at least, you should get the point.
The usurpers claim that “The master’s tools will never dismantle the master’s house.”
Heh. Keep your toolbox full. Before you start a proper job, make sure you have the proper tool. Their side will dismantle, our side will build. Mind you, that may involve some demo work to begin with but the demo is not the purpose of the exercise, as it would be for those toting that big 65 around with them.
They just want to play in the ruins.
Rhymes with one of Plato’s dialogues. Would you rather be a man of virtue or thought to be a man of virtue? Most people are racist, in the sense that they know that average racial differences exist – too obvious to deny. They know, for example, that blacks are better athletes and are more criminal and that Jews are wiley & smarter. However, they don’t want to be known as the kind of person who holds such beliefs. So the truth is sublimated. Better to be thought well of than be ostracized for blasphemy. Then, what happens, the lie becomes… Read more »
So kwan dissidents are finally growing up and realizing rules of the game. Only thing left for them is not to attach themselves to young female ‘dissidents’ with big racks.
The movement has been hobbled by tradthots. But the tradthot is just another example of only half-believing what you believe: “Sure, I’m a realist about the women, but she’s not like the other girls.”
Peaceful resistance or violence is, seemingly, what it all boils down to. Embrace radicalism and the reputational toxicity that entails or cater to moderate fence sitters in order to get that critical mass going. Rockwell or Buckley. I recognize that in this, as in so many other pressing questions of our time, there are no easy answers. But speaking only for myself, I will say this: I have long since made up my mind about what *I* think needs to be done. I have bestowed upon myself a…robust…mandate. I am waiting for others to join me in this glorious enterprise.… Read more »
“the results of the current experiments with diversity are certain to fail in the long run” That’s because the diversification progressives aren’t engaged on a personal level. They admire the costumes and dances of exotic immigrants but when it comes to other aspects of diverse cultures the admiration is tempered, white suburban ladies with circumcised sons are offended by female genital mutilation. Their husbands think that cock fighting is barbaric but enjoy catch-and-release fishing. Hmong dresses are pretty but arranged marriages between 60-something geezers and 13-year-olds can’t be allowed. So for most Americanos, progressive or otherwise, diversity only goes so… Read more »
A different school, yes… and after a semester, they’re back in the school board meetings, griping that the new district doesn’t have enough diversity.
They never learn. I watched it happen – in the course of a decade, I saw them change a lovely safe little college town into mini Mogadishu. I watched the same tenured idiots move school districts two, three, four times, doing the same thing each time.
Chemotherapy is the only cure.
“The objectivist will counter that facts matter and eventually, factual reality must triumph over wishful thinking.” The issue is one that G K Chesterton highlighted many years ago, regarding the docility of British politics. He said that the reason political opposition became tepid was not because political opponents were strong enough to restrain themselves, but because they were too weak fight each other. They paraded their weakness as a virtue. Modern American conservatives are cut from the same cloth. They claim that truth will triumph inevitably (i.e. as an unstoppable force), so knowing the truth is enough. This is nothing… Read more »
One thing I think the FAUXVID 19 ‘crisis’ shows is most people want to be told what and how to think so they can get on with their lives. “Masks, okay. I have to be locked down so hospitals are not overrun, okay. A lightspeed quick vaccine will fix it all, okay. Just tell me what to do so we can back to normal in 2021…2022, 2024??? Okay, whatever.” It seems to me the partisans have learned to appeal to emotions and make their explanations real simple. And most folks just follow because its easy. Dissidents talk big ideas which… Read more »
The big ideas, planning and fancy talk are for those in the know. For those who want to be told how to live, any propaganda will do – just make sure it is our propaganda.
The trick is to make the propaganda appeal to normal people. That is why encouraging, say, family formation is such a good vector to get people onside. It sounds good, most people just instinctively know it is good – probably why there has been a wokist propaganda onslaught on the traditional family.
It seems it would help the political right (objectivists) to at least understand and anticipate the tactics used by the left (partisans). For example, for months leading up to the election, dems were beating the drum about Trump not conceding, not leaving the white house after the election. A perfect example of Saul Alinsky’s ‘make it about the response’ rule. Demonize the other party for their reaction/response to your tactics, denying your own role. The democrat drum beating on Trump not conceding was loudly signaling an intent to cheat in the election. A more effective response would have been to… Read more »
There’s a reason Sam Francis called conservatives “beautiful losers.”
Francis also called the Republicans “The Stupid Party.”
Z, what you’re suggesting (and I think have suggested before) is our cause has to be rooted in moral arguments and not just truth/objectivity. We should be talking about the immorality of the democide of the European people(s).
As a slight aside, I prefer “democide” to “genocide” because it is more likely to be accepted by normies and this is more important (for partisan purposes) than being objectively “correct” (both words are correct).
What was interesting about Donahue was that he loved playing the high-minded pundit and at one point he lamented the fact that there was more interest in him talking to circus freaks than, say, ministers from foreign countries. One latent memory that sticks in my mind was a conversation that he had with a character named ‘Toby’ (I couldn’t find the Donahue segment, but apparently zhe made the daytime circuit: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_VeLOIxiG4c ). Like much of the bilge I caught on daytime TV it was an effort to plant ideas Inception-style into the audience that only meanies do not give circus… Read more »
Another great column.
And thanks for the Arthur Jensen-link. I notice that already in 1980, Donahue was able to talk about “people of color” – I thought that was a Millenial term.
…Arthur Jensen-link…
@13:50 A Princess Leia hairdo! Woo, the eighties were grrreat!
Donahue knows he cannot use the old liberal gag of dismissing an enemy as stupid, so he keeps shifting the focus from the facts in the book to the alleged motivations for writing about him. He wants the audience to come away thinking that Jensen is an immoral person for having an interest in the topic Ad Hominem attacks are frequently used and disparaged by intellectuals but the thing is that they work. For a reason. It all comes down to trust. Should an uninformed person trust the source of new information? If not, if the new information is dishonestly… Read more »
In this long twilight struggle to save the West, those concerned with dignity, courage, and fair-mindedness must be relegated to the drawing room to comfort the women, while those willing to do whatever is necessary go out and subvert the enemy on the field of partisan politics.
Indeed….Fine piece of writing!
People are starting to catch on – Mayors and Governors issuing their lockdown orders from cabanas in Mexico or Hawaii are the current glaring examples.
For some of the conservatives, the means are the ends; that is, running the process of classically liberal politics is an end in itself. The problem is that they often don’t have any real goals beyond that. The fact that the real world is shitholing fast? Don’t care, as long as it was by the book. I remember a hard-right guy asking one of the “free spech” guys, “well, ok, let’s say you had the right of free speech–well, what would you say? What would you lobby for?” And the free speech guy had no answer, because that procedural right… Read more »