I thought I would take a break from the money game this week to address an issue that comes up in the email from time to time. That issue is my ideology. Whenever I comment upon ideology, almost always in a negative way, I get comments suggesting I should explain my ideology, rather than just criticize others. Certain nationalists take issue with being called ideologues for some reason.
The trouble with this is I am not an ideologue, but I thought that might make for a good show, so that was the plan this week. Then as I was recording it, I started having issues with my voice, like I am getting a cold. That threw me off my game and the show wandered around a bit. I would have scrapped it and started over, but I was not sure if the pipes would make it, so I stuck with the first pass.
Realism and pragmatism are much abused terms in American politics. The people we call the right often claim to be on the side of realism, but that is not so. They are just a slower version of those they claim to oppose. The people we call the left used to love the term pragmatism, despite being fanatics. There is a good chance they dust off that language in time for the next election.
Realism and pragmatism are not the opposite of ideology. Ideology does not have an opposite unless you consider the absence of ideology as the opposite. No society is devoid of a moral framework, which either turns up in the dominant religion of the people or as a set of customs and traditions. Ideology is an attempt to replace both religion and tradition with a new moral framework.
The realist understands that ideology is a shabby replacement for religion and tradition, no matter how muted the goals. Pragmatism demands that any political program operate within the limits of the organic moral order of the people. The realist sees things as they are and wonders why, while ideologues dream of things that can never be and demands we explain why not. He never accepts the answer.
That is the show this week. The first half is the problem with ideology, but specifically the American ideology. I even talk about the L. Ron Hubbard of the American ideology, Leo Strauss a bit. One of these days I will do a show on Strauss, but I do not find him as interesting as his followers find him. The rest of the show is why I think I naturally reject ideology. Not a great show, but you get what you pay for.
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This Week’s Show
Contents
- Intro
- Ideology
- Why I am not an ideologue
- Realism
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last day at the day job & the first to comment. I’ll take it!
Congratulations!
If your saying what I think you mean, enjoy!
I have to feed the critters up at the house.
I’ll listen to the show on my way down to see if my farm is still standing. (Lots of water and stuff).
But what we almost certainly would not have enjoyed had Mr. Thurmond become president are the fruits of forced racial integration as it was imposed in later decades: the tidal wave of black crime against whites that is now commonplace; black race riots from Detroit and Watts to Los Angeles in 1992; the virtual destruction of American cities as a black underclass, protected by the federal government, pushed out whites terrified for their own lives and those of their families; the destruction of American education and the transformation of the schools into day-time prison camps for hoodlums. No forced busing; no affirmative… Read more »
Our nearest city, the state capital, is now nearly 42 percent black. White Flight was a sneer word in the local media as HBO put out Banging In Little Rock.
I attended a wedding at the former home of one of the chief instigators of the 1957 school integration debacle. It was a beautiful old mansion in the heart of Little Rock, now in the middle of the hood. All was quiet the night of the wedding, but there was a shooting on the corner two days later.
Thurmond would have just slowed things down a bit. The forces pushing for integration would still be there. Without a continuous stream of Thurmonds, we were end up here anyway, just maybe a few years later. The problem with an endless stream of Thurmonds would be that those forces do not disperse over time. One can believe that had it been allowed to build and boil over, we would have been able to justify extreme actions to put it down, sure, but then explain Detroit or Watts. Until we get serious about things and pull an Escape from New York… Read more »
When there was a will, both popular and political, to punish negro pathology harshly, there were no Newarks or Detroits of Watts’s to speak of. The nuggras understood what would happen to them if they got out of line. When that will evaporated in the mid-sixties, the lid popped off the pressure cooker and here we are living in African squallor, dysfunction and moral chaos.
That did not happen overnight. Indeed, the Radical Republicans got that ball rolling officially in 1866 Civil Rights Act. Being damnYankees, they couldn’t help themselves.
It’s not that the will ended in the mid (19)60s, that’s just when the lid popped off. The combination of not having a constant stream of Thurmonds, plus the gradual buildup of force in the name of “civil rights” was inexorable.
Racial integration was always inevitable, once the New Deal regime was fully in place. You can draw a straight line from that event to that kid’s murder in Texas. This was a process that was always going to play out and no election would have changed it.
In my corner of the world, there are no people of any <90IQ race. Education has been demolished, with a passion, all the same. It has been done by the intrinsic “democratization” of everything in our time: everything must be accessible to everyone: as that principle is enforced or catches roots, anyone meaningfully above average (in intellect, and/or will to do genuine work and apply some standards) absquatulates a line of work or an occupational context. Only those who are both mediocre and enjoy wallowing in mediocrity are left; from then onward, it is a race, or a moderately-paced, plunge… Read more »
Any word that ends with -gogg can’t be good.
Like Gogg (the UK) and Magogg (AINO)?
Worked with risk models for nearly 40 years…and brother, let me tell you how many times they were horribly (and expensively) wrong. Some have gotten better over decades–usually via expensive mistakes. But one always finds there are “X” factors that could not be anticipated. Take the Palisades fires…the wildfire models assumed 1) reservoir water would be available (it was empty), 2) response assets would be pre-positioned once the “red flag” went up, they were busy doing DEI seminars…or something and 3) normal brush clearance/thinning was done. None were. Humans, being humans, can never execute to a “model” whatever stripe it… Read more »
Z: “the L. Ron Hubbard of the American ideology, Leo Strauss“ Any chance we could get some elucidation there? All I know about L Ron Hubbard is that Tom Cruise believed in him, and that Trey Parker and the j00, Matt Stone, ridiculed Tom Cruise in the episode, “Trapped in the Closet”. Plus something something something something about McDonnell Douglas DC-7s flying into or out of volcanoes [or maybe it was DC-10s]? Anyway, does the metaphor with Leo Strauss have anything to do with snake oil salesmen and their mesmerization & hypnotization techniques? I suppose that would be the “Cult”… Read more »
L. Ron Hubbard was mid-XX century. The man got in trouble while holding a naval commission for shooting at things that weren’t there and was later diagnosed as schizophrenic. He went on to become a bad science fiction author and start up a very successful amateur psychology grift which he then dressed up as an anti-psychology UFO religion in order to escape prosecution for fraud, which survives today as the Church of Scientology.
Worked with a guy years ago who was reading Dianetics. I read the back cover and told him it was nonsense.
Read a book about him in college. It was written by a former Scientologist, so I’m aware it was a certain POV. Quite a character! Utterly charismatic, apparently. Sui generis. Short story: he took psychology and dressed it up in science (Dianetics), later religion in sci-fi (Scientology) for the modern age. Naval stuff, book claimed he wanted to take over the world. Would make a wild movie.
I suppose it’s that Hubbard and Strauss both cultivated hierarchy/rivalry among their followers/students by giving various of them the impression that only they were granted access to some (of the) esoteric truth. So “Straussianism” survives as a nepotistic cult or two instead of as an apprehensible philosophy (or history of philosophy or whatever), and all good men roll their eyes and look for the exit when you say the name, just like Scientology. The analogy I’d use isn’t Hubbard but Leonard Bernstein. He and Strauss were great at giving you the impression that something somebody else wrote was really interesting… Read more »
Right now I would say the risk model for the U.S. is exceptionally bad. Nothing being done that causes me to have any hope that the U.S. survives as a political entity into 2035, and that could be optimistic. Trump may have his heart in the right place, hard to tell, however like his last term he is in the process of crashing and burning. When you get Tammy Bruce being asked what the U.S. position is concerning the IDF murdering 15 paramedics, execution style, and her response is: “It is all the fault of Hamas,” then this administration has… Read more »
Anyone who works with models knows that the model is wrong, the question is by how much. We live in a country ruled by magical thinking and midwits, though, so this is forgotten and the models become fact. This is most clearly true with “climate change” where the models said NYC would be underwater 20 years ago, well NYC is not underwater but they still point to their models when demanding total control. The 2008 crisis, I know that people on the right tend to blame the government’s intervention in lending markets, and people on the left tend to blame… Read more »
Z, those pipes had better be serviced by the Sunday show! I demand my $5 worth!
I wonder if they still make Sucrettes? Ah, medical memories from childhood in the 70s.
Zman, speaking of ideology, what do you mean by “if you see a libertarian, hit him and he will know why?” I am thinking about trying that experiment.
I have wondered this as well. Perhaps since, as Zman has pointed out, libertarians are not serious about the use of force. All governments stay in place because they are willing to violently defend themselves. Libertarians are self-limited in this regard, because by their own ideology, they must allow freedom to the subversives that will eventually overthrow them. So hit a libertarian, and his lack of response proves the limits of his ideology.
Excellent explanation.
Alternate explanation: Libertarians are inherently punchable and they know it.
Failure to recognize and deal with its spiteful mutants is perhaps the #1 failing of the west. Practically everyone you find on Bluesky is a spiteful mutant. Not all ideologues are spiteful mutants, but all spiteful mutants are ideologues (or at least fancy themselves as such). These people can’t be reached, reasoned with, debated etc. It does no good to show them charts and graphs. They have to be dealt with some other way. And the only way the west has seen fit to deal with them, so far, is to give them voter registration cards. So here we are.… Read more »
The Puritan impulsive has driven the Anglosphere over the cliff. Jews were able to exploit it, of course, but the blame ultimately lies in the Puritans. It is amazing that Britain largely rid itself of the hyper Puritanism–the Church of Scotland hardly qualifies–yet seems to have been its biggest victims. The world’s best and brightest had a horrible flaw, perhaps genetic, and is on the verge of killing itself.
It’s not just that the spiteful mutants have not been dealt with, it is that they have been weaponized. The regime can churn these people out like a factory and then set them loose whenever they want. I was reading about antifa showing up to a university speech the other day! Remember when that was commonplace in 2017-2020? Then you didn’t hear about it at all for four years? The regime activates these people at will. Their creation is a feature not a bug.
They are churned out by nature. The regime manipulators do some fine-tuning, with their great resources and slyness. They don’t create these people or their attributes, though.
These people can’t be reached, reasoned with, debated etc. It does no good to show them charts and graphs. Are you married, or do you have a girlfriend? Does it any good to show her charts, graphs, or give her demonstrations? Come on. The illusion that the world spins the way it does due to a minority of reprehensible, or defective, responsible ones is comforting… but does it lead to real understanding of problems, and finding of solutions? That UK sentencing commission that was in the news recently, which recommended harsher sentencing for whites than for wogs, is made up… Read more »
I hadn’t at all considered the murdered Texas kid in terms of ideology, but no doubt anti-racism led directly to his murder. Black violence can be ignored or explained away but it is always there. Segregation was a half-measure, and removal is the only solution although it is unlikely to happen (perhaps not as true any longer). The kid’s father indeed is more Bolshevik than Moonie.
Great show.
Russell Kirk used to say, quoting Napoleon, “Ideology is for idiots.”
Realism and pragmatism are ideologies, of a sort. Their conceit is that they purport to be “fact-based”, but even the most dispassionate analysis will eventually run up against Godelian incommensurabity, and contradict itself.
Perhaps the least “ideological” world view is Trumpian transactionalism. Everything is an exchange of value. No moral considerations exist outside the deal. Ethics are determined by adherence to its terms, as creatively as one can manage. It’s basically Semitic mercantilism without the “chosen-ness”.
Not the best code to live by, but not the worst, either. We all can’t be Warriors.
We All argue based on assumptions – even when these assumptions are unconscious or denied. Call it religion, call it ideology – the name doesn’t matter: the point is that to made progress in life, we each Need to become aware of our own assumptions. Only after we have become aware of them, can we decide whether we really want to have the assumptions we actually have. This is important; because often people discover that they don’t want to hold the assumptions that they are implicitly (unconsciously) arguing-from. Or me may discover that some of our assumptions contradict each other.… Read more »
Perhaps. But I suspect 90 percent of adults are entirely incapable of the sort of introspective self-examination you suggest. And of the 10 percent who are capable, a sizeable percentage of them are uninterested.
“Not a great show, but you get what you pay for.” LOL. For $4.99 per month, I get more excellent content than I can keep up with.
What does it mean to have no ideology? Does Z Man really want to say that he has no ideology?
* That one’s actions are not consistent with any principles.
* That one responds to problems in a way that cannot be explained by any set of values or rules.
* All statements of principles are useless.
We like politician’s who have principles because they won’t surprise us or betray us. Someone whose actions are non-ideological is impossible to predict and so trusting them difficult.
Should we stop talking about our principles? Is politics just about intuition and “vibes?”
“Should we stop talking about our principles?”
It’s a step beyond that, even. If you truly have no ideology, you cannot have principles. Even with the yellow folder thing, you continue the tradition because you believe it works, that it accomplishes some worthwhile end that results in a better outcome than, say, blue folders.
I think principles, inferred from tradition and longstanding religion, are non-ideological and praiseworthy. When principles spring, on the other hand, from confected, inorganic theories and philosophies, they are ideological and therefore not to be trusted.
I get praiseworthy. Why non-ideological?
Ideology isn’t having principles, or ideals, or ideas, and be guided, within realistic reason, by them.
Ideology is to pedestalize one or more “moral virtues” (so-called, and supposed), and smash realism and awareness of reality into smithereens as part of the (supposed, so-called) virtue worship.
Ideology is to will “principles” and ideals to rule over reality, and dismiss reality as unreal whenever there is a conflict or divergence between the two.
Maybe DJT has hit on our ideology with “common sense.”
As to meetings, the only worthwhile meetings I ever attended were design reviews. Then we ditched the design reviews and went to about 80% development with the balance figured out in the field. Stupid short-sighted fools.
I’m gonna go to this Billy strings concert and keep an open mind (having already opened my wallet) but rather than being a positive sign I would say Billy strings is a sign that any popular art is totally dead at least in America. Billy strings seems to be. Walking corpse: hid original songs are bad, sorry to say, they are boilerplate bluegrass/pop. He’s good at psychedelic bluegrass. He’s good at bluegrass, and that’s great but while his voice is good too it is not original and great instrumental solos get boring to me really fast. Dave grisman was better… Read more »
Yes, you are no ideologue. You are a prophet, as manifested in the “Back to work” post from yesterday, where you make a long, powerful list of anticipations, without expending a single sentence on why what you know is going to happen will take place.
Why is the “global bank” and “global reserve currency” game approaching its expiration?
Aren’t still all other countries quite visibly afraid of the USA, and its hundreds of world-financed military bases?
This “American ideology” is foolish, destructive nonsense. The local talk show guy, conservative/libertarian, discovered Russell Kirk and spent a week or more spouting about all these supposedly “universal truths”.
I made fun of him until the radio station blocked my number.
Pre-ideological thought started with a realistic conception of human nature and the implications of that nature for the arrangements of human societies. Ideological thought tends to reject the idea of human nature or believes that human nature is malleable. All the absurdities of ideologues stem from this rejection. The actual situation of humanity makes all the pretty dreams of the ideologues impossible. The utopias they believe they can engineer on earth always end up as actual dystopias of one sort or another.
“Pre-ideological thought started with a realistic conception of human nature and the implications of that nature for the arrangements of human societies.”
True. But isn’t the act of abstracting from the specific to the general a leap of faith? Lord knows “science” screws this up constantly. Coffee causes/cures cancer, etc.
Why trust reason to have successfully generalized when we reject reason for anything else? Why embrace the uniformitarian assumption that what is true today will be true tomorrow?
The part that I can’t wrap my tiny little brain around is that while I agree Wilson’s “safe for democracy” and Bush’s spin on it, bombing the world to do things our way, were definitely ideologies, I can’t see why we have a dog in the fight with Russia/Ukraine or Israel/Gaza. How is having principles that insist on imposing your views on someone half a globe away any different than what Bush did? Z explicitly mentions Africans having their own way of working things out. I think he probably wisely avoided the tar baby. Though the tar baby deserves at… Read more »