Author Archives: thezman

Musings On Moldbugism

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I no longer recall the first time I heard about Mencius Moldbug. I want to say it was seven or eight years ago, but I’m not sure. What I recall is someone asking me what I thought of Mencius Moldbug and not having the slightest idea what was meant by the question. I was soon reading through his blog, skimming mostly. The person who had asked about it was younger than me and a fan of Moldbug, so I felt obliged to thank him for the link and say some nice things about it, even though it was really not my thing.

My first impression was that it was for young males who were part of third wave internet culture and gaming. By third wave, I mean those who came along with mobile computing and immersive on-line gaming. The second wave were the folks who came along with the PC revolution. The first wave were the people who built their own computers, started a dial-up BBS and enjoyed hours of free long distance, courtesy of phone phreaking. I fall somewhere between the first wave and the second wave.

I would read the Moldbug blog a few times a month and maybe read some of the other guys in the NRx thing when I had the time or interest. I’m guessing that peak neo-reaction was half a dozen years ago. That seems like when the term was popping up all over the internet, associated with the phrase Dark Enlightenment, which I think was coined by Nick Land. Since then many of the bloggers big in the movement have closed up shop and the terminology has mostly fallen out of usage. NRx seems to be dead.

For those unfamiliar with Moldbug, looking to kill a few days reading his work, his blog posts are archived here. I’ll caution you that they tend to be long and meandering, bordering on stream of consciousness. For a shorter and more concise reading of Moldbug and the core of NRx, you can read this retrospective at Thermodor. People in the movement may quibble, but it strikes me as a clean and concise summary of Moldbug and the NRx movement in general. The criticism at the end is also worth reading.

As far as criticism, the most potent and accurate is the simple observation that Moldbugism, and to a lesser extent NRx, was not able to outlive its creator. Once Curtis Yarvin gave up blogging, the internet movement he created quickly faded away. Maybe a better way to state it is that it was quickly gobbled up by the alt-right, alt-lite and other manifestations of dissident politics. My guess is a fair share of his fans simply went back to the safety of techno-libertarianism. Regardless, Moldbugism is no longer a thing.

As an aside, an indication of just how out of touch and superfluous the Buckley Right has become is the fact that they never felt the need to disavow NRx. In fact, they were largely unaware of its existence. Instead they were still obsessed with rounding up the remaining paleocons and casting them into the void. National Review finally got around to addressing neo-reaction and Moldbug, when their in-house homosexual took on the topic, confusing a bunch of things, in the process of trying to make sense of Buckley Conservatism.

Anyway, there are two possible explanations for the end of Moldbugism. One is that his arguments were not original, just stated in a new way. His assertion that Progressivism has its roots in Puritanism, for example, is not new. I was making that point 25 years ago in Usenet debates and I know I’m not the first guy to notice it. His criticisms of democracy have been around since the Enlightenment. Old ideas restated in modern terms eventually just fade into the tapestry of the intellectual movement that spawned them.

The other possibility is that the people attracted to Moldbug’s ideas, including Moldbug, came from the Left ideologically. Young people raised on Progressivism were attracted by the subversiveness of these old ideas. They moved right into Left-libertarianism, then Right-libertarianism and then eventually dissident politics of various flavors. Put another way, the Dark Enlightenment guys were merely going through a phase as they first experienced the outlawed ideas from the outlawed past. Now, they are onto other things.

Moving from libertarianism, often Left-libertarianism to the alt-right is something you hear a lot on the alt-right. Mike Enoch, of The Right Stuff, has talked about his political evolution and it matches this pattern. He was in a Trotsky movement at one point, then moved through libertarianism and eventually to the alt-right. Maybe neo-reaction is like withdrawing from heroin. Going cold-turkey from Progressivism leads to all sorts of reactions, but eventually they fade and the patient can begin a normal intellectual life.

In this regard, Moldbugism should be a cautionary tale for those into dissident politics, particularly the alt-right. Discovering outlawed ideas from a bygone era is liberating and exciting, but there is a reason that those ideas were outlawed. The reason we find ourselves in a Progressive theocracy, is that those old guys with all of their sound ideas about human nature, lost the fight with the Left. Studying their failure will probably count for more in the coming fights than digesting and internalizing their philosophy.

Another angle here is that Moldbugism never got much traction from paleocons, paleo-libertarians and Southern populists. If like me, you were a Buchanan man in the 90’s, NRx felt more like an echo than a calling. Further, neocameralism has a whiff of libertarian dreamer about it that biological realists find ridiculous. Therefore, the more potent minds in dissident politics were never attracted to Moldbug. Long after many NRx bloggers were onto other things, guys like Steve Sailer are still going strong.

In the end, Curtis Yarvin should be remembered as an important part of this thing, if for no other reason than he normalized and made interesting, the critique of the prevailing orthodoxy for a generation of smart people. By calling into question some of the shibboleths of the ruling elite, he helped make it possible to question all of them, including their most cherished beliefs. Whether or not Yarvin gets all the credit for that is debatable, but he was part of an effort to get smart people asking questions about this stuff.

The lesson of the Left’s dominance is that they institutionalized a critique of Western civilization. For as long as anyone reading this has been alive, it has been hip and cool to question the culture and customs of the West. Like water dripping on a stone for a century, the Left has eroded Western civilization with an endless stream of small challenges. If this counter-culture we see forming up is going to succeed, it will have to develop a culture of endlessly questioning and challenging the prevailing orthodoxy.

The Torquemadas

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Long ago, it became clear that genetics was going to upend all of the Progressive assertions about human nature. In fact, it was going to challenge the core of Western Liberalism. It’s a little hard to hold onto the idea that “All men are created equal” when you no longer believe in God and science says some men are more equal than others. It’s impossible to maintain the universalism that is the foundation stone of the prevailing orthodoxy, when group differences are clearly rooted in genetics and evolution.

This is, of course, the end of the world. All of the laws and political institutions of the West have been modified to comport with the belief that all humans are the same, regardless of location. Race, ethnicity, even sex, are now considered outmoded notions from a less enlightened era. The reason American Progressives endlessly talk about institutional racism, for example, is it is the only acceptable answer for why blacks perform so poorly compared to other groups. To consider anything else runs counter to accepted dogma.

It’s not just Prog dogma that is under pressure from science. Most of what people in the West believe about human nature is rooted in the idea of free will. It is assumed that people can choose to be good or evil. A drunkard, with help and training, can choose not to drink. Everything about the self-help industry is based on free will. If you work at it and buy his materials, you can be just as successful as Tony Robbins. If you take his class, you can be like Mike Cernovich. The assumption is you can make yourself into anything.

Again, the universal belief in free will and the blank slate is the bedrock of the modern West. You see it in this Joe Rogan podcast with Sargon of Arkkad. Both guys are right-libertarians, or at least that is how Rogan would describe himself. Arkkad calls himself a liberal, but he most likely means it in the British sense, which corresponds to our conservatives. In their back and forth, they both start from the premise that people are free to make of themselves what they will, regardless of their biology.

Whether we like it or not, science is punching big holes in this underlying belief. At the individual level, it is becoming increasingly clear that your general intelligence is a result of your genes. Personality traits are clearly biological. Even without genetics, people had understood this to be true up until fairly recent. Then there are group differences, which have always been out in the open, but made taboo. It is only a matter of time before science  begins to confirm what people have always known about human diversity.

We are on the cusp of an age, not all that dissimilar to the end of the Renaissance when science and philosophy began to challenge the age old assumptions of the West. The Church gets a bad rap for Galileo, but they were not acting without reason. From the perspective of the people in charge, challenges to the prevailing assumptions about the natural world felt like a leap into the void. Maintaining public order is the first duty of an elite. In that age, it felt as if the ground was shifting under their feet.

The difference, and it is a big difference, is we are not experiencing science for the first time and the public is better informed than 400 years ago. In fact, much of what is coming from genetics and the cognitive sciences confirms what our grandparents took for granted about humanity. The expression “the apple does not fall far from the tree” did not become a hearty chestnut by accident. Long before anyone could conceive of the human genome, humans knew that you inherited your physical and mental traits from your parents.

Another big difference is the modern keepers of morality are far less reasonable and more prone to hysteria than the leaders of the Church in the Renaissance. You see it in stories like this one the other day and in efforts like this one. Race mongering is a sacrament of the Cult of Modern Liberalism. Academics are forced to play along with the morality of the one true faith,. Those who refuse are accused of heresy and threatened with internal banishment, which is exactly the point of promulgating the term “scientific racism.”

The point of a movie called “A Dangerous Idea” is to serve as a warning. The term “scientific racism” is a nonsense phrase. It has no meaning in the literal sense, but it carries with it the implication that science is subject to moral scrutiny. It does not matter if the conclusions of your research are accurate, you could still be found guilty of the mortal sin of racism. Accuracy is no defense against the charge of heresy. The PC enforcers may not have an Inquisition, but they have an unlimited supply of Torquemadas.

They also will have a lot of sympathetic minds in the general public. In the current age, racism and antisemitism are at the top of the hierarchy of evil. White people stumble all over themselves to prove they have nothing but love in their heart for all mankind. At least three generations have been programmed to think that the ultimate goal of society is to achieve perfect racial parity, where everyone is equal and in perfect harmony. Demonizing anyone who speaks out against the prevailing moral hierarchy is not going to be difficult.

It is easy to be pessimistic about these things, but history says that reality does eventually carry the day. There’s also the fact that science has greater moral authority with the public than the PC enforcers. Then there is the reality on the ground. The migrant invasion of Europe is teaching the West that it is a good idea to have separate countries for different people. Even so, the people in charge are not going to yield without a fight. We are on the cusp of a long ugly period in the West, as the old beliefs give way to the new.

It will not end well.

Guns and the Prog

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A useful way to experience the lunacy of Progressives is to discuss guns with your local lefty. Most people understand that gun control is worthless as a tool to control crime or even reduce gun accidents. The people using guns in crime are by definition not the sort to obey gun laws. Similarly, the people inclined to shoot themselves or friends while playing William Tell will find some way to off themselves, no matter what you do. The only result of gun control is to harass honest citizens exercising their rights as citizens.

The mountain of data in support of liberalized gun laws is beyond dispute. Even if you are not inclined to dig into the details, the fundamental logic is manifest. People who abide by the laws are, by definition, not the sort to break the laws. That means people who break the law are not interested in any new laws you are passing. Therefore, passing gun laws will only inconvenience those who follow the law and do nothing to stop the criminals. At best, gun laws are just a tool of the state to go after the more clever street gangs.

Despite all this, Progressives obsess over gun laws. This story from a few months ago is a good example. The people who support this sort of stuff know nothing about guns, gun culture or gun shows. Yet, they remain convinced that gun shows resemble an arms bizarre in the Middle East, where bearded men buy and sell military gear. Further, they remain convinced that gun shows are exempt from the thousands of gun laws on the books. They are convinced that “gun show loophole” is a real thing.

That’s what makes guns a useful topic for understanding the Prog mind. All of us have had the experience where the Prog friend or relative starts going on about guns. Someone then steps forward to correct all of their errors about guns and gun laws. Then someone gently explains to them the anti-logic at the core of gun control. The Prog will take correction, nod along and seem to understand the material, but then soon after they will be repeating the same gun control slogans they were saying the last time.

It’s tempting to think it is a mental illness and to some degree it is. It’s just the nature of the fanatic. They see only that which confirms the nature of their fanaticism. That simple and seemingly effective conversation you had with the blue haired girl at the office about guns may as well have been in Swahili. As soon as she confronted disconfirmation, her receptors shut down and she went onto autopilot, appearing to comprehend what you were saying, but not really hearing any of it. You were Charlie Brown’s teacher.

It’s why it is an error to think they are stupid or dishonest. Those things may be true, but the reality is, they don’t know they are doing it. It’s as natural to them as blinking is to the living. Gun control has become an obsession with Progs, because they are convinced it harms white people, particularly white men. Again, this is not malice of forethought. It is instinctual as the Prog faith is an explicit rejection of the culture created by western white males. Gun control reminds them of this and it makes them feel good, so they embrace it.

This is why gun control has been a political topic for more than fifty years. G. Gordon Liddy, when he was in the Nixon administration, worked on gun control. That was the early 1970’s. His task was to help craft regulations to get the so-called “Saturday Night Special” off the streets, particularity the streets of DC. That term came into the lexicon via the Gun Control Act of 1968. In other words, like the “gun show loophole”, 1960’s Prog fanatics invented a phrase to market gun control, despite the fact there was no such thing.

That’s what makes the gun issue useful in understanding the Prog mind. Gun control as a social policy has been thoroughly discredited, but that does not dissuade the Left from pushing gun control. It’s why it is pointless to think you can change their mind or get them to reconsider their position. The Prog is beyond the reach of facts and reason. They are the truest of true believers committed to a cause they put above all else. You can no more talk them out of their beliefs than talk a Muslim out of his faith.

This applies to all issues, not just guns. Take a look at this video of Tucker Carlson talking with the neocon nutter, Ralph Peters. The neocons have been wrong about everything with regards to foreign policy. Despite the disastrous results, they continue to advocate for the same polices that have been discredited by reality. At one point, Peters admits to having been wrong about Iraq, but then seamlessly presses the case for repeating the mistake in Syria. It’s as if he tuned out his own admission of failure.

The lesson here is that there’s no point in trying to reason with a fanatic. Whether or not the neocons are the Trotsky wing of the Progs or the Buckleyites is debatable, but there is no debate about their fanaticism with regards to Muslims and the Russians. The endless fake news about Russia and the election is rooted in neocon fanaticism. They are sure Putin is Tsar Alexander III threatening to impose the May Laws on Manhattan. The abject lunacy of it, like the lunacy of gun control, has no effect on the mind of these fanatics.

There’s another lesson here. The NRA has been the one effective organization in the culture wars of the last half century. They do not win every fight, but they have managed to claw back territory after having lost some fights in the 60’s and 70’s. The reason is they avoided party politics and the temptations of political access, They stuck to building majorities in favor of their issues. They win because they transcend Washington politics and build large coalitions in favor of gun rights. Our team can learn a lot from the NRA.

The Z-Cast: Episode 2

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This week I try to build on lessons learned from week one. I have decided to create both a full episode and a collection of sub-episodes. The full podcast will be on my Spreaker page and on my YouTube channel. The sub-episodes will be on the YouTube channel only as that is just easier for me. Converting these things to the YouTube format and uploading them is a pain. There has to be a better way, but for now I’ll just suffer for my art.

Here is the direct download link

 

The Church of Modern Lunacy

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I have a passing interest in the Church of England and its American variation, the Episcopal Church. An old friend is in the church so I get some first hand descriptions of what it is like to be in a dying institution. That’s the only way to describe the Episcopal Church. Attendance declines every year as old members die off and new members never materialize. Go into an Episcopal service and you can’t help but notice that most everyone is a senior. The actuarial tables are the church’s greatest enemy.

Of course, church attendance has always skewed a little older. Young people tend not to be attracted to the faith, even if their parents regularly attend services. As people get older, have families and begin to sink roots, they get more involved in their faith and attend services regularly. That’s the trouble with the mainline Protestant religions. The young are not coming back once they start having families. That means their children are not raised in the faith. As a result, these churches are now in a death spiral.

The story is familiar to anyone who has been paying attention. These churches made the decision to chase the latest social fads in the 70’s and 80’s, hoping to make themselves more appealing to the young. The only thing they did was make themselves less attractive to people interested in being part of a traditional Christian sect. It was not just in the pews, but in the clergy as well. Those feeling the call found that the church in which they were raised was not interested in defending and maintaining the faith.

The result is the clergy slowly radicalized. First came the women and then the feminist women. Soon they invited in the homosexuals and the clergy started looking like the faculty of a liberal arts college. That’s when the pews started to empty out. Why bother going to church, when you can get the same liberal lecture from television? That’s what started the decline in church attendance. Instead of offering a shelter from the storm, they decided to chase an over-served market – radical Progressives.

Talking to my friend, he tells me that there are elements within the Episcopal Church that know what must be done to save the church. The trouble is they are outgunned and out maneuvered by the radicals. That’s the thing. The conservatives make it a priority to serve the church and serve God, while the radicals are always scheming to advance the radical agenda. The conservatives are constantly outmaneuvered because they are not playing the political games. They end up getting marginalized, despite having numbers.

Of course, young people seeking to join the clergy are confronted by a politicized bureaucracy full of homosexuals and social justice warriors, who are mainly interested in advancing their own agenda within the church. Like the old commie radicals of yesteryear, the current radicals use struggle sessions and purity tests to boil off those who would challenge their agenda. Imagine you’re a young priest and you are told you now have to celebrate a special mass for the transgendered.

The General Synod of the Church of England has voted to ‘welcome transgender people’ by considering preparing a church service as a way to “mark a person’s gender transition”.
The official church of the United Kingdom voted four to one in favour amongst the Clergy and more than two to one amongst the Laity (members who are not Clergy) at the four-day Synod, the motion reading:

“That this Synod, recognising the need for transgender people to be welcomed and affirmed in their parish church, call on the House of Bishops to consider whether some nationally commended liturgical materials might be prepared to mark a person’s gender transition.”

Vicar of Lancaster Priory Church, Chris Newlands, posed the motion to the Synod, saying he would speak on behalf of transgender people as the church’s Synod has none.

He said: “We need to be aware of the impact that our actions – be them welcome or rejection – have on the members of the trans community.

“I hope that we can make a powerful statement that we believe trans people are cherished and loved by God, who created them.”

The BBC reports that, “Such a service would not be a second baptism, however, as the Church’s teaching is that humans are made in the image of God – transcending gender – and baptism takes place only once.”

Archbishop of York Dr. John Sentamu said there was a need for vicars “to welcome and affirm, in their parish, transgender people”, adding that the “theology has to be done” by the House of Bishops and “can be done very quickly”.

Notice the feminine language. They want to “welcome and affirm” trannies into their churches. I’d like these guys to point to the passage in the Bible that covers men who like to play dress up or people so mentally unbalanced they believe their sex organs are imaginary. Ministering to the mentally ill has a place in a church, but that’s not what they are saying. They want to make mutilating people a sacrament. Imagine being forced to embrace this sort of madness. It is no wonder the sane clergy are leaving.

Of course, it’s also why the pews are empty. It’s another reminder that Progressives must be treated like rage zombies or highly contagious disease carriers. Once you let one into your organization, it will set about bringing in more of its kind. In this case, it was women in the clergy, then feminists, then homosexuals. They have reached the point where few inside the church care at all about the faith. It’s all about the latest Progressive fads and how they can outrage the remaining members of their congregations.

Lawfare

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The weaponization of the law, particularly the civil courts has become so common, that we no longer notice it. The most obvious example is when  someone gets acquitted of a crime, but then the alleged victim goes to civil court for damages. Alternatively, some hate thinker gets off in state court, but the the feds come in and charge the guy with civil rights violations. It’s an obvious abuse of the law in order to get around the jury system, but it is now just another feature of a system more concerned with vengeance than justice.

The college rape hoax phenomenon is another variation on this. A mentally unstable coed makes claims that can never be proved, but the school, fearing Title IX litigation, punishes the accused anyway. The SPLC is doing something similar with their litigation against the website, The Daily Stormer. The point of the suit is to shut down the site, because the people at the SPLC don’t like the content. Even if the case is eventually tossed, the point is to intimidate the owner and anyone who holds similar opinions.

This bizarre story is a new twist on how the lawfare game is being played.

Tumblr has released account information for close to 300 anonymous users to a revenge porn victim in what online privacy advocates say is a major violation of the First Amendment.

The 27-year-old New York victim, who first learned that an unauthorized video of her having sex with a boyfriend when she was just 17 had been posted on Tumblr ​​last winter, plans to sue the users for disseminating child pornography.

“The ultimate goal is to expose these people,” said attorney Daniel Szalkiewicz, who represents the Bronx victim.

“There is no First Amendment protection for child porn,” Szalkiewicz said.

On Monday​,​ Tumblr complied with a June 7 order issued by a Manhattan state court judge to release the email addresses and account names of 281 Tumblr users.

You’ll notice the legal base stealing. Is this woman a victim? We can’t know that until it is established that the video was shot without her consent. If she agreed to the filming, which is most likely, then she is the victim of her own stupidity. Then you have the legal fiction that this is child pornography. No one in their right mind would call this child porn. Clearly, her lawyer is hoping that fear of being tarred with “child porn” is enough to coerce a settlement. The Mafia would be envious of this maneuver.

What we have now is litigation in the shadow legal system. The lawyer has coerced the company into aiding him in what amounts to a shakedown. The lawyer is also using the media to threaten his targets with exposure and all that comes with it, unless they agree to pay him off. It is a clever legal trap. In order for these people to defend themselves, they first have to admit to viewing the material. A First Amendment defense would argue that they had a right to look at what was posted on the site, even if it was illegally posted.

Once you admit to viewing the material, you run the risk of losing the initial claim and then having to argue about whether it constitutes a violation of child porn laws. You don’t have to be a graduate of Harvard Law to see that the easiest way out of this trap is to settle as a group and get some sort of non-disclosure in place. In other words, this case is not brought in the interest of justice or to mitigate harm done to the alleged victim. It is a shake down and what most people would consider extortion, even if the court does not.

This goes back to the Servile State post. No one in this sordid relationship is free in any meaningful way. The big bad company is being forced to supervise its users, to make sure they do not violate the ever shifting morality of the people in charge of the state. If they fail in that duty, they are forced to help punish the users they did not properly supervise, by ratting them out to the state. The result here is that everyone is responsible for everyone else. It turns everyone into both a slave and slave master.

That’s the other aspect of lawfare. It is uncivilized. Into the Middle Ages, tribes in Europe still practiced the wergeld. This was the price put upon a man’s life based on his rank. If a rich man killed a poor man, by accident or on purpose, he could pay the victims family in gold for the value of his life. You can see how this can quickly get out of hand. Not only would rich people feel free to kill inconvenient poor people, they would be tempted to kill their families too. No family to pay, means to no wergeld to pay.

That’s what we have with lawfare. Instead of the law determining if a crime has been committed and then determining the guilt or innocence of the accused, the process is about determining the price of this woman’s honor, as it were. In the future, the courts may be forced to post prices for posting revenge porn so that angry ex-boyfriends know in advance the risk of hitting send. At the same time, young women will now know what they can get for agreeing to be filmed having sex with that guy they picked up at the bar.

That’s sarcasm, obviously, but lawfare is not a good thing for a society. What cases like this do is undermine the respect for law. It is why the bar associations used to forbid advertising on TV. They knew that greasy sleezeballs in their ranks would go trolling for slip and fall cases and phony disability claims. That’s been the result and as a consequence the public’s respect for lawyers has declined. If you want to have a low-trust society, erode public faith in the law. That’s exactly what lawfare is doing in America.

Why Conservatism Died

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I read Tyler Cowen’s blog a couple of times a week, despite the fact he banned me from his site. I mostly skim the comments looking for familiar names. There are a handful of commenters there that post interesting responses. Cowen is not all that interesting. He’s Thomas Friedman without the mega-rich wife. Here’s Friedman’s wife’s home, in which she permits him to live. Banal rump-swabbery pays well, but not as well as marrying the daughter of a billionaire, so Cowen remains a junior rump-swab.

Looking for material, I stumbled upon this in Cowen’s links. It’s not a very interesting article, so don’t bother reading it. What is interesting is the author is a guy named Reihan Salam and he wants to reorganize American politics to be more like some place not called America, perhaps his home country of Bangladesh. Proportional representation has always been antithetical to the American creed, because it breeds the sort of tribalism and sectarianism a continental sized country can never afford.

One of the reasons many of us gave up on conventional politics is that in the mainstream, guys with weird, unpronounceable names, from foreign lands keep demanding we change our country to suit their needs. That would be tolerable if the response was “shut up and learn how to be Americans.” Instead, the political class goes out of its way to celebrate these people. Our rulers make it clear that the opinions of newly arrived boat people count for more than the opinions of the natives, who made the country possible.

Putting aside my justifiable xenophobia, take a look at Salam’s biography.

Salam was born in Brooklyn. His parents are Bangladeshi-born immigrants who arrived in New York in 1976; his father is an accountant and his mother is a dietician. Salam attended Stuyvesant High School and Cornell University before transferring to Harvard University, where he was a member of the Signet Society and lived in Pforzheimer House. He graduated from Harvard in 2001 with a degree in Social Studies.

Everything sounds like an American success story until that last line. What we have is a classic example of how the affirmative action game is played at the highest levels. Most likely he went into Cornell through the agricultural college, which has much lower admissions standards. He then transferred into Harvard because he ticked the right boxes and was placed into a nonsense track like social studies. Barak Obama was at least able to pass the bar. Salam has yet to prove he can stock shelves at a grocery store.

That’s not the worst of it. According to his bio, “Salam has been described as Literary Brooklyn’s Favorite Conservative. He has written that he intends to pump ideas into the bloodstream of American conservatism”. If there is any question about the dullness of Reihan Salam, it is answered right there. Conservatism, by definition, is the rejection of exactly what he claims as his goal. Conservatism, allegedly, is not about chasing the latest fads or ideas. It is the preservation of the proven and the traditional.

That’s not the worst of it. Again, according to his bio, “He believes it is “racist” for people to date only those of their own race.” Everyone knows that a cornerstone of conservatism is race mixing. Of course, that’s a requirement to get invited to the “right-wing” platforms on which he regularly performs. Salam is a regular on Slate, Vice, NPR, The Bill Maher Show, Chris Mathews Show and The Colbert Report. He also writes for National Review when he is not too busy with all of his other media ventures.

You can certainly see why Salam is Brooklyn’s favorite conservative. He’s a regular on all of their favorite shows and writes for their favorite publications. He even holds most of their favorite opinions. If you were one of those ridiculous racists who thinks words have meaning, you would erroneously think that Salam is just playing a well crafted role as the house broken conservative. That would be ridiculous. Salam is a conservative in the tradition of Bill Buckley and Ronald Reagan. What sort of bigot are you?

Obviously, Reihan Salam is just another guy working the Conservative Inc hustle. His utility lies entirely in the fact he has brown skin and a weird name. Instead of being an ornament on the ankle bracelet of Elizabeth Warren, he is a token on the charm bracelet of Rich Lowry. Even so, he is always ready to better deal himself and become a full-throated Progressive if there is a well paid opening. For now, he’s perfectly willing to convince people that today’s Progressive lunacy is tomorrow’s conservative dogma.

It’s why Conservatism is dead. It’s not just that they outsourced their movement to Asian migrants. It’s that they stopped being serious. They turned their thing into a parlor game, where they play a role the Left designed for them. Instead of being in opposition to the Left, they have embraced the morality of the Left, in order to party with the Left. If the public leaders of conservatism prefer to hang around degenerates like Bill Maher, rather than fight for the causes they claim to champion, why would anyone follow them?

The Colony

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Many on the alt-right make references to Weimar Germany and the rise of the NSDAP under Hitler. The Richard Spencer wing is particularly fond of Nazi aesthetics, the haircuts being the most obvious example. Part of it, of course, is owning the insult. If they are going to be called Nazis, they may as well own it. This is a time honored way of signalling a rejection of the prevailing morality. If you are going to be called a dirty hippy, you may as well grow your beard and stop bathing. The alt-right is doing the same thing.

It goes much further than simply adopting the Nazi aesthetics, though. Richard Spencer is fond of drawing comparisons between his thing and the rise of the Nazis in Weimar Germany. He’s not alone. Ryan Landry works from the “Weimerica” motif, in his blogging and his Daily Caller posts. The popular blogger, Brett Stevens, does a lot of this too. The alt-right is not in favor of invading the Sudetenland or partitioning Poland, but they think Weimar Germany is a good analog to the modern US.

I don’t think it works, though. Germany after the Great War was exhausted in every measurable way. It was not just cultural exhaustion. That was certainly part of it, but the heart of Europe was leveled by war. By the end, civilians on both sides were lacking in the necessities of life. The economic base was destroyed. The political classes and social classes were in ruins. Not since The Thirty Years War had Europe been so completely devastated. That does not compare with modern America or even modern Europe.

The utility of such a comparison is mostly on the economic front. Modern America is not suffering from wholesale price inflation due to money printing. We are, however, suffering from asset inflation. The value of homes and businesses, particularly publicly traded companies, has skyrocketed across the West. This is showing up in home owner rates, as young people are finding it hard to buy a home. As Steve Sailer pointed out, affordable family formation is at the heart of what ails modern America.

There’s also the unfathomable public debt. It is not just public debt. Private debt is at record levels and showing no signs of cresting. In fact, it is reasonable to say the world is entirely fueled by debt now. It was the German decision to fund their war effort with debt that led to the economic catastrophe following the war. It was debt that allowed them to make one disastrous decision after another, taking on more risk in a hope of winning a final victory over the Allies, and reaping the benefits of that victory.

The critical missing ingredient, though, is the massive cost of war. America can, if she is inclined, scale back the military-industrial complex, withdraw from policing the barbarian lands and stop playing big brother to Europe. America has good options for averting disaster and no one is dictating policy to us. German after the war had nothing but bad options and the Allies were doing everything possible to maximize the suffering. The soil in which the Nazis blossomed was vastly worse than what is birthing the alt-right today.

A better analogy may be Ireland under British rule or the British Raj. The resistance movements that evolved in those countries were not the result of desperation or a political void. The British, while no one’s idea of generous colonizers, were not ruthless conquerors either. Compared to other European countries, the Brits were sensible and humane administrators. They tried to work with local elites to maintain order. More than a few Indians, for example, were sent to England to be educated and trained.

Even so, they were still foreigners and the natives, like all people, chaffed at being ruled by foreigners. It is a truth of life that most people would rather be ruled by a tyrant from their own tribe than a benevolent king from a foreign tribe.The Irish and the Indians were no different. They wanted the British gone, despite the fact that the Brits were the best thing to happen to them. These nationalists were not motivated by the chaos of cultural collapse. They were motivated by a positive love of their people and their culture.

That’s what makes these nationalist movements a better analogs for what is going on in the West. The people signing onto populist and nationalist movements are not doing so because the state has failed. Ours is not an age of economic dislocation and political chaos. No one is going hungry or being thrown into the streets. What’s motivating these populist revolts is that the people who rule over us are no longer like us. They feel like foreigners, who have no regard for local customs and traditions.

Another reason these are better analogies is the Hindus and Irish were successful, long term movements that brought with them a widespread cultural component. The Nazis, in contrast, were losers whose legacy still haunts the West to this day. Emulating the tactics and philosophy of the Nazis is a good way to follow them into the dustbin of history. It may be a fun taunt, given the nature of the people who rule over us, but in the end, cheap taunts are not going to overthrow colonial rule. Only a legitimate counter culture can do it.

Steve Bannon famously said, “If you think they’re going to give you your country back without a fight, you’re sadly mistaken.” This is a long war. The alt-right would be wise to think about how to win a long, low grade culture war. That means building up the intellectual and cultural side, while also systematically throwing sand in the gears of the colonial machine. The path to victory is to make neo-liberalism too expensive to maintain and too unappealing to support. Think Michael Collins, not Joseph Goebbels.

The Servile State

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A century ago, Hilaire Belloc wrote in the The Servile State¹ that attempts to reform capitalism will lead to an economy in which the state dictates that certain people will work for others, who likewise must take care of them. Belloc called this the servile state. This is different from early arrangements in which slaves and serfs were the backbone of the economy. In those arrangements, the owner has a choice to not own slaves. It is also different from capitalism, in which everyone is politically free by law.

Belloc was a man of his age so he viewed economics through the goggles of socialism and the newly emergent industrial capitalism. In The Servile State, he was searching for an alternative to the destruction of liberty necessary with socialism and the instability inherent to capitalism. The former results in an inequality of political power, while the latter results in an inequality of material wealth. Eventually, a small number of people rule over the masses, who begin to resent their rulers, seeing them as tyrants.

What Belloc argued is that socialism is inevitably the state dictating to property holders how they can dispose of their property. The state does this either through direct ownership, or through legal requirements for the ownership and use of property. Political freedom is determined by the degree of freedom one has with regards his labor and the results of his labor.. Therefore, socialism must restrict the political liberty of citizens to the same degree that it controls property and labor of the citizens.

Capitalism puts ownership and control of property in the hands of the people. In pure capitalism or what we now call libertarianism, individuals not only control their labor and the results of their labor, they are politically free. In theory, men either labor for their own use or agree to labor for others. The state’s only purpose is to enforce contracts as all of the dealings between citizens is consensual and formalized in a contract. The appeal of capitalism, pure capitalism, is the allure of pure political freedom.

By the time Belloc was writing, it was clear that pure capitalism would inevitably result in the concentration of wealth. A small class of property owners would come to posses the bulk of the nation’s wealth. That means a class of people who were free and a class of people who were not free, because they could not own and control their own labor. This led to social instability and eventually violence. Belloc argued that attempts to reform capitalism through state action would result in something he called the Servile State.

Reforms to capitalism are always through the law. The state places limits on how the owners of property may use their property. This then leads to a negotiation between the state, which has the monopoly of force, and the property class, which has a monopoly of capital. The result is a system in which the state seeks to protect those without property by placing requirement in the capital owners. In return, the state require the masses to labor for the property class, under conditions set by the state.

The result is that the business is forced to hire people it may not wish to hire, but the state also dictates to labor how and when they can sell their labor. Put another way, the poor are forced to serve the rich, but the rich are forced to be generous to the poor, looking out for their welfare. It is a social contract enforced at the barrel of a gun. It has the inequality of capitalism and the lack of political liberty inherent in socialism. The Servile State is the worst elements of both economic systems.

Belloc could not see what was coming in the post-war era and he certainly had no idea what was coming with the technological revolution and the explosion of neo-liberal globalism. He was prescient, however, with regards to how English economic systems would evolve over time. Look around at the modern world and you see the world he described as the inevitable result of “reformed capitalism.” Today, employers hire whole teams of people who makes sure the rich and powerful follow the rules.

What’s been missing in the technological age is the other half of the equation. As the West de-industrialized, the enforcement of labor laws have fallen away. Masses of helot labor brought over from Asia into Silicon Valley, for example, worked under agreements they struck with the business owners. Tech companies love open borders as it gives them a loophole to avoid some of the constraints of the Servile State. The same is true at the unskilled end, where companies rely upon masses of labor from Latin America.

This is an untenable situation in its own right, but the coming automation of the American economy will result in an evolution of the Servile State. The Universal Basic Income is nothing more than a modern implementation of the sort of infringements on political liberty Belloc described a century ago. Property holders will be forced to care for the dispossessed and, inevitably, the state will put behavior rules on the dispossessed. The UBI will come with rules requiring the recipients to act a certain way.

You get a glimpse of this in the efforts to control political speech on-line. Social media companies get exceptions to anti-trust laws, permitting them to run monopolies. In exchange, they are tasked with policing dissent on behalf of the state. The users get “free access” to platforms like Faceberg and Twitter, just as long as they agree to the terms of service and accept discipline when they post subversive things. Imagine this system applied to the universal basic income or to access to your self-driving car.

Belloc’s alternative was something he and Chesterton called distributism. Some have argued that their economic ideas were proto-fascism, but that’s debatable. What Belloc argued for was the inverse of the Servile State. Instead of a strong central state, political authority would be distributed and diffused throughout society, while wealth concentration would be constrained locally though ad hoc arrangements and cultural institutions. The goal is to maximize liberty, while minimizing inequality.

Whether or not this is possible in the modern age is debatable. Belloc and Chesterton argued that this was the natural arrangement of Europe. They also argued that it required a strong and energetic Christian tradition. That ship has sailed in the West, but maybe it does not matter. There’s no getting around the fact that neo-liberalism may be economically stable, but it is wildly unstable culturally. The experience of Europe thus far suggests it is suicidal. How to address it may lie with globalism’s last critics.

The Z-Cast: Episode 1

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Here is the debut episode of what I will call the Z-Cast, until I come up with a better name or I am chased off the internet. It is a first effort so it has all the flaws of every first effort, but you have to start somewhere. Every actor has his first role. Every surgeon has his first operation. Every hit-man has his first kill. I have a long way to go between here and good, but I’m hoping it is fun learning how to make the trip. Of course, comments and commentary are encourage.

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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qOB1qBDVzhw