The Great Dimming

Posted on September 20, 2022 by thezman

For a long time, it was understood that the success of a people was tied to the quality of the people in terms of their abilities. A highly capable people would do better at the necessary things of society than an incompetent people. Often, moral claims would cloud the view. Maybe one people were chosen by God to rule over the others or maybe the people offended the gods and had been punished as a result. Even so, there has always been a link between talent and results.

Today we understand that Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally between peoples or among people. Some people are smarter than others. Some people have cultural qualities that seem to be rooted in their shared genetics. These cultural qualities provide a benefit when it comes to the tasks of society. A people who values hard work and honest dealings will do better than a people who favor sloth or lying. Whether these cultural qualities can be inculcated is debatable.

The blank slate crowd are sure that everything about a human society is a construction of the mind and can therefore be deconstructed. Western society, which has towered over the rest of mankind for more than five hundred years, can be disassembled and then reassembled to put non-Western people in charge. There is no evidence to support the claim, but a great global experiment is underway, nonetheless. There is mass migration from the Global South into the West.

A dozen years ago, Jason Richwine did his doctoral thesis in the topic and found that migration into the United States from the south was decreasing the quality of human capital by reducing the over all IQ of the population. He relied upon the mountain of IQ studies that show the average intelligence of Hispanics to be ten points below the average for Europeans. The usual suspects flew into a rage and had Jason Richwine condemned for heresy.

No one bothered to challenge the conclusions of his study, as that would suggest moral claims can be subject to objective measures. A key component of any religion is that the moral claims are unassailable. The new religion of Diversity, Inclusion and Equity operates like every other religion. Its principles are beyond question. In this case, it means that all people are equally capable and the differences seen between people are due to the racism of white people.

You see this in a response by a writer at Reason Magazine. Ronald Bailey makes no effort to dispute the factual claims of Richwine, as he lacks the intellectual capacity to understand them, much less dispute them. Instead, he draws a parallel between Richwine and eugenicists from a century ago. You see, “eugenics” is a bad word so laying it in the same area as a person makes that person bad. You can then safely dismiss the words of the bad people without addressing them.

Even if you accept the claims in that Reason post, the flow of people from the south into America is having a clear impact on IQ. The claim is that the people coming in will get smarter by standing on the better dirt in the United States, but it will take four or five generations for that to happen. That is roughly a century. While that is happening, the population of low IQ people rises. This is happening rather quickly due to the age distribution of the white population.

For example, using government data, whites have an average IQ of 100, blacks are at 85 and the new people are around 90. This is consistent with what Richwine found in his research and what subsequent research has shown. This is one of those times when the official government position mirrors reality. That means that the average IQ in the United States in 1950 was around 98. By 1980, with the uptick in immigration and decline in white fertility, the average was just over 97.

In other words, with very stable demographics and little immigration, the average IQ in the United States had not changed very much in thirty years. This would explain why the country was able to pull out of the cultural lunacy of the prior decades and turn things around so quickly. There were a lot of smart people. Societies with high average intelligence also have a much larger number of smart people. These are the people who solve the problems made by other smart people.

By 2000, the effects of immigration were showing up in the test scores. The average IQ of the country, based on the new demographic mix, was below 97. By 2020 the average had fallen to below 96. In another decade it will fall below 95 and when the white population is a minority, it will be around 93. Note also that the aging off of the white population lowers white IQ. Not only are white people getting dumber, but old people are dumber than their younger selves.

Imagine a wardrobe made for a man who is 6’5″ and athletic being handed down to a man who is 5’10’ and a lazy person. The latter can pretend he does not like the style, but the reality is the clothes simply do not fit. This is what is happening in America as the people are replaced with new people. The old cultural, political and economic institutions were made for a people with an IQ close to 100. The new people will struggle to operate what they have inherited.

The flat earth people argue that culture is meaningless and the new people will be able to run the country as they like with the same economic results. The only thing that will change is the complexion. Instead of white guys staring at their mobile devices as they walk into traffic, it will be trans-lesbians of color. In fact, the final end of whiteness will unleash the creative energy of the nonwhite people. The result will be the paradise the prophets have long promised.

The trouble is the facts suggest otherwise. Twenty years ago, Richard Lynn and Tatu Vanhanen made the connection between intelligence and economics. In IQ and the Wealth of Nations they showed that average national intelligence corresponds with the over all wealth of society. The usual suspects condemned the book and the authors, while accepting their conclusions. There is a reason the best universities do not draw names from a hat for admissions.

Recently, researchers George Francis and Emil O.W. Kirkegaard have revisited the topic and came to the same conclusion, which is to say there is a strong correlation between national wealth and national IQ. Francis notes that national IQ correlates not only with economic prosperity, but every national indicator of success. That means things like crime, social trust, affordable family formation and all of the other things we associated with stable, happy societies.

Of course, there is the smart fraction issue. As civilization becomes more complex, the demand for cognitive ability increases. At the top, where the most complex decisions are made, the demands go up much faster. The more complex a society, the more above average people are required to manage it. A society where everyone is the same IQ of 100, will not perform as well as a society where the average is 100 and intelligence is normally distributed.

The trending down of national IQ means the relative number of people in the smart fraction initially declines, but the overall smart fraction grows. In time, however, this reverses and the smart fraction begins to decline quickly in total and in relation to the size of the population. There are not enough smart people around to keep the system running, so the system must become less complex. Put another way, it must disaggregate, either slowly or all of a sudden.

What this means in terms of public policy is debatable. The most likely answer is that debating it is a waste of time. There is no arresting the demographic changes and there is no changing what that means as far as human capital. Even if there is a way to make it work, there are not enough smart people around willing to do it. At some point North America passes through the marching moron phase into something else. That something else will poor, nasty, brutish, and short lived.

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Barbarians At The Ballot Box

Posted on June 21, 2022 by thezman

For the longest time, the debate over immigration has been about how both sides can agree on open borders while appearing to disagree. The Left made the spurious claim that America was the result of immigration. If immigration declines, then the country will decline. The Right made the claim that immigrants were natural conservatives and the only way for the Right to compete in the future was to load up on those super-duper conservative immigrants via open borders.

Outside of this immigration two-step, race realist would point out that immigrants tend to support the government party for practical reasons. In the West, the government party is always a few clicks to the left of the people and several giant leaps to the left of its heritage population. In America it means seventy percent of immigrants will vote for the Democrats, regardless of their policies. The cultural inclinations of the immigrants will have no impact on their political activity.

There has always been a cynically pragmatic thread to the immigration debate centered on the crude reality of politics. The Democrats supported open borders because it brought them extra voters to exploit. Their call for more immigration parallels their ballot stuffing measures. Republicans want more immigration because their donors want cheap labor. The “cheap labor lobby” theory relies on the antiquated claim that the business lobby still wears monocles and top hats.

It is starting to look like these claims make sense, but only within the context of a good economy, stable demographics and a pacified white population. In the post-Cold War America, the Democrat-Republican two-step on immigration made a lot of sense for both sides of the dance. Similarly, the observations of the race realists and cynics played out in every election. All of sudden, none of this is making any sense because the logic in which it worked is falling to pieces.

The first bit of logic that is breaking is the economy. When the white middle-class is doing well, they want their government to be generous. The government becomes an extension of their moral sensibility. When the middle-class feels stress, this swings around the other way. Now that the white middle-class is hitting retirement, that swing is looking quite dramatic. There is not going to be a lot of sympathy from a group living on savings when the stock market has lost twenty percent.

There is also another aspect to the changing economy. Airline pilots and engineers are not floating over the Rio Grande. The sort of people coming over the border are not bringing anything of value. There is no shortage of unskilled labor. The real labor crisis in America is in competency. The real struggle for business is in finding people who can do skilled work and will want to do it well. Rather quickly, immigration is no longer an exploitable asset for the open borders lobby.

Another problem for the open borders people is the collapse in institutional trust that accelerated in the last half dozen years. Trump was a warning that the people were losing faith in their institutions. The response by the institutions was to prove the people were correct in their suspicions. Anything the two parties try to sell is assumed to be part of some conspiracy to harm the country. The reaction to the latest gun grabbing by both parties is a perfect example of this new normal.

One other bit of the old structure that has started to crumble. The ruling elite of America, sensing the “browning of America’ have embraced leucophobia. This is a bigotry toward all things white, driven by a fear of being white or acting white. The defining feature of the popular culture the last decade has been a snarling, aggressive war against white people, especially white men. This pogrom was institutionalized in the late Trump years as part of the color revolution against him.

This is turning out to be a poison pill for the antiwhites with regards to the Spanish speaking immigrant population. It is turning out that the conservatives were sort of right about migrants being naturally conservative. They were simply wrong about what they naturally want to conserve. The Hispanic vote does not want to be lumped in with the freak show the Left has assembled and they are not down with the leucophobia that has become a standard feature of American life.

The polling over the last year that has suggested a shift in Hispanic voting is now turning up at the ballot box. Surprisingly, the only Republican to get that this has nothing to do with boiler plate conservatism and everything to do with ruling class degeneracy is Marco Rubio. It turns out that Hispanics are more revolted than white people by the sight of a man in a dress. They are willing to vote Republican because anything is better than a crossdresser.

There is a similar dynamic going on with the color wheel. Hispanics have a much more intimate relationship with blacks in America. They tend to live near them, often taking over their neighborhoods. Hispanics are extremely race realist. The effort to lump them in with blacks, as part of the rainbow coalition is offensive to them. Democrat efforts to make them a stripe on their flag is turning this block into a collection of extremely race realist Archie Bunkers.

Politically this is creating an amusing dynamic. One side is demanding the Hispanics get in the back of the bus with the other BIPOC’s while the other side is screaming at them about the evils of racism. Hispanics are about to learn what white people have been learning the last ten years. That is, they have no voice in politics. Forty percent of the population is white-wing and no one in either party speaks for them. Hispanics are about to join the politically disposed.

None of this should be viewed as good news. The Republicans winning a landslide in the fall elections will only make things worse. Whenever the people vote the wrong way, the ruling elite forces the Republican party to punish them. Then there is the prospect of the government being run by Biden, McConnel and McCarthy. The long simmering Irish question will finally burst into the open. That and having three morons, one with dementia, running things can only lead to disaster.

All that aside, there is a late Roman empire feel to this. The ruling elite, in an effort to conceal their weakness, chooses to settle barbarian tribes rather than fight to keep them at bay. Rather than create a constituency for the ruling elite it just adds to the number not represented in the ruling elite. At some point, the newly settled barbarians and their new neighbors decide that the new group of barbarians are a better play and they throw open the gates.

Lessons In Identity

Posted on March 28, 2021 by thezman

One of the reasons conservatives preach against identity politics is they believe it contradicts republican virtue. In a republic, people are supposed to be supremely loyal to the institutions of the republic. The men that hold office are not what matters, but rather, the office itself. You are supposed to respect the office, even if the man in the office is not respectable. This is why preventing low character people from holding office is important, as it diminishes the respect for the office.

Identity politics, in the conservative formulation, is tribalism and that means the tribe comes before everything else. A person who puts his tribe ahead of all else will sacrifice the office he holds or the political system itself, if it is good for his tribe. This is why conservatives moan about identity politics. They think it is un-American. They are not entirely wrong on this point. This is clear with the Jonathan Pollard case. His primary loyalty is to his people, so he spied for Israel.

For obvious reasons, conservatives will never use a case like this when moaning about the dangers of identity politics. Instead, they direct their anger at the white people who have been supporting them for decades but getting ruined as a result. Alternatively, they will gently chastise the Left for firing-up the blacks with fantastical claims about supernatural racism. They are not directing their wrath at the blacks, of course, but at the white people they say are responsible for it.

The Pollard case, however, is an excellent example of identity politics, both the positive and negative manifestations. Pollard claims that “If you’re outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable.” This is a version of, “if they are going to call you a Nazi, you may as well be a Nazi.” In other words, Pollard believes Jews have no choice but to be unreliable and subversive in their hosts countries, because that is the role carved out for them.

This is a great example of negative identity. Pollard thinks all diaspora Jews are defined in their opposition to their host population. This means a big part of who they are is controlled by exogenous forces. If they are in Asia, then their anti-Asian attitudes will come to define them, but if they are in America, it is un-Americanisms. Pollard is defining diaspora Judaism in the same way Woody Allen defined it in the movie Zelig, in which the main character was nothing more than a chameleon.

On the other hand, Pollard points out that to be a Jew is to first and foremost have a loyalty to the tribe and to Israel. In fact, it is this loyalty to Israel that defines the Jew wherever he may find himself. This is a positive identity. Loyalty to Israel and maintaining the cultural habits of the Jewish people, no matter the environment, is what defines the Jewish person. If all the non-Jews died tomorrow and there were only Jews left on the planet, this would still control Jewish identity.

This duality to identity points out something important. If all non-Jews did die off, then that positive Jewish identity would quickly weaken. After all, loyalty to Israel would not mean much when there is no longer a threat to Israel or the Jewish people. Without some comparison and competition, this identity would grow weak. As those familiar with the Hebrew Bible know, the great threat to Israel was always internal. Those secondary identities are what come to dominate in such a condition.

On the other side of the coin, a strong identity turns negative when the group is surrounded by an alien identity. For example, Pollard’s casual assumption that Jews must be seen as unreliable by host populations. Therefore, being a good Jew means working to undermine the host population. What he is suggesting, at least in the case of Jews, is that being a minority population is unhealthy. A minority group with a strong group identity will inevitably become self-destructive.

This duality of group identity is why Europe, despite massive efforts to the contrary, maintains national identity. Net out the tens of millions of alien immigrants and the majority of native people are strong nationalist. The reason for this is Europeans are close enough to one another to notice the differences. There is plenty of competition between European people to maintain the group identity. It is why immigration is important to the European project. It dilutes nationalism.

In North America, identity in the form of nationalism never gained a strong purpose until the 20th century and that was largely artificial. What it means to be American was never a topic of conversation until the 20th century, because it never needed to be. Your local identity was much more important. Even racial identity was never strong, because blacks were small in number and never a real threat. This is why white identity never developed in North America. Non-whites were never competition.

All of this is quickly changing. The invasion from the south will intensify nationalist identity in Europe to the point where whites preaching against it will be laughed off the stage by white Europeans. The weakening of the European consensus is clear when you look at what is happening in ruling class politics. Here and there the view of immigrants and their role in Europe is changing. Denmark and France are two recent examples of where the consensus is starting to shift toward nationalism.

In America, the white population is so beaten down by decades of anti-white agitation that the recovery is much slower. Whites have been conditioned to never take any side, especially their own, but that is changing. The latent sense of identity is flowing into proxy issues like populism and gun ownership. These issues lack an explicit white identity, but they have a strong implicit one. They are white identity with training wheels and in time these will become more explicitly white issues.

The truth is like a body. No matter how well you try to hide it, it eventually turns up, usually at an unexpected time. Ethnic and racial identity are truths of the human condition, so they can never be forgotten, no matter how well buried. That is the truth of the Pollard case now floating to the surface. Identity is about trust. A people can only trust their own people. As racial and ethnic distance grows, the trust declines, which is why peaceful separation is the natural order of mankind.

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Immigration Agitation

Posted on June 18, 2019 by thezman

According to news reports, the Trump administration is preparing a big sweep of illegal immigrants. Trump was supposedly tweeting about it. According to the news, the plan is to “round up thousands of migrant parents and children in a blitz operation across major U.S. cities.” Most likely, the plan is to include lots of tips to local media in an effort to get maximum attention for the effort. Of course, when the problem involves tens of millions, using the term “mass arrests” when rounding up thousands is a bit of a stretch.

Those on the patriotic immigration beat will no doubt look at this with skepticism, as it is mostly a show. These people, once arrested, will have to go through the normal deportation process. Since that has been bogged down by corrupt judges and lawyers, that process will take years. Meanwhile, the people arrested will be set free, so the effect will have been to take these people to a field trip to a federal building. The illegal invaders themselves will lose whatever fear they have of being deported.

That’s the age old problem with bluffing. Once the bluff is called, all future bluffs are worthless. In fact, they become a tell, of sorts. The person prone to empty threats can be manipulated, as everyone knows what they won’t do once they start making threats about what they will do unless something happens. A threat is only useful if the person making it has credibility. In the minds of billions of people, the threat of deportation from America is no longer credible. They know it is a bluff.

Team Trump and maybe even Trump himself, thinks this is a great way to mollify the base on the immigration issue. The usual rage heads in conservative media will play along, calling this some great move by Trump to address the issue. No doubt, the types of people still wearing MAGA caps will fall for it. They are mostly older voters, conditioned to go along with whatever the television tells them. The more jaded, however, are likely to react the opposite way, seeing it as another Trump con.

That said, political theater is always aimed at the gullible. Most white people calling themselves Progressives don’t watch MSNBC, for example. They will read the NY Times and the Washington Post, but they look at the cable airheads the same way most dissidents look at the Fox News rage heads. Political theater is aimed at the dullards, because the dullards need it. Otherwise, they will stop paying attention and wander off somewhere. No doubt, Trump gets that, so he does a lot of political theater.

All that said, the skeptics should probably not get carried away. The main issue with immigration is ignorance. The people in charge and their media organs have done an amazing job of hiding the problem in plain sight. Most white people in America have noticed the invasion in their cities and towns. They notice the complexion of their kid’s school changing. Yet, the mass media has done an amazing job of keeping them from really noticing it. In fact, people have been conditioned to embrace it.

When Trump talks about immigration or when he stages one of these public relations ventures, it chips away at that conditioning. Immigration, not just the invaders, but all immigration, is one of those subjects that is best never discussed, if you are the people in charge. It is one of those topics that the more people understand, the angrier they get about it. There is no good way to sell open borders to normal people, so the media is instructed to cover it up, by preventing any debate about it.

Additionally, any discussion of immigration opens the door to other taboo subjects, like the guest worker scams. As much as people get mad about Trump bellowing about how we need unlimited guest workers, what he is doing, in effect, is the agree and amplify response popular with dissidents on-line. His exaggerated enthusiasm is so incongruous, it breaks the normal pattern of discourse. Whether this is intentional or not, his meandering on immigration keeps the issue front and center.

Probably the best thing about these public relations stunts, however, is it opens the door to some obvious questions patriots can ask their Trump loving friends. For example, why is it legal for landlords to rent to foreign invaders? Why is it legal for Americans to help foreign invaders come into the country? Why are churches so excited to help invaders, but can’t be bothered to help poor blacks? Immigration opens the door for lots of jimmy rustling questions you can spring on your normie friends.

The Civil Rights Movement created many more racists than it cured, because it brought many whites into contact with blacks for the first time. All those middle-class white people who had to flee their neighborhoods for the suburbs took with them a hard lesson, even if there was no way to turn back the clock. The same is true with open borders. There could be no such thing as white identity politics without mass immigration. It exists due to this demographic catastrophe inflicted upon us.

That’s probably the hardest part about this for dissidents, as well as the immigration patriots in the civic nationalist sphere. There’s no “winning” in the conventional sense when it comes to immigration. The die is cast, as far as the demographics of the North America. The future is majority-minority, with large swaths of the continent off-limits, for all practical purposes, to white people. Debating immigration is an entry point for discussing an ideology built for what comes next, not what has already happened.

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The New Narrative

Posted on February 25, 2019 by thezman

Spend time in a small business that has stood the test of time and you will learn the origin myths of the company and the founders. These myths will have plenty of truth content, but a lot will be fanciful or exaggerated. One reason is the story is inevitably told by the founder or his heirs, so it is self-serving. Another reason is the story is intended to give meaning and purpose to the people in the company. For an origin myth to work, it has to be inspirational and reflect well on the people in the organization.

People always have origin myths, of course. The most famous of which is the story of the Jews. The whole chosen people business is obvious nonsense. The flight from Egypt is at least plausible in some areas, but unless you’re willing to accept that God is an indiscriminate child killer, it’s a story that only Jews can believe. Still, the origin myth of the Jews has served them well for a very long time. These stories are central to Jewish identity and it is that strong identity that has allowed Jews to prosper.

If a strong set of origin myths correlates to a strong sense of identity and a strong people, then the reverse is probably true. The lack of origin myths, or a declining interest in the origin myths, probably suggests a weak identity. Perhaps the people have yet to come to identify themselves as a people or they are going through some sort of transition in terms of how they see themselves. The old myths no longer work, because they don’t fit the emerging narrative to explain how it is this people came to be.

This longish post in Foreign Affairs by popular historian Jill Lepore is an interesting read for a number of reason, not related to this post. The endless name dropping that torments writing in the humanities is a topic of its own. That’s mingled with self-promotion, in the form of references to the author’s books. Of course, anything to do with American history has to have a few paragraphs of the usual blather about slavery and Jim Crow. That said, it is worth the time to read it and the related posts on the site.

Lepore is one of those useful bellwethers in that she tends to write what the intellectual side of the ruling class is thinking. A big part of being a popular academic is to be in good standing with the ruling elite. They like being told about their wonderfulness from academics, so flattery is a big part of the game. That offers a window into the minds of the people who rule over us. What posts like this suggest is the people in charge are concerned with the fracturing they see from their position in the clouds.

That fracturing is predictable. Peter Brimelow predicted it two decades ago. Import tens of millions of strangers with strange customs into America and you’re going to get conflicts between the locals and the newcomers. The fact that these strangers were imported to replace the natives, who were not consuming and reproducing at levels satisfactory to the rulers, certainly did not help. Add in the rise of identity politics as a way to control the population and the result was predictable. Pat Buchanan predicted this.

Lepore is correct that people need a narrative that binds them together and explains why it is they are a people. America had an obvious one until the Civil War. When New England conquered the rest of the nation, the national story ended and was replaced by that new story that put New England at the top, as the ruler of the rest. That held together into the middle of last century, when Jews updated the tale to insinuate themselves into the story and explain their new dominance in the ruling class.

That American narrative worked until the people in charge decided they needed a new people and flung open the gates to unlimited immigration. A fascinating bit in that Lepore article is that she starts her essay in 1986 with the historian Carl Degler and his warning about the abandonment of nationalism. That talk would have happened around the time the ruling class was opening the borders. The implication that Mx. Lepore does not seem to grasp is that the hostility to nationalism preceded wholesale immigration.

On the other hand, she is a clever woman, so she could very well have done this on purpose, as a way of injecting the idea into the bloodstream of her peers. The academy is so narrow now, it is looking like a singularity from our perspective, but inside there is some room to maneuver. It requires a heavy dose of esoteric language and triple bank shot references to avoid detection. Perhaps that’s what she is up to by starting with that Degler speech and then ending with a piquant quote from that same talk.

That said, if the intellectual class in the West, but particularly in America, had not drawn all of the wrong lessons from the two great industrial wars of the 20th century, the ruling class would not have set about destroying the fabric of their countries. Perhaps the Frankfurt School notions were a bad idea after all. There’s no mention of this in the Lepore essay, but that an obvious implication once you read to the end. The finishing paragraph is a quote from Degler’s talk at that 19856 conference.

“The history of the United States at the present time does not seek to answer any significant questions,” Degler told his audience some three decades ago. If American historians don’t start asking and answering those sorts of questions, other people will, he warned. They’ll echo Calhoun and Douglas and Father Coughlin. They’ll lament “American carnage.” They’ll call immigrants “animals” and other states “shithole countries.” They’ll adopt the slogan “America first.” They’ll say they can “make America great again.” They’ll call themselves “nationalists.” Their history will be a fiction. They will say that they alone love this country. They will be wrong.

Again, there is no mention of open borders and the unprecedented levels of immigration in this essay, as those things cannot be discussed openly or rationally in the intellectual class. Still, the essay suggests that there is some interest by cloud people in what is happening among the dirt people. They can’t bring themselves to address the fact that you cannot have a common story when everyone is a stranger. Instead, they keep talking about Hitler and the other wrong lessons they drew from the events of last century.

There’s also the strange sense that these origin myths can simply be conjured and then imposed upon a people. The implication of this essay is that America needs a new one, so the people in charge better get busy creating one. The trouble is that white people are not allowed to have an identity and the non-white ascendancy does not have much to point to, as far as their contributions to the national story. Lepore offers something from Frederick Douglas as a starting point for this new national narrative.

A Government founded upon justice, and recognizing the equal rights of all men; claiming no higher authority for existence, or sanction for its laws, than nature, reason, and the regularly ascertained will of the people; steadily refusing to put its sword and purse in the service of any religious creed or family, is a standing offense to most of the Governments of the world, and to some narrow and bigoted people among ourselves.

That is no doubt inspiring to the cloud people, but it says more about how they see themselves than with the facts on the ground. It’s also a negative identity, based on victories over demons that exist only in the imaginations of the rulers. It also suggests she or her masters would like to see whites written out of this new national story. In case it is not clear, “bigoted people among ourselves” is you paleface. Perhaps that can be a useful cri de guerre in the war with the dirt people, but it is not binding narrative.

The fact is, the rise of nationalism, populism and white identity politics is a result of decisions made long ago. The radicals killed the national narrative, because they said nationalism is a dangerous construct. Their solution was to destroy the nations of the West, which has meant destroying the national identities of the West. That has now devolved into a war on the native stock of the West. There can be no unifying narrative that includes the both the destroyers and their victims.

That brings us back to the start. That small business that gets gobbled up by a multinational cannot maintain its origin myths. The people in that firm can no longer identify with that story, because that story has come an end. If they stick around, it is because of new reasons, less inspiring ones than those that bound them to that small business. That’s what we are seeing today in modern America. The old narrative has come to an end. It is time for a new one. The question is, who will do the writing.

Who And How Many

Posted on January 15, 2019 by thezman

The immigration debate in America, and maybe the West as a whole, is not much of a debate, at least as far as public policy. Instead, it is something of a meta-debate, in that the facts and important decisions are talked about indirectly. For example, in the US, everyone sort of thinks it is about Mexican immigration, but no one ever explicitly speaks to the facts about Mexican immigration. Details about who is actually coming over the border or gaming the anchor baby system remains a mystery.

As is always the case with big issues in America, immigration is debated on purely moral terms and even there, the morality is not explicit. No one ever bothers to explain why America is a “nation of immigrants” or whether that’s salient. For that matter, no one can seem to wrap their head around why immigration of any sort is morally good. Even immigration hawks go to great lengths to speak well of legal immigrants. Ours is a meta-debate about the morality of undefined policies stripped of facts and details.

Imagine a public debate over building a bridge across a local river. The salient facts would be the cost, where to put it and who benefits from the bridge. Instead, one side talks endlessly about the morality of building bridges. It’s who they are. By extension, those who oppose bridge building in the abstract are immoral in some way. The other side, in contrast, spends its time trying prove they are not opposed to bridge building, but simply have questions about where to put this bridge and how much to spend on it.

Even when someone tries to talk about the economics of immigration, putting aside cultural preferences and demographic reality, the debate soon veers into a weird sort of romanticism. It’s just assumed that jobs are going unfilled due to the lack of labor. There’s never any examination of the claims. Further, it is assumed that temporary labor shortages in one area of a continent sized country are immoral. Rising wages are treated like an insult to the economy, this vaguely understood thing we must worship.

The fact is though, the reality of all public policy is that it is and will be a debate over the facts of the issue. That reality can be wished away for a long time, but eventually the reality comes home. That’s what we are seeing with the stand-off between Trump and the Cult of Brown Ascendancy. We’re slowing creeping up on the fact that immigration is about who and how many. That is, who will we accept and how many of them will we accept. Immigration has always been about who and how many.

Those are not a questions most Americans are equipped to answer. The how many part is the easiest, especially if you start with zero as the default. No one is walking around thinking to themselves, “We really need more Eritreans around here.” If immigration was capped at zero, no one would notice. In fact, if there was a moratorium and the government started to aggressively deport people, even those in the system, most people would not care. In other words, the how many number is a small number.

The tougher question is what sorts of immigrants will we accept, even in limited numbers. In the Mid-Atlantic, where a large Korean community exists, most people would be fine with Korean immigration. Unlike the Chinese, Koreans are not fleeing political oppression or economic uncertainty. Koreans come here for lifestyle reasons, so they assimilate rapidly. They also take pride in being the model minority, despite what what some lefty advocates claim. Koreans came here to be Americans.

At the other end, no one would want any Muslims from the Middle East, as they simply don’t fit a modern Western country. Everywhere Muslim migration has been high, we see terrorist barriers, armed patrols and absurd security measures. In fact, most Americans could be convinced that we make an exception to the First Amendment and ban Islam, maybe even deport all Muslims. It has not worked and it can never work. The Western policy toward that part of the country should first be containment.

Similarly, sub-Saharan Africans are a no-go. America has a long history of trying to integrate Africans into a Europeans country. It does not work. Most people can accept the moral obligation to the descendants of former slaves, even if their ancestors were not slave holders. Bringing in a new population of unassimilable people, with a natural hostility to Europeans makes no sense. Again, no one is walking around wondering how things are going in Chad. That and American blacks don’t like African migrants.

One of the interesting things that happens when you start to think “from where and how many” is the how many becomes an easier question the more you think honestly about the “from where” part. For Americans, the real issue is how many South Americans we will accept. That quickly reduces to a much simpler question. Do we need any of them? For most people, the answer is no, we don’t need more people. Therefore, the only question left is are we morally bound to take anyone in for permanent settlement.

That, of course, is why the open borders crowd prefers to keep this a meta-debate about meta-morality. Once you start thinking about the facts, the default on immigration swings 180 degrees. The default becomes zero and building a massive barrier to entry makes complete sense. The debate is over the exceptions and more important, the conditions for those exceptions. The moral authority becomes the will of the people, rather than a self-selected cult of true believers divorced from daily reality.

No Easy Answers

Posted on July 11, 2018 by thezman

It is natural for people to embrace simple answers to complicated problems, even when it is obvious that those simple answers have no chance for success. One reason is complicated solutions imply a lot of hard work. Most people would prefer as little struggle as possible, so the option that offers the least amount of effort is always going to have the most appeal. Then there is the fact that hard solution mean hard problems, problems that change things. People don’t like change, so they avoid facing reality as much as they can.

This is the heart of the current crisis. White people in America are faced with a set of facts that are immutable. Demographics is a straight forward issue. As of 2011, about 60% of the population was non-Hispanic white. The percentage of the minor population that is non-Hispanic white fell below 50% for the first time. Given current immigration and fertility numbers, America will be a majority-minority country within a generation. The crisis of our age is not just how we respond to this reality, but how we come to accept it.

The civic nationalists will move heaven and earth in order to avoid facing demographic reality. In fact, they do everything they can to avoid thinking about it. The results of the NY-14 election are a great example. The civic nationalists latched onto the socialist angle, with the desperation of a drowning man. The fact that the district is over 60% Hispanic was lost on them. Even when presented with the facts, they preferred to prattle on about “muh socialism.” The simple answer asks the least of them, so they go with that.

On the other hand, we have the recently red-pilled. Like ex-smokers, they demand action now, believing all they have to do is explain what they have just learned to everyone else, and public opinion will turn on a dime. Paul Nehlen and Patrick Little are good examples of how this works. They read Culture of Critique, had a revelation and then found the nearest street corner on which they could preach the gospel. All of their efforts were based on the belief that the solution was simple. Just red-pill everyone and the problem is solved.

Of course, the very act of running for office is a denial of reality. It assumes the system is fine, but the people are defective. This has been the guiding star of conservatives for three generations. The simple solution to the culture war is to get the “right people” in office and they will solve the problem. The fact that this has proven impossible, and that the system has led us to this point, is never considered. The possibility that liberal democracy inevitably leads to cultural suicide is unpleasant, so even the red-pilled look the other way.

It used to be a popular line on social media to comment about something being the reddest of red pills. The JQ’ers loved using that line to pose as the most “woke” people in the movement. The truth is, the reddest of red pills is accepting that there is nothing to be done, with regards to our demographic destiny. The die is cast. Barring genocide or some weird plague, the land currently called America will be majority-minority. We can seal the borders tomorrow and the facts will not change. There’s no answer to that problem.

Further, liberal democracy assumes things about the citizenry that cannot be true in a majority-minority nation. The Founders saw this from the start and worried about factionalism ripping their new creation apart. Even in a completely white, English speaking country like early America, there was lots of diversity. People putting loyalty to their tribe ahead of loyalty to their nation was a legitimate concern. The American Civil War was not fought along regional and cultural lines by accident. It was tribal warfare.

The fact is, another bit of that dreaded demographic reality is that what comes next cannot include the current system of governance. In a multicultural society, everyone’s primary loyalty is to their group. Liberal democracy assumes people are loyal to their narrow economic interests. The black guy will vote for what works for him, not for what blacks ad a whole think is in their interest. In an all-white society, this works as whites are the least tribal humans. In a majority-minority society, this cannot possible work.

What comes next for us is what we see in the Middle East. In every country, one group dominates the rest, imposing their idea of order on the society. Saddam controlled Iraq for his people. The Persians run Iran. The Muslims run Lebanon, where every hill and valley may as well be its own country. The rule in multi-cultural, multi-tribal societies, is that one tribe rules the rest. That’s our future. The question is which groups will come to dominate the rest and what sort of system will they impose in order to remain in charge.

The Immorality of Immigration

Posted on June 21, 2018 by thezman

In all times and all places, the people in charge have certain primary duties, obligations that come before anything else they like to do. It does not matter what form of government is in place, the rulers, for example, have to maintain public order. Being the tribal chief is useless if your people and lands are in chaos. For that matter, having a tribal chief is useless if it means living in chaos. Therefore, one of the primary duties of all rulers in all times and all places is to maintain public order by enforcing laws and local customs.

There are other primary duties of the ruler, like organizing the common defense that are universal to all people and forms of government. Then there are primary duties that are peculiar to a people or to a form of government. If the ruler is understood to be a god, then the ruler and his people have a duty to maintain that myth. A central part of that social order is the transcendent nature of the order itself. In modern western countries, protecting property rights and enforcing contracts is counted as a primary duty of the state.

One of the more destructive things to happen to America over the last half century is the sacralizing of immigration by the followers of Emma Lazarus. The endless repetition of the nonsense phrase “nation of immigrants” has turned a temporary necessity a century ago into an essential element of the nation’s founding mythology. The fact that immigration is a violation of the state’s primary duty to the people is excused, because the immigrant now has a superior place in the moral order. The state is now in service to foreigners.

In a nation like America, one that allegedly is built on consensual government, citizenship has great value. In fact, the most valuable thing to a citizen of a representative democracy is his citizenship. The reason for this, is that citizenship is an ownership stake in the nation itself. In theory, the American government was voluntarily founded as an agreement among individuals, invested with the right to secure mutual protection and welfare and to regulate the relations among its members. In short, we are shareholders in America.

If you had the option of selling your citizenship, let’s say at some sort of auction, where you get money for your place as an American citizen, there would be no shortage of bidders. For example, there is no shortage of buyers for the EB-5 visa, which costs $500,000. That’s right, you can buy citizenship from the US government. Your citizenship is something of value and therefore, the state has a duty to protect it, just as they have a duty to protect your property rights. This is a primary duty of government.

When the American government willy-nilly hands out citizenship papers to millions of foreigners every year, it is, in effect, stealing the value of your citizenship and giving it to someone else. This is no different than a company diluting the value of its shares, by selling additional shares. It’s why open borders fanatics swear that immigration makes us all richer, despite the mountain of evidence to the contrary. They know it is essential that people believe this as even the sacred immigrant is not enough to justify theft.

Now, the argument from open borders people and libertarian loons is that immigration is not just holy and beneficial, but that the duly elected officials are passing these laws, so it is legitimate. The trouble is, we don’t live in a democracy. When 50% plus one vote to rob the 50% minus one, it is still theft, even if it comes after an election. This is why America is not a democracy and it is also why democracy was famously called two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch. The very nature of democracy makes it an immoral form of rule.

Additionally, a primary duty of the modern state is the maintenance of equality before the law. In fact, this is what makes the law legitimate. Not only do all citizens have a say in what laws are passed, but those laws apply to all citizens equally. The very nature of immigration violates this principle. Immigration steals from some citizens for the benefit of foreigners and the benefit of a small number of connected citizens. This is true for quasi-immigration schemes like guest workers, as well as for permanent settlement.

If the primary duty of the state is to safeguard the citizens, including the value of their citizenship and maintain equality before the law, then immigration by its very nature is a direct violation of the social compact. It makes a mockery of the very idea of consensual government and sows distrust among the people. It is why all mass immigration quickly leads to a breakdown of order, because it erodes the legitimacy of the ruling authority, as the people see they are no longer willing or able to fulfill their basic duties as rulers.

That does not preclude all immigration. It’s just that the bar is is extremely high. In order to justify that which is naturally and always immoral, the offset must exceed the cost of the deed. Since this is impossible in the modern age, the followers of Emma Lazarus have been forced to turn morality on its head, claiming the first duty of the state is to foreigners at the expense of its own citizens. It has turned America into a bust out where everything of value, including citizenship, is sold for the benefit of a few.

The Sacred Immigrant

Posted on June 14, 2018 by thezman

For a long time, I’ve made the point that the Republican Party is not really a political party, in the sense that it is a coalition held together by common interests. Instead, it is more like a dumping ground for politicians, who no longer fit in with the Democrats. About a third of Republican office holders would prefer to be huddling with the Democrats, but the voters of their home district or state have decided the Democrats are too crazy, so ambitious politicians run as Republicans. The result is a party held together by convenience.

You see that with the immigration disaster brewing in the House. As it stands the GOP could simply do nothing on immigration and ride the wave of popular support into the election. That would be the smart thing. Instead, they are trying to pass an immigration bill, that has no chance of making it through the Senate. Now, this could be good politics, if it is popular with their voters. Instead, they are about to pass a bill highly unpopular with their voters and sure to remind Trump supporters why they hate the GOP.

A leaked draft of House Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-WI) amnesty deal could lead to the “biggest” amnesty for illegal aliens in United States history, experts tell Breitbart News.
Ryan’s immigration deal would go beyond giving amnesty to only the nearly 800,000 illegal aliens who are enrolled in the President Obama-created Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program.

According to a leaked draft of the amnesty deal, obtained by Breitbart News, Ryan’s plan would allow the entire “DACA population” to be eligible for amnesty so long as they meet low educational, work and criminal requirements, prompting the amnesty to explode in size.

That DACA population could include the nearly 3.5 million DACA-enrolled and DACA-eligible illegal aliens, and even more illegal aliens who arrive in the U.S. to fraudulently obtain the amnesty.

NumbersUSA Governmental Affairs Director Rosemary Jenks told Breitbart News that Ryan’s amnesty will — at the least — allow 1.8 million illegal aliens to stay in the U.S.

“This has the potential to turn into the biggest amnesty we’ve ever had,” Jenks said.

The leaked amnesty deal reveals that Ryan and the Republican establishment may even be considering going beyond giving amnesty to DACA illegal aliens.

A second amnesty is included in the leaked draft, one that would allow the children of temporary foreign guest workers and “anyone who has a ‘contingent nonimmigrant status’” to apply for the amnesty.

This amnesty for the children of temporary foreign workers does not have a numerical cap, allowing for an endless amount of foreign nationals to obtain amnesty through this avenue known as “Pathway Concept B.”

“The winners are the DREAMers cause they get their amnesty, Democrats because they don’t have to concede much to get the amnesty and donor-class Republicans who are interested in perpetuating the current system,” Center for Immigration Studies Director of Policy Jessica Vaughan told Breitbart News of Ryan’s leaked amnesty deal.

It is tempting to blame this on the secret “donor party” that allegedly manipulates the inner party, like some sort of Turkish conspiracy. There’s no doubt that agriculture lobbies and the tech industry push hard for unlimited “guest worker” visas. No matter how many indentured servants they are granted, it is never enough. But, who is pushing for amnesty? In whose interests is it to hand a ballot to millions of foreigners? That actually hurts the cheap labor lobby, as it removes exploitable people from the labor pool.

This is an example of why so-called conservatives lost every fight over the last thirty years. They start with the assumption that the other team is working from facts and reason, motivated by a desire for some tangible goal. In this case, immigration patriots will demand everyone believe Paul Ryan is getting sacks of cash to push this ridiculous amnesty bill through the House. Sure, some of the provisions are bought by lobbyists, but the amnesty stuff has no obvious constituency in the Republican Party.

The fact is, people are more often motivated by a desire to be seen as on the side of angels, even if it brings personal risk. Just look at the number of pols who have driven a hole into their career opposing Trump. As they go under for the last time, they are smugly certain they are doing the Lord’s work. For many in our political class, open borders is entirely a moral issue now. They want to grant the blessing of your town to the world, because they feel righteous as they watch it play out from their guarded communities.

This suicidal altruism is not just confined to the political class. Any time the immigration question comes up, there are people who will blurt out “I’m not opposed to legal immigration. it is illegal immigration I oppose.” That’s why the political class is working to legalize every conceivable form of immigration. If there are literally no laws against coming here, then there can be no illegal immigration and everyone is happy. It’s the natural result of sacralizing the immigrant. The only question is about how best to worship him.

It’s why arguments from facts and reason about immigration have had no impact on the political class. Even as the public begins to get serious about the issue, the politicians are unresponsive, because they correctly see the immigrant remains a magical figure in the mind of the public. Until a large majority of the voters become hostile to immigration in the spiritual sense, the political class will continue to worship migrants. Yeah, the cheap labor lobbies play into this and exploit it, but the root problem here is immigrant worship.

The New Druze

Posted on February 18, 2018 by thezman

In the late 10th and early 11th century, a form of mysticism evolved that incorporated elements of Islam, Greek philosophy, Gnosticism, bits from other esoteric faiths, which existed in the Mediterranean and the Middle East. The person credited with spreading this new faith was a guy named Muhammad bin Ismail Nashtakin ad-Darazi. He came to Egypt in 1017 and began preaching and attracting converts. He was branded a heretic and executed in 1018 by the sixth Fatimid caliph.

The Caliph, al-Hakim, was not hostile to the new faith, so much as hostile to ad-Darazi, who he thought was suffering from megalomania. His move against ad-Darazi was to put Hamza ibn ‘Ali ibn Ahmad in charge of this new religious sect, which would eventually be known as Druze. Despite not being a member of this new religion, the sixth caliph became a central figure for it. His decision to kill ad-Darazi changed the nature of the religion and allowed it to spread.

This is an interesting bit of serendipity, but it has a connection to our own age in a few important ways. The most obvious, if you are a fan of the period, is al-Hakim is often blamed for starting the crusades. His decision to persecute Christians sent ripples through Europe, eventually leading to the call to recapture the Holy Land. There were other forces at work, but it is generally accepted that al-Hakim played a crucial role in the clash with Christendom.

Eventually two main strains of Islam came to dominate the Arab world, while Christianity dominated Europe. The Levant has remained a place with lots of diversity. The Druze live mostly in Lebanon. The Samaritans are in the Palestinian territories. Maronites, Eastern Orthodox and Melkite Catholics exist in Lebanon. Syriac Christians and Alawites exist in Syria. Of course, various flavors of Judaism dominate in Israel. It is not an accident that instability is the only constant in the Levant.

That is an obvious lesson when examining this part of the world. If one wanted proof of the axiom, Diversity + Proximity = Violence, the Levant has more than enough for any argument. The pathological zeal of Western leaders for inviting the world into Western lands, can only have one end. That is the what we see in Lebanon, a country blessed with a great location, abundant natural resources and natural barriers. Yet, it is a land riven by sectarian violence and the lack of a unifying identity.

There is another lesson from the history of the Levant and that is the cauldrons of diversity tend to create more diversity. The reason this part of the world was popular with schismatics is its diversity attracted these people. Diversity turns the culture into an open are market for every idea imaginable. The openness to new ideas is constantly destabilizing society, open the door for new cracks and crackpots. Diversity rewards diversity, which makes stability impossible.

That is something to keep in mind as Europe works to invite the world. Throw a bunch of people together with a wide range of beliefs and inevitably it spawns a bunch of new combinations. The flow of Muslims into Europe, a land that has abandoned Christianity for various secular passions, is going to spawn new spiritual movements. The recent conversion to Islam of an AfD leader is the sort of thing that is happening with increasing frequency. Islam is now a thing in Europe.

The other aspect to this is the West is now an open country, when it comes to the religion business. Just as Catholicism faced a dying collection of pagan beliefs, Islam is now flowing into a world held together by pointless social fads. The soul of Europe died a long time ago. To be a European today means to be a deracinated stranger in a land that is increasingly unfamiliar to you. That makes Europe fertile ground everyone looking for converts..

That does not mean Europe will be Islamic. Islam always adapts to the local environment. Islam in Asia is Islam with very Asian characteristics. Islam in the Caucasus is a mountain man version of Islam. Biology is the root of everything and that means cultural items like religion flow from it. The Islamification of Europe will inevitably result in something that is very European. The Germans will have their take, the Danes will have theirs and the French will do something French.

It also means all sorts of other permutation that result from mixing Western empiricism, Oriental mysticism and traditional Christianity. The Druze we started with in this post combine Ismailism, Gnosticism, Neoplatonism, Pythagoreanism and Hinduism. It is an esoteric faith that is also an ethnicity. The Druze do not accept converts and they do not allow out-marriage. A person who marries outside the faith is no longer Druze and their children will not be Druze. Imagine something like that happening Bulgaria.

The point of this somewhat disjointed post is that Europe is dead. The civilization that was created by the culture born of the Enlightenment carries on, but the culture that is the West is dead. Something will come to replace it and that something will, in whole or part, be carried by the people now attempting to replace the Europeans. The resulting culture that rises next will be some combination of the ingredients being tossed into the cauldron, but it will look nothing like the ingredients.

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