Every four years the media tells us that this is the most important election in our lifetimes, maybe in the history of the world. It is always nonsense, of course, but even if it does turn out to be important, few people realize it. Hardly anyone realized that the 1992 election, for example, would be an inflection point. The Cold War was over, and it felt like politics was not all the important.

This time may be different. Trump is a unique figure and has come to define the first quarter of the 21st century. To understand him and his time on the stage, you must start with the election of the execrable George Bush and then follow the chain of events that flowed from that moment. Trump was the delayed response to the hollowing out of conservatism and the Republican Party by the neoconservatives.

What the Trump era has come to be about is who is going to run the country, Americans or a collection of alien weirdos? For their part, the alien weirdos have made it clear since Trump came down that escalator that they would rather blow up the world than allow normal Americans to rule themselves again. The election next Tuesday is the last battle in the fight between Trump and the alien weirdos.

By all accounts now, Trump is favored to win. If the riggers steal another election, then any hope you have for a soft landing is gone. The country plunges into the darkness and whatever comes out decades from now will bear little resemblance to what everyone understands to be America. This may happen even if Trump wins, but there is at least the hope that not all the lights go out.

That is the show this week. This is, at the minimum, a very important election, but also the last election for a uniquely American figure. No other country could produce a politician like Donald Trump. Even by American standards, he is a singular figure, a force of nature who has changed everything during his time in the arena. Enjoy the last few days of his last election. You will never see this again.

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This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Enjoy The Ride
• The Case For Trump
• The Case For Harris
• Fraud Factor
• The Big Mo
• State Predictions
• How To Watch

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Contents

• Intro
• How Low Will They Go?
• A Consequential Endorsement
• Republics And Empires
• Certifiable Lunacy
• Miscellany
• Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.    And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, one and all, from your inclusively genial host John Derbyshire, here to bring you reflections on the week’s news.

Ten days to the general election and the anti-Trump rhetoric is heating up. Did you know that Trump is a Hitler Hitler Hitler, Nazi Nazi Nazi, fascist fascist fascist? In case you didn’t, all sorts of Ruling Class front men have been stepping up to tell you: John Kelly, for example, Trump 45’s Chief of Staff, and Bob Woodward, one of the hack journalists who helped bring down the great Richard Nixon fifty years ago.

How will it all end up? I don’t know any better than you do, but I’ll speculate.

Before I get to speculating, though, just my weekly reminder that my website johnderbyshire.com is there for your reading and listening pleasure with links to my entire print and online output all the way back to 1966.

On the cover page of that website are instructions on how you can help keep me afloat using snail mail, PayPal, or crypto, or via Zelle direct to my bank, or with a tax-deductible donation by a check earmarked with my name and mailed to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you for your help. Continue reading →

One of the reasons it feels like the wheels are coming off society is that we seem to be at the end of things. By things I mean cycles. These are cultural, intellectual, historical and economic cycles. Some have played out over generations while some are playing out in a single lifetime. The result of so many things ending at once is something like the confluence of several rivers.

Probably the biggest thing coming to an end is the idea of America that everyone was raised to believe. If you remember the Cold War, then you probably recall people talking about the difference between America and the world. It was not just the free world versus the communists. Europeans would talk about how America was the envy of the world for our freedom and love of individuality.

We put people in jail now for having the wrong opinions. Our institutions are so corrupt no sane person trusts anything that comes from them. The only difference between America today and the Soviet Union of the 1970’s is that we have vast material prosperity, but that is bought on credit. The American economic system is a ticking timebomb just waiting for someone to cut the wrong wire.

People struggle to accept that old America is dying, and this remains a primary obstacle to changing the trajectory of society. The answer to the ongoing madness from the people we call the left is some form of “We just have to go back to…” that can never happen, so we continue to swirl in the churn of decline. This is often the dynamic with the other things entering their end phase.

It is why we are cursed with backward thinking. Everyone is obsessed with rummaging around in the past, like a person searching around for a lost item, as if there is an answer in the past that will prevent the inevitable future. One reason no one talks about what comes next is fear of what comes next. It means closing the door on the past and those past ideas. The future is a terrifying idea for America.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Cycles & Super Cycles
• The Rope Of History
• The End Of Things

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Contents

• 01m57s Thank you, Columbus!
• 08m45s Kamala’s Fox interview
• 18m59s Bring on the triumvirate!
• 26m15s Skeptical on Kamala’s Glock
• 28m39s Anarcho-tyranny, U.K.
• 31m35s Anarcho-tyranny, U.S.A.
• 34m13s Triggered by Chaucer
• 35m54s Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! That was Haydn’s Derbyshire March No. 2 in a big band arrangement, and this is of course your intractably genial host John Derbyshire with thoughts on the passing scene.

Two weeks this coming Tuesday is Election Day, if Comrade Merrick Garland doesn’t find a way to cancel it — don’t think he’s not trying. What are the prospects? I have no idea, but I’ll cover some relevant events.

First, though, my weekly reminder that you can help support my efforts here via snail mail or PayPal, relevant address and link at johnderbyshire.com, or using Zelle direct to my bank, or with a tax-deductible donation by a check earmarked with my name and mailed to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759. Thank you for your help. Continue reading →

The failure of conservatism is one of those things that has been observed many times by many different people, but why it failed is never discussed. The assumption is that conservatism failed because the people in it did not try hard enough, or they were easily corrupted by the big money donors. The underlying assumption is that it could have succeeded and created the civil nationalist paradise.

This is why these successive efforts over the last decade to create a new right have failed to get very far. They assume they just need to get new people saying the same old things and they can get the band back together. Christopher Rufo’s internet activism is in pursuit of the same agenda as Buckley conservatism. It has the same agenda because it learned nothing from failure.

The most likely answer to why conservatism failed, however, is that it was doomed from the start and by start, I mean the founding. Conservatism, in a nation that was never a nation, but rather a country that saw itself as a radical experiment in liberty, was going to be the first thing reformed out of existence. What a radical experiment of any kind can never tolerate is anything in its way.

Conservativism in America was just slow progressivism, with progressivism being the radical ideology at the core of the experiment. As Dabney noted a century ago, conservatives were merely a drag on progressivism. Its job was to slow the process but eventually concede to the progressives. This meant that the reason conservatism failed is the progressivism has failed.

That is the show this week. Technical issues made it difficult to record and compile the show, so it may sound a bit wonky. Getting over those technical issues left little time to organize my thoughts on this topic, so it is mostly thinking aloud, but it is a subject I may returned to in a future show. The death of conservatism is as much about the death of progressivism as anything else.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• The Death Of Conservatism
• Doomed From The Start
• The Mystery of Progressivism
• Buckley Conservatism
• Trumpism & Populism
• After Conservatism

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Are we doomed? It certainly seems like it. Polling on the issue suggests that most people expect something bad to happen in the near future. The unspoken driving force of our politics for the last decade is this sense of foreboding. Despite all the numbers people use to measure society looking good, the voters keep searching around for someone who will either fix things or stop the fixers.

One reason for the pessimism is the people in charge have been crying wolf for decades as a way to both distract people from certain topics and as a way to rally support for the ruling class. The theater of democracy requires a hero and a villain, so it is only natural to create a crisis atmosphere in which to place them. Politics is one manufactured drama after another.

Even so, there are reasons to be worried. The behavior of the authorities in response to the floods in Appalachia underscore the fact that our government is not very good at doing basic things anymore. The main road was washed out and no one thinks it will be replaced in their lifetime. The reason for that is we drive over torn up roads every day that never seem to get repaired properly.

That said, doomsday seems to be a part of the American DNA. For as long as there has been moving pictures, the end of the world has been a topic. Movies and television shows based on the end times are a stock feature. The cause of doom changes from generation to generation, but the sense of doom is constant. It is as if Americans need to be in fear in order to feel alive.

On the other hand, maybe it is that the youngest people in the Western world have the best historical perspective. Nothing lasts forever and that means what we call the West will one day draw to a close. Perhaps the birth of this nation is so recent that it remains a reminder that death is inevitable. On the other hand, maybe we suffer from a collective form of imposter syndrome.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• Doomsday’s Past
• Doomsday Templates
• Are We Doomed?
• Arc Of History

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Contents

• 01m52s Hurricane Helene
• 11m32s Vice-Presidential debate
• 19m07s The Israel-Iran War
• 30m19s Longshoremen strike
• 33m56s President Carter at 100
• 35m49s The Great (squirrel) Replacement
• 40m04s Signoff with Buck Owens
• 00m00s Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Greetings, listeners, from your undeniably genial host John Derbyshire, with a glance at the news as September crumbles down into October.

Before proceeding, just a word of thanks for the encouragement and support I get from listeners and readers. Back in July, when VDARE finally succumbed to the relentless assaults of Letitia Lard-butt and her legions of lawyers, I admit I was in low spirits for a while, but you guys soon got me back to my normal, cheerful, sparkling self. Heck, I may even write another book, possible title We Are More Doomed Than Ever.

Please allow me my weekly reminder that you can make a tax-deductible donation to my work by mailing an earmarked check to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759.

OK, this week’s news. Top of the headlines: that disastrous storm in the Southeast.

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Every once in a while, I stumble upon a topic idea that vexes me because I am not sure where to go with it. A month or so ago I stumbled upon a Jordan Peterson video in which he explained why Jews are so successful in America. It was a bizarre thing that presented many jumping off points. Then the video disappeared from YouTube, as he no doubt has minions policing the site, so I went looking for it elsewhere.

I did not find it, but I found something similar that he wrote on his site back when he was being stalked by alt-right types asking him about Jews at his events. What came to mind was a post from five years ago where I used Stefan Molyneux and Scott Adams to explain the sophist of ancient Athens. For some reason that brought to mind this interview on the site IM1776.

It seemed like there should be a show about sophistry there or maybe a long post on the topic of profilicity which is related. The trouble is the topic is probably too big for a thousand-word post and maybe not big enough for a show. Anyway, I decided to wing on a show and let the chips fall where they may. That means the show will either be cheered as one of my best or jeered as one of my worst.

Something that did not occur to me while doing the show is that certain topics have become sophists tests. In fact, in retrospect I should have called the show that and made the show about the topics that flush out the sophist from the crowded field of people who present themselves as analysist and critics. If you cannot manage topics related to race or ethnicity, for example, you are a faker.

We got a taste of this in the vice president debate when Walz started ranting about how Finland has low crime but lots of guns. The online audience erupted in “what else does Finland not have?” while others remained puzzled by the question. If you know the answer, you know the truth, but if you do not know the answer or cannot understand the question, then you a faker or simply ignorant.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Intro
• What We Mean By Sophistry
• What The Ancients Thought
• Leo Strauss
• Modern Sophistry (interview) (Link)
• Sophistry & Democracy

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• 01m30s Canceller gets canceled
• 12m48s Crushing dissent in the Party
• 24m06s The Amy Wax saga latest
• 32m08s Good news about Higher Ed.
• 34m55s A new ministate
• 37m49s Sir Keir is the wurst
• 39m52s Signoff for Springfield
• 00m00s Signoff

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Transcript

01 — Intro.     And Radio Derb is on the air! Welcome, listeners, from your holistically genial host John Derbyshire, looking back on another week of fun and frolic in the public sphere.

Before I begin, my thanks as always for your emails and your support. This is the last podcast of September so it comes with a reminder that my monthly Diary will be up next week, readable at johnderbyshire.com/Opinions and cross-posted to The Unz Review.

And please let me just also remind you that you can make a tax-deductible donation to my work by mailing an earmarked check to: The VDARE Foundation, P.O. Box 211, Litchfield-with-a-“t”, CT 06759.

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The defining feature of this age is the never-ending crisis, always surrounding the latest name for the Devil. Everything about politics surrounds the current panic over Trump, Putin, white supremacy, and so on. These are just names for Old Scratch and the people going on about it are in a panic. It is not just that the Devil is out there, but that we must act now to prevent some terrible thing he is doing.

The theater of American democracy is always the same. The people we call the left are always in a panic about the Devil or a potential victim of the Devil. The point of their panic is to generate a sense of urgency to do something about the Devil or about the alleged victim of the Devil. Sometimes, it is a combination where the agent of the Devil must be stopped in order to save his victim.

Trump has been useful for the regime because he is the Devil, but not an abstract version like climate change or a foreigner like Putin. It is much more difficult to get people excited by a distant threat or one that is hard to explain. Trump is right here, walking among us. For the people we call the left, the last decade has been defined by the great struggle against the orange demon and his minions.

When Trump is gone, they will have a huge hole in their lives, but they will find a replacement as the center of American identity is this concept. What it means to be an American is the crisis of Old Scratch. To be an American means moving from cause to cause, always the same cause though. It is the crisis of what to do right now about Old Scratch and his evil designs on our democracy.

For sites like this to exist, it requires people like you chipping in a few bucks a month to keep the lights on and the people fed. Five bucks a month is not a lot to ask. If you don’t want to commit to a subscription, make a one time donation via crypto. You can send money to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 1047 Berkeley Springs, WV 25411-3047. You can also use PayPal to send a few bucks. Thank you for your support!

This Week’s Show

Contents

• Introduction: The Crisis & Old Scratch
• Old Scratch
• The Crisis
• Permanent Crisis

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