What Is National Conservatism?

Posted on January 5, 2023 by thezman

National conservatism, a movement created by Israeli Zionist Yoram Hazony, has gained some degree of respectability over the last decade. People associated with the movement have been given space on mainstream platforms. His conferences get a large crowd of academic types, most of whom get a speaking role. The event is one part academic conference, one part networking event. Of course, it is all made possible by billionaire Peter Theil who underwrites it.

Therein lies the first puzzle. Look at the collection of people associated with the movement and it is hard to find common ground. Peter Theil calls himself a libertarian, but he supported Trump. Granted, the space between Trump’s 1980’s civic nationalism and libertarianism is not that great, but most libertarians threw their dresses over their heads and went squealing into the night when Trump arrived. They joined their friends on the Left in calling him a fascist.

It gets fuzzier when you see paleos like Paul Gottfried and Daniel McCarthy, along with varieties of the “new right” like Michael Anton and Josh Hammer. The only thing these people have in common is support for Trump. Otherwise, they do not have much in common with one another, at least on the surface. Then you have people like Rod Dreher and David Goldman speaking at these events. Hazony’s events are the bar in Star Wars for dispossessed right-wing intellectuals.

Things get more muddled when you look at where some of these people come down on the key issues of the day. Here is John O’Sullivan giving a speech about Ukraine at the most recent conference. He clearly knows nothing about the Ukraine or the war, but he is happy to defend the Global American Empire’s meddling. Here is someone writing the “national conservative case” for arming Ukraine. He thinks war with Russia will help in the war with China to come.

Those two are not outliers. Here is Yoram Hazony making the rather farfetched claim that Ukraine was just minding its own business when for no reason at all Russia decided to invade them. If one were to take Hazony’s book, The Virtue of Nationalism, at face value, you would expect him to take the opposite position. After all, Hazony’s book is an argument against empire and it is the Global American Empire that is the cause of the war in Ukraine.

Of course, no one can read Hazony’s book and not see that it is mostly a way to give Europeans the language to defend Zionism. The prevailing ideology of Western elites is explicitly anti-nationalist. An ethnostate like Israel falls far outside of what Western elites consider acceptable, so you can see the problem. Israel ethnically cleansing the West Bank does not fit the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion pogrom. The Hazony project is mostly a way to square that circle to Western conservatives.

As an aside, Hazony makes the claim in his book that a people have a right to a homeland if they have the ability to keep and maintain it. He makes this qualification for two obvious reasons. First, it sets a size limit for a nation. Otherwise, three people could get together and demand independence. The other reason is it allows for the easy dismissal of Arab claims in Israel. The Palestinians have no claims because they cannot keep their own lands.

The fact that this argument is best applied to Israel is never addressed. After all, Israel would not exist without the British then the Americans. The entirety of Israeli foreign policy for over half a century has been to use any means necessary to gain favor with great powers in order to fend off the Arabs. Israel is the product of empire. Now that the Global American Empire is looking weak, Israel is now cutting the Ukrainians loose in favor of the Russians.

Putting that aside, the question remains, what is national conservatism? At this point, the best answer is that it is a holding area for people not welcome at reputable events who never want to be associated with disreputable events. For example, Jason Richwine is welcome at a Hazony event, but at that same event Hazony will rage against “race science” like a grievance studies major. Mark Krikorian is welcome, but anyone associated with VDare is banned.

The result is that national conservatism is sort of island of misfit toys. The only thing holding them together is a desire to get a seat at the table. Thiel’s money lets them put on extravagant conferences at world class facilities, which draw in famous people looking for some street cred as an outsider. For example, Marco Rubio, a product of Conservative Inc., gave a speech at Hazony’s event and now talks about himself as an implacable foe of the Washington political establishment.

Otherwise, national conservatism is a term without meaning. The nationalism expressed by people like Hazony is situational. Israel can build settlements in Arab areas because it is in their national interest. Russia, meanwhile, is guilty of imperialism when she moves to defend ethnic Russians from Ukrainian fanatics underwritten by the Global American Empire. This sounds like the same old neoconservatism that has plagued us since the middle of the last century.

As for the conservatism, there is not much agreement. Hazony claims that American conservatism is rooted in Burke. The umbrella group that sponsors his activity is called the Edmund Burke Foundation. On the other hand, the Claremont people that freely circulate in these events reject that claim. They are Lockeans, at least with regards to the American founding. Others are social conservatives rooting their moral claims in the authority of their religion.

There is nothing wrong with heterodoxy. In fact, more events where disparate people can socialize and debate is a good thing. As a movement, however, there has to be something more than Peter Theil’s money and estrangement from the cool kid’s table of the prevailing orthodoxy. Without a common goal or even a common narrative, it is just a collection of outsiders desperate to get back in, terrified of the ominous sounds coming from the darkness to their right.

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Willing Accomplices

Posted on January 3, 2023 by thezman

If one were looking for a reason for why the conservative movement failed so completely you would be spoiled for choice. Most people would point to the fact that despite having billions of dollars and majority support on key issues, conservatives managed to conserve nothing. Others would point out that many of the people claiming to be conservative were more concerned with maintaining good relations with their friends on the Left than advancing conservative policy.

Often this is where you hear some form of the Hoffer quote about great causes becoming religions, corporations or rackets. It is a great observations and certainly true, especially with regards to the conservative movement. Any system that produces a sanctimonious simpleton like David French has long since stopped being a serious political movement. Most of conservatism is a racket, while the rest is just a jobs program for philosophy majors.

While true, these are symptoms rather than causes. The real cause of conservative failure was the race issue. Once they conceded the moral high ground to the Left over the issue of race, the Right was forced to embrace the blank slate and egalitarianism in order to make any sense of it. You cannot agree that unequal results are immoral if you also claim that Mother Nature does not distribute her gifts equally. You have deny nature in order to embrace the moral claim.

Once conservatives accepted the starting premise of the Left, they condemned themselves to forever embracing the Left’s conclusions. You can see this in the fight of the antiwhite pogroms called CRT and DEI. This recent National Review post claims that conservatives can win the race debate. That sounds good until you read the actual text of the post and see that the secret formula for winning is another version of the internet meme, “the conservative case for…”

Here are the key lines. “We must see racial disparities where they exist and acknowledge racial trauma as real, because for many Americans, it is real. Responding to the trauma of racial discrimination by simply expressing a commitment to a race-neutral ideal is a bad move.” In other words, the so-called conservatives have to accept the premise of the Left. They see winning as proving to their masters on the Left that they are properly trained on the issue of race.

Now, the author of the piece is an interesting character. We can be sure that his ancestors did not arrive on the Mayflower. He is an example of what conservatives tell us is the new model American. His people arrived recently and as if by magic they are not only as American as everyone else, but they now have a duty to criticize the errors of your ancestors and explain how you can make things right. South Asians have embraced the skins game with a passion.

There is another name for this. Isaac Willour is a fine example of the Ingrate-American, a new arrival who does nothing but lecture white people for not having done enough to make his stay comfortable. White Americans could be forgiven for wondering why in the hell they need to listen to this interloper about anything. Maybe instead of lecturing us about our ancestors, he should be thanking us for a life that the civilization of his ancestors could never provide to him.

Putting that aside, once you concede that racial disparities require your attention and that they are the fault of white people, you sign onto whatever pogroms the Left launches on white people. There can be no salvation for white people until those disparities are gone, but since that is an impossibility, the only choice left is a forever war on whiteness, which is a war on white people. This is the logical end of the conservative embrace of the blank slate.

One you concede that people are amorphous blobs that can be made into anything, the cause of observable disparity shifts from the individual to society. Once you buy into the idea that all men are created equal, you concede that any observed inequality must be the result of some malevolent force in society. Once conservatives signed onto these two concepts, they committed themselves to a war on the majority population in the name of equality, equity and justice.

This is how conservatives went from Bill Buckley arguing with James Baldwin over the issue of civil rights to a world where recent arrivals lecture the white population about the crimes of their ancestors. After all, if all you have is the claim that all men are created equal, endowed with natural rights, what argument can you have against some guy getting off his flying carpet and claiming to be your equal? As your equal, does he not have the right to judge you and your ancestors?

Of course, this degenerate thinking pollutes everything. After all, how can one oppose open borders when you owe such a huge debt to the world? How can one question the economic arrangements when the world is counting on your sacrifice? How can you oppose community wrecking policies when you wanting to live a peaceful life among people like yourself is clearly white supremacy? Once the blood libel gets going, it becomes the universal weapon.

This is why conservatism has been a failure in America. Once they signed off on the blank slate and egalitarianism, they had no way to dispute any of the claims made by the Left, so they were reduced to being their unwilling accomplices. Eventually, their masters lost patience and now conservatives compete with one another to see who can be the most enthusiastic for the latest progressive fad. Conservatism is a shadow that cheers as the Left flits from one cause to the next.

What If They Believe It?

Posted on January 2, 2023 by thezman

One of the questions no one in the media plans to ask is why the FBI was so deeply involved in the Twitter disinformation campaigns? The word “disinformation” is the correct word in this case. Twitter was actively trying to provide the public with false information about a wide range of issues. One tool they used was silencing those who contradicted official narratives. They would instruct the Twitter censorship team to take down posts and ban particular users.

Presumably, the FBI was not just involved with Twitter, but with all of the big social media companies. Of course, this was just part of what the FBI has been doing to undermine the normal functioning of society. Victor Davis Hanson took a stab at cataloging some of their activity. He does not get into their plots to entrap people in various capers like the Gretchen Whitmer case. Then there is their involvement in the January 6 protests at the Capitol.

This is a massive effort, but to what end? Paul Gottfried suggests the primary motivation is power politics. “I’m still trying to figure out where the close alliance between surveillance agencies and the woke Left, which has been evident since at least the Obama Administration, may lead. I have no doubt this friendship is based more on power considerations than ideological affinity.” The assumption here is that the FBI does not really believe the crazy things they are saying.

Gottfried’s position is the standard conservative position that has been the default for more than half a century when dealing with the Left. Conservatives assume that there is no way these people believe what they are saying. Instead, they are motivated by a more sensible reason like money or power. Conservatives tend to be practical people, so they assume people are motivated by practical reasons. They cannot accept that these people genuinely believe what they are saying.

What if the FBI is as woke as it appears? What if the people at the top of the military, the people pushing the DIE agenda throughout the ranks, really are as antiwhite and generally insane as they sound? Talk to anyone in the services and they will tell you that the officer corps makes corporate America look old fashioned. Every FBI agent is sent to the ADL for brainwashing, so the selection pressure strongly favors the sorts of people who believe in the woke conspiracy theories.

It is entirely possible that these organizations, in fact the entirety of the managerial class, has been taken over by true believers. This does not mean all of them believe this stuff, just that there is a critical mass of believers. The 80/20 rule, also known as the Pareto principle, is as close as we have to an axiom in this area. Across all human organizations we see that there is a “vita few” that exert an extraordinary amount of influence over the whole.

What if the managerial class, having become self-aware at the end of the Cold War, has simply landed on what we call wokeness as its binding agent? What if adherence to one of these illogical and unnatural fads is simply the way people inside signal their status and commitment to others? Many, if not most, do not honestly believe this stuff, but as social animals they do what they believe is necessary to be in the group and enhance their status opportunities in the group.

In other words, the conservatives are right in that there are plenty of people cynically playing along, but know this stuff is insane. They do it for all the reasons ambitious people do things. They want to increase their status. The wrinkle here is they operate from the assumption that everyone else does believe this stuff, or at least enough important people believe it that it is best to play along. Even though a majority of the members do not believe, the whole acts as if they do believe.

What this suggests is that even if the conservatives are right and most people in the managerial class do not believe this woke lunacy, they act as if they do because they believe their fellows do believe it. That means no amount of facts and reason could change their minds, because they assume that everyone around them is genuinely woke on the latest things. In fact, knowing the truth, so to speak, makes life more dangerous for them in their social milieu.

This would explain the fanaticism of these people. If they were cocksure of their beliefs, they would have little reason to proselytize. The obviousness of their claims would be enough, so there would be no need for enforcement. On the other hand, if these people are riddled with doubt, but sure most around them are true believers, then stamping out all contrary opinion and the people who present those contrary opinions is the most rational way of defending themselves within the group.

The “group belief” option seems to comport with observation. The people policing the borders for dissent always frame their actions in terms of self-defense. The Twitter censors were “protecting” fellow believers from “misinformation” and “stochastic violence” on the platform. When what others think you believe determines membership in the whole, it is not a big leap from there to believing that anything that causes doubt or questions belief is a threat to your existence.

The other thing the group belief option does is explain how easily these people flit from one set of beliefs to another. The people bellowing “my body, my choice!” quickly shifted to bellowing “take the vax bigot” during Covid. Not only did they not see the irrationality of both positions, but they were blind to the contradictions. The reason is the content in these slogans is not what matters. In fact, it is meaningless. What matters is what the slogans signal to the person’s social environment.

This approach answers the “woke buddy” question. Everyone has at least one person in their life who is smart and capable, but he subscribes to the latest madness from the cult of modern liberalism. You can explain it to him and he will nod a long, but then go right back to spouting the latest madness. The answer is that these noises are just group identification. Like a cult member facing deprogramming, he says what he must to break free, but remains in the mental space of the cult.

Finally, the irrationality of the beliefs probably enhances the group solidary aspect of the whole wokeness agenda. Because it makes no sense on its face, one must be initiated into the concepts. Once inside, the member comes to feel like a member of a clerisy or possibly an elect or even a chosen few. It would be interesting to see a demographic study on the woke population. It would explain the overrepresentation of certain groups in this secular cult that now dominates the ruling class.

Getting back to the beginning, the reason the FBI and other institutions are bending the knee to this new religion is the people running these organizations either believe this stuff or want to believe it for social reasons. Even if the true believers are just twenty percent, they have become the standard against which members are judged. That means your facts and logic are, at best, pointless noise to them. At worse, reason is viewed as a grave personal threat.

This may be why conservatives are loathe to consider the possibility that these people really believe this stuff. If that becomes clear, then the conservatives with the charts and graphs lose their value. If the group belief option is true, then conservatism is a dangerous liability to society. The rational thing for normal people is to snuff out the remaining conservatives and then set about plotting in secret for when the ruling class can be physically removed.

Is American Conservatism Possible?

Posted on December 28, 2022 by thezman

In America, Right and Left are relative terms in that the Right is defined by its relationship with the Left. While the Left flits from novelty to novelty, the Right shouts, “please slow down” while following it around. As Robert Lewis Dabney put it a century ago, “American conservatism is merely the shadow that follows Radicalism as it moves forward towards perdition.” His observation has remained true to this day. It is why yesterday’s radical idea is today’s conservative principle.

This is not true in other parts of the world. Radicalism exists, but it throws itself against the defenses of tradition and history. It may break down those walls, as we see in Europe, but the contours of the Right remain in place. European conservatism is the appeal to hierarchy, tradition and permanence. Joseph de Maistre would be shocked by modern Europe, but he would still be able to make out the borders that define the modern conservative forces of Europe.

The opposite is true in America. Take someone from the founding generation and transport him into the middle of the 19th century and he would recognize the forces of radicalism quite easily. After all, the radical abolitionist would look strikingly familiar, having come from the same stock. Transport that man further into time and he would recognize the New England roots of the progressive. Conservatism, on the other hand, would make no sense to him in any age.

That is the problem for conservatives. The rest of the world has traditions, habits of mind and institutions with roots into the mists of time. America is a young society, so the ancient customs are not all that ancient. Most of those were borrowed from Europe during the colonial period. Others were trampled under the hoofs of one prior radical pogrom or another. Modern conservatives are left to conjure an authority due to a lack of tradition and history.

You can see the dilemma here in this speech Michael Anton delivered to Hillsdale College on the end of conservatism and the beginning of a new politics. Anton is part of a project to build a “new” conservatism. Like the “old” conservatism, his starting point is Lincoln and the “second founding” as imagined by Harry Jaffa. Note also that the person introducing Anton is careful to insert the Athens and Jerusalem line into his remarks, signaling his membership in the cult of Jaffa.

The cult of Jaffa and Lincolnism has been discussed at length here and other places, so there is no need to go over it again. Of interest here is the selection of Lincoln as the Abraham of modern conservatism. This is a bit like picking Karl Marx as your starting point for German conservatism. In his time, Lincoln was a radical and not just the bourgeois coffee house variety. He was willing to kill as many of his fellow citizens as needed to impose his radical vision on the country.

The “new right” would no doubt dispute that characterization of Lincoln, but you cannot place Lincoln on the Right during his age. Abolitionism was a radical idea, one that the radicals of the founding generation rejected. John Adams opposed the idea on the grounds that it was worse that slavery. Like many of his generation, he personally opposed slavery, but he understood the danger posed by the abolitionists. Adams would have viewed Lincoln as a dangerous fanatic.

Of course, in his own time Adams was a dangerous fanatic. The people trying to form up a new conservatism love waving around the Declaration of Independence, but that was the most radical document produced to that point. In fact, the entire founding of the United States was a great experiment in radical politics. It is not an accident that America is often called an experiment. The very basis of America is the praxis of radical thought and it continues to this day.

The truth is America has never had much to work with for anyone trying to create a genuine conservatism, because America lacks the history and traditions that would naturally anchor conservatism. Compounding it is that the limited history and traditions that are available are nothing but a long journal of one radical experiment after another in the vain hope of creating that city on a hill John Winthrop imagined when he and his fellow fanatics landed in the New World.

This lack of necessary ingredients with which to fashion a genuine conservatism in America is probably why conservatism has been a failure. When you are reduced to conjuring a novel history in support of novel ideas, as we see with the current “new right” experiment, all you are really doing is engaging in your own form of radicalism, just without the force of authority enjoyed by the Left. Conservatism becomes nothing more than a parlor game for outsiders.

This is why any effort to produce a genuine alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy needs to start with an honest inventory of reality. What can be produced from the materials at hand to create something that can resist the acid of liberalism? The answer cannot lie within the liberal tradition. To go back to 1950, 1850 or 1750 looking for answers to the problems created in those times inevitably means explaining away the defects of liberalism in order to preserve it.

The place to start with fashioning an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy is not in 1950, 1850 or 1750, but in 2050. Given the current demographic trends, imagine a continent filled with versions of Orania and then contemplate the ideology of a people who can maintain it. This is one lesson we can take from the founders. They tried to fashion a practical solution for their people at the time. The next founding will have to do the same thing, but for a different people.

The Marx Of America

Posted on December 27, 2022 by thezman

Note: Henrik and Lana of Red Ice need some help with medical bills. Their new born needed almost two week in the ICU. Donate here.

There are men who are remembered for what they did. There are men who are remembered for what they said. Then there are men who are remembered for who they have influenced or the chain events touched off by them. This last group is unique for the simple reason it is hard to say exactly why they are remembered. They are history’s version of the popular figure who is famous for being famous. One such example is the late philosopher, Leo Strauss.

That last sentence provides a clue as to why this mediocre philosopher and historian is a figure who looms large of contemporary politics. Serious students of philosophy take exception to calling Strauss a philosopher. Historians dismiss him outright. Students of Greek philosophy roll their eyes when they the man’s name. Even his followers will spend hours debating how to properly label the man. Despite this lack of distinction, Leo Strauss is an important figure in our politics.

For those looking for an accessible explainer on Leo Strauss and his work, Paul Gottfried’s book, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America is a straight forward summary and analysis of the man and his work. For those looking for an even shorter introduction to the topic, here is a good review of the book. At the end of that review, the reviewer touches on the central question of Strauss. Why does this mediocre academic cast such a long shadow?

The main reason anyone talks about Strauss is that his followers have been central to American politics for half a century. His most famous acolyte was Harry Jaffa, who created the cult of Lincoln that still animates conventional conservatism. His reimagining of American history allowed contemporary conservatives to get to the left of their opponents on the issue of race. It is why the modern conservative cannot shut up about Abraham Lincoln. He is their get out jail free card.

That does not explain why we have lots of middlebrow intellectuals announcing themselves as Straussians rather than Jaffians. Modern conservatism owes far more to Jaffa than Strauss, but the conservative intellectual space is littered with people flying the flag of Leo Strauss. Additionally, there are flavors of Straussianism, as in the East Coast Straussians and the West Coast Straussians. What is so magical about this man that half a century after his death he still casts a shadow?

This is where Marx comes into the picture. Like Strauss, Marx was a mediocre intellectual, but he cast a huge shadow. There were many smart men working the communist and socialist circuits in the 19th century, many smarter and more reasonable than Marx, but it was Marx who towered over the rest. Despite having been wrong about pretty much everything, Karl Marx remains a respected thinker and philosopher on the Left.

One reason Marx rose above the rest was that he provided intellectual authority to the socialist movement. His theory of history turned a collection of moral preferences into scientific fact, which gave the believers an unquestionable authority upon which to base their economic and political claims. To this day we hear people on the so-called Left claim that they are on the right side of history. This means their opponents are on the wrong side of history, so they can be dismissed.

Similarly, the Straussian method provides the believer with a set of tools to instantly create the needed authority for their normative claims. Strauss taught that you must learn the true intent of a writer. The Straussian, of course, has the special skill to see through the esoteric writing of genuine philosophers, who out of necessity always cloak their real meaning from the casual reader. Strauss allows his followers to divine the real meaning of historical texts.

At first this does not sound like much, but it allowed Harry Jaffa to tease out the real thoughts of the Founders, which to that point had been called the Framers, because they wrote the text of the Constitution. Jaffa claimed that their real thoughts were contained in the Declaration. From that he could turn the Founders into Moses and Lincoln into Joshua. The former led his people out of bondage, but not into the Promised Land, while the latter completed the journey.

That is a clever trick, but as Gottfried noted, this was not simply for the amusement of bored intellectuals, but part of a political strategy. By casting Lincoln as the real founder of the American republic, conservatives, who were clustered in the Republican party, could claim him as their own. Not only does the “great emancipator” become a shield against the charge of racism, but he also becomes a license to turn egalitarianism and the blank slate into conservative principles.

That is a major appeal of Strauss. His method provides a set of tools for rhetorical combat within practical politics. The Straussian method allows the user to flit from one tine of Hume’s fork to the other. They can conflate those things that are axiomatically true with those things that are contingently true. Decorated with their own interpretations of Plato and Aristotle, gratuitous assertions become immutable fact. These tools let the users win the debate, rather than reveal important truths.

Probably the main appeal of Strauss is the same as for Marx. For the initiate, the system of thought provides a framework to answer every question. This in turn elevates the believer’s sense of self. When you are on the right side of history, you inevitably are filled with confidence. When you can divine the intent of the great minds and use this secret knowledge against your opponents, you become a god. The appeal in both cases is spiritual, not intellectual.

The comparison between Marx and Strauss works because of the people who were most attracted to the two men. The people who rallied to Marxism were not the urban proletariat, but the urban bourgeois intellectuals. Similarly, those rallying to Strauss are not highbrow political thinkers. His appeal is to the middlebrow bourgeois intellectuals that grow like a fungus on the modern age. Both provided a purpose to idle men without an obvious role in life.

Ideas have consequences and bad ideas have bad consequences. That should be the lesson of Marxism. Leo Strauss was a clever man, for sure, but his bad ideas have given us a half century of political agitation and subterfuge. One would think the embarrassing catastrophe that was the Bush presidency would have relegated Strauss and his followers to the dustbin of history, but when you are untethered from facts and reason, the facts never get in the way of your next argument.

The Canary Is Dead

Posted on December 15, 2022 by thezman

Note: This is the time of year to be generous to those in need, so if you are looking for a place to give, here is an option. Most certainly know the story, but for those who do not here is the background.

If you live near a public tennis court, you may have noticed that there are not that many people playing tennis these days. Many courts have simply been abandoned to nature, due to a lack of interest. Depending upon where you live, you may see people playing pickleball, which has nothing to do with pickles. It is a game that is something like ping pong, except the players are on the table. They use paddles and a plastic ball, taking turns hitting the ball back and forth over a net.

According to the wiki page, the game was invented as a way to give kids something to do when they were bored. Over time it caught on around the neighborhood and soon it was becoming a thing. Recently the sport has caught on in a big way with tournaments and leagues around the country. It is very popular with Baby Boomers, because they can play the game while stationary. They just bat the ball back and forth to get some exercise and socialize with friends.

This is a bit ironic. Fifty years ago, tennis went from being a rich person sport, like polo and golf, to something of a national craze. In the 1970’s big tennis matches were must see television and the stars of the game were household names. Baby Boomers were young and fit, so they could play tennis. Then father time made tennis much less enjoyable and tennis went into decline. Fifty years later the Boomers are back on the court but playing pickleball instead.

It is hard to overstate the warping effect the Boomer generation has had on the American culture. The tennis to pickleball phenomenon is one example, but all of sports has been changed by the Boomers. Through most of the twentieth century, sports attendance was light, but then the Boomers got into sports and suddenly going to games was a thing. Hundreds of billions have been spent over the last half century creating sports arenas for the Boomers.

Of course, standing outside for three hours is tiring on the old back and knees, so sports attendance is in decline. College football, which is a quintessential Baby Boomer pastime is seeing a collapse in attendance. All of sudden the people who make a trip once a year to catch a game at their alma mater are finding a reason to watch the game from the comfort of the recliner. They can stay in touch with their old classmates on Facebook, so why make the trip to the game?

The decline in attendance is a serious threat to the college model because the infrastructure for this industry relies on donations from alumni. The rich donor wants his friends to see his name on the sports building. He wants his friends to party with him in the luxury suite. If all his friends are at the Villages watching the game on television, what is the point of writing the check? This is why those sagging attendance numbers have colleges in a panic.

Golf is another sport feeling the Boomer decline. This is the sport for the white suburban middle manager. Three decades ago, there were a lot of these people and they filled up golf course around the country. Demographics and the actuarial tables are thinning the ranks and so the number of golfers declines every year. Those little brown guys swimming over the Rio Grande may be natural conservatives, but they will not be taking up the game of golf any time soon.

This decline in participation will mean a decline in interest. Twenty years ago, the big names in sports talk radio were known throughout the culture, because tens of millions of people listened to these guys while at work. The core demographic for these shows was white men between the ages of 25 and 55. That demo is now in steep decline and the listenership is following them. Here is a list the top sports talkers and you probably recognize none of them.

What all this points to is a looming winter for sports entertainment. Some sports like the NFL have been gaming the cable system to tax the public for their product, but that model is facing the same demographic collapse. The grandparents still have a cable subscription, but their kids most likely cut the cord and their grandkids will never have a cable subscription. That assumes the grandkids even exist, which is highly unlikely according to the census.

The decline of the Baby Boomer generation was always going to bring a decline to the leisure industry, but the demographic decline promises a depression. Many will wonder why they should care, but the sports entertainment industry is driven by the same economic principles as the rest of the economy. Those billion dollar stadiums and multibillion dollar franchises are leveraged to the max. It all assumes a growing audience of middle class white people.

You can probably do this same exercise with other parts of the economy. How will the legal rackets maintain themselves when the law schools are forced to drop the LSAT requirement in the name of equity? A courtroom like this is amusing, but it is no way to keep the ambulance chasers in business. Even if the standards do not collapse, the legal profession is about to experience a great die off. Soon, simple cases will take years because of the lack of bodies.

It is easy to overstate things, but the country is about to undergo a demographic revolution, and this is before the Great Replacement discussion. All of the things that relied upon a massive number of suburban white people are going to find they lack the people to maintain the old model. The number of suburban whites as customers is in decline and the number to do the work is in decline. Sports entrainment is the canary in the coal mine and the canary is dead.

Custodial Musings

Posted on December 13, 2022 by thezman

Note: Is the man in your life a lifeless lump on the couch? Is the little lady acting more like an old lady? Need to add some spice to your life? Then head over to Minter & Richter for a jar or two of their hot sauce.

Wawa is a local convenience store chain in the Mid-Atlantic. The typical store is a big gas station near a major road, along with a store selling the sorts of things working people would pickup during the day. Their big draw is a sandwich shop that makes a decent cold cut at a very good price. It is not gourmet eating, but it is far above what you would get from a fast food joint. Of course, being a convenience store, they have the quick items you would expect.

Another take on this is a chain calling itself Royal Farms. They have copied the model used by Wawa and many other chains. They used to be strictly a convenience store chain, but they have been building big gas stations. Many are something like a small truck stop, providing services to the big scary truck people. Like Wawa, they have a sandwich shop, but their hook is fried chicken. They claim to have the best take away fried chicken on the planet.

One interesting difference between the two chains in the Greater Lagos area is that Wawa hires mostly white people, while Royal Farms hires black people. Wawa will hire the occasional nonwhite, but the stores are 90% white. Royal Farm is 100% black at their stores. This turns up in the customer base too. Go into a Wawa at lunch time and it is all white working people. Go to Royal Farm and it is lots of black people, along with some Hispanics and white working-class people.

The one thing both chains have in common is a labor problem. Royal Farm is the most amusing in this regard. It is entirely possible to order a turkey sub and be handed a roll with just the condiments and then be told they are out of turkey. Alternatively, it is possible to order something but you get nothing or someone got tired of waiting and simply took your food when you were not looking. Of course, this all assumes the ordering kiosk is working, which is not always the case.

Like many take out chains, Royal Farms was an early adopter of the self-service kiosk in order to solve the quality control problem. Quality control in this case means the staff, who struggle to do the basics. Mother Nature does not always get it right and the defects end up working at Royal Farms. This problem has turned up all over the retail space, but Royal Farms seems to get the worst of the worst. There is a World Star Hip-Hip vibe to their hiring decisions.

No one is immune to the retail staffing problems and as a result these two competing chains have been in a technology war. The self-service kiosk for ordering was the first logical step to reduce errors in food orders. Both aggressively push their app and the use of delivery services. Both now have self-checkout kiosks that blow away the ones you see at the big retail chains like Home Depot. The goal, of course, is to reduce the staffing to the barest minimum.

What this points to is something that people have been warning about for decades and that is the great robot take over of the workplace. Go into one of these chains and you can easily imagine a time when you order your sandwich from the screen and a robot assembles it, wraps it up and delivers it to a pickup area. You pay for your items at a self-checkout kiosk using your bank app. The only interaction with a human is the guards who make sure you paid your bill.

This is not limited to retail. The mass layoffs at Twitter confirm what many people have suspected for a long time. There are lots of people sitting in office cubicles who have no real purpose. Maybe they are there to tick boxes. Maybe they perform some function mandated by the government, which could be automated. Maybe the marketplace has stopped functioning, allowing for massive overstaffing. That clearly has been the case at the giant tech firms like Twitter.

The people who have been warning about the automation revolution have always asked the question, what happens to the displaced workers? The teddy bear conservatives cling to is the great invisible hand of the marketplace. Sure, the robots will replace the people, but the magic of creative destruction will save the day. Look around the retail space and that is clearly not happening. It will certainly not be the case for the tens of thousands of people fired from Big Tech.

Even if the magic beans of capitalism are not the answer, it does not follow that there will be a neo-Luddite revolt against the machines. Again, you get a glimpse of the future in these retail chains. Go into a Wawa and people are happy to interact with a robot to get their food and checkout. Everything about that experience, in fact, everything about their lives has been reduced to a transaction. As long as people can get their extra large drink and snacks, they will not complain.

That is the lesson of Covid. Those fired Twitter people were in make work jobs and they knew they we in make work jobs. Here are some examples from conservative media that have been making the rounds. The reason these people liked working at home so much is they were not doing anything at work. Covid allowed them to pretend that goofing off at home was real work. The reason firms are struggling to get people back to work is many of their workers have no real purpose.

How big of a leap is it to slash the pointless people from the workforce and then give them busy work at home? Some parts of the country spent close to two years experimenting with this idea. It was like the old gag around Washington whenever there was a big snowstorm. Nonessential workers were told to stay home, which meant everyone working for the government. Something similar happened during Covid and we learned that most people were not essential.

Of course, Covid came with rules to make sure the suddenly idle were not going outside and getting into trouble. Short of a revolution, we will never know why the rulers all got on the lock down bandwagon, but one likely answer is they feared millions of idle people milling around looking for something to do. Making sure they stayed in their huts, plugged into the internet was a primary goal. The robot revolution will no doubt come with something similar to pacify the masses.

Stand around in a place like Wawa and it is not hard to see where this is all heading and then wonder if it can work. We are about to tip into a world with lots of useless people, kept busy by a custodial state. They will be given credits to buy the things they want and kept busy through various means. Some will be assigned busy work, while others will simply be amused into a catatonic state. Still others will be used to police their fellow inmates in the custodial state.

From the perspective of the managerial class, this seems like a great challenge that will give purpose to their lives, even though many will be assigned to busy work. Can a people live like this is another question. Note that during Covid there was not the predicted baby boom. It turns out that lots of idle people at home did not let nature take its course after all. Maybe such an unnatural way of living does not put one in the mood to bring new life into such a world.

The Future Christian

Posted on December 7, 2022 by thezman

Note: Let’s face it, you stink. The way to stop stinking is to take a bath and for that you need soap. Havamal Soapworks is where you can find it. It also makes a nice Christmas gift, especially for those smelly people in your life.

A question that never gets asked is whether or not Christianity, however one wants to define it, can survive in the modern West. Those opposed to Christianity, which is the entirety of the managerial class, never discuss it. Actual Christians are aware of the challenges they face, but they just assume they are on the side of angels, literally and figuratively, so the question does not require an answer. If you are sure yours is the one true faith, then the survival question has been answered.

Looking at survey data, just three states, Alabama, Tennessee and Utah, have a weekly church attendance over 50%. On the other side, New Hampshire is the only state that has a majority who never attend services at all. Vermont, Maine and Massachusetts are all in the high 40% range and on their way to being majority non-Christian. Given that Yankeedom has ruled the country since Gettysburg, it is no wonder that the rest of the country is slowly losing its religion too.

In Europe things are bleak for the Christians. Four countries, Belgium, the UK, France
and the Czech Republic have majorities who have never attended church. Spain and the Netherlands are in the high 40’s. Poland and Ireland are the only two countries with a majority of church goers, but in both cases, the younger population has caught the modern disease and they avoid church. In Poland youth attendance is 27% and in Ireland it is at 33% according to recent surveys.

In fairness, there are a few modifiers to these numbers. One is how one defines regular church attendance. Most surveys break it down between weekly, multiple times per year, rarely and never. One can still identify as a Catholic, even if one is only going to mass on a monthly basis. Similarly, an adult that does not attend service, but went to church as a child and was baptized into the faith could still identify as a Christian, but not necessarily a practicing one.

The point being is that you can quibble with the numbers and whose survey is better, but the overall picture does not change. Christianity in the West is not just on the wane, but in many places, it is on the way out. When you shift from the private sphere to the public one, it is rare to find any discussion of Christianity. The Christians allowed on stage must profess an undying devotion to Jewish people, Israel and various myths and legends important to the Jewish people.

This void in the managerial class is being filled by people who define Christian as the bad whites they despise. The recent gay marriage bill made possible by the Republican party, allows the IRS to strip churches of their tax exempt status if they are not willing to play along with the homosexual marriage charade. Like the Obama health care bill, the point is mostly about attacking Christians. The people in charge want the believers to know that they are not welcome in America.

This is where the survival question comes into play. Most people who regularly attend services think they have a constitutional right to their faith. Evangelicals, for example, when they are not celebrating Israel, are waving the flag. These are people who not only think they are on the side of angels, but they also think they have the law on their side with regards to how they practice their faith. These people are completely unprepared to defend their faith from the coming assault.

Mainstream Protestantism has been thoroughly corrupted. On the east coast, the surest sign you are near an Episcopal church is the rainbow flag. That sect has given itself over completely to the worship of homosexuals. The Southern Baptist Convention now sounds like the grievance studies depart at a third tier state college. The Methodists are in a civil war over the usual questions. Of course, the Catholic church long ago succumbed to the pink mafia that took over the clergy.

The fact is, the Christian in modern America is under assault not just from the historical enemies of the faith, but from the institutions he has relied upon to defend religious liberty in America. The churches themselves have signed onto the programs that promise to make it impossible to be a Christian, at least one who thinks Scripture is more than just some pointless stories. Just as important, the believers seem to be psychologically unprepared for the fight.

From a purely secular and analytical perspective, religions evolve to solve the basic questions of human society. Religions help explain the natural world and provide authority to the customs and traditions of a people. Often, religion provides at least part of the answer to the central question, who are we? It is religion that helps people understand the observable world around them. That ranges from the natural phenomenon to the nature of human relations.

The modern West is increasingly defined by the deliberate avoidance of observable reality, along with prohibitions against noticing certain things. The authority for these prohibitions is mob rule, guided by an invisible hand that is on the list of things no one is allowed to mention. Christianity offers an alternative source of authority and Scripture encourages the believer to engage with the human condition. It is not hard to see why that invisible hand guiding the mob hates Christians.

This brings us back to the beginning. Can Christianity survive? The answer depends a lot on how one defines Christianity. Within this century the mainline churches will have disappeared, their nicer buildings having been made into museums. Baring a cataclysm that derails modernity, institutional churches are doomed. That will leave the believers to fend for themselves as ad hoc communities. They will have to redefine what it means to be a Christian in order to survive the onslaught.

That presents another problem. Most of the people who would join an ad hoc community of believers embraces the universalism and openness that has been the ruin of Christianity in the West. In a world where demographic reality is the defining feature, the refusal to recognize demographic reality is a suicide pill. In other words, if Christianity is to survive, it will have to become something different. Christians will have to find the authority for new survival skills within Scripture.

It is easy to see why Christians prefer not to think about this stuff. It is a complex problem that defies simple answers. It is a lot easier to type “Christ is King!” in a Gab post than think about these challenges. Like all the other problems facing Western people, the future does not lie in the past. Whatever comes next for Christians will be fashioned from what is available in the future. Like most Western traditions, the old Christianity will not survive the revolution.

The Great Delusion

Posted on December 6, 2022 by thezman

Note: If you are wondering what to buy the little woman for Christmas this year, consider something from our friends at Minter & Richter. For the ladies, giving the man in your life something cool he can wear in public lets the hussies know he is taken.

Imagine you are the CEO of a large corporation and you have to make a big decision about a critical issue facing the company. Your team in the C-suites have been busy putting together all of the information they can about the issue. There have been meetings and presentations on all aspects of the issue. Experts have been brought in to explain various aspects of the issue. After having digested all of the information on the issue, it is now time to act. What do you do?

Obviously, the right answer, even without knowing any of the details about the issue in this hypothetical, is to put it up to a vote. First, you will have the various sides on the issue make their case to the employees. Maybe have a series of Zoom debates and let the parties put up posters around the offices. Perhaps the principles representing the various positions will have an all hands on deck meeting. At some point, you have the employees log in and cast their vote.

Of course, this is ridiculous. No company would ever do such an insane thing, at least not in this age. In the 19th century there were some efforts to create socialist companies, but they ended poorly. Usually, these democratic companies were part of a utopian society. In the modern age, no one thinks the principles of democracy have any place in something important like a corporation. The truth is the commies were right about American business. It runs on fascist principles.

It is not just major corporations that avoid democracy. There is no military in this world that embraces democracy. The nearest thing to democracy in warfare was the pirate ship, which often voted on where to plunder. Even on a pirate ship, there was a captain who made the big decisions. His men might “vote him off the ship” but they would quickly elect a new captain. Otherwise, every military on the planet has a vertical chain of command and no democratic principles.

A good rule of life is that when any organization reaches sufficient size to employ a full time leader, it employs a full time leader. A small group of men working to a common goal might operate from a consensus, but even in small groups someone is the de facto leader to whom everyone looks for the final decision. It is fair to say that an organization without a leader is unnatural. Human beings, even women, always organize around a leader, even when everyone is agreement.

This natural lack of democracy is most evident in science. If someone comes along claiming that he has discovered a new element, the science men do not call together a meeting and vote on the claim. The claim must be backed with proof and that proof is analyzed and challenged to verify it. Despite what the Gaia worshippers say, consensus only exists within science where proof is not present. The word “consensus” is a signal of doubt, not proof of the claim.

A good rule of life is that anything important is excluded from anything resembling the democratic process. No business runs on democratic lines. Armies do not run according to democratic principles. Those two areas are arguably two of the most important bits of any human society and they run according to fascist principles. Even family life avoids democracy as much as possible. The expression “head of the household” exists because households naturally have a leader.

If one wants to understand why voting is a pointless waste of time, you just have to ask why no important things are ever put to a vote? Immigration is arguably the most important issue facing the country. Politicians avoid it like the plague. Even the “good politicians” speak in tongues when the issue is raised. Meanwhile, they scheme in private to do what they know is against the interests of the people. No one voting for it will dare mention it when on the campaign trail.

The fact is our elections are meaningless. The candidates speak in vague terms about abstract items. It is all in-group/out-group signaling. “We have to secure our southern border” is just echolalic babbling used to titillate a certain population. “We need affordable healthcare for all” is emotive noise for different people. None of the things candidates say while campaigning has anything to do with how they will vote once in office or the policies that will become law.

You could easily replace the people with colored blocks of wood. How would the current Georgia senate election be any different if the choice were between red block of wood and blue block of wood? Alternatively, the candidates could be replaced with lights that flash different colors in response to different noises. Say the word “immigration” and one light flashes green and the other flashes red. The expensive humans could be replaced with cheap robots.

The reason our elections are meaningless, of course, is that no human society ever subjects important things to democracy. The old joke about if voting mattered, they would not let us do it was funny because it is true. There is no correlation between public opinion and public policy. This study from 2014 went through 1800 issues and found no link between what the people told the politicians they wanted and what the politicians eventually did.

If nothing important is ever subjected to democracy and democracy never results in the public will manifesting in public policy, then why are people hooked on the act of voting and why is democracy an object of worship. Based on observation it appears there is no argument that can be made to convince the bulk of the people to end this absurd charade we call voting. Suggest a boycott of the process and the typical suburban peasant gives you a sermon about democracy.

Compounding this bizarre worship of democracy is that most modern people live a third of their lives as fascists. The self-employed person has almost disappeared from the labor market. Small business is following the self-employed into the abyss as big business dominates the marketplace. That means most people work in companies that operate along fascist principles. If half of your waking life is committed to fascism, how in the world has democracy become an object of worship?

Societies can have moments of madness. The 1970’s saw America embrace leisure suits and disco, while cities were turned into war zones. Much of that period has been politely forgotten because no one can make sense of it. Maybe this age and its fetish from democracy is something similar. The chanting about democracy and obsession with politics is another fit of madness. Instead of afros and sideburns we have brain damaged hobos in the Senate and black Nazis.

Alternatively, this great delusion about the importance of participating in elections is a form of escapism. As people become more dependent on the system for the basics of their lives, they need to believe they have some say in how the big machine that is the modern society runs their life. Democracy and the various identity cults are a way to feel like you have control when you are effectively living as a prisoner. Democracy lets the inmates feel they are in charge of the asylum.

White Sambo

Posted on December 5, 2022 by thezman

Note #1: I have multiple goodies up behind the green door this week. The schedule going forward will be two written pieces a week and one podcast. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.

Note #2: If you are looking for a book to read, you may want to buy the book A Walk in the Park: My Charlottesville Story. It is a first person account of the events by a couple of good guys who deserve your support. it would be a great Christmas gift.

In the novel Invisible Man, an important bit of symbolism is a paper doll, called a Sambo doll, that was popular in the middle of the last century. It was often a paper doll made up with exaggerated features of back people. In the novel, black street sellers would attach the doll to a string and include a stereotypical song and dance performance as a way to sell the dolls to passersby. Of course, the passersby were white people who bought the dolls because it appealed to their racism.

Obviously, the black people selling the dolls were profiting from the promotion of what the writer saw as a negative stereotype. One interpretation is that the reason black stereotypes persisted was that some blacks profited from them. The black people selling the dolls made money from the suffering of their own people. They were willing to degrade themselves and their people to make a few dollars. These selfish acts were a part of the problem facing blacks in America.

It was not cut and dried for the narrator. He could see that the black men profiting from these stereotypes were simply adapting to reality. They made money for themselves and their family, which by extension benefitted the community. Black stereotypes, in effect, created a moral dilemma for back people. On the one hand, they kept black people down relative to white people. On the other hand, profiting from these stereotypes allowed black people to prosper despite their condition.

Later on the novel, the narrator tries to burn one of the Sambo dolls for heat and finds it difficult to do, symbolizing the difficulty of overcoming the stereotype. He is eventually able to burn the doll. In the process he realizes that it may be difficult to overcome the cultural framing that the Sambo doll symbolized, but it is possible if one accepts the reality of his condition. The individual can only transcend his condition by creating and maintaining his own individual identity.

Invisible Man was written seventy years ago, but the problem facing black people described by Ralph Ellison has not changed. You see it in this interview of Jared Taylor on the Young Turks channel. Dr. Rashad Richey is playing a stereotypical black character, which has been lampooned for generations. He gets to make a nice living doing it, but like the characters selling Sambo dolls in the novel, he is profiting from the perpetuation of negative stereotypes of black people.

An extreme example of this is the Kanye West story. His career has been built around selling the stereotypical black cultural items, things like sneakers and expensive lifestyle items, to an audience primarily of white suburban youth. His own struggle with this reality seems to have broken him. His most recent interviews suggest he is a man rolling around in a struggle with own personal Sambo doll, one that he created and that looks striking like Kanye West, despite the name change.

This moral dilemma applies to anyone who exists outside the moral consensus and this Kanye West stuff is an example of it. Nick Fuentes has signed onto what he used to mock just a few years ago. He was the guy in the so-called optics war who insisted that presentation was important. He mocked the alt-right people for praising Hitler and throwing Roman salutes. He is now flying around with a guy who praises Hitler and makes the alt-right sound philosemitic.

Fuentes, faced with the dilemma described in the novel Invisible Man, the choice between playing the stereotypical role for money and attention or rejecting that role in order to create and maintain an individual identity, has chosen the former. Like so many before him, Fuentes is volunteering to play the role of cartoon Nazi that the system he claims to oppose needs in order to perpetuate itself. Like the character in the novel, he is perpetuating a stereotype for profit.

The counter from his fans is that these publicity stunts get attention and therefore expose people to this material. It brings attention and resources into the community that lies outside the moral consensus, which helps the community. In this case, by signing onto the Kanye West circus, Fuentes raises his profile, which he then uses to promote the ideas and opinions of his followers. Like the character selling Sambo dolls in the novel, Fuentes is degrading himself to support his community.

Here is where the comparison breaks down. Black people in the middle of the last century faced genuine economic hardship. A man trading his dignity to feed his kids is making a rational choice. Similarly, refusing to trade his dignity, even if it means his family suffers, is also a rational choice. That is the moral dilemma. Both choices are rationally defensible. Playing the cartoon Nazi for the mass media, on the other hand, lacks rational support.

The reason is the argument in favor of “getting the word out at all cost” has been proven false over and over for generations. George Lincoln Rockwell got the word out by dressing up as Hitler. David Duke was the preppy Klansman and got a whirl on the big stage in the 1980’s. Most recently, the alt-right was front page news for a while and nothing came of it. No minds were changed. It was just another version of the white Sambo act for the benefit of the people in charge.

Like the narrator in the novel, the only way forward is to step outside the moral framework and create a new and independent identity. In the political context, this means a stand alone argument in favor of some alternative future. There is the list of complaints about the current system, every cause has a bill of indictment, but it is followed by a plausible alternative. There is a vision of a future independent of the current moral framework, not just opposed to it.

Blacks in the middle of the last century were faced with a choice. They could find a way to live within the system or find a way to live outside the system. The choice was the former, which has often required a sublimation to the same sorts of stereotypes that allegedly motivated the civil rights movement. Agreeing to be one of the forty-two black people living in the white nationalist enclave of Brattleboro Vermont is no different than selling those paper Sambo dolls on the street corner.

In this age, white people are faced with a similar dilemma. One can simply play the role of suburban peasant until that is no longer permitted. One can play the white Sambo role pretending it is something other than theater. Alternatively, one can seek to live outside the world of racial coercion, looking to a world free of racial coercion. That is a genuinely break from the past and present. It leaves the Sambos and the enablers to the dustbin of history.

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