Category Archives: Culture

The Quest For Meaning

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When you are living through an age, it is very difficult to see the currents with which the age will be identified. Few people living in the Jazz Age would have guessed they were living in the Jazz Age. In this age, society is whipsawed by one trend after another, so it seems impossible to know which one will be remembered. Maybe this is the geriatric age where aging Baby Boomers ruled the day. Perhaps the democratic age, where mob rule plunged the West into darkness and chaos.

One option may be the age of meaning. This is the time when people are always searching about for meaning and purpose in their lives. They turn the trivial into all-important moments, so they can pretend to be in a struggle. They invent victims of imaginary oppression so they can play the white knight. Every crisis, it turned into a crusade that quickly takes on the trappings of religion. Ours is an age where everyone is on a vision quest and they force the rest of us to play along.

For example, lost in all of the handwringing about Afghanistan is how some became emotionally attached to a place they ignored for two decades. Suddenly, getting our “allies” out was a holy mission. They spent all day on-line playing “digital Dunkirk” as if they were really doing something heroic. All of a sudden, the media was full of stories from people who claimed to working to get their friends out of the country. Of course, those friends were always heroic Afghans, not Americans.

This quest for meaning was not limited to LARP’ing on-line. Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero. They were not satisfied with making noises about it on the House floor. They had to be in the middle of the action. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma decided to play Rambo and went over to personally rescue people. These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play.

Of course, for close to two years we have been hit by a tsunami of this from women claiming they are in the “front lines” of Covid. Just look at the language. They imagine they are in real trenches fighting real monsters. When it started, every nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building. Many got swept up in their fantasies on-line for the same reason.

The main reason the Covid panic is not old news is the people swept up in the cause cannot let go of it. For many, this was the first time in their life they woke up in the morning with a sense of purpose. There are nefarious reasons behind the government response, but it is aided and abetted by the quest for meaning. There are many more people who want to believe the stories are true than those who are offended by the assault on their liberty by the state in response to the problem.

The best way to see this quest for meaning is in things that are not driven by a sense of crisis, but by history. Here is the ridiculous governor of Virginia inserting himself and his co-religionists into the history books. They get to feel like heroes for righting a past wrong, that was probably not wrong. The facts are not important. They need to be part of the long gone struggle. Since the line for the Emmett Till ride is way too long, they picked a different event to exercise their quest for meaning.

This is one reason events like the civil right movement are talked about as if they happened yesterday. Part of it is nostalgia, for sure, but a big part of it is a secondhand nostalgia by people who have no direct connection to the events. Instead, they seek to fill the need for meaning and purpose in their present lives with fantasies about having experienced emotionally important events of the shared past. This allows them to feel like they are part of the struggle from the safety of home.

Bourgeoise restlessness is not a new thing. This desire to do something important seems to be the result of leisure. Young men from good homes have gone off to seek adventure since there have been young men from good homes. We live in an age in which large swaths of the population are idle. Poverty is no longer a threat, as even the poor have more than they need. In one respect, the quest for meaning in a post-scarcity phenomenon driven by an excess of middle-class people.

Another driver though is the devastation wrought by liberal democracy. Social capital in the form of family and community has been used to fire the great engines of the technological state. The transactional replacements, on-line community, social media groups and mass media, are a poor substitute. Like emergency meal replacements, manufactured community can keep you going for a while, but it is a constant reminder of the loss of the real thing, as well as a poor substitute.

At the end of the Time Machine, the protagonists realizes that the future he witnessed was not the failure of man, but the result of his success. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” Once those challenges were conquered, there was no need for the sort of men who rush to the sound of danger. Over time those types faded away and were replaced with the type who easily lived a carefree life as food.

We are learning a similar lesson. Like all living things, humans are wired to do what is necessary to reach sexual maturity. What has always made man unique is the desire to live beyond that point. To look into the heavens for purpose and then manifest that purpose on earth for the benefit and admiration of our people. The dream may be small or grandiose, but it is the dream that gives meaning to life. We are not meant to live in adult daycare centers, marking our days consuming the latest products.

Perhaps the tech overlords will make the virtual quest for meaning good enough to keep the species going for a while longer. We will plug into the machine and have our dreams made true by an algorithm. Maybe we simply make ourselves insane in the increasingly chaotic quest for meaning. Whatever happens, there is a good chance that people look back at this age and know that we were spoiled for choice in the material realm but starved for choice in the spiritual realm.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Christian Zionism

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If you were to compile a list of the most influential people in history, you would probably start with the most influential ideas. The people responsible for inventing those ideas or popularizing them would be on the list of influential people. Presumably, without those people, the ideas would not have had the same level of impact. Marx would be on the list because he came up with Marxism. Without Marx, it is hard to imagine that branch of socialism developing as it has over 150 years.

Christian Zionism is an idea that does not get much attention, despite the fact it has cast a long shadow over Western history. It is fair to say that Zionism would not exist if not for the Christian Zionists. As much as people like to talk about the influence of Jews and Judaism on the West, it was Christians and a peculiar strain of Christianity that made Zionism possible. In fact, the modern state of Israel probably owes its existence to the hard work of Christian Zionist.

Christian Zionism has its roots in the Protestant Reformation. The revolts against the Church gave rise to a wholesale reassessment of Christian dogma. The distribution of the Bible in vernacular languages allowed radical Protestants to interpret the scriptures in ways contrary medieval Catholic tradition. Christian Zionism can be viewed as the result of the democratization of Christianity. When every man could read the Bible, ever man’s interpretation of Scripture was suddenly equal.

Restorationism was the Protestant idea that the Jews would eventually return to Israel as part of the flow of history. Here you see the early roots of this idea that history flows in one direction toward a predictable end. With regards to the Jews, their return to Israel was part of the end times. It did not take long before this evolved into a belief that helping the Jews return was an essential part of Christianity. Restoring Israel was the next logical step for this branch of Christianity.

Picking the first Christian Zionist or even the most influential one is difficult as the 19th century had many philosemitic Protestants. Of course, all of them were relying on Puritan interpretation of Scripture, so you can probably credit Oliver Cromwell with making it possible for Christian Zionism to flourish. The British empire then spread the idea around the world. Wherever English speaking people exist in large numbers, you have fanatical support for Israel to this day.

The guy who should probably get credit for the invention of Zionism is an Anglican clergyman named William Hechler. He was a rabid crusader against antisemitism and the sponsor of Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism. He called for the Jews to return to Palestine as a pre-condition for the return of Jesus, which made the unconditional support of Jews and Israel a core Christian belief. Overtime this has evolved into unquestioned devotion to Israel.

Theodor Herzl could also get credit for Christian Zionism. After all, it takes two to make a relationship and Herzl was the first Jewish Zionist. If not for large swaths of the Jewish diaspora embracing the ideas of the Christian Zionist, it is hard to imagine the movement lasting into the 20th century. Even today, secular Jews despise Evangelical Christians, in part, because of their support for Zionism. There are other reasons, but the unbridled support of Israel and the restoration is one element.

Even so, the creation of the Jewish state in the middle of the last century was the product of Christian Zionism. Its existence has nurtured and supported Christian Zionism, especially in America. In fact, much of the spiritual fervor that would flow into Christian identity politics is channeled into Zionism. In the cultural climate of the West, this is one of the few safe ways for white people to cheer for their own side. You can probably argue that Zionism relies on a form of white identity politics.

Christian Zionism and Zionism would not exist without the strange form of empire first invented by the British then perfected by Americans. The British were the first ocean empire. The Greeks dominated the Mediterranean, of course, but that is not the same as dominating oceans. At the minimum, the British Empire was the first modern ocean empire. Today, America controls the world because she controls the seas, which means she controls the flow of goods globally.

It is hard to argue against Zionism as the most influential idea of the 20th century and now the 21st century. The creation of Israel by the British in 1948 has focused the attention of the West on the Middle East ever since. The long Cold War was entangled with Zionism which gave birth to neoconservatism. The last thirty years has kept the American empire obsessed with the fate of Israel. It is not unreasonable to say that American foreign policy is controlled by the Israelis.

Step back and you can argue that Christian Zionism is the result of two main forces unleashed in the West. One is the democratization of Christianity. It is impossible to imagine Zionism flourishing within the Catholic Church. The other is egalitarianism, the very Protestant idea of equality. Without hierarchy, theology was turned over to the entrepreneur, always looking for a novel way to sell Scripture. That is how you get ideas like Restorationism or Mormonism.

Returning to where we started, if one was looking to compile a list of great historical figures, you would have to include William Hechler on that list. Even though his name is unfamiliar to the modern ear, his influence is immense. If not for his tireless promotion of Theodor Herzl, it is possible that Zionism was never born. Imagine what the world would be like if Israel remained a concept, rather than a physical reality. The last century would not be possible.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Lawless

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There are two ways to look at the rules. There is the spirit of the rules, the intentions of the rule makers, what they were trying to achieve. Then there is a narrow interpretation of the rules as written without any thought as to what it was the ruler makers were trying to create. The former option assumes the ability to discern the intent of the rule makers from resources often unrelated to the rules. The latter assumes the ruler makers were without error when they created the rules.

This should be how legal disputes are framed. One side argues intent, and the other side argues the letter. The reason is both sides acknowledge the primacy of the law, but disagree as the its meaning. Their dispute can and often does result in a compromise where the letter of the law side agrees to a change in the wording in order to clarify the meaning, such that both sides can agree on the implementation. The dispute is a form of improvement on the law and its consequences.

That should be the nature of the law in a civil modern society. Instead, the law in modern America is a battle where one side conjures imaginary constructs in which the rule makers could have created law and the other side rigidly defends the last set of imaginary constructs that were miraculously embedded into the law. One side argues for a living constitution, an imaginary framework that is always spawning new legal models, while the federalist side defends the law as written.

An example of the imaginary construct is this ruling by the Ninth Circuit which ruled 7-4 against George Young, a man who was twice denied an open carry permit. The court found that Hawaiian law predates and supersedes the Second Amendment. “Hawai‘i law began limiting public carriage of dangerous weapons, including firearms, more than 150 years ago — nearly fifty years before it became a U.S. territory and more than a century before it became a state”.

In the opinion, they rely upon a philosophical claim that the present is the result of the long march of history. The pro-gun side only goes back to the 18th century and the writing of the constitution. This new theory goes back to medieval English law to argue that the default position has always been a strict regulation of weapons. They also acknowledge that they could go back even further, presumably to dawn of writing, to prove that history moves toward an unarmed society.

To the untrained mind, this sounds like a weird new form of animism, in which the intent of history is discerned by a specialized examination of the historical record. In this view, the law itself becomes meaningless. What matters is the esoteric debates among a specialized class of clerics. They compete with one another to conjure novel theories of history to determine public policy. The assumption is always that some animating force lies behind the movement of history.

More important, the people writing the law cease to matter. In the case of the Second Amendment, we know the intent of those who wrote it. Despite the crackpot claims about it applying only to militias, we know what the Founders meant. They wanted a society comprised on armed men willing to defend society from tyrants. Jefferson imagined a society that had regular rebellions in which tyrants were hanged as a way to keep the tree of liberty properly manured.

The intent in this mystical legal theory does not matter, as the people writing the laws are just flotsam on the tides of history. The Founders may have thought they were on the right side of history, but history clearly shows they were not, so history demands their intent be ignored. They fought the tides of history, with their crazy ideas about liberty, but they and their creations must be swept aside as the mighty river of humanity flows towards its inevitable destination.

Another example of this mystical view of history is the claim that the Second Amendment is the result of racism. You see, the concept of racism may not have existed in the 18th century, but it is a thread running through history. It is the invisible hand that guides the white race. Because everything white people have done can be motivated by this dark spirit force of racism, nothing white people have created can have authority, including their intent when writing laws.

In practice, this shamanistic legal theory is the overturning of law itself. If the letter and spirit of the law are products of history and history can only be understood by the shamans of the faith, then there is no law. The Soviet Union had a constitution that looks like something the modern democrats demand. In reality, everything in that document was interpreted by party theorists. The text was meaningless and so was the political theory behind it, because they existed to serve party goals.

Ironically, history tells us where this must end. The clever use of language by people bred to argue esoteric points of moral philosophy does not alter reality. The law in America is now a tyranny of the invisible hand of history, as interpreted by a shadowy class of clerics that never step into direct sunlight. The law is a conspiracy against the people, as corrupt as every other Western institution. Like politics or economics, the law is a tool. The hand that wields that tool is what matters.

At some point, the hand behind the present madness will become clear.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Burying The Truth

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Note: The weekly post is up at Taki. This week is a cranky rant about wanting to be left alone in a world full of busybodies. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, along with some other things.

Inside the microwave oven there is a microwave generator, which takes electricity and converts it into high-powered radio waves. The magnetron blasts these waves into the food compartment. The microwaves bounce back and forth off the reflective metal walls of the box, just like light bounces off a mirror. As these waves travel through the food item, they make the molecules inside it vibrate more quickly, which generates heat and that is what causes the food to get hot.

It is not only a brilliant way to quickly heat food in the home, but it is also a good way to think about what is happening inside modern America. Instead of a magnetron generating microwaves, we have the mass media which generates lies, fabrications, and propaganda. These waves of false information bounce around within society causing people to act. Since these waves of data are at odds with reality, this causes friction within society and the people inside get increasingly agitated.

As an example, consider this story in the sporting press about mascots. The claim is that a survey was conducted and the Notre Dame mascot, an exaggerated leprechaun, is the fourth most offensive mascot in college sports. The top three most offensive mascots were from Florida State, San Diego State and Hawaii. According to the story, these mascots are offensive to Native Americans. The survey was conducted by a company calling itself Quality Logo Products.

For starters, the whole thing is based on the lie that it is possible to be offended by a team mascot. This is a lie created in the last half century. For ten thousand years of human history, no one thought to be offended by such things. In fact, no one looked for a reason to be offended. Personal offense required intent. The person causing the offense was either trying to insult someone or was reckless in their opinions so as to cause an offense to social norms.

Putting that aside, what are the odds that this company, which sells marketing materials, actually conducted such a survey? What are the odds that anyone knows the name of the San Diego State mascot? Most American sports fans would know the Notre Dame mascot, as their football team is nationally famous. Few people probably know there is a college called San Diego State. The same can be said of Hawaii. In other words, the survey is completely fake.

The way these things work is the company probably thought this was a good way to get attention for their services. If you beam some lies into the college sports oven, you will get some of the fans agitated. In this case, the mass media is the mirror reflecting this stream of nonsense back to the intended target. Other media picked up the original “story” and beamed that back onto the target. In this way, a deliberate lie is turned into another social irritant, agitating the public.

Joseph de Maistre said, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” This is the modern age, accept that most opinion is false, and it is produced on an industrial scale. The people are assaulted by a constant stream of lies and falsehoods that comes from all directions. Even the escapism of sports entertainment is weaponized against them.

Some people sense that they are in a sea of contemptuous disregard for truth and unplug as best they can from the system. They don’t consume television and avoid what passes for mass culture. The person who does this chooses to live outside of society, however, so it brings its own challenges. Still, everyone has experienced the peace of going on holiday and unplugging from the system. It is like being unchained from a lunatic for a few days.

Another aspect of this is that the modern age selects for the sort of person who enjoys trafficking in lies and the madness it creates. This is a feature of political systems that claim to express the general will of the people. Communist societies bombard the people with propaganda to break their spirit. By forcing the people to nod along with the lies, they force the people to be party to the lie. As Theodore Dalrymple once said, “A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

In liberal democratic societies, this is not a part of the design, but a byproduct of the conflict central to democracy. That conflict is the assertion that all opinion is equal and must have equal weight. Equality is itself a nonsensical term as no two things on this plane of existence are truly equal. When it comes to humans, it is like comparing snowflakes, as everyone is slightly different. In order to maintain the fiction of equality, liberal democracy must paper over reality with lies.

What starts as a polite fiction soon becomes an obsession for the true believer, who becomes obsessed with covering the truth of nature. This creates the demand for people who enjoy lying. At first, the best liars rise in status, as they serve the interests of the system and the people atop it. This inverts the natural moral code of the people, rewarding the falsehood at the expense of daily reality. Quickly, democracy turns into a madhouse of lies and heated reaction to those lies.

Equality is the great crime against civilization. The evidence of this crime is reality, which like the corpse from a homicide, is impossible to hide forever. No matter how hard the perpetrators try to weigh it down with lies, it keeps turning up. This fact drives the egalitarian mad as he becomes obsessed with hiding this truth. His madness becomes the madness of the people over whom he rules, but the reality of the human condition will not stay hidden. It is an immutable truth of life.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Death Of Citizenism

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Note On Comments: Many have complained about the number of comments that end up in moderation. There is not much I can do about it, but one way to avoid this trap is to avoid certain language like profanity. The spam filter gets triggered by the colorful use of euphemisms. Links to images and movies is another trigger. They tend to go right to the trash bin without hitting moderation.

For at least two decades there has been a debate on the Right, broadly defined, about how to define America and the citizen. On one side are the intellectual descendants of Harry Jaffa, who argued America is just an idea, so a citizen is someone who agrees with that idea. On the other side are the people who take the view of the Founders who held the traditional view of nationhood. America is the product of a people who secured the blessings of liberty for themselves and their posterity.

A middle ground was staked out twenty years ago by Steve Sailer. He came up with an idea he called “citizenism” which says “Americans should be biased in favor of the welfare of our current fellow citizens over that of the six billion foreigners.” Therefore, “our leaders have a duty to current citizens and their descendants over the interests of prospective citizens and their descendants”. This is a definition that allows for the appreciation of racial differences between the current citizens.

Sailer’s definition is reactive, more than objective. He was trying at the time to put space between himself and other race realists. He wanted to talk honestly and openly about racial differences without being lumped in with people like Jared Taylor, who he considered to be a white nationalist. Sailer and Jared Taylor had an exchange back in 2005 on this topic as well as Taylor’s book The Color of Crime. Here are some bits of this debate here, here and here.

Fifteen years on, we can look at the three sides of this dispute with the benefit of hindsight and see who was closer to the truth. The “nation of ideas” side is looking rather shabby, as the West lurches into despotism in an effort to keep the wildly diverse population from destroying itself. The suspension of civil liberties, constant surveillance and state sanctioned domestic terrorism suggest that the idea at the heart of this new definition of the nation is authoritarianism.

Further, the “nation of ideas” concept was always a Marxist notion. Instead of society being the product of economic relations, the nation of ideas people define society as cultural relations. This is right out of the cultural Marxist handbook. The main difference is the Left thinks that culture is the product of institutions while the Right thinks it is the product of magic. While both sides are wrong about the source of culture, the Left was smart enough to seize the institutions.

The traditionalists who claim a nation is the product of a people, held together by a shared history and kinship have not been proven correct, but their claims against a nation of ideas is supported by present reality. Time will tell if the West devolves into tribal camps that judge their relations with other groups purely through the lens of tribal self-interest, but that is the current direction. At the minimum, the Jared Taylor camp was right about identity politics and what is means for white people.

As far as citizenism, it may be the biggest loser. In his exchange with Jared Taylor, Steve Sailer wrote, “And yet, this manner of thinking, this dismissal of objective reality in favor of assessing whose side the speaker is on, is probably as popular today in America as it was in Berlin and Moscow in Orwell’s day.” Sailer was comparing Orwell’s description of Nazism with Taylor’s brand of white nationalism. In other words, these views contrast with objective reality.

It is turns out that the citizenism can only work if everyone involved steadfastly and fanatically rejects objective reality. For example, they must refuse to consider that what leaders will do is not always in line with what you think they ought to do. Further, the “best interests of the current citizens” is a normative statement, whose definition is based on the perspective of the speaker. The universalist concept of best interest at the heart of citizenism is as real as the unicorn.

To some degree, this form of bourgeoise objectivism has always functioned as a form of escapism where the objectivist gets to be both right and taboo. In this case, he gets to speak candidly about the human condition from the perspective of biology but avoid being sanctioned by the people who must deny this reality. In other words, it assumes there is an exception to morality, where you can avoid official sanction over impure thoughts if you can prove those thoughts to be correct.

This is a world that denies the reality of the prevailing orthodoxy, thus denying objective reality with regards to human relations. Every society has its moral framework that is rooted in its sense of identity. This is largely controlled by the ruling class, which is a feature of every society, regardless of politics. The morality of the people in charge of the West requires us to deny biology and they make no exceptions. That is a reality one must accept before engaging in any analysis of politics.

In the end, Steve Sailer’s approach was rooted in a misunderstanding of what lies behind things like open borders. It was not a desire for mundane things like a desire to save the world or a demand for cheap labor. At the heart of the neoliberal project is the assertion that humans are infinitely adaptable to their culture. This is the unequivocal denial of biological reality. This is why citizenism was doomed from the start. It offered a compromise that could never be tolerated, much less accepted.

In the end, the nation of ideas side was probably more realistic than their critics on the biological reality side. They accepted the premise of cultural Marxism, which is that control of the institutions is what matters in current politics. They simply lacked the intelligence and courage to put their ideas into practice. As a result, the West is headed into the darkness of radicalism. If the West is to survive, Western man must accept biological reality and the reality of those who oppose him.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

You Own You

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One of the few things that libertarians get right is that the foundation of Western civilization is private property. They claim this is a universal reality, which is clearly incorrect, but it is true with regards to Western civilization. The assumption that a man owns the produce of his labor is the main difference between Europeans and the other people of the world. It forms the foundation of law and the logic of political organization, in addition to being the bedrock of Western economic systems.

What libertarians get wrong is that you can create a society where government only protects private property and does nothing else. As with so many things, they get the causal relationship backwards. Like everything else about human society, the concept of private property is downstream from biology and culture. Therefore, the primary reason to have a state is to defend the people and their way of life. Private property is one attribute of Western people’s way of life.

Putting that aside, the ape historians in the glorious future will no doubt trace the decline of Western man to the decline in private property. It will not begin with socialism or other economic concepts. Those are far downstream from what really matters to a people and their way of life. The Nordic people made socialism work while at the same time maintaining the concept of private property. They simply struck a different balance between property and culture than other occidentals

The erosion of this key facet of the West starts further up the chain of causality at the cultural level. This is where the abstract concept of property exists, the platonic form of private property. This is where the wreckers and subversive have gnawed away at the concept in little ways, thus making it less clear downstream. As a result, the idea of private property has slowly receded from the public discourse with regards to politics and economics, even within socialist debates.

Take, for example, the internet. It exists because thousands of people working in government institutions invented a way to link computers into a network. This is why the internet is a public good. It is the creation of public institutions, in the same way the highway system is a public good. The internet was further built out by private companies seeking to profit from the exchange of information, much in the same way merchants use the highway system to profit from commerce.

This is true with regards to e-commerce. Jeff Bezos is able to hurl himself to the edge of the atmosphere in a giant phallus, because he got rich selling stuff on-line. Like all large corporations, he also bought indulgences from the government, in order to gain an advantage over rivals. First it was not paying sales tax and then he moved onto direct subsidies from state and local government for his supply chain. Like other big retailers. Amazon would not exist without government subsidy.

Amazon, however, is the exception. The rest of the tech oligarchs made their money stealing the property of others. Facebook, for example, sells the property of its users to companies looking for data on the population. They call this marketing revenue, but in reality, it is just theft. They steal the labor of their users and then sell it to interested parties without the knowledge of their users. It is a form of slavery in which the user base volunteers to give away their labor to the platform owner.

Many will push back against this characterization. After all, they will say, the service is free, and the real product Facebook is selling is their own creation. They use their technology to capture human activity. Then they make it accessible in a friendly format for their actual customers, the people paying them. The users, because they are choosing to use the platform, are choosing to abide by an agreement they never read and therefore agree to allow Facebook to steal their property.

That right there is how the concept of private property is eroded at the abstract layer of Western civilization. Most people, even classical liberal types, think what the tech companies are doing is legitimate commerce. They have accepted this degraded version of property that carves out an exception to the laws covering property to allow for what amounts to theft. If Claude-Frédéric Bastiat was sent through the time portal to this age, he would call the internet “legal plunder.”

That is what we are seeing, legal plunder. Property is the product of human labor, both physical labor and mental labor. The business owner, the man who organizes men and material to produce goods and services, sees the return on his intellectual labor in the form of profit. It is his ideas and organizational talent that makes the enterprise possible and maintains its operations. The Marxists always attacked this idea but could never get around the reality of intellectual property being the fruit of labor.

Instead, the way around this problem is to attack the concept that you own you and therefore you own your labor. If Facebook can watch you on-line, track your activity through your mobile device, then sell this activity to their customers, it means one of two things. Either you no longer own you or we no longer have private property. After all, your activity is the product of your labor, so if you own you, then you own your activity and Facebook is stealing. Otherwise, you no longer own you.

If we return to the original Western concept of property, then you not only own your activity but also your reputation and your defining attributes. If a company wishes to use these things in a product, then they would need to strike a deal with you in the same way they would if they wanted your physical labor. If Facebook wanted to sell your data, they would need to get your permission every time they sold your data. The mobile devise makers would have to pay you to use their phones.

Of course, this is not present reality. The assumption is that you do not, in fact, own you, so all of this is perfectly normal. The reason enterprising lawyers have not proposed a novel legal theory to the court based on the ancient concepts of private property is that no one questions the right of the tech companies to harvest your property. The state is acting on this new normal as well. New laws, for example, have been passed to require alcohol tracking devices in new cars.

A world in which you do not own you is called a penitentiary. The phrase “lock down” was quickly normalized, despite being a prison term, because the population has been habituated to the idea that they do not own themselves. Of course, the state can lock you in your home. After all, they can determine your associations and they allow private enterprise to spy on you in your home. You don’t own you. Like a pet, you are the property of powerful interests, and you must do as you are trained.

The point of the state is to preserve the people and their way of life. This is its primary reason to exist. The secondary and tertiary reasons, like crime control and tending to the poor are all dependent on the people and their way of life. The defense of property is one of those attributes of culture the state must defend. The failure of the elites to defend the people and their way of life starts with this Western notion that you own you and all that you produce. That failure is the death of the West.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Real Pandemic

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It is very difficult to assess what is happening in a revolutionary moment, because things seem to change so quickly. Looking back, the French Revolution is easier to understand, because we know how it ended. We can look at the events in the context of Napoleon or the Terror. The same is true of the Bolshevik Revolution, that came to a similar end. In fact, putting the two together makes it possible to understand things about both that the people at the time could never know.

This is a useful thing to keep in mind in this age, as the radicals push the revolution forward, for reasons they don’t comprehend. Legacy conservatives will keep trying to jam these events into the obsolete world view, blaming things on the lust for power or a desire to take your money. Others will blame it on nefarious actors like George Soros, because that is the easy thing to do. Blaming a a single bad actor or groups of actors makes things simple for the simple-minded.

In reality, in revolutionary times, men are like people swept up in a great flood, carried along by the forces of nature. They look for things to hang onto in order to escape being swept away, like their own ideological mindset. The revolutionaries are no different in this regard but they convince themselves they are the ones driving the river, when all they have done is unleash the floodgates. They are as much a victim of their own zealous lunacy as the people they oppose.

An example is this story about the city of Charlotte. The city is passing a nondiscrimination ordinance that will protect “gender identity, gender expression, sexual orientation and natural hairstyles.” Since all of those things are meaningless word salad, they have, in effect, banned everything and nothing. The term “natural hairstyles” is a cult-Marx term for black women with afros, but otherwise the rest of it just means whatever the mentally ill can conjure next.

The people behind this stuff know that these words and therefore the law is nonsense, but they also know that is the point. They have been trained up in the latest cult-Marx dogma which says they must subvert expectations and undermine the prevailing cultural orthodoxies. They may or may now know what any of that means, but they know enough to know chaos is the order of the day. These terms are all moral signifiers, justifying an all-out assault on cultural norms.

Again, the usual suspects will try to assign specific rational explanations for why they are trying to sow chaos, but that sort of reductionism misses the point. The chaos is the point of all this, as the goal is to smash the cultural orthodoxy. Essential to Nth wave Marxism is the belief that culture is what prevents the natural rise of socialism, so if you destroy the culture, a new socialist order will arise. More important, a new socialist man will rise from the wreckage of white supremacist society.

Like original Marxism, this is nonsense. It is worse than nonsense, in that it is an esoteric religion that flatters the believer by replacing their reality with the promise of special insight. Once you come to believe that wrecking the present order will usher in the great revolution of mankind, you are now in a special club of people who have found the answer to the great question. The irrationality of it is the draw. It appeals to that natural need to believe that is a key trait of man.

What we are living through is a revolution pushed along by people who are sure they are creating conditions for the great liberation. The details of that great liberation and how it will come into existence are just assumed. This was always the appeal of the original Marxism. It provided a childish vison of a glorious future, onto which the believer could project his fantasy vision of the future. Then it supplied a story of history that claimed the glorious future was an historical inevitability.

This the core of Cultural Marxism. Because of the demographic changes in the West, it has been repackaged along racial lines. Instead of destroying bourgeoise culture they are set on destroying white culture. This has obvious appeal to people who came to the West for the free stuff but find that the cost of that free stuff is the abandonment of their old ways. For blacks, of course, it means they get to taste the vengeance that has been promised to them since the last century.

In the lab, this stuff sounds appealing, but when you go around smashing the culture, there is no guarantee what will happen next. The culture tends to restrain the worst passions of the people who produced it. Once those restraints are gone, those passions are released to mix with the passion of the zealots who did the smashing. Imagine an Antifa rally without police protection. All of a sudden, the people who defunded the police discover a truth hidden in their revolutionary furor.

This is why making sense of the revolution is only worthwhile as a way to get a glimpse of what comes next. History shows that the people driving these events are like the coronavirus of the present moment. All efforts to mitigate it result in a mutation that gets around the mitigation. All you can do is prepare for what comes after it has done its worst to the host population. Then maybe you can have a chance to rebuild with an eye on preventing any future outbreaks of this pestilence.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Blood Feud

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A blood feud or blood rivalry is a long conflict between two closely situated groups of people, usually involving retaliatory killing. There is some event, real or imagined, then members of one group attack or kill members of the other group in retaliation for harms they suffered in that initial event. This leads to retaliation from the second group and we have a spiral of tit-for-tat. Until fairly recent in human history, the blood feud was quite common and often formalized in ritual and custom.

When people were more tribal, the blood feud worked to keep the peace. This seems counterintuitive, but the practice allowed for agreed upon compensation to the victim in the form of blood or money. The Wergild, in Germanic law, was the compensation paid by a person committing an offense to the injured party. If the victim was killed, then it was the value of his life. In other cultures, the concept of “blood money” was not uncommon, as a way to adjudicate disputes between clans.

This is something to keep in mind when looking at stories like this one. We have a 100-year-old man being charged with crimes that may or may not have happened at a place he worked over seventy years ago. He may have worked at the Sachsenhausen camp in the Second World War. According to the article, it is not all that clear what happened at that facility. His role in the running in the camp is also unclear. Yet, he is being ceremoniously charged with crimes at the age of 100.

This is not a new story. He is being charged because of the long running blood feud between Jews and Europeans over the events of the war. Jews believe they are victims that can never be compensated for the crimes against them perpetrated by the Europeans in the last century. It is not just Germans. They have claims against other European groups, even Americans, who saved them. The blood feud demands blood, even if it is the blood of an old man not long for this world.

These sort of witch hunts are uncivilized and antithetical to the traditions of the modern world, but they persist because Jews have tremendous amount of influence. Much of that influence, it is believed, rests on their victim status. That last part is mostly nonsense, but many people believe it. Anti-Semites think this is the magic key to Jewish influence, so they occupy most of their time trying to prove the Holocaust is fiction created out of whole cloth. Thus is the nature of blood feuds.

To be clear, no reasonable person can claim that Jews were not singled out by the Nazis for special treatment. The record is clear on that point. The Nazis also targeted other groups, like Gypsies and Slavs. There is no question that monstrous things happened in the war at the hands of the Germans and their allies. Much of it was the inevitable consequence of war, which is always a monstrous thing. When war is waged on the industrial scale, the results are horrific.

That should be the lesson of the two great industrial wars. The Great War was a blood feud scaled up and decorated with lofty rhetoric. At anytime, the sides could have accepted the futility of their blood feud and crafted a blood peace. Instead, they fought themselves to exhaustion. The Second World War and the horrors that flowed from it were the result of having learned nothing from the last war. Instead, the blood feud between the people of Europe continued and spread to the world.

The reason European societies evolved ways to mitigate the local blood feud or eliminate it entirely is they tended to spiral into mutual destruction. A blood peace was often stronger than one agreed upon out of convenience, for the simple reason both sides suffered real harm to achieve it. Two tribes that lost members over a feud that was eventually settled to the satisfaction of both, had a shared bond that transcended material concerns or present convenience.

Of course, individualizing crime and disputes was the way we eventually eliminated the blood feud entirely. Holding the individual accountable for his crimes and his crimes alone, regardless of the relationship between his group and that of the victim, settled the matter before it could spiral into a feud. When the Lord hangs the murderer, rather than forcing his people to pay the clan of the victim, it changes the relationship between man and tribe, as well the relationship between tribes.

In a way, the criminal code was a preemptive act. When the sovereign steps in to punish the guilty, he is short circuiting the natural tribal reaction. If the law is clear and the sovereign is even handed in his application of it, then the people not only accept his remedies but will seek his remedy before seeking their own justice. This is how the law is supposed to work in what we think of as civil society. At the heart of it is a sense of justice motivated by a desire to keep the peace.

What we see with the hunt for centenarians whose primary crime is of blood is a perversion of this principle. The reason to arrest this old man for crimes that may or may not have happened is to perpetuate a blood feud. There is no justice to be had in these cases, as the events happened so long ago. It is not as if there is a need for an example to discourage others. This is just a tribal cry for vengeance echoing through the corrupted halls of western justice.

Not to put too fine a point on it but look at the other example in the story. “A 96-year-old woman has also been accused of working as a Nazi, as a secretary to the commandant of the Stutthof concentration camp in Poland.” They are going to put on a trial a woman whose crime was having worked for the Nazis. In this case, the tribe crying out for blood is the Poles, who suffered more from the Nazis than any other group. Even so, much blood was spilled to reach a peace, the Poles should accept it.

In the end, this is the test of civilization. Civilized people understand that you must close the books on the past, in order to avoid reliving them. The present is always a story of the past, but it cannot be a nightmare from which we never awake. Disputes are settled and they become a part of the story of a people and that people’s relationship to other people, as part of the blood peace. When one or both sides cannot accept that blood peace, accept the blood of the other as a sacrifice, the result is more blood.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

The Final Boss

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One of the underappreciated qualities of liberal democracy is its ability to grow and develop its own opposition. In the Cold War this was not obvious as communism in the form of the Soviet Empire filled the role. Domestically, the inner party had the outer party as a fixed partner. Democrats controlled domestic policy, with some mild opposition from the Republicans. On the other hand, the Republicans controlled foreign policy with some mild dissent from the Democrats.

This partnership collapsed when the Soviet Union collapsed. A year after the voters overwhelmingly approved the appointment of former C.I.A. man George H. W. Bush as the successor to Ronald Reagan, the logic of having spooks run the country no longer made much sense. The system quickly pivoted to Saddam Hussein as a temporary fill in for the evil empire, but he was a poor replacement. In the next election the Cold War generation was replaced with the Woodstock generation.

The Clinton years were really just an interregnum. The system needed to learn how to create new enemies. We got the beginnings of the great Islamic enemy and an effort to recreate the holocaust in the Balkans. It was not until the son of the former C.I.A. man that we got the threat of international Islam as the new enemy. Fear of men on flying carpets carried the system into the Obama years. Toward the end of his second term, the search for a new enemy had started.

In this respect, the Trump election can be seen as a natural development. The system needed a bogey man and Trump was prepared to play the role. His appeal to the masses of Dirt People properly frightened the Cloud People and his reckless use of language made him easy to isolate and demonize. The new enemy of the regime would be white supremacist insurrectionists. That is the reason the regime compares January 6th to September 11th. It is their new origin story.

That is one way to look at what has been happening over the last 30 years. It is the quest for authenticity. This vast sprawling managerial state needs a reason to exist, so these manufactured crises provide it. Through the Cold War, the Berlin Wall was both a physical and temporal starting point for the regime. It is why presidents would go to the Brandenburg Gate and give speeches. The great twilight struggle against communism was the reason the regime existed and why it persisted.

The crusade against the Mohammedans was the first full attempt to recreate that old magic and provide the regime with legitimacy and authority. It is why 9/11 became a solemn holiday celebrated by both sides of the regime. Even though the left-liberals opposed the right-liberals in the prosecution of the crusade, they completely accepted the origin of it and the centrality of it. Note that the last anniversary of 9/11 came and went without much ceremony. It no longer matters.

On the other hand, we will now have two new holidays for this new crusade being used to authenticate the regime. Juneteenth will now be the new Independence Day and January 6th will be the Passover. The former is in commemoration of when the good news reached the last of the magic people. The latter is when the tides of history protected the faithful from the raging mobs of systemic racism. Perhaps this will be published as the Gospel of Saint Jaffa, a new holy book.

This new enemy the system has created for itself is more natural and compelling for the regime, so it will be more durable that the crusade against Islam. That drama raised questions about certain subjects that no one is allowed to discuss. It also had religious overtones, which invited in Christians. The only thing that makes the regime more uncomfortable than Christians openly talking about their religion is a collection of white guys noticing they are the only ones without an identity group.

The other compelling aspect of the new war on white people is that it has a historical and anthropological appeal to the regime. One side has been defined by its opposition to bad whites since Charles I. The other side has been similarly defined since Emperor Titus sacked Jerusalem. The new enemy of the regime both inspires and unites the regime in a new end times struggle to make manifest the words of the Declaration of Independence and the Gettysburg Address.

What this suggests, of course, is that this jihad against white people we see raging everywhere is not going to go away quickly. All events will be warped to fit into the new world view of the struggle. Foreign adversaries will be cast as agents of white supremacy or enablers of white insurrectionists. Regime members who need to be purged will be painted as collaborators at their show trials. January 6th will be their Yom Kippur and every June 16th their Purim.

Whether or not this can work is a question no one dares ask. History has not been kind to regimes that are defined by their war with their own people. A multiracial regime at war with half the people on racial grounds is inherently unstable, as it creates both the means and the motivation to destroy the regime. If one half of the country is defined by its opposition to the regime and the other half is too dysfunctional and inept to defend the regime, the outcome is not hard to imagine.

History gives us a story arch for various forms of social organization. The old palace systems of the Bronze Age do not scale up. Empires all succumbed to internal contradictions and imbalance. Aristocratic systems eventually run out of able elites to maintain the system. Communism finally runs out of seed corn. It could be that the final phase of liberal democracy is a final war against itself. Born in sin and animated by a search for salvation, it sacrifices itself as its final act.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Historical Fiction

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“The future is certain; it is only the past that is unpredictable” is an old Soviet era joke about the party’s habit of rewriting history to serve the current moment. Like so many things Soviet, it applies well to the current American regime. Not only do they rewrite the past, but they also magnify events from the past to make them seem like they just happened yesterday. They diminish more recent events so they seem distant. The old communists were amateurs compared to liberal democrats.

The rewriting of history is best done by people who have a certain historical outlook and a facility for language. It is a unique sort of sociopathy that allows them to create highly complex models of the past that are decorated with well-established facts, but are otherwise filled with distortions and outright fabrications. Erasing a man from a picture and banning any mention of him still leaves a hole. Rewriting the man’s history, weaving it into the story of the opponents solves two problems.

You can see how this works in this hysterical screed from the left-wing propaganda site the Bulwark. At this point it is inaccurate and dishonest to put the neoconservatives on the political Right. They agree with the establishment Left on everything except some foreign policy items. They actively make war on the establishment Right. Of course, they are even more hostile to dissidents, nationalists, and populist than the most deranged lefty. Neoconservatives have returned home.

Putting that aside, note the natural way in which the writer builds an intellectual framework that fits the needs of the moment. Within in that framework are all of the usual bogeymen that haunt the minds of these people. We have various internet characters who have tormented them. There is the Russian conspiracy hoax and the foaming at the mouth Trump hatred. Of course, Evangelicals are in there. The only thing missing from the list of bad actors is Tsar Alexander III.

All of this is designed to dirty up the Claremont Institute, which is the only establishment Right operation to take seriously the crisis of the present. They operate American Greatness and the site American Mind. Of course, they have been willing to look at Trump and the movement that carried him to office in a serious way. Michael Anton was one of the first establishment figures to make the case for Trump in 2016. This is why the fevered minds of neoconservatism despise them.

The psychopathic hyperventilating is amusing at a certain level, but it obscures the really important nugget at the start of the screed. “The Claremont Institute was founded in 1979 by Peter W. Schramm, Thomas B. Silver, Christopher Flannery, and Larry P. Arnn, all students of Lincoln scholar Harry V. Jaffa.” Then just a bit later, “Jaffa’s work on Abraham Lincoln was groundbreaking, and can be credited for recovering a sense of Lincoln’s intellectual seriousness.”

It is easy to skip over that as the cult of Lincoln has become a fixture in both the establishment Left and the establishment Right. Both left-liberals and right-liberals claim Lincoln as their own. National Review trots out Lincoln every time the left-liberals are banging them over the head about race. You see, Lincoln was a Republican, so it means it was right-liberals who saved America from slavery! They do the same ridiculous thing with MLK, even though he was a Marxist.

Forgotten is how this cult of Lincoln was created and who created it. That person is Harry Jaffa, who should go down as history’s greatest fabulist. He is responsible for what is known as the second founding thesis. You see, the real founding the country was not with the Constitution. That is just words on paper to solve practical issues facing the newly independent colonies. The real founding of the country, the moral and spiritual founding, was with the Declaration of Independence.

According to Jaffa, “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” is the primal roar of the new people, a new concept of a people. The Founders wanted America to be a land of universal equality. That was the ideal they setup for themselves. The Constitution fell short of that because of the needs of the moment.

The Civil War, however, was not a continuation of a cultural dispute dating back to the English Civil War or even a war over slavery. It was the second founding. The old errors and sins of the first founding were washed away with the blood of millions so America could continue toward that original ideal. Slavery was abolished and the Constitution was modified. Those modifications have been used ever since to alter the country in pursuit of the founding ideal contained in the Declaration.

This is also where we get the proposition nation stuff. “Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.” You see, that original rhetorical flourish was actually a call to create an entirely new type of nation, a proposition nation based on ideas, rather than people. It is not hard to see the mischief that has come from the embrace of this rewriting of history.

In a slightly different context, John Derbyshire noted that some people have an unnatural skill at creating “elaborate, plausible, and intellectually very challenging systems that do not, in fact, have any truth content”. Harry Jaffa and his followers were such men. For that matter, Strauss falls into this camp as well, but that is a topic for another day. Because the second founding idea provided the right-liberals with a fig leaf over the race issue, it has become their creed.

That does not change the fact that this is nonsense, but like Stalin rewriting history, it is powerful nonsense. In fact, the current antiwhite pogroms aimed at extirpating all signs of whiteness are rooted in this. The advocates justify their cultural genocide on the grounds that it is part of this process to reconcile America with its long failure to live up the original idea. Ibram X. Kendi and Robin DiAngelo are really just modern day manifestations of the Founders, dreaming of a proposition nation.

At the core, the dissident project is about peeling back the layers of lies and fabrications like second founding theory. History is a story of a people and our story has been rewritten by strangers who see us as enemies. Correcting the record is not just an exercise in trivial exactitude. It is about re-centering a people on the foundation of their past so they can once again reach for the stars. If the folks at the Bulwark want to know “what they hell is happening” there is the answer in a nutshell.

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