Surplus Value Of Diversity

Posted on October 3, 2019 by thezman

U.S. District Judge Allison D. Burroughs ruled that Harvard University’s admission program was a Constitutional application of affirmative action. In other words, Harvard’s systematic discrimination against Whites and Asians was, according to the law, not discrimination against Whites and Asians. In addition to reaffirming the second-class status of Whites and Asians, she wrote, “It is somewhat axiomatic at this point that diversity of all sorts, including racial diversity, is an important aspect of education.”

Now, in general usage, an axiom is something that is self-evidently true, like the sky being blue or water being wet. More precise speakers will use the word to mean “tautology”, something that is true in every possible interpretation. To say, “It is somewhat axiomatic” is therefore a rather tortured assertion, but revealing. It is the sleight of hand we get from the kritarchy. Every alleged statement of fact is really just a form of hairsplitting intended to nibble away at any notion of truth.

That aside, it does bring up some interesting questions. How much diversity is a good thing and how much diversity is too much? There’s no doubt that someone like the judge in this case would reflexively respond that there can never be too much diversity, as diversity is an unalloyed good. There’s also no doubt that like every other diversity fanatic, the judge has organized her life to be around as little diversity as possible, with a special emphasis on avoiding vibrancy. Revealed preferences are real.

Clearly, even the people who say it is somewhat axiomatic that diversity is important think a lack of diversity is important too. Put another way, even the blubbering diversity fanatics assume some upper limit on how much diversity is tolerable, even though they focus on the lower bound in their proselytizing. Somewhere between complete diversity, a place with at least one of every flavor, in perfect proportion to their frequency on earth, and complete homogeneity is the sweet spot according to the advocates.

Arthur Laffer famously explained that there is a relationship between income tax rates and the resulting tax revenues. A 100% tax will result in zero revenue, as no one will voluntarily work without being paid. At the other end, where no tax is imposed on income, the net revenue is also zero, for obvious reasons. Using Rolle’s theorem, there is an optimum tax rate between those two end points. In theory, this should be calculable, so tax rates should be set at that point and left alone.

Now, we know the tax is not a continuous interval, so Rolle’s theorem would not apply in the case of these sorts of social taxes. Still, at one end, zero diversity and vibrancy, we get something less than maximum happiness. Universal homogeneity sounds good in theory, but in reality, people like to punch things up a bit. At the other end, the multicultural paradise ruled by the usual suspects, has nearly no social happiness for normal people. It does not exist, because no one would tolerate it.

The legendary empiricist, La Griffe du Lion, looked at the correlation between the black population in a city and the white victimization rates. The assumption is that blacks prefer to live around whites, as they always seek access to whites. On the other hand, whites are neutral on living near blacks, unless it has some impact on their well-being, which is where crime is a useful metric. Whites move from high crime areas to low crime areas faster than any group, having the least tolerance for crime.

What the numbers reveal is that as the percentage of black residents in a city increases, the white victimization rates begin to climb. At about 20% black population, the white victimization rate climbs rapidly. Blacks commit crimes against whites in this analysis at 64 times the rate of whites committing crimes against blacks. Other studies have found different rates, but it is axiomatic that black crime is vastly higher than white crime and it is axiomatic that blacks prefer white victims more than whites prefer blacks.

Now, it is not somewhat axiomatic, but a universal truth that when Progressives talk about diversity, they mean blacks. Therefore, we can now put the upper bound on diversity as 20% of the population being black. Any more than that and white crime victimization begins to soar and awareness of it begins to soar. This sets off a chain reaction known as white flight. Baltimore is a great example. Once its black population crossed the 25% level, it began a rapid decline into chaos.

This does not address the other issues of diversity. Since it is axiomatic that diversity is about blacks and whites, as demonstrated in that court case, the obvious question is how many white people are required to maintain the multicultural paradise? It is just assumed that whites must be exposed to diversity, so they are not only beneficiaries, but also a necessary ingredient. You cannot purify white people through the healing magic of diversity if they are not actually part of diversity.

As the examples of Rhodesia, Baltimore and now South Africa show, there is some minimum number of whites required to keep the lights on, so everyone can enjoy the wonderfulness of diversity. In the case of Rhodesia, the number fell below the minimum and it became Zimbabwe. In Baltimore, they have hovered along the critical number for decades, always ready to tilt into chaos, but saved by the state. South Africa staggers on, but they too are approaching the inflection point.

As Steve Sailer has pointed out, America schools are starting to run out of white kids to maintain the diversity is magic assertion. Once a school gets too diverse, no one wants to send their kids to it, not even the diverse, so diversity requires a certain threshold of white people to make it work. According to the data in that Sailer post, a good starting place seems to be 50%. Once the white population falls below 50%, the negatives of diversity increasingly outweigh the positives.

Another example seems to make the same point. This story about white flight from tackle football in America has some interesting numbers. Again, the 50% number appears to be a threshold. Peak football in America was when whites were 50% of the youth leagues, which eventually supply the NFL. The decline in play and interest in the NFL over the last few years also supports the observation. The NFL now has a diversity problem, created by their efforts to fix their diversity problem.

Taken together, the starting boundaries of diversity are no more than 20% black, with no lower limit definable, and no less than 50% white. The diversity sweet spot lies somewhere in that zone. Given the ethnocentrism of Jews and Asians, a hard limit on their numbers is certainly part of the formula. Hispanics, a group that is a social construct, should not be a consideration. Most likely, the right mix for maximum diversity benefits is something close to what America was like in 1965.

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Bourgeois Anarchy

Posted on October 2, 2019 by thezman

It is generally assumed that liberal forms of government like parliamentary democracies and representative republics are middle-class in nature. That is, they require a strong and stable middle-class to come into existence, but they also foster the growth of a strong and stable middle-class. Because the bourgeois are conservative by nature, unwilling to risk their peace and prosperity, liberal democracies will tend to resist radical social experiments or take on great risks, like wars of conquest.

Of course, the history of popular government in the West strongly argues against those theoretical assertions. Not only has the West been racked by war, the peace that has existed for the last three generations is due to the imposition of empire. The Pax Americana is the result of the decades long stand-off with Bolshevik radicals and the final triumph of the American financial empire. In other words, the results of liberal democracy seem to be the opposite of what is predicted.

In fairness, one could argue that the last century of war and radicalism were part of the birthing pains of liberal democracy. Prior to the Great War, the West was still largely dominated by hereditary empires. Radicalism was the result of the prior age, born in the Industrial Revolution under the age of kings. The great competition for what would follow hereditary rule was the industrial wars and the subsequent ideological war, which was ultimately won by bourgeois liberal democracy.

This is the underlying assumption of Francis Fukuyama’s book, The End of History and the Last Man. The final triumph of the American empire of the Russian empire was not just the end of the Cold War. It was “the end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy as the final form of human government” He has since revised his opinion on the matter, in light of current ructions, but it is an argument you still hear from time to time.

It does not matter how you frame it, as the West is now dominated by liberal democracy and the bourgeois sensibilities that supposedly support it. Look around the political classes of the West and you will not find exceptional men. In fact, much of Europe is now run by frumpy middle-class women. What is remarkable about the ruling classes of the West is not their mediocrity, but their uniformity. Every politician says the same things and behaves the same way in office. It’s rule by automata.

The horror that has gripped Washington for the last three years is not about policy disputes with Donald Trump. It is mostly about style. Trump is garish and flamboyant in his words and deeds. He is not a man with bourgeois sensibilities. Instead, his tastes range toward the crude and the base. The bourgeois hatred of Trump is all about the aesthetic. He’s not one of them and he is not respectful of their thing, so they see him as a threat, a foreign object that must be expelled from the body politic.

Of course, this smug, bourgeois elitism is not limited to Trump. It has become an article of faith in Washington and throughout the ruling capitals of the West, that the hoi polloi is the enemy of democracy. The great caper to rig the 2016 presidential election was as much about thwarting the will of his voters as the man himself. Today, the political class in Washington is proudly undermining the basics of democratic order in the name of democracy. Something similar is happening to Boris Johnson in Britain.

Washington politics is now an endless squabble between mediocrities over trivial matters that distinguish one from the other. Because these people all fall within a very narrow band of general talent, what makes one stand apart from the other is little things that would normally be overlooked. In order to avoid that, they amplify these trivial issues and endlessly pick at one another’s small distinguishing features. The result is endless hairsplitting and backstabbing over persona slights and insults.

It turns out that bourgeois government looks a lot like everything else in bourgeois society, in that it is debate about how many mediocrities can dance on a pin. The reason for this is the great middle is not all that great. If we use the standard of IQ studies and say the average IQ in America is 100, that is the pole around which bourgeois society is twisted. The closer one gets to that number, the more representative of the whole. By definition, the middle-class is mediocre.

Further, the people who fall about one standard deviation above the middle are going to be the people who dominate the cognitive fields like law, polices, the media and the academy. That’s an even narrower band of people. Relative to one another, they are even more mediocre. Walk around a college campus and you are surrounded by people who never met a risk they did not take. The same is true in the political class. What’s remarkable is the near total lack of accomplishment outside of politics.

Critics of democracy generally point to the stupid getting access to the ballot as the main flaw of democratic systems. If for example, America only allowed males to vote, the political center would be somewhere to the right of Ted Cruz. If whites were the only vote, something similar would result. The argument from those very bad people who make such arguments is that we have 30% of the population not built to operate a Western style democracy. As a result, the system must fail.

Whatever truth there is to that, the reason for those conditions, for stupid people getting the vote and foreign people imported to vote, is the bourgeois political class, supposedly operating from middle-class sensibilities, made that choice. The decision to expand ballot access was not done by the king or the oligarchy. That was the work of middle-class people supporting members of their class in political office. The same can be said of open borders, where bourgeois demands for cheap labor rule the day.

The fact is, a precondition for a middle-class is an elite that will impose order and discipline that allows for the growth of a middle-class. The bourgeois was never intended to rule, rather they were built to serve. Put them in charge and you get what one would expect by putting the inmates in charge of the asylum. The resulting bedlam always requires a strong hand to restore order. This is why authoritarianism always seems to follow every foolish experiment with democratic rule.

A New Western Code Base

Posted on October 1, 2019 by thezman

Critics of the modern age usually start from the assumption that the way in which the West is organized is fine. The problem is either the people, as in we have a rotten ruling class, or some set of defects that have been introduced into the system. The lament is often some form of “if we had only not done X.” This is usually accompanied by fingering some point in the recent past, like the 60’s. Recency bias has always been a major part of right-wing criticism of left-wing politics.

The underlying assumption is that liberal democracy will work just fine, if we can just get rid of those terrible liberals or go back and correct some mistake from the past. No one ever stops to wonder if maybe those nasty liberals and errors in judgement are a feature of liberal democracy, rather than a defect. Like Marxists or libertarians, the right has worked from the assumption that the right sort of citizen can be conjured or created, in order to make liberal democracy function as intended.

The truth is, the results we see around us, whether it is spasms of radical self-destruction or the suicidal flood of migrants, are all the natural result of liberal democracy. The troubles facing the West are not the result of some defect or shabby operators at the top. This is what you get from liberal democracy. As a wise once man said, “Democracy never lasts long. It soon wastes, exhausts and murders itself. There was never a democracy that did not commit suicide.”

The reason, of course, is the underlying assumption of democracy. That is, all men possess the same set of talents. After all, if every man’s say in the running of society is equal to the rest, if it carries the same weight at decision time, then all men must truly be equal. Otherwise, it is a system that deliberately vests the incompetent with the safety and security of others. In other words, the democrat must either be suicidal or sincerely believe men are of equal talent in this important task.

This is the fundamental faith of modern liberal democracy. It assumes and demands that all people are equally capable of making decisions about public policy. This is why noticing any differences in people has become a crime. To note that the retarded, for example, lack the necessary agency to care for themselves, raises the question of who else may lack the necessary qualities to care for themselves. If you cannot care for yourself, how can you be trusted to judge what is in the best interest of others?

This is why we see campaigns by radicals to expand the ballot to children, criminals and the mentally feeble. They couch their cause in fairness, but ultimately what is driving them is absolute egalitarianism. To acknowledge that people are not equally capable of being citizens, means debating where the line is drawn between those capable and those incapable of citizenship. This is a slippery slope that can only lead to the upending of the assumptions of modern liberal democracy.

That is where any alternative right, or alternative anything, must start, as it is the only way to arrive at an alternative outcome. Democracy starts and ends with egalitarianism, which is a binary issue. Either all men are equally capable of active participation is society or they are not. There is no middle ground. Democracy chooses the former and must relentlessly work to make it manifest. This is the root of the current madness that has gripped the West. It is a denial of biological reality.

This is the place to start when contemplating an alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy, whether it is in the narrow domain of politics or the larger one of culture. If all people are not the same in the particular sense, then it follows that all people are not the same in the general sense either. Since a “people” is the sum of the traits and abilities of the individual components, then what we observe as national character is the result of those individual differences peculiar to the people of that nation.

This brings us to the other face of democracy, which is universalism. Every democracy, from the Greeks to the present, assumes that the only legitimate and moral form of government is democracy. After all, if all men in the democracy are equal, it must mean all men in every society are equal. The social contract instantly becomes portable, applicable everywhere. Therefore, anything but liberal democracy is an immoral and inauthentic form of human organization.

The Peloponnesian War was a defensive struggle to resist the rapacious aggression of the Athenians, versus the natural hierarchy of the Spartans. The Great War that devastated Europe was ultimately to impose liberal democracy. The Second World War was a follow on to defend liberal democracy from fascism, which was followed by a 70 year war to defend it against Bolshevism. The history of democracy is a blood bath to prove it works everywhere for all people.

If what we observe is true, that people are not all the same in the wholesale or the retail level, then the question is why? The egalitarians point to various forms of magic like racism, the environment and the tides of history, but all of these collapse under the least bit of scrutiny. If any of these claims were true, we would see evidence of it in the West, where tens of millions of non-Europeans have been imported. Instead, the evidence revels the opposite. The differences in people are natural.

It is these natural differences in people that must be the starting place for any alternative to the prevailing orthodoxy. That sounds easy, but it is the great struggle of this age. It not only means standing outside the moral order, it requires questioning everything we inherited from the Enlightenment. That is what will divide Right and Left in the coming age. On the one side will be the defenders of the Enlightenment, and its egalitarian pretensions, while on the other will be biological realists.

Just as the Enlightenment struggled to escape the cocoon of the Middle Ages, biological realism is struggling for life today. Even sober minded critics of liberal democracy struggle to embrace it. Paul Gottfried, in his first post back at the venerable paleocon outlet Chronicles, makes this point about himself. He can acknowledge some of the points from biological realists, but ultimately he prefers to hug the shore of nurture, rather than sail into the sea of nature.

Yoram Hazony, the Israeli philosopher, wrote a book in which he wrestled with biological reality in his defense of nationalism. Chapter after chapter relied on accurate observations about human diversity. In fact, the foundation of his argument is that nations are different, because they are composed of people, different from the people of other nations. Yet every time he reached the obvious end point of his logic, he pulled back and started flapping his arms and howling about equality.

Hazony and Gottfried are realists, when it comes to ethnicity. Hazony is an ethno-nationalist, while Gottfried is a paleo-conservative. Neither man is naive about the realities of the human condition. Both struggle, however, to transcend their conditioning, which shows how powerful the egalitarian ethic is in the West. It can overcome not only facts and reason, it can make you question your own observations. The project to build a metaphysics around biological reality, therefore, is daunting.

The human diversity we see all around us, the diversity of outcomes, within regions and nations, as well as between them, is not an accident of fate. It is not the result of some dark magic or a conspiracy of one people at the expense of another. These differences are rooted in our nature. Human biological diversity is a real thing that describes who we are as a species. Man is not man without this great diversity, because we are the result of a long natural process of regional trial and error.

Because biology is real, that means sex is real, race is real and ethnicity is real. These are all real things, coming into sharper focus every day through the study of the human genome. The long journey from the dawn of modern man to the first civilization was not the same for all people. The resulting nations of people reflect the long biological journey made by each people. It also represents the natural division of labor, for creating life and for living it, between the sexes and between the talents.

The Enlightenment was the software needed to take Western man out of the Middle Ages, through the age of sail and the industrial age, into the technological age. Like all legacy code, it has reached the end of its time. The demographic age, in which Western man finds himself a minority in a sea of diversity, all creeping up on his natural habitat, will require new code. We need a new moral framework and to do that means deposing the current one and everything that it entails.

The Tax Revolt

Posted on September 19, 2019 by thezman

In the realm of economics, hidden taxes are considered the worst taxes, as they corrupt the relationship between the parties in a transaction. The hidden tax adds a third party to the transaction, which clouds the true cost from buyer and seller. This secret partner to the transaction is often the government. Fees in the supply chain, like energy taxes, for example, show up in the cost of the product or service, but they are not disclosed, so the true cost is hidden from both the seller and buyer in many cases.

In the social realm, there are hidden taxes that are not really hidden, as they are experienced every day, but no one thinks of them as taxes. For example, people living in Lagos on the Chesapeake are well aware of the tax. This is the daily cost of insulating yourself from crime and mayhem. It may be a direct tax like alarm systems or bars on the windows. It can also be an indirect tax, like the two hour commute from one part of the suburbs to another. Time is just another form of money.

There is also an emotional cost that comes with living around so much vibrancy. When you live in a place like Lagos, around the tax, you can never relax. Life in diverse areas is a constant struggle between two species that were never meant to occupy the same ecosystem. The fragile peace is a source of stress, because it is so fragile. You know that the cost of that peace is tolerating the endless inconveniences. The pale face just assumes maintaining the peace is his burden alone.

It is not just the anxiety of living in constant danger. The tax shows up in a million little ways in your daily life. If you go into a lunch place in certain parts of town, you can expect to see a local struggling to order from the menu. The inculcated sense of entitlement means they will waste time ordering odd things that slow up the whole process for everyone. In the grocery store, shoppers will pick checkout lines, based on the assumed tax in each option. Everyone tries to be a tax dodger.

Like real taxes, there is no way to avoid the tax. In a place like Lagos, it is everywhere and is just a part of the background radiation of the universe. One just learns to navigate around these burdens. You are only made aware of the tax when you go away to some tax haven and then return to Lagos. The most stressful day of vacation is the first day back. It’s like moving from black and white to color. For newcomers, the tax is not just disorienting, it can be terrifying, but then they acclimate.

Of course, the newest tax comes from open borders. Illegal immigration is fueled by the demand for cheap labor. All of those little brown guys riding leaf blowers are here because they are cheap. The price of the landscaping services may be lower, but the cost shows up in the emergency room or in the police blotter. This is a form of cost shifting that is, in effect, a hidden tax on the people using other services. The high cost of cheap labor is another hidden tax all of us are forced to pay.

The tax is not just a racial thing. The ultimate cause of the tax is Progressive whites, who are a tireless burden on everyone around them. When box wine auntie shows up for Thanksgiving dinner, everyone pays the price for tolerating her. The day is a little less enjoyable, a little less relaxed. In many cases, everyone is thankful that racist Uncle Bob did not strangle her at the table. Perhaps instead of thankful, everyone is disappointed. Again, everyone secretly wishes to be free of the tax.

That, of course, is the ultimate hidden tax. Every normal person has had to self-censor, hold their tongue around some Progressive goofball. Maybe it is at work, where fear of being canceled out of your job leads to self-censorship. Often, it is in daily life where everyone avoids certain topics around the liberal guy. Being polite, something that is supposed to be a gift you give to others, becomes another tax in your life. Every normal man has quietly thought about canceling the tax man in their life.

The tax is everywhere. Turn on the television to watch a sportsball game and you will be inundated with commercials for race mixing, homosexuals and girl power. What should be a few hours vegging out in front of the tube to watch men play a game, quickly turns into an aggravation that saps your strength. TV ratings have declined for sports, because for many normal people, the tax is now exceeding the benefit. Staring blankly at the wall is more relaxing than another lecture on girl power.

This is the massive hidden tax on normal people. The price of tolerating Progressive lunatics is the stress of crumbling community, the irritation of endless propaganda and the bitterness than comes with self-censorship. Everyone’s life is diminished because a small group of people impose a heavy tax burden on the rest of us. The rise of dissident politics is not a reaction to Progressive lunacy, so much as it is the result of carrying the hidden tax burden. Normal white men are tired of paying the damned tax.

The Collapse Of Authority

Posted on September 9, 2019 by thezman

The cancer eating away at the modern West is a lack of authority to which people can point to judge public policy, public debate on those polices, as well as the reactions to those policies and debates. As a result, debate has degraded into various camps striking poses, usually by signaling their unhappiness with the pose of other camps in the public sphere. The lack of an agreed upon authority means there is no way to judge the merits of any claim. Instead, it leaves force to resolve disputes.

A good recent example is the neocon opposition to Trump. These people are entirely defined by their hysterical reaction to Trump. There is no substantive issue around which they base their opposition. They are not pointing to ideological authority, tradition or even rules within the party. Their opposition to Trump rests on no authority other than their emotional reaction. That’s not an appeal to authority. It is a tantrum, the sort of thing you expect from toddlers. It is also the norm in the public space.

Now, there are two types of authority. One rises from objective knowledge accumulated over time about the natural world. An authority on engineering is someone, who has been trained as an engineer. His credentials are determined by meeting a set of objective criteria, like engineering exams, but also by remaining in good standing with other engineers. The same is true of all areas of expertise. These are the authorities on what is or what is not empirically true about their area of expertise.

In this regard, the West is in surplus. No matter the specialty, you can find someone who knows the material and can explain what is known about the topic. If you have an interest in statistics, you can find books written for every level of reader. You can find on-line courses covering just about any bit of knowledge you seek. If you have a desire to read Homer in the original, you can take on-line courses in ancient Greek. When it comes to what is factually true about the world, we have a surplus.

Where there is a shortage is in the area of what ought to be. What is true in the world is a very different thing than what ought to be true. What is true does not rely on a human authority to make it true. It does not need a supernatural authority to validate it. Two plus two will always be four as long as the universe exists. What ought to be true, however, relies on people, either as the authority or the voice of authority. This is the basis of moral codes, hierarchy, dissent and the collective action of society.

For most of Western history, religion was the authority upon which society relied to determine what ought to be. In the early Middle Ages, there was a great debate about the nature of that authority. That finally was settled and the Catholic Church was the worldly manifestation of that authority. After the Reformation, that authority was eroded, but replaced with Scripture as the source of authority. The story of the West, until the Industrial Age, was the story of Christian authority over man.

Of course, Christianity is a relatively new thing, so there have been other sources of authority in the West. The authority of blood is a universal. The great men of a people rise to the top of society. Their descendants, having inherited their great qualities, are assumed to be a source of authority. The king may not have done anything other than be born to the right father, but he has the magic blood. If it turns out that it did not take or the magic has lost its power, someone new must come along.

That’s where tradition fills in the gaps. The king’s heir may be less than the king, but the institutions that rose up around the king are now invested with authority. The reason the heir should be king, the reason he and no one else ought to have final authority, is this is how it has always been done. Tradition is probably the most powerful source of authority, as it assumes the is, as well as the ought. The custom, through trial and error, is proven to be the best, so it ought to be maintained.

In the current age, normal religion has been sidelined, not only as a source of authority, but as a legitimate part of public discourse. Fifty years ago, a public discussion of morality would have had representatives of various faiths to discuss what ought to be according their religions. A century ago those representatives would have provided authority for the current morality. Today, no public debate about moral issues, about what ought to be, includes religion, much less priests or theologians.

Tradition, of course, is by default eliminated from consideration. Much of what is passed off as public discourse is really a debate about how best to tear down the remaining traditions of society. The entirety of Progressive thought can be symbolized by the toppling over of statues on the college campus. The only thing they insist ought to be true is that truth itself must be overturned. Progressive morality, such as it is, is both the negation of moral truth and the denial of objective reality.

A world without authority, especially an agreed upon authority, is anarchy, but humans naturally retreat from anarchy. This is because anarchism is just mob rule. The ideal of anarchism is the mob mutually and magically agreeing to not murder one another, while the reality of it is the mob demanding authority to bring order. It is why democracy, which is just mob rule, is always a transition state. It is the period between the respect for natural, hierarchical authority and authoritarianism.

An example of this from history is the slow collapse of the Western Roman Empire, first into constant warfare, then into chaos and finally into the anarchy of local authority in the early medieval period. The end of the republic was not the end of a natural authority in Rome. The rulers still had to respect the gods and traditions. It is when those sources of authority collapsed that the end was clear for the Empire. The subsequent rise of the West was the rise of authority, Christian authority.

The modern West is undergoing the same sort of collapse of authority. Christianity, like the pagan faiths of the ancient world, has receded to the fringe. Tradition and hierarchy has given way to mob rule and force. What’s missing from the analogy is a new religion that provides a coherent order to the gathering chaos. Progressivism is an anti-religion, in that does not provide order to the natural world. Instead it preaches a denial of order and the denial of reason. It’s a primitive revolt against the natural order.

Medieval Jewish Policy

Posted on August 24, 2019 by thezman

The standard narrative, with regards to relations between Christians and Jews, is one of constant conflict. The Jews have been subjected to various forms of repression, ranging from marginalization to genocide. The underlying assumption is that the Christian majority was either motivated by religious fanaticism or ignorant bigotry. Of course, the events during World War II loom large in this understanding. The Germans are just assumed to have gone insane and followed an anti-Semitic madman.

That’s what makes the book Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe such an interesting read. Instead of the modern practice of working backwards to force history into the current narrative, it is a review of the polices toward the Jews, in the centuries following the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It’s an old book, published in 1977, by a now retired scholar of the period. It’s also a short book, just 140 pages. The style and brevity makes it a good introduction to the period for the casual reader.

The book starts with a review of Jewish policy under the Visigoths, who ruled what is now Western France and most of what is now Spain. Both Gaul and Iberia had large Jewish populations by the end of the Roman Empire. The Breviary of Alaric was a collection of Roman laws that applied to the Hispano-Roman and Gallo-Roman population, living under Visigoth rule. It was within this body of laws that official policy regarding the Jews was established in the Visigoth kingdom.

Under the Visigoths, the Jews had a great deal of autonomy. They maintained their own courts, were permitted to own slaves and conduct trade within the kingdom. More important, the Jews were rich and powerful, so they played a large role in the internal politics of the kingdom. The main area of conflict was over the Jewish habit of proselytizing to the Christians as well as the pagans. The Church would tolerate the Jews converting pagans, but not the converting of Christians.

That’s the most interesting aspect of the book. Throughout the early medieval period, the Jewish populations in the former Western Roman Empire were endlessly proselytizing to the Christian populations. This was not just under the Visigoths in the early Christian period. This continued through the Carolingian period, despite very strong objections from the Church. Even the Church, however, was forced to overlook these violations of the law, as the Jews had a lot of power.

If one were to search for a starting point of anti-Jewish sentiment in the West, it would not date to the time of Christ, but to the medieval period. Jews not only competed with the Church politically and culturally, they were very aggressive in their approach to Christians. For example, in the Carolingian period, Jews widely circulated the Toledot Yeshu, which is an alternative biography of Jesus. It describes Jesus as an illegitimate child, who practiced magic, was an adulterer, and died a shameful death.

The Church, of course, was not happy about this behavior, but lacked the power to do much about it, other than train better priests. That’s another interesting aspect of the period. Jews and Christians regulars celebrated feats together and Christians tended to prefer the Jewish sermons to that offered by the Church. Many Bishops also had good relations with the Jews in their area. In other words, into the Middle Ages, there was not much in the way of antisemitism, at least not as we understand it.

It was these twin realities that drove the development of anti-Jewish policy in the Church during this period. Many important churchman, individually and collectively, not only feared the proselytizing of the Jews, but worried about the fact Judaism was very attractive to both pagans and Christians. It was in this period that institutional opposition to Judaism developed and evolved, despite the fact that the secular authorities were pro-Jewish in their policies. Antisemitism was a reaction to this.

Another aspect to all of this is the fact that Jews used to be aggressive proselytizers, working hard to convert pagans and Christians. Today, the opposite is true. While anyone can become a Jew, that’s like saying anyone can become a physicist. It is technically true, but conversion is not common. Jewish law requires the rabbi to try three times to discourage the convert. This policy may have been a response to the conflicts with the Church over the conversion of Christians.

Probably the most surprising thing in the book is just how pro-Jewish most secular rulers were in the early medieval period. Charlemagne and his son Louis the Pious were extremely favorable to the Jews in their domains. They actively encouraged Jews to immigrate into their lands and gave them special privileges to conduct trade. They also had many Jews serving in administrative roles, holding power over Christians. The Jews were treated better than the Church in many cases.

The reality of the early medieval period is that the secular authorities maintained a very tenuous grip on their holdings. The king relied upon the local landowners and community leaders to maintain control. In many cases, those wealthy and powerful people were Jews within large Jewish communities. As a result, the Church was often the least influential institution. In many cases, the local bishop relied upon Jewish support to maintain his position. The Jews had a lot of power.

Probably the most telling point in this regard is the fact that the most successful monarchs of the period all had pro-Jewish polices. Charlemagne, Theodoric the Great and Gregory the Great pursued pro-Jewish polices. The Jews were literate, wealthy and maintained well-organized, long-standing contacts with Jewish communities throughout the West and East. As such, they were a powerful ally. In return for Jewish support, successful Christian rulers protected Jewish interests.

As much as this reality contradicts the current narrative, it also contradicts many anti-Semitic narratives as well. For example, it is popular with modern anti-Semites to claim the Jews worked with the Muslims in conquering Christian Spain. In reality, the Jews were willing to work with whoever looked like a winner. Jews also worked with Christians against the Muslims and sided with the Viking raiders when they sacked Bordeaux. They also worked with the Franks against the Vikings.

One final bit of interest is it seems that the beginning of Jewish hatred for the Catholic Church began in this period. This hatred turns up today in modern Zionism. In Yoram Hazony’s book, The Virtue of Nationalism, he repeatedly claims that Catholicism was a form of empire, which he condemns. It’s a strange tick, given that the Catholic Church holds little influence in the modern world. It was the Church, however, that managed to reduce Jewish power in the West, starting in the medieval period.

The book does not address this issue, but the fact that Church policy was separate, often at odds with official policy, in the kingdoms of the early medieval period, made it possible for Jews to carve out special privileges. Once Church policy became entangled with official policy, this was no longer possible. Jews were then marginalized and isolated, in order to prevent them from influencing the secular authorities and proselytizing to the Christians. The Catholic Church was bad for Jews.

Monsters and Heroes

Posted on August 15, 2019 by thezman

A common plot for a heroic tale is one where a people are under threat from a supernatural monster or maybe a person possessed by great evil. The king is either unable or unwilling to defend the people from the threat, so a great hero emerges to do that which the king is supposed to do. The hero then goes off to face the threat, defeats it thus saving the people and writing his name in the book of heroes. Probably the oldest existing version of this is the Old English epic poem Beowulf.

Now, more sophisticated versions of this plot will bring the king into the story line by exploring the reasons he cannot or will not defend his people. Maybe the king is playing a double game, where he hopes to summon the hero, who he sees as the greater threat, in order to get him killed by the monster. Alternatively, the king is weak or incompetent, thus he represents failed leadership. His character in the story is a reminder of the risk of to a people tolerating bad leaders.

Now, with that in mind, fast forward to the current age and consider what is happening in American public life. For starters, we have an economic system that cannot be described as anything but predatory. The issue has become so acute, even The Wall Street Journal has had to take note. The reason for the collapse of the America middle class is well known. The active efforts to suppress wages, while maintaining a usurious financial system, is draining the life out of the middle-class.

Again, the reasons for this are fairly well understood and, more important, we know who is behind the policies causing it. People have been writing about the financialization of the economy since the 1970’s. Way back when Wall Street convinced Congress they should auction off the manufacturing base, analysts on the Right and Left identified the prime mover behind this phenomenon. The monster that is savaging the people is well known, yet the king does nothing to defend his people.

Concomitant with the financial collapse of the middle-class has been the spiritual and cultural collapse. Probably the most symbolic aspect of this is the opioid crisis, which has put its icy hand on every shoulder of society. It’s not just an urban thing like prior drug epidemics or a class thing like crime. Look at the number of high profile people who ended up in a rehab facility after getting hooked on pain killers. Every week, the nation’s obituaries are full of stories about opioid related deaths.

Again, this is not some great mystery. On the one hand, you have people like the Sackler family who basically got a license to kill. They used it to flood the nation with legal drugs and induced doctors to hand them out like candy. Similarly, the flood of fentanyl from Mexico is well understood. We know who is doing this to the American people, yet the people in charge barely acknowledge it. The monster that is savaging the people is well known, yet the king does nothing to defend his people.

We have spent three years being lectured by our betters about those clever Russians and their Facebook ads, threatening our democracy. It was a giant hoax, of course, and we know why the hoaxers perpetuated it. They were covering up a seditious plot to subvert the 2016 election. The fact that it was a hoax does not mean there are no threats to the political order. We know, for example, that the tech giants are deliberately trying to subvert the democratic processes.

Again, this is not some mysterious thing that is just coming to light. It has been happening for a long time now. Here we have Silicon Valley trying to bully British media outlets to not interview Farage. Here we have a former Google exec explaining how his former employer interferes in elections. What’s happening with these tech oligopolies is not some great puzzle that has just coming to light. The monster that is savaging the people is well known, yet the king does nothing to defend his people.

The pattern is unmistakable. Time after time the people come under threat from a well understood enemy of bourgeois order and time after time the people in charge do nothing about it. Only the most naive think the Epstein affair or the massive corruption in the FBI will be addressed. At this point, everyone knows the plot. The flow of stories will slow to a trickle and then the whole thing will be forgotten. In time, Epstein’s plotters will be partying with the FBI plotters at Lois Lerner’s Vineyard mansion.

The people are under threat by a variety of monsters. It’s not just Grendel, but Grendel’s mother and the whole extended family. The people in charge, whether out of fear, avarice or degeneracy do nothing about these threats. People thought the Orange Knight was the hero, who could slay the monsters and bring peace to the people, but thus far he has remained under his desk, posting insults on Twitter. In fact, the king sees the hero as a greater threat than the monsters that savage his people.

If our version of this tale is to be recounted in future generations, the plot will have to take a different turn. Ours will have to be the version where the people, seeing the king undermine and plot against the hero, finally realize that the real monster vexing them is the one who rules over them. Every society is under threat from monsters, often ones they created or allowed to develop in their ranks. The people who survive are those who figure it out and either find a hero to slay the monster or do the job themselves.

The White Fright

Posted on August 13, 2019 by thezman

One of the features of current year America is the occurrence of panics, particularly among the managerial elite. The most recent is the White Fright, where the media is hysterically reporting every disturbance as the act of white supremacists. This panic appears to have been triggered by the El Paso shooting, but it is a manifestation of a much longer occurring paranoia among the managerial classes. It dates back to at least the last presidential election and has roots in the Obama years.

The underlying assumption of the White Fright is a belief that whites are secretly organizing to overthrow the current order and impose some sort of pale patriarchy on the country. These white supremacists are everywhere and look just like normal everyday white people, so any white person could possibly be one of them. These people can, at any moment, turn into a violent spree killer, if exposed to certain kinds of content called “hate speech” which is found on-line.

The similarities to medieval witch hunting are too obvious not to notice. The adversary is not something that appears in material form. Like Old Scratch, white supremacy is an evil spirit that works through the infected. Once under the control of white supremacy, the person no longer has agency. Not surprisingly, like the accused witches in Salem, the modern white supremacist is most likely to be someone that vexes the moral authorities, either by their presence or by their actions.

Now, many on the Right have been conditioned to look at this stuff and come up with an explanation that makes the Left seem less nutty. For example, Steve Sailer will argue it is a clever ploy to rally the coalition of the ascendant. The National Review types will claim it is a ploy to conceal the fact that Democrats are the real racists. These are conditioned responses that are not intended to explain what’s going on with the Left, but to fit it into the normal Left-Right dynamic that describes America politics.

A more nuanced explanation is that the White Fright is part of a great fear that is sweeping the managerial classes. Like that which swept France in the summer of 1789, this fear is rooted in both the economic and the social problems of society. There’s also a paranoia about the ruling class. These people are riddled with angst and fear of being dropped from the managerial class. This causes them to be highly sensitive to any disruption in society and as a result, they are prone to panics.

The media, internet censors, social justice warriors and corporate HR departments are the servants of the ruling class. As such, they are wholly dependent upon them for their status with regards to the rest of us. Unlike the commoners, who are only vaguely aware that there are powerful people behind the political theater, the managerial class is much more aware of this reality. As a result, they live like the peasants of France, keenly aware they are dependent upon people they cannot trust.

This anxiety manifests itself as panics about imaginary villains plotting to topple the existing order. The Russia hoax is a good example. It is assumed that the people peddling it did so for cynical reasons and that may be true. The people spreading and repeating it, however, were motivated by a genuine fear of dark forces working in the shadows against their interests. Marianne Williamson got a lot of attention in the last debate by mentioning “dark psychic forces.” It resonated with certain people.

Now, another possible explanation for the White Fright is that something similar to what happened in Salem is going on in current year America. At the end of the 17th century, what amounted to a Puritan theocracy, had taken root in New England. Everything about social life was controlled by the religious sensibilities of the people, mostly enforced by a narrow theocratic elite. The form and purpose of New England towns was based in the religious understanding of the people we now call Puritans.

This model, when facing the challenge of witch panics, was unable to adapt and cope with the phenomenon. The response from the religious authorities decreased public trust and eroded their authority. The trials themselves, instead of reducing fear among the panicked, increased suspicions. Before long it became obvious that the religious authorities were as much a part of the problem as the people making accusations and spreading rumors. The witch trials discredited Puritanism.

That could be what is happening in current year America. The similarities between modern Progressivism and Puritanism, in its manifestations, not theologically, is hard not to notice. Everything from vinegar drinking scolds to their effeminate male enablers are present in modern day Progressivism. Current year America is ruled by a bizarre identity cult that is every bit as superstitious as the Puritans. The White Fright may turn out to be the witch scares of late empire America.

Those are all the amusing and gratuitous explanations for what we are seeing. There is another possibility and that is a genuine fear rooted in real danger. The response by the managerial class may seem hysterical and irrational, but maybe that is just a byproduct of mass media culture. Maybe there is a real threat. The people running from the monster, shrieking like madmen, are not acting rationally, but their fear is not irrational either. The monster is real and is a real danger to them.

It should be noted that panic is not the default response to disasters or dangers. In things like fires, natural disasters and combat, panic is not typical. Instead, mutual aid is the most common response. An obvious example is the response of the people in the World Trade Center buildings during 9/11. Among the stories of great heroism were stories of incredible cooperation. People came together and helped one another get out of the buildings. Mutual aid and cooperation was the natural response.

Rather than a panic or mass hysteria, the White Fright may be a call to familiarity and mutual aid by the managerial class. The old political order is breaking down, as the inevitable consequences of multiculturalism manifest. What we could be seeing is a primal call for social re-attachment. The primary purveyors of the White Fright are white, or at least white presenting. The old good-white coalition is rallying around the fear of white supremacy, in defense of what is lurking outside the walls.

Of course, all of these possible explanations for the panics we are seeing are rooted in the general sense that society is fragmenting. That’s because current year America is fragile and possibly ready to shatter. The old political order is in decline and the rise of identity politics promises to replace it. These panics are as much about the fear of what comes next as superstition or immediate threats. The White Fright may one day be seen as the turning point in the rise of white identity politics.

Post Soviet America

Posted on August 12, 2019 by thezman

Way back in the late stages of the Cold War, the Soviet political class started to fracture and splinter. The reform movement of Gorbachev was one faction, while the old guard that resisted him was another. There were other factions playing both sides against one another, as well as genuine reformers on the fringe. The reason the ruling elite was splintering was the system over which they ruled was no longer functioning. This reality was becoming clear to many, but not everyone in the party agreed.

Intrigue began to dominate party politics in the final stages of the Soviet Union. There was always politics within the party, but it revolved around the ruling center, much as court intrigue would revolve around the king. As the system began to falter, that center collapsed and party politics was conspiracies within conspiracies, as factions jockeyed for power. Eventually, the system collapsed and the party with it. What followed was a period of looting by oligarchs that rushed into to fill the void.

It is an important thing to think about when analyzing what’s happening in current year America. In the West, the response to the end of the Cold War was the replacement of the old sober minded political class with their self-absorbed, amoral children. The most notable example being Bill and Hillary Clinton, who have come to symbolize Baby Boomer political culture. Theirs is a politics of limitless mendacity. Everything is for sale, including the very institution over which they preside.

In other words, the Soviet Empire fell into a period of chaos and disorder in response to the end of the Cold War, while America fell into a period of self-indulgence. This way of framing it is like two sports teams after a championship match. The losers fall into finger pointing and blaming one another. The winners go on a bender to celebrate their victory and the benefits that come with it. Eventually, the loser regroups. In the case of Russia, it is becoming a normal country again.

There may be another way of reading the post-Soviet period in America. It may be that the period ushered in by the Clintons was an interregnum. Both sides of the Cold War were purpose built to face off against one another. The Russians bankrupted themselves with an ineffective organizational model, so the end of the Cold War brought a genuine collapse, as that was the only way forward. In America, the country was still rich, so the old model could trundle on as if nothing really changed.

This interregnum was a period where the old political order carried on searching for an enemy to replace the Soviets. First it was the Muslims, which gave us two ghastly wars of choice and the surveillance state. That weakened America greatly, but instead of facing the long overdue reorganization, the political class tried reinventing the Russian bogeyman. Now, as in late stage Soviet Russia, the political center has collapsed and we are entering a similar period of chaos and intrigue.

Like the Soviets, we have oligarchs jockeying to loot what’s left the country, seemingly uninterested in staving off collapse. Big Tech and Wall Street have all the signs of super-predators from another planet, waiting for the chance to rush in and steal whatever they think has value. Like Gorbachev’s government at the end, official Washington is weak, while a populist reform movement builds. Trump is not Boris Yeltsin, but no historic analogy is intended to be perfect.

Of course, there came a point in the late stages of the Soviet Union where the emerging power centers outside the party, what would become the oligarchs, resorted to violence in their struggles with one another and the party. This is something that is starting to turn up more and more in America. Starting with the execution of Seth Rich on a Washington street, through the explosion of Antifa violence, the country is now buzzing with conspiracy over the bizarre death of billionaire Jeffrey Epstein.

That is another thing we are seeing in America that was common toward the end of the Soviet Union. The public is so cynical about the motives and character of the ruling class, that no one believes anything. The fake news meme was effective because trust in the media had dropped to zero. The lies had simply accumulated to the point where no rational person could accept anything from the media at face value. The continued existence of mainstream media just increases the cynicism.

Now, something not reported in the old Soviet Union that we are seeing in current year America is the panic. We are currently in the midst of a White Fright, where the media is tasked with casting daily events as signs of a white supremacist uprising. The coalition of the ascendant is being told to lock their doors and remain vigilante, as the twelfth invisible Hitler is slated to return at any minute. Like the Russia hoax, this one is a ruling class hoax that suggests a breakdown at the very top.

Again, it is not a perfect analogy. That’s not how analogies work. That said, there are important differences between the end of Cold War America and the end of Cold War Russia. The interregnum between the end of the Cold War and current year America is one example. Another is the nature of the oligarchs ready to seize power from Washington. They are foreign in outlook, if not legality. The tech barons and Wall Street financiers have loyalties that transcend any attachment to nation.

These new oligarchs are globalists, while the Russian oligarchs were local. The oligarchs of current year America are anti-nationalists, seeking a post-national world order. Their desire is to turn the heart of the American Empire into just another province. There’s also a class consciousness to their enablers. The managerial elite see themselves as a new class, tasked with administering the new global order. These are not men for hire, as we saw in Russia. These are true believers.

There’s also the fact that the American military is a different thing than what evolved in the Soviet Union. The Russian military was quite comfortable involving itself in politics, while the America military lacks the talent and culture to do it. Civilian leaders in America have always been smart enough to choose obsequious and incompetent generals to run the military branches. The talent is down a few ranks. The culture of the military would not lend itself to political involvement either.

Even so, what all of this suggests is America is headed for a period of chaos similar to what gripped the Russians after the Cold War. Just as the Russian oligarchs were too greedy and short sighted to replace the party, our oligarchs are too foreign and feckless to provide an alternative to Washington. A period of chaos in probably what comes next for post-Soviet America. The sudden collapse of empire and then a reversion to its natural state after a period of chaos and violence.

Technological Despotism

Posted on August 6, 2019 by thezman

In the 1990’s, it was popular for conservatives to excuse their impotence by throwing around the line, “In a democracy, the people get the government they deserve”, which they attributed to Tocqueville. So-called conservatives like Newt Gingrich were supposed to be idea men, brimming with technocratic solutions to every problem, while Clinton was a windy degenerate from a bygone era. The fact that the voters sided with Clinton over conservatives reflected poorly on the people.

The quote, of course, was not from Tocqueville. It was actually Joseph de Maistre, who coined that phrase. It was oddly symbolic of the state of conservatism. They had turned their back on everything that defined Western conservatism by that point, so forgetting seminal figures in the intellectual tradition of the Right was appropriate. In retrospect, the fact that the so-called conservatives did not understand the word “people” in the context of the quote was the most poignant error.

Putting that aside, the quote itself is a nice shorthand for the actual truth that lies behind those words. The people get the ruling elite they can produce and that ruling elite will then create a government that reflects its nature. The condition of the people is reflected in the morality of its ruling class. At the same time, the ruling class is responsible for the people. Its duty is to advance their interests. In this way, the pivot point of a people is its ruling class. It is what they make of it.

The founding generation of America were men of civic virtue. The saw the willingness to put the interests of the community ahead of private interests, as the threshold item for a leader. As a result, they rejected the monarchical system of government they inherited from England and created a republic. The constitutional system they created was based on the assumption that, in general, the sort of men who would rise to prominence were men who prized civic virtue. The Constitution reflected this.

That turned out to be the fatal flaw of the constitutional order created in Philadelphia two centuries ago. While the system of checks and balances worked to prevent the ambitious and unscrupulous from gaining politician power, it was not built for the ruling elite that would evolve in the 19th century. When the North conquered the country, America became a nascent empire. It still reflected the founding order, but its elite was now changing to reflect the changing nature of America.

The ruling elite the evolved after the Civil War and into the Industrial Revolution did not place civic virtue at the top of its moral order. Instead, it was the desire for and the love of honor that motivated the ruling classes. They quickly reorganized the government to reflect this reality. Rank and status were now the coin of the realm. Whether it was dominating some area of the economy or conquering foreign lands, the path to attaining rank and status was though government and politcs.

You can see this in the type of men who occupied high office. Before the Civil War, the leadership of the country were men who either got rich before entering government, or they were born rich. This was the result of a natural ruling class that reflected the human capital of the people. After the war, there emerged men who made their names in government. Their path to high status was not as natural leaders of their community, but as shrewd operators in the political system.

The obvious example is Abraham Lincoln, who is treated as the Moses of the second founding by the previous ruling class. This was not a man who prized civic virtue or was a natural community leader. Instead, he craved status and power. He attained those through the skillful maneuvering through politics and then through the brutal use of force to create a political order that reflected this new ruling class. For those who wonder when America will have its Sulla, look no further than Lincoln.

Every phase of an elite runs its course and this one is no different. The ruling class that evolved after the Civil War through the Cold War was built for a different age. It was industrial and it was geared to a world of industrial competition. What kept it going long after its peak was the Cold War. The stand-off with communism not only locked the New Deal political order in place, it locked in place the status system of the ruling elite. That system, thirty years after the Cold War, is now giving way to something new.

The technological age, like the industrial age, is the accelerant for a long overdue transformation of the American ruling elite. This new class is no longer created and housed within the political class. It exists outside of it, within its own power centers inside and outside of government. The intelligence services, for example, are now an independent power center, beyond the reach of Congress. Silicon Valley and Wall Street are now more powerful than Washington.

This new ruling class has a unique motivation. The elite of the republic was defined by civic virtue. The elite of the empire was defined by status and rank. This new ruling elite will be defined by the fear it instills in the public. In the technological age, fear of the oligarchs will be the supreme public virtue. Fear will be ruthlessly and creatively inculcated by a ruling elite that is wholly disconnected from the people over whom it rules. This stage of America will be the age of technological despotism.

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