Bloody Democracy

One of the more abused words in the English language is the word “democracy” which has come to mean just about anything. Our politicians love talking about the glories of democracy, especially after they have won an election. When they lose, as we are seeing with the Left these days, well, it is an assault on democracy! The word has become a Western version of Juche, the North Korean state ideology. It is not a form of government, but a mystical spirit that is the essence of the people’s goodness.

For Progressives, democracy is one the of the primary abracadabra words in their book of incantations. Whatever they want, it is almost always decorated with the word democracy or some reference to it. It’s not that they have any respect for the will of the people; it is that they truly believe their whims and causes are imbued with the magic they associate with the word democracy. Democracy is what they call that supernatural force that guides history and carries the righteous to the promised land.

This article from the Progressive site Jacobin is a good example. America, of course, is not a democracy. It is a representative republic. In fact, what we have come to know as liberal democracy in the West is explicitly not democracy. Instead, Western nations employ various forms of representative government. The reason for that is experiments with democracy have been disastrous. It turns out that mob rule is not a great way to run a country. The usual result is a blood bath followed by a tyrant.

Of course, the Left is not all that interested in democracy as a form of government. For them, it is trolley they ride from where they are now to the place they wish to be. That place is where they have an iron grip on society. Naturally, while they are waiting for that trolley to take them to the promised land, they sing the glories of the trolley system they call democracy. If things don’t work out as planned, well, the system is not democratic and the proof of that is they lost. After all, the spiritual goodness of the people is on their side.

The linked article is interesting and entertaining for a number of reasons beyond the less than credible claims about the glories of democracy. What’s fascinating about it is what it reveals about the Left. The author, after detailing what he sees as the facts of the undemocratic outcome, falls back on the example of revolutionary France. Appropriately enough, for a site called the Jacobin, the author wants some sort of National Constituent Assembly, where the people can fashion a new constitution.

The National Constituent Assembly lasted two years and can only be viewed as a failure, as it led to the radicalization of the Paris mob and eventually The Reign of Terror. Roughly 16,000 people were sent to the guillotine and another 25,000 were hung, shot or beaten to death by mobs. All of these murders were done in the name of the people. After all, what is more democratic than murdering people in the name of the people? Most of those killed were in no way opposed to the revolution. They either got in the way or failed to do what the radicals expected.

Nowhere in that long piece does the author mention Maximilien Robespierre, Les Enragés (“the enraged ones”) or Madame Guillotine. He later celebrates the Marxist revolts of the 19th century and then the glories of the Bolshevik Revolution in the 20th century. No mention in those cases of the bloody outcomes. That would require either a reconsideration of the glories of radical democracy or the celebration of senseless murder by angry mobs. It’s better to just skip past those problems.

That’s the revealing bit in the piece. The Left has learned nothing from the past, even their own past. The Right is often accused of being captive to a romanticized past, but it is the Left that is trapped in a permanent time warp. The first radicals of the Left followed the logic of Rousseau to its natural conclusion, murdered a bunch of people and then gave way to a tyrant. They keep repeating this pattern without ever having learned from past results. The Bolsheviks, for example, looked to the Jacobins as examples.

Part of this is explained by the radical fixation on the future. The Left has always been blind to the past as they put all of their energy into reaching the glorious future. The bigger issue is that radicalism is an intellectual dead end. When the only acceptable answer to the natural inequality of man is more democracy, you eventually end up with pure democracy, but the same natural inequality. That leaves enforced equality as the logical next step. With coercion naturally comes political violence and then terror.

The End of Anti-Racism

I don’t remember when it was, but I have a recollection of John Derbyshire wondering when racism would become fashionable for young people. It may have been a podcast or a column, but it was long enough ago that I don’t recall much about it, other than the question itself. Everyone is required to think of racism in the same way that people used to think of devil worship or communism. It is, and always will be, the worst form of evil so it can never be normalized. Even thinking about it could be enough to get you in trouble.

I’m not much of a racist myself, but I don’t think about it very much either. Still, I remember Deb’s query because it was so provocative. We live in an age where nothing is sacred, so we are told. Being subversive and outrageous is the highest virtue. Our celebrities exist almost exclusively on  their ability to outrage. Logically, if racism is the great taboo, someone will try to make bank on being racist. Young people with their desire to reject their parent’s morals, would be prime candidates for this sort of thing.

To some degree, the alt-right, at least the social media version, is the first green shoots of hip racism to sprout into public view. Edgy internet personalities like Anthony Cumia and Gavin McInnes dance close to the edge of racism in their performances. Not being a regular listener, I can’t say for sure, but I have no recollection of them saying anything I’d put down as explicitly racist. Like dirty jokes in the 1950’s, there’s lots of innuendo and wink-wink sort of stuff, but even the edgiest guys are careful to avoid being racist.

Racism does seem perfect for mockery and derision by our hipsters. I was reading something the other day about the evolution of people on different continents. An interesting area of inquiry is why people in the Indus River Valley evolved different social structures from the people of Europe or East Asia. Every other paragraph, the writer felt compelled to write something like, “people have avoided asking this question for good reason.” The obvious reason is it might come off as racist and racism is so bad, the writer could be struck by lightning by even asking the question.

It reminded me of this post last year about banning research into IQ and race because, well, the void where God used to reside could be angered by it. Or maybe it is bad juju. Who knows, but the fear of racism is so pervasive that a science magazine is ready to hold a book burning and maybe throw a few heretics onto the fire just to prove he is not racism. It’s the sort of thing we associate with an age when fanatics from the Inquisition were snooping around, looking for sinners to torment.

When a taboo becomes as ridiculous as this, it is a prime candidate for mockery. The people who tend to like mocking social norms are young people. It may not be an accident that the alt-right skews very young. It’s also probably why a guy like Gavin McInnes mocks the pc-types, who are forever worried about racism. He is aiming for a younger audience and lampooning the nonsense young people see from adults is an obvious way to attract that audience. It’s a short trip from there to what Derb had in mind.

It’s natural to think that our current taboos are immutable, but think about the things that used to be off-limits that are now common. In my youth, men used to be sent to prison for making or distributing pornographic films. Now, TV is filled with what my parents would have considered to be pornography. The big New Year story was how Mariah Carey had some sort of screw up during her performance. No one noticed that this portly, middle aged mother of two was half naked, wiggling her goodies around on stage.

There is, of course, homosexual marriage. It went from being the punchline of jokes to being official dogma in a little more than a decade. In less than a generation, we went from a taboo on suggesting it to a taboo on opposing it. It’s a good example of how quickly these things can turn. There’s little reason to think that such a thing could not happen with racism. That’s not to say we will be bringing back Jim Crow, but maybe bringing back Blazing Saddles is not too far off. Perhaps race realism is the next gay marriage.

Of course, there is the issue of elite opinion, which had a lot to do with the sudden shift on an issue like homosexual marriage. So-called conservatives were more than happy to go along with the Left’s latest fads so things like gay marriage faced no opposition. Racism is hysterically opposed by everyone in the managerial class. But, this was true of Trump and that opposition just made him more attractive to voters. Old fogies flipping out over memes on twitter, they consider racist, will only encourage young people to do more of it.

It’s hard to know how this will go, but it is not unreasonable that we are headed into the age of post-anti-racism. The hysterical anti-racism of Boomers could never survive conflict with reality. The young, who have no experience with actual racism, are starting to respond with mockery of both racism and anti-racism. It’s hard to impose moral codes on people who are laughing at you and mocking your taboos. The great moral crusade of this age may not survive conflict with guys like John Rivers and his tweet storms.

The Saudis and Israelis.

According to the CIA Fact Book, Israel is a country of 8,174,527 people, including the settler in East Jerusalem and the Golan Heights. If it were a US state, it would rank 13th in population, behind Virginia and ahead of Washington. Interestingly, the population density of Israel is 377/km2 which is roughly the same as New Hampshire. The images of Israel on the news show it as a crowded place, but that is not the case. There’s lot of nothing between the cities and towns.

If you put Israel into a search engine it returns 888 million results. If you put New Hampshire into the same search engine, you get 168 million results. No one, of course, cares much about New Hampshire, but just about everyone cares about Israel. Every American politician is required to have an opinion of Israeli and its difficulties with the Arabs. More important, they are required to have the correct opinion about Israel. This is even true of liberals as we saw with Obama and his last minute UN gambit.

Many people on the Dissident Right think the US and the world pays far too much attention to Israel. While there is an obvious cultural and historical attachment for the place in the West, the Israelis can handle themselves. Pat Buchanan would have us cut the cord entirely and leave Israel to her own devises. That would be part of a larger policy of abandoning the Middle East entirely. After all, the oil would still flow onto the world market as it has not where else to go. Who care who pumps it out of the ground?

The paleo-libertarians have a similar view of Israel and the Middle East, but theirs is more from the economic side of things. The cost of meddling far outweighs the benefits. Ron Paul looks at the endless wars and sees nothing but pointless expense. All we are doing, according to Paul, is turning a billion people into enemies for not obvious reason. It is hard to know for sure, but Ron Paul seems to be a guy who roots for the Israelis, but thinks they can handle their own affairs.

That’s probably the right position, but it is hard to see how that can ever happen. The Israelis have become adept at influencing American foreign policy. It’s not just the elaborate lobbying efforts in Washington. They are good at getting their side of things into the news media. Naturally, many Jewish Americans in the media are more than willing to play along. David Brooks is a big shot columnist for the NYTimes and his son is in the Israeli defense Force. It’s not hard to figure where he comes down on Israel.

It’s not just the Israelis. That big Saudi “cultural center” outside DC is not there for no reason. As is the case with Wahhabi mosques all over the world, it is primarily an intelligence facility, but it also serves as a handy clearing house for Arab lobbying efforts in Washington. The Saudis have had a long relationship with the Bush family, of course, but they have good relations with many other prominent politicians. John McCain, for example, can always be counted on to carry water for the House of Saud.

That’s where many on the Dissident Right miss the mark. Israel’s lobbying efforts in the US, and their vast espionage efforts, are as much a response to the Saudi efforts as anything else. The US has been in bed with the House of Saud since the 1930’s. It was US oil companies that first exploited the Saudi oil fields in the 1930’s. Soon after the end of World War II, Aramco was formed and then the headquarters was moved from New York to Dhahran. The point being that the US has a much longer and deeper relationship with the Saudis than the Israelis.

Even if America abandoned Israel entirely, the Saudis would still find ways to entangle us in the Middle East. The fact that the 9/11 hijackers were all Saudis is probably not a coincidence. There’s pretty good evidence that the Saudi family was financing at least some of the hijackers. While Israel could probably get along just fine without US support, the House of Saud evaporates without Uncle Sam protecting them, the oil fields and the Persian Gulf. Therefore, the royal family makes lobbying the US and spying in the US a top priority.

If the US was ever going to get out of the Middle East, it would start with pulling the plug on the Saudis, but no one will ever do it because no one knows what comes next. Despite the problems, the West can do business with the Saudis. US defense contractors operate all over the kingdom, officially and unofficially. They maintain the signal intelligence operations and provide logistical support for US military operations in the region. They also operate as an inlet for intelligence passed from the Saudis. That’s not easily replaced.

The result is the Saudis will exert an outsized influence on US foreign policy and the Israelis will try to counter it and augment it when it works in their favor. The fact that the Israelis and Saudis often work hand and glove to supervise the chaotic Middle East is one of the many contradictions that defines the general lunacy of the region. There’s no escaping this as long as oil is the primary source of energy in the world. Blaming Israel or the many supporters of Israel in the US is not going to alter this reality.

If American wants to get out of the Middle East, it need to divorce the House of Saud.

In Your Face Fellow Bloggers!

Doug Ross is out with his annual awards for blogs and sites that cater to the Right and guess who is in the top tier? That’s right, yours truly is on the list of Most Influential sites this year. I’m right in there with the heavy hitters of the New Right. I’m not sure I deserve it, but I’ll take it.

The top spot goes to The Conservative Treehouse and that seems like a good choice. I was never a reader until this year, but I check in frequently these days. That’s mostly because I hear it mentioned on the great Howie Carr show and John Derbyshire mentions it on occasion in his podcast. That means it has reached a very wide audience in a short period of time. It is a fine site that is worth checking out regularly

The section titled “The Biggest Losers” is spot on. I know more people who quit reading these sites than people who continue to read them. It’s not so much their hostility to Trump and Trump voters that got them in trouble. No, it is their unwillingness to stray too far from the Progressive porch. When BLM was running around killing cops, these sites spent more time telling us how much they loved Lincoln than analyzing what was happening. Kept men are interesting to no one.

Doug gives his own site an award and he should. You can do a lot worse than Bad Blue as a home page. He spends a lot of time each day linking to other blogs and news sites that would interest the sort of monsters who notice things and pay attention. Aggregation is one of those things that makes the Internet much more usable, which is why Drudge remains a top-10 site after all these years. When curious about what to think about I scan through what Doug has linked.

Back to me for a second. The site is averaging about 75K readers now and according to the traffic stats, link backs and so forth, the growth is steady. Facebook and Twitter drive a lot of traffic, but I turn up on google searches too so that means other sites are linking to the blog. If you enter “opposite rule of liberalism” into your nearest google machine, look at the results. I’ve tried this for other pithy phrases I’m fond of using and the results are similar.

I am, of course, very thankful for the recognition. It is always nice to have someone praise your labors. I’m also thankful for the readers and commenters who make the site infinitely more interesting. I have no plans to quit this year so my hope is the readership breaks the 100K mark in 2017. More important, support the media that supports you. Guys like Steve Sailer and John Derbyshire could use a few bucks so donate during their beg-a-thons. The sites Doug highlights could always use more readers so recommend them when warranted.

Thank You!