Cargo Cult Conservatism

Posted on June 16, 2022 by thezman

If you were to go back in time to the 1980’s, scoop up a group of conservatives and show them this post from the National Conservatives, those retro-conservatives would be very confused. For starters. they would be puzzled as to why such a thing was even necessary in 2022. Surely by this late date everyone would know the general framework of the American Right. More important, it would be the general framework of the nation, given the trajectory of the conservative movement.

Once the present situation in America was explained to them, they would no doubt want to know what went wrong? Was there a horrible calamity that derailed conservatives and sent the nation reeling into authoritarian degeneracy? Did the Left stage a revolt and seize the country by force? Did we lose the Cold War? At this point, the room would fall silent as none of the signatories of that post could provide a coherent explanation for why things have gone so horribly wrong.

Many of them have been participating in a long running debate about what fills the void left by the implosion of Buckley conservatism. A few camps have formed up around various concepts. They all agree that Buckley-style conservatism was a failure, but there has not been much discussion about why it failed. In fact, they seem to think Buckley conservatism was fine, as they make clear in that document. Again, everything there was baseline conservatism in the 1980’s.

Those 1980’s conservatives would also be a bit puzzled by the names. Once they got their bearings, they would quickly figure out that many of their favorite conservatives in the 1980’s did not live to see 2022. New voices would have come along to fill those spots, but surely some would have made it. Which of these names are taking up the banner once held by Sam Francis, Pat Buchanan and Paul Gottfried? It seems like those guys were right about the direction of conservatism.

Imagine the shock when it was explained that those guys were not only purged from conservatism but pre-emptively purged from the new conservatism. Sure, this statement of principles is being posted in a magazine founded by Pat Buchanan, but not a single name on that list would want his name in the same sentence with Buchanan or any of the other guys from the 1980’s who turned out to be right. In fact, many have denounced the old paleos as immoral.

There is something to be said for getting back to basics in a time of stress, so this statement of principles makes sense for a group that largely seems dedicated to going back in time and starting over. By embracing what was standard issue conservatism in the 1980’s, they are hoping to reset the movement and install themselves at the top, with all the benefits that come from it. That means their central claim is that real conservatism has never been tried.

It is in that document, however, where you see the seeds of failure within the old Buckley-style conservatism. The first principle starts with “We wish to see a world of independent nations.” It finishes with “We endorse a policy of rearmament by independent self-governing nations and of defensive alliances whose purpose is to deter imperialist aggression.” The fact that this obvious contradiction was not obvious to the signers suggests they have leaned nothing from failure.

As George Washington explained in his farewell address, a nation cannot remain independent when it forms alliances with other nations. As history makes clear, when you agree to defend Poland from its enemies, you inherit the enemies of Poland, even if that contradicts the interests of your people. Washington correctly argued that “inveterate antipathies against particular nations, and passionate attachments for others, should be excluded.”

One can maybe debate this point within the larger debate about conservatism, but there is no debating the bit about deterring imperialist aggression. The sole source of imperialist aggression in the world today is the Global American Empire. By the reasoning in that first principle, the world should unite in opposition to the United States and perhaps even the collective West. You can be certain that not a single signer of that document would agree with that point.

Of course, it is the last point where they give the game away. This is surely the contribution of Yoram Hazony, who seems to lack even a high school level understanding of human biology. Instead, he just accepts the far-left claim that race is skin color and that biology is a social construct. Whether he really believes this is open to debate, given that he is an Israeli, but he makes a point of denying biological reality whenever the opportunity arises.

That last principle is worse than ignorant, it is traitorous. These are the guys claiming to defend the tradition, history and culture of the people. At the same time, they insist “The history of racialist ideology and oppression and its ongoing consequences require us to emphasize this truth.” Really? Who are those racist oppressors? Is it the guys whose statues lie in ruins? Is it the guys lying in graves desecrated by left-wing goons bellowing about the history of racialist ideology?

This gets to the failure of Buckley-style conservatism. At some point, Buckley figured out that he could enjoy the lifestyle he deserved by conceding the moral high ground to the people he claimed to oppose. Once he conceded that basic point, he condemned himself to a lifetime of performing as a useful idiot for the benefit of his masters on the Left and he condemned his movement to failure. There is simply no room for conservative ends within the left-wing moral framework.

A nation is a people, not a collection of abstract concepts. Within a nation there can be a fair degree of variance, but relative to other people the differences are tiny from the perspective of outsiders. To a Swede, a Finnish atheist is no different than a Finnish Lutheran or Finnish pagan. They are just Finns. On the other hand, no one, not even these egalitarian nationalists, would confuse a Finn for an African. That is because they are obviously different people.

Finally, what this and the larger discussion within the group debating the future conservatism reveals is they have learned nothing. That is because they have not bothered to think about why conservatism failed. Perhaps the danger that lies in such a project is the issue. Maybe they lack the intellectual firepower to tackle it. Either way, repeating the slogans of the past, hoping to recreate the past is called a cargo cult, not a serious political movement.

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End Phase Phenomena

Posted on June 15, 2022 by thezman

A cause that has any hope of surviving past the novelty phase will demand from its followers a sacrifice to show commitment. Criminal organizations are the simplest and easiest examples of this phenomenon. A street gang will require all of the members to get a tattoo, for example, to show their commitment. More mature criminal organizations will require new members to commit crimes in front of other members to prove their willingness to sacrifice for the gang.

In more sophisticated movements, the adherents will perform rituals or make symbolic sacrifices to show their commitment to the cause. It has not been unusual for cultural movements to adopt a style of dress. The macaroni style, for example, was an extreme expression of commitment to a cultural and social class. In this age, the sexual subcultures often embrace clothing styles like the “lesbian kit” to set themselves apart and show commitment to the subculture.

Whether it is getting the gang symbols tattooed on your face, wearing an unofficial uniform or committing yourself to a way of life, every cause requires something from the members as a payment. This sacrifice is not only a signal to the other members, showing their shared commitment to the cause, it is also a form of advertising to potential members of the cause. More important, it adds a sense of value to membership in the cause. The members feel committed.

The people displaying their pronouns in their e-mail signature and social media profile are signaling their commitment by sacrificing some portion of their dignity. There is a noticeable discomfort in these people then they say “I go by they/them” because they know what they are doing is foolish. It is as ridiculous as wearing a flowerpot on their head, but that is the point of the ritual. They are making a fool of themselves in public as a way to show their commitment to this cause.

The same thing is at play when white people take to the stage and begin hectoring their fellow white people about racism. It is patently absurd for a white person to stand up and condemn their ancestors for being white or for the crime of having created a culture that is now called white supremacy. Some of what drives this is mental illness, for sure, and some is the “my fellow white people” act. Much of it, however, is the need for the adherent to show their faith by committing an act of lunacy.

For example, look at this post¹ from a gym teacher about the racists power structures at the local swimming hole. His profile makes clear that he is a fully enculturated bug man, but as a white male, he is at the bottom of the woke subculture. His post about how the man is conspiring to keep black people from swimming is a sacrifice of whatever dignity he retains as a man. The point is not to change minds, but to show others in the subculture that he is fully committed to the cause.

A key part of the cult ritual is the irrationality of it. The systemic racism claims are just modern magic. There is no rational or empirical argument behind these claims, but that is what makes them appealing. You just have to accept them on faith. That is the sole appeal of the trans business. One has to strip themselves of all sense of self in order to claim that humans are assigned sex at birth. The ridiculousness of the claim does not allow for even a shred of dignity.

This is why we are being flooded with a wave of public testimonies about how the trans community is ignored in some way. In this post, we learn that the guitar makers have ignored transgenders and women. The fact that the sex of the performer has no bearing on the instrument or that there is no such thing as transgender is central to the sense of sacrifice the writer feels when posting this. In another age, he would have been writing about elves and sprites with the same conviction.

Part of this self-degrading ritual within the identity subculture is the attention these humiliation rituals gain the adherent. It is why we have gone from publicly tolerating homosexuals to take your child to a drag show events. Each step has been more bizarre and degrading than the next. Post-Marx culturalism has been a weird race to the sea that has finally led to mothers offering up their children to predators. The believers seek the ultimate sacrifice they can make to the cause.

How much the shot callers on what we now call the Left understand the forces they are manipulating is hard to know. It is not particularly clear that the trend setters in this cult understand the intellectual history behind their movement. They have simply embraced the primary modes of thought and let nature take its course. Robin DiAngelo could simply be a fame seeking huckster who landed on the right cause at the right time to make money from a movement desperate for a purpose.

Despite this cult’s efforts to tart up their thing with jargon from the sciences, what drives it is a need to vanish into a cause. The appeal to the adherent is the need to sluff off the identity of the adherent and take on the identity of the group. Self-loathing has always been at the heart of mass movements. Christianity explicitly embraced this reality with the concept of sin. To be a Christian is to not only accept the teachings of the particular sect, but to accept and embrace your sinfulness.

These modern identity cults are less sophisticated, feeding on a population desperate for immediate gratification and lacking the intellectual capacity for high culture organizational structures like mainstream Christianity. This is why the rituals are so primitive and crude. The barrier for entry is low, so the people flooding into this scene tend to reflect that standard. It is also no surprise that they have arrived at the cusp of child sacrifice. Spilling innocent blood appeals to the savage mind.

Counterintuitively, these spasms of ritualized self-degradation may be a positive sign that the culture is finally ready to free itself. For generations, American culture has been locked into cultural norms so ingrained in the land that the present culture has not been able to evolve to fit the times. The energy of each generation is channeled into civic nationalism, which is throwing seeds among the stones. American culture has been a zombie shuffling along with no real purpose.

Oswald Spengler used the term pseudomorphosis to describe “an older alien Culture lies so massively over the land that a young Culture, born in this land, cannot get its breath and fails not only to achieve pure and specific expression-forms, but even to develop fully its own self-consciousness.” This is most obvious in the obsession with the Founders you see on the Right. All of the energy of youth for building something new is channeled into ideas from men who wore powdered wigs.

What left-wing identity politics is signaling is the old culture finally losing its grip on the present, which is why these maladapted mutants can easily organize in public and attack the symbols of the old culture. The subculture is not a replacement for the old culture or a genuine culture in itself. Instead, it is a cancer on the old culture, slowly eating away at its organs. Coinciding with it is the swelling hatred by the young culture ready to break free from the old body.

There is the other part of Spengler’s concept. At some point, after enough pseudomorphs have been created, the next flowering of cultural energy is fueled by a hatred for the old forms. In the present age, it is those asking how useful is that old civic nationalism rooted on the culture of the Founders when it has led to suburban mothers sacrificing their children to groomers? Perhaps it is now time to shed the old forms and think about creating a new model appropriate to this age.

Of course, everything comes to an end. The current spasms of degeneracy could simply be the death throws of a dying West. What comes next may not be a new West, but a return to the barbarism that has been the standard for humanity. What gets left behind is a reminder that a people once thrived and reached for the heavens. Like all prior civilizations, this one will end in rubble. What will remain is the high achievements along with the mystery as to why it failed.

¹https://findmyguitar.com/blog/female-signature-guitars

The Ukrainian Disaster

Posted on June 14, 2022 by thezman

In 9 AD the Roman general Publius Quinctilius Varus led three legions across the Rhine to teach the barbarians a lesson. In what the history books call the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the barbarians ambushed the Romans and wiped them out in what the Romans would call the Varian disaster. This event ended the expansion of the Roman empire into what is now Germany. Other than some retaliatory excursions, the Rhine became the de facto boundary for the empire.

We may be seeing another Varian disaster in Ukraine. This time the empire moving east is the Global American Empire and the battle is the Donbas. This is the disputed region in the east of Ukraine that has historically identified with Russia. They revolted against Kiev in 2014 after the American State Department toppled the Ukrainian government and installed a puppet regime hostile to Russia. The resulting civil war in the east and the south culminated in the Russian invasion in January.

A few months ago, every cable shout show host was festooned with Ukraine flags while spinning tales about the evil Russians. Ukraine was who we were as a people, willing to bear any burden to defend democracy. Every expert assured us that the Russians would revolt against their evil dictator and the Russian army would quit in the field, once they knew the Twitter mob had cancelled them. It was just a matter of time before Zelensky was taking selfies in Moscow.

Like the Battle of the Teutoburg Forest, the Battle of the Donbas is shaping up to be a humiliating defeat for the empire. The Ukrainian army is now trapped in various pockets with limited supplies and no chance to escape. The Russians have maneuvered them into a position where their artillery, what little remains cannot reach the Russians, but the Russian artillery can reach them. The Russians have a lot of artillery and they are incredibly good at the use of it in siege warfare.

No one knows for sure, but reliable estimates going back a couple of months suggest the Ukrainians have been losing up to one thousand troops a day. These estimates are based on known figures for Ukrainian units at various places like Mariupol and then comparing them to areas that have come under Russian control. The Zelensky government has been slowly raising its own estimates, suggesting they are losing close to five hundred troops per day.

Until the war ends and there is an official effort to count the dead, we are left to guess about the casualties, but what is clear is that this is a one-sided war. For reasons no one has yet to explain, the West instructed the Ukrainians to take up positions in fortified cities rather than go out to meet the Russian army in the field. The Ukrainians had more battle ready troops at the start of the war than the Russians and they had the advantage of working on their own territory.

Choosing to fight a defensive war allowed the Russians to maneuver the Ukrainians into pockets around the east and south. They could then pick and choose their targets, bringing superior fire power to destroy the defenders. The West poured in weapons but it turns out that anti-tank weapons are of little use against an artillery barrage from over the horizon. Once the Russians sorted out what the Ukrainians were doing, it has been a turkey shoot since the spring.

Just from a military perspective, this is a disaster. War doctrine says that an invader needs a significant advantage in men and material. Because of the blunders of the Ukraine’s Western handlers, the smaller invading force will end up obliterating the larger defending force. It is not just about taking territory. The Russians are systematically destroying the army so that it can never regroup. This will be one of those events that military historians study for years to come.

The military aspect is the smallest part of this unfolding disaster. The absurd triumphalism of last winter has now given way to panic in Europe. Their economy is in an inflationary spiral that is only going to get worse. The sanctions on Russia have wreaked havoc on the EU economy. Energy prices are ratcheting up and serious food shortages are on the horizon. Compounding it is the fact that the sanctions are just starting to bite. Things will get worse by autumn.

The scene is not much better in the United States. The added element is that the people in charge look like the day room at a rest home. The economic woes have highlighted the fact that the people in charge are old and stupid. People will suffer bad economic time if they assume the ruling class has people who will eventually rise up and put things in good order. What the unfolding economic crisis is doing in America is revealing the dearth of competence in the ruling class.

Things are about to get worse. At some point this summer, the Ukrainian army will cease to exist as a practical matter. Observers think the Russians will wrap up the Donbas in the coming weeks. They will have achieved most of their goals when the conflict started plus a couple of extra items. They will be free to take control of Odessa, thus turning Ukraine into a landlocked country. It will also be an economic basket case entirely dependent on Western aid.

In other words, the West will be saddled with an exceptionally large humanitarian disaster at a time when the West is facing terrible economic conditions. The West may have no choice but to sit down with the Russians to hammer out a solution. On top of the loss in the field and the economic debacle, Western leaders will have to endure the humiliation of shaking hands with Putin. Whatever credibility Western leaders have left will evaporate at that moment.

In the grand scheme of things, the Varian disaster was more of an inflection point than a disaster for the empire. It was the point at which the empire shifted from expansionism to a defensive posture. For the Global American Empire, the Ukraine disaster may be much more consequential. This debacle undermines the fundamental logic of the global American system. In time it could be the point where the Cold War finally ends for the West and a great retrenchment begins.

Monetary Madness

Posted on June 13, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Monday Taki post is up in the usual place. It is a different take on the post here today. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door for those who are in need of audio stimulation. There is a post on the war as well.

A half century ago, President Richard Nixon closed the gold window. American citizens had been prohibited from owning gold since the early 1930s, but foreign governments could exchange their extra dollars for gold. France tried to make a run on the US gold supply so the American government was forced to break the final link between the dollar and gold, thus ending the gold standard. This set off a chain of events that eventually led to what has been known as the petro-dollar.

Nixon was forced to break the gold peg because it was a fiction. In theory, the amount of dollars in circulation reflected the amount of gold held by the United States, but in reality, the American government had been printing as much money as they thought they needed. The reason the French were racing to redeem their dollars for gold was that they knew the peg was a lie. Once that lie was fully understood, a run on the dollar and global monetary collapse was possible.

It is a good lesson about the reality of the gold standard. It was an example of the old adage that if you need a gold standard to control a corrupt government, that government is corrupt enough to find a way around it. Much of the good living of the post-war years was due to expansionary monetary policy. The cost of that was paid in the 1970’s with spasm of inflation and finally a recession in the early 1980’s that supposedly put monetary policy back in order.

The thing is the money printing after the war was not a problem because those extra dollars could find a home in the expanding American economy and most especially in the rebuilding of Europe. The dollar was the world reserve currency so everyone in the world was willing to take dollars for payment. Europe was in rubble and needed rebuilding, so the demand for dollars seemed endless. As a result, the United States supplied as many dollars as was needed.

The monetary crisis on the 1970’s was due in large part to the fact that Europe had recovered and no longer needed a flood of dollars. The trouble was the American economy was dependent on the expansion of the money supply. The subsequent negotiations that ended with the petro-dollar and the Louvre Accords was supposed to solve this problem. Instead, it merely shifted the target for extra dollars to low labor cost areas like Asia and South America.

That has been the story of the last thirty years. American manufacturing, technology and services have been shifted to low cost areas. The extra dollars followed them in the form of investment, thus keeping inflation in the United States low. The dollars not soaked up in these countries came back in the form of investments in treasuries, equities and real estate. The system let the government expand and asset values to mushroom, without creating retail inflation.

Like the 1970’s, the place for the extra dollars is drying up. That means they are flowing back in the form of inflation. China is no longer the cheap labor economy desperate for investments, so they are not soaking up extra dollars. In fact, China is a maturing economy determined to shift from exports to domestic consumption. It is also not willing to accept inflation from the United States and Europe. The result is too much money in the West creating an inflation spiral.

It is not the only reason for inflation. Stimulus policies aimed at sustaining the standard of living against economic reality are a big driver. The supply chain crisis that is the result of decades of outsourcing is another driver. Then you have the berserk response to the crisis in Ukraine, which is creating havoc in fuel and energy markets. In a complex system like the global economy, there are always many contributing factors to the things we see in the marketplace.

One way to look at the current economic crisis is as a consequence of the Second World War and the subsequent Cold War. The half century long state of war in the United States and the West resulted in an economic system designed to wage global war without operating a war economy. When the war ended, there was no great demobilization and normalization. The cost was seen as too high, so American leaders found what looked like a cheap way to avoid it.

Unlike the 1970’s, the short term solution for the present inflation is not a contraction of the money supply. The Federal Reserve is carrying trillions of assets on its balance sheet which it has to unload. It will now be selling those into a rapidly declining market, as asset prices have been artificially sustained with the combination of free credit and the flows of extra dollars into assets. The Fed could easily set off a collapse in asset values and a global credit crisis if it is not cautious.

The biggest problem facing the country is the lack of competence in the decision making areas of the ruling class. The economic side is dominated by monetarists, who think an economy is just the sum of it money. The political class is full of carny weirdos selected for their entertainment value. Of course, the senior generation has been conditioned to seek good times, rather than make sacrifices. America lacks the human capital to tackle the problems we face.

The situation facing America is not unlike that which faced the Russians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. The cost of terrible governance over seventy years came home all at once and they lacked the political leaders to manage it. The Russians not only faced an economic catastrophe, but a political one as well. They went through a decade of chaos followed by a decade of slow recovery. That is what most likely awaits the United States and its European dependents.

Getting Preachy

Posted on June 10, 2022 by thezman

In the biological sciences, there are a group of measures used to test the health of an ecosystem or the health of a species. In the case of a species, estimates of the population are usually the starting place. Then it may be the population density of the species, which can determine if the pressure is the loss of habitat or some unknown environmental factor that is lowering fertility. It is assumed that a declining population relative to territory is always a sign of crisis in a species.

Of course, these measures are never used to test the health of European populations because that is a conspiracy theory. Everyone knows that all you have to do is utter the abracadabra phrase “conspiracy theory” and all of the related things that are easily observed can no longer be mentioned. Putting that aside, the same measures we use to test the health of a species could be applied to humans. In fact, we could have much more granular and accurate measures.

For example, we cannot know the total fertility rate of a frog species, but we do know the fertility rate of humans. In fact, we could break it down by race and ethnicity if we really wanted to know the answer. We know that the population of European people, relative to other populations has declined significantly over the last century. We also know the population density of Europeans in Western lands, relative to other races has also declined significantly over the last century.

Unlike frogs or bats, humans have quantifiable social habits that are tied to the health and wellbeing of the people. Church attendance in the West, for example, correlates with fertility rates. Across the West, church attendance has been in decline and along with it the overall fertility rate. In parts of Europe, churches are now museums used at Christmas and Easter for largely secular ceremonies. In the United States, the ruling classes mocks and ridicules Christians.

This overall drop in church attendance tracks with the growing social unrest and the alarming decline is social trust. Put another way, a healthy society can have a good government or a bad government, but it can thrive because it has an abundance of social capital as measured by trust its primary social institution. On the other hand, a society in crisis has declining social capital. Trust in the organic institutions like the church, declines, reflecting the collapse in social trust.

There is a lot here, but the one thing we can know for certain is that Christianity in the West is in crisis. That crisis seems to parallel the crisis facing European people, which suggests there is a connection. Maybe the decline in faith is a symptom of the overall decline in the people or maybe all of these measures have a common cause that lies upstream from the culture. The “who decides’ answer is controlling the “how things are decided” side of the formula.

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Integral Thoughts

Posted on June 9, 2022 by thezman

Integralism is the principle that the Catholic faith should be the basis of public law and public policy within civil society. As with everything political, there is debate as to when the concept was born, but modern integralism as a genuine political movement has its roots in the 19th century. For obvious reasons it has been limited to those countries with a large enough Catholic population to make integralism plausible. That means the Latin countries of Europe like Spain and Italy.

Over the last decade, integralism has become a topic of conversation, largely due to Harvard Law professor Adrian Vermeule. He is a critic of modern liberal democracy as well as the conservative movement that operates within it. His main work is in the area of administrative law, but his embrace of the integralism concept has attracted others from the traditionalist wing of conservatism. Matthew Schmitz, Sohrab Ahmari, and Patrick Deneen are the notable converts.

In fairness, what is forming up to be American integralism is not what Archbishop Marcel Lefebvre had in mind at the Second Vatican Council. The thinkers and writers coming to the integralism banner share Vermeule’s disgust with modern conservatism and its role in enabling progressivism. Sohrab Ahmari called it David Frenchism, a performative traditionalism that is weak and conciliatory toward the Left. They imagine themselves creating a new Right similar to old European Right.

To be fair there are some serious people within this space thinking hard about how to re-center politics within the Western Christian tradition. To be even more fair, there is no chance of this happening, at least not peacefully. Liberal democracy comes with its own religion and moral code. It cannot tolerate alternative morale codes and it cannot exist within the moral framework of Catholicism. We will need a revolution to go from liberal democracy to some new moral order.

Therein lies the main problem with all modern political philosophy. It assumes a blank sheet of paper where the deciders get to decide the type of society they will create and impose on the world. They spend their time working out the political theory and then imagine how it would work, assuming a fresh start. It is the game of imagining your dream home in some idyllic setting. The plausibility of the house and the process to make it happen is just assumed.

Libertarianism is probably the most egregious example. As Hans Hermann-Hoppe explained many years ago, it is not possible to go from modern societies to a libertarian society within the constraints of libertarian theory. Further, there is no way to maintain a libertarian society, assuming you solve that first problem. Despite this obvious reality, libertarianism persists. The adherents are content to imagine themselves living in the Shire with the other hobbits of libertarianism.

Integralism has a strong whiff of this same sort of escapism. Instead of being yeoman farmers trading sheep for shoes, the integralists imagine themselves riding out to face the black knight of liberal democracy in defense of the faith. There is not much thought given to how we could turn back the clock. It is just assumed that something will happen, the current order will fail and this alternative will become the obvious alterative to the crisis of liberal democracy.

In fairness to the libertarians and integralists, they are not outside the bounds of normal political debate with this approach. The post-Marx culturalists who now dominate the American Left believe they just have to destroy the current cultural institutions and from the rubble will rise the egalitarian paradise. The old civic nationalists believe we just need a blank piece of vellum onto which we can copy down the original constitution and America becomes a republic again.

A curious feature of this age is that almost all political discussion operates in the world of forms to the exclusion of practical concerns. This is true in outsider politics on the Right, which has largely been centered on re-fighting the 20th century. Some want to re-fight the 1960’s while others want to re-fight the 1930’s. There is little self-examination about why those fights were lost the first time and no consideration for how re-fighting those old failures will change anything in the present.

The fact that this sort of idealism is popular on the Right suggests that maybe right-wing political theory in a liberal democracy is not supposed to be a serious counter to the prevailing orthodoxy but is a safe harbor for dissent. Historically, the Right exists as a counter to ideology, not as an alternative ideology. The man of the Right is the one throwing cold water on the dream of immanentizing the Eschaton. He focuses on what is possible, not what is desirable.

This is where integralism can contribute. All human societies need a source of authority to justify the rules of the society. “This is how we do things” must be supported with “this is why we do things this way.” Catholicism fused tradition with the supernatural to provide a basis of authority for medieval Europe. The Roman empire had to rely on force to impose its will abroad, but at home it was the traditions and customs of the Roman people that provided the moral authority.

Every human society has an authority. In theory, the authority in a liberal democracy is the will of the people, the consent of the governed. In reality, fifty percent plus one is a fickle master and easily exploited by unscrupulous actors. The crisis in the modern West is rooted in the fact that the system is easily manipulated to profit a ruling class that operates in the shadows of the political order. The gods of democracy are tricksters who revel in the frustrations of the people.

An alternative to liberal democracy must first deal with this reality and propose an alternative authority upon which to base the moral order. That new authority is unlikely to be medieval Christianity, but it will have to be something similar. Some combination of nature, nature’s God and the civilizational interest of the West will be the authority for a new political model. Perhaps some form of techno-feudalism is in the cards for what comes after liberal democracy is thrown into the dustbin of history.

Of course, this means moving from the safe harbor of political escapism into the world of practical solutions to present problems. The real damage done to the American constitutional order has been the deification of the Founders. Their ideas have been turned into holy writ. In reality, the Constitution was a practical solution to present problems hammered out by practical men. It was a political compromise, not the foundation for a political cult.

Whatever comes next will have to start from the same basis. What sort of civil society is possible in the world as it is demographically, technologically and materially? Is a civil society even possible under present conditions? If not, then what must be done, no matter how unpleasant, in order to create the conditions that will make a civil society possible in a post-democracy world? Whatever comes next will not be the work of dreamers, but of practical men solving practical problems.

That is the value in boutique political movements like integralism. It is not a solution, but rather the starting point for a necessary critique of the current order. From that will flow the necessary debate to conjure a plausible alternative. Integralism can be a hammer to crack the walls of modern conservatism, which in turn exposes the soft realty of the liberal democratic order it protects. Integral to an alternative moral philosophy is a rational critique of the present order.

Cloud People Blues

Posted on June 8, 2022 by thezman

Note: There is a new post up behind the green door on nationalism. It is a response, of sorts, to this podcast on AmRen. For those looking for audio stimulation, I did an interview with a libertarian. May God save us.

The late Joe Sobran famously said, “In their mating and migratory habits, liberals are indistinguishable from members of the Ku Klux Klan.” Less famous writers have often pointed out that the American Left talks like MLK but lives like the KKK. Without exception, the white people staking out fashionable positions on race do so from as far away from black people as possible. Antifascists love Portland Oregon because it is one of the least diverse cities in the county.

This was always true. Sobran made his observation about the American Left forty years ago when the country was still 85% white. Thirty million South American tourists later and the Left may be even more sensitive this reality. On the one hand, they have become violent in their racial politics, but also extremely sensitive to the reality of race in the daily lives. Forty years ago, white race hustlers actually went to the ghetto once in a while, but now they stay as far away as possible.

This heightened contradiction could prove to be a fatal flaw for the sorts of race politics the political class has enjoyed for decades. The California elections show that left-wing white people have zero tolerance for their preferred race policies. San Francisco voters removed far-left District Attorney Chesa Boudin from office. The reason was he let black criminals loose on the city in the name of racial vengeance. It turns out that left-wing voters do not want black guys robbing their local Walgreens.

In many respects, the American Left is the reactionary wing of the old ruling majority of the country that is slowly fading away. Left-wing strongholds tend to be wealthy, orderly places where the managerial class enjoy a white nationalist lifestyle. The exceptions are the carve out areas for minority candidates. They will vote overwhelming for Democrats, often resulting in comic figures like Maxine Waters. The Mexican version of this tends to be more sober minded, but still firmly Democratic.

The white reactionary enclaves, like many of the areas in San Francisco, are mostly about maintaining the old 1950’s lifestyle. The people there want safe streets, good schools, fashionable living and they are willing to pay for it. In addition to the high cost of living comes a tolerance for boutique ideas. The social contract on the Left is they support novel political ideas, as long as they get to live like the people in the hit television show Madman, set in the 1950’s.

This is not just an issue for the Left. Most conservative politicians and leaders live in fashionably liberal areas like Washington and Northern Virginia. The deal Conservative Inc. struck long ago was that the middle-class white suburbs get left alone, in exchange for going along with the egalitarian fantasies about race. They get to scold their voters about race while making sure to never make the mistake of getting off on the Martin Luther King Boulevard exit to get gas.

The problem with this old arrangement is the digital world is a smaller place, so it is really hard to hide from reality. In the 1960’s, these crackpot ideas about crime took a decade to sink their teeth into the culture. America in 1968 was still fairly good for most people but by 1978 the cost of fashionable politics was too high. In this age, the cost started hitting home hours after someone explained the new bail reform policy in the Facebook group for the smash and grab community.

There is another twist to this. The effort to racialize the Hispanic vote is not going the way the politicians expected. It turns out that Mexicans are not willing to think of themselves as black or share politics with blacks. The whole “people of color” thing is not working with Hispanics, especially Mexicans. Unlike blacks, this group wants tangible results, especially regarding working class issues. They vote like the old white working class, that the modern Left still enjoys mocking.

It is not all puppies and sunshine for Conservative Inc. with regards to the changing nature of the Hispanic vote. The happy talk about them being “natural conservatives” was right but using the old definition of conservative. That is, someone who wants to live in an orderly white neighborhood where a man can raise a family. They are not interested in waging pointless wars of choice, handing out favors to corporate donors and treating the middle-class like a dumping ground.

It is turning out that the old consensus where the managerial class gets to live like it is the 1950’s and the rest of us have to embrace the post-racial future is not going to hold up for much longer. When the soulless bugmen of San Francisco are jumping off the racial vengeance ship, the consensus is untenable. Politics, regardless of the system, must be about fixing potholes and controlling the criminal element. A system that cannot do the basics is not going to last very long.

None of this should be taken to mean the end is near. Both parties are relics of a bygone era run by fossils with no connection to reality. Most white people have no representation in politics. Hispanics appear to be on the same path. These groups will vote for whoever seems to represent their interests, but it will not matter as both parties are controlled by the usual suspects. In the short run it means more Marjorie Taylor Green type characters and a rise in general frustration.

Friends And Enemies

Posted on June 7, 2022 by thezman

Imagine you are an advisor to a politician facing a difficult re-election campaign in the fall and you are tasked with planning a campaign strategy. If you are a rational person, you would first start with the polling. What are the big issues on the minds of the voters and how do they rank your guy on those items. The best way to get back in good standing with the voters is to show them you care about their issues and most important, you agree with them on those issues.

Now, this is easier said than done. If the top issue with voters is energy prices and your guy has spent his career talking about the need to ratchet up energy costs in order to please Gaia, then you have a problem. The voters are stupid, but there are limits and your guy is a true believer. In fact, you worship Gaia as well, so the idea of speaking against the climate cult is a bridge too far. Still, you have to figure out a way to convince people that Gaia cares about gas prices too.

This is the problem with impractical politics. When public policy is about putting two cars in every garage and a chicken in every pot, politicians are free to acknowledge error and change gears to chase the voters. In happier times, politicians were the guys chasing the parade, hoping to get to the front so they could pretend to be the parade leaders come election time. That can only work when the only thing you believe in is being on the good side of the voters.

When politics is dominated by true believers, then the range of choices is limited to what ideology permits. Even worse, disconfirmation, those bits of reality that contradict the tenets of the faith, must be seen as a plot against the faith. After all, to acknowledge reality would require questioning the ideology. Instead, the ideologue is required to attack reality as a challenge to the faith. Politics for the ideologue is reduced to the friend-enemy distinction.

We see this today. The number one issue for voters is gas prices. The ruling class likes high gas prices because it pleases Gaia. They also like it because it harms the Dirt People, which reinforces the friend-enemy distinction. The Cloud People are largely defined by not being Dirt People. It is why administration officials start giggling whenever they are asked about gas prices. It is also why they cannot pivot to take the side of the voters and promote policies that lower gas prices.

Getting back your job of promoting a candidate in bad odor with the voters, this ideological trap is a problem. If the reason the voters are unhappy is an issue like gas prices and your guy is giggling about it in public, then there is no way you can fix his problems on that issue. That only leaves one option. You have to find some other issues on which your guy is good with the voters. With the right “messaging” you can distract the voters from the bad stuff and focus on good stuff.

This works if there are issues where your guy’s ideology is popular with the voters or issues outside of ideology. Right there is the problem. Since ideology is political, everything political will fall within ideology. In other words, there is nothing within the political space that falls outside of ideology. You could have your guy campaign on the latest sports scores, but the voters would just assume he lost his mind. They expect him to talk about the political. That is the point of politics.

Since the Cloud People define themselves in opposition to the Dirt People, it means their ideological position on all things political must in someway be in opposition to the very nature of the Dirt People. When hunting around for issues to distract the voters, your guy will inevitable stake out a position that separates him from the Dirt People as a matter of ideological identity. Even when trying to distract the voters you run the risk of alienating them on these secondary issues.

We see this with the current frenzy of gun grabbing in Washington. The Biden people put out word that they were going to distract people from the economy by grifting on the latest school shooting. The problem is the gun grabbers are consumed with spiting normal people who support gun ownership. Instead of the issue being a way to distract voters, it is a reminder that the people in charge hate the voters. The distraction quickly becomes a reminder of why people are unhappy.

The upcoming January 6 show trials are another example. The whole point of this thing is to remind the Dirt People of their place. They could sell some of this right after it happened, as most Dirt People are in favor of order. At this point, when shelves are empty and gas prices are soaring, the Dirt People are starting to wonder if the QAnon Shaman was onto something. This show trial is exactly what the party should be avoiding, but they cannot stop themselves. It is who they are.

Of course, from your perspective as an advisor, none of this matters. If your guy loses in the fall, you will still have a job. You may not be working for an office holder, but you will catch on at a think tank or cable channel. Politicians are just actors hired for the role and the supply is endless. You just have to remember who your friends are and who are the enemies and you will be just fine. After all, friends take care of friends who never forget who is the real enemy.

This is the crisis in American politics. The primary thrust of American politics is defending the prevailing orthodoxy from challenges. This reinforces class identity and that friend-enemy distinction. As a result, public policy is about maintaining the great divide between the Cloud People and the Dirty People in order to maintain ideological and class solidarity. This informs all of their actions. Pragmatic solutions to current problems are seen as apostacy.

Quitting The Circus

Posted on June 6, 2022 by thezman

Note: The Taki post is up. This week the subject is another take on the subject of today’s post, just from a more serious angle. The Sunday Thoughts podcast is up behind the green door for subscribers.

Politics in a democracy not only devolve into theater, but they select for the sorts of people attracted to the theatrical. The reason for this is democracy is about winning the crowd, which rewards those best at winning the crowd. Inevitably, elite interests will invest in those who show the ability to stand in front the mobs and win them over without making too many promises. After all, if you need to bribe the crowd then why bother investing in a guy trying to win the crowd?

Of course, the best stage performers are the people who are extraordinarily high in extraversion and very low in agreeableness. This person loves being the center of attention and likes meeting new people. A good actor can light up a room full of strangers and come away energized by it. He will also be very low in empathy and see others as either competitors of victims to be exploited. Great performers tend to be horrible people when away from the stage.

This is what you get with democracy. It is rule by the sorts of people who run away to the circus because it is their best shot at a happy life. Liberal democracy is supposed to correct the defects of democracy by bounding the choices of the mob with a set of principles like equality before the law. In reality, these principle are turned into props by the performers to add moral weight to their performance. They are no long winning the crowd, but instead are leading them on a moral crusade.

This is why morality in a liberal democracy gets turned on its head. Society’s least principled people are elevated to the top of the moral hierarchy. Carny folk are made into the priestly class. Naturally, they warp public morality into that which best serves their interests as performers. Like all carny acts, the political class in a liberal democracy is always on the look out for a new act and new bit. The highest moral good becomes the new act that brings in the crowds.

This is why American politics is so shallow. The current gun grabbing show being staged in Washington is a good example. Like a reboot of a comic book franchise, the gun grabbers are performing fan service. They know the slobbering idiots will show up with their t-shirts and home made costumes. It is a low cost way for the performers to get a big audience. The only point of the gun grabbing act is to please this narrow market sector so the performers can get a quick payday.

One of the ironies of this system is the biggest clowns come from the wealthiest and poorest congressional sectors. The obvious example is Nancy Pelosi, who represents one of the richest and most progressive districts in the country. The people who live in her district are rich and presumably have serious responsibilities. Yet, in their politics they go for the most ridiculous and absurd. Their politics are not about serious matters, but about the gestures that control bourgeois life.

That is what liberal democracy becomes at it zenith. It is a form of escapism for the class wealthy enough to escape the consequences of bad government, but not so wealthy as to enter the ruling elite. These are the people who promote pointless nonsense like climate change and gun grabbing campaigns. At the same time, they refuse to even think about practical problems that haunt society. Fixing roads is for poor people, while fixing the climate is for special people.

Another side effect of liberal democracy is the race for novelty. In the 1990’s, the luxury opinion was homosexual marriage. That was the thing bourgeois simpletons waved around to signal their aloofness from practical politics. Since anyone can acquire these luxury opinions, we have quickly moved along the clown line to the point where major corporations are celebrating child molesters. When novelty is the highest moral principle, who has time to worry about the kids?

Some will argue that the circus of politics is an intentional creation by the usual suspects to conceal their grip on society. That is a form of escapism, like all conspiracy theories, to avoid the reality of liberal democracy. Elites do run society, but they do not run the circus of democracy. Their only role is to make sure the actors do not accidentally shoot one another with a prop gun. Otherwise, they let these frivolous freaks do their shows and keep the masses occupied.

This is the beauty of the system, when you think about it. If the only way to fix the system is to get a bigger crowd, that means all opposition must select for greater novelty and narcissism than what is currently on stage. The winners of every election end up with a bigger clown than what was on stage. The losers get the new clown as well, which means no matter the result, you get stuck with a clown. Elections are always heads they win, tails you lose.

Just as the solution to a drinking problem is not more drinking, the solution to democracy is never more democracy. The drunk can only begin to recover himself by quitting the booze. Similarly, a people can only recover from the rule by carny trash by exiting the theater of democracy. Usually, the drunk has to hit rock bottom before he has the will to conquer his addiction. Most likely the same applies to democracy. America will have to hit rock bottom before it abandons the clown-ocracy.

A Joyous Return

Posted on June 3, 2022 by thezman

Distraction is a primary tool of politics, used most often by politicians who are in trouble with their voters for some reason. Boris Johnson is in trouble for partying like a rock star during the Covid lockdowns, so he never shuts up about Ukraine. This has the added benefit of providing an excuse for inflation, shortage and energy costs. If he can get everyone to pretend that Ukraine is more important than feeding their kids or paying their light bill, maybe they forget about the partying too.

Joe Biden is trying the same act with guns. Unlike Boris Johnson, Biden has many more problems to hide via distraction. Eighteen months into his tenure and just about everything has gone wrong. Biden is about as popular as rectal cancer. The reason is incompetnace. This is compounded by the fact that Biden is a vegetable, barely able to function most of the time. Even when lucid, he reminds people why no serious person ever thought Biden was anything but a clown.

His handlers are hoping they can have him stand over the corpses of dead children, pointing the finger at white people and his troubles will go away. This is what passes for clever politics in a world disconnected from reality. Everyone is onto this stunt and no one is fooled by it. Instead, people rush off to the gun shop and pick up something, just in case this time things are different. Gun grabbers have sold more guns and gun company stocks than John Browning.

The gun issue is particularly bad for Biden because it reminds people of his reputation for being an outlandish liar. Most people know the facts on guns. When the gun grabbers start in on their nonsense about “military-style rifles”, “weapons of war” and “gun show loopholes”, everyone knows they are lying. For Biden, it brings to mind all of his other whoppers. Instead of distracting from the administration’s problems, the gun issue refocuses the mind on the source of the problems.

It will be interesting to see what the summer brings. The administration seems to be poleaxed by the economic troubles. They try to avoid mentioning it. Ukraine was supposed to be the main topic, but that is now joining gas prices, food shortages and inflation on the list of forbidden topics. They will need something to distract people, so we will just have to wait and see. Who knows? Maybe they produce something inventive to keep people busy over the summer.