205 thoughts on “Historical Fiction”

1. Correcting the record is not just an exercise in trivial exactitude. It is about re-centering a people on the foundation of their past so they can once again reach for the stars.

   This may sound campy but I often think of this stuff when I’m out walking my dog and look up at the stars. You can actually see them most nights in Oregon during the summer. I used to think it was inevitable that one day people would live out there among those suns. Nowadays I look up and just think, no, the future will likely just be a handful of shit and sand right here on earth.

   It’s hard for me to imagine what could possibly motivate the millenials and zoomers in their quests for “social justice” and “equity”. Starships would be extremely difficult to build but are certainly within the realm of the physically possible. The young wokists’ utopia has been imagined before and tried before though using slightly different words. When Whites tried it, the result was grim, joyless totalitarianism. When PoC tried it, as in Venezuela today, the result is vast slums full of – well full of sand and shit.

   17

   • It’s hard for me to imagine what could possibly motivate the millenials and zoomers in their quests for “social justice” and “equity”.

     Some combination of boredom, self loathing and frustration over falling short of their expectations.

     3

   • When we went to the moon (allegedly :-), many blacks resented it.

     Gil Scott-Heron’s “Whitey’s on the Moon”
     https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=goh2x_G0ct4

     4

     • I can’t really blame them. A bunch of people who aren’t your people off on a vanity project while your family rots in poverty would piss me off too.

       And note while people like to make envy out to be a sin, normal human societies they kind we spent 90% of our evolved life in had a basic degree of equality,. You and your tribe suffered together and while big men got more, they earned it and frankly the more had to be shared anyway to buy status.

       The current situation is untenable for that reason and when people have enough of it, you get SA right now . Sure you starve when Y/T infrastructure gets destroyed but in that case everyone starves which is on a psychological level better for a lot of people of all races.

       1

2. The Lighter Side of Dark Matters Dept.

   While the South Africa civil disorder continues apace, here’s a wry report from Daily Mail. Jailed leader’s son asks followers to “Please protest and loot responsibly.” Good to see that a bit of that dry British wit remains, as well as at least a glimmer of propriety. (Damn! I’ve been reading too much Derbyshire! 😀 )

   https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-9786731/POLICE-caught-looting-goods-South-Africas-descent-lawlessness-continues.html

   6

   • He should have added “please remember to be ‘mostly peaceful’ when murdering people”. More of an American joke though, a brit might not get it.

     4

     • When I was a kid, the saying went, “If negroes can’t eat it or fuck it, they shit on it.”

       8

       • While working in the hood for several decades, the phrase was, if they can’t eat it, burn it or fuck it, they break it.

         6

         1

3. If able to stomach it, review the latest offering from a Harvard educated Sophist who at one point, compares himself to Sarah Conner from the Terminator franchise…

   https://www.thenation.com/article/activism/voting-rights-black-heroes/

   Getting past all of the rhetoric of the opinion piece reveals what it all comes down to: Power. Stolen elections are conspiracy, unless it pertains to someone like Stacey Abrams. All history is re-imagined as if Wakanda would be real if America hadn’t been such a meanie for no reason whatsoever.

   The future they envision is not equality or absolution of grievances, but to merely hold the whip and repeat the scenes currently in South Africa.

   18

   • Once a parasite seizes power over the host, the bloodsucking escalates until the host is bled dry & dies. As such, we are on a collision course with collapse and it’s best to develop a contingency plan for this outcome. Do you really want to be in a big city when the rioting goes berserk and roving gangs run wild? Do you have a safe haven where you can retreat and protect yourself & family? And you cannot eat lamentation & I-told-you-so, so best get busy now.

     6

     • Out of a multitude or disaster scenarios there’s always room for another, no?

       https://www.theepochtimes.com/will-china-attack-the-united-states_3899959.html

       2

       • Why attack what you already own?

         I, personally, welcome our sino overlords.

         3

4. The thing that gets me, is that after civil rights, shouldn’t the country be more happy? If segregation was so evil, that would reflect in our manners and crime and behavior.

   But its been the opposite. “Death Wish” and Dirty Harry weren’t popular becasue things were good.

   Incidently, I remember seeing a “End Apatite” in a BIll Murry movie, I think it was Scrooged.

   9

   • I’m sure the AWs would say we’re unhappy because we’re still segregated, albeit informally rather than juridically. If we could just force da ebel whi suprimiss to include the saintly African-Americans, all would be well.

     2

5. Soviet historians: Those who predict the past.

   4

6. David Frum in his Atlantic column says Trumpism is becoming facism. He’s gracious enough to admit that Trump’s no Hitler.

   6

   • Frum is the wave of the future

     See, they’re adapting. Just like little chameleons

     2

   • Trumpism is not becoming fascist, of course. That’s just nonsensical rhetoric designed to whip the flames of AW. However, if fascism–as opposed to Nazism–is required to prevent white genocide and preserve Western civilization, sign me up.

     13

     • But….but…we could get rid of … you know…. 🤫

       1

     • What if it takes actual Naziism to save White people. Is being compared to Hitler just too much of a sacrifice for you?

       6

       • Why do you people continue to insist on allowing the enemy to create the vocabulary & grammar upon which foundation the discourse will proceed?

         Until you create your own vocabulary & grammar, you are merely intellectual [& much more importantly, PSYCHOLOGICAL] slaves of the parasites which spend every waking hour of their parasitic lives inventing new & ever moar seductive vocabularies & grammars for you to regurgitate dutifully.

         3

       • It’s not required. The hypothetical is invalid on its face.

         1

     • All we are saaaying, is give Marx a chance.
       All we are saaaying, is give Marx a chance.

       Imagine.

       -Lennon, Lenin
       A rose is a rose. By any other name would smell as sweet

       1

7. “It is about re-centering a people on the foundation of their past so they can once again reach for the stars.”

   I want to take this opportunity to remind all you bad thinkers that you can only actually reach the stars if you have three sassy black women doing the math for you. Carry on.

   25

   • It’s true.

     Black women give me all my change at MacDonalds. They only get it wrong 4 out of 10 attempts.

     They’re math geniuses.

     5

8. Wow, great point. Maybe the second founding novelty is a sore spot to poke at…

   3

9. Two questions
   (maybe obvious for American people, please forgive me for that)

   1-Did Lincoln really wanted to expulse every black in Africa?

   2- (about “RIGHT-wing liberals”) : was the republican party, in 1860, considered already as a rightist party, and dem party as a left wing party?

   (if not, when did the rep party moved from the left to the right?)

   Thanks by advance to every answerer 🙂

   • Yes! But, I think the impulse of democracy to harvest black votes, eventually overwhelmed the idea.

     Too bad.

     6

   • “There is an unwillingness on the part of our people, harsh as it may be, for you free colored people to remain with us.”

     “The colony of Liberia has been in existence a long time. In a certain sense it is a success. … The question is if the colored people are persuaded to go anywhere, why not there?”

     “The practical thing I want to ascertain is whether I can get a number of able-bodied men, with their wives and children, who are willing to go, when I present evidence of encouragement and protection.”

     https://hd.housedivided.dickinson.edu/node/40448

     5

   • Did Lincoln really wanted to expulse every black in Africa?

     The only thing anyone knows for certain about that particular hominid is that every word out of its mouth was a lie, including the words “and” and “the”.

     2

   • …was the republican party, in 1860, considered already as a rightist party, and dem party as a left wing party?

     Depends on how you define right a d left.

     The Republican Party was created in 1856 as an explicitly abolitionist and anti- polygamist party. Does that sound right wing or left wing today?

     What it was not was traditionalist or conservative. It also was not advocating a small government. It wanted a more robust federal government to reform society by eliminating the above mentioned cultural factors. Does that sound like a right wing or a left wing political agenda today.

     It’s also mostly forgotten now that their opponents called them the Radical republicans a label that many of them embraced.

     3

   • Any political party which abandoned the original constitution and based its raison d’etre on a sentence in the Declaration of Independence, basically a declaration of war sent to the King of England, that party would have to be considered not only radical but revolutionary. Furthermore, any political party which would justify massive bloodshed in order to further its goals would also have to be considered fanatical.

     3

10. Regarding the Bulwark screed: “What an odd endorsement of the Claremont Institute.” (paraphrasing Michael Malice)

    6

11. For Lincoln— and for virtually every other White man at the time who favored freeing the Black slaves— an indispensable correlate to Emancipation was Repatriation: sending the freed slaves either back to Africa, or to some other far off locale. None of them imagined the full equality and integration into American society that today’s liberals take for granted. None of them were under the illusion that that could possibly work.

    And damned if they weren’t right….

    29

    • There’s a story in “The King in Yellow” (1895) that considered a future 1920 America would have at least one Negro state like “Swanee”

      7

    • You should avoid attributing our enemy’s actions to stupidity when malice is more fitting. John Brown and his ilk not only wanted full equality, they wanted “involuntary miscegenation” to genetically eradicate the Southern nation, followed by black supremacy. The primary plan for a good subset of Yankees (“radical abolitionists”) was for the blacks to rise up and go full on Haiti/Angola/Zimbabwe on the White Southrens. That was the original intent of Lincoln’s emancipation proclamation.The Morganthau plan for the South, as it were.
      Again, they hate us and want us dead, and have for centuries.

      5

      1

      • Again, they hate us and want us dead, and have for centuries.

        As I have said in these parts recently, all of classical American History, from circa 1750 to 1900*, was just one long century and a half replay of Culloden, war after war after war.

        *When the Frankfurt School seized control of the ship of state.

        2

    • Jim Crow was poor whites living as rich whites did then, and as rich whites still live now.
      Apart.

      5

      • Poor Whites == the losers at Culloden.

        Rich Whites == the winners of Culloden.

        [The rich Whites weren’t actually AT Culloden; they sent their hannoverian scabs to do their fighting for them. You see the same pattern in Culloden IV, the war of 1861-1865, when, once again, the rich Whites cheated and imported myriad taters & lutherans & jews to do their fighting for them.]

        2

12. Whatever Jefferson may have been up to with his words in the Declaration— about all men being created equal— many other things he wrote reveal him as a race realist who could not possibly have been intending or imagining full civic equality for Blacks.

    “Nothing is more certainly written in the book of fate than that these people are to be free. Nor is it less certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government. Nature, habit, opinion has drawn indelible lines of distinction between them….. Comparing them by their faculties of memory, reason, and imagination, it appears to me that in memory they are equal to the whites; in reason much inferior, as I think one could scarcely be found capable of tracing and comprehending the investigations of Euclid: and that in imagination they are dull, tasteless, and anomalous.”
    —- from his 1805 ‘Notes on the State of Virginia’

    So whatever realm of equality he was referring to in the Declaration, it clearly wasn’t equality in the sense modern liberals use it. Jefferson clearly had no desire or intention to include Blacks in the America he was envisioning.

    Likewise Lincoln: he had no illusions about Blacks being equal, or playing an equal part in American life:

    “I am not nor ever have been in favor of making voters or jurors of negroes, nor of qualifying them to hold office, nor to intermarry with white people; and I will say in addition to this that there is a physical difference between the white and black races which I believe will for ever forbid the two races living together on terms of social and political equality. And inasmuch as they cannot so live, while they do remain together there must be a position of superior and inferior, and I as much as any other man am in favor of having the superior position assigned to the white race.”
    —-18 September, 1858, In his debate with Stephan Douglas

    So the notion that the “equality of all men” the Declaration spoke of was full civic equality— or that the Civil War was fought to promote American Blacks to such equality— is clearly fallacious.

    The only people those notions could be foisted on, are those who know nothing about Jefferson and Lincoln.

    22

    • The Declaration was written for a specific problem that could not be resolved except by Independence and war to break from England.

      The problem being dreadful misgovernance all round.

      Below is the beginning, the Founders explained WHY they had to separate from England.
      Why British government had become unbearable (and it was incompetence from afar).

      “When in the Course of human events, it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.“

      I’m quite certain they regretted the next words of all men being created equal. We all certainly have since.

      In any case it’s mooted, that government fell in January at the hands of the elites and we may consider ourselves Free of at least those chains at last.

      Now do as you will, just as they do as they will. Let the strongest rule, and not by words, but force, for it is far easier to submit to a tyranny that earned it as opposed to the coward swindlers we have now. It is easier to kneel to a blood stained warlord then a nigger, don’t you think?

      5

13. If I might be permitted a very small, very limited defense of my former profession, it’s not so much that professional historians are rabid ideologues, it’s just that they’re incredibly sheltered, incredibly naive, and not nearly as smart as they think they are (I told you this would be a very limited defense).

    Assume that you were hired to write “An Introduction to the Japanese” for some reason. But you don’t speak Japanese, have never been to Japan, and your internet is so inconsistent that all you’ve got to work with is a few old anime videos and the collected novels of James Clavell. That’s the situation facing most professional historians, vis-a-vis actual human behavior.

    For one thing, academia is a guild profession now — has been for a long time — and so your average professor is quite often the child, and even the grandchild, of professors. They quite literally grew up on campus. For another, real world experience on your resume actually counts against you when you’re applying for grad schools, and if you do manage to get it with some dreaded private sector stuff on there, you can kiss your social life goodbye — you might only be a few years older, chronologically, but you’ll be lifetimes apart from your classmates (I speak from experience here). Finally, here is a comprehensive list of the graduate coursework I was required to take in economics, statistics, agronomy, and things military:

    See what I mean? If history is supposed to be an analysis of “what people be like,” as one of my most entertaining former students once put it on the term paper, then you’d think that the three F’s — that’s Farming, Fighting, and Fornication — would feature prominently in the educations of prospective historians… but they don’t. You’d think basic stats would be on there — hell, you’d think basic math would be on there — but I got into a pretty decent grad school without even taking the math portion of the GRE.

    All of which is to say that it’s not surprising that eggheads fall for Derb’s “challenging systems of thought that contain no truth.” They don’t know what they don’t know, and their entire lives — starting, in many cases, with their grandparents — is designed to keep them from ever finding out.

    38

    • very instructive description of the historians challenges, thank you

      3

      • This is of course not to diminish the role of ideology – lots of them *are* rabid ideologues, and even the ones that aren’t rabid are far Left. All I mean to say is that I don’t think “starting with an ideologically predetermined conclusion” is as common as outsiders think. They think they’re following the evidence. It’s just that what they don’t know is so vast that “the evidence” can only point to a few basic things.

        4

        • All ideologies are psychological warfare campaigns, and they only work on the ideological-ize-able.

          [HINT: Insula versus Amygdala…]

          1

    • Always interesting to lift the robes on the academic clergy. Reminds me a bit of Dalrymple. He worked with criminals and the insane as well and came to many similar conclusions.

      3

      • The problem with academics is they can’t do anything remotely useful. This will exacerbate as we head for collapse, chaos and ruin. Who needs a professor when heads are rolling…nobody.

        1

        • Some of them especially any young comely ladies might make good slaves.

          And yes I jest, some.

          Slavery is already a problem in California and elsewhere with illegal weed production and sex work and who knows what else. That old evil is certain to reoccur.

          1

    • You came up through the ranks after I did, Severian. When I took the GRE–1994 and 1995–the quantitative portion was still very much a requirement. But what you mention is just further proof of dumbing down in academia. Not so very long ago a relatively high baseline of intelligence was required to obtain a Ph.D. and to become a professor. No more. The professoriate has always had more than its fair share of fools, of course. Now, alas, it is becoming inundated with idiots, to boot.

      PS–I was recently speaking to a history prof who was my informal mentor when I was an undergrad. He told me that in the history department where he works–and from which I gook my bachelor’s–comprehensive exams are no longer required to qualify for writing the dissertation because, “Nobody needs to memorize all that stuff, anymore. You can just find it on the Internet.” I almost vomited on the spot.

      2

14. The dissident project is about “re-centering a people on the foundation of their past so they can once again reach for the stars.” True, and nicely said.

    13

    1

15. To ourselves and our posterity

    10

16. I’m working my way through Plato now. It’ll take a long time. However, rhetoric and sophistry frequently make their appearance. Rhetoricians were clever orators who were skilled at persuasion but light on content (ie., politicians); Sophists were cunning and specious debaters, what we’d call “gaslighting” today.

    Clearly, this skills and others are helpful in re-writing the past. Whoever said “The winners write history” was only partially correct. It’s those who keep the archives, and update it to suit current policy, who control the past. The Winston Smiths, if you like. When the Idealists are in control, whether they were the Council of Nicea in 325 AD, the Communists of the 20th century, the Warren Commission, indeed nearly any politically-motivated group of any time, their goal is to whitewash and airbrush the past until it suits their fancies. Then, surely, current reality, or at least perceptions, will fall in line with the desired party line, the Five Year Plan.

    7

    • I just finished Gorgias and Platagorus, and I read a few smaller ones too.

      I don’t know what to make of it yet. But I do see the seeds of Aristotle, who was the seeds of St. Thomas. So I’m reading it in that view.

      3

    • Slightly off topic here but I’ve been trying to read more of “the Classics” that educated men would have been made to study. I’m not just looking for a list of books but any convincing arguments as to whether to read online, hardcopy, audio-book, brain implant chip (just kidding). I’ll also consider non-Western stuff. Right before the Coof Panic shut down my gym I was listening to The Art of War (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=biZnHA-e73A) while on the treadmill. Plato is an obvious pick but a lot of the modern lists of classics are compiled by wokists whose entire point is “look how awful White Western culture is”. So what have all you DR types been reading?

      2

      • The internet is your friend. In the first place, virtually all of “the Classics” are public domain (unless a recent edition, clearly). That means you can get an ebook version or (less available) audio book. Archive.org, gutenberg.org, and librivox.org are my go-to places. If you use a Bittorrent client, there are plenty of similar public domain collections available, including from the above sites.

        Naturally your local library should have some. I’m not even opposed to printed books, but I hope you will be able to avoid fattening the wallet of Amazon and their globohomo partners-in-exploitation.

        What to read? There’s probably more available than one could read in a thousand lifetimes. I would suggest searching for a list of “Classic Literature” or such, that will let you fine-tune your choices. I’ve found that reading some criticism (usu. academic stuff) on a particular author is helpful (sometimes this is even included in a collection). If time is limited (isn’t it always?), you might try to read the best works representative of major authors, or time periods, or nations, etc. For example, Plato left a lot of books, but the best may be “The Republic”

        I wouldn’t worry too much about “woke” revisions. I’ve heard this can happen, but the danger is probably limited. All the better to read a pdf image of a century-old text, to protect from that. I find specific ebook versions easier to read, but my reader handles both. Or you can read them on your PC.

        3

      • you can get the harvard classics set of books free, or for $2 from amazon. these are from the 1920’s harvard and represent the best in human knowledge at the time.

        4

      • The best there is right here…

        https://www.audible.com/search?publisher=Audio+Connoisseur

        1

    • Plato was one of the most very wickedest men ever to walk the face of the earth.

      To read Plato is to read pure unadulterated Evil.

      1

17. Z, thank you for this clarification of the Dissident Project.

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

    How does this change anything?
    Politics is the problem, politics is Power. Recentering the People now conquered and marked for cultural genocide openly and probably actual genocide as policy – recenter them to do what? Get power? How?

    And I must say I think things have changed. I don’t think they’ll march or even rally to an idea. I think the age of ideas has passed, the age of raw power has begun.

    And do you know, the Republic has fallen- and look who sits on its grave?

    And other men look and say if they can do that why not I?
    And my dears they may be hiring , and not hiring pens, but the other.

    When the Roman Republic fell Warlords took the Empire. This will be different? Where Cicero failed, Claremont or Taki will succeed?
    Ideas are dead.
    Power lives again.

    16

    1

    • Yes, but the exercise of power does not have to include the slaughter of innocents. There is a better way. Power should be used sparingly and be highly focused on the root of the problem. As Z has pointed out in recent posts & podcasts, the disease models as an emergent behavior like that found in bird flocks and fish schools. You just need to focus on a few cells and the rest will follow en masse.

      5

      • TomA,

        Those with power decide that.

        And the winner- won’t care.

        2

      • TomA: Yes, but the” exercise of power does not have to include the slaughter of innocents.”

        Tom, what is your opinion of what the Allies did to Dresden? Hiroshima?

        1

        1

18. Pingback: DYSPEPSIA GENERATION » Blog Archive » Historical Fiction

19. My beef with Jaffa is the whole idea that Lincoln was consciously trying to reforge the American Union.

    Everything he did during the war suggests a desperate, improvisational quality to each and every act. He knew his mandate for the presidency was slim and his actions against the copperheads and other southern sympathizers suggest he was well aware that he was staying in power on a wing and a prayer. All indications for postwar policy point to him taking the ex-slaves and shipping them somewhere far away from the shores of the US.

    Point being, he was far too busy running a war to have the time to conduct abstruse political theorizing on what the United States of American was all about. Anecdotally, it appears he didn’t even think the GA went over that well with the audience. In all likelihood, to Lincoln, it was just another re-election speech.

    10

    • How many angels can dance on the head of a pin? How many different ways are there of interpreting Lincoln’s words and actions based upon events that took place 150 years ago? How many differing opinions can you extract from a confab of “experts” debating Lincoln’s legacy? How many divisions does the Pope have?

      When all you have is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail.
      When all you have are words, every solution looks like a debate.

      6

      • That is brilliant TomA,
        And I’m stealing it.

        “ When all you have are words, every solution looks like a debate.”

        2

    • Yes. The excellent book on the Civil War period “The Fall of the House of Dixie” does a very good job of outlining the incremental, improvisational quality of Lincoln’s presidency. The amount of revisionist history around Lincoln just fills an ideological need among the Left and retconners.

      3

    • Basil;
      Agreed. Lincoln was neither the messianic figure of Jaffa, et al, nor was he the satanic villain as portrayed by some. Just to begin with, he was *not* a New England Abolitionist absolutist. His 1860 platform was ‘Free Soil* and Union’, *not* freeing the slaves, per se. After the war began, as you say, he was, first of all, mostly just trying to hold his coalition together. He was very open about this. As evidence, here’s a link to his famous letter to abolitionist Horace Greeley.

      http://www.abrahamlincolnonline.org/lincoln/speeches/greeley.htm

      The money quote: “My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.”

      *Free Soil = White small farmers (and about 70% of the pop. at that time worked in agriculture and related) not wanting to have to compete with plantation-based, slave-labor agriculture, particularly in the newly opened Western Territories.

      13

      1

      • Thank you, it is so lost to history that Lincoln and the Republicans we’re trying to Keep the slaves from taking work from free men.

        5

      • What Western Territories were slaves going to be working in? Neither the terrain nor the climate were suitable for the kinds of cash crops that would make chattel slavery profitable. Beyond a fringe of southeastern Kansas, there was really nowhere a planter could go and make money from slave labor. By the time of the troubles in Kansas, Cyrus McCormick had already invented the threshing machine. There may have been a possibility of introducing slavery to the irrigated lands of the Southwest, but by the time those areas were being settled and irrigations systems buit, machines were replacing human labor and no thinking person, assuming slavery had survived into the 1880s, would have risked trying to set up a plantation system in those areas at that time. In other words, the Dred Scot case was a purely political ploy to isolate slaveholders and focus enmity against them by stirring up fears which were largely non-existent. Trying to imagine slave plantations in Nebraska is ludicrous. The purpose of the Kansas-Nebraska act was to drive a wedge between North and South and stir up irrational emotions. It succeeded wildly.

        2

        • Epi;
          All of what you said is mostly true. But it is also mostly irrelevant to the world of 1856 US politics when the Republican Party was formed. There was very little common knowledge about agricultural conditions W of the Mississippi at that time. Besides this, there was no shortage of lying hucksters extolling ‘the bountiful West’. Those hucksters were trying to induce gullible settlers to migrate W in order to make their own land speculations pay off.

          Who can predict future inventions and their commercial success today_? Why would that situation not apply to the world of 1856_?

          In 1856 an extrapolation of the recent past made the spread of plantation agriculture seem a likely threat to free labor. No more than 10 years prior, plantations had spread to Arkansas and Texas, after all.

          While we can’t know precisely what Lincoln’s supporters thought in the 1860 election, we can know what they wrote at the time. It was almost nothing like what Jaffa et al, *or* Lincoln demonizers say now.

          1

20. Integral to the idea of a “proposition nation”, a nation of ideas, is the religious foundation of the people writing the story.

    One people can see their God. He looks like them, has a name, and once walked amongst them, as one of them.

    Another people cannot. He has no name, no face, and can be anything.

    Now, which story is more likely to rooted in blood and soil reality, versus anything our imagination needs it to be at the moment?

    10

    • Yes once a nation is something you cn conjur from the ether, a proposition, the rest is a matter of who owns the inkwell.

      The gum on the soul of the progressive jackboot that is the “proposition nation” is like the joke with the punchline: “we’ve already established you are a whore, now we are just negotiating your price.”

      4

21. Christopher Caldwell had the opportunity to step up to the plate as Claremont’s most influential member, with his latest book, “The Age of Entitlement”. It’s probably the most important book this century and it clearly shows how the post 1965 State itself was altered to act as both carrot and stick for enforcing the DIE agenda (and all its offshoots, present and future). Caldwell does successfully put everything onto paper, but he stops shy of connecting the dots. Inferring what can and must be done is left to the reader.

    Zman, a couple of months ago, you cited a talk between Caldwell and Andrew Sullivan (on Sullivan’s podcast I believe). In any case, Caldwell immediately set aside his entire ouevre he had carefully labored over for years in favor of yukking it up and swapping ole Harvard memories with Sullivan to remind Sullivan’s audience of his bona fides as a paid up member of the ruling bureaucratic elite … no pesky talk about what State mechanisms have been put into place since 1965 (and abused in overdrive by the Obama Admin). There was no time left over by the time these two were done snapping each other’s suspenders. Caldwell still has one foot in both camps, much like J D Vance, and Murray. It’s the best these 3 can do until things further deteriorate. New leaders will emerge with time,

    26

    • The opiate of prog status is something we all must confront if we are to be honest about which God we serve and to which people we desire to live on. Who are we? Cannot exist in the blood and soil if we serve the cloud gods.

      This affliction takes a representative from flyover and turns her into a beltway cocktail whore by night and twitter warrior by day.

      Our perspective from dirt looking up at the balcony reveals the elixir of prog status to be rather obvious.

      What is less obvious is the myriad of ways in which we succumb to that same nectar in or daily lives as we chase the dragon instead of calling the emperor a naked fairy.

      16

      • I’ve found that the way to cut the legs out from under both Progs and their (((kindred spirits))) is to tell them “I’m pagan”

        They have no answer for it and can’t even begin to think on how to use it against you. It also helps that I am being serious. I mean, I see a lot of wisdom in the old folkways, and if I am any “ist” it would be a naturalist, and that goes hand in glove with a pagan. And when I tell them quite seriously that I am part wolf and part dolphin, they almost want to cry because their brains start to short circuit.

        Incidentally, I was a bit stunned, as if I were dreaming of hearing myself, when Novak Djokovic recounted his childhood story about seeing wolves in the forest by his home, and how it deeply affected him when they gave him a stare and communicated something to him. A person will have to have experienced it or then it just seems like b.s. I was also attacked by a hybrid wolf-malamute as a kid, and I swear it turned me into a little wolf boy. It does change you. Gives you an animal spirit. I can attest to it.

        Again, these old folk stories have a lot of truth to them. The wolfman story, for example. A lot of guys used to always identify with animals. Hawks. Wolves. Whatever happened? Now they identify with fairies and unicorns.

        We lost touch with a primal part of ourselves perhaps. I am glad I haven’t.

        Grrrrrrrr !!!!

        7

        1

    • Yes, I just finished “Age of Entitlement.” I get the same idea of Caldwell. While overall I think his arguments in the book are firmly in the DR camp, he clearly throws in a few sops to modern (Liberal, Zionist, whatever) sensibilities. For example, in his critique of the Eugenics movement of a century or more ago (in fairness he covers both sides of that volatile issue) he mentions how the evil strict immigration laws of the USA (1920s onward) forbade the U.S. consulate to let in the flow of Jews and other refugees who needed asylum in the years leading up to WW II. Implicitly, the USA (and Whites) are guilty in retrospect. Scant mention of whether the host nation even had the right to decide who is admitted and who stays out. Presumably, it is the moral responsibility of the safe countries to admit, without limit, anyone with a sob story, real or imagined, without regard to what benefits or costs these immigrants bring. At the least, I supposed the West is atoning for the sins of generations ago. I don’t think it’s going to work out for our benefit, however. 🙁

      8

      • I don’t know what Caldwell knows but there were times I felt the book sounded how I imagine one written by a full fledged amren type would sound like but with the more R-rated stuff removed.

        3

    • Guys like Caldwell and Charles Murray can’t quite connect the dots because it’s too big a leap for them. After being indoctrinated in CivNat ideology for decades it’s hard to do a 180. Some of these folks will tell you what they really think in private or if you get a few drinks in ‘em but otherwise they don’t step too far out of line.

      I’ve only encountered one exception among high-profile figures and she (yup, it was a woman) has paid the price but doesn’t care.

      2

      • A Nicole Fuentes, as it were 🙂

        2

      • Nah. They get it.

        Caldwell still has to earn a living.

        Murray is in his twilight years. His latest book should’ve been written in such a way that made him banned on Amazon.

        Rush Limbaugh did the same. Very disappointing.

        4

    • AnotherAnon: Very well said. I have been accused of purity spiraling for not hastening to welcome erstwhile ‘allies’ whom I consider right liberals getting rather concerned that their project is getting out of hand. Your reminder that they ‘have a foot in both camps’ is duly noted. I shall attempt to moderate my words.

      2

      • Please do not, and accept my full and sincere apology.

        I abase myself. Your experience, education, and full throated defense of your people and of honest womenhood- all while eyeing the snakepit that Dallas is becoming- is of far more value than the rambling of a rather ignorant lunatic.

        2

        • Alzaebo – You are fully entitled to your opinion, AND you are right – I do need to learn to moderate my words. But I still don’t consider Abigail Shrier an ally.

          2

          • You are most kind, madam. Much appreciated.

22. I’m familiar with Larry Arne. He has that Hillsdale scam where he rakes in a million a year as the chief priest of the Lincoln cult. One thing that jumped out at me was remembering an old Pat Buchanan saying that the Declaration of Independence was actually the birth certificate of a nation already born in the hearts of men of a certain culture and ethnicity. I think that says it pretty succinctly. These “founding documents” are mere outcroppings of something that was designed to produce them. A rose bush creates a rose. By replacing a nation of European whites with other people, we’re ripping out the rose bush, planting cacti, and still expecting roses to bloom. They won’t be coming back.

    36

23. ‘In a slightly different context, John Derbyshire noted that some people have an unnatural skill at creating “elaborate, plausible, and intellectually very challenging systems that do not, in fact, have any truth content”.’

    I actually do believe that some, SOME, historians in the past have been RELATIVELY honest and followed the evidence wherever it led. I was raised on Will Durant’s History of Civilization and The Lessons of History. I know he had many preconceptions, but overall, he was a RELATIVELY honest and ethical historian of “the big picture.” However, today’s historians that make a living out of telling people about the past are merely barely literate court historians that will write whatever they’re told to write, in their “own style”, of course, regardless of how ridiculous it is. The 1619 Project is a good example, as is the concept that White people are responsible for and continue to cause the failures of other races (one race in particular), even though White people as a group are no longer in charge of anything. Except paying for everything and preventing society from collapsing.

    15

    • Excellent point. Let’s hope that South Africa is successful in exiling or otherwise destroying the remaining non-indigenous people, who clearly have been the source of the centuries of misery that continent has suffered, up to and including the current riots, looting, injuries and deaths.

      2

      • The joggers there are done for, once their little fun is over they’re gonna experience starvation at a national level.
        South Africa ain’t the united states where there’s still enough abundance to keep welfare still going.

        9

    • Edward Gibbon was the best historical writer, ever. Period.

      Knew gods how many languages. Published an epic work that is still examined 400 years later. Influential in politics and as a writer.

      Severian would probably tell you (correctly) that nearly all of today’s “historians” are complete poseurs.

      1

      2

      • I like the Geo III quote upon being gifted with Gibbons’ latest “Another damned great thick book, always scribble scribble scribble, Eh, Mr Gibbons?”

        Old George gets a lot of bad press for some reason.

        1

24. Obviously there is some value in educating others about current events and the malefactors publishing literary insanity on the internet media pages. But that education only has usefulness if you believe that we are going to talk our way out of the mess we’re in. In theory, this new insight would enable you to more effectively persuade others that The Bad Guys are totally wrong and, voila, the light bulb goes off, everyone change their minds and miraculously become sane.

    The problem with this is that natural selection has been extinct for a few millennia now and DNA pollution is making sanity a rarity in our population. Talking won’t fix DNA-based stupid. Imagine being in a medieval melee where everyone is swing long swords wildly and you’re the only one in the group trying to calm everyone down with your soothing words. Whose DNA is going to survive that contest?

    8

25. I remember an article in the National Review, early 1981, when MLK’s birthday was formalized as a national holiday. I recall it cautioning against what was the right’s wholesale embrace of MLK, even though many of his philosophies were opposed to conservative principles. It’s been amusing over the years observing conservative commentators just assuming that MLK would be a supporter of free market capitalism, anti-affirmative action, etc. I believe they had this vision that if MLK had survived, he’d be marching arm-in-arm with Ward Connerly (black activist who fought affirmative action in California in the 80s) in protest of minority quotas.
    LOL.

    22

    • It is an open question how many Conservatism, Inc. hacks understand the truth about MLK but lie about him and how many truly believe the myths that have been created about him. The younger ones clearly believe the myths. I wonder how many current writers for National Review have read much of the archives and how they reconcile what was written then with what the magazine’s editors write today. I remember how pissed Jim Geraghty was when at some point during the 2016 Presidential primary cycle, several of us in the comments started comparing them to the Washington Generals. He came off like a true believer, dumb enough to think MLK just wanted everyone to be treated equally and not take it any farther. This is why the quality of the writing at National Review has declined so rapidly. They have had to find people dumb enough not to connect the dots.

      11

    • For research purposes I just visited The Root and found their take on MLK in the comments…familiar:
      RightWhite: Conservatives are idiots, King was a communist who hated white people.
      BlackyBlacks: Conservatives are idiots, King was a communist who hated white people.

      18

      • Finally. Intersectionality defined.

        7

26. The paid buffoon shills at the Bulwark aside, it’s really remarkable how far to the Left ConInc has moved in the last ten years. I mean, with regard to the Claremont attack, there is nothing that the Claremont Institute believes in, as cited in the attack piece, that William Buckley or Russell Kirk, supposedly the founders of movement conservatism, would have disagreed with – Hell, Jonah Frickin Goldberg would have agreed with 95% of it ten years ago. The move left has been relentless, and fast, and it started before Trump.

    It sounds odd, but I believe that the collapse of ConInc resistance to gay marriage was the turning point. In many ways the collapse reminds me of what happened to the ARVN in South Vietnam in 1975 – what was conceived by top leadership as a strategic withdrawal from an untenable position turned into a rout, because once they started retreating, there was no obvious place to stop. Ditto ConInc on sodomite marriage – I mean, if you’re not going to conserve something that has been part of Western Civilization since long before Christ, what’s the point? The gay marriage issue looked minor at the time, one of those things that only square God-botherers cared about, but, like the Central Highlands in Vietnam, it turned out to be a lot more important than anyone thought.

    29

    • Well– can’t really blame Jaffa for that.

      My only 2 points of reference to this fellow’s output is that he really liked Lincoln and he really hated any legal lenience toward paraphilic intercourse of the Greek variety.

      I’ve heard about the name & his books so many times, couldn’t be bothered to read them but when I do see a journalist writing some errata about him, it tends to be about one of (why not both?) those topics.

      1

    • TheZman is right:

      Whenever you see the word “Pride”, substitute the word “sodomy”.

      We live in very decadent times.

      1

27. Nice to see that John Derbyshire quote. He is one of our greatest and one of our most under rated writers/thinkers. Quote JD again any ol’time.

    JohnDerbyshire.com

    8

    2

28. What group of people have this “certain historical outlook” and a “facility for language”?

    17

29. We live in truly remarkable times, do we not?

    Selling historical revisionism used to be child’s play, back in the good ol’ days of gate keepers, paper, and printing presses.

    Now?

    Unsavoury poisoned minds, dissidents, and Pepe The Frog are around the world twice and home for coffee by the time the shitlibs cook up their steaming crocks of docudrama. Belief in their dreck is strictly voluntary – and this is where the dissidents fall down. Hell’s bells – we have the library of Alexandria at our fingertips, everything is only a click of the mouse away!

    There should be a million Z men. There should be tens of millions of dissidents. Torba over at Blab should be a billionaire tech oligarch. We are all fact checkers now – or at least those of us with triple digit IQs. We need to push that down into the lower echelons of the IQ bell curve.

    Can we do that before war breaks out? We are in a foot race, gentlemen. Either way it is going to be a photo finish.

    21

    2

30. “some people have an unnatural skill at creating “elaborate, plausible, and intellectually very challenging systems that do not, in fact, have any truth content”

    In order to be believable lies, they have to be elaborate and intellectually challenging.

    4

    • I think you’re right. That’s why there is such a great market for these ‘challenging’ lies, particularly in the middle classes. People who have never lifted a finger to learn the basics about groundwater, how to sharpen a knife, or how clouds are formed just want you to know how knowledgeable they are. I see it all the time.

      The important thing is to be seen believing, and also heard divulging, such challenging lies. People’s beliefs tend to come and go out of fashion like clothes. Covid is a good modern example. This is why it is important to think for yourself. But also, more importantly, to recognise what is actually of consequence to you, personally. This gives you the freedom to tell people that “You don’t give two hoots about climate change and gay rights”… they aren’t your problem. And if they are problems at all, they are secondary, tertiary, quaternary &c.

      The same people believing these ‘challenging’ lies are the ones who watch poncy art movies and look down, in quite obvious fashion, on Arnie and co. laying down lead on the Predator with a minigun.

      6

31. Is it indecent to point out that Harry Jaffa was Jewish?

    12

    • It is without the obligatory triple parentheses.

      13

      • 🙂 We can speak with relative freedom here. Hell, the topics we discuss here would be banned in short order from any social media site I’m aware of. I’m guessing Z-man doesn’t have much of a presence on those, even if he’s not (“yet”) received the scorched earth Nick Fuentes treatment.

        3

        • In re: Nick Fuentes.

          I can’t spare this man. He fights.

          2

    • I was afraid to look.
      You can’t say that, anyways, because both of his parents were gassed before he was born.

      3

      • I honestly didn’t know until I looked it up just now. Somehow in my mind, I guess I thought a Lincoln scholar, someone who felt he had the authority to proclaim the meaning of the founding of this British nation, would in some way be quasi-old stock – really foolish of me.

        2

    • Strauss, too, apparently.

      I once asked on here if any people had so fully embraced modernity as Jews. Somebody replied that, no, they’d created it, which I thought was a stretch. But by the day it seems I discover another influential Jewish figure! And of course, less notable gentile figures whose thinking I often find myself agreeing with.

      3

      • The host here is not jew obsessed so it’s not like he goes looking for examples to cherry pick.

        3

32. Thomas Fleming of the Rockford Institute used to refer to him as “Mad Harry Jaffa.” Mad as in crazy.

    7

    • Once Fleming left Chronicles the magazine suffered.

      2

      • The irony – Paul Gottfried runs it now. They hate each other.

        1

      • The biggest loss for Chronicles is when Sam Francis passed away.

        1

33. This process of rewriting the historical record leads to some peculiar outcomes, especially when the new narrative is involved.

    Robert E. Lee is the foreshadowing of 20th century Hilter according to the updated version. However, if it is pointed out to a Progressive-Leftist that Lincoln asked a Southern slave owning Virginian to lead the Northern army to bring the states back into the fold, a blank stare or confusion settles across their face.

    Pointing out that the Emancipation Proclamation had zero effect on the status of slaves in the Union states that didn’t secede is futile as well.

    Today’s knowledge and understanding of our nation’s history for most people reminds me of the old Tonight Show bit Jaywalking, where Jay Leno would ask simple 5th grade level questions to people outside the studio. It used to be funny how ignorant they were. It’s not funny anymore. People who forget their past usually forfeit their future.

    30

    • I think much of the blame rests with Whiggish historiography.

      4

    • Lincoln got another Virginian to betray his people and lead the United States Army in 1861. Winfield Scott.

      11

    • Apparently little knowledge of the not very kind treatment that prisoners of war received, on either side. Scant as my knowledge of history is, even I have heard of [quickly Googles for data…] Curiously, Andersonville is first result for the worst (the Confederacy’s fault, of course). I had to dig deeper to find the Union’s answer: Camp Douglas.

      3

34. I kind of think that Jaffa-ism is a weird sort of white/jewish version of kangz and/or nation of islam.

    5

35. The Civil War, however, was not a continuation of a cultural dispute dating back to the English Civil War….

    It was absolutely. As was the American Revolution itself. For many centuries royalty, kings in particular, stood between the aristocracy and the commoners, looking out for the interests of the general population and the country itself. They sometimes misconceived their role and at other times failed while accepting it but nevertheless their duty it was.

    The failure of Cromwell’s Puritan regime in the UK meant that it could only survive in the New World, which it did. New England Puritan thought was the basis of the revolution and continued in the struggle between the northern states and the south. Just as Cromwell’s Parliamentarians demanded control of the entire UK, including Ireland and Scotland, the Puritans wanted control over the south and implementation of “manifest destiny” over a country and people of which they had only the scantiest knowledge. In this case Lincoln was the reincarnation of Oliver Cromwell himself.

    While Cromwell is today a bad memory in the UK that survives in the minds of many, Lincoln has been portrayed as a heroic American figure. If any history needs re-writing in a more objective and realistic manner it is that of the founding of the US and the immense damage done to the country by the maniacal Lincoln, who could have purchased and freed every slave in the country but preferred to kill their owners instead.

    30

    1

    • I think it was Hoffer that noted the Roundheads ranks were swollen by urban poor who had been pushed off the land by the enclosures. And that the roundheads would not have been triumphant without that element.

      So in a way, that was another fallout of the Norman conquest and their dispossession of the native English.

      12

    • Superb. Very interesting is the idea that “royalty, kings in particular, stood between the aristocracy and the commoners”.

      That places them in the middle, as a limiting factor, not the top, as a State tyrant. Thus, constitutional monarchies for the modern, literate age.

      Note that in the ancient empires, emperors were the middlemen between the gods above and the people below. Pretty much every empire styled itself as a kingdom of Heaven, with the emperor divine, legitimately representing his people to the gods.

      A limiting factor, the Face of a national family with sanctioned authority. If that face of the family is lost, we end up with the muddy fusion of State and Corporate, sparking a religious war of legitimacy between the power factions of military (State), administrative (Preisthood), and owner (Corporate).

    • Good job missing the point. Jeesh.

      5

      • It’s odd that such a thoughtful comment can be birthed from such a complete misunderstanding of what you wrote.

        7

        • Yeah I thought the same thing. Good job in making his point but he was preaching to the choir. Oh well – I sometimes read these columns fast and carelessly.

          1

      • Did not Cromwell and his Puritans bring Democracy to the Colonies?

        Jaffa gave us Lord Protector Lincoln, just as his people, wanting back into Albion, brought up Cromwell and the corrupt Parliamentarian aristocracy.

        Of course the story is revised by the priesthood to justify the victory, and excuse the bloodshed.

        The question now is a King, or even a Lord Protector, possible in a multicultural democracy?

        • Yer gonna get warlords, and the winner decides.

          2

          • Actually, I was trying way too hard- but you are correct, I’d erased the part about the coming Period of Warring States.

    • Times change, terms change, but in the end it always comes down to hierarchy vs equality. Heirarchists suffer from the vice of high-handedness, but the egalitarians always become the most vindictive tyrants when they achieve power.

      3

      • To put a finer point on it, I’m not sure whether or not you’re implying the Puritans played the aristocratic role.

        In any case, I’d argue they were outside of the political hierarchy. Bourgeois, Levelers, feminizers, proto-Marxists, Judaizers (as EMJ would say)— pick your term. Revenge of the Nerds.

        1

        1

        • Played the outsiders in the hierarchy. (There are times when I miss the EDIT button)

          2

          • Agree. They were offered a deal as conquistadors.

            1

          • I’m intrigued. Have to ask, by whom?

            2

    • Trump tried to play the role of the king protecting the commoners but, unfortunately, failed.

      6

36. The main characteristic of the Left/Prog restaurant is that there is an intellectual dish for all tastes. The revisionist History stuff Zman discusses here is just one of the items on a big menu:

    For the Blacks: the 1619/CRT/reparations stew
    For the alphabet soup: the right to show your junk in a day spa or marry your dog
    For the guilty Whites: the “Second Founding” souffle’, “Equity” omelet
    For the Hispanic immigrants: welfare state tacos
    And finally, for the rest: just steak tartare – the raw power of the State.

    The raw stuff attracts bureaucrats, the subcons, many Asians, the media and others who just worship the State. The nihilism inherent in this dish is no intellectual impediment to the Left. Ultimately, it’s what’s for dinner for everyone and you’ll be forced to eat it and like it.

    16

    • The problem with having a large menu is that you need a large kitchen staff. I think of the bloated American university system and media as that kitchen. It grinds out all these different flavors of propaganda for all these different factions. This worked for a long time because they all saw Whitey as the common enemy. What we started to see in 2020 was a power struggle among all the different groups.

      Given that their “ideology” is a mass of contradictory impulses this could be very bloody indeed. You won’t see gangs of Pajeets and Jews having knife fights in grimy Brooklyn alleys but once you mix in Blacks, Hispanics, Laotians, Thais,.. Now the potential for violence is much higher. The problem is that the Big American Pie has been promised to many different groups. Some are accustomed to just taking theirs and killing the competition while others think the contest is decided with SAT scores and accounting tricks.

37. There’s a new way to mess with left – demand that we open up our country to white refugees from S, Africa. Where I live, in the Great White North, it would be deeply amusing to watch our leader squirm when asked why we are not accepting white S. Africans as refugees.

    27

    • Idly web surfing I ran across a web site dedicated to helping SA citizens emigrate to Australia. Reading the open forum I thought there would be some good tidbits about why they were leaving. Nothing in that forum. No mention of the elephant in the room. Just a little talk of rising crime rates and bad schools. Even those SA citizens leaving are good whites, probably supported Mandela but are leaving still for obvious reasons. They just wont say it. It’s infuriating.

      7

      • They dare not say it. ANC bureaucrats hold their travel papers in their hands.

        5

        • Alzaebo – it’s not the fear of the ANC bureaucrats but even more the fear of the Australian or New Zealand ones, who would be quick to refuse entry to any avowed raycist. Plus, even once they’ve escaped the South African hell, a lot of the emigres try to keep their heads down and fit in socially, and that involves the usual pieties about race.

          7

          • Not the South Africans I know.

            They are all pretty vocal about both blecks and Juice

            Incidentally, they were the DR before it even existed, in terms of their mindset

            But then so was everyone else prior to 1982 or thereabouts when everyone started putting on an act and pretending they never made black or Juice jokes even 10 minutes ago.

            But it is highly highly highly improbable that as people get older they don’t find themselves reverting back to their roots or to their thoughts when they were younger and life in the west was far more open and free.

            4

    • What I fear will happen is that White SA’s will be set upon by an aroused Black populous and before the world will declare a genocide in progress, their numbers will be reduced substantially. The White SA’s are preparing to hold out under such attack in the hope of holding off extermination until an embarrassed world comes to their rescue.

      A drowning man clutches at straws.

      5

38. I thought overpopulation and fratricide were what pushed Europeans into the New World, not some lofty social experiment by eggheads.

    That, and a bunch of inventions by white people like longitude and deepwater ships.

    8

    • The original puritans and the quakers came to North America to build utopia. Others came for more undone reasons.

      Overall though, most immigrants came here to get rich quick.
      That’s really our founding ethic. Which reverberates today. Whether the dissident right likes it or not.

      12

      • My ancestors came here because Americans were practically giving away valuable farmland. Nothing wrong with that, but it wasn’t because of any garbage about equality or democracy.

        12

      • “Overall though, most immigrants came here to get rich quick.”

        Isn’t this pretty much the bottom line of the ‘American Dream’?

        10

      • Pretty much

        The country was founded for pragmatic expansionary reasons, adventure, and fairly pedestrian desires such as getting rich. Or rather I’ll rephrase it; not “founded” but “driven by.”

        And that’s where the problems start imo. Because society’s “priests” or the people who feel it their obligation to give some kind of mythological or religious context to this project have fixed on the puritanical themes. Thus, it was not simply a bunch of guys coming here for whatever reason, but a “founding” borne of religiosity and a moralistic enterprise. That creates a massive disconnect between the reality of why people came here versus how this small little sect from New England tried to sell it. And not only sell it, but craft it and conceive of it and infuse it with meaning.

        And it’s something that these priests won insofar as dominance over the culture.

        I said some time ago that while all the STEM guys were downplaying or laughing at all the Lib Arts people, the latter were busy doing their thing and remaking the nation in their image. It’s our modern analog. The STEM guys, the down to earth guys who make things and just want to make money and do stuff and raise families, very pragmatic and conventional of mind, versus the modern day priesthood I the form of lib arts majors.

        And the priests always seem to end up winning. Boggles the mind that these people ultimately have more sway over the country than, say, the guys who went looking for gold, or oil, or land. Or that the blue haired lib arts freak has more sway than the civil engineer.

        3

      • Pretty sure mine were redcoats who came to fight the French and Indians. Liked it enough to stay and fight for independence. Simply wanting your own nation— what a thought!

        6

      • Not only an English disease. The Spanish had it at least a century or two earlier. Hernan Cortes, early Conquistador, is possibly misquoted as saying (in good Castilian of course) that “We came to save souls, but also to get rich.” Even if the quote isn’t accurate, the stated and actual motives of the colonization are.

        5

    • John Harrison, the man who effectively solved the longitude problem in ever greater increments with his sea-going clocks, H1, H2, H3 and H4, must surely be one of the greatest geniuses who ever lived. At the time, this problem was considered so difficult, that is it alleged even lifelong virgin, antagonistic bell-end, and part time theologian Sir Isaac Newton reasoned that it could not be done.

      I jest when I say those things about Newton, of course; but the point is Harrison’s undertaking was monumental, not just intellectually, but also from a practical standpoint. He was, if I recall, a carpenter. A carpenter who read as many works on classical mechanics as he could when younger. And he toiled for years. And his result? Well, it is no exaggeration to say it changed the direction of England’s trajectory, and really the World’s too.

      It meant we could get to brown countries far more easily to oppress locals, raise taxes. Of course, to my knowledge neither Newton nor Harrison were black. That said, the National Maritime Museum in Greenwich, where Harrison’s clocks are now stored is surrounded by, ahem, ‘new Englishmen of dusky hue’. Sad. Mind you, if Harrison’s invention allowed whites to travel yonder far more accurately, it also meant movement in the reverse direction; and PRESTO! 21st Century Greenwich.

      16

      • I think your chronology is wrong. Influx from extra-Europe occurred before Europeans pushed out into the world.

        1

      • Memo for future empires: Emigration to new lands permissible and even encouraged. Immigration back to Mother Country forbidden under any and all circumstances.

        5

      • OrangeFrog: I visited the Maritime Museum back in 1980, but was still so ignorant at the time as to Harrison’s historical import. Wish I could go back and slap my younger self. So many missed opportunities.

        1

        • Good for you my dear. That was four years before I was born, so I reckon it may have even been quite white then. A double plus: Harrison’s clocks (H4 is a staggeringly complex piece of machinery) and a lesser chance of mugging.

39. Pro history is a lot like pro wrestling. There are a few Heels, a few Faces, and a whole bunch of Jobbers. The Faces get away with anything – e.g. proven plagiarist Doris Kearns Goodwin, or Michael Bellesisles (still employed in academia). Their function is to push the narrative, and the Jobbers’ job is to run with it… which they are happy to do, for entirely mercenary reasons (only “original” “research” gets published). Indeed, when I first started, decades ago, I was told that teaching is “an inherently political act,” so go ahead and use your classroom as a soapbox.

    The good news in all of this is that it destroyed the profession’s integrity. Now it’s all about “narratives”… and the narratives are ludicrous, sloppy, and incoherent. When someone comes along with a nice new narrative (of the ” abductive reasoning ” sort), not only will the “educated” classes be unable to resist, they won’t even know where to start acquiring the tools. The whole structure is rotten; a gentle breeze could push it over.

    23

    • Goodwin and Bellesisles are when I started to think the ruling class was succumbing to its own incompetency. Goodwin’s book on baseball was so obviously fame that even the jock sniffers in sports radio mocked it. I recall hearing a couple of NYC sports guys rip the things to shreds. The gun book from Bellesisles was equally shoddy. IIRC, that won the Bancroft award. It was laughable nonsense on its face, but no one inside the hothouse noticed it.

      The old line about not getting high off your own supply comes to mind.

      17

      • Did Doris Kearns Goodwin have sex with LBJ during her days ‘on the ranch’? The guy slept with everything that moved, and that category would include a women as homely as young Doris. Maybe she can speak on this?

        Caro books be damned, hers has the subtitle, “The Most Revealing… Ever” in it. Caro a foppish TDS sufferer, yes, but still authored the multi-volume bio that I would, since I read them all, put ahead of Ms. Goodwin’s weak sauce, which I also read part of. I could not finish it, it was so bad.

        6

      • It did indeed win the Bancroft (which is basically the Nobel Prize of American History, for those who don’t know the arcana). I don’t have the link to hand, but the whole saga started because an amateur, a lawyer, started digging into it. Nobody in the biz could be bothered, even though situations of that sort — “this one record group that explicitly says exactly what I need it to, that no one has ever heard of before” — are *always* bullshit (Bellesisles wasn’t the only one who ever tried it, by a long shot). Specifically, he cited records that no longer exist — they were destroyed in the San Francisco earthquake at the turn of the century.

        7

        • I don’t know if it was the case with Bellesisles, but with Goodwin, it was assistants who wrote the books. She had a staff who did the research and put most of it together. She was, at best, the senior editor of her books. It is easy to see how this can go wrong. “The boss wants sources to backup this point, so let me find her the sources.”

          The thing with Goodwin that always got me is that she was such an obvious phony. Her baseball book was as fake as a three dollar bill, but no one in that class knows anything about sports or sports fans, so no one noticed. She basically read all of George Will’s baseball columns and manufactured memories based off of them and a baseball reference. Of course, Will was a ridiculous phony as well.

          7

          • Bellesiles was sanctioned by the history profession. But that was 20 years ago. Probably wouldn’t happen today.
            https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arming_America

            3

          • @Jack Bonifce,

            google up “Michael Bellesisles today” and find out what a censure by the history profession is worth. The fact that I’m about to quote from a New York Times article about his rehabilitation should give you an indication:

            “Mr. Bellesiles, who has been teaching history part time at Central Connecticut State University in New Britain while working two other part-time jobs, did precisely what he had hoped to avoid: revive the controversy about “Arming America.” Then, in June, an article he wrote for The Chronicle of Higher Education about teaching students military history during wartime stoked further discussion of Mr. Bellesiles’s credibility. In it he mentioned a student who told him a brother had been killed in Iraq — a claim that turned out to be false. The Chronicle, which investigated the incident after readers raised questions, said the student confessed he had lied to Mr. Bellesiles.”</blockquote

            Still employed in academia. Still writing articles for trade publications. Hell, he even has a new book out… which is getting attention in the New York Times. Oh, how he suffered! Central Connecticut State ain't Emory, I'll grant you, but the only job this guy should've ever been able to get near college kids was "night shift clerk at the campus Kwik-E-Mart."

            The guild always protects its own.

            3

          • This failure to maintain standards is universal across the managerial class. If Bellesiles had written approvingly of the Bell Curve, he would be working at Home Depot now. He is a true believer, so they take a stripe from him for violating the basic rules of his profession and give him a chance to earn it back. This happens everywhere. We have a Congressman sitting on the most sensitive intelligence committees, despite being involved with Chinese spies. He hates white people, so no worries.

            5

          • I remember when it used to be “queer as a two dollar bill.” Good times.

            2

40. The first propositional nation was Christianity.

    Which means that styling America as a propositional nation is a religious conception. A particularly aggressive and proselytizing one, that will tolerate no competing faiths and recognize no geographic limits.

    6

    • Which is why that Yankee song written by that abolitionist fanatic woman, Julia Howe, perfectly encapsulates the insanity of her Puritan New England class and her Black Republican martyr, Lincoln, which first destroyed the South, and is busily consuming the rest of the world.

      “ In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
      With a glory in His bosom that transfigures you and me.
      As He died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
      While God is marching on.

      (Chorus)
      Glory, glory, hallelujah!
      Glory, glory, hallelujah!
      Glory, glory, hallelujah!
      Our God is marching on…”

      7

      1

      • Shortly before I left my last—and final—organized church, we’d sing any number of familiar hymns. “Battle Hymn” was my favorite—better than a cup of strong coffee in the morning.

        Until one day, they changed the lyric

        “As He died to make men holy, let us *die* to make men free,”

        to

        “As He died to make men holy, let us *live* to make men free,”

        Nothing escapes Leftist revision.

        …

        6

        • My hymns are sung in Latin, and not written by crazy women who were delighted to kill my Southern ancestors by the hundreds of thousands for their precious Negroes, so you’ll have to pardon me for saying God damn that song and the black hearted bitch who wrote it.

          8

          1

        • Composci: I thought for sure they’d take out any mention of Christ. That’ll come a bit later. Everything has its utility and its expiration date and they’ll find and use both.

          2

    • I don’t know about that?
      There is spiritual or metaphysical equality and their is social equality. The apostle Paul had no problem returning the slave Philemon to his master. I don’t think the apostle believed in the modern progressive Christian idea of social equality.
      I also just cannot see the apostles running around advocating that the Greeks or Romans would be enriched by more Ethiopians.
      What we are living in is a perversion of Christianity.
      True, Christianity is universal. But only in a spiritual or metaphysical sense.

      11

      • There’s quotes in the Bible of Jesus telling his followers to reject their parents and families. And that their fellow cultists are their family now.

        That type of belonging was one of the major draws of Christianity in its first several centuries. Especially in the fourth when the influential bishops were preaching a community of poor – and rejection of the preceding local identities.

        5

        6

        • True, it’s there. And just like the words of the Declaration of Independence about equality. Those words in that section of the Bible can be taken and run with to no end.
          Christ was probably talking about His rejection by the Jewish leadership and social structure of His time.
          I don’t think He was advocating for Christianity to break up the family structure.
          Obey your father and mother is a part of the teachings and commands of Moses and Christianity after all.
          However I will grant that Christianity is a universal religion frought with many ways to use it for nefarious purposes.

          5

        • Your last paragraph almost perfectly mirrors Nietzsche’s various critiques of the founding of Christianity. He deals with topics sometimes scattered about his various books. But a core one is his essay “The First Christian,” of St. Paul. Paul was, says Nietzsche, looking for a way to update Judaism into something new. He took the teachings of the Nazarene, incorporated philosophy of Plato, and made his new faith more popular by incorporating aspects from various Pagan traditions then popular. Among these included resurrection, eternal life and championing the plight of the poor against the rich. “Inversion” or “transvaluation” of values will make the poor, the downtrodden, to be the righteous, while the successful, the rich, the powerful, are made to be the agent of evil. The afterlife promises a reward (also an innovation) to more than make up for the suffering endured in this world. Somewhere he calls Christianity “Platonism for the masses.”

          Quibble the details if you like, but I think Herr Fritz has it nailed when it comes to a popular religion that provides solace to the poor…while, of course, allowing the rulers to co-opt and mold it to suit their own needs as well.

          2

          • There is plenty of scripture besides Paul that references an afterlife. Maccabees for starters – why pray for the dead if they’re, you know, dead (which is why editing 1000+ years after the fact causes issues). So not sure how much of an “innovation” that was. IIRC there were different schools of thought within ancient Judaism on the afterlife question.

            4

        • And yet the Pope crowned kings and emperors, and mediated disputes among nations.

          1

      • Agreed – the modern day cult is essentially a heresy gone to seed. In the absence of a vital Church to reign in the loons, the heresy has gained institutional support.

        All madness ends eventually. In our era, sane men need to assert themselves. They stand like Pentheus, transfixed before the mad cult of Dionysus to the point of being devoured by it. Where Pentheus failed, the sane of this era must succeed.

        2

    • The translation I usually see with respect to the great commission is “make disciples of all nations” which seems to presuppose the existence of nations. Didn’t say destroy them or make them disappear. Much like you can be both an Italian and a capitalist. They are not mutually exclusive categories.

      4

      • c matt: Those ‘nations’ are still separate nations in heaven. There’s a distinct difference between spiritual salvation and earthly miscegenation. And nowhere did Jesus speak against slavery or servitude, only on mutual social obligations. The only slavery part I recall was Moses et al, now used as justification for so much evil.

        1

        • The Bible (indeed, probably any venerated holy text) can justify great good – or great evil. Here’s a few examples (I don’t have citations tho.)

          Abolitionist? Quote Jesus: “He came to set the captives free. Those in darkness have seen a great light.” Etc.

          Slaver? “Servants (or Slaves) obey your masters.” Or the letter to Philemon, already mentioned today.

          As [?] said, the Devil can cite scripture for his own purposes (and he does, in the temptation of Jesus). So can everybody else!

    • You think ?

      I mean, the Romans did the same thing. bringing “civilization” to the hordes. In fact, it always seemed to me that the spread of Christianity was a like the kid brother’s attempt at playing a Roman.

      And before them the Greeks. My Greek friend never forgets to hit me over the head with the fact that the Romans stole pretty much everything from his people. And I say, ok, except for the butt plugging. And I suppose aqueducts.

      Point being, as people have long maintained, the English essentially carried the torch of the Greek Empire, or western civilization, or that the English Empire was the carrying the torch of the Roman Empire. And now America has been entrusted with it. But obviously we dropped the torch and lit ourselves on fire. Now maybe the Russkies or the Hunkies can do it. The torch keeps getting passed around. But the heart of the matter stays the same. And the heart of the matter is the spirit that lives in white people. Yes it varies among the tribes, there are nuances, but the differences aren’t all that extreme.

      2

41. > Erasing a man from a picture and banning any mention of him still leaves a hole. Rewriting the man’s history, weaving it into the story of the opponents solves two problems.

    One of the greatest memory-holes of history is that Rhodesia even existed at all. It’s especially that way because it showed what might be the greatest resistance of Whites to an existential threat, and also their greatest betrayal by fellow whites. As the new state of Zimbabwe collapsed into a typical African country, they had to ignore any memory of the peaceful and stable country that the West destroyed. I’ve been trying to find a physical copy of Ian Smith’s memoirs and can only come up with used books costing 50+ dollars.

    We’re going to see a similar operation in South Africa as they are making their rapid progress in full Africanization, though this will be far harder, as Mandela is a secular hero and the Truth and Reconciliation Committee was supposed to be a model for the United States.

    33

    • I used to work with an Afrikaner. He called his homeland a third world country with first world infrastructure. After a couple of drinks, he would call is an African country with European rules. After a few more drinks he say that most Afrikaners know that when the infrastructure begins to fail, it is time to leave or prepare to fight. I never knew which side of that dichotomy he was on, but given that no Occidental countries will take the Afrikaners as refuges, we may see another bush war.

      21

      • SA will be a great test of what, if anything, remains of Whitey’s testicular fortitude. Afrikaaners were once like Canadians, Aussies, and New Zealanders, in that they punched WAY above their weight class militarily. Even the Japanese feared them.

        Now? I guess we’ll see. As for the rest, I’ll just note that my tablet’s autocorrect changes “Aussies” to “sissies”… and they’re still pretty macho compared to us decadents here in the Evil Empire.

        22

        • I met an Afrikaner at a secret handshake society meeting who was part of a group planning for what we see today. They were not just preppers or goofball militants playing soldier. Frankly, they were more like a religious sect. They were not small in number either. They owned a lot of land and they were organizing around their ideas.

          24

          • “I met an Afrikaner…”

            I met one too. Asked him why he didn’t stay and fight for his country, told me he “wanted better for his children…” So emigrated here to USA.

            We are playing tennis, and there are these two middle aged white guys in the parking lot across the street from the courts flying electric radio control planes. Big ones. So they start entertaining themselves by flying over the courts, where we two were the only ones playing.

            This agitates my SA friend. I shout over to these clowns, they ignore me. I tell Mr. SA that one more buzzing, I am going to straighten the situation out.

            The inevitable over flight occurs, I put down my racket, head for the gate. Mr. SA starts with, “don’t do it…” Then as I continue, eventually is screeching my name, sounding like a girl … “noooo, forget it, dooon’t go…”

            Does not accompany me.

            I get across the street, two 40-ish males. I approach, first one says, “we didn’t hear anything” when I asked. Other one blurts out, “we heard you but didn’t know what you were saying…”

            Like two little children. I let them know, one on two, one more over flight I come over and we get it on. They sheepishly promise no more, soon pack up and leave with their little toys.

            That there an interaction with three white men, all middle aged. One, coward Mr. SA. The other two sniveling children, also cowards. These are the ‘men’ that are going to ‘save’ just what exactly?

            This just before the covid hysteria. Mr. SA shit the bed I heard, would not come out of his house. Had cut him adrift after the airplane incident.

            10

          • Frankforce, I recently had a similar situation at a gas station with a little foreigner who parked in front of the air pump station and went inside to shop. When he came out five minutes later I gave him a few choice words about where to park. He challenged me to a fist fight, and my adrenaline almost got the better of me. I was a good high school wrestler and can bench 225. He weighed about 140 pounds. So I knew I would crush him like a bug with one or two punches. But I quickly remembered the world we live in. There were cameras and witnesses everywhere, and did I want to spend the night at the police station and face possible criminal charges over some goofball stranger, or did I want to go home to dinner with my family. If we were in a more remote area, I’m afraid of what I would have done to him. But it’s a different world today.

            3

          • I met one SA’er at a conference here in the desert. He and I were the lone spouses—it was the wives’ conference. One of the resort features was an evening bedding-down of a large herd of Javelina, which are best describe as a type of native, pig-like, desert animal.

            There were many visitors from other lands who had never seen these animals in their native environment before. This nightly herd bedding was an advertised attraction. This SA’er was I believe a Boer farmer and he was observing with me and few dozen others.

            He scoffed and said they were just a “bunch of pigs.” I reverted to my academic lecture mode and tried to explain that they looked like pigs, but we not classified in that family. He looked at me and said “Oh yeah, watch this”. He cups his hands to his mouth and make some gawd awful guttural sound. The pigs—one and all—immediately alert then scatter into the desert on a dead run, never be seen again that evening. He turned to me and said “see, they’re pigs!” (I assume he was imitating a distress call from pigs in SA)

            Well, more than one visitor and the resort staff were piss’d at this old Boer farmer. I hustled him off to the bar for drinks and we waited there for the wives.

            That’s the only SA I ever met.

            7

        • My onyl contact with SA’s was a woman. I was in college in Ireland for a semester and she was living with her irish boyfriend she met at, ahem, a kibbutz.

          She was sooo bossy, and I hated her accent.

          That was in the early 90s.

          Incidentally, her Irish boyfriend gave us americans the initial tour around campus (Galway). A coed from Bard college asked where the Lesbain and Gay club was, he assured her they had one, and that Ireland was A-O-Gay.

          I was clueless in those days.

          5

          • “But it’s a different world today.”

            I get you, but only intellectually. My nature overrides that programming if you push too far. But I also have training and experience to handle myself in these situations that comes through the transgressors backed down.

            Spending a night in jail would not stop me from straightening you out if you fucked with one of mine. Let little things slide, then medium. Then large. Don’t ask ‘wha happint’ when it all goes to shit.

            2

          • She’s Sud Efriken. she’s got a grudge. it’s where she keeps her Kaa.

    • Vox Day thinks Anders Brevik will be canonized before too long; I think Ian Smith and Hendrick Verwoerd are much likelier candidates.

      7

      1

    • We’ll accept any immigrant but the Afrikaaner and Boer.

      If that doesn’t say it all, I don’t know what does. I guess we were afraid of their inherent racism.

      13

      • Biden’s administration said just the other day that they don’t want and will stop people fleeing from Cuba from entering the US. Not that I disagree, but their only doing it because those people will be anti-communist.

        14

        • Personally, I agree with Totally Legit Joe on this one. Those refugees must be insane, fleeing Cuba’s legendary 100% literacy and free health care.

          11

        • Perhaps someone here knows whether this is “law” or simply “regulation”, but Cubans have for years had special status wrt remaining in the country. I believe it’s law. Basically, if a Cuban touches land, he can remain—asylum needing no justification. If they catch him in open water they can immediately return them. It was mockingly termed, the “one dry foot rule.” It is as old as Reagan era.

          1

    • Put on some John Edmond and fire up a stogie. Good way to reflect on the current times.

      3

    • If the Globo elites were smart, they would immediately airlift the Boers to European countries, and spread them out so that their numbers / influence is thin.

      Whites might start getting some of the wrong ideas if they see Boers fighting in Africa.

      Unfortunately, what’s more likely is that they successfully carve off a chunk of territory in the Western Cape. Then, the USA, France, or England nukes them, or provides South Africa with arms to relentlessly attack the white section, kind of like Rhodesia. However, it’s not 1990 anymore. Would China be opposed to a white state in Africa? Most of the world doesn’t care, and the USA is a declining power.

      Wild card scenario: Russia ends up letting them in as refugees. I hope they stay and fight though.

      11

      • Russian population declining; Boers and Afrikaners need a place to live. I see a win-win here. Ponimayu?

        3

42. Funny how the Naturalization Act of 1790 and the preamble to the Constitution seem to get swept under the rug.

    21

    • The preamble is answers why the government was created and thoroughly refutes the notion of a propositional nation.

      IMO. The American revolution was mostly an anti-colonial rebellion. The declaration used a lot of specious rhetorical flourishes to justify that rebellion to enlightenment intellectuals in Europe that had their own hostility to their monarchies. The founders at the time certainly didn’t believe most of the BS.

      But then, after being successful more and more people came to accept the specious DoI on its own terms.

      Cialdini’s book Influence has a chapter on that phenomenon, wherein an argument used to justify an action transforms into a central motivating factor over time, in some people.

      8

      1

    • According to the very good people who put out propaganda for the Federal Court system, the preamble makes the United States effectively a Kritarchy. Watch the second video where a diverse group of students talk about what the different phrases of the preamble mean to them. An Asian claims that “for ourselves and our posterity means, “for our children and the children of others.” A black kid follows up with saying it means, that whoever comes to this country should have “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” They won’t hesitate to rewrite the meaning of the Preamble to fit their aims either.

      It is like the progressive Christians who try to boil down the entire meaning of the Bible to one verse in the book of Micah that includes the phrase “do justice.” To them justice means whatever progressives are pushing politically at any given moment.

      https://www.uscourts.gov/about-federal-courts/educational-resources/about-educational-outreach/activity-resources/us

      11

      • we’re in trouble!

        1

    • The founders should have explicitly mentioned race in the main body of the constitution.

      7

    • Wolf: Ultimately they’re all just words on paper. It’s the spirit of the people and their progeny that give them any power or authority. Same goes for ‘rule of law.’ No such thing as magic dirt nor magic papers . .. nor magic people. Just stouthearted men who were willing to sacrifice for the future and their progeny. Genetically, we are not the same people; we are so much lesser than they were.

      4

Comments are closed.