Note: The Taki post is up and related to the today’s post. The ongoing debate about the future of conservatism is interesting to me. It is good that such a thing is happening, but so far it reveals that we are a long way from having a sensible debate. The participants are still locked into an antiquated mode of thought. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door for subscribers as well.
Recently there has been a slow rolling debate among right-wing intellectuals about the state of conservatism and what comes after conservatism. The New Criterion held a symposium on “common good conservatism.” The James Wilson Institute has been debating originalism and legal conservatism (here, here, here and here). Josh Hammer from Yoram Hazony’s group has also been writing about that topic. This debate has also spilled into the foreign policy realm.
There are plenty of others chiming on the topic, but the starting point, even if it is not acknowledged, is that conservatism is done. Whatever comes next may carry the name, but it cannot be the same thing. Interestingly, the old Buckley crowd is not a part of this debate, nor are the neocons. They are too busy hanging onto their sinecures to think much about what comes next. The paleocons have also been left out of the debate, which is ironic given that they were right all along.
As is to be expected with people who view themselves as political theorists, the back and forth is not always accessible. This is especially true with regards to the debate around conservative jurisprudence. It is in that debate, however, where we see the first little green shoots of realism. In this essay the writer points out that there will never be a great rollback of the school prayer decisions. The main reason is no judge or lawyer would ever think such a thing is proper.
The great transition from the original constitutional order to what we have today did not happen in a vacuum. The people have changed, the institutions have changed and the people running the institutions have changed. The writer points out toward the end that the truth is the original social order that is so popular with “constitutional conservatives” no longer exists. America, from top to bottom, is a different world from the one that produced the Constitution.
This is the problem with the current debate about the state of the nation and especially the state of conservatism. The starting point is always the belief that things can be rolled back or reset to a prior order. It is a political revanchism where the plotters seek to reestablish the old order, but this time the people in charge of that order will not be so willing to change it. The proposed alternatives to conservatism promise a return to the past, without regard for how we got to the present.
If there is going to be a New Right in America then the starting point must be a discussion about how we went from the 18th century liberal political system to the present custodial state. In other words, it means retracing our steps in order to find the point at which America went off the course charted by the Founders and instead embarked on a new path for the country. It is in the essay about school prayer that the original sin begins to come into focus.
The writer points out that those school prayer decisions were the result of the consolidation of judicial power under the incorporation doctrine, which is the doctrine by which portions of the Bill of Rights have been applied to the states. In the case of school prayer, the courts extended the prohibition on the federal government regarding official religion to the states. Later courts extended the definition of “official religion” to include any reference to religion.
Clearly, the Founders never intended the establishment clause to apply to the states, as it was never applied to the states until the 20th century. The question is why did the court suddenly decide to apply parts of the Bill of Right to the states and by what authority did they do this? The answer is the 14th Amendment, passed as part of the constitutional reforms following the Civil War. Of course, the reforms were imposed by the victors as part of the spoils of war.
The Civil War did not happen in a vacuum. The roots of that conflict go back to the English Civil War and the founding of the first colonies. Note that the victors of the American Civil War were not the primary hand drafting the Constitution. It was men of the South, with their roots in the cavalier side of the English Civil war, who carried the day on important debates forming the new Constitution. It was the losers of those debates who carried the day seventy years later.
Another way of framing this is that the constitutional order so beloved by originalists did not hold up very well to challenge. It collapsed in the 19th century and since then the victors of the long running debate dating back to the English Civil war have been trying to refashion a new order and a new society. If conservatives are going to find a new path forward, they must come to grips with the present. That means reexamining the past in order to understand why their preferred model failed.
This is why the current debate over conservatism is sterile. No one in that debate is willing to reconsider the 19th century and the events that transformed the country from that which the Founders designed to what emerged in the 20th century. The events of the 19th century are now holy writ. The second founding doctrine is just as entrenched with conservatives as it is on the Left. In fact, both sides compete for who best can achieve the perfect equality promised by the doctrine.
The starting place for a new conservatism is the acknowledgement that the founding creation failed the test of reality. That naturally leads to a debate as to why it failed, which is a debate about the 19th century. That, in turns, means a rethinking of the 20th century in order to gain a clear understanding of the present. Once a new historical framework is in place, then a New Right can begin to chart a new course for itself and the society in which it operates.
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The Civil War is notorious as being the first war in history where it was the winners, not the losers, who were ruthless and permanently invaded by a barbarian mass that made them into despised minorities in their own homeland. As soon as the slaves were freed, the Anglo-Saxon Northerner suddenly had to accept boatloads of cheap labor Irish, Italians, Poles, Lithuanians, Jews, Muslims, gypsies, basically anyone with white skin. They were just the same as those who had been there for 10+ generations and who bled and died to free the salves. No good deed goes unpunished.
Those generic whites went on to defeat fascism, another good deed, and this one was rewarded by being forced to accept boatloads of generic brown people to replace the generic whites.
Today, highly educated first world populations, again practicing good deeds and noble behavior, are forced to accept masses of Islamic fundamentalists and African barbarians who have absurdly high fertility rates simply because they refuse education. They get to replace the educated first world, because no good deed goes unpunished.
Someday a generation is going to figure out republican government (anything not a monarchy) always produces an elite that hates its own people no matter how noble they are, and seeks to replace them with even the worst people in the world just to make a few grift bucks. This is always what you get with a government of those hungry for power, not those simply born into it.
The normie con veneration of the constitution drives me nuts.
It’s become a twisted form of idolatry for them.
And as with all idolatry, they venerate the form with very little understanding of its history, original intent or even structure. Most of them think the constitution begins and ends with the ten amendments, and really the 2nd. They get a blank stare when I point out that the purpose of the constitution was to create the framework of the federal government, it’s institutions and delineate the power of those institutions.
They get hostile when i assert that the founders were wrong in their basic theory of that structure. That a separation of powers would lead to a limiting completion between the branches. But any reading of history demonstrates exactly that, political parties, which they hadn’t even considered, developed within a decade of the constitution’s ratification and neutered such competition. It was only a short time later that the Supreme Court abrogated to itself the role of determining what was and was not constitutional. Which the living founders realized immediately would lead to judicial tyranny, and which was not opposed or precluded by the other two branches.
They are also completely baffled when it’s pointed out that the US has a common law paradigm, not a civil law one. And that judicial action is an inherent part of such a legal paradigm.
What happened to society is easy: sensitisation due to the enfranchisement of women (escalated more recently by technological change that has brought about the enfranchisement of youth and LGBT+).
Anything is a failure that denies reality, and the reality is social and technological change. The challenges to conservatism include:
– Society’s newfound appeal to emotion rather than intellect.
– The increasing irrelevance of religion (in the west) and the consequent liberation of morality from traditional constraint.
– The need to extend the conserving process to the conservation of the natural environment (sorry guys, but denying this is doing you tremendous damage).
– The need to stem immigration – that is, the brazen appropriation of someone else’s culture.
– The need to uphold meritocracy.
– Understanding the pressures of technology which has been rendering the past irrelevant at a remarkable rate. Even the eternal values are swept away by the tsunami of immediate gratification provided by technology.
– Upholding biological reality. Cleaving to evolutionary principles make conservatives the enemy of the loudest section of society.
– Defending their most basic principle: wealth-creation for those who can, but even this, arguably, is no longer necessary nor desired. We no longer want the fastest buck because of the very real environmental costs. The wealth-creation principle was fine up to a point (about 1970), but is now past its expiry date.
For all these reasons, conservatives have found carpet slipping from under their feet as the left-right continuum has shifted. The solution is either to accept some shift to the left or try to reinvent national socialism (this time without involving imperialism and genocide).
Oh, and get a presidential candidate that everyone respects. How had can that be? – it’s a huge country.
It all comes down to individualism vs collectivism. Right and Left aren’t political teams that people choose to join. They’re a spectrum ranging from extreme individualism to extreme collectivism.
What the individualist Right has never come to terms with us that our basic desire to be left alone meant that the collectivists would out organize and out hustle them…largely because their group collective effort could be woven into the system whereas individuals can be quickly isolated and removed.
As has been the case for millennia the choice for the individualist has been to leave the society they hate. The collectivists will hound us into the grave, and having done so, proceed to exhume and rebuttal us 1,000 times until we obey them.
If there is to be a new Right, it needs to embrace basic human nature and appeal to individuals while realizing that individualism loses unless it is weaponized in terms that the individuals set. When individuals adopt collectivist tactics, we lose, because we cede the argument to the adversary.
The whole point of the plandemic was to destroy individualism through face diapers and “collective concern” for the old and sick enforced by emotional blackmail.
We lose because we participate in that crap.
Want to win? Cut ties with mainstream society. Build ties with family and friends.
Why is no one talking about Christianity? Alexis de Tocqueville said that American would come down to a fight between pagans and The Church. The Left, whatever your interpretation of it is, thrives in the vacuum of spirituality we’ve left in our society for fear of “being told what to do”. They’ve replaced it with their own pagan faith.
As the lukewarm and liberal types leave the Catholic Church; convinced by scandal and her subjugation to endless abuse from our media and overlords, a keener, hardened edge of true dissidents remain. I see the Latin masses filled with young families. We hear reports of recently ordained priests being more conservative than ever. There is hope not in policy or endless debate but in the faith of our ancestors. The faith of the martyrs and original dissidents.
Christianity is a spent civilizational force.
There’s no going back.
(Pains me to say it)
The Church cannot die. Indeed they’ve tried.
Died 1859.
Didn’t see the Civil War, Christians slaughtering Christians. I wonder what he would’ve said.
The system that Calhoun proposed in the Disquisition is the best option. It fits the character of the times and the people.
It’s clear that the Constitutional system failed. What’s clear that when the North attacked the South that the Constitutional system was abrogated in the interest of something else (not slavery, but the ‘modern state’).
A working system both creates reality and copes with it. No political revolution ever got anywhere acting as though ‘reality’ wasn’t already on its side.
The fact that ‘the center’ cannot hold is a good thing. We never needed Lincoln’s Tyrant State. And we sure cannot make it function now.
The North/South feud is as fake and gay as the “yeeeeee haaaaaaw!” Texan cowboy archetype. Ethnarc was a weird blessing for TRS before Covid scared him off, but I always wanted to slap him for his “war of northern aggression” sctick. Not wrong, but this spiritual southerner crap is the dissident’s variation of identity politics.
Awaiting moderation. TRS. Ethnarc. Jayoh. Just pissing around to see if the glow filters work.
Yep. Border collie corgi X-com UFO Defense
OT, in case ppl close to the Canadian protests are reading here. People who claim to have sources inside Canadian police, say Trudeau has decided to go full Tiananmen BEFORE FRIDAY. Could be tomorrow or any day before Friday. They will kill cell phone service and take arrestees down to Lansdale (no idea where this is but Ottawans probably will). Hundreds of cops being bussed into Ottawa now, from Toronto and other places. I can’t guarantee this is not its own PsyOp to spread such rumors.
I don’t have advice for what the protesters should do. Get lawyers lined up would not be a bad idea I guess. I am now asking myself when I would consider it necessary and righteous to use deadly force against regime troopers that may be about to cut all the bonds linking them to civilized men. I guess everyone must answer that for themselves because if that little f*cker Trudeau goes through with that, it could get sporty up in Canada, it could get very sporty very fast. If I were LEO I would certainly ask myself if I signed up to be an oppressor and a little P.O.S. doing the dirty work of Evil that just considers me an expendable tool. Good luck to all. Fuck ’em!
Here is the link
https://rumble.com/vua9cs-police-are-planning-to-use-brute-force-to-disperse-the-protestors-in-ottawa.html
Yep the pigs are getting increasingly aggressive. A couple nights ago they declared it illegal to provide fuel or food to truckers and stole some diesel jerry cans. People have responded today by all carrying jerry cans around the protest. An old man was arrested today for honking. Another cop ran into a guy’s truck during a traffic stop then arrested him. A judge has declared it illegal to honk in downtown Ottawa (not joking). Trudeau repeated that the protestors are “racist” and flew a “Nazi flag” and retweeted some Muslim deputy announcing 300 more cops coming to the scene.
The protest has been spectacular so far, and was still going strong last weekend (second weekend) with thousands and thousands coming over the weekend to protest, meet, and party. Tens of thousands protested in other cities last weekend, and wide swaths of Toronto were completely blocked off to traffic. Trucks are still blocking the entire downtown core of Ottawa. Libs are increasingly unstable and shrieking, demanding that all the “insurrectionists” be shot or whatever. Many videos of freakouts from masked clowns on the street demanding that people leave “their city” (I thought borders were racist?)
The great thing about this protest is that they are just sitting there, revving their engines and honking. This is driving liberals suicidal. Nobody has stormed a building like Jan 6. People are well aware of optics and negotiations, and are on the lookout for feds. The truckers are not going anywhere, and if there is violence it won’t be the truckers firing the first shot. The only laws being violated are idling, honking, and parking bylaws, lol. We’ll see what happens.
Trucks are said to be closing in on Brussels, NYPD and FDNY have blocked the Brooklyn Bridge, as protesters (“Go New York!! I knew you hadn’t really gone to sh*t” if I may be allowed 🙂 ). Kiwis are trucking too against that broad with the horse dentals. The suckers can’t contain it, it is becoming peoples vs regimes all over the West. And it started in Canada.
It is amazing. The “West” stands exposed as an oppressive, totalitarian monstrosity now. Let me add the United States has arrived at the point where such an authentic, anti-regime demonstration could result in mass murder that would make Tiananmen look like a picnic. Nonetheless, firing on our Canadian brothers and sisters would cause a direct citizen confrontation with D.C. if it sided with the killers–which it almost certainly would do.
The WEF weeps.
It would be amazing and ironic if the much needed global rebellion against the abomination that “liberal democracy” has become started in the country most known for being milquetoast and inoffensive. I will say that if some sort of bloodbath does start in Canada it will take no time at all to touch off a hot civil war in the US.
Another piece of information:
The largest border crossing in the US/Canada, Windsor/Detroit has been partially blocked all day, and fully blocked since 5pm in both directions, and now closed. Trucks are backed up for miles into Detroit. Police are massed from the entire province in Ottawa for the trucker protest and lack the manpower to remove this blockade. https://www.freep.com/story/news/local/michigan/detroit/2022/02/07/protesters-canada-block-ambassador-bridge/6699215001/
The third largest crossing at Sarnia/Port Huron MI was blocked yesterday. The Coutts AB/Montana border was closed on and off. Protesters opened one lane in exchange for a promise to end vaccine mandates. An estimated 15,000 have descended on the region waiting to block it up again.
Big things going on, hopefully we can keep up the momentum. Feds are scared too because, like Jan 6, there are no leaders. Bunch of loosely connected guys are just pulling up in trucks and blocking the border.
Thanks so much. I am trying to find a non-regime live feed without success so far, so the information is greatly appreciated.
(found a stream)
when in doubt, turn to Google maps with Traffic filters on. you can basically check up on the borders that way. Windsor-Detroit is a mess right now.
Thanks! Like Jack, much appreciate on the ground and locally sourced info! Our would-be lords don’t want us to know anything.
B125: I am so impressed by and proud of White Canadians right now I could burst! So many rumors (about other cops pouring into Ottawa, about Trudeau preparing said cops to storm and arrest the truckers, about some Ottawa cops resigning ) – situation is really fluid. And while I recognize the importance of optics (hate that word) in this case, I simultaneously worry that too many of the truckers are civic nationalist rubes who really can’t see that all their fellow protesters and all their public supporters are White, not brown or yellow. I pray they hold the line and win the day – for all of us.
Meanwhile the US Navy builds confidence in the dollar and sends a message to China with their new, “F-35 into carrier deck,” tactic.
The video I forget is here:
https://m.youtube.com/shorts/UGx9FffY0b4
I am doubling my portfolio in the company making those pregnant pilot flight suits!
Hyperloop this, EVs that, pFizer the other…
This whole snow job by the WEF sales force might just be the top tier hyping up their latest IPOs.
Build media excitement, cash out, and on to the next scam. Gods help us if they really believed their own bulls***.
Hint to separatists:
George Wallace was shot by Arthur Herman Bremer on May 15, 1972.
Addendum:
Dear 3g4me: hey gorgeous, lookie what I found:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1488128816434266115.html
(Looks like the Magic Media stupes still drooling over Qanon couldn’t recognize real 4S in action…
playas got played!)
Alzaebo: Hope and pray they are as organized and professional as link indicates. They cannot back down. If there was any link I could genuinely trust to send them financial support, I would do so.
Man, wish I was there. On the fence about this American thing, but I might still find a way to innocently get a load from LA to Wash…er, Baltimore.
My obtuse and unintelligible comment meant,
“while intel/media types were distracted by the Qanon psyop, the real pros were live-gaming scenarios,” which I hope is true.
I mean, even Rotterdam and Belgium are getting some.
I’d like to mention something that’s a little more interesting to me that conservatism being in its death throes. We all understand why that’s happening, because the people who run conservatism inc were never really conservative in the first place.
The more interesting thing is that liberalism is in its death throes too, and they’re making a much greater noise about it, while simultaneously blaming it on conservatism. It’s like watching a Godzilla movie where King Kong and Godzilla are wrestling each other all the way to the bottom of a chasm they’ve fallen into.
I was saying 10-15 years ago that the word “liberal”didn’t really fit the Democratic left, at least not anymore. They’re decidedly illiberal and have been for a long time. It’s just that up until now they could hide their control of all the institutions behind the illusion that they were still fighting for the little man. Donald Trump pulled that veil from their faces and their instinctive reaction has been full-blown authoritarianism. The people of this country had a moment where they actually believed their vote mattered again and they had to shatter that illusion with brute force.
It’s fascinating to watch the left exercise full control over the entire government while hiding from some kind of specter of fascism that’s lurking in the shadows. The reality is that fascism=dirt people in their minds. All those people at Nuremberg were dirt people. 1/6 was dirt people. 2016 election was dirt people. They’re scared of dirt people and they’re ripping themselves to shreds because of that fear.
“All those people at Nuremberg were dirt people.”
Justice, justice, justice for the victims! I kiss you, I kiss your hands, I kiss your feet for this.
For me, the whole decline can be traced back to Lincoln and his abrogation of States rights.
As Lincoln proved there are no rights other than those you can enforce against those trying to remove them/
I blame Martin Luther.
This piece may lead anybody on the Right: Dissident, Alt, Paleo, whatever realize why the should have nothing to do with AirBnB.
https://www.unz.com/mmalkin/why-airbnb-banned-me-and-my-hubby-too/
These people hate you and want you dead.
Talking about school prayer feels like I’m being talked about and not being allowed to respond.
This issue is dead beyond belief and irrelevant. It is grating to the point of CPC analysts on mass media pondering on what crumbs and tricks social conservatives should fall for next to get in line with the CPC.
Woke Christians are not a good ally faction. That is the bunch that would be involved in these endeavors. Best to stay far away from Dubya and Oklahoma type politics.
The “Oklahoma” Christians (Penteostal & some Baptist) with whome I became acquainted over the past three years neither venerate Bush nor have tolerance for the current situation. They are pretty much fed up, and that includes their assessment of their federal legislative delegation.
Taking a historical perspective I don’t think America failed. Nothing that becomes the most powerful country in the world is a failure. Because what would success then look like? Here is what happenen; America has run its course. America is not unique, the Founders were very smart but not moreso than the best of other countries and civilizations. And this is a pattern that happens again and again, for powerful countries. Eleven hundred years ago, the world alarm call in Europe was ‘The Danes are coming!’ Very hard to believe today but 1100 years ago it would make any Frankish warrior sh*t bricks. Today it is this silly little country in Northern Europe that occassionally shows slightly better judgment than the Swedes or Germans (lowest bar ever?? Possibly), but is otherwise very, very decadent. Britain suddenly burst onto the scene under Elisabeth I and Drake and really became number one after Waterloo. It was the nominal number one until it couldn’t handle Germany. If we go back much further, 2200 years ago there were advanced civilizations in India and China. In India, being Indoeuropeans (the Brahmins), abstract thought was in vogue. They discovered (or invented, depending on your personal philosophy of math, I say discovered) the zero and Ashoka, a philosopher king, built several columns of, incredibly, stainless steel. Something otherwise not invented until, I think, the 19th century. The Chinese were also doing well here. With their more ‘autistic’ way of thinking their inventions tended to be less abstract, like gun powder and the compass. Later both grew weak and were overrun by invaders, the Muhammedans in India, the Mongols in China. India and China are also reminders of how long it can take to rebound. For them about 2000 years, maybe 1000 depending on when you think they fell.
We know the symptoms in a society going into this terminal decadent phase, such as excessive intellectualism (a conference on ‘the future of conservativism’…eh? as the truckers would say), a fetish for ‘human equality’, money and entertainment over honer and adventure, feminism and foreign influx. We can strongly suspect affluence leading to a flaccid, comtemptible and easy way of life, to be the root cause of this, although I don’t think we *know* this to be so in the sense we do know the symptoms.
We must go back beyond culture and far beyond legal events like the incorporation doctrine, to find the root of our decay. It is the easy life of security and affluence. The reason we cannot make sense to leftists is that they never feel the consequences of being wrong. Affluence protects them.
Our task is the hardest in political discourse ever. It is to find the elusive elixir of salvation from decadence that the Romans, ancient Indians and Chinese and Arabs, Vikings, Spanish and Brits never found. It has nothing to do with how the constitution was written (Thomas Jefferson would be very surprised indeed to discover that gay marriage is in there somewhere) or what the Founders did. We have some clues to go on. We know the symptoms, there is strong reason to assume that affluence is the cause behind those symptoms. And (I’ve been fooling around w game theory lately) I think it is an interesting problem there (anti-geeks, stop reading now if you ever got this far); it is an iterated game where the better you do in the first round, the worse are your odds in the next round. Because it is winning – great power and security, later great wealth, that weakens your hand. I don’t think this problem has been worked out in game theory. Usually game theory is just ‘this is what to do to get the best result for yourself.’ If the better you do means the worse off you are in the next round, we seem to be more into predator-prey dynamics and I don’t think they have been analysed with game theory although I could be wrong there.
I say we begin by treating the symptoms and go back to ‘to love a child is to discipline it’ ways of raising our children (if you say that openly, next week social services, and a cop, may be at your door; this is how sick it is today).
Your comment would be easier to read if divided up into smaller paragraphs.
You’re probably right. It’s so d*mn long even I don’t want to read it again, hence full of typos. I probably use too many examples and overdevelop the steps in my reasoning.
No, Simba, no!
Don’t go full Baptist!
How do you make a Baptist omelette?
First, beat the kids.
Then, get two eggs…
It sounds like the spindly, enstupified degenerates are getting to you. These are our moral thought leaders and managers in just a few more years. Future seems bright, eh?
The thing is, affluence is the goal of any society. Yet when we finally catch the car…
(Egads. The answer might be, the girls can take over, so the men stop defending what was their ‘territory’.)
I do NOT mean abusing children. Loving them is to guide them and not pamper them.
I knew that. Joshing with you.
Every Southron of a certain age used to start conversations with, “We gotta beat the kids again and evolution is a lie by Satan!” as an icebreaker. They couldn’t figure out where we’d gone off the rails either.
Many apologies.
My big mouth again.
Hehe no problem buddy
Iterative. I think that’s how time is fwiw. And yes, the higher you climb, the harder you fall. I’m glad somebody figured that out 🙂
Sorry for the sarcasm, but it kind of shows how soft and out of touch we’ve become that Science! needs to point out the obvious, right?
There is an element of ‘the higher you climb the harder the fall’ to a game where ‘the better you do the worse off you are in the next round’, good point. It is not obvious to me what the solution to such a problem is. What did Eastern Europe do the second the commie yoke was off? They wanted to get as rich as Western Europe ASAP. Not realizing that it was communism’s idiotic economics that had probably saved Poles and Czechs from becoming as decadent as Belgians and Brits.
It’s the moral element, or the lack of it, isn’t it? If it was impressed on people that too much prosperity is a very bad thing, they might think twice. Or maybe not. It’s a tough one.
Good question, not sure if most people would have the discipline not to indulge. If food is any guide, ppl know too much food is bad but some still can’t keep away.
I’d say the U.S. has been damned lucky over the last century or so not to have suffered the tremendous physical/material destruction that many European countries, Russia, Japan etc. had to deal with. Of course many of our old and (formerly) proud cites look worse than any continental city I’ve visited, mainly thanks to the negro and White appeasement of the creatures – our own self inflicted neutron bombs.
But I’d also say our luck is likely running out. Seemingly everything in this (former) country is corrupt and overseen by a coterie of imbeciles everywhere. With a debt load that’ll never be repaid, it’s just a matter of time. It’ll be prime time for a new, serious group of leaders to emerge.
The most dangerous thing about a country going soft is probably that it loses ‘demographic discipline’ and suddenly everyone is ‘entitled’ to live there. This is particularly a Western problem today. Japan in 2100 may be 35 million people. But it will still very much be Japan ethnically. Sweden may be 40 million, none of them ethnic Swedes.
Both conservatives and liberals are progressives.
Conservative: Yesterday was right. Today is wrong.
Liberal: Yesterday was wrong. Today is right.
Which, if we move forward in time, becomes:
Conservative: Today is right. Tomorrow is wrong.
Liberal: Tomorrow is right. Today is wrong.
Note the contradiction.
Progressivism is Nihilism.
Best Regards,
Mike
It goes back even further than school prayer. The question should be asked, why were public schools even created in the first place and what was the intended effect?
Whatever the intention, within 60 years they became brainwashing tools. Particularly after the Civil War. As the country industrialized the new upper class wanted human cogs for their big new factories. The last thing they would have wanted was critical thinking, which even at the turn of the 20th Century was beaten out of school children. Public School was a bulwark to keep American kids from becoming some Walt Whitman admiring a pond in the woods all day instead of cranking out engine parts. Prohibition never would have gained ground if it wasn’t for the original 19th Century cat ladies going off on demon rum in front of their third graders in the Victorian era. From about the 1830’s forward, and particularly picking up steam after the Presidency of the corrupt, gay, railroad lawyer, with his carpet eating old maid wife, women with names Emily and Annabel have been the hand that rocks the cradle in the public school system. What we’re living through is the terminus of these crazies. The silver lining of legalizing abortion 50 years ago is that many of these women killed their kids, and are now barren with cats. It also means that these women are crazier than ever as their lineage finally terminates like modern say secular shakers.
Ignoring the influence of the education system might be the biggest failure of conservatism. K-12 selects so heavily for female leftist teachers that even these “no politics in the classroom” laws that are popping up will likely have no effect whatsoever. I remember going to school in the 90s and at the time it was considered untoward for a teacher to push left-wing politics the way they do now, but they still found ways to slide it in. History classes always seemed to come with photocopied packets of Howard Zinn chapters, and Science classes always seemed to end up being about environmentalism.
The real problem is that I doubt there are enough conservative women to staff teaching positions, and trying to push men into the field will just make the public schools a secular version of Catholicism. No Gods, just the diddling.
Think about it this way: Colonial America had a higher literacy rate than either England or France (~90% A rate we haven’t approximated since.) Then came mass migration. Many if not most of whom were illiterate. I think it was an attempt to integrate foreign populations that threatened to overwhelm the very existence of a young country.
This debate is sterile, albeit understandable, because it presumes that some form of Right can function effectively in Blackistan. This, of course, is impossible. What passes for the Right in this country is a pack of milquetoast bedwetters bleating feebly about the second amendment, the right to life, and if they’re feeling particularly spunky, low taxes. That is mighty thin gruel for a political platform. Yet, such is the anti-white Left’s monopoly on power that those positions are the only ones allowed–for the time being–to the so-called “Right.”
In point of fact, attempting to push rightwing positions in a thoroughgoingly Leftist society is silly. The only way for the true Right to get what it wants is to create a separate nation state. It must then study what went so disastrously wrong in America (hint: think diversity and Leftist control of academia), and institute safeguards to ensure that it doesn’t happen again.
Wallace was right. Segregation now, segregation tomorrow, segregation forever. If that’s not the operating principle of the Right, then no matter what else they espouse, failure is inevitable. If that makes me a racist, then I am a racist BFYTW.
I get called a racist periodically and my response is, no, I’m a bigot. A racist hates everyone in a particular group regardless of any interactions with them, a bigot hates a particular group BECAUSE of his interactions with them. My interactions with American Natives are–they are smelly, thieving, wife beating, promiscuous, child abusing drunks. My interactions with American Blacks are–they are touchy, entitled, raucous, bullying, lazy, whiney “all about me-ers” who won’t take responsibility for their own decisions.
You’re not prejudiced, you’re postjudiced.
Bang on Ostei, and thanks for the helpful hint there – but for most all the audience here – it was probably not necessary.
People respect raw power and that’s what’s needed to stop this. The will to power. Trump may have actually won the election, despite his copious lies and deception, had he just sent the military into Portland and had they gunned down Antifa with live ammo. The lessons of the 20th Century are that you never have dialogue with communists. They’re not worthy of dialogue. Engagement in dialogue automatically elevates them to your level. The right will be engaging in dialogue all the way to to firing squads.
Bin Laden understood this, right? People will go with the strong horse, not the weak horse. Dialogue with these monsters is moronic.
Bin Laden totally got it. And the US pulled out of Saudi Arabia over the next month. And, Bin Laden was given a dignified, naval burial, with Muslim customary practices when he was buried at sea instead of being buried in a vat of lard. What does that tell you?
Yeah course he was.
Good grief does any adult actually believe that fiction.
Hey there Trumpton;
The G said it, it must be true!
Or Trump would have revealed that he had no real power. I suspect that there were plenty of appointed leaders in Summer 2020 that would have refused to obey such an order.
Once again Osti, dead solid perfect.
Z Man makes two points that I’d like to elevate.
One, the power of any Constitution to regulate people in the future is weak. Instead, the people who interpret and execute the document are far more consequential than the script on the parchment.
Two, as Z Man observed, “The people have changed, the institutions have changed and the people running the institutions have changed.” His words underscore the fact that nothing is more important than deciding who gets to live in your country.
Since I believe that morality is mostly instinctive preferences that we inherit from our ancestors, a country should be a genetically extended family. Different peoples want to structure society differently so we can avoid unnecessary conflict by having separate countries.
” … a country should be a genetically extended family.”
The word “nation” is derived from the Latin “natus,” “born”; the past participle of the verb “nascere”; “to be born.”
A nation is precisely what you suggest: “a genetically extended family.” Think “Cherokee Nation” or “Sioux Nation” (i.e., tribe).
This fact gives the lie to the nonsense term “a nation of immigrants.”
As an Orwell character says in “1984”: “The revolution will be complete when the language is perfect.”
I just have to point out that I noticed the names dropped in the article you cited in Taki Mag (https://unherd.com/2022/01/why-is-the-right-so-unattractive/), both left and right, reads like the attendee list at a Bar Mitzvah.
I try to notice less these days but wow.
Memebro: Funnily enough, just had the same thing happen to me as I was glancing through the headlines at WRS (always a hit or miss experience). Regarding who helped spearhead the attack on Rogan – look up the name and history of one Kenny Meiselas, first wife Beth Katz, and their boychicks Ben, Brett, and Jordan:
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1490220423270699009.html
Incredible. Saved!
As a certain writer over at Taki’s posits, blacks are using Hollywood’s own rules to push the original Hollywood industry crowd out– so the young have moved their industry into political theatre, while the old fogies’ heads reel from karma.
To the boychiks, Rogan doesn’t impress them at all, because to a black man, another black man is “just another nigga.”
They probably tell him he should be making shoes in a shtetl somewhere.
From memory, the late Lawrence Auster used to recommend Raoul Berger’s book on the incorporation doctrine.
I suspect the seeds of liberal collapse were brought about the notion that we could include non Westerners in our Western system. Seemed like we were doing fine until we started letting Africans, Chinese, and the rest have a say.
Oh, and tolerating the idea that history is moved by esoteric forces or principles rather than God. Man is weirdly bent toward obsessing about the eschaton, so the eschaton needs to be in God’s hand. When man comes to believe he has a hand in bringing it about that’s where things get hairy. This is why freemasonry is so dangerous and other similar societies. Anything or anybody that entertains the idea of secret masters, learned elders, white brotherhoods of the cloud masters… all of this implies people can work together with esoteric forces to bring about utopia. It’s the same with Marxists, who who work with imaginary dialectic processes to move history toward an earthly paradise. The same applies to heretical Christian cults that do things like send money to Israel so that they can build a third Temple and trick God into coming back,
“… it means retracing our steps in order to find the point at which America went off the course charted by the Founders and instead embarked on a new path for the country.”
So in a “death by a thousand cuts”, you wish to point to and isolate *the* cut that ended the condemn’s life? It’s no wonder that “conservatives” don’t wish to go this route. What is needed is to bring about a modern consensus as to what we stand for as a group and fight for an association of like minded people. In other words, start over again with first principles. I propose a White ethnostate. All else is easy after that.
But before you can have a discussion of “first principles” you have to understand how you got to this point. Otherwise it is just escapism, which is the heart of the crisis of conservatism. They operate in a fantasy world of their own creation while the other side remakes the real world in which we live. There is a reason those “first principles” have been no match for the Left.
You have a point, but as some comments here have already pointed out, there is disagreement as to any one divergence as a cause of our present malaise. And if we accept that there have been a number of Constitutional missteps/oversteps over the years, then we also accept that some of these missteps *interact* with each other. Multivariant analysis is a bitch.
The rabbit hole we go down seems long and complex.
The first hurdle is to accept that it has been an evolutionary process. Once you establish that point, then the next thing is to root the starting point. The reason I think this is vital is to avoid recency bias and to break the cycle of “all we have to do is X” and everything will be better.
On the recency bias, my observation is that conservative debate tends to center on old personal scores. “If only they had listened to us back in ’78 when we said…” Frankly, I think the actuarial tables are our friend here. The debate will progress one funeral at a time.
The broader view also makes the simple answer crowd appear simpleminded. In my time, these guys have been the bane of any serious discussion of cultural and social issues. To be blunt, they need to be read out of the discussion entirely. If the answer were simple, there would be no need for the debate.
It may also be an entropic process. A lot of conservative “If only we’d…” talk implies that politics can be solved somehow. Leftism may simply increase over time and the time it takes to kill the society depends on how solid the foundation was to start, the problem being that too solid means you spend centuries in stasis confident in your superiority over noodles and tea while the rest of the world finds a better use for gunpowder than making poop grenades.
The thing to remember with leftist ideology is that it is totally stupid to the point of being essentially chaos. As the system winds down and loses the capacity to do useful work entropy is maximized and everyone’s intellect is replaced with mindless slogans and multiracial soda commercials.
Steve Haywood recently seriously suggested term limits as the answer. Total tool. I begin to fear a less nuanced, more direct, approach will be necessary. For your consideration (kai murros):
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x5ly7p1
Well, from a more recent history standpoint, the big lesson should be that “winning matters.” The Left just wanted to win. They did whatever it took to win.
Open the floodgates to immigrants to reduce % of white voters. Sure. Take over the media and present a completely false picture. Check. Crush anyone who opposes you. Got it. Etc.
The Left is laser focused on winning. The Right is focused on talking about how great their ideas are and how hypocritical the Left is.
The other big lesson is that the Left is simply better at playing the political game than the Right. The Left lives and breaths politics, and I mean the day-in and day-out politics. Organizing, fund-raising, protests, etc. They love that stuff. The Right hates it.
Any political system you create will very quickly get taken over by these people because they will work 24-7 to find any and every way to start getting control of that system. They’re the political version of the Terminator. They’ll never quit. Ever.
It’s interesting that other countries seem better able to subdue their Leftists. And it’s not words on a piece of paper that keep them in check. It’s hard men willing to hit back at them.
The Chinese government is doing that right now. The Russians are also pushing back. They understand that you don’t beat these people by debating them.
You might notice that in Russia and China the media is closely controlled by the ruling govt.
They well understand the power dynamic.
Its why China is intent on controlling the media to stamp out the nihilism it sees destroying other countries.
Russia is doing the same.
Control of the media and the banks is key.
If I had an ethno-state, I’d make it illegal for non-citizens (people not of my tribe, so to speak) to own any media outlet or bank.
Citizen: Right-wing death squads need to be a real thing.
“Any political system you create will very quickly get taken over by these people because they will work 24-7 to find any and every way to start getting control of that system.”
Then perhaps we should focus on reforming the people and not the system. One method that might work is secession, a process that would isolate the far-Left, now disproportionately located in a few coastal metros, away from us. This would prevent them from gaining control of our society because they aren’t physically there to do anything about it.
Despite the misconception that the United States is too mixed to break up, it is increasingly segregating politically as conservatives and normies flee blue states for red states; California recently ran out of U-Hauls leaving the state. Maybe half of Floridians weren’t born there.
We know personality and political inclination are heritable traits. What would a future Red States of America look like when 90% of the Leftist population suddenly finds itself on the outside in a different country? It’d be lot harder for politically active Leftists to subvert our system if there aren’t many of them left to do so. And because Republicans have more children than (White) democrats, and politics is heritable, we’d likely never have to worry about this happening again; all future generations will be naturally conservative at the genetic level and, thus, not susceptible to manipulation by the Left. That’s something that was never possible in any previous age until the Industrial Revolution.
“It’s interesting that other countries seem better able to subdue their Leftists.”
My guess is that other countries, particularly in Asia, simply have fewer Leftists as a percentage of the population than the West does. Professor Edward Dutton has advanced the theory that the Industrial Revolution, which began in Europe, ended harsh selection pressures which previously kept conservatives and religionists the vast majority of the population. Absent this selection pressure, spiteful mutant Leftists began increasing in number until a tipping point was reached in the 1960s and our system was overthrown.*
In contrast, Asian nations only industrialized quite late. This meant harsh Darwinian selection pressures continued until the modern age. The Japanese were still Medieval until the mid 1800s (swords, a type of feudalism) when the Americans forced them to open up to the outside world, and the Chinese were starving primitives back when I was in kindergarten.
Because Asians industrialized late**, and because their birthrates are lower, far fewer spiteful mutants arose in the population. Indeed, current modernist selection pressures favoring natalists assures they probably never will. This means Asia likely won’t have to deal with any significant Leftist problem to the same degree the West does – which came about through early industrialization and relatively high birthrates and low infant mortality.
Asian nations are an example of superior populations able to make any type of system work. We should follow their example because simply changing systems won’t work with the current population. We can do this by segregating them out of our society. This prevents them from influencing the culture or the government, and in that vacuum normie conservatives will always be assured victory.
*Another explanation involves mass immigration to the United States. The kinds of people who packed up and left their previous homelands to come here – especially after we began importing Eastern Europeans — tended to be less conservative, more neurotic, more political, slightly more intelligent, less traditionally religious (but still fanatical), more individualistic, and more psychopathic (i.e. more Leftist).
This is seen in relatively low New England White crime rates, even absent guns, being much higher than the Western European equivalent. Also, American White IQs tend to be consistently higher in New England than in Western Europe by about a point or two; even in the South, IQs run 7 – 9 points higher than compared to countries like Greece. There are more White psychopaths in the population when compared with Europeans. And White Americans are consistently more individualistic, seen in their opposition to government programs and support of gun rights (which I also support), than native Europeans.
**You’ll also notice Eastern European nations like Russia have been able to suppress their Leftists to a greater degree. The Industrial Revolution didn’t reach Eastern Europe until much later. Thus, there may be slightly fewer leftists there to contend with.
Rush is dead and Bongino has become the new ConInc attack dog, but more visceral this time around. His slogan is . . . I’m angry, I have a thin skin, and I swear a lot when not on the air. His mission is to dissipate conservative anxiety via venting their angst from the virtual pulpit. And although most of what he says about Progs is accurate, the solution he preaches is the ever-failing vote harder gospel. He readily admits that most R politicians are backstabbing RINOs, but that is preferable to the dreaded Ds. Hence, the solution to what ails us is MORE COWBELL!!!
This is why Conservatism is dead.
The acronym “RINO” has long struck me as delusional; it implies that genuine Republicans are not simply puppets of the higher economic powers. Democrats versus Republicans turns out to be less consequential than Coke versus Pepsi. By the way, Coke versus Pepsi is every bit as rigged as the red team/blue team nonsense, as the same investment bankers own both companies. Any “competition” between the two is primarily theater. Go figure!
Agreed, but the asshole that stabs you in the back is a thousand times worse than the asshole that punches you in the face.
Ds are in-your-face antagonists and you can see them coming head-on, so forewarned is forearmed. But a RINO is the stranger that jumps into your foxhole wearing the right uniform, but then shoots in the back of the head when you turn to face the enemy. That’s an important distinction.
Absolutely.
I have the same reaction to the “conservatism is dead” meme: good riddance.
In other words, conservatism is dead because conservatives are bloody obtuse.
In my lifetime, I’d say that people recognizing that the 14th Amendment was a major turning point taking us away from the federal system is a major breakthrough for our side. Conservatives (for lack of a better term) really should examine the manner in which it was “adopted” … not only under duress, but threat of loss of representation and reversion to, essentially, a Southern territory. Therefore, the 14th’s legitimacy, and everything on which it is later based, is of dubious provenance. Legal “niceties” matter and the 14th was not born of legitimate circumstances.
Last time I recall this “untouchable” piece of gospel mentioned in anything but reverent tones was Goldwater (who understood very well what folly civil rights legislation would lead to, eventually).
” … Goldwater (who understood very well what folly civil rights legislation would lead to, eventually).”
Which is why the states populated by the only remaining *real* Americans voted for Goldwater in ’64. Those states’ representatives also voted against Hart-Cellar in ’65.
The stupid animus against “boomers” fails to take into account that the boomer problems is one of culture and history, not of age.
“The great transition from the original constitutional order to what we have today did not happen in a vacuum. The people have changed, the institutions have changed and the people running the institutions have changed. The writer points out toward the end that the truth is the original social order that is so popular with “constitutional conservatives” no longer exists. America, from top to bottom, is a different world from the one that produced the Constitution…. If there is going to be a New Right in America then the starting point must be a discussion about how we went from the 18th century liberal political system to the present custodial state. In other words, it means retracing our steps in order to find the point at which America went off the course charted by the Founders and instead embarked on a new path for the country.”
Supreme Court nominee Robert Bork’s book ‘The Tempting of America’ attempted to retrace some of those steps way back in 1997: asserting that rule by the Constitution as it was written has been supplanted by elites seeking to get the unconstitutional political results they favor by imposing their own values— values not found in the Constitution— through “legislating” from the bench; instead of doing their intended job by applying the law as the Founders wrote it:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0684843374/ref=dbs_a_w_dp_0684843374
” … “legislating” from the bench; … .”
That was possible only b/c the Congress failed utterly in its Constitutional power to regulate the federal courts. The idea of doing so never even occurred to them. They still have the power to regulate the courts, but why should they? They are doing just fine in the USSA.
“It is a political revanchism where the plotters seek to reestablish the old order, but this time the people in charge of that order will not be so willing to change it.”
When have “the people in charge of that order will not be so willing to change it” ever been willing to change the thing that put them at the top of the food chain? If they appear to be willing to change it, watch out! They have something else in mind and will only focus on appearances. No, any time anything at the top changes it is due to “right of conquest” by something outside of their control, and they only change enough to retain their control. Or, the guillotines roll for a while as they plot their way back. Maybe through a Napoleon. Who eventually becomes what he replaces.
“Maybe through a Napoleon. Who eventually becomes what he replaces.”
Although we do have the example of Cincinnatus. And George Washington. He returned to his farm and would have done so after his first term as Pres, but circumstances moved him to remain in office.
“The starting place for a new conservatism is the acknowledgement that the founding creation failed the test of reality. That naturally leads to a debate as to why it failed, which is a debate about the 19th century.”
Hell yeah, times 10 to the hundredth power. Until “america,” much less “the conservative movement,” can wrap its head around A. Lincoln and what he effectuated there is no movement in any direction, much less forward. And the sordid legacy of Lincoln and the Radical Republicans is the very thing that the “conservatives” discussed in this post and the excellent Taki piece will NOT discuss. Instead, they’re doubling down with the books on “freedom fighters” F. Douglass and Abe Lincoln and Harriet Tubman as some sort of exemplars of what “we” should be.
It’s pointless to look at those people for anything other than laughs/comedy. The real discussion should be among the dissident right and the paleocons.
Our side needs books on Lincoln, to the extent that they focus on his tenacity and how he managed to drag the Puritan Yankees over the finish line. What he wrought was disasterous, but if we’re serious about winning the next struggle for our people’s home, his methods are unfortunately inarguable.
Conservatism failed for multiple reasons, but the greatest one lies with the fact that (American) conservatives don’t really understand the Left, or even the natural world. Conservatives adopt “principles”, then try to bend the world to those high-minded principles without understanding the more basic motivations of their Machiavellian Leftist opposition or how the real world works outside their theories. Thus, they were always two steps behind in the culture war.
Take the following misconception, for example:
“prayer decisions were the result of the consolidation of judicial power…”
Were they? I’d argue that was merely the means and not the reasoning. The abolition of school prayer was the inevitable conclusion to mass immigration, of a system trying to make peace between all of its new – disparate — groups. America had long been a Protestant country, so it didn’t really matter what prayers were said in the schools; they were basically all the same from the standpoint of most Americans. Thus, there was little controversy over them. Try asking your average Protestant “what’s the difference between a Baptist and a Methodist?” and you’ll understand. I’ve known Protestants who freely move between denominations without giving any of it a second thought.
But mass Catholic immigration changed the character of the country in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. As late as the 1960s, presidential candidate JFK had to announce he wouldn’t take his orders from the Vatican. We went from a common understanding of prayer to something more complicated and not shared between different sects. There was the potential for destabilizing conflict as a result (which is no way to run a global empire), so the system had to invent a reason to ease tensions between the various groups. That meant abolishing prayer altogether – removing the thing that people might fight about.
The same logic applies to the loss of our statues, cultural heroes, and public Christmas celebrations*. Invite new peoples into your country and perhaps they might have conflict with the old population should they differ culturally, racially, or historically. Can’t have statues celebrating the White men who conquered the new “Americans”. Can’t celebrate people immigrants find offensive. Can’t have a holiday not shared by increasing numbers of non-Christian immigrants. Easy solution: get rid of them; no more conflict. That’s what the ruling class thinks, anyway.
No appeal to philosophy or the legal practice is necessary. The powers that be exploited the courts and the constitution to impose their will, but that doesn’t mean the impetus behind that decision originated with the method they employed.
*My home town eliminated our century plus old Christmas parade due to “diversity” around the time of Obama and Jon Stewart telling me it was all a right-wing conspiracy, so don’t say there wasn’t a war on Christmas. I saw it in my backyard. In any case, what prevents the courts from one day striking down Christmas as a federal holiday once mass immigration from the Indian subcontinent further changes the country’s demographic makeup? You don’t really think that won’t happen one day, do you? I’d argue something like this already happened with school prayer, so there is the precedent.
Another example of “conservatives” not understanding Leftist psychology (and losing as a result) can be found with their misconception of Leftist moral relativism. Remember back when the Right told us the Left were bleeding hearts who didn’t believe in boundaries? Yeah, that’s now obviously wrong. The Left revels in imposing their boundaries and destroying anyone who crosses them. They want to pack our Supreme Court, overthrow our constitution, impose their cultural hegemony over us and blacklist anyone who points it out; they thirst for war against countries like Syria and Russia. Try getting a job in Hollywood – or academia, or the legal profession, or even the lowly comic book industry — after admitting that you voted for Donald Trump. So much for freedom of expression.
So, what explains the discrepancy between Leftist speech and action, and why did conservatives misunderstand the Left to begin with?
First answer, Leftists consider you an out-group, so they are willing to lie to get their way. Ask yourself if you’d feel more or less guilty stealing from a stranger than you would stealing from a close family member. That mentality explains much of the Left. They define themselves by who they’re against (you), so ethical norms are often cast aside in their pursuit of victory against people they believe are evil. Would you feel guilty about stealing Joe Stalin’s favorite pair of slippers, then lying about it? Most conservatives would rightly feel that pretty much any bad thing (and any normally immoral justification for it) that happened to that evil man was either warranted or unworthy of condemnation. The Left feels the same way about you.
Leftist groups like the ACLU championed free speech only because they were trying to protect Leftist speech at a time when the other side had the power to censor them. They never had any higher principles. The ACLU was founded by communists during an era when the government could, and often did, ruin you for such an association. The same people had no problem previously endorsing the House UnAmerican Activities Committee in the 1930s when they persecuted “fascists” and some Christians. Only later when the HUAC turned on the Left did they change their tune and promote free expression. Many Leftists (Trumbo) who opposed the communist blacklist called in the FBI to rat out people with right-wing sympathies.
Leftists were never for moral relativism, free speech or any of that stuff. They were merely interested in manipulating you to accept their freedom back when you had the power to take it away. Defending right-wing groups like the KKK was merely window dressing to disguise this fact. Otherwise, the modern Left wouldn’t be trying to censor potheads like Joe Rogan for the slightest of deviations from their regime’s narratives. The Left did this because you’re not on their side, in fact you’re evil, so anything goes in their effort to ensure their freedom and take yours away.
The fact that “conservatives” have repeatedly missed these points about their enemy bodes poorly for any effort to reform conservatism so that it doesn’t fail again. My guess: they’ll embrace the same high-minded philosophies and legal arguments that hold precisely zero sway with the other side only to find out once again when the other side is in power that the Left doesn’t give you the same consideration you give them. You’re not on their side. You’re literally Hitler. So why not steal your slippers and lie about it?
Second, conservatives are normies who project their psychology onto the Left. They falsely believe the other side is motivated by the same things they are – principles, fairness, patriotism, etc. Conservative feel we’re all on the same side; conservative in-group inclusion is expansive and tends to cover the Left when this is not at all reciprocated. Thus, conservatives are always moderating and trying to make peace with people whom they falsely believe are on their side, just perhaps a little misguided (“maybe they’ll see the light if we can just hit them with the right facts,” they think). This misunderstanding allows crafty Leftists to manipulate conservatives to their advantage. Say the right words and the other side will go down the wrong rabbit hole for generations trying to appease you.
The first step in reforming the right is to promote a true understanding of the psychology of the other side. Anything else comes downstream or is entirely superfluous.
Banana Boat: Many excellent points. May I also add that, long before Lincoln and the 14th amendment, Juice and a few others began legal challenges to various states’ laws requiring a candidate for office to be Christian. I don’t have all the relevant facts at hands nor the time/desire to do a long overview, but the generally ‘hands-off’ approach the majority of the founders took to individual states’ religious rules and conduct came under attack almost immediately after the Constitution was ratified and the war for independence won.
Secondly, I would argue that the traditional right’s failure is not merely in thinking of the left as misguided fellow citizens, but a more fundamental failure in elevating tactics and supposed inalienable rights as magic and inviolate. A certain nameless blogger (obnoxious but with often excellent points) has pointed out that there has never been truly ‘free speech’ – it has always depended on who had the upper hand. This initially really bothered me and my gut reaction was to strongly disagree, but over time I’ve come to think he is utterly correct. The Alien and Sedition Act, the Whisky Rebellion, early ‘blue laws,’ – there have always been limits depending upon what group was in charge.
So once again we return to demographics. As Zman constantly and correctly reminds us, politics is downstream from culture. So changing the people – from majority protestant northern Europeans to a Juice controlled ‘melting pot’ of first various Whites and then any and all flotsam and jetsam from all corners of the earth – changed not merely the system but the very understanding of those first magic principles. I’m not in any way arguing we must all splinter based on percentages of ancestry, but too many descendants of Ellis Island immigrants, regardless of ancestry and religious belief, have yet to face and accept this in their rush to insist we’re all ‘Americans.’
It is controlled because real time and moving media is controlled. It and nothing else creates reality.
Without control of that all other mechanisms are useless.
Excellent post. I often tell my conservative, normie friends that they always lose because they extend a hand and the left pulls a gun.
You’ll never win against an enemy who has zero regard for the rules while you’re following them.
And does it make any difference?
“So much for freedom of expression.”
Great post. Many excellent points. but your (apparent) belief in freedom of expression is misplaced. We used to have blasphemy laws and “blue laws” to prevent worldly commerce on Sundays. Then came (((Lenny Bruce))) and (((the free-speech movement at Berkeley U in Californicate.
Freedom of expression/speech is a Trojan Horse. What is wanted is an *organic* ruling class that permits the stupid freedom within carefully (but not necessarily tightly) circumscribed limits.
Propaganda WORKS! And the vast majority of people are defenceless against it b/c they are shallow, stupid, and utterly lacking in character and toughness of mind.
Is it really propaganda?
The NPC mechanism is far more explaining of the scenario than propaganda.
In a more serious examination I have been re-visiting Julian Jayne’s Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind as the most likely explanation of what we see around us, and it seems likely that we are regressing to a majority Bicameral society (maybe we always have been and I just never noticed).
That would correspond with my thoughts on hindbrain emo thinkers vs cooler neocortex thinkers.
‘Bout time I visit that book as well.
It seems more and more likely to me that the constitutional order failed the day it was signed and that it was always destined to failure. Dead men cannot rule over living men. That is what rule of words on a paper is. Hell, former (Constitution) Jefferson couldn’t rule over later (President) Jefferson.
Conservatives make great neighbors, not political allies. They are as worthless as they have always been.
” … the constitutional order failed the day it was signed and that it was always destined to failure.”
Patrick Henry famously refused to participate in the constitutional convention because, in his own words, “I smell a rat!”
And he was right.
The only “check” that could have ever worked in the Constitutional system was the right to leave the Constitutional system. The War of Northern Aggression put the kibosh on that.
Legally, it’s true, the Civil War creating the structure that enabled the extreme judicial overreach that is occurring to this day, and was when the Constitution died and was buried.
Spiritually, The WWII European Theatre is the religious war that has defined the American people. The story is bunch of good ole’ boys who hated fascism and breathed freedom and had equality in their hearts sacrificed their lives to defeat Sata-, I mean Hitler, and save Jesu-, I mean the Jews, from the holocaust.
The cracks are showing in both narratives, as Hollywood would not be able to get away with a movie like “Saving Private Ryan” or a series like Band of Brothers” anymore, because people know much better now, and “modern cynicism and demographics make it impossible to create a patriotic movie of that mold anymore. For the Civil War, try making a movie like “Glory” now and see how it does. Same issue.
The starting point for a new conservatism is the acknowledgement that the system can’t be reformed because conservatives have lost the demographic war. It’s over. Any conservative who talks about how to change the system has no grasp on reality.
The dissident right understands this.
The way forward is to create protected communities that represent us and our values (based on our biology) within the larger, very hostile society. Instead of crying about discrimination against whites, we have our own businesses and communities that treat us fairly. We interact with the larger system only as a means to secure protection of our communities.
It’s not “our” system anymore. We should employ a multitude of tactics to maintain our autonomy within that hostile system, whether that be the use of lawsuits, political donations, quiet refusal to obey laws, etc.
The new conservatism will be a movement to carve out a place for conservatives (really, white conservatives) within the larger society.
True. Anyone who is advocating playing by the rules is not our ally. People who openly support throwing wrenches in the system to get their way and to harass our enemies, or allow our guys to skirt the rules with a wink and plausible deniability, knows the new game.
The next revolution won’t be won with guns, but a thousand white gremlins in the machinery taking everything apart and repurposing it for their purposes.
A Charles de Gaulle, bunker, undisclosed location backwoods WV, heading a resist@nce movement to oppose the Vichy government in Emerald City.
You might want to inform yourself a bit on “Vichy” and on pre-war politics in France.
Communists were part of de Gaulle’s coalition for a while.
Look into the presidency of Paul Doumer; his Radical Party; and why he was assassinated by a Russian refugee.
De Gaulle wanted to fight Hitler, while Petain collaborated with the Nazis. De Gaulle and Jean Moulin lead the resistance movement. We need a leader to head our resistance movement.
I doubt we’ll make it all the way through without guns being involved.
Citizen: Well said. One exception is where you assert that the Dissident Right understands this (i.e. that conservatism is dead because the demographic war utterly deformed and took over the system). Of course, there are various debates about what precisely constitutes the DR, but recently Counter Currents has begun an initiative (headed by a former political insider) to form a voting coalition of Whites purportedly ready for a sort of positive White identity. Their first preferred candidate is a man named Kumar running in Arkansas. Since I am an accelerationist, I strongly disagree and think this is doomed to failure. Any attempt to work within the current framework means accepting that said framework, as currently operated, is legitimate and leads to de facto cooption. Not to mention that choosing a non-White as a White-identity standard bearer is oh, so very reminiscent of Conservative, Inc.
As an aside, after commenting at Counter Currents very infrequently over the past several months, I recently left two comments – not in any way related to my opposition to their current campaign – one re Branch Covidians and one comparing the site and commenters to Amren, after which I was promptly banned. So other than an occasional shot across the bow at Unz (and legitimate kudos that Sailer is willing to print them, although my bet is many of his regulars have already pre-filtered out my criticisms), my sole online presence is here. Any bets on how long until Zman bans me? That is mostly in jest (I hope), because Zman seems to be the only one truly willing to face not merely how and where the current system went off the rails, but also that it cannot be reformed and the only way forward is from the outside.
Yeah, I did notice that a guy named Kumar was pushing to be a white identity candidate. Apparently, he’s mixed, probably Indian dad and white mom. This is one of those fuzzy lines, but if the guy is willing to take the abuse, I’m fine with that.
I’d just make it clear to him and anyone else that exceptions are just that. Japan hasn’t stayed Japanese by allowing its genetic pool to become 50% non-Japanese. (If the guy was sincere, he’d come out and say that a white community probably shouldn’t let him in or, at the very least, that’s he’s a glaring exception that should be extremely rare.)
Regardless, I’m not saying that whites can completely unplug from the larger society. That’s not going happen. When I say that we understand that the system can’t be reformed that doesn’t mean we don’t deal with the system. We just have to understand that its no longer our system and we look at it like the despised minority that we are.
It’s a set of rules to be manipulated to serve our interests. The rules have no moral authority over us, but they do have power behind them. But the moral authority aspect is important.
On the Kumar question, it depends is he a Mounds Bar (chocolate on the outside, White on the inside) or a Snowball (white on the outside, chocolate inside). A very limited and well-vetted Mounds Bar might provide enough camoflauge to be able to withstand abuse from the system. Cf. Zemmour, whose tribe background is probably allowing him to say things no pure Aryan could without incarceration cf. Le Pen).
The other best hope for peaceful “reform” if at all possible, is the ghetto approach. Concentration of not just Whites, but like-minded Whites in at first districts, then municipallities, and hopefully at the county/parish level. At the county/parish level, there is a certain level of insulation that would be difficult to breach. If critical county-wide offices are held (judges, sherriff, prosecutors) you are the system.
That would be the goal. Not sure how you achieve it.
” … because Zman seems to be the only one truly willing to face not merely how and where the current system went off the rails, but also that it cannot be reformed and the only way forward is from the outside.”
ZMan is a national treasure, no doubt about it.
Funny thing about conservatives. I think they’ve understood all along that it comes down to demographics, but then you have to ask yourself what’s to be done about demographics, and that’s an uncomfortable question. It’s America’s weak spot.
I think it had to be obvious early on that the colonies would eventually become a nation, and our politics have always revolved around that. I have to say, America worked best in its continental empire stage.
But that brings up the uncomfortable question. America worked best because it was doing the dirty work of nation building. Immigrants were assimilated, Americans came to see themselves as Americans instead of citizens of their states. The uncomfortable part: the subjugation of the Indians and the South. When it came time to figure out what to do with the freed slaves, too much blood had been spilled, too much will exerted, as nation building requires. The country or a faction within it— whoever it was— was exhausted, and we gradually slipped back into liberalism and into the UK’s orbit, and we haven’t recovered.
Just my opinion, which I could be wrong about. But like I was saying the other day, you can’t fear facing the dark side and being overcome by it.
Paintersforms: Sorry, I originally downvoted and then wanted to upvote; why can’t I do both?! Agree with your initial paragraph; demographic reality makes most people extremely uncomfortable. But disagree re ‘nation building’ and assimilation and treatment of Indians.
I would argue America worked best – as in the independence of individual citizens being left alone to live as they pleased – before it forcibly assimilated all the states and embarked on empire building. The treatment of the Indians did not conform to any particular set of behavioral norms or rules – ultimately it was conquest, pure and simple. That also makes people today very uncomfortable, because out new ruling class has declared that White Christian world building (which entailed conquest of all other races) was mean and bad. Meanwhile, their own conquest in a far off corner of the world (and a pox on both their houses) is a good and holy cause.
And assimilation is a fiction. The basic fabric of American character and life was just as changed by the various White immigrants as they were ‘assimilated’ into the existing social order. Mass population movements always result in some new mixture; pretending that all White Americans are the same is fundamental error.
“The treatment of the Indians did not conform to any particular set of behavioral norms or rules – ultimately it was conquest, pure and simple.”
exactly, it was nothing but a simple tribe vs tribe scenario, but on a bigger scale.
It’s all stuff I haven’t completely thought through, so like I say, I could be wrong.
With that said, my nationalism is the blood and soil sort, and while America took care of the soil part, we’ve neglected the blood imo. When did the continental empire start? 1861 seems obvious, or was it the Mexican-American War, or even Jefferson’s empire of liberty? And was it an empire because of aggressive expansion, or because the blood (and culture) was neglected? Would an American nation be possible? Idk. Today, even among whites, there are too many hyphenated Americans imo. Even the talk of roundheads and cavaliers speak to our renewed ties to the British Empire. You’d think we’d have become a distinct people by now, with our own distinct history, and I do think an excess of liberalism has had the most to do with it, getting back to demographic discomfort.
I think the Indian matters speak to it, also. Intertribal conflict and conquest often lead to the creation of a new nation, i.e., nation building.
I guess what I’m getting at is there’s plenty of ugliness and slag in the melting pot, when you get down to it. It’s something we have to come to terms with if we’re ever going to be more than a glorified shopping mall.
Paintersforms: Agree 100%. Thanks for clarifying.
“I think it had to be obvious early on that the colonies would eventually become a nation, and our politics have always revolved around that.”
No, this is completely wrong. America is *not* a nation. Never was. Never could have been. There are some very good books on that subject (as though we needed books to see the blatantly obvious) that explain the numerous different nations that have lived in the same territory since the 17th century. The War to Prevent Southern Independence took place precisely because the antagonists were *not* part of the same nation, but merely of the same *country,* which is not the same thing at all.
There was never a time when Massachusetts and South Carolina were going to live under the same gov’t as a *permanent* arrangement.
My limited understanding was that the US originally was supposed to be more like the EU as it was about 20 years ago. The fed’s role was basically a common currency, common defense against foreign invaders/threats, and a unified trading/treaty block. That’s it. English would do the English thing, Italians the Italian, Germans the German, etc.
Ironic, that as the EU strives to be more lke the US, more Americans are thinking US should devlove into a EU (if it doesn’t disappear altogether). The first state to coin its own money will win. I wonder if a state could issue “state vouchers” that could be purchased with dollars (or other currency), used as bearer instruments, and accpeted by the sate to pay property/sales/income tax or purchase any good or service (licences, fees, etc.) from the state? If a secondary market existed for them in exchange for goods an services, they would basically become currency.
It’s not been proven, so you might be right. At the same time, I’m not British or German, and I have plenty of ancestors in this dirt, so I have to be something.
Forgotten is that Italy and Germany were not unified states until the 1880s.
C.matt brings up a most interesting point- I’ve read that there were some 10,000 “currenies”, mostly town and Company town scrip, in use until 1888, when the Federal note was declared supreme, legal tender for all debts.
Feeling the need to clarify that first statement… it’s not been proven in the sense that we’ve never succeeded in becoming a stable, unified nation, for various reasons. That was the intention, though. Forming a more perfect union, securing the blessings of liberty for our posterity, etc. That wasn’t contract-American talk, in spite of the contract.
Alzaebo: but they did speak Italian and German, so there was an acknowledgment of shared ethnicity before the establishment of the the nation-state.
It’s an interesting angle! We speak English (sort of), so does that make us English? I’m sure it’s a big part of why nationhood has always loomed large in our politics. I don’t know what I’d be other than an American, but what is an American, exactly? Maybe if we could answer that we could start making headway again.
Generic conservatives start from behind dealing with demographics because they have internalized a pro-business mentality. And the business mentality wants growth of everything, including population numbers.
So it’s easy to convince them that immigration is a good thing per se. Gotta keep that population swelling forever so our corporations have more customers!
Our dyed-in-blandness conservatives qualify their drum beating for population growth only by proclaiming that immigrants should be “vetted.” That usually means checking their criminal records (when many of their countries of origin have next to no such records). Or making sure they don’t have Benetton’s Disease and have been vaxxed.
But hey, if business can’t find enough minimum wage workers then immigrant replacements are the answer. Race? Ethnicity? Who cares. Africans or Bangladeshis can wipe tables and wrap burgers as well as traditional Americans, maybe better! How they live and vote is someone else’s problem, if it ever occurs to our corporate Mandarins that it’s a problem at all.
I wish I could upvote your post 100 times. I’ve preached this for a long time. It may not be popular on here, but the great replacement of whites wasn’t personal, it was business. If whites kept having 5 kids per couple, this wouldn’t have happened. TPTB saw declining birth rates amongst whites, they also knew that increasing populations is an easy way for corporations to increase profits. They sold this to the middle class as their 401k and home gaining lots of value. Let’s be honest, if a politician came in and cut immigration, and the US home values and stocks stagnated, they’d be out in one term. Any conservative movement needs to be honest and say, you guys need to have more kids or be willing to trade some of your wealth and comfort in order to have communities you want to live in with folks like your own.
The Greek: The roots of the 1965 immigration act go back decades, when America was bursting with ‘new’ Americans from all over Europe, and they were all having multiple children. Emmanuel Cellar made keeping the immigration gates wide open a key point of his political career, begun in 1923. So yes, it was VERY personal.
And White Americans were still having multiple children post WWII and throughout the baby boom. All during this time Celler and compatriots worked hard to overturn the 1924 immigration act. When they succeeded, with cover by Ted Kennedy and others in 1965, America was still in the tail end of the famous baby boom. So I don’t know where your “it wasn’t personal” assessment is coming from. No one here is naive enough to think the 19th century business barons didn’t just want more warm bodies to fill their factories, but even some of them expressed qualms about masses of Chinese or Indians.
Once the frontier was declared closed and most of the land available under various Homestead Acts (right up into the early 1900s) had been claimed, there wasn’t the desperate need for male workers (so many having been killed off in Lincoln’s War). The White American birth rate was perfectly sufficient for the number of available jobs throughout the 1960s and certainly the 1970s, while Mexicans flowed across the border and Chinese and Indians began to stream in endlessly.
Yes, business interests certainly had their part to play, but it was all very, very personal and your assessment is very, very skewed.
It is one of those historical ironies that the South keeps trying without success to apply the brakes to Northern radicalism, even as that radicalism devours our urban landscapes and results in the flight of millions of liberals to places South and West, where remnants of individual freedoms they despise still prevail (for the time being). So if there is to be any secession in our future, Southrons and Cowboys would be wise to expel the bearers of evil.
Gotterdamn-it-all: Spot on. Can we please make sure Austin gets nuked along with New York and LA?
Austin is very much like California – lots of natural beauty made utterly hideous due to the nature of its inhabitants.
I’ll take that as an ironic joke. Understood. But expulsion is the better option. Austin was once a find place and will be again. Unless we nuke it 😉
There is a joke. I can’t remember the exact line, but it goes something like
Amateur time travelers kill Hitler.
Journeymen time travelers kill Marx.
Masters kill Rousseau.
For sheer damage its hard to beat Rousseau’s claim that the (early as his time was) modern age is the true villain. In a state of nature, he argued, we would all be free. Civilization was the enemy.
Now, we know that there were problems before that. The English Civil War was earlier and had groups like the Levelers. Communists, and the managerial state they’ve captured, are the inheritors of both traditions.
I go back on forth on this point. Rousseau is a good candidate for history’s greatest monster. Hagel, the Protestant Aquinas, is another good option. He provided the theory of history that underpins everything we see from the Left.
It’s funny you mention Rousseau.
I was reading a biography of De Tocqueville this weekend and it was pointed out that De Tocqueville recognized Rousseau as part of a coeterie of French intellectuals in a cult that worshipped Reason and had some pretty accurate thoughts about what that cult would lead to, based on their ideas about the perfectability of man.
In the Current Year we can clearly see how those ideas about perfectability feed into new movements intended to perfect mankind, like transhumanism and AI-algo driven social credit systems.
On the flipside, Rousseau’s claim that the, “noble savage,” is man’s ideal state feeds into yet more cults like the green/Gaia movement and the depopulation freaks.
Too bad Rousseau never had the opportunity to be introduced to the many cannibalistic societies which infested much of the world in his day.
“Amateur time travelers kill Hitler.
Journeymen time travelers kill Marx.
Masters kill Rousseau.”
I’m going to remember that joke because I agree with it. Unfortunately it means I need to learn how to spell Rousseau.
Just remember the two consonants in the middle like “Diarrhea.” “Diar”-“Rhea” “Rous”-“Seau.” Uncanny.
Yeah. It’s a very challenging environment. Here, for example, is a conversation with a gun guy, John Lovell, with Stephen Mansfield about the nature of revolutions. Lovell was a Ranger, does lots of gun videos, is conservative in the ordinary sense, Evangelical, civnat. Does not like where the country is headed at all.
But here is a conversation that is filled with so much nonsense, but one stands out: this idea that the result of the Civil War was that we all came back together as Americans, just without slavery, and everything was fine.
The conversation is interesting only as a display of bloody-minded civnattery; the comments, though, contain a surprising level of pushback. A guy like Lovell is going to have a very difficult time working through the little program Z just outlined. Lovell’s followers, though, are already working through it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eiM6CvV3YeM&t=799s
LMAO!!! Just a few minutes of that cringe was all I could handle. Guys like these will be found in Pacific jungles in 30 years mouthing ignorant platitudes about equalitarianism.
btp: I see similar elsewhere all the time. For far too many it’s still a case of the enemy are all ‘communists’ and that too many are too ‘divisive.’ Constant push for people to all ‘just get along,’ ignoring the demographic reality that no, we cannot. And just as my 63 year old backside is not going to be on the frontlines, neither are all the 50+ vets and gun guys who still think they’re killing it in SF training.
” … a conversation … about the nature of revolutions.”
Once again: Revolutions take place in people’s minds and hearts and therefore–necessarily–are finished *before* anything “kinetic” (like shooting) happens.
Old habits die hard, which is why the current crop of eggheads is unable to debate honestly about root issues. Dogma is hard-wired during a child’s formative years when the brain doubles in size, and the idea that “all men are created equal” must remain an idealistic abstraction because every aspect of reality is a refutation of it. As such, it will always be the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.
And none of this will change until the environment changes. Only when we are forced to focus on root survival on a full-time basis will we be able to shed our addiction to yakking about fantastical abstractions. We have way too much time for leisure dalliance in high-minded social engineering rather than restore those fundamentals that made us the most advanced species on the planet. Yakking a just an entertaining pastime on the journey to eventual collapse, which is when real remedy may begin.
Yeah Tom, unfortunately I think you’re correct. All this philosophical stuff is very interesting and fun to discuss. But I fear we will need well-digging and animal husbandry seminars more than Locke vs. Burke in coming years.
Captain Willard: I love these sort of discussions but agree with you re desperate need for practical instruction. Spent the weekend learning/practicing a new food storage skill as well as watching youtube videos observing off-gridders making fundamental mistakes that even I, just from casual part-time observation, months ago noted to myself as errors to avoid in our hoped and planned for future build.
Please note this is not a general arm chair criticism – I have not done and could not do a lot of the hard work they are doing; just surprised at how many don’t seem to do basic surveys of what works and what doesn’t before they begin. Building up against a steep and unreinforced hillside? Repeatedly relying on uninsulated, non-varmint hardened buildings for sensitive water filtration, solar equipment, and generators? Not putting in the initial work to bury water tanks and lines just because it doesn’t freeze every day in their location? Not planning for roof pitch or weight capacity because experts and ‘average temps’? Not insulating ‘x’ because it’s not a vital spot? etc. I’m constantly making mental notes, trying to learn from others and discern what works best.
Geez, that was a mini-manual in it’s own right.
Thanks, I think- turning tax deed parcels into quick-built redoubts (distributed semi-off-grid trailer parks, basically) is going to be a bigger task than I thought.
The idea is to market them to the like-minded in the Gab and speakeasy economy so they don’t become meth labs or drive the moms crazy from tedium. Hoping to arrange buys so they can be near neighbors in a self-sustaining “birds of a feather” community-in-a-community, like the early Christians.
Perhaps apartment complexes and 1031s might need a look, too.
I hope to encourage all to start outlining project prospectuses, may a thousand flowers bloom.
Well, there must be some hope because enough of us on this side of the divide have seen through it. Unless everyone here is over 65, if not 75, “all men are created equal” has been drilled into our brains from every angle. Yet we escaped it.
How many do you think this view amounts to out of the total population?
Also, growing up we weren’t subjected tot he 24/7 media, social and music messaging that surrounds these kids.
We few, we happy few, we band of brothers.
For we to-day that sheds his blood with me
Shall be my brother
Are “we” in the majority or minority? Methinks we are the heretics rather than the sheeple, and that is no trivial matter.
“Real Conservatism has never been tried” is about as convincing as The Other Guy in the same formulation.
The collapse of the American republic in the 19th Century was camouflaged for more than a century by a period of historically unprecedented prosperity that led to empire and military dominance. All that pretty packaging is receding now and exposing the utter rot that had been hidden below the surface. The debate that will matter going forward is “who, whom.” My money is not on the people who currently have the whip hand even though I have no clue how this shakes out. My biggest takeaway from the Canadian trucker strike, along with the aftershock of the Covid lockdowns, is what a house of cards globalism has proved to be. It could be gone in a shorter order than most appreciate but whether its primary victims prevail is an open question.
tl;dr: Debates about conservatism are ridiculous on their face.
The 19th century had the frontier. The simple fact is that we have to put up with each other now. America was always unstable, but we could always go west. There was always the ability to ignore the other side. Between mass migration and the internet, the frontier is closing even in our own minds.
Rome went through something similar. Eventually, there were no farms to put the veterans. The frontier hardened.
Frontiers are the true path to greatness. Spain had a frontier with the Muslims and easily went across the sea. The eastern marches (Prussia, Austria) of Germany became its greatest states.
The closing of the American mind began in 1911.
The American frontier selected for a certain type of person, while also amplifying those qualities necessary for success in that environment.
The internet, and the digital world it ushered in, is also selecting for and shaping a certain type of person: very different from the pioneer stock that settled America, to put it mildly.
One might argue that there are still ‘frontiers’ of another sort, for those with the vision and foresight to recognize them.
Whatever you may think of his plan to colonize Mars as the first step in humans becoming an interplanetary species— I’m respectfully skeptical— Elon Musk’s amazing achievements point to the fact that great (White) men of genius have always been what’s driven human progress.
What it will look like when/if sacred people of color are put in charge, is anyone’s guess.
As the primary driver of the ‘racial reckoning’ appears to be Black resentment at Whites’ superiority of achievement, Musk may be one of the first to go. Demanding equal representation of BIPOCs among his top engineers would be a logical first step in ensuring that his efforts conform to the strictures of “anti-racism”.
The answer to the *need* for minority engineers is as it always has been—you hire two engineers, one minority and one (White mostly) to do the work.
The westward expansion that eventually closed the frontier was made possible by the Civil War and the imperial drive that followed. Those ambitions have never stopped although the desire now outstrips the ability.
Jack: Note also, re Canadian Truckers, how desperate the authorities are to ensure they fail? They now have the police confiscating gas and supplies and arresting anyone who tries to help them. The city of Ottawa is legally challenging them because certain segments of the population have been discommoded. Far too many Whites have no sense of commonality and will fold at the first hardship. And even the Truckers seem to be relying on Canadian fellow-feeling, when enormous portions of Canada are now Han and pajeet and Haitian.
The government’s machinations evince a desperation to maintain a system that is doomed to failure. The truckers may come up short, and the non-White “Canadians” certainly either oppose them outright or are largely indifferent (until food and fuel run out), but this has exposed how shaky globalism really is, not that the supply chain interruptions haven’t done so already. Imagine what a war or even solar flares would do to a system based on production on the other side of the globe. The whole concept was stupid. The Davos crowd has proved to be as delusional with their grand plans as every utopian movement in the past. They have pushed driverless trucks, probably for this very reason, but the holes in the system are too numerous to fill.
Again, I have no clue what comes afterward, but everyone needs to be prepared because what always has been assumed is far more tenuous than most people can conceive. Things could unravel overnight.
Don’t want to steal TomA’s thunder, but I think the Canadian Truckers may be destined to find out what happens when you try to play on the regime’s turf using its rules and allowing it to deploy its tools (literally and figuratively).
Don’t know how feasible it would be, and certainly would not have the same visual impact of thousands of trucks occupying the “sacred space” of a nation’s capitol, but what if they just made Ottawa a “No Go Zone” for delivery? Make the urbanites drive 30 miles one way to get a loaf of gluten free camel dung bread or whatever it is they eat these days? Seems that would be more difficult to police against.
“They now have the police confiscating gas and supplies and arresting anyone who tries to help them.”
So now it is illegal to give them food. This is going to end in violence and it is entirely the fault of these little commie f*ggots who run Western countries. Hatred starts to fill the heart.
I’m so glad you brought this up. They’re going to get the 1/6 treatment. I’ve been following this story and these guys set up saunas, pizza ovens and fed the homeless, bouncy castles for the kids, etc. No corporate media has followed this story, but I reckon most folks that have are asking themselves why aren’t these guys running things? And wouldn’t we be better off if they were?
I find the study of the founding cultures interesting. America really began as rival cultures as the book by Colin Woodard called American Nations so well explains.
Now our rulers seem to be trying to force an international deracinated culture upon us.
Whether the roots of this new paradigm being forced upon us came from the dominant Puritan culture or a mixture of foreign influences including the usual suspects is up for debate.
The more I study the divisions back in England the more I think the American civil war was the turning point to our demise.
But we have to find a way forward and out of this Floydism.
The Woodard book is very good, and every DR should read this as well:
https://www.amazon.com/Albions-Seed-British-Folkways-cultural/dp/0195069056
America is not a “nation” and never was.
Sadly, England is no longer a nation.
” … the victors of the long running debate dating back to the English Civil war have been trying to refashion a new order and a new society.”
Very true! But one can see the seeds or roots of the English Civil War of the 17th century in King John’s War (aka “the First Barons’ War”) in the 13th century. Not that that means anything except that “we” and “they” have *always hated one another.
And the first blood of the current civil war was drawn by that lunatic from Wisconsin at the “take-me-out-at-the-ball-game” shoot-’em-up in early 2017, so the war is already underway.
To the commenters who (understandably) express misgivings about the future of *real* conservatism, I’d just remind them that one Yankee did, on at least one occasion, speak the truth. John Adams wrote in a letter to a friend that the American Revolution was not the shooting and fighting, but that it had actually *preceded* the shooting and fighting b/c a revolution–any revolution–takes place *unseen* in the hearts and minds of the people, and anything “kinetic” is the *result* of an already accomplished revolution, and not the revolution itself.
So bear in mind that the revolution–our revolution–is taking place right now, unseen and unappreciated even by some of out own. It will not be noticed (by most people) until it is finished.
The revolution will not be televised.
Hopefully not going too far afield from this topic, but to your point about the hearts and minds…
…It is coming out now that the US TV ratings for the Winter Olympics are abysmal. Not just historically low, but off the charts low, compared to past Olympics. This on the heel of the Tokyo Summer Olympics which had historically low ratings.
Interesting that events that used to draw on American patriotism, where many would watch obscure athletic competitions to cheer on their fellow Americans and track medal counts, sees interest waning significantly. Maybe American (or what used to be considered American) hearts and minds have checked out, and can no longer muster this patriotism. Maybe post 2020, Heritage Americans have realized it is no longer their country and therefore are checking out.
If I were the regime, this would be a big red flag. Perhaps it is, but of course the regime would certainly draw the wrong conclusions from such a red flag and act irrationally.
The audience for the opening night was about half of what it was for 2018 and way off from 2014. NBC is trying to put out “total audience delivery” numbers which include streaming of any kind. If you watched one skier go down the mountain on your phone, they are going to count you as a viewer. It is a good trend, we will see if it holds for the 2024 Olympics in Paris.
Olympic ratings collapse is not a good thing.
Like empty churches, the Boy Scouts and our pozzed military, it is an example of societal decay. The virtues of work and dedication to excellence are ignored. This will only result in further degradation of our remaining social capital.
The saddest thing is, after womens beach volleyball, the winter Olympians are bar none the most attractive specimens of the human race (notwithstanding my friends on the curling team).
Mow: I haven’t watched the Olympics since 1980. They do not reflect those “virtues of work and dedication to excellence” but rather excess commercialism, female solipsism, and non-White worship. It’s not the ratings, but the Olympic faux-competition and ceremonies themselves that reflect societal decay. Let them perish.
Au contraire, it is a good thing. The Olympics for American viewers is simply a poz-woke-BLM fest. The fewer watching the propaganda, the better.
Did anyone watch the opening ceremony to see if they foreshadowed the future like they foretold the plandemic in the London 2012 opening ceremony?
@ Lucius Sulla:
Thanks for that. I didn’t know it. And I think your “take” on the abysmally low ratings is right. The revolution in people’s hearts and minds is well advanced, as the Canadian truckers demonstrate.
Thanks again for that info.
It’s no longer amateur sports, so it became another corporate media event. The PRC is the corporatist wet dream: ruthless authoritarianism, censorship, combined with profitability.
I’ll root for the American ice hockey ladies to trounce our Canadian broads in N95 masks.
I’m still of a mind, similar to couple of the previous comments, that something big and bad needs to happen before any substantial conservative morality can come to the fore. I’m afraid we’ll have to get to the point where figuring out how to eat and survive daily will become paramount, rather than discussing such important topics as gay marriage, tranny rights, sportsball, Joe Rogan or covid, among others. It won’t be a happy time, but without some sort of cleansing fire, all we’re doing is nibbling around the edges of the lefty leviathan.
There’s a part of me that really wants you not to be right. But I honestly think you are. Gay marriage, feminism and trans perversions annoy the heck out of me. But they are symptons of a far larger problem which is a culture that has gone to the gutters. And if there is a way to correct that, a way to make little sissified, entitled degenerates screaming about 78 genders from behind their frutty iphones, see that there really is something called reality and we actually have to work within it, I can’t see that way right now. Rational, factual discourse gets nowhere with them. Sometimes a child has to feel the burn before it will fear the fire.
” … there really is something called reality and we actually have to work within it, I can’t see that way right now.”
The problems you mention and, indeed, *all* such insane excesses of our time are the result of unprecedented luxury. Not prosperity, b/c what we have is a credit-fueled binge, not real prosperity. But the problems under discussion are the problems of rich people who lack the strength of character and the toughness of mind to cope with wealth and luxury. These problems and mad excesses and divorcement from reality are rampant b/c Americans–indeed, *all* Westerners–are too rich, too secure, too well-fed, and have WAY too much time on their hands.
That, however, is changing right now. When these nitwits find themselves struggling for their next meal, nutty things will be forgotten. Reality *will* reassert itself whether anybody is ready for it or not. One ever-present sign of that is the food rationing that we already have. Those little stickers on store shelves that say “Limit two per customer”–that is food rationing. And it’s just getting started.
A perceptive commenter on Zerohedge pointed out that, for most modern rich, just winning is not enough.
Our modern rich really seem to have a hateful need to see everyone else lose as much as possible.
“Our modern rich really seem to have a hateful need to see everyone else lose as much as possible.”
I think it’s because they are by and large nouveau riche and are *not* an *organic* elite.
“There are three kinds of men. The ones that learn by readin’. The few who learn by observation. The rest of them have to pee on the electric fence for themselves.” Will Rodgers
I’ve written about this and spoken about it. History says reform is only possible when the powerful interests at the top of the social order have real fear for their position. That does not mean reform happens. Many of the people at the top of the French society prior to the revolution knew they had serious problems. Just not enough of them. Until a significant portion of the ruling class decides they have no choice but to reform the system, the system remains, even in the face of popular discontent.
” … the system remains, even in the face of popular discontent.”
We are seeing an example of that right now in Canada. But I wonder whether, rather than reform, the current state of things might lead instead to fragmentation. There’s no particular reason why people who have hated each other since at least the 13th century should continue together when they can just go their separate ways. It was tried in the 1860s and failed. But it can be tried again and, rather than “reform” such that we can all “just get along” and stay together, we could go our separate ways this time. The “union” is, after all, no union at all, but rather an abusive relationship held together by force and the threat of force. And the abused partner very often bolts at the first *real* opportunity.
It’s one of the odd things about “defund the police” b/c the police, after all, are just obstacles. They are in *our* way. How would things go down if they really were defunded everywhere?
Fragmentation is well underway now. It will spread from the bottom to the Ruling Class, who will transition into different camps according to their vested interests.
They’re not attempting to get rid of the police, they are attempting to drive unreliable people out of the police force. It will take a little more time to politicize the police, and considerably more time to politicize the local sheriff’s departments and the like.
Which is why modern times demand modern solutions. The pitchfork mob and guillotine are now obsolete and new methods must arise. Collapse, fog, stealth, excision, and the emergent behavior of flight can accomplish this goal with maximum efficiency and minimal pain.
Until a significant portion of the ruling class sees their co-conspirators heads in a basket and realize the last thing they see will be a jeering crowd nothing will change.
“Until a significant portion of the ruling class decides they have no choice but to reform the system, the system remains, even in the face of popular discontent.”
And at present, our ruling class seems to believe that by portraying the discontent as terrible people— “literal Nazis!”— that might be all it takes to discredit them and render them impotent.
In my discussions with my civnat sister on various topics, it’s become clear that the main driver of our diverging opinions lies in the different sources of information we find to be credible. Sources I rely on, she considers disreputable, and refuses to even consider.
What needs to happen is a collapse in the US dollar.
As long as the Wokesters control the infinite money printer they can print up all needed Fedbux for their pet projects, bailout their buddies, and import new voters, forever.
Yes, enduring that scenario would be horrific for most people that are not prepped.
I agree whole heartedly that something massive had to happen before the west woke up and conservative got some balls with a new morality. Before the last few years, I used the think that this was going to be a western country, like Germany or France, become an Islamic republic in the next 20 years (roughly). Now with the US debt, inflation, and war dogs going at full speed, I seem to think it will be a spectacular collapse of the US.
I’m pretty sure the entire “Constitution” applies to FedGov, specifically to put a leash on said institution.
The states have their own ruling documents. The problem is people have been conditioned to believe false history. I really don’t know the solution to that, other than teaching your own tribe(s) the truth.
The debate as to why conservatism failed is almost impossible when most of history is “fake news”.
Good luck with teaching the truth to younger generations. I have checked out home school history curriculum as we have preschoolers and wanted to see what was out there. Even most of that is pretty bad, but I saw one called The Good and the Beautiful was getting called racist, so I was hopeful. It turned out the only reason for that was they included a couple of common sense sentences about slavery, that it wasn’t unique to the history of the United States and more people than sub Saharan Africans had been taken into slavery in history. It also included sections praising the women’s suffrage and civil rights movements. It was a CivNat dream course. I suppose you could create your own book and reading list. Any parents with kids in a school system, any school system, are going to have to counter program what they are taught.
Use pre-war text books for the humanities and history. Everything else is compromised.
At some point in the non-too distant future I suppose pre-war s going to mean something else.
Mater Amabalis is a good guide for homeschooling, as well as the Story of Civilization for history. We homeschool four troublemakers and it’s all non-woke Christian based.
One, every leader must be a teacher. You have to consistently explain your world view and your take on history. The Right has consistently failed to do that.
Two, states did have their own constitutions. Then Yankees burnt down those states and set a new precedent.
Bartleby, you’re overlooking the cursed 14th amendment and its ensuing “incorporation doctrine.” The Constitution that is in your mind was replaced after the civil war.
” … most of history is “fake news”.
Bonaparte said that history is lies agreed upon.
Which is why every DR ought to subscribe to The Barnes Review.
https://barnesreview.org/
And if visiting their site doesn’t convince you, then open this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Barnes_Review
Do it now.
A debate about a new conservatism while discussing our wayward paths since the 19th century will not happen on any level where it will have any influence.
In our present time where midwits are ever present and feelz rule the day how can anything like this ever alter our course. In conservatism we have lost many in battle, treason and even by attrition. Lone voices meeting on small podcasts seems to be future. Hate me for blackpilling but nothing happens without a substantial collapse and a slow rebuilding. Maybe that is partly what you meant.
A “substantial collapse and a slow rebuilding” may be in the works even now. The rebuilding may be ad hoc in many places and slow if a marked decline in current standards of living requires more time and labor devoted to procuring and preserving life’s necessities. Especially so if the grid becomes a luxury for many people. Not that folks won’t have limited access to the digital currency we’ll need to do business, but barter exchanges have been cropping up in unlikely places including among the woke.
As Z intimates, America going forward won’t be our g-g-g-g-g-grandfather’s Glorious Revoution.
Hrrrrrrrrrmmmm. Things can’t be rolled back? As a Canadian, I watched Blowjob Bill Clinton institute a raft of gun control laws especially with regard to “assault rifles”. When Bush came in he basically chit canned them. When Barkie Obutthole left office, Trump made a big deal of dismantling Barkie’s “legacy”. Some little things, it seems to me, can be reversed.
Up here the conservatives died, dried up like old dog chit, and blew away on the wind. FFS – Turdo is literally driven into hiding over his idiot mandates, the political win is literally flapping in the breeze waiting for them to seize… and they decide to have a leadership crisis instead. They are literally hemmming and hawwwing wondering which cuck to pick to replace the one they just turfed. The potential candidates are the usual clowns like the vibrants, the vaginas, and elderly morons. I’d dearly love to see some of the liberal BS up here reversed…
I think the focus in this debate is beyond the mere act of moving commas around the legal and tax code.
I’m sorry Z – as you note, Yesterday men and Paleos will not be taking part in that discussion. All I know for sure is that today’s system is armour plated and entrenched – it will do all in its power to protect itself. Any changes will require that you have to water that tree of liberty of yours…
One has to ask why the previous system did not really defend itself in any meaningful way?
It just stood around like a buffalo herd as they were shot down.
Pretty sure Bush the Lesser indicated if the 1994 AWB was extended by Congress he would have signed such an extension…
As far a ObamaCare, all Trump did was create an EO to not enforce the “tax” for not participating. We still have ObamaCare, the policies, the .Gov reporting, etc…
It did way more than that (like “RomneyCare” that preceded it.) It made prices skyrocket via regulation and consolidation of providers. It basically eliminated community hospitals and independents that served the working class.
Correct me if I’m wrong but 100,000 truckers are now occupying Ottawa and Trudeau has fled. Is than not an abdication, and if it is where is Lech Walesa? What are the Canuks doing now that they have Trudeau on the run?
The visualization of “Trudeau has fled” is too darn funny. Did he risk precious seconds to empty his sock drawer before fleeing the palace?
Hoagie: The cops are confiscating trucker supplies and arresting those who seek to re-provision them. The powers that be stole the $9 million donated for the truckers (they now say they will return the money to those few who will know to ask; the rest will most likely to to BLM or corporate coffers). The residents of Ottawa are mounting a legal challenge because the horn honking and road blocking has discomfited them. Don’t assume premature victory because one coward ran away.
Lech Walesa was funded by the vatican and Roberto Calvi to the tune of a $billion. The Canadians truckers have no such support.
Your financing needs to be out of reach of the enforcers.
Unfortunately, the entire western banking system is part of this, so unless ironically Russia starts funding Canadian dissident movements they are going to get cut off.
I am not sure there has ever been a successful insurgency – and that’s what the Canadian truckers are, so far non-violent phase – without external support from a state. It may have happened but I don’t remember one.
Whoa, shinola.
What if the Canadian truckers *become* a state? A nation, rather?
Yukon, West/Central Canada, and the American Rocky Mountain West lookin’ mighty big resource rich, nowatimsayin?
Irrigation canals from Saskatoon all the way to Albuquerque.
Glenfilthie: Sorry, but incremental change or ‘rolling back’ this or that is insufficient. When the very foundations of society (what is sex, what constitutes a family, what is morality) have been undermined, laws and politics are so much noise.
Precisely. Talk of laws, poltical theories, etc. is bass ackwards. Biology>Culture>Politics. Two options (1) Retake culture (long, slow slog) and not sure much can be done about biology at this point, which makes the slog even slower and longer, or (2) total collapse. Personally, I think No. 1 will only be partially successful in certain pocket areas at best, which makes No. 2 inevitable. Such is the way of things.
There is a third option and it is even worse than 2). This cr*p goes on for another 100 years of all their QE, ‘vote harder’, more police state surveillance ‘for your safety’ BS. And by then our progeny are pretty much gone.
Collapse is going to be hell. But there are worse kinds of hell.
a colossal failure in russia could shake the system so hard it might make room for a new right-wing ideology in america, war is the best way to get rid of a decadent establishment.
Whenever i look at those shitty nato countries such as france & britain fancying themselves as some sort of military powers ready to combat russia, while starving themselves of gas & getting overrun by savages, i do wonder how long will it take for globalism to completely devour itself.
Both those countries have larger economies than glorious Russia and do not rely on imported Russian hydrocarbons.
Regarding them being overrun:ya might want to look a little closer to home .
“Both those countries have larger economies than glorious Russia”
if germany’s & italy’s economies go to hell glorious
france follows
“do not rely on imported Russian hydrocarbons”
exqusite britain has the same fate as EU countries cause qatar oil will have to be distributed to multiple countries if russian oil is gone meaning it will get expensive as fuck, its quality & quantity will probably drop as well due to logistics.
I very much want Putin to invade Ukraine and for America to send troops to stop it. I very much want to see China invade Taiwan and for the US Navy to send carriers to stop it.
I’m Hanoi Jane now, and I’m not happy about it.