Note #1: There will be no more Taki posts. I decided to bring that to a close in order to focus on other things. There is only so much time and I was stretched too thin so something had to go. I want to focus more on the pay-per-view content which has a steadily growing audience. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.
Note #2: I have received a few suggestions about other platforms like Gum Road and Locals, which is a Rumble creation. I am interested in any feedback from people familiar with these sites. RamZPaul is on Gum Road and the Duran guys are on Locals, but I know nothing about these platforms.
Given the current trajectory, it is reasonable to think that in the not too distant future some alien race will be digging through the rubble of humanity trying to figure out what happened to this strange species. Just as modern archeologists dig through ruins of ancient societies, trying to figure out what happened, those aliens will be doing the same with earth. They will dig through whatever is left, things like buildings, tools and cemeteries, piecing together the story of man.
The thing they will not find among the decaying buildings, rusting vehicles and collapsed bridges will be piles of human rights. They will not open a door of some oddly preserved building and find a bunch of skeletons who had found shelter along with their sacred human rights. In fact, they will probably find no trace of human rights or any discussion of the concept. Given that most of our knowledge is now digital, these sorts of things will be impossible to detect.
The main reason for this is human rights do not exist. They are a thing that humans invented late in the history of mankind. People say that human rights are real and point to various authorities to support the claim, but rights are not real things. They exist only as a figment of our imagination, like the concept of lust. No other species has this concept so it is possible the aliens will not understand it either. It will be as alien to them as our entirely made up concept of human rights.
That is something to keep in mind when people of the so-called “new right” go on about the importance of natural rights. Here is an example from Michael Anton where he addresses the idea of historicism. This is the argument that all human thought is the product of its historical moment. Men in one period accept certain things to be true that men in a different period would not accept as true. Loosely put, mankind and its mental constructs are a product of time and place.
What we think of as conservative in North America rejects this claim. It starts from the assertion that all men come into this world with natural rights. The right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness is the pithy expression of this. The very loose argument here is that the natural world, including the human place in it, operates from fixed and observable rules. The laws of nature and nature’s god. From these rules we can tease out things like the rights of man.
A quite simple example is ownership. You are born into this world as the property of your parents who created you and raised you. At some point, you leave the ownership of your parents and become a free man. You own you. Because you own you, you must own your activity, your labor. If you own your labor, it stands to reason that you must own the fruits of your labor. Hence the concept of private property. Ownership traces to the laws of the universe, which is its authority.
There are similar arguments for all sorts of things we consider to be natural rights, like equality before the law and self-defense. Some of these rights have a strong connection to observation of nature. The right of self-defense is something we can see in all of nature, not just mankind. The right to a speedy trial and a jury of our peers takes a few leaps to find some root in the laws of nature. Regardless, the claim is natural rights are rooted in the authority of nature.
Michael Anton makes two important claims in his response to Paul Gottfried that are critical to the current crisis. One is that this idea of natural rights is not time bound as Gottfried claims, but universal and timeless. Even when we were not aware of them, we had these natural rights. The other claim is that America, as currently constructed, can only exist if it is structured around the concept of natural rights. It is the only way a disparate people can coexist in a single society.
The first argument is what is called a gratuitous assertion. The logic of natural rights may be timeless, but it has always rested on something that is not timeless and that is a Christian concept of God and man’s relationship to God. In fact, it depends on a specific version of Christian belief. Many Christians reject the idea of a universe defined by fixed and unchanging rules. Other types of Christian reject that we can understand these rules, even if such a thing even exists.
The very loose foundation of the natural rights argument is that God is perfection and therefore he created the world without making mistakes. This means he has no reason to tinker with the rules. They never change. Further, when he created the world he had a purpose, just as a carpenter has a reason to make a cabinet. The world as we see it is not just random pointlessness. It is a world created with a purpose by God and it operates by a fixed set of rules.
If you reject this concept of God, then you reject what naturally flows from it, which is why the concept of natural rights is a cultural artifact. It is peculiar to European people, especially those west of the Hajnal line. Eastern Europe does not have a strong natural rights tradition, because they have a different conception of God. Muslims have no concept of rights because Allah is unknowable. Islam accepts that the rules of the universe are unknowable and therefore unpredictable.
In other words, we have no evidence that natural rights are universal and timeless, because the foundation lies outside of the realm of proof. If you accept the narrow idea of God and the universe he created, the natural rights arguments make sense, but if not then these arguments are nothing more than convenient inventions. The reason the phrase “I know my rights” means nothing in China is the Chinese lie outside the timeline of the people who invented the concept.
This brings us to the second point, which is that the only way America can function is if we all agree on this mental framework. This is the social contract argument updated for a modern audience, the people who now live as strangers in their own lands. Instead of the claim that we voluntarily came together and agreed to live by a set of cultural and political rules in the same society, the argument now is we better convince the new majority that we have to live by these rules or else.
In this regard, Anton is correct. The demographic revolution is already leading to a cultural and political revolution. The only way America returns to something like its former self is if the new people embrace the old rules. If Nikki Haley, Hakeem Jeffries, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib embrace the logic of Thomas Jefferson, then maybe we can continue to function by the old rules. If they reject natural rights theory, then we will need new rules to accommodate the new people.
The fact that we have to have this discussion is bad news for the natural rights crowd as it assumes the new majority is not embracing Thomas Jefferson. In fact, they have been busy toppling his statues and erasing his name from the history books, along with all the other people responsible for the natural right tradition. Whatever claims one wants to make about the universality of natural rights, it is clear that the new people and their enablers are not embracing the concept.
Inadvertently, Anton is confirming Gottfried’s central claim. What we think of as our natural rights are a product of a specific people living in a specific time. They are no more universal than conception of God. Natural rights may be more than just a fad, like powdered wigs or waistcoats, but they are tied to a people. Like all traditions, they live on in the memories of the descendents of the people who invented them and once there are no more descendents to carry on the traditions, they are gone.
The fact is, natural rights are a thing that come naturally only to Western people, so they are no more universal than blue eyes. Sure, some people outside of Europe will have blue eyes or green eyes, but most will not because the genes for these things dominate only among Europeans. The same is true for the European understanding of the universe and man’s natural place in it. Natural rights are the product of traditions peculiar to European people.
The unanswered question in Anton’s piece and the entirety of the movement calling itself the “new right” is this. What happens when the new people reject the Western tradition of natural rights? Should they be forcibly removed? Should they be compelled to change their ways? Maybe give up their old gods and go through a rigorous training in Calvinist religious doctrine? After all, the concept of free choice is part of the natural rights tradition. What if they choose to reject this concept?
That brings us back to where we started. If those visiting space aliens arrive and find natural rights, it will be because they find societies based on them. Those societies will necessarily be controlled and dominated by people who invented the concept and make it their purpose to maintain them, no matter what. Survival of the fittest is just as much a part of natural law as free speech. More so, in fact. In order for rights to survive, the people who created them must survive.
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I lost this text twice because of computer problems. I am writing this for the third time. I hope this time I can finish it. I know that I am late to the party and I apologize. I disagree with Z about his philosophical materialism. The fact that rights are not physical (so future alien archeologists cannot discover rights in the remains of human civilization) does not mean that they don’t exist. Future alien archeologist wouldn’t discover Math theorems or your ideas, sensations and emotions in the remains of human civilization. This does not mean that Math does not exist or… Read more »
Very nice post. Language has been inverted and weaponized; so-called “rights” instead of duties and responsibilities.
And the sins of people big and small are now “rights” that all the rest of us have to pay for. Aint that the truth.
Which is why I find it hard to have sympathy with atheist dissidents. There either is objective metaphysical truth or there isn’t, regardless of what is written on a stone tablet or on a computer chip. A thing and its opposite cannot both be true. Regular people used to know this. Committed atheists reject it. Believing Catholic prelates used to defend it. I’d prefer the Dissident Right to not question it.
Shapiro delenda est
Will miss you 😢 on Taki
You Goyim are cattle. Cattle have no fuckin rights. Schlomo opened the cattle gate and is injecting you with poison for a reason…he wants you crippled up, dead, your kids sterile…you buried in a box with your Bill of Rights stuffed in your pocket. Wake up Whitey.
Why does Israel have such a high rate of vaccination for c0vi1d?
This is a piece of the puzzle I’ve been struggling to fit into my unified theory of Covid.
Different juice, brother
Covid becomes dangerous only for the elderly. Mortality rates climb from statistically 0% at 50yrs to 20% at 80yrs. How old are those running this show? A healthy 15yr old getting the, essentially experimental vax, doesn’t make sense for the kid. But it may marginally protect the olds. These people cling to life so dearly. Loathsome. If I make it through what’s next, I plan to use the sabbath to piss upon their graves. Whereupon, I will quietly reflect upon my hatred of them. Apologies to the non-psychopaths amongst this cohort.
Perhaps, I’ve become intemperate.
And yes: the gap between our (increasingly theoretical) “rights” as enumerated in the Constitution— and our *actual rights* as they currently exist— is large and getting larger: The Second Amendment stipulates that our right to “keep and bear arms”— that is, to own and carry guns— “shall not be infringed”; in other words, that the very “fringes” of that right— the outermost edges of it— must remain inviolate. But clearly that’s not the case; all sorts of laws have chopped-away the fringes of that right. Likewise, our right of freedom of association is long gone: having been destroyed by the… Read more »
Do not forget, that it was the Republicans who were on the vanguard of taking way our rights. It was the Republicans who were on the vanguard of erecting the security state. It was the Republicans who were on the Vanguard of the Civil Rights legislation.
It is a remarkable string of political massacres they attended to.
And now, their handlers have already prepared the Republican and the Republican party for the next phase of the project:
https://americancompass.org/oren-cass-and-j-d-vance-on-the-future-of-the-republican-party/
C.S.Lewis in “Mere Christianity” makes the case that there is natural law across cultures in the same way that we have some universal morality. All are convinced murder is bad, but have different definitions of when its ok. The other example off the top of my head is parents (even animal parents) are supposed to look after and protect their children. The argument goes that if we have some natural responsibilities, we have some natural rights too.
Yes, there are quite a few rules which appear universally, in virtually every human people-group that we we’re aware of: • don’t murder members of your tribe; • don’t steal from members of your tribe; • look after the children of your tribe; • don’t lie to members of your tribe; • when a member of your tribe does you a favor, you owe them reciprocity. And that’s one of the problems with “diversity”: when most people you interact with are no longer members of your tribe— when they are people you have a little or nothing in common with—… Read more »
forced vacs
mass tax burden at all income and purchase points
child mutilation, mass abortion and indoctrination
state propaganda and mainstream media unity
complete breakdown of social reciprocity for individual from institutions and govt
All the white countries currently violate institutionally every one of those universals, irrespective as to how many aliens have been forced into the nation.
And that is on top of a concerted mult-idecade push to replace and disempower the white populations in their own nations
Seems they are not so universal as you think.
It seems helpful to differentiate the theoretical from the practical: to distinguish “what should be”— according to someone’s conception—from *what actually is* Whether you derive your conception of rights from a holy scripture, or from somewhere else; in a practical sense, it seems incontrovertible that *you only have the rights that you’re able to protect and enforce*. Saying “God gave us these rights” doesn’t mean anything in a society where human rulers have taken them away. God may have given all human beings inalienable rights, but that doesn’t obviate the fact that people living in communist China don’t have them.… Read more »
This is spot on. Today I completed a journey whose return path led me through Lagos and Washington DC. One of the roads was the George Washington expressway. I don’t know if Expressway is correct because underneath was written, “Dedicated to Gladys Noon Spellman.” Spellman’s entire legislative agenda was diametrically opposed to everything George Washington not only stood for, but everything he fought for against the greatest military to that point in human history. In her bio from the Maryland Commission of Women written in 1985 states: “Gladys Spellman was a trailblazer for the women of our state and nation.… Read more »
This sort of cultural and heritage humiliation is everywhere.
Learn to swim.
We have given of our gifts too freely. All that we have, and have done, we have given to those who are not ready for it. This is akin to sugar candy every day to children, or Kalishnikovs to Africans. We were told that they would become us- this was a false hope. From the Devil’s point of view, we have upset the balance. Imagine the world of Bladerunner 2049. Synthetic flora, replicant humans, mountain ranges of trash, skies and seas choked with chemical garbage. Only White people could create such a world. Only us. The rest revert to a… Read more »
Hence the concept of private property. Ownership traces to the laws of the universe, which is its authority.
++++
Except everybody knows that is crap. You can have what you are strong enough to keep. That is nature’s law, and is evident everywhere in the universe.
Indeed that is correct. There is only force. The rest is wanking on about things that don’t matter anymore, if they ever did. As Holland is now demonstrating today by force purchasing and closing 3000 livestock farms because 10 EU traitors on the commission have decided it. Generations of property ownership, land management, effort, food and livelihoods . Fuck you says the govt. The boot is pressing on the face with every more pressure and still its not enough to break people free of their learned helplessness in the face of hypnotic evil. Europeans are either gonna have to fight… Read more »
Yep.
It will be a fight, the worst enemy is “our own” keep it local get to know your neighbors, local officials find out who MIGHT be an ally & who WILL be an enemy they might be even in your own family. Do not show your hand. Be a gray man.
Calvinism posits a completely deterministic view of human life. Calvin asserted that— *without exception*— *everything* that happens is God’s will. He famously insisted that “not a drop of rain falls, not a breeze blows”, that God hasn’t deliberately brought it about, deliberately willed it into existence. And he extended that doctrine to all of human behavior as well: everything which human beings do, reflects God’s deliberate will. *It’s not simply that God has allowed it; rather, according to Calvin, God has deliberately brought about everything that happens* In line with this, Calvin further asserted that before God created anything, God… Read more »
Thus I reject Semitic narratives; they are political propaganda to justify conquest rule, a morality to ease the troubled conscience of slaves. Harshly put, because of the Cuckening: a cuckening which has happened before. Sargon and the line of Semitic tyrants were the “Snake” in the coded political history of Genesis. “Snake” was a cultural reference, true, but said in the tone of a hated family rival. Why? Because the book was revised by the brothers who failed, filled with righteous jealousy. I had thought their ire was directed at us, but no, the true thrust of their anger was… Read more »
Locals is Dave Rubin’s own, meant as a free speech platform. It is not a Rumble creation, tho Locals and Rumble recently merged.
Don’t know of any complaints; then again, I’m not looking for a video platform.
Locals is in the hands of controlled opposition. Would be nice if we had our own Locals like service.
So, build one. That’s what Dave Rubin did, originally. Why is he special? A: Because he actually did it, starting from nothing. What Locals is now is a different problem, but it’s not like there’s some barrier if you want to attempt the next Youtube.
There’s also the Lotus Eaters (Sargon’s own).
Fact is there are already a dozen or more alternatives of varying merit, and the question becomes reach and scale.
Rumble has “investors” who’ve invested enough that the company publicly offered to buy out Joe Rogan’s contract+penalties (at least 200 million dollars)—and the site demands that you prove your identity if you want to use it.
I’d sooner fax a copy of my posting career to Merrick Garland.
All that tax money being recycled through many avenues for those endless control mechanisms.
The amusement they must get from all these platforms and organizations that people are paying for their own enslavement and they can’t even see it.
good article. speaking of the fall of civilizations , this channel on y tube is called “fall of civilizations” and has what i think are excellent summaries of the end causes of issues that led to the disappearance of civilizations , from the Sumerians on.
this video is a good one to start with . https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d2lJUOv0hLA&t=5788s . it’s a great one to learn some reasonable history from , and “the message” is very limited too.
Thanks much, miforest; that’s the kind of thing I was looking for, as I want to listen to docu-casts on my long drives.
The pajeets in Google/Youtube had flooded the tubes with Pajeet propaganda, cutting off or redirecting away from White narratives, most especially Aryan and Celtic histories.
Zman you betrayed your Catholic roots when you associated Calvinism with choice. Calvinism (contra Arminianism) is the doctrine of predetermination, the opposite of choice.
And thus, by paying attention to what Calvin said, we forget entirely his real role: this insane mystery puppet from nowhere directed the funds and thrust of genocidal religious war between brothers.
A bonus! Calvin also declared that the mark of a witch was green eyes and red hair, and urged the extermination of the rarest form of beauty in the world. I have no doubts as to the true Master whom “J.C.” served.
>>>Calvin also declared that the mark of a witch was green eyes and red hair,<<<
And where, exactly, did he say this?
[…] Survival Of Rights […]
I’m sad that there are no more Taki posts (was using that as a gentle introduction…) but rather disturbed that Takimag has apparently removed all the Z-Man posts. They’ve never before removed posts when a writer left their fold, so wtf?
Hmmm. My ‘read’ on posts by the man Taki – are that they come from a very feminine voice. Now there may be some contractual reason we are not privy to – that led to the removal of prior posts. Or it could be a simple snit – see the rupture between Lind Dinh and Unz as an example. Otherwise, to the ear of this ONE man – Taki has a snarky, female voice. So a knee-jerk removal if Zeesterman took his ball and went home, would not be odd in that environment. In any case, I am a daily… Read more »
There were some good articles. But Z was no ‘rougher’ on the deserving than say, David Cole’s column.
Well, now I wonder who owns the rights, and whether Z might reproduce them here.
For the same reason Taki killed the comment section, Taki’s daughter runs the site AFAIK. she wants to stay in the good graces of polite society, they still have some interesting writers but the Zman is a loss
(((They live))): “she wants to stay in the good graces of polite society” We paleocons badly missed the mark in ignoring the near omnipotent power via which “Social Proof” mesmerizes and hypnotizes the average White front-hole. Obviously, in our own private lives, as bachelors, we’ve got to be searching diligently [frankly obsessively] to find young fertile White front-holes [with whom to breed] who are ultra-resistant to the almighty power of “Social Proof”. But they ain’t exactly easy to stumble upon. OTOH, they’re precisely the kinds of chicks who would have refused the V@xxines, so if the V@xxines do indeed induce… Read more »
(A triumph for Bourbon! Such a comment deserves long savoring.)
Indeed, as a long time part of the Takitariat, when Taki (his daughter being editor) removed the comments, the value of the site plummeted…Taki’s daughter is a social climbing society girl, and she didn’t like the criticism of Jews and Israel, for one thing..She lived in London, where Israel is king…
Yeah, Taki’s hasn’t had quite the bite since then. Still, it’s one of my semi-regular skims, and Z’s columns were not “out of line” as they go.
Indeed, I read Taki’s for Taki, he serves up delicious dish.
Taki’s reminisces of what was and could’ve been, had Whites not thrown away their crown, is like the last memories of sumptuous feast at a fantasy ball, to be imagined and savored by we peasants before the Seljuk hordes break through the wall.
(D.C. also, his is a canny insight into the mind of a smart enemy. Like a bondslave overhearing the talk of the Seljuk ambassadors.)
Z’s themes today echo many concepts that I’ve belabored here for years. I surely cannot take credit for them being original ideas; they are far older than me, from earlier writers and most probably dating to 18th-19th century European thought. A key quote in today’s essay: “Many Christians reject the idea of a universe defined by fixed and unchanging rules.” My goal today is not to trash only Christians; let me call them “Idealists.” In all times and places there are plenty of people who think that the rules can be changed. Or ignored. This returns to the ancient Platonic… Read more »
Q. Why must rights be enforced? Or more to the point, if they are not enforced why do they cease being rights?
2+2=4, regardless of what O’Brien might try to convince Smith.
Not sure I’m correct, but my impression is natural rights are derived from nature, not necessarily inherent in it. So indeed they come out of a certain tradition and need to be enforced.
But like I say, I could be wrong and the last 300+ years could’ve been based on naïve idealism, hard as that is for me to swallow. I tend to think an incredible winning streak had Western man smoking his own dope.
Human rights, as adverted to by Z-man, are largely a product of the social trust developed by peoples raised under manorial feudalism, west of the Hajnal line…that social trust does not exist in, say, Sicily or most of the rest of the world….
Yes, but as another commenter on here noted, a lot of that trust was earned by a population that didn’t take abuse after a point. ‘Natural’ rights, I’d say! We’ve lost that edge, safe to say.
Z: “More so, in fact. In order for rights to survive, the people who created them must survive.” Ben the Layabout: “Yes, rights do exist. But they are purely a human creation. Rights cannot exist, or at least they don’t have much value, absent the human institutions that grant and maintain those rights.” =============== Kinda way way way off topic, but are there any serious Urologists or Endocrinologists here chez Z who can weigh in on the theory of worldwide collapsing sperm counts? In just the last few days, the sperm count stuff has been everywhere in the news, to… Read more »
Hail, Caesar! A Triumph, I say! Prepare the garlands, make ready the Processional Way!
******
I see exactly this in the secondary layer, in what is called the “spiritual” realm.
It is design, a Design above mind. A titanic movement in a certain direction. As a dead man told me, Nature is beyond morality–yet, even so, it is only the Good that prevails.
Most fortunate are we, the children of Creation: for of all the gods of Creation, the greatest amongst them, is Mercy.
re: ‘ phrase “I know my rights” means nothing in China’
I, for one, will be extremely disappointed if The Atlantic does not ceremoniously soon extend lockdown amnesty to the CCP. Emily Oster should explain this in Mandarin to the protestors via dancing TikTok video. Expecting consistency from intelligentsia is one of those grand true things I got from Tom Washington and George Jefferson
Lot so ungrateful comments here the re Taki Theodoracopulos. He has been calling a spade a spade since the 1980’s along with providing amusing tales of his travels and vices and also providing a platform for various writers. He should be given his due respect.
Yes, I read Taki’s, for Taki.
He serves up delicious dish.
Taki’s is lessened without the Zman.
[…] ZMan discusses some inconvenient truth. […]
Scott Adams uses Locals and apparently likes it a lot. I subscribe and watch him there and have had very few problems with it.
“The Joker” a man-osphere talker that suggests replacing women with dish soap and an appendage uses Locals.
Has Scott Adams killed himself yet?
I agree that on earth in human societies, ultimately FORCE is the true power. There’s no debating this. That’s why in my ideal society, there is freedom of speech to give room for the few outsiders/geniuses lest they get smothered by conformity. But there is NOT such freedom for the civilization wrecking crazies who espouse trannies, DIE, feminism, porno, and all the rest. I say lock them up and throw away the the key. Because if you don’t and extend them good faith courtesy, they will get their foot in the door and inevitably take power and NOT return the… Read more »
I have a natural right to own guns. Because, come and take them.
Admittedly, I am weak in philosophy. Still coasting on a undergraduate course on Hellenistic history.
“Coasting on an undergrad course in Hellenism…”: don’t fret, the entire Roman Empire did the same thing.
SidVic,
I would derive your right to own guns, from your fundamental right of self defense; which in turn derives from your fundamental right to keep on living.
What’s ironic is that the natural rights civilization seems to harbor the seeds of its own destruction. Owing to a misbegotten because overly capacious conception of human nature, the ostensible universality of natural rights provides in implicit argument for racial egalitariansim and unlimited immigration. If all human beings, irrespective of culture and location on the globe, inherently possess identical rights, what grounds are there for any culture or civilization to remain hermetic? On the contrary, it stands to reason that we really are one world and our political arrangements should reflect that reality. But, as we see from the cultural… Read more »
Agree. It’s only my gut instinct, but it feels as though the CivNat vibe is over – or very nearly over. Fewer and fewer people care. Non-whites and the usual suspects never believed in it, but as they gain in numbers (non-whites) and begin to openly exert their power (small hats), these groups are no longer even pretending to care about colorblind civic nationalism. More and more whites are waking up to other groups’ exploitation of our CivNat beliefs. No one likes to be a sucker. You can see it even here. A few years back there was a lot… Read more »
We must be understanding of why it is so hard for them to let go. From this understanding, we can help some cross over. A numbers game has been played against us and we need all the numbers we can get. They think, and rightly, that if they give up on obeying the rules of the system, (colorblind, natural rights, consent of the governed, limited government), then the system will be over. Yes, it will be. What they don’t understand is that it is either they declare the system over and face reality or it won’t be the system that… Read more »
I read the comments on some Breitbart clickbait – if they are a representative sample, then Normie’s worship of Israel the risen Antichrist is as strong as ever.
(Of course, the moderators at Breitbart are most decidedly painting that picture, as well.)
Ah, exscusi, Zblog moderation, I should’ve coyly said “their worship of the ADL.”
A sign! My liberal bestie just now sent word to invest in EE bonds.
Normie is right, without this creaking, corrupt system even as it is, the retirement class is lost.
From where I sit, it appears most of the civnats have one thing in common: they are old. In 20 years not so many of them will be left. But in 20 years a lot of other things may not be left either.
Superb comment. I have come to the conclusion that so-called liberty enables its own destruction through permissiveness toward the forces of anti-liberty. For instance, people use their own free speech to assail and prevent the free speech of others. Such self-contradictory activity cannot be effectively opposed under a regime of liberty. “Liberty” means refusing to play offense. It’s impossible to win any game without playing offense.
“the West’s Power Structure, which is now postmodern rather than Enlightenment-based” That solves a lot of problems I have. When I think Enlightenment, I think reason, science, materialism. What we have today is anything but. How did we get here? Best guess I have is the Enlightenment’s fruit: leisure and plenty; total, industrial war; loss of religion for ideology; Leviathan. But then that makes me think we’re still in the Enlightenment, at its end. Internal contradictions, or something like that. Otoh, I guess the dividing lines aren’t so clear when you’re living through them. Idk, I’m having a hard time… Read more »
Beginning as early as the late 20s, and reaching full effect by the early 60s, Leftist intellectuals lost faith–as it were–in orthodox Marxism, certainly as it was lived in the USSR and the Warsaw Pact countries. Postmodernism, which has its roots in Nietzschean relativism, and critical theory, which is a more culturally-oriented form of Marxism, then vied for the attention those disaffected Leftist intellectuals. Postmodernism, thanks to Michel Foucault and the relative quietism of the critical theorists, won this little battle and proceded to conquer American academia beginning in the late 60s. At some point in the 80s, pomo had… Read more »
Think I read somewhere (don’t quote me, I read casually lol) that during that early 20th century timeframe, Atlanticism took hold in the American academy. That’s where I get the idea that America was reconquered— that and the establishment of the Fed. Before that, America was rather isolationist.
I wonder if that was the vector. Certainly would make sense.
(PS I really need to re-read Nietzsche. He seems to have a reputation as the fount of many evils. Must’ve missed something 😆)
Painter, as this blog’s resident Nietzsche Pimp, I declare you have him pegged quite well 🙂
I recommend Preface (section 1) of his “Human, All too Human” as a fairly succinct manifesto.
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/38145/pg38145-images.html
He’s like a dog that got kicked too many times imo. Easy to see how spiteful mutants could run with that and miss the point, also how the well-adjusted could be put off. Still, it seemed to me he had good, if damaged, will. Idk, maybe I’m being too generous?
Nietzsche (and perhaps others, but I’m most familiar with him) wrote widely about just those issues, ca. 1870-1890. Even in his era, he argued that Christianity was long in decline in Europe, no longer a serious subject of study in the university. As I understand him, he claimed two major attempts to reconcile religion with advancing knowledge (science): Jesuitism and Liberal Democracy. This latter becoming a secular religion. The progress of science ties in too. The “will to truth,” the relentless quest to discover the secrets of nature, brings material progress and new knowledge but inevitably at the cost of… Read more »
Big mistake to leave Takimag, imo. It’s an edited organ, therefore has an aspect of legitimacy to it, which self-publishing can never have, no matter how ardent the fan-club. It is also a high-visibility platform (it is how I came to find this site) with some big names (whether or not you agree with them all the time) and connects to a wider ecosystem, such as The Spectator readership. IMO also, pay-per-view is just going to lose more of your audience than you will gain – I for one refuse to pay for anything online. It’s not so much the… Read more »
It’s interesting that all traces of Z seem to have been removed from Taki.
He’s be un-personed.
Forgive me if this has already been addressed below, but I’d like you to elaborate on your assertion that there’s no such thing as list. On its face, it’s rather absurd, but maybe we’re working on different definitions. Lust, by my definition, is simply the biological drive and desire to copulate when you see an attractive female. When you see an attractive female, it moves a little in your pants. There’s lust in simplest terms. Now men can chose to act or not act on this list based on a number of cultural or logical reasons, but that’s a different… Read more »
***Damn autocorrect…lust not list
Is it just me or has autocorrect and predictive typing gotten too aggressive and intrusive?
I feel like the setup I had on my phones from 2013 to about 2018 was far more helpful and effective than what I have today.
The urge to copulate is a real thing, but the moral component is conceptual.
The practical consequences of unbridled lust is a real thing, which nature knows well enough.
Which I think illustrates how today’s article got into a semantic tangle. A stimulating read as always, but I found little convincing or meaningful in it.
I was thinking about the sin of lust, not the biological impulse. I should have been clearer.
Everyone has sexual urges; what we do with them determines whether we’re being lustful or not.
As Martin Luther famously said, “You can’t stop a bird from landing on your head. But you can stop him from making a nest in your hair.”
In diverse, vibrant communities, I believe they call it “muhdick”
Ref Taki – I never forgave him and his miscreant daughter for taking away the comments section a few years ago.
ZMan is too good for them.
You said it. You and I used to post there regularly until we were all unceremoniously given the bum’s rush. So, screw ’em, says I. This is my posting home now, and if Z begins writing for another site other than Taki’s, I’ll read his stuff there, too.
Taki’s comment section was very good. Better than most. It seems like it went away around the time Charlottesville but I could be wrong. Taki is not so bad. Refers to New York as the Big Bagel.
We can argue over natural rights and historicism, but what about “human nature,” “male/female” nature or (gasp) Nature in-and-of-itself? Are ALL our views historically and genealogically conditioned? Are there ANY truths, i.e., unchanging brute facts, on which we may agree? More generally, is this a random, chaotic, chance-based multiverse without a telos, or is there a cosmic order, a creating and embracing intelligence that animates ALL of existence? This strikes me as a fundamental choice we’re required to make between Being and non-being, where the latter cannot be.
Excellent post. What I can say is this: human nature is real, but it’s less comprehensive than most on the Right usually reckon. Human beings are violent, musical and in need of amusement and esteem from our fellow man (thymotic pride). Beyond that, the vagaries of specific culture supervene. As for truths, even social ones, I believe they exist, although some cultures will not agree to them. But just because a truth is denied, doesn’t mean it isn’t valid. Regarding the cosmic questions, the universe is certainly governed at the macro level by the laws of physics, which were created… Read more »
Rta,
When you ask, “Are ALL our views historically and genealogically conditioned? Are there ANY truths, i.e., unchanging brute facts, on which we may agree?”
I would suggest that there are:
The urge to continue living would appear to be a fundamental drive, which every living creature shares.
So it seems entirely reasonable to assert that *all living beings behave as if continuing to exist is a fundamental right*
Interesting how when if came time to withhold communion from the congregations, due to the Chinese stiff cold, of which the vast, vast majority of churches did, all the preachers put on their bulletins the one line from Paul in Romans 13, which may as well have been written by the CCP. Even an Obama speech writer would have said “I love it but they won’t buy it in Peoria.” Of course Paul was wrong as he was eventually dragged away by authorities never to be hear from again. Was he rebelling? Was he in the wrong? Did he show… Read more »
Very fair, although another factor was certainly the make-up of the congregations, either young bug-persons or seniors terrified of the coof. They could have been defiant and opened their doors but a lot of the ministers/priests knew that their congregations would be no-shows as their true god is the glowing rectangle.
This is a popular belief, but largely not true, at least in my own AO, the churches were not shut down by the seniors, but by the Karens.
The local Methodist pastor, for example, appealed to Wesley’s “Do No Harm” directive as his justification for masks, then shut-down, then ultimately jabs. He’s a guy in his 30s who bullied the Admin Council into doing things his way, not His way.
American Christianity pussing out when the shit hits the shinola goes back further than the coof. In the 80s and 90s they did a lot of complaining about abortion, but all of it fell far short of what you would expect of someone reacting to baby murder.
Even further back the protestant majority tolerating the immigration of dirty catholics to breed like rabbits and subject us to green dyed beer and lousy adaptations of Italian cuisine.
Fifty years ago, all the dem catholic politicians who supported abortion should have been excommunicated. But there wasn’t stomach for that consequence at the beginning, and there sure as hell isn’t now.
Wow.
Nice find, JR, very relevant here.
Romans 13, 1-5. I will discuss with someone I admire, a very learned man, a scholar, a history major, my Pastor.
My country, right or wrong? My government is good because God says it is, or because it is good, God says it is?
Good luck. IME, pastors of every denomination are taught in seminary to recite extra-biblical dogma as Truth. Most pastors just go with the, “ah, but that is not legitimate authority”. Ask him what he thinks of His temptation in the wilderness., when the devil offers Him the kingdoms of the world. (Matthew 4.) Since it says flat out that He was tempted, it means He knew the devil could deliver on the deal. And, no the deal wasn’t over the dirt or anything else physical. (Psalms 24). I can’t think of anything other than the idea of one man having… Read more »
Very thought provoking post. Chapter 8 of Romans 13 says “Love does no harm to a neighbor. Therefore love is the fulfillment of the law.” Governing bodies, God’s and governments both stand behind the laws to govern the masses (thou shall not murder, adultery…) funny how the biblical laws and others in religious text often mirror one another. Governing bodies in the world change constantly, leaving nature as the true arbiter(to Z man point), However God’s laws have only changed once from a biblical perceptive with the death of Christ (old vs new testament). I think the true question comes… Read more »
The inaccuracy is what chafes. That a cosmic order needs “a creating and embracing intelligence” is the terrible chain that binds us to the Lord of Hell. I mean this, with all my heart and soul, and with all that I’ve learned and been given. Yet, such an understanding, as a child would understand, allows one to give word to the near-inexpressible scale of what we are dealing with, in such tidy fashion that one can live in a Godly way. My fear is that good children, striving to do good, can be fooled. It this not what has happened… Read more »
“…everything is composed of energy…”
Soooo, what is energy composed of?
A right is something you possess that confers no obligation on another – free speech, free association, etc… An entitlement is something you possess that does confer an obligation on another – handicapped parking, welfare; that is, demanded by one, paid for by another. Understood this way, an abortion is not a right since it obligates the unborn child to give up its life to pay for the mother’s entitlement to a better “quality of life”. It is called a right because those who want the power of life and death demand that it be so, not because it is.… Read more »
“The fact that we have to have this discussion is bad news for the natural rights crowd as it assumes the new majority is not embracing Thomas Jefferson. In fact, they have been busy toppling his statues and erasing his name from the history books, along with all the other people responsible for the natural right tradition. Whatever claims one wants to make about the universality of natural rights, it is clear that the new people and their enablers are not embracing the concept.” It has been game, set, match since at least the end of the Nineteenth Century and… Read more »
It at least goes back to Tammany Hall, the existence of which proclaimed the rejection of Jeffersonian democracy and wore it’s institutions as the proverbial skin suit.
Mainstream conservatives love the notion that principles and belief systems matter more than people. They are loathe to recognize that principles and belief systems do not create themselves. Those principles/belief systems come from particular peoples and reflect the unique genetic patterns among those peoples. Until enough conservatives come to terms with that reality, conservativism will continue to be a paper tiger, more a farce than an ideology worth embracing.
Conserve the People, not the latest “idea”. Indeed, indeed.
Modern society largely rejects the notion of sin from which the Christian religion offered redemption and salvation. So it is unsurprising that the values, rules and “natural rights” that allowed Christianity to spread and flourish will struggle to persist. What seems to remain universal is the innate religious drive. In a decidedly post-Christian society, the majority have recognized new “sins” such as patriarchy, racism and homophobia. And they have simply diverted their fundamental religious drive to identifying and redeeming or destroying the new sinners. For yesterday men, what was once right is now wrong; and martyrdom is once again a… Read more »
In his own way, Michael Anton is more deluded than the National Review. Even if the cockpit were to be somehow commandeered, everything before that moment still would be irreversibly altered. Only the disembarkment point would change.
” In a decidedly post-Christian society, the majority have recognized new ‘sins’ such as patriarchy, racism and homophobia.”
Not coincidentally the “new sins” are the things, the virtues, the TRUTHS, that stopped and restrained real sins.
“diverted their fundamental religious drive to identifying and redeeming or destroying the new sinners.”
The “new sinners” are of course the righteous, the good.
It’s a tale as old as time, really. In Russia, it was the sons of fantatic rabbis that often became the most fanatic atheists and communists.
I like the idea of natural rights, because that’s my tradition, hard-won by people who fought and died for it. Lately it’s the writing-down of rights, and consequently the elevation of law above tradition, that bothers me. I wonder if there’s a link between universality, written law, and the Christian notion of the Word— or the earlier Hebrew law. Seems likely to me, but I haven’t put in the work to be certain. The problem, seems to me, is that it reduces a people to an idea. Citizens instead of nationals, etc. Not that there isn’t some sense to it,… Read more »
What do people who believe in natural rights do if large populations are uninterested or unpersuaded by arguments for natural rights?
The only answer is to separate from the unpersuaded but the current natural rights advocates are unwilling to talk about this.
The sunny, optimistic talk of Reaganites who are so certain that everyone will be persuaded sounds stupid to me. When a GOP politician proudly states that, “I believe that the best days of America are still ahead,” I bitterly shake my head.
Yeah it’s some old white man’s burden stuff. “This is our way, tough shit if you don’t like it” should be sufficient, probably would be if we were less idealistic, more worldly. It would be a good way of separating wheat from chaff.
I think what I’m getting at is that we wouldn’t be so keen to save the world if we weren’t so divorced from it. In other words, in the world but not of it.
“when you end up denying flesh and blood— an integral part of the organism— you’ve gone too far.”
So very yes. Leftists espouse that humans are just a bundle of nurture rapped in skin.
This is perhaps the best piece that I’ve ever seen here. Well done.
Not to get too philosophical, but the piece does seem to privilege the tangible over the intangible with respect to what is real. Concepts can be real though intangible. Words are “real” though intangible. I do agree that real or not, “rights” are only available to the extent the reigning society enforces them, and that is largely based upon the culture that creates and sustains that society. Change or lose that culture, and the enforcement of/respect for those rights disappears along with it. So, even if the rights are universal and eternal in a conceptual sense, they are very time… Read more »
Word are as real as the concepts they represent. Gravity is a word with genuine weight because gravity is as real as anything can be in our conceptions of reality. Gravity would still exist even if we did not have a word for it. Latin has no word for volcano. Home had no good word for blue. These things existed before our minds could come up with words to capture the concept. Right, on the other hand, have only ever existed in our minds. Unlike gravity or the color blue, it is a concpet that cannot be detached from the… Read more »
And even if one does away with the notion of a “creator”— and sees evolutionary theory as providing the most accurate understanding of our human backstory— it’s still possible to look at the behavior of every living creature, and recognize that an instinctive urge to keep on living, seems to characterize all life.
Every creature seems to behave as if continuing existence is their “natural right”.
And following from that, would be the right of self-defense: the right of the creature to defend against threats to their continuing existence.
The problem with Z is that it assumes that there is no God, so objective morality is impossible. It is only a fiction created to humans. His reasoning is: there is no God, so there is no foundation of an objective morality so morality is a fiction (and such are rights, being a language to express morality). Morality is in the mind. Religious apologists produce the reverse reasoning. Since there is an objective morality (you cannot torture children for pleasure), there must be a God, because God is the only foundation of an objective morality. Everybody is entitled to his… Read more »
“Objective morality” is a contraction in terms. Morality is, by definition, subjective. Your opening statement would be valid if it read, “The problem with Z is that he does not share my conception of God, so he does not accept my moral claims.”
This conversation made me to think about how in practice you only have rights to the extent you don’t get in the way of big corporations, powerful men’s interests, or a protected sacred class. We can have all the hueman (or hooman in dog-speak) rights we want in our imaginations and our sacred political documents, but if a judge can be coerced, bought, or simply hates you you don’t have any rights. Same for policemen. Journalists can also help or do damage to our rights. At the end people that have the coercive power and the judges decide if you… Read more »
“We need Christianity 2.0”
I rather like that- a New New Testament, written by men, as the entire Book was.
What “works” persists, and it’s always environment specific. The ancestral peoples of Northern Europe lived in a place of sharply changing seasons with harsh winter deprivations. Over time, the behaviors that “worked” in this unique environment became encoded in DNA. Post civilization, nurtured behaviors that also “worked” became transmissible to future generations via social mechanisms such as religious training of youth. Eventually, secular mechanisms of social indoctrination co-evolved and generally were applied across-the-board, not just in niches like religion. This occurred when multiple religions had to coexist in the same region. The concepts of natural rights and universal rights grew… Read more »
TomA, we survive as a tribe. So, it is worthwhile to spend some amount of time, while we’re not improving our own fitness and building a community, to try to persuade our tribesmen to stop believing dumb things, like the universal appeal of natural rights as our Founders conceived of them.
Unfortunately, huge numbers of our tribesman are no longer fit for the current environment, and will need to be left behind by those of us who want to preserve an ‘us’. And worse, many of those who superficially seem to belong to our tribe are actually our worst enemies, and will need to be treated as such. Sentimentality is a trait that will have to be suppressed if we are to survive as a people.
Throughout this essay, my mind kept being drawn back to Lovecraft’s “At the Mountains of Madness,” which is basically Spengler’s civilizational model converted to pulp sci-fi form.
The protagonist of that story might not have found evidence of the Elder Things watching TikTok, but he found the decline in culture you’d expect to find as a reflection of that.
“What happens when the new people reject the Western tradition of natural rights? Should they be forcibly removed? Should they be compelled to change their ways? ”
Nobody is going to do anything.
What remains of the Right is going to keep talking on the internet until they are put in a box six feet under.
The Right is going to fade away with a whimper, The Left will murder this civilization, and whatever emerges from the wreckage will be something completely different.
When the Legions left Britian, who at that time, could foresee the Saxons creating England?
I don’t doubt the sincerity of civic nationalists who seem to believe that the phrase “ordered liberty” is some sort of magical incantation that will defeat their enemies, but your observation reinforces my suspicion that the leaders of Conservative Inc. are controlled opposition who are paid to waste the energies of their followers on fools’ errands until they can be easily crushed.
They are controlled opposition. Good cop, bad cop. We are screwed.
Defeatism is not a sustainable evolutionary trait. For about a billion years now, the strong and smart have prevailed through all manner of adversity. This will be no different. Rather than whine the defeatist mantra, perhaps you would be better served to get stronger (sorry, no help on the smarter part, but you can acquire wisdom if you open your mind to it).
“For about a billion years now, the strong and smart have prevailed ”
Totally true, and that is why I said what I said.
The strong and smart (in practical maters) are not the “Heritage Population”
Evolutionary theory doesn’t say natural selection favors the strong or the smart. It just favors what survives. That is not always the strongest or smartest. The saying is “survival of the fittest,” but there is zero definition for fittest except “what survives,” so the phrase is equivalent to, accurately and meaninglessly, “survival of the survivors.”
Vizzini, Not exactly…. I don’t disagree with what you said, I just think you need to take it one step further. “Survival of the fittest” can certainly become mere tautology, when you define “fitness” as “the characteristics possessed by those who survive”, and leave it at that. “Who survives? The fittest. Who are the fittest? Those who survive.” But evolution takes place in particular environments; and it is *adaptation to those particular environments* which determines *what “fitness” means* in any particular case. So “the fit” are not simply “those who survive”, but “those whose characteristics render them best able to… Read more »
Actually, bacteria (among the most populous life forms on the plant) can exhibit communication behaviors that model as intelligence. And bacteria with strong movement capabilities tend to survive and thrive better than their competitors (again, can be modeled as strength). Do a google search and you will find tons of articles on these topics.
” the strong and smart have prevailed.”
No, whatever worked prevailed. Who’s smarter, a rocket scientist Olympian with two kids or a low IQ welfare recipient with 30 kids supported by the State?
Darwin is clear in his answer.
fakeemail, For sure: Western welfare democracies may be the first societies in history to successfully subvert evolution: having created an environment, where the least-capable not only survive, but thrive, and outreproduce everyone else. A few years ago I worked at a homeless shelter, where I got to know two Black crack whores. One of them had had 11 kids, the other had had 13; all of them taken away by child welfare authorities, because the mothers were addicts. If each of those 13 kids has 13 kids of their own— while responsible White couples are having less than two kids—… Read more »
Intelligence is a survival-enhancing trait for humans in most times, but not in your example. [Neo-]Darwinism would explain the welfare family as an evolutionary adaptation. Nearly limitless resources (“supported by the State”) are available; the, er, “organism” will opportunistically fill that ecological niche.
A key aspect is overlooked: in raw nature, natural selection will tend to cull the less-fit. But civilization provides many UN-natural environments, at least temporarily.
Agree. West of the Hajnal Whites are an evolutionary dead end.
If enough people start to develop an immune reaction to the media conditioning then there may be some hope, and that is particularly true for women..
Although given the current trajectory that seem unlikely a 99% do not even see it is their enemy and controller.
If enough Indians start developing immunity to these smallpox blankets…
We had our time but we were corrupted. We were promised a brilliant future of freedom and equality. So we trashed our duties (which was the thing that allowed our society to survive) and started enjoying life, while our enemies laughed at our stupidity.
See the two minutes of Disney’s Pinocchio about the Island of Games. There is no better description of the end of our culture and our people.
As a (regrettably former) strong civic nationalist, I find this perhaps the most distressing post of Z-man’s in the five years I’ve been reading him. I think this might be because it strikes so close to the heart of what’s gone wrong with us — that it’s so central to the loss of the nation, though society and civilization I grew up in and loved. I would say “God help us,” but that would be a call meaningless to more than half of the peoples now within out (failing) borders.
EDIT (dammit): Hate phone typing — Don’t know how the “though” got in there; and should be “…our borders …,” not “out borders …” last sentence.
Give me a pencil, or at most an IBM Selectric over these efficient modern monstrosities for creating the written word.
… I so agree with you; however it has given rise to a fun new discipline of interpretation of a written text: is this a typo, or is awkwardness, what key did the writer mean to hit but missed, how often did he look over what was just written and revise (so often chunks of text are left in) etc. Yet another challenge is closed caption interpretation – hilarious at times maddening at others …
Indeed. As I sit here, I feel a profound sadness at today’s Z-man posting. Perhaps his worse “black pill” in memory. Heretofore one had hope that the loss of values one currently experiences was transient. That even if during one’s lifetime they disappeared, there was hope for resurgence. In short, that these values were indeed timeless and universal, not transient and situational. That if lost, such might be only temporary and would be found and adopted again.
But what if situational and genetic? Then indeed Humanity suffers an even worse loss as our race dies off.
For my part, there is always hope. Not so much for a reinstatement of a previous social order per se (that ship has sailed) but for a resurgence of the things that are most important in life. We can’t control what aspects of us will persist, but the fact that we existed will always be true, and it will also always be the case that we mattered and had influence on the flow of life. Better that we focus on building the new world to come and staking out our place in it than we stay regretting the world that… Read more »
Always amazing how all the civnats and libertarians never batted an eyelid when it was pointed out that all the illegals coming over would eventually outvote and overwhelm them. The border hoppers were not carrying copies of Von Mises in their napsacks.
It wasn’t about principles, it’s NEVER about principles. It was about the short term economic gain of cheap labor.
An old story: for love (of God, family, country) or for money?
Ah, yes, the glaring irony of “Colorblind Civic Nationalism” is that it can only exist in a 90%+ white country. The hubris of whites is that we assume that our view of the world is THE view of the world either emanating from God or nature, but most definitely the correct view. CivNats are nothing more than modern Yankee missionaries hellbent on spreading the word. But they screwed up. Even the Puritan missionaries were smart enough to go to other people’s lands. CivNats invited those other peoples into our land – and we’re now paying the price. Sure, the usual… Read more »
So is just about every other dominant Western ideology. Libertarianism – completely a white man’s delusion. Woke-ism – well, perhaps there are others behind it, but it is only relevant in a mostly white society. Liberalism (classical liberalism and what we call liberalism today) – white person thing. Come to think of it, ideology itself is more of a white person thing, and stronger in America than even in Europe. The rest of the planet is far more tribal, and practical. In Africa, Dictator A and Dictator B are fighting to see who’s tribe can win, and get all the… Read more »
It is a mistake to classify it as an ideology I think.
It is more a semantic hacking of the internals of how people encode information.
There is no ideologilcal belief basis that forms a whole, there are only kafka self contradictory phrases that are used to place full formed stopping thoughts and slogans into the brain without any supporting cognitive process as to how they got there.
It is literally a spell system using linguistic techniques that directly alters the perceived reality of those susceptible to it.
This is very interesting way to look at it. It mirrors my notion that we are not yet evolved to recognize when such lines of attack are taken as they are taken. We understand what’s happening when bombs drop, but not so much when we are subject to mentacide.
Oh, huzzah, trumpton, huzzah.
I shall bruise my forehead on the floor to this and to B125’s clarity of purpose.
“Come to think of it, ideology itself is more of a white person thing, and stronger in America than even in Europe. The rest of the planet is far more tribal, and practical.” Any “multi-cultural” society is tribal, and none more so than the United States. A segment of American Whites thinks magically and has deluded itself to believe it is special and will continue to live peacefully and comfortably. We very well may see the folks we call “liberals” react more sharply than CivNats when that delusion becomes impossible to maintain. They also are part of a tribe even… Read more »
>We very well may see the folks we call “liberals” react more sharply than CivNats when that delusion becomes impossible to maintain. This has always been my little theory. Impossible to know if it’s correct, or the probability of it being correct. Sweden was certainly interesting, the goodest of good whites. The “far right” party just barely happened to win a majority. We know that this doesn’t happen on its own, and the media didn’t freak out and downplayed it in the Anglo media, which suggests that a segment of the Swedish elite are looking to wind down the diversity… Read more »
We’re more ideological because we’re less tribal. European tribes disappeared during the Middle Ages, because of Catholic Church forbidding the marriage between cousins. Then feudalism, Enlightenment and capitalism made us more individualistic. Nationalism was the last vestige of tribalism, but there was destroyed after World War II, because of Hitler. Without tribes, ideologies is the most important for us. All other peoples are more tribal than White people. Other people help each other. This is not bad: this is good. I have lived more than 20 years outside Western countries and I have seen how they help each other and… Read more »
Good.
F*** Taki. Used to be that next to this place… they had the best comment sections in town. Some of the visiting wanks were as much fun to read as the featured authors.
I’ll get by without Taki just fine.
Agreed. When they did away with comment section, I quit reading – that is until Z started contributing. Now I can quit again.
I still enjoy reading David Cole there. One of the few essayists I can enjoy even when I disagree.
But yeah, sucks to see Z leave.
I find Cole thoroughly unreadable
usNthem: At Taki Zman was casting pearls among swine. His level of philosophical thought and understanding of civilizational issues are in another league entirely than Steve Sailer eternally trying to quantify the qualitative, or David Cole celebrating himself and his based mestizos.
The idea of natural rights was specific to a certain subset of English-speaking white men at the conclusion of the English Civil War. Locke’s “Second Treatise” described, and the English Bill of Rights of 1688 codified, the political settlement of the civil war — religious toleration, free speech, right to bear arms, no taxation without representation, etc. The Founders did not fight for universal human rights, they fought for the rights of Englishmen that had been part of English law for a century before the founding of the U.S. In evaluating Jefferson’s appropriation of Locke, it is important to understand… Read more »
It’s been a while since I heard the whole Hobbes vs. Locke debate, so thanks for the reminder.
Credit to Z though. This article sums up so much of why we’re seriously f***ed.
It also lays out why, among natural rights, freedom of speech has been the first to go.
Nice points, and I would just like to tack on a bit about their epistemology: Jefferson and Locke were empiricists. I think that Jefferson would argue for a “right(s)” government based on the idea of an orderly universe. An empiricist, at least during Locke’s era, would have to have faith in an orderly nature and universe; hence, Jefferson as a Deist. They have faith in a mechanistic, orderly universe. This inherently brings with it certain rules. If we consider the enumeration of grievances in the Declaration, and the “in the course of human events,” there is a sense of orderly… Read more »
And human rights, to be clear.
Correct. The natural rights tradition in Western philosophy originates with the Scholastics and the attempt of Aquinas to reconcile Aristotelian empiricism with Christianity. Locke in fact wrote an earlier work entitled “the reasonableness of Christianity” attempting to do exactly this. Throughout this entire tradition, however, there remained the belief that natural rights and Christianity were not obvious to everyone, but rather only to rational people and educated people as opposed to savages and barbarians. In other words, savages and barbarians had natural rights but were unaware of them due to their ignorance. The overall point is that natural rights as… Read more »
Mao Tse Tung said !!!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWBjwgxEawo
SWPL
Stuff white people like. Without white people we won’t see many of the things white people like, thats just the way it is
https://stuffwhitepeoplelike.com/
Maybe I’m missing the point of that website SWPL. I don’t know anything about “My so called life” since I’ve never watched it even though I was aware of it’s existence back then.
So I went to the list of things White People like and pretty much batted zero until I scrolled down to #1 – Coffee. Then that even went bust since “White people gotta have starbucks, which is ridiculous.
It left me where it found me, I’m as white as they come and I don’t get it.
Its a ten year old site, its mainly a joke talking the piss out of a certain type of white liberal, but in the end its true that many things are SWPL, and if you have less white people, you will have less of the things white people like or value
Fair enough.
Fair enough was all I wanted to say but “your comment was too short, go back and type some more stuff and filler.
Thank you, I actually do appreciate your response.
It’s best read in conjunction with its antithesis site:
Pau; Kersey’s excellent SBPDL
Stuff Black People Don’t Like.
As always, Thanks to Ron Unz, the exception that proves the rule.
Fuckit.
https://www.unz.com/sbpdl/
gibber gibber gibber
Some-one should waste five minutes determining just how much drivel make a post.
Very white of you, Vince, I must say!
In addition, (((They))) live, your moniker is a rather cheeky comment all to itself.
Brava, lad!
Yes, and for another thing, a strong sense of irony hung in the air about those Things White People Like. And, if you think about it, Irony – writ large – is THE Über Thing White People Like. Or so it would seem to me.
Well written piece. It seems to me that the concept of “natural rights” as well as the civilization that created them are slowly but surely heading the way of the Dodo – and they just don’t get it. The idea that the various and disparate people of the world would of course glom onto our current morality is hubris in the extreme. Just like Woodrow Wilson’s claim we had to “make the world safe for democracy”.
There’ll natural rights alright- for everyone other than the peoples who invented the idea…
It was always preposterous to think that our culture would translate well to other cultures. I hadn’t thought about the natural rights angle, so I appreciate Zman articulating this problem. Another area to consider is the notion of justice. We have a culture-specific notion of justice that relies heavily on the concept of the individual and his/her rights. We consider ‘backward’ the idea that entire groups can be blamed for an individual’s crimes. But other cultures and other peoples do not share this view. Even we used to have a group-justice ethic that became replaced by an individual-justice ethic. Now,… Read more »
Iron Maiden: The very concept of individual rights and responsibilities is a product of a specific people/culture and thus concurrently proves the legitimacy of group virtues and guilt. No individual White today ‘invented’ the auto or the lightbulb or most conveniences of modern life, but there is no denying the historical and biological lineage of the inventors. Joint pride is normal and justifiable. “He’s one of ours” is a real thing. Certain groups practice this consciously and deliberately – Juice as a prime example. Blacks simultaneously celebrate when one of their own achieves anything, and deny any community-wide responsibility when… Read more »
That’s fair and nicely put. I don’t disagree with where you landed in terms of group vs. individual responsibility. For my part, it’s a question of how far does that group responsibility go and under what conditions?
A certain Chinese philosopher noted that all political power flows from the end of a gun. While the Christian faith does involve more freedom than most others, Mao was correct.
In the now distant past of this country, rights weren’t violated because enough people were willing to start shooting oppressors. People think they have too much to lose now, but given the war, famine, and economic depression that our leaders are working on, we’ll be back to gunfire deciding things sooner than they think.
Saw a photo a while back of a citizen’s arrest of a sheriff who was trying to evict a widow at the behest of an insurance company. This was in the 1950’s. Doing this now would involve 100 FBI agents raiding those citizen’s homes and being brought up on domestic terrorism charges. Violence has been monopolized by the State at a level rarely seen in human history and is making the second amendment more and more or a dead letter. Sure, you can shoot an attacker, but have fun rotting in prison for 10 years if he was diverse. The… Read more »
“citizen’s arrest of a sheriff who was trying to evict a widow at the behest of an insurance company. ”
Reminds of me of the famous “Grapes of Wrath” scene: “Then Who do we shoot?”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7JEYHczRar8
While keeping the larder and armory stocked and stacked is key, all should consider adding bags of lime and a backhoe (or at least a trusted neighbor) to ensure you meet the new “Can’t Stand Your Ground” law.
Most Chinese (actually most non-Westerners) see Mao’s quote as plainly and stupidly obvious. Westerners think it’s backward, but only Westerners could possibly rationalize themselves into thinking that other things drive politics, like economic growth or human flourishing. It’s never power…it’s “public service”.
You are assuming that the majority of the people WANT those rights. If a nation is defined by its people, then what kind of a nation now exists? There is a necessary commonality that needs to exist in order for a nation to exist. The USA doesn’t even have a common language any longer, never mind having an agreed upon set of values. You will not see anything happen like you describe. We are so far removed from the courage necessary to resort to the gun. America is being actively purged of Americans. There are now enough non-Americans to take… Read more »
Given Coonteenth has now official sanction (it’s a federal holiday) and is being promoted as an alternative to Independence Day, we’re perhaps further along than you suggest.
They have tried to replace Christmas with Kwanzaa, but so far unsuccessfully. Probably more owed to commercial factors than cultural/religious ones, unfortunately.
Celt Darnell: Oh, Christmas will continue but may well be officially renamed ‘Xmas’ or Solstice day, so as not to trigger or offend anyone – the same way the juice gradually substituted BC/AD with BCE/CE. It’s the same, they say . . . but not. Besides, tons of Hindus and Iranians and juice have Christmas trees – because ‘they’re pretty’ and considered a non-religious symbol. There’s a reason they light a national tree in DC but not even the smallest municipality can have a creche/nativity scene. Keep the name but change the substance. Just another endless iteration of “Kill it,… Read more »
Before Christ’s Entry/Christ’s Entry
Here’s a nice marker for the death of the American nation: July 2, 2020, the day self-proclaimed conservative Republican senator Ron Johnson floated the idea to replace Columbus Day with Juneteenth in response to the Floyd riots. That was when the savages won. Separation is the only hope now for the American people. It is happening informally but there is no appetite at the moment to formalize it. Will that day ever arrive? Events, dear boy, events–if they ever in fact happen.
“It is still hopelessly ingrained in them that diversity is good and that we can, and should, co-exist.”
Ingrained very much so. When all the proof in the world is given that it’s not good, doesn’t work, and causes suffering on all sides, they are unmoved.
They simply respond that we’re not doing it right, but once we figure how to do it right, it will be the most valuable and wonderful thing ever.
“They simply respond that we’re not doing it right, but once we figure how to do it right, it will be the most valuable and wonderful thing ever.”
The answer is that white people need more conditioning.
“The beatings will continue until morale improves”.
Those of us who have chosen to live in reality are made to suffer, I am convinced of it.
Arguably, the replacement of Christmas was done already by removing all religious aspects of it and ‘rebranding’ it as a secular, materialistic holiday. The more interesting question is: why didn’t we perceive what was happening right under our noses and how to we prevent such blindness in the future (since we can’t go back in time)?
No offense, I think “stark realization” is a better term here. The decline of Christianity has been remarked upon for a long time now.
Then we really are the New Jews, as the evangelists would have it.
We will boil off our civnats to be subsumed by the larger populations- giving the darkies a White upgrade, as Creation’s Design demands- and resolve into a smaller, tighter, more focused core.
“Many Christians reject the idea of a universe defined by fixed and unchanging rules.” AKA Catholics, to an extent
“Other types of Christians reject that we can understand these rules, even if such a thing even exists.” AKA Orthodox Christians
Western Christians (especially Protestants) love to codify, rationalize, and universalize everything. It is their way. Much of what ails us can be traced from the PQ, not always the JQ.
Admittedly I have a bias, but the Catholics deserve credit for the idea of a universe operating by fixed rules. You can credit Protestants with expanding on the idea, but they could never have done this without the Catholic church. it was Catholicism that spread Greek thought and internalized it into the new religion.
Given that Protestantism literally exists only as a response to Catholic excess, this does make sense.
Don’t speak of your Protestant minister,
Nor of his church without meaning or faith,
For the foundation stone of his temple
Was the bollocks of Henry VIII
Brendan Behan
Typical of the Irish to credit Protestantism to the English….
And, let it be also noted, that the Irish state has now made it the law that the “incorrect” exercise of freedom of speech and thought is a punishable crime in their country. Rather ironic that they would have done this after centuries of contending for those very rights to freedom of speech and thought themselves, eh? But this return to mind slavery seems to have come naturally, albeit now under their new rulers, the EU and the pursed-lipped, “liberal” order.
The Orthodox like to say that Roman Catholics internalized Latin thought, meaning adding legalism or rationalism to belief…where it probably shouldn’t be. Protestants took it one step further, basically allowing how your brain interprets the scriptures as being the highest authority. Every man a cleric!
The Greek and Russian East has been fine simply with the divine mysteries.
“Catholicism that spread Greek thought and internalized it into the new religion”. how so? more so than the Orthodox church did, through Byzantium? in my mind, Catholicism is the antithesis of Greek philosophical tradition; obedience vs discussion.
karl: I, too, used confuse modern conceptions of and untruths about Catholicism with the historical record. But reading “The Cave and the Light” by Arthur Herman gave me a much greater understanding of the development of philosophical and religious thought. And I’m not a Catholic . . . but credit where credit is due.
Before the Schism, Rome had eastern and western flanks, but authoritarian Romans had still been taught by Greek tutors.
The Schism itself was a battle of political power, as was the Trinity a settlement of it. Religion begins as politics, and ends as politics.
I guess with your qualification of “to an extent” it is relatively accurate. Catholics do believe in fixed and unchanging rules, but those are relatively few. Just like you don’t have to have an opinion on every question, the Catholic Church has not set a definite dogma on every theological issue. Limbo being one example off the top of my head (i.e., what happens to the souls of those who die without baptism through no fault of their own) – still an open question.
One only needs to read the farce of the EU Human Rights courts to see how hackneyed and arbitrary any talk of human rights actually are, or just talk to someone fifty year ago versus today. It’s clear it’s based on sentiment and cultural norms more than any critical analysis. Natural rights doesn’t fare much better. If the idea of Natural Rights was simply a philosophy that tried to ascertain effective rights a person had in a community that would put the person in good standing with the community and put the community at an advantageous standing with whatever environment… Read more »
Notice how we have “rights creep” at the same time we have the narrowing of rights. You now have the right to pretend to be an invented sex, something with no basis in reality, but you have no right to hear a wide range of opinions. You have a right to health care, but you no longer have the right to protect your children.
Excellent point. “Rights” now are the religious dogma of the Ruling Class and change constantly. This mutability was the hallmark of most pre-Marxist tyrannies. Civic nationalism also is a quasi-religion although in theory it has the patina of immutability. It is both predictable and sad that Anton clings to the old faith like Emperor Julian praying to his ancestors as church bells chimed all around him.
“It is both predictable and sad that Anton clings to the old faith like Emperor Julian praying to his ancestors as church bells chimed all around him.”
I feel like that going to my old Church as I drive by countless pride flags.
“Rights creep”, is really arbitrary application of power. The proposers and enforcers of these, “rights”, are manipulative. The people who want these new rights don’t want rights, they want permission to do anything they want.
This system is called Libertinism. You are free to do whatever you want, best if that thing is degrading yourself. But, you are not free to do anything that interferes with our right to control you – but best if we control you by you getting lost in destructive self indulgence.
Chet Rollins: Vital point about rights versus responsibilities/obligations. And I believe you are correct that the Bible does not discuss rights. Certainly one of the commandments is “Thou shalt not murder,” but even that has been muddied into incomprehensibility by centuries of convoluted interpretations.
The Chinese language makes no distinction between political rights and political power.
When I first read your comment, I thought of this lack of a distinction as an inadequacy of the Chinese language. On second thought, this deficiency is efficient in that it ignores what is a distinction without a difference.
Even if thinkers like our Founders are correct that the Rights of Man can be deduced from observations about humans in the world, these rights don’t matter at all without Mao’s barrel of the gun. Well, talk of these rights matter only if they inspire people to organize and resist.
Universalism cheapens everything. Look at old books and the phrase “an Englishman’s ancient rights” was something you could find in these debates because the people discussing it knew that rights were tied to people. Once you break the link between people and the concept, both the concept and the people lose their value.
Your observation is why those old “At least I still have the Constitution” memes were so disarmingly funny.
I tried to link to one but they are almost entirely scrubbed from the internet.
https:
Yes, maybe the best meme I’ve ever seen and I’ve seen some doozies.
I liked it best when used in 2016 when a white guy was running from D.I.E. after attending a Trump rally.
That’s simply because most modern people, especially our present Lords and Masters, being historically illiterate, and profoundly stupid, cannot understand the distinction between “rights” and “liberties”. Especially ordered liberty.
You may be inadvertently supporting the relativist claim.
“Natural rights are a product of a specific people living in a specific time,” specifically “peculiar to European people.”
“The fact that we have to have this discussion is bad news for the natural rights crowd as it assumes the new majority is not embracing Thomas Jefferson. In fact, they have been busy toppling his statues and erasing his name from the history books, along with all the other people responsible for the natural right tradition.”
LineInTheSand: “these rights don’t matter at all without Mao’s barrel of the gun”.
That was the genius of the Anti-Federalists, when they insisted upon an explicit Bill of RIghts, and especially the moast important right of all, which is the RKBA.
[The Passive-Aggressive federalist gringotts goblins had to bump it to second place, simply to massage their own butt-hurt egos.]
In human affairs, all behavior swims downstream of the RKBA.
Conversely, no RKBA quickly results in extinction.