Note: Behind the green door is a post about gay germs, a post about the purse fight between Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder and the Sunday podcast. This week the plan is to do some more Ukraine stuff, given the uptick in war news. You can sign up at SubscribeStar or Substack.
In the comments of my last response to Michael Anton, someone quoted a passage from one of Anton’s posts in our back and forth. For the sake of brevity, no doubt, the commenter clipped out some of the original text. There were a lot of good comments in that post, but that one stuck with me because of the bit about not wanting to be ruled without consent, which is a topic I have addressed in many posts, podcasts and even a speech I gave last autumn.
I rummaged through his post and found the exact passage. Here is what Anton wrote in the first part of that paragraph, “I don’t want to be ruled without my consent and I don’t want to submit to a fake aristocracy. Those are, in fact, among my chief objections to the present regime: it rules me without my consent, and it rules not for the common good but for the private good of a fake aristocracy.” That is a pretty clear statement of the ends he seeks with his natural rights arguments.
As an aside, what is a fake aristocracy? He never bothers to explain what makes one aristocracy fake and another authentic. The closest he gets is, “This points to a fundamental problem with hierarchy. The trad Right rejects nature as the standard for politics because, they say, nature is abstract, universalist, corrosive, etc. But for a hierarchy to have any meaning, it must be based on some evaluation of higher and lower, better and worse.”
Higher than what? Have meaning? Who in the hell is the trad Right? Note that he employs cognitively meaningless statements to illicit an emotional reaction from the reader in order to trick him into a false conclusion. You see, the bad men like fake hierarchy which is bad because fake is a bad word, so putting it next to the word hierarchy makes it bad too. This sort of linguistic guilt by association is clever, but it is what makes his writing so muddled.
Putting that aside, what about this consent business? Specifically, his demand to live in a society in which he is ruled only with his permission. That is, after all, what it means to consent to something. When you consent to something you are voluntarily giving your permission for someone to do something. Sure, you may have needed some convincing, but consent assumes you have a choice. To consent to something, you must voluntarily grant your permission.
When we say “consent of the governed” we mean the permission of those over whom some group of people will rule. That sounds good, because Americans have been conditioned to associate that phrase with positive ideas. It is right there in our holiest of holy documents, the Declaration of Independence. “Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.” The goodness of government only flows from the consent of the people.
Now, before we go much further, we have to address the elephant in the room and that is the fact that the signers of that document were lying. Most of them owned other human beings and none of them bothered to ask the freemen in their employ about their decision to revolt against the king. When it came to forming a new government, they had two tries at it and never once sought the consent of the governed. It was a nice sentiment, but the framers were practical men.
That naturally leads to a question. Is such a society possible? Is it possible to have a society in which men are free of coercion? After all, that is what Anton is rebelling against in that post. Consent is permission for something to happen or a voluntary agreement to do something. The alternative to consent is coercion, which is the use of force or the threat of force to obtain compliance. How would one structure a society in order to eliminate coercion?
Here is where we must notice something important. A consensus is not the same thing as majority rule. If ten people get together to decide on where to get lunch, the consensus is the place everyone can accept. The final choice may not be the first choice of anyone, but it is on the list of acceptable choices. If six people pick the lunch spot, pull guns on the other four people and force them to go along, then that is coercion, even though the majority voted for the lunch choice.
In other words, if you put things before the people and ask them to decide, you will most likely have some people who oppose the majority decision. In fact, some of those dissenters may categorically reject the choice of the majority. No amount of persuasion or enticement will change their minds. If the choice is where to go to lunch, no great shakes, but if it is how much to pay in taxes or whether to go to war, the dissent becomes a serious issue.
Right away we can see two problems. One is that a society of any size is going to have irreconcilable disagreements. Anyone who organized a lunch order knows how hard it is to reach a consensus. In the end, dissent must be overruled. The other problem is that putting matters to a vote will always result in coercion. The majority will force their preferences on the minority. Since in every vote there is a minority and the composition of that minority changes, everyone is subjected to coercion.
No matter how much consideration the rulers give to the opinion of the people, no matter how hard they try to get the consent of the governed, some people will simply refuse to give their permission. The choices at that point for the majority, as well as the rulers, are stasis, anarchy or coercion. No society larger than the Dunbar number can operate without some coercion. At any given time, some people will be compelled by the rulers to do that which they would prefer not to do.
Now, the few remaining libertarians will no doubt chime in and say that a libertarian or an anarchist society would be free of coercion. After all, all human interaction would be voluntary and individual. While such an arrangement would be free of coercion, it would also be free of all of the things we associate with human society. It is just random humans living in walking distance of one another. It is why there are no libertarian or anarchist societies outside of East Africa.
To be fair to Anton, let us assume he knows this and what he really means is he wants a society with the least amount of coercion. Humans are not perfect so what we create will always fall short of perfect. The societies we create will therefore be as flawed as the people who make them. The question then turns from how to create a coercion free society to how to reduce coercion. How should one organize society in order to reduce coercion to the minimum?
Proof that the universe has a sense of humor, is that nature provides us with the answer to this question. Evolutionary biology tells us that people are most cooperative with those who are closest to them genetically. If you populated an island with Michael Anton clones, they would operate like a multi-celled organism. Each member would intuitively know the preferences of the other, because they would have the same preferences, due to their genetic sameness.
Obviously, that is not possible, but luckily nature provides us with lots of close examples to use as a proof. We know that the first human organizations were kin groups and that larger human societies were built on related kin groups. Ten thousand years ago related kin groups began to settle around stable food sources in order to defend and exploit those food sources. We also know that within these groups men would die for two brothers or eight cousins.
At first blush it might not seem that inclusive fitness has much of a role in reducing coercion in human society. What does your willingness to die for your people have to do with coercion? Well, consensus and cooperation require sacrifice. It does not always require you to sacrifice your life, but when you volunteer to cooperate or you agree to a compromise, you are sacrificing something in order to do it. It is the glue that binds the two sides in the transaction.
In other words, it is not just like-mindedness that fosters cooperation through sacrifice, but it is like bloodedness. This is what nature tells us. If you are looking to increase cooperation and therefore reduce coercion, you want to decrease biological distance between the members. Put another way, the key to being ruled with your consent is to live in a society populated by and governed by your people or people who are no more than distant cousins. Diversity is the death of consent.
Interestingly, Anton seems to know this. In the essay that made him famous, he wrote the following, “Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle.” Note he used to argue from tradition and now he argues against tradition.
When you go back and read the Flight 93 essay, you cannot help but note a difference in tone and substance. Assuming Anton knew his own mind when he wrote that essay, he certainly knew how the phrase “third world” would be read. His deliberate use of the phrase “no taste for” makes clear that Anton thought at the time that non-European people were unfit for a society based in European values and traditions. There is no other way that can be interpreted.
So, what changed? That passage quoted at the start offers a clue. Here is the second part of that original passage. Anton wrote, “I still think whatever you’re planning won’t work; or, to be more precise, I don’t think you’ve done much planning at all. I don’t think you’ve even begun to think through how you’ll organize your new post-natural-rights society, which is why I expect it either to be a mess or else to revert to natural rights without admitting it.”
Let us unpack those two sentences. Anton says he is sure that what I am planning will not work. Then he says I am not planning anything at all. In fact, he says I have not even started planning, but he is sure that when I get around to planning, it will be a mess or I will end up planning whatever he is planning. This is the content of just two sentences written by one man, but it reads like the work of a committee of people not on speaking terms with one another.
Putting that aside, I think we have a clue as to why he has issued a fatwah against me and those on this side of the great divide. It is not that he disagrees with the point I made at the start of this exchange. It is that he thinks it should not be said. He prefers to prattle on about elves carrying natural rights because that is less likely to get mean words from the people who control the moral framework. In other words, he feels he must submit to their moral coercion.
In this post responding to Paul Gottfried’s argument in favor of the Anglo-American tradition, he notes that he and Paul are not Anglos. Anton is Mediterranean and Gottfried is Jewish. Here is what he wrote, “Neither of us, therefore, is Anglo, and neither is related by blood to any of the men who founded the United States, or even were Americans at the time of the founding. It seems to me, then, that neither of us can be, strictly speaking, heirs to the Anglo-American tradition.”
That is an interesting passage for a number of reasons. As far as this topic, it may explain why he has reverted back to the banal civic nationalism that he seemed to reject in the Flight 93 essay. Even though the logic of his own arguments leads to something like Yoram Hazony’s ethnic nationalism, this creates a problem for the people in charge and that creates a problem for Michael Anton. Instead he is looking for a way to argue within the prevailing moral orthodoxy.
That explains that muddled passage about what he thinks of my plans. He is not arguing against my reasoning. How could he? His arguments from Straussianism arrive at the same place as my arguments from evolutionary biology. It is that he assumes that I will soon realize that saying these things out loud is bad for business. In other words, he is projecting his own fears about his position within the conservative industrial complex onto me and the empirical right.
That horse left the barn a long time ago. It turns out that I am far less tolerant of coercion from “fake aristocrats” than Michael Anton. In fact, the starting place for understanding dissident thinking is the assertion that conservatism failed because it was supposed to fail. The men in it traded their souls for expensive homes, fancy suits and the company of people they must treat as their betters. The dissident right is the rejection of that form of politics.
In closing, I will return the favor and offer Mr. Anton a bit of advice. The project to achieve conservative ends within the neoliberal moral framework has been tried by smarter men than either of us. That project began when Buckley capitulated on race back in the last century. It is why conservatism has been a failure. When you accept the moral claims of your opponents, you inevitably accept their conclusions, which is why conservatism managed to conserve nothing.
The reason Michael Anton and his cohorts in the conservative ecosystem feel the need to address dissidents directly is they are losing control of the narrative. Every day more and more people wake up from the 20th century. Much of that awakening is driven by demographic and cultural reality, but another part is the realization that the causes of these problems are not political or economic. They are systemic. The system is failing because it rests on false assertions.
Even though Anton has hurled a lot of invective my way, I bear no ill will toward him, now that I have reconsidered his position. The fatwah he has issued against me will be up on the wall next to other fatwahs. In fact, I wish the entire crew the best of luck, even though Chris Buskirk and Ben Boychuk refuse to reply to my e-mails. When you live in the valley of the damned, you get used to such behavior. After the revolution, I will see that you get sent to a good camp.
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Anton is way off base if he said:
“The trad Right rejects nature as the standard for politics because, they say, nature is abstract, universalist, corrosive, etc”
If by “Nature” he means the natural world, it is anything BUT “abstract.” Abstractions only exist in the human mind. Nature is about as “concrete” as anything can be. Points to Anton for “unversalist”: Nature does by definition apply to everything at least in the real world and you can’t get much more universal than that. “Corrosive,” yes in the sense that Nature has her own laws and will indifferently “corrode” any of Man’s silly ideas that are not in alignment with her immutable Law. But she seems to uphold quite stably those concepts that are in agreement with her dictates.
Isn’t the core problem of politics, indeed much of human thought, that it is wish-making that is not informed by Nature (natural law, the limitations imposed by the physical world?) I argue this is the case.
This is when I started to realize that Anton just repeats things he memorized in college. He does not know what he is saying, but he thinks it is profound, because it impressed him when he heard or read it.
Make me think Anton is just using an anti-DRRR strategy, but with “nature” variation.
DRRR : bc the point is to put the author (Anton) on the good side (hey LOOK, I’m on the nature’s side, not on the other, as are those stupid rightists)
Anti: because even if the goal is the same (center-right is the only true reasonable in da place), the strategy is inverted (the KKK are not demonkrats here but demonright)
It’s quite a dishonorable attitude, IMO.
Have to add : I have, as long as I can remember, read than rightist authors were more on the nature’s side than the leftists, which are more on abstract’s side.
That’s because it is true. The Right is grounded in the objective, the Left in the abstract. Nature is concrete, objective, and predictable and therefore less appealing to people who want a thrill.
The reason totalitarian dictatorships murder infinitely more people than their authoritarian rightwing counterparts is for this reason, when you get down to it. The victims of the former are bad ideas, the latter people.
There is no compromise possible with these people, and unfortunately they have the upper hand at the moment. I also think we have far more Jacobins here than there, too, again unfortunately.
Just because somebody “memorized things”, thinks it is “profound”, and it “impresses” him, doesn’t mean that those things are wrong.
Only if in the light of new things learned that contradict those first impressions and new profundities are stubbornly resisted that a person may be faulted.
I was libertarian until I spent months in third world countries where the average IQ is about 80. We need to use whatever power we can to protect what we have from becoming that. I don’t care if it’s government, corporations, culture, religion, or all of the above. We need to own all of these tools and they should be wielded by white, male, Christians. Anyone else needs to stfu or leave. Is that ruling without consent?
“That project began when Buckley capitulated on race back in the last century.”
No, it was way earlier. When the Right capitulated to freedom, equality and progress, they were unable to conserve anything. Anything organic had to be destroyed because it was against these three insane ideals.
This is why Robert Dabney complained about conservatism unable to conserve anything, during 19th century, way before Buckley.
The Right is duty, hierarchy and tradition, the opposite to freedom, equality and progress.
“It is why conservatism has been a failure. When you accept the moral claims of your opponents, you inevitably accept their conclusions, which is why conservatism managed to conserve nothing.”
Exactly. If you accept freedom, equality and progress, you must accept trannies. Why can’t a man be free to be a woman? Why can’t this guy be equal to women? Yes, it has never been this way, but you can’t stop progress.
The tragedy of right-wing people is that, in order to win, they must fight the brainwashing of THE TWO LAST CENTURIES. This is too much for most of them. They want to be conservative while adopting the civic ideals of American society, which are left-wing ideals.
This won’t do. This is why they always lose. You cannot accept the premises and deny the conclusions
Amerca was founded as a left-wing State over a righr-wing Christian nation. Eventually the State changed the nation, because the nation internalized the left-wing ideals of the State
Totally agree with you.
The “accept the moral claims of your opponents, you inevitably accept their conclusions” was EXACTLY what happened under the rule of Louis XVI.
And even more incredible but true :under the Restauration era, when the government of the kings choose to ally with liberal party against royalist party (a true party).
This unexpected second chance for royalism (1815-1830) was wasted in less than 15 years.
Then arrived the “center_right liberal Bourgeois” “monarchy of july, when royalists were even more crushed than in Restauration.
Next, 2nd Republic, were the last of the royalists choose to ally with… Guess who?
Yes, center_right liberals, the SAME which ruined monarchy since Louis XVI!
And why so? IMI, just for social (socialite…) reasons, because they belong both to upper class (ignoring the new royalist right, based on nationalism and popular sustain).
Thus, royalism disappears, engulfed in the cursed obese Blob of center-right conservatism.
Well before Buckley, so.
Btw, do you knows from who came the catchy “never ally with conservatives?”
It came in years 1890 from a french journalist, leader of a brief antisemitic and boulangist movement, Édouard Drumont.
He allied with conservatives.
He lost.
Anton’s claim to fame was to vote harderer for the perps who committed Flight 93, to build a national securiry state that would somehow protect us from themselves committing Flight 93.
I hate-listen to the Claremont podcast fairly often. Their tightrope walk to sound edgy, while staying in the ruling orthodoxy’s good graces is simultaneously entertaining and exhausting, as are the “someday I will be the keynote speaker” presentation styles. Z-Man is correct that they are merely performing a faux-edgy, updated Buckley. It’s a complete and utter waste of time.
The vote harder pretense that permeates it all is so thick and obtuse that it’s hard not to believe it’s willful
What is most interesting is that they acknowledge that America is gone and that there was a Revolution in 2020. I would argue that 2020 was the America’s official funeral that ended the 100+ year revolution against it.
I saw their 2022 post midterm symposium. In their eyes and in the eyes of the Congressmen who came to speak at it, was defeat.
I don’t think they are interested in accepting defeat. The M. Peterson symposium on caesarism was interesting. The most interesting guest was D. Cooper. He had a fire in him. The least interesting was Anton. Anton is a good person. He is just stuck in his mind. In a situation where we are a defeated people/party, philosophizing on the principle that was killed by the revolution has no place. I think as we get deeper into post-America, people in that role will find that nobody has any use for them. I think we are reaching a point where there will be zero use for any punditry.
Either we will die a slow death listening to pundits, or we’ll become men of action defending ourselves and building the structures we will need to survive and to live with our heads held high.
It’s sort of amazing that Anton’s last essay really contains the following:
“It’s not the first time that an opponent of a particular political order unwittingly adopted the metaphysic of his enemy, thus hamstringing his own ability effectively to fight it.”
I wonder, hidden in that quagmire of prose, maybe there’s a code we’re missing, like he’s a POW blinking torture or something.
Ironic since Anton himself was outed against his will when he wrote FLIGHT 93 under a pseudonym. The old saw about never trusting a conservative is absolutely true.
Before march 2020, I would have resumed the debate as follow :
1-key idea of the system is egalitarianism (for those which argue than wealth people are wealthier, I would just answer that this is just a matter of time)
2-egalitarianism give mass immigration
3-Conservatives “fight” against immigration, and fail, bc they submit to antiracism, because, you know, Hitler, so.
4-nationalists fight against immigration and fail because racism had became illegal (western Europe) or have too heavy consequences (socials and economics) (USA)
5-Yet (however/nevertheless/yet… I never know what is the rightful word in english, in this context)
Yet, immigration CAN’T be fought without racism (there’s no other rational argue for massive migrant expulsion)
***
But since march 2020, I realized our societies are so deeply sick than even with 100% white ethnostates, we would be in the road to shithole.
(of course, that’s just a theorical exemple, bc a western society which would rehabilitate racism would also find ways to fight covidism, obesity, ugliness worshipping, brrr money, etc…)
What I try to write is that race is now just a part of an entire antiegalitarian ideology to be build.
1-I’m not sure we would have time (or legal possibilities) to build it.
2-I’m not sure it would convinct a critical mass, and if the powerful technological state-system would collapse.
In conclusion, I see no other way than royalism to establish a sustainable, perennial system.
Democracy will always secrete egalitarianism
Dictatorship always bring to a) final democracy victory, or b) royalist restauration
“Ideal Republic” is just democracy but slower.
There is a cheesy Winston Churchill epigram surely all Con Inc. think-tankers know by heart — they love their cheese — so I won’t rehearse it but rather will try to riff instead: The central problem ‘round here is the blessings in life are unequally, and unfairly, distributed, which everybody already knows by age 5, yet “democratic involvement” constructs this troublesome reality as the Not Who We Are adversary to assail. And as Metal Moldbug once put it, reality always fights back and furthermore never loses, thus makes the ideal fixed political target. Marketplace-of-Ideas fetishists say Democracy would have to be “discredited” somehow to be abandoned, like a bad smartphone release I guess, but the construct is by design discredit-proof. The 2003 Iraq War was based on many bad, weird incentives, from revenge to CIA featherbedding to Straussianism to Dunder-Miflin-style managerial reorganization action plans for Saudi troop bases, but it “succeeded” by placating the stakeholders, not proving this or that Pentagon memo Historically Correct. Random idiotic things happen all the time, the world isn’t like a movie. People who live and work in Washington think they are in a movie, though.
As Z notes, Anton – like all colorblind CivNats – has accepted (or, at least, publicly says that he accepts) the morality of the Left, which is that there are no biological differences among the various peoples of the earth that are anything more than skin deep.
I don’t care how many philosophers that Anton quotes to sound smart, his public acceptance of such a laughably false claim marks him as either an idiot or a liar. It really is that simple.
This is why his responses to Z-man are so convoluted. He’s throwing a smoke-screen to avoid addressing the topic of biology and culture, which he likely knows is ridiculous on its face.
He wants to keep his nice job and his respectability (which requires him to lie), but he also doesn’t like to be shown as a fool, so he just avoids the topic. You’re not a liar or an idiot if you just don’t saying anything about biological differences. You’re just cowardly.
What’s most odd about this whole affair is that Anton threw such a hissy fit. Why shine a light on someone pointing out the obviously factual flaw in your theory?
He doesn’t quote any philosophers from Zanzibar—or even Chile.
All the public faces of Claremont seem to have been ordered to take an anti-populist/Trumpist/??? turn a few weeks ago. The tone of their podcast changed and they started picking out right-wing media characters to mock (“Alinsky-style,” I guess). Because they’re Twitter-brained shitlibs, they started with Andrew Tate. Shameful display.
Anton picked Z. A literate choice, at least.
“Anton – like all colorblind CivNats – has accepted (or, at least, publicly says that he accepts) the morality of the Left, which is that there are no biological differences among the various peoples of the earth that are anything more than skin deep”
I do not think Anton thinks his, judging by his statements on panels with Chris Caldwell. He even says something along the lines of “the conservatives thought we could have legal equality and maybe some temporary measures without equity”
“ After the revolution, I will see that you get sent to a good camp.”
I assume you are just being facetious here? In all my readings of your commentary, I’ve never sensed vindictiveness. 😉
It was an obvious (and hilarious) joke, lighten up Francis…
“When the world is mine, your death shall be quick and painless” said Baby Stewie in a moment of gratitude, infant and frustrated would-be dictator in the cartoon series “Family Guy.”
“You hit like a girl, Anton”
What he wants is the right to issue a veto. His view of things leads to minority veto power. Like if a person with “special dietary needs” is part of our lunch crew. One person can say “I can’t eat any pork or from any stove which has pork prepared on it” and categorically exclude certain restaurants, even if the other 19 people want to eat at one of these restaurants.
This is exactly why we cannot live in our own neighborhoods. A minority may take offense to the fact we do not want him living among us.
I upvoted. Yet there are times when the majority may impose its will. For example in my subdivision, I can’t raise chickens in the backyard, take months to rebuild a ’72 Chevy Nova in my driveway, and sundry other proscribed activity.
A key difference is that my membership in this community was voluntary, as is everyone else’s.Nearly all the rules were known before I committed and at least implicitly I consented. And if the rules change, as they sometimes do, continued membership remains voluntary.
As the reach and scope of the government grows, the “voluntary” aspect rapidly diminishes.
> it may explain why he [Anton] has reverted back to the banal civic nationalism that he seemed to reject in the Flight 93 essay.
Anton was, and will always be, a CivNat. His apparent deviation from CivNat ideology is merely pragmatic and transactional; he’s worried that the foreign imports will vote for the Inner Party instead of supporting his faction: “…importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican…”
There’s no evidence Anton ever deviated from blank-slate-ism and he’s clearly endorsing it in more recent writings. That, at root, is the principal source of disagreement between those on our side of the Great Divide and everyone else.
Anton isn’t a blank slater and wants boomer vision of equality under law rather than every institution in USA organized around anti-white hate. I think he supports Caesarism but per Claremont rules cannot say this openly.
Anton is correct that we have a “false aristocracy.” Many also bracket it (((aristocracy))). However, it happens to be false precisely because the people who govern us are indeed elected with at least 50.01% of the ballots cast. Yes there is some fraud, but the real fraud is subjecting about 10% to at most 15% of the thinking population to the emotive animalistic and degenerate masses.
If anything can destroy a so called “natural right” its your average “Muricuhn” (or any other human being on Earth) with a ballot in hand. The founders knew this. They only wanted the landed class voting, the very idea of other ethnicities and women voting would have been laughable. Had the founders wanted to expand the franchise, they would have expanded it.
I’m reminded of the quote from Huey Long, “One day the people of Louisiana will get good government and they won’t like it one bit.” All government is force. All government is coercion. Stop paying your property tax bill and see what happens. Or even a simple speeding ticket. What’s important is the size and scope of government. The number of laws on the books and what’s being enforced. Our “false aristocracy” tortures us with thousands of tiny laws, while ignoring the big ones. For instance, a big one “All undocumented aliens are to be deported.” The worst scum among us govern us, make fortunes doing so, and in the process, invert the law to their own ends.
No “real aristocracy” would ever, in a thousand years, subject itself to the whim of the masses, which defeats his entire argument. The whole point of an aristocracy is the rule over men, not the ruling by men…or purple haired women…
Imagine the horrifying, unaccountable tax laws alone of King George II. A few cents in customs duties and some stamps. The horror! Not like “muh natural rights” where I get to pay half my income to the state.
Anyone who mouths the platitude “the consent of the governed,” among many other bromides, in the wake of Covid is an abject idiot. Trying to appeal to a moron of that caliber is a fool’s errand.
Mao was right.
Let me don the cap of Baal’s barrister and suggest that perhaps what Anton means when he speaks of “consent” is not so much acceptance by all people of whatever the government decides, but rather acceptance of the basic form of governance and its premises. Ergo, 20 percent of AINO’s citizens rejecting the Covid Captivity is irrelevant as long as they all accept the legitimacy of the form of government and the actual government that instituted it.
Is that what Anton actually means? Perhaps not. Just throwing it out there as a possibility.
As best as I can tell, Anton clings to the lower case republican mythos, whereas 50 percent plus one decides policies but the long-dead constitution prevents that majority from doing X things. Obviously that day is long gone and a majority can ignore with impunity either fantasy natural rights or those specifically enumerated. He kind of recognizes this reality, which of course raises the question of “so what is to be done?” Like the Buckleyites, to the degree there is a difference, his response is vote and try harder.
Covid more or less put paid to that response, as do open borders and war without end. All that matters is raw power, but folks like good ghost stories so the constitution and other phantoms are discussed.
Carl Schmitt was right
Right wing Anglo-Americans who want to win need to read more Carl Schmitt
To paraphrase George Carlin (at least libs used to be somewhat interesting and funny): Democracy is a dumb idea. Think of how dumb the average, 50th percentile person is, straight in the middle American, and then remember: 50 percent are dumber than that.
Jr said: “The founders knew this.” Everyone forward of when “The Assemblywomen” was first performed has known the problems with plebicites and the franchise. And yet Muh Founders did the exactly same stupid thing that felled Athens, and were entirely aware of the disastrous results of the prior experiment. Sounds incompetent and stupid, you ask me. You get nowhere lionizing and repeating past errors.
The Founders were the radical left of their time. I said that in a Christian conservative blog and they reacted as if I had insulted Jesus. Then, I realize that the Founders are religious figures for the American people. Every evil is explained along the lines of “The Founders knew better than that”.
Sorry, the Founders created a system whose natural evolution is today’s America. You cannot say that a seed is good and the tree that grows from it is evil.
The Founders were evil and they created an evil system, with an evil logic that made the system worse and worse. Get over it.
I agree with your statement, 100%. But if you want a true taste of what the educated rubes in the southern red states believe, try watching one of “historian” David Barton’s presentations. He literally scratches every possible itch felt by “muh Constitution and muh Founding Fathers” boomers all through Dixie.
As a Bible and World History teacher at a small Christian academy I’ve had to sit through two of Barton’s seminars (once in Virginia and once in Mississippi) and on both occasions I wanted to chew my own face off. Jefferson once wrote, “If my neighbor believes in one God or 100 gods it neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” That’s hardly the stuff of a Christian fundamentalist, but all these Founding Fathers worshipers can’t even see the problem with Jefferson.
But we’re so far gone into Clown World that being annoyed by these things is doing me no good whatsoever. I’m just waiting for the collapse, and hoping that my kids can know a better America than the one we’re living in right now.
Some quick comments on this debate and other comments I have read here:
1. Michael Anton’s observation is correct that what this blog proposes is a hierarchy with the best and brightest ruling. While details of the hierarchy are never spelled out it will have to be based on genetics (if Zman doen’t believe that genetics is destiny I hope he will clear that up for us). This is, to put it bluntly, a genetic caste system.
2. Zman has spilled a lot of ink discussing how our system has been gamed and we are no longer a meritocracy (I know a “true” meritocracy has never existed). Working from the premise that our system was doomed to failure it shouldn’t be too much to ask what qualities a better system would have? Can we guarantee that a future Marcus Aurelius won’t spawn another Commodus?
3. If individual rights are a figment of the imagination then so is freedom. Are we all just “moist robots?”
4. A few years back I was reading the comments on one of Zman’s posts and a commenter asked what should be done about the “Christian question” (the CQ). Being a Christian I was insulted. After reading his post “The Future Christian” I think I know Zman’s answer. I have heard Zman say that there is no one more conservative than him. In what sense is that true? He is as antagonistic to every American institution, including Christianity, as any leftist I have met. What does he believe he’s conserving?
Thank you.
“I have heard Zman say that there is no one more conservative than him.”
Really? On the Conservative Question, I have read Zman write “never trust a conservative,” which is excellent advice.
“Being a Christian I was insulted.” That was your first mistake. Taking insult is an emotional reaction. You should have engaged with the matter intellectually instead — that is, if you were hoping for increased understanding. Increased understanding, by the way, would not preclude you from continuing to disagree with what you came to understand better. It would give you stronger grounds for disagreeing with it.
“[Zman] is as antagonistic to every American institution, including Christianity, as any leftist I have met.” First, I’m doubtful that’s a fair assessment of our blog host. Second, even if it is fair, American institutions have gone janky and no longer seek to conserve anything aside from their own power. Much of what passes for “Christianity” today has caved to modern degeneracy and thus become part of progressivism rather than conservatism. When a civilization’s major institutions become malevolent toward tradition, those who favor tradition become malevolent toward those institutions. Straightforward enough?
Every single major Christian denomination has been take over (converged), at least at the national level is no longer even Christian. The Christian churches are all thoroughly corrupt. There may be other Christians who are “offended” at me saying it, that doesn’t make it not true.
I do think there are some excellent churches in America and these will have to become the new leadership of the denominations.
Even the Mormons have cucked. When old Mitt was growing up, African Americans couldn’t be anything more than a follower. Now Mitt is marching with BLM demanding history be erased.
IMHO, this is what happens when one larps at a religion. Imagine actually believing in the teachings of Joseph Smith and the Latter Day Saints and disavowing plural marriage and the “racist” portions of the doctrine. WHO do you really worship? Whoever it is, it ain’t Christ.
Like all others, the Church was not spared the march through the institutions. In fact, it was one of the first and major targets.
And if by the Church, you meant the Catholic Church, they got it good and hard woth the anti-Papacy of Bergoglio. Speaking as an outsider, but I think that the evidence here is pretty well established, at least among most of the hierarchy if not the laity.
I have never seen it proposed on this blog that genetics will determine the ruling class where the genetics are the sole measure of the best and brightest.
There is no guarantee that whatever system comes in the future won’t spawn another Commodus from a Marcus Aurelius. As bad as Commodus was, he didn’t conspire to destroy Rome and the Roman people, nor sponsor a mass migration to destroy the Roman’s homeland and peoplehood. He was surrounded by a society and a people that were a bulwark against his madness/stupidity.
There are degrees of bad. You don’t not reform or reforge a system or nation because there is no guarantee that it will never degenerate or go through a period of crisis. We are ruled by people who hate the nation and have acted to destroy it. We are ruled by people who openly call for and fund the destruction of our race. Not even Commodus or Nero were that mad or disloyal.
That is what we are dealing with here – an existential threat to a nation, to a people and its homeland.
The CQ is a legitimate question. The Churches are an active participant in the invasion of our homeland, the replacement of our people and the subjugation of our cultural practices and norms. Any individual or institution that acts as such is right to be called into question. In fact, it has renounced its legitimacy thus called itself into question. It is legitimate to ask, is this institution going to aid us in our existential struggle or is it working against us?
You clearly don’t understand what time it is. Or, maybe you do, but you lack gravitas.
Individual rights exist because men do what is necessary to establish and then to protect them. Freedom only exists because men do what is necessary to institute it and to protect it. Above the individual and above freedom are obligations and duties that are reciprocal. Go live in Flint for five years, and walk around like you are a middle class white guy who lives in a small village in Vermont. Then come back and give us a lecture on individual rights and freedom; tell us if Commodus son of Aurelius and the context of Roman Civilization is worse or better than Mayor Cleevus Smith III governing Shawneequa and Jontavius buttressed by the white man funded Welfare State.
The history of life on Earth (about a billion years) is manifest genetic hierarchy. And Homo sapiens sapiens is now at the top of the pyramid. Civilization has been around for about 10,000 years and dominance of man-made environments for about a 5,000 years. The latter two have been operative for a tiny fraction of life’s history; and yet, know-it-alls like Anton presume to “know” a better way and merely lacks the means to impose his “theory” on everyone else. But what if he’s wrong and he leads us toward colony collapse or extinction? What good is “I told you so” after nearly everyone is dead?
Minor correction: There has been life on earth probably 3 billion years, +/-.
I don’t disagree with much else you say, but only comment upon your last question. What if it’s the case that as part of the process, that nearly everybody must become dead?
Glenn, Joe Sobran answered your pro-forma question years ago:
“Western man towers over the rest of the world in ways so large as to be almost inexpressible. It’s Western exploration, science, and conquest that have revealed the world to itself.
Other races feel like subjects of Western power long after colonialism, imperialism, and slavery have disappeared.
The charge of racism puzzles whites who feel not hostility, but only baffled good will, because they don’t grasp what it really means: humiliation.
The white man presents an image of superiority even when he isn’t conscious of it.
And, superiority excites envy.
Destroying white civilization is the inmost desire of the league of designated victims we call minorities.”
Joseph Sobran, April 1997
the muds are going to get theirs, and soon. they are too blinded by hate to see the only thing keeping them alive is white technology and subsidies. well all that is in the process of going away, and then their population numbers will revert to what they were before white intervention. no loss to humanity when they all starve, the world will be a much better place.
I made up “Global Easter Island”
Gary North, probably in 1980s, wrote in a very similar vein. He was discussing the problem of envy. He said, basically, that the very power of the successful and the wealthy, and their efforts to help the less well-off, inspired resentment and envy in the lesser population.
As I remember, he was not drawing any specific conclusions from that observation, e.g. how the wealth and successful should behave otherwise.
I do believe his observation is very true in the general case. Certainly there are instances where help actually results in a positive outcome for both donor and beneficiary. But I suspect there are more ways it’ll go wrong — a sentiment expressed in many pearls of wisdom, like the law of unintended consequences, or the observation of how the road to Hell is paved. 🙁
If one accepts the above as generally true, then (to me at least), if taken to a logical conclusion, it would seem to lead to the rather soulless and chilling conclusion, in the perspective of the one holding power, that at best one should ignore the plight of the worse-off, or perhaps optimally, to exterminate them.
Your post reminds me of social media posts where a poster and their replies will agonize over some facet of American society, like public transportation, or schools, or prisons, or pretty much anything. Pages and pages of moralizing wonder, a yet a ctrl+f for “blacks” will return zero results.
“Genetic caste system?” What are you on about?
Hard to imagine a genetic caste system when everybody in the nation-state is white.
I think it’s less important to have a “true” anything, than a working anything. Even making something like a giant telescope mirror you are not actually trying to create a “true parabola” (or whatever mathematical shape is sought). Obsessing over that puts you back in Plato’s cave getting nothing done.
In America, the recipe for a society that was mostly free, prosperous, and scientifically progressive (the only kind of progressive that matters) was always pretty simple. Select your “aristocracy” mainly from White (and “White-adjacent”) smart men whose minds had been honed and disciplined in relatively good schools that at least taught the 3-Rs.
Then there’s the matter of lying. This is something the Straussians actually get right. It’s important to keep lying about how the system actually works. The Founders understood this, Strauss understood this, Huey Long knew this, everybody who used to talk about “tolerance” knew this. What are we “tolerating” anyway? Well, we’re going to tolerate having a few oddballs who don’t fit the pattern. So you let in Marie Curie and Grace Hopper and George Washington Carver and Albert Einstein (and Rock Hudson). That’s a bit different from actively recruiting ONLY those people. It’s really really different in fact. This is why “tolerance” is no longer tolerated.
This is how the Founders were able to talk about Democracy without bursting out laughing (or crying). They knew not to talk about “that part”. Besides, “that part” was pretty clearly written in between the lines in a good Straussian fashion that everyone understood. You didn’t need to say it aloud.
Now “that part” is the only part. Now we’re starting to get Democracy. The real thing. Good and hard. Bend over America. This IS what you asked for.
You don’t have to lie if your system is based on human nature and you recognize it.
If you lie, your opponent can manipulate you with your lie. “Don’t you say that all men are created equal?”. Then, why do you oppose democracy and immigration.
Some months ago, in an international meeting, USA denounced China for the Chinese genocide of the Muslim Chinese (it is a real genocide). The Chinese representative answered that China didn’t accept moral accusations from a country that treat black people like sh*t. The American representative should have answered that black people are not treated badly in America, but he couldn’t because the official theory is that racism is huge in America. The USA governmemt was trapped in their own lies.
And that’s why you don’t bade a system on lies.
“This is, to put it bluntly, a genetic caste system.”
Cope! Or as Lee Kuan Yew said, complain to God, not him!
“If I tell Singaporeans – we are all equal regardless of race, language, religion, culture. Then they will say,”Look, I’m doing poorly. You are responsible.” But I can show that from British times, certain groups have always done poorly, in mathematics and in science. But I’m not God, I can’t change you. But I can encourage you, give you extra help to make you do, say maybe, 20% better.” -LKY
https://youtu.be/FxaBCg72hxs
“antagonistic to every American institution, including Christianity”
Make sure to tell Charlemagne about how Christianity is “an American institution”
I recently had a conversation with one of my civic nationalist neighbors. He will go on about need to “get back to” natural rights. He worships the Declaration and prattles on about all men equal and such.
He gets annoyed at me when I point out that Jefferson was talking about and to “Englishmen.”
“That naturally leads to a question. Is such a society possible? Is it possible to have a society in which men are free of coercion? After all, that is what Anton is rebelling against in that post. Consent is permission for something to happen or a voluntary agreement to do something. The alternative to consent is coercion, which is the use of force or the threat of force to obtain compliance. How would one structure a society in order to eliminate coercion?”
Seems to me that governance rests on the tripod of cajolery, bribery (i.e., material incentives), and coercion, and that all these three elements are necessary. To the extent that cajolery is essential, we can employ the euphemism, “consent of the governed.” Though come to think of it, this may have been supplanted by “manufactured consent.” Even outright despotism and tyrannies have never run on pure coercion. Some carrot is needed along with the stick.
Even outright despotism and tyrannies have never run on pure coercion
–North Korea is the exception that proves the rule.
The majority may get the stick, but even in NK there are people who help the monarch stay in power who get the carrots.
It’s interesting how the neighboring tyrannies (China and N.Korea) mirror one another. China has favored the carrot, the Kims favor the stick.
Mmmmm. Four seasons happy carrot.
Confucius say “happy is man with bullet in back of head instead of two bullet in front of chest”. Or some such shit. Why is my fortune cookie blinking?
That a self-contradictory notion such as “consent of the governed” achieved such far-reaching popularity further demonstrates how steeped in delusion humanity tends to be.
In general, I’ve found Anton’s criticisms coherent and accurate, given our fundamental disagreement over the utility of using natural rights as an organizing principle for a multiracial society. (The biggest problem is that the only people who modify their behaviors to respect natural rights are whites of Northern European descent.)
But I think he entirely misses the mark when he says, “The trad Right rejects nature as the standard for politics because, they say, nature is abstract, universalist, corrosive, etc.”
The trad right that I come from is all about embracing nature as the standard for politics. When believers in an unquestionable lawgiver criticize me for having no moral grounding, I point to the shared, general morals that have evolved within white societies that exist independently of supernatural belief. I found my ethics on the observable morality that is based on the human nature of Northern European whites. Basically, I restate Aristotle’s ethics with the caveat that I am restricting my discussion to Northern European whites.
I say to Anton that rejecting natural rights does not entail rejecting the human nature revealed in observable, evolved ethics of an ethnic group.
“When you accept the moral claims of your opponents, you inevitably accept their conclusions, which is why conservatism managed to conserve nothing.” That really is the crux of the matter, isn’t it?
For a while now I’ve been stating the same basic observation in my own words: If you embrace the morality of your opposition, you have already lost. Normie conservatives seem incapable of grasping such an obvious reality. They sheepishly adopted undefinable lunacies such as “antiracism,” oblivious to the fact that progressives monopolize that rather nebulous value. These so-called conservatives are unworthy of the name; they are, in truth, moderate progressives lacking in self-knowledge.
Beware all those who lack self-knowledge. They will never make for useful allies.
normies are just logs for a future fire.
Great line! You should put that on a t-shirt.
Grease fires are dangerous and Dorito-fed types have a lot.
Great line.
There might be one exception here. Such allies can be deployed as human wave attackers into enemy machine gun positions. Good for larfs and keeping the price of food down at least.
This a a meta post. Truly taking the fight to the highest level of argumentation. And it is both sad and revealing that Anton is not intelligent enough to be a good nemesis. He should be parrying each thrust by Zman with a sound and solid counterargument rather than resort to literary tricks in hopes of denigrating him. And this is the substance of ConInc. It aspires to “appear” competent rather than actually be competent. If Anton had real balls, he would appear on a stage with Zman and duke it out with his personal integrity on the line (real skin in the game). But cowards are cowards for a reason; it’s how they stay alive. Which is not what nature intended; and that is an adverse consequence of civilization – the deadweight must persist.
As a side note, there is ample evidence from biology that certain behaviors are genetically encoded, and are both species and subspecies specific. IOW, we arise from the womb with ancient programming that helps us stay alive and thrive in our ancestral environment. This has been around for about a billion years. For this reason, you cannot place Africans in Alaska and expect good results. Just sayin’.
To be fair to a guy like Anton they rightfully do not give up their principles because once you do, the implementation of the principle is gone. It won’t manifest. Jordan Peterson has the same hangup.
Their hangup can be seen clearly in the MLK/Civil-Rights dichotomy.
The elephant in the room of MLK’s non-violent protest is that it was always backed up by the threat of violence. He even phoned in those threats to presidents, governors and mayors. The same is true of his exhortations to being colorblind. The entire Civil Rights regime is based on color awareness and a legal and financial spoils system based on race/color. The only people who play by those rules are the people on the losing end of them. It is what TomA pointed out.
Then you have Anton, Peterson … … who argue principle from their ivory tower. They rightly fear that if we abandon principle then there is barbarity that rules. Yes. But who are the barbarians? I say it is the people who refuse to play by the rules of civility, not the people who play by them and get horse-f’d by those who don’t. The problem is their universalism. They cannot see that only they and we, (white Northern Europeans), play by those rules. The obvious course of action is to preserve our culture for us, but fight against our enemies so their is a people left to preserve. The longer they hold out, the more likely what they fear most will come to be, and they will be the least safe from all of it.
Universal Europeanism/Americanism has failed. The ruling regime acknowledges it by its declaration of war on white people and The West. Their solution is the utter destruction of the people and the civilization. You preserve the people and their civilization first. Then you argue amongst yourself the principles of the New Founding. At war, the soldier who believes in individual liberty puts it aside to fight to the death to preserve his life and his homeland. He even supports leadership that quashes the, “rights” of traitors and treasonous ideas so his fight is on a single front and not in vain.
Every “nonviolent protest” since AINO massacred the Bonus Boys in the shadow of the Capitol (there’s literally nothing new under the sun) had the blessing and protection of the Junta. Further, those protests allowed reflected the Regime’s morality or lack thereof, because otherwise they received the Soviet treatment.
The only thing that keeps the lamppost solution at bay is that the plates are still spinning enough to keep normie on his comfortable couch. But when normie can no longer afford Doritos and beer, he will have no choice but to get up and pitch a fit in front of the TV set. And its all downhill from there. First whining, then complaining, then getting in the face of the 17 year old purple-haired girl at the checkout counter, then banging garbage cans in the street, and ultimately joining in the rioting in the big city, where some cop will obligingly crack his skull. Into this fog of chaos will walk the forces of redemption with singular and focused purpose.
Principles are the last refuge of a scoundrel. Or did I get the quote wrong lol.
While I’m very sympathetic to Zman’s line of reasoning here, I think it’s worth pointing out the Elephant in the Room. If the DR cannot find some common cause with the griller/civnat/Anton school of thought, it’s going to be a hard slog to preserve anything worthwhile on this continent. (Think “People’s Judean Front v. People’s Front of Judea” from Monty Python.)
It’s just a numbers game. I enjoy a good intellectual debate as much, or maybe even more, than the next guy. But practical concerns loom large now. So where do we go from here?
Given the history of the griller/civnat/Anton school of thought, our best position is to demand 100% of what we want and concede 0% of what they want. In time they will negotiate with themselves until they are demanding nothing more than a storage locker for their belongings.
I’m fine with this as long as we can stuff them in said lockers.
Okay fine, I take your point, given their track record of developing “the conservative case for xxx”. But do you think we have enough time for this back and forth to play out? I’m not so sure. You “get out more” than me and circulate with other thinkers. From my office desktop, the timeline looks tight.
“…our best position is to demand 100% of what we want and concede 0% of what they want.”
That sounds like something Tom Hayden or Jerry Rubin might have said in 1967.
And it is.
The fact is, the grillers will accept whatever they are told to accept. They’re all watching football and hockey, which is inundating them with LGBTQ propaganda, and none of them rebel against it. If you told a “conservative” griller that anal sex should be illegal he’d be outraged — but it was illegal in most states as recently as 2003. All the Negro football players they worship have hot blonde white women who would never give the average griller so much as the time of day (cf. Simpson, Nicole Brown). They don’t care.
The grillers will willingly fight and die and get their legs blown off if the government tells them “Go git ‘im, boy” like a dog. It doesn’t matter who the enemy is — Huns, Zips, gooks, towelheads, commies, whatever.
The hoi polloi are completely able to be manipulated by the elites. They have one principle and one only: “Go along to get along.” Guys who would have been marching with the Wehrmacht in 1945 were marching for the East German National People’s Army ten years later.
The trick is to control the institutions of power, and then people will naturally follow like the sheep that they are. The problem for the Dissident Right is that we are in the exact same position the hippie leftists were in back in 1967 when they were shut out of power and the Establishment and that the institutions were politically and temperamentally conservative.
Make no mistake, “The Long March Through the Institutions” was real, and it was an overwhelming success for the Left. The Left created a counterculture, replete with ideology, dress, speech, music, and holy sacraments like weed and anal, and has seized total power today. “Conservative” grillers accept all the major tenets of the leftist agenda of the Sixties today: feminism, birth control, out of wedlock/interracial sex, racial egalitarianism, legal weed, etc. All of it.
The Left was successful because sixty years ago, the “conservative Establishment” adhered to classical liberal principles like free speech and free association and “freedom of conscience.” People thought the hippies were crazy, but nobody tried to prevent them from speaking out or publishing their crazy ideas.
We do not have that luxury. The contemporary leftist establishment is totalitarian in nature, it is not going to allow its opponents the free speech or freedom of association to mount a cultural counterrevolution.
Brilliant and one hundred percent accurate comment.
XMan has put an arrow in the center of the bullseye and shattered its shaft with a second one. Compliments!
I think it may have even been Z who said that the only thing the regime respects is violence. That’s not a call to violence against them, lordy knows they don’t even let nuclear armed Russian violence bother them, it’s just to note that the only thing they can engage in that garners any respect is violence. Whatever normie might cook up in terms of persuasion he needs to know that for the regime, violence is first and foremost on it’s mind in terms of it’s persuasion methods. The Jan 6th protestors would have been better off knowing that for sure.
The foregoing comments make me worry that the next Jan. 6 protestors, or its equivalent, will take note of a few unhappy lessons from the one of two years past. I’d delineate these as follows:
1. Those in power only respect violence.
2. That last group that tried they are contemplating will spend the rest of their lives in jail, or indeed are still awaiting trials years later.
3. There are limits to penalties. As the old English wisdom has it, you might as well hang for a sheep as a lamb.
I hope that any future protestors will take the above into account before acting rashly, that they will count the cost, that they may pay a dire price for putting their feet upon the Speaker of the House’s desk.
If the majority of protestors believe as such, I fear they might be motivated to do far more than merely mar the nice furniture.
Communism took over the East through violent revolution
Communism took over the West using the techniques of Antonio Gramsci
you do realize this comment marks you as a griller?
my view is civnats/grillers/antonies are safely ignored, in all things.
Yeah Karl, I’m not interested in being an internet tough guy (I confess I do own a grill and use it regularly). I’m interested in survival. Numbers are important. So are alliances. Please tell me your plan to increase our numbers.
Captain Willard: Alliances with whom, and to what end? Why I it unacceptable for Whites to take their own side and stand up for themselves, by themselves, in what were their historic homelnds?
With other whites obviously. My point was that if we cannot “widen the circle”, it’s going to be a tough fight. It seems like a pretty innocuous point, but everyone’s mad at me. I understand Zman’s point about being steadfast, and I appreciate Karl’s frustration with normies, but I think there has to be some process that leads to widening the circle. That’s all. Thanks for your comment! You always have really good points.
I don’t see that Capt. Willard believes it is unacceptable for Whites to take their own side and stand up for themselves by themselves. The problem (or “challenge” in MBA speak) is to get sufficient numbers of them to do so. And failing that, what or is there a Plan B?
certainly not with someone like you. when you say “alliance” i hear “someone else gets their hands dirty”. sorry if i frightened you; i am not a tough guy, relly.
Good luck Karl! You sound like a guy who can handle himself.
I’m not sure that it is a “number’s game.” The tribe doesn’t have the numbers, yet they win. The Bolsheviks didn’t have the numbers, yet they won.
Numbers certainly don’t hurt, but I’d argue that commitment and skills count for more. Colorblind CivNats have neither.
Yes, you make a great point. I’m talking about an intellectual and political movement that “chips away” at their base gradually and widens our circle. If you’re waiting for 100% ideological alignment, you’re going to run out of time I think. It’s especially important to focus on younger people who maybe haven’t formed strong views on these issues.
Not as familiar with the Bolsheviks, but the tribe is very skilled at their craft. It is a numbers game in the sense of having the right numbers in the right places, then using those numbers to “leverage” others.
Do the far left fanatics compromise with the moderates? No they keep pushing for what they want. Even compromise is just a stepping stone to what they really want. Who is currently most successful at furthering their agenda?
Captain Willard: It is most definitely not “just a numbers game” in the political/punditry sense you intend. There is no way you are going to get a magic ‘x’ percent of Whites to take their own side and recognize the severity of their decline. Politically, the sheep follow the winning team or the strong leader. Surely you are aware that perhaps 20% of Americans supported independence from the English crown at the start of the revolutionary war. Waiting for that magic number of grillers to suddenly understand biological reality, when decades of mass media and cultural and educational brainwashing say otherwise – is a loser’s game.
It IS a numbers game demographically. I still see the absurd claim that AINO is 72% White thrown around all the time (try officially 58.7% counting Jevvs, Arabs, and various subcons/mestizos).
Whites are a mere 9-12% of the world’s population (depending on the source) and by age and birth rate that percent is decreasing every day.
Seeking purported ‘allies’ – whether they be Joe Q. Normal or Ho Lee Fuk – to win ‘natural rights’ for one’s own people is not my goal, nor the goal of the vast majority of the dissident right.
As usual. you make a great point. I was trying to be succinct, so I left out some things. Mainly, we are nowhere close to even 20% like in the Revolution. Maybe it’s more like 5%. So it’s just not enough.
I understand everyone’s frustration with normies et al. But I think pragmatism demands some process to get more people involved. If it’s this difficult to bridge the gap between Zman and Anton, it’s going to be a tough slog against a short timeline.
Karl getting up in my grill over nothing really proves my point. If the DR fights with adjacent groups like Libertarians fight with Minarchists, this project is going to stay really small and lack broader influence. Thanks for your comment! I always enjoy them.
‘Karl getting up in my grill’. One of the rare figurative and literal alignments. I don’t know if it was intentional, CW, but kudos either way. Good comment, btw
>It’s just a numbers game
Tbh, the far left might be closer to accepting a world order consisting of 10,000 bloodedness-based Lichensteins than would BigCon.
We would be better off appealing to the leftists than CivNats. Leftists already see racial differences, are starting to push apartheid type solutions and are viciously hostile to any ethnic who strays off the plantation. The left inverts the racial hierarchy for the purpose of virtue signaling but they see it. In fact they can’t stop talking about it.
It’s a lot shorter distance from their stance to ours than it is for CivNats whose entire identity is wrapped up in NOT seeing such differences.
I think it’s simply gotten to the point that no one in positions of power give any care whatsoever to what normal White people think about anything. If it’s blacks, gays, trannies, wamynz, etc., they sure as hell do – or at least offer seemingly sincere lip service. But as far as any of us are concerned, tough s***. It may not even be coercion anymore. They just do what the hell they want, our consent be damned. We’re just along for the ride on the DIEway to hell…
Great post today, btw.
“I think it’s simply gotten to the point that no one in positions of power give any care whatsoever to what normal White people think about anything.”
Perhaps because whites are the easiest to cajole and coerce and whose tacit (if sullen) acquiescence is the easiest to obtain. If whites acted the way the BLM/Antifa crowd did after the martyrdom of St. George of Floyd, it would be a different matter. In increasingly multi-racial USA, the whites are just one constituency and arguably the easiest to control. This particularly holds true for the Dems, whose constituency is stitched together from all these disparate groups — blacks, homos, etc.
Where would we be today if whites had rioted after Ruby Ridge and Waco the way blacks did after the deaths of St. George the Breathless and Trayvon? The squeaky wheel gets the grease. Whites have never squeaked.
It’s too late now. They’ve prepped the ground well enough that any such activity is considered domestic terrorism before it even begins, justifying the full weight of LE and even military response (with a clear conscience), so it is doomed before it starts. IOW, we have already lost, the GR is a fait accompli, and now, bereft of other meaningful steps to take, we’re waiting on them to hoist themselves by their own petards.
It’s kind of like the stock market. Nobody rings a bell at the top. We (most of us anyway) didn’t know it was time to act.
You would think all stick, no carrot is not a good political formula but the political formula is top + bottom vs middle. In the GAE that is: Uber rich who benefit from endless bailouts) + bottom (under-class of BIPOC+Z 1st class citizens aka protected classes) against the vast majority of middle class white tax cattle.
This political formula because it appeared before and perhaps there is something universal about it. In establishing absolute monarchy the King appealed to the people and promised to protect them against the minor nobles. Enlightened absolutism married with cameralism in Prussia resulted in perhaps the greatest governed societies in human history.
Check out The Cameralists by Albion Woodbury Small and “On Free Immigration and Forced Integration” by Hans-Hermann Hoppe
“The reason Michael Anton and his cohorts in the conservative ecosystem feel the need to address dissidents directly is they are losing control of the narrative. Every day more and more people wake up from the 20th century. Much of that awakening is driven by demographic and cultural reality, but another part is the realization that the causes of these problems are not political or economic. They are systemic. The system is failing because it rests on false assertions.”
This is the crux of it. I don’t think the argument is about “natural rights” at all.
The plane crashed. Those who dissented slightly from Con, Inc., orthodoxy are negotiating for better medical care at the expense of those who had enough sense not to board.
“Every day more and more people wake up from the 20th century.”
If there’s a single sentence that sums up the growth of the dissident right, it is this. It takes those of us who grew in the 20th century some time to understand that the rules we lived by (or at least, thought we lived by) in that century apply less and less to the 21st century. The facade of those rules remains, but make no mistake, it is just a facade. The real rules remain unspoken in polite company.
Those who continue to harbour the belief that said rules either still apply, or if they do not apply then they can at least be restored, populate the ordinary ranks of conservatism, continuing to fail to conserve anything at all.
They wanted Rosa Parks. They got Ashli Babbitt.
Jack: To quibble – while I understand your intent with that analogy, Rosa Parks herself was an official commie organizer(meaning officially associated with the party back in the ’50s), and a plant specifically chosen for her role of ‘civil disobedience.’
Yeah, I know, I was using her as their mythos. The same applies to King, who they also would put on Rushmore.
Jack: God, what a mental image. Their Rushmore would be Parks, King, St. Floyd, and now St. Tyre. Natural rights normiecons are fine with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Roosevelt. My Rushmore would not include a single US president, nor any ‘conservative’ icon – from Rush to Jared Taylor. Perhaps Joe Sobran, or Harold Covington.
@3g4me:
I can just imagine the left going ape with carving black people into mountainsides, leaving behind archaeological evidence for future generations that looks just as demented as the Moai.
3g, you know about Covington!
@3g:
I’ll go a step further and when you read it you immediately will realize it is true: there will be a holiday or national monument dedicated to sexual deviance in the next two years if AINO survives that long.
What are you talking about “in two years”??? We’ve already had a month dedicated to it for more than decades now.
@c matt:
Oops, yep. Strike the holiday part, and thinking about it they have a USS Harvey Milk now, so that’s a monument of sorts.
USS Harvey Milk, a fine ship fit for a Rear Admiral.
Avoid the poop deck though.
One of the DR-ish writers, Peterson or perhaps Taylor, has noted that effectively, our Federal holidays no longer commemorate White men (e.g. mostly slave-owning long-dead Presidents). Instead they were all lumped into “President’s Day.” In contrast, MLK has become such an icon that he is the only individual with a national holiday honoring his (alleged) accomplishments.
In short, the wages of civ-nattery are death… societal death followed by a vast number of individual deaths…The deadly “vaccine” is only the start.
I think that Anton failed to adequately capture what Strauss — whom is cribbing from — is saying in that paragraph. Here is Strauss:
“All political action is, then, guided by some thought of better or worse. But thought of better or worse implies thought of the good. The awareness of the good which guides all our actions, has the character of opinion: it is no longer questioned but, on reflection, it proves to be questionable.”
It remains true that throughout all of this, very little reference has been made to the political good (or bad) that is motivating any of the participants in this. Yet it’s the very foundation of the entire debate. What is the “good” that we are seeking to obtain through political action? Can anyone answer this? What makes it “good, or “better,” than the alternatives?
That is a fair point at the end. My answer is so simple that I forget that it needs to be said. The answer is this, given the demographic and culture reality in North America, what sort of civil society is possible? Can there be an all encompassing civil society at all? Until we are honest about those two questions, things will continue to decline until the answers are provided by forces we would prefer to avoid.
The answer to your last question is an obvious “no,” and accounts for much of the hysteria today. The experiment failed. The plane crashed.
The proper question is what do we do now?
The part that bothers me about Anton and others about Strauss — and I am a paleocon who worked for Pat Buchanan and have also been reading Strauss for 30 years — is that they do not follow his questions to their conclusion. They remain zetetic until the end.
But I believe that Strauss understood there was a political good, and it is in The Republic, and that is: “Doing one’s business well.” What is man’s proper business in the polis? He didn’t feel the need to spell that out for his listeners; if he had, it would’ve meant he’d wasted his time with all of them. (Perhaps he did.)
Straussians read “On Tyranny” and snicker at Strauss’s putdown of Heidegger (“all he did was speak of Being”) while never understanding that Strauss is also speaking of them.
One of the many things I find intolerable about Straussians is they will make their argument and when challenged they will demand that you read Strauss. When you read Strauss and point out the obvious problems, they either accuse you of never having read Strauss or of not understanding Strauss. It is the cult of the true Scotsman.
“they do not follow his questions to their conclusion”
It is willful, obviously. It reminds me of the clowns at Tea Party rallies dressed in colonial garb who omit the part about merciless savages.
Reading Strauss is like reading Ayn Rand (admittedly without the histrionics or drama). First, you think it’s profound. Then, you think it’s obvious. Finally, you realize it’s obtuse.
My belief is that Anton knows all this. As Z points out, his anonymous writings give the game away. As a good Machiavellian though, He deploys Strauss and Jaffa like the Cross and garlic to keep vampires like Kristol and Podhoretz (the lessers) at bay. Ultimately, it won’t work, but he thinks we will be in the camps before he is.
Jack Dobson,
Oh, nice observation. Yes, our Leaders have been deploying the Merciless Savages against us for decades; actually, since the conclusion of the War of Northern Aggression, the seceding states were forced to remain, but similarly forced to accept galling Amendments in order to resume some semblance of agency, so the former Confederate states had to comply, and “consent” to all that to which they would not accede.
And just as that of which Jefferson complained, our rulers today still reserve the deployment of Merciless Savages against us as a matter of state policy, protecting the Savages from consequences (blacks, obviously, but nowadays, white antifa, and other “minorities”). Physical violence is only one element of this deployment, cultural vandalism and terrorism through statutes are arguably their major weapons.
@tarl:
Spot on. It is both disappointing and predictable. It might as well be read from a hostage script.
Tarl, exellent post, you’ve read Rand I see.
@JJ:
It is worse. Our rulers have outlawed noticing they deploy merciless savages against us.
I offer a good fictional cinematic answer to your metaphor: the 2011 Liam Neeson adventure film “The Grey.” Google and read at your leisure. Or perhaps 1993’s “Alive,” based upon (alas) real-life disaster in the 1970s.
Neeson’s character says “Once more into the fray, to live again, or die this day.”
Isn’t this obvious? We seek the flourishing of our people, spiritually, materially, artistically. What else is there?
Rulers do not draw their legitimacy from the consent of the ruled, whatever that means. They derive legitimacy by the effectiveness of their rule in achieving those goals.
I offer Carl Schmitt’s “friend/enemy” distinction. The “good” stuff comes after that.
Precisely…It used to be true, most of the time, that politics aimed at helping, or at least not harming, American families..That changed under Woodrow Wilson and the “missionary” generation, and has not been a goal of DC politicians since then…
It started before then. Just ask the former states of the Confederacy what it felt like to be the object of the “Reconstruction”, a/k/a the Illinois Ape’s “Second Founding”.
Civilization is the only morality. Source: Evolutionary group selection, Charles Darwin.
Modes of behavior and cultural patterns which make your political entity stronger in absolute terms and against external groups, allowing you to continue occupying your limited portion of earth are “right wing” and the only legitimate definition of “the good” from a bioevolutionary perspective. Are markets good? Sure to some extent – but not people selling puberty blockers and water bottles with xenoestrogens. Those make your society weaker.
Stay tuned for my book 😛
The reality of the battleground around biology and race is now a daily event.
The mayor of New York City announces CRT training is mandatory for all employees.
Van Jones announces the death of the black in Memphis was actually caused by White supremacy.
Reparations are being proposed in the state of California.
The coercion is coming at us daily now.
And much of the coercion is based on a false view of biology that race is just a construct.
The dissident right has the truth behind us in this battle.
In an unintentional sense, Van Jones is correct. Rule of law is mostly a White, largely Anglo-Saxon construct. The problem is thinking those outside that ethnos can live let alone thrive in such a system, so Van Jones responds with derision at the suggestion. Merrick Garland is acting in accordance with his racial predisposition. So was Michael Brown. They are the same sides of the same coin.
I don’t know – judging by the numbers and results, the tiny hats have done extremely well in the “Rule of Law” system.
That is down to the little hats, with their hair-splitting/logic-chopping skills refined by centuries of Talmudic argumentations, when upon assuming a major role in the legal/jurisprudential system, they have changed the “Rules” of Law categorically.
There is a sequence: reengineer the Moral Sensibilities of the society; then, through that breach, attain dominance of the legal/jurisprudential realm; ultimately arrive at control of the legislative process through infiltrating their own and wielding the power of money and media to assure compliance from the potentially recalcitrant goyim. Alongside of this, the Gramscian March Through the Institutions proceeds apace, with entry into the “Elite” eing dependent upon acceptance – indeed, the avid embrace – of the spiritual and intellectual coup.
What is “evolutionary biology” but the melding over time of people with various origins who, via their migrations, inhabit the same land and breed. The “white” race is a relatively new invention. Read what Darwin said about the Irish or Der Fuehrer about the Poles.
As for clans and kinship, consider Scottish history before incorporation into the U.K. Talk about spilling the blood of your kin. If those related “by blood” form the dominant group, others, if not excluded, are assimilated and the genotype begins to change. Some of the best Anglos today may be Mediterranean or Jewish while any number of dumpster divers may trace their lineage all the way back to the Norman conquest.
I think your difference with Anton comes down to your preference to live among whomever you define as “your own kind.” Nothing wrong with that. Jared Taylor, who seems to be a very fine and tolerant man, who lived for years among the Japanese, makes that point explicitly. The fear of such things may reflect the fear that the dominant group will violently oppress or exterminate the minority. You’d have to ask Anton if that’s the source of his fear. Why not if two of you are on friendly terms in spite of any intellectual or philosophical fatwas.
No, my main beef with Anton is he asserts things that are empirically false. He is free to believe what he likes, but when he says those beliefs are immutable rules of the universe, then I am free to point out that he is full of nonsense.
imbroglio: You (or your twin) seem to be posting the same psychobabble at Sailer. The whole “What is White?” pseudo question. Aside from the historical fiction that the Irish or Italians weren’t regarded as ‘White,’ you are deliberately substituting class and culture for race. No one here is asserting that there are no differences between the historic English people and the historic Italians, or Poles. What we are asserting is that these people are all Caucasians of European origin, who generally followed various flavors of Christianity, and generally – over time – stopped marrying their first cousins and broadened the definition of kin group.
The strawman of Scottish clan battles has already been dealt with exhaustively – again, no one here has ever claimed Europeans never quarreled with or warred against other Europeans. By trying to claim that this unquestionably reveals that biological ties are nonexistent, you are instead revealing the paucity of your logic. Plenty of people with very close blood ties – nuclear family level ties – have quarreled throughout history. Biological closeness does not automatically confer peace and lack of coercion – but of course, no one here (other than you in your irrational argument) claimed this.
However, the opposite is definitively true: The lack of biological closeness – more specifically, the greater the biological distance – the less likely there is to be inherent agreement or cooperation. Disparate peoples are . . . disparate. Forced to share a polity results in massively increased coercion.
Peddle your twaddle elsewhere.
how the hell can someone not of anglo ancestry, be anglo? that is pure nonsense.
They identify as Anglo. Ask a tranny how this works.
Side note: The reason I don’t describe Our Insect Overlords as an “aristocracy,” even though they clearly are, is because you just can’t get around the images of knights in shining armor in lots of people’s minds. Even when we’re ruled by Chelsea Clinton and Malia Obama and Jenna Bush, Anton types will still be pretending that gosh, it somehow just worked out that way. They didn’t actually do liege homage to Joe Biden — he didn’t clasp their hands between his, and he didn’t knock them on each shoulder with the flat of his sword — and therefore they’re not aristocrats, even though we’re up to, what, the fifth generation of Bushes in politics?
Main note: Screw “consent.” No, really — Anton clearly doesn’t believe in it either. If you’ve been at all fair in your presentation of his arguments, then he uses “natural rights” in the exact same way Robespierre et al used “the General Will,” which is the exact same way Lenin et al used “dialectical materialism” and “the right side of history.” You can’t be coerced into the inevitable, comrade. Nobody forced you to fall when you tripped over that rock, because Gravity is a force of nature. It’s quite simple, Comrade — the General Will / the social contract / natural rights / the right side of history / the world-spirit / dialectical materialism requires that you die now. Zelensky says thanks, of course, and so do the Board of Directors at General Dynamics and Raytheon, but it was a natural process that did it, same as it ever was.
This is a great post. But you did leave out “the Divine Right of Kings” haha.
True, because it’s the same thing. It’s ALL the same thing. The Soviet dissident and mathematician Igor Shafarevich wrote a great (but very weird) little book called The Socialist Phenomenon, in which he quoted many of Lenin’s Russian critics; it’s the only place you can find them in English. One of them gave the best refutation of all this stuff I’ve ever seen, because it’s the shortest. From memory (but pretty close):
“Mr. Lenin claims that his political program is an historical inevitability. Thus Marxist parties in Russia are like parties of astronomers, who know with mathematical certainty when an eclipse will come… but immediately set about murdering people, to make sure it does.”
Yes interesting – Camus makes the same criticism in “The Rebel” about Communism.
I am reading “The Socialist Phenomenon” right now. It has blown my mind. I thought Socialism was a byproduct of the Enlightenment, which was a byproduct of Christianity (I am a Christian). Then the book finds Socialist ideology in ancient Greece and Socialist societies in Sumer, the Inca Empire and the Jesuit missions in the Paraguay. This has destroyed my view of Socialism and I am still trying to build a new understanding
To erase this image in the mind of the populace, show them pictures of the end of Spanish Hapsburg line. That should fix the idealization of the aristocracy.
One thing about the right to self determination, is where does it stop at?
Part of an empire has the right, then a separate ethnic group has the right, then more and more divisions down to the individual.
Great question, which I will rephrase as, “If ethnic groups want to separate from the rest of humanity, then why can’t neighborhoods or book clubs or individuals do the same?” In theory, there is no reason to end the subdividing.
In practice, the subdividing stops because many countries/nations/people in the world are acquisitive, and therefore you must be able to defend yourself. The largest coherent unit of survival is the extended ethnic family of a nation. If you try to assemble a coalition bigger than this, then smaller groups within the coalition will betray each other for advantage because they don’t feel a familial connection.
We may eventually be able to define a genetic difference between two individuals’ DNA and predict their ability to cooperate in mutual defense (given that they already share a language and culture/religion). If we ever are able to do this, it will probably just confirm what we already know from history and observation.
You are at least partially right. I’ve seen the same claim in some libertarian writings such as Browne, e.g. those philosophies that would maximize individual sovereignty. At least to the early me, this was a Good Thing about big-L Libertarianism: the ideal that I should be allowed to do as I wished, with the proviso that my behavior did not affect the freedom of my neighbor to do the same. As I’ve matured (somewhat) I now see that like many ideals, such does not always work so well in the real world.
Heinlein in some of his SF offers libertarian ideals, or perhaps they are caricatures. For example, in Starship Troopers he posits a military that is amazingly flexible and accommodating the moral beliefs of its soldiers or draftees. But in return, there is draconian punishment if one does not abide by the custom contract he negotiated.
Anton’s main point seems to be that if someone is inoculated to the culture to the point where it becomes the air they breathe, genetic differences will not bear a huge amount of difference in how people function. Also, the aristocracy of a healthy culture will naturally follow the will of the people, since they both flow from the same culture. The idea of a fake aristocracy seems to be dull witted people of a foreign culture enforcing their edicts.
He is right in a way, that a unified culture is necessary for peace, regardless of genetics. The problem of people with different genetic makeups preferring different cultures, and having different cultural limits, is why they are forcing a culture of the most deranged things imaginable and daring dissent. The only way to get all the different races under the same cultural umbrella is to make the culture as simple and bottom of the barrel as possible, something all races can achieve.
Forced school integration was an attempt at cultural cohesion, with expected results. A very cohesive culture can keep a small percentage of genetic outsiders in line, but quickly breaks apart when a critical mass is reached and everything breaks apart. One only needs to see the destruction of cities in the 1960’s to see this.
One of the great sociological experiments of our time is going to be when North and South Korea unite again. It’s at that point we’re going to see whether genetically homogenous people brought up in different cultures will be able to get along. Unfortunately for Anton, I would bet on he North Koreans enforcing a more authoritarian and traditional culture, wiping out American influence and ideas of natural rights. Western liberalism simply does not have the antibodies to resist an aggressive outside culture.
it is certainly true that genetically close people can have incompatible cultures. The British isles are a good example. That is never an issue in dispute. The issues is can genetically distant people share a common culture. All the evidence from history says no and what we know of the human sciences says no.
The immigration experiment in America is as much proof as we need. The northern Euros who came over in the late 19th and early 20th blended in quickly. The southern Euros needed much longer. In fact, immigration was halted due to the problems of trying to assimilate people from outside of northern Europe. Of course, we have just about bankrupted ourselves trying to assimilate Africans with nothing positive to show for it.
In short, if you hope to get the culture right, you better get the biology right.
genomic homogeneity is a necessary but not sufficient condition for cultural homogeneity, which is itself a necessary but not sufficient condition for civilizational stability
I don’t think you mean it will be a bad thing if the North Koreans try to enforce a more traditional Korean identity. At least I wouldn’t think it would be terrible if it did. Hopefully the South would continue to be prosperous and drag the north along with it in a more traditional society and maybe get population replacement rate up.
“It is not that he disagrees with the point I made at the start of this exchange. It is that he thinks it should not be said.”
Anton is just afraid of coming to terms with race and intelligence. About the real diversity of Man. About the blank slate fallacy.
He’s like a kid who grew up in religious family and plays football. One day he’s in the locker room and has a gay thought. NO ABSOLUTELY NOT! and recoils in panic, and for the rest of his days he is a raving homophobe.
I don’t mean to compare dissident theories to homosexuality, but nowadays people are scared of being “racist” as people in 1980 were scared of being gay.
Consider if Mitt Romney, or Ted Cruz, or even Lindsey Graham would tolerate rumors about themselves being gay, or themselves being closet nationalists. What would make them run to the microphones quicker? The days of Larry Craig are well over.
I know I’m way out in left field here, but this is an apt comparison. The closeted folks are nationalists. And Anton is very closeted, and denying his nationalist urges to anyone he can.
Actually I think that pedophilia is less toxic in the political-media world than nationalism. We can delve deep into Anton’s psyche here, or we can simply assume that he’s frantically avoiding and intellectualizing what he knows to be true.
No doubt the propaganda organs despise Nationalist Attracted Persons more than pedos. I think you may be right about the closeted nationalist thing, which makes Anton utterly contemptible if true about him (I don’t know for certain). I’m certain it is true about others without naming names.
The experiment failed. It failed when Lincoln waged war against a consensual, voluntary union of states. It failed when he and later scholars dressed it up as a war for freedom even while it was out in the open that he and the abolitionists knew that incompatible peoples could not share the same land. It failed when the Bull Moose, Progressive, Democrat and Republican parties killed off Marcus Hanna and the last republicans and Woodrow Wilson formalized the Administrative State. It was killed with the Hart Cellar Act, the Civil Rights and Great Society legal and economic regime. Its funeral party was held in 2020.
I would like to see Anton close ranks and argue against the Biden/Mayorkas, or is it Mayorkas/??? unrelenting, unending stream of immigration. The Lieutenants who man a remote and crumbling fort are in their office arguing over who will stand on the ramparts while the hallway outside their office burns – at the orders of those who rule the capital.
Though I’m no longer a doctrinaire libertarian, more of a populist these days, I have to point out that there’s nothing inherently un-libertarian about ethnocentrism and group identity. It’s just that the farce that calls itself the Libertarian Party is too cowardly to go against woke egalitarian ideology. Even Rand Paul ended up backpedaling after he bravely condemned the Civil Rights Act.
Great post, Z.
The comment section of a Breitbart post covering the black police officers in Memphis is littered with the usual “Democrat mayor!…” and “Democrats are the party of the KKK!…” No one appears to realize that Vermont and Maine are also run by democrats.
The Afghans who have been dumped into the resettlement cities no one voted for speak entirely different languages. Farsi and Pashto are so distinct from one another, a farsi speaker cannot even say hello to a Pashto speaker.
Western balkanization is the only way forward. Those of us who understand that nature and race are real and that biology and sex are real live in a different world from those who still don’t or won’t comprehend or accept reality. We may as well speak different languages and live on different planets.
The USA just may need to become the Separate, Divided Regions of what once was America.
We may very well become divided regions but I want to whole country, except Hawaii. They aren’t us and we stole their country anyway. We fought for, settled and made the used-to-be United States with very little help from other peoples and we should try to keep it even if we have to fight for it.
I find that quote from Anton to be quite revealing and you apparently missed why it is.
That is a classical marker of the Scotts-Irish culture that the settlers of Appalachia brought with them, that was adopted by new immigrants into the areas they dominated.
It is a “leveler” culture. The “fake aristocracy” reference is that in that culture no aristocracy is legitimate. The “consent of the governed” is a further reference to that culture. It was embraced by them as an inherent aspect of the quasii- anarchy that existed on the frontier that they settled and pushed ever outward. It wasn’t an anarchy in the libertarian or mad max sense – but was resistant to resentful of outside impositions.
My take on this whole kerfuffle is that the things that Anton calls natural rights are more accurately called cultural norms. The organically developed way that cultures define the proper relationship between individuals, the community and outsiders. It’s a weird tic of American cultures to desire the universality of their own cultural norms.
All of which puts me in agreement with Z on this issue.
But imo Anton’s pov is driven by his cultural groundings, not some insidious ideology. And I’d love to get the country back to the place where those cultural norms were predominant again, to the point that they were just accepted as the way things were by an overwhelming majority of people. Which was the case up to a few generations ago.
You could be right, but given that Anton makes a big deal over the fact that he is not an Anglo and therefore could be excluded from Anglo-American tradition, I do not think he would deliberately mean what you think he means. You could be right and this just further proof that he does not understand the arguments he is making. There are many hints to that effect. The long windedness is always a clue that the writer is unsure of his arguments.
As to your final point, I think most everyone would agree on that, but current demographics makes that close to impossible, if we are being overly generous. What would be required to get back to those cultural norms, however, is ruled out by the universalism baked into the civic nationalist claims we see with Anton. It boils down to “We would like to return to those cultural norms, but we think it is immoral to do what it would take to make it happen.”
That last sentence distills all the bloviation down to the essence quite nicely!
What our detractors call “white supremacy” or “systemic racism” or even “capitalism” is really just Anglo-Saxon culture. Maybe you can throw a little Dutch in there as well. If the USA were founded by the Portuguese or the Greeks we wouldn’t be having this cordial exchange between Anton and Z-Man.
It’s not even Anglo-Saxon.
It is a mix of three distinct sub-cultures that existed in the 18th century on the North Sea littoral (3 out of many more at the time). That then evolved in North America in unique ways. Such that the dominant strains in NA had ceased to exist in the North Sea area before they were reintroduced by American following the World War.
It is Anglo-Saxon and it was not a sub-culture.
This is the equivalent of black people claiming they invented European culture.
Also,Scots Irish is a misnomer: they were southern Scots and northern English.
This is a ridiculous argument that there was no English common culture at the time and England was just a random collection of culturally disassociated peoples who began to develop a unified culture when they moved to north America.
It’s a cope by American Exceptionalists who are trying to break the ethnic link between the early US and England. “They weren’t really English”.
Gipped and edgy civnat.
Two of the cultural groups that settled America, the Puritans and Quakers were weirdo outsiders in 17th century England – which is why they emigrated en masse to America. Their cultures had died out in England by the early 19th century. The thrid major cultural group were scotts-irish settlers that were always marginalized outsider in northern England and Southern Scotland. Which is why they emigrated to Americans or to Ireland then America. That last group was also much more Celtic than Anglo-Saxon.
There were also other cultural groups within England, Wales and Scotland at the time that did not emigrate en masse. So no, there was no unified Angol-Saxon culture on the British Isles in the 17th century.
Claremont Conservativism:
Ethos: “To argue within the prevailing moral orthodoxy”
Action: “We would like to return to those cultural norms, but we think it is immoral to do what it would take to make it happen.”
Resolution: We must be united in the Conservative ethos!
I’m unclear on exactly what you mean by “what it would take”.
Thinking of population transfer or Singapore style execution of drug dealers and whippings for committing violent crimes?
It would be cool to try the latter before totally dissolving the American experiment but of course there is no hope under the current managerial progressivism regime.
I agree that there is probably no going back home again.
That is certainly one of the lessons that I take from history.
However, it is worth mourning what has been lost occasionally, without dwelling on it over longly.
As far as Anton goes, he may not genetically be Anglo-Celtic – but he’s pretty obviously been culturally assimilated. “Natural Rights” is an Anglo-Celtic cultural artifact that does not exist in Italian culture or history, or really any where else.
One weird feature of culture that I’ve notices is that people almost never realize that their own preferences and behaviors exist in a specific cultural frame and instead just assume that everyone share them and that they are the naturally correct way of doing things.
“Natural Rights” is an Anglo-Celtic cultural artifact that does not exist in Italian culture or history, or really any where else.
Odd thing to say. Natural rights is simply the extension/application of natural law, which was written on extensively by Greeks and Italians for millennia.
It really does noy matter as natural law is no more real than elves or leprechauns.
it would be impossible to impose old cultural norms on the entire continent, but very doable in the emergent angl regions. what is going on in aino, now, reminds me of when a cell splits in two, and then forms two cells.
“non-European people were unfit for a society based in European values and traditions.”
Ironic, in that those who would disagree with the above would agree just as vigorously with “European people were unfit for a society based in non-European values and traditions.” The proof is the overwhelming lack of migration of European people to non-European societies. Especially progressives – their bugout plan is always Canada, not El Salvador.
I think part of the misapplication of natural rights being universal is the observation of overwhelming migration from societies that don’t apply them to ones that do. But that is economic migration, not “values” migration. Pablo, Abdul or Mbukambe doesn’t wake up one day and decide “I really want me some of those natural rights”. They wake up and want a job, food, security, etc. and see where those can be best obtained.
“The proof is the overwhelming lack of migration of European people to non-European societies.” let me introduce you to south america. i know what you are saying though, and it is a valid point (just not quite as absolute as you present it).
The British Colonial administrators living in the Kenyan highlands seemed to live pretty well. Of course the law was set by the British and actually enforced but the weather was great.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giraffe_Manor
Leaving aside this magnificent response by ZMan for a moment, this comment is thought provoking. Not that it is what Anton really meant, no idea about that…
I grew up in southern KY and the “leveler” culture is ingrained in my initial emotional responses to almost everything, not always to the good. I call it the frontier mentality of old or a more modern, slightly lesser take as the “a man’s home is his castle” attitude.
I suppose this cultural artifact has been weeded out and intellectualized away within the grillers. I wonder if it can be appealed to or reawakened within in order to carve out something new. It can’t be the basis for that something new, though. “I just want to be left alone” won’t work by itself, anymore.
The grillers are the cultural heirs of the quakers, who always just wanted to get along with everyone to the point that they couldn’t defend themselves.
Speaking of purse fights……………..
oh no you didn’t! 😛