Since the late Middle Ages, political thought in the West has started with the assertion that the point of social organization was to reduce coercion. The ideal society is one in which everyone naturally played their role without being forced into it. The assumption is that forcing people into roles for which they are not suited, or they do not wish to perform is both unjust and dangerous. It is also more costly to compel people to obey the law than if they voluntarily abide by the law.
If the goal of your political model is to reduce coercion to the absolute minimum, then you ideally want a society that agrees on everything. After all, if everyone agrees that society must have gong farmers and some people are better suited for the task than others, then everyone is going to agree on having gong farmers. Even the guy chosen for the task will agree if it is explained to him. He may not like the task, but he will understand he is playing a vital role in his society.
Straight away you can see the problem for individualism and the natural rights crowd when it comes to organizing society. If we start from the assumption that we are all unique individuals in control of our own destiny, then we are free to not go along with being the town’s gong farmer. Even if all the facts point to that role being best for the person and his community, he is free to reject it because he is an autonomous person free to live his life as he sees fit.
If we assume we have magical rights bestowed upon us by the gods, then it is fundamentally immoral for society to coerce us into anything, much less a profession we do not like. Since coercion is not limited to physical force, the gong farmer who sees himself as a sovereign man with natural rights is going to look at the social arrangements that result in him being the gong farmer as coercion. In other words, he has a right to not be the gong farmer.
You can see the obvious problem with trying to organize a society composed of individuals who think they have God-given rights. Your proposed social order must first convince all of them to accept the results of the system, even if the results favor some members over others. That is a tall order, given that everyone believes that they have the same rights as everyone else. After all, if God gave them the same rights, why would he then not give them the same talents?
Since it is not possible to get even a small community to agree on everything about the particulars of organizing the community, especially when everyone believes they are God’s special little snowflake, you are going to need something that leads these individual snowflakes to voluntarily submit to the social order. They will have to believe that their individual rights rest on their sacrifice of those rights in order to maintain the society which makes their rights possible.
That last bit is what has vexed the natural right crowd for generations. They desperately want to believe that natural rights exist independent of society and the men who create and maintain it, but logically this is not true. The concept of rights, natural, individual, human or any other version, is an invention of man. Rights are a claim on society, a demand that the rest of society protect certain entitlements bestowed upon members in exchange for their membership in the society.
We see this at work all over today. The man who subdued the subway lunatic operated on the assumption that he had a duty to defend the rights of his fellow subway riders from that crazed lunatic. The people who will put him in jail operate under the assumption that they have duty to defend their race against any and all actions by people of the white race. Since the latter group has control of society, the former’s individual rights will mean little in the courtroom.
Putting the particulars of that aside, we see a problem of trying to organize a society based on individualism and natural rights. The first thing that must happen is that such a society exclude anyone who does not accept these principles. Even a small number of people who reject these concepts will create two problems for your society organized around individualism and natural rights. One is they will violate the rights of others and second, they will force society to violate their rights.
Now, science tells us that the closer humans are genetically, the more likely they are to agree on the basics of human behavior. Put a group of random Finns together and they will quickly display the group characteristics of Finns. Put a group of Bantus together in the exact same circumstances and they will quickly display the group characteristics that we associate with Bantus. If you want a society with the least amount of coercion, then you want the least amount of biodiversity.
What follows for the individualism and natural rights people is they must insist on a society composed of people who naturally cherish individualism and natural rights if they have any hope of maintaining these things. Further, they must also conjure an exception to their moral code that allows them to act collectively in order to repel attempts to undermine their individualism and natural rights regime. They end up in the same dilemma as the libertarians.
Hans Hermann-Hoppe observed that within libertarian ideology there is no way to maintain a libertarian society. After all, if John Galt suddenly decides to be a Marxist, what business is it of his neighbors? If others join Galt in his new civic religion, what can the libertarians do about it? The non-aggression principle forbids them from compelling Galt and his followers to remain libertarians. The individualism and natural rights crowd run into the same problem with the defenders of the subway lunatic.
The solution for the individualism and natural rights people is a moral code that transcends individual rights, but also supports individual rights. If you believe that your people have been given rights by your God and those rights are what distinguish you from other human groups, then collectively defending those rights is not only permitted, but also necessary. You have a God-given duty to defend your society which is organized around individualism and natural rights.
What you need to maintain a society based on individualism and natural rights is a folk religion that sacralizes those rights and the people who possess them. The same God that grants your people natural rights commands you to defend the people granted those rights, as well as their society that maintains those rights. Under such a condition, the individualism and natural rights people would be justified in rioting in New York and chasing off the prosecutors in defense of their God and his people.
The missing component for the individualism and natural rights crowd is a moral component that compels the believer to defend these principles. Nature cannot be the moral authority for anything, as natural operates outside the domain of the prescriptive, but God or gods can certainly be that moral authority. God tells us what we ought to do, so if our God tells us we ought to respect individualism and natural rights, then we have a duty to do so by any means necessary.
What all this means is that if you want to live in a society in which individualism and natural rights are respected by everyone, then you need to come up with a folk religion that sacralizes those things. What you want is to live in a liberal theocracy in which dissent from individualism and natural rights is not tolerated. What liberalism needs is not a Karl Marx, but a Moses, someone who lead his people to their promised land where they can create their liberal theocracy as God intended.
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I’ll freely admit that the “rights” and “natural law” jargon are built on pretty shaky foundations that don’t reflect the human condition well especially when you try to rope in every oddball primitive tribe. It’s just that I don’t see any other way of framing one’s opposition to further abuses of power in the current mass society. In some ways I think “rights” are a lot like any other abstraction that we use that doesn’t quite fit reality. We talk about “centrifugal force” in physics too but technically there’s no such force. A lot of quality of life issues are… Read more »
Oregon’s libertine social policies could function when the state was all white and the druggies were just potheads. The porch monkeys and heroin/fentanyl addicts are the ones who decided to destroy Portland and the pussy government wasn’t capable of dealing with it.
They’re pretty much recruiting hard core degenerates into the state with all the “resources” they make available. My wife met some hobos from Florida as it turns out and they were saying the place is nationally famous as some kind of hobo Eldorado. Maybe the bitches who run the local government think that somehow once hobos and addicts get above a certain percentage of the population they magically turn into taxpayers. Maybe they think Brandon will bail the place out and they won’t even *need* local taxpayers. As far as I know that strategy only works for DC and maybe… Read more »
As an emigrant from Oregon, let me suggest North Idaho to you. Why isn’t it on your list? Same great geography of the NW but chock full of guns, Trumptards, Christian Nationalists and a Republican party that is actually, conservative. The RINO Governor sucks but we’re working on that…
My problem with a theocracy is that I consider the existence of spiritual super-beings implausible. I would prefer a system based on what is real rather than what is imaginary. I think it would be much better if people understood that morality is an expression of behavioral traits that exist by virtue of natural selection, and that we must have a moral code because we are not intelligent enough to regulate our day-to-day relations with each other based on pure reason. It would, of course, be best if that moral code were as much in harmony with our natural moral… Read more »
We have christian theocracies to thank for anything still standing in europe, and all the greatest inventors and artists in history. Compare middle age europe to native american, sub saharan african, mongolian, hun, even arabian, ottoman, or chinese societies at the same time. Brutal, ruthless barbarians, the lot of them with no beauty save for maybe some chinese fireworks and stick figure drawings.
“My problem with a theocracy is that I consider the existence of spiritual super-beings implausible.” Because you are an atheistic midwit. And contrary to what your midwit level IQ is telling you, you are not terribly bright either. You have “religion” my friend, as most atheists do though they will be the last ones to admit it. Your absolute certainty about the lack of existence of ‘super-beings’ speaks volumes about your own theocratic leanings, absolutism, and fanaticism. To my ear, you sound no different than a Pentecostal speaking in tongues or a Southern Baptist preacher spitting about fire and brimstone.… Read more »
It’s unfortunate that I’m not a genius like you.
I’ve asked multiple questions below, and received utterly non-satisfactory answers to all of them, for a reason that dawned upon this afternoon — not one of you, and not Z Man, has actually *read* Strauss’ Natural Right and History. If you had, you would be embarrassed to find yourself offering arguments that Strauss dispatched within the first few pages of NRH, and which prove that conventionalism and nihilism exist on the Right just as much as on the Left. Numerous comments attempted to convince me that there because there is no universal agreement as to what is natural right, and… Read more »
Maybe you picked the wrong website? No hard feelings.
I’ve been on this — and In This Thing — far longer than you have. While Z Man was building his career in Lagos, making money, I was working for Pat Buchanan in New Hampshire, taking lumps and personal professional hits that few of you will ever know.
Been in this Thing longer than you’ve been alive, almost certainly.
For all of Z Man’s refusal To Name The ***, we all know the real target of these random, spasmodic shots at Anton and natural right.
Who let in the lolbertardian through the back door?
NB: Ayn Rand’s real name is Alisa “EARLY LIFE” Rosenbaum.
She was a radical supporter of her own right to murder any possible child in her womb.
https://tinyurl.com/mryuaw8y
Fancy that.
Somebody needs to break out the ammonia and cleanse this place of the stench of lolbertardianism.
You have no idea what you’re talking about. You think that a discussion of Leo Strauss is a discussion of libertarianism?
No, I think a discussion of Leo “EARLY LIFE” Strauss is a discussion about Bronze Age Death Cult psychological warfare campaigns designed to enslave, parasitize and destroy the entirety of the host nation’s culture & religion & bloodlines.
Good post, Bill. “Numerous comments attempted to convince me that there because there is no universal agreement as to what is natural right” Hobbes tried to square this circle by arguing that the only natural right was the right of Man to choose to enter the Social Contract. But once he did, he agreed to give the sovereign ALL authority and ALL necessary power to resolve disputes of any kind. By contrast, the Founders were Lockean social contract theorists, and Locke tried to restrict what authority the sovereign did or did not have. Of course, culture filled in the gaps… Read more »
For Hobbes, the natural condition of mankind was a war of all against all for wealth, security, and honor. In the state of nature, we have the natural right to preserve those goods however we can. The most effective path to a “long, commodious life” (as Hobbes calls it), however is to enter into a contract to ensure maximal access to those goods. That is because the odds of a long happy life in the state of nature are quite poor. The rational thing, then, is not to sacrifice the very thing that permits one to enjoy the fruits of… Read more »
Thank you, William. This comment says it all. The Dissident Right (or the Dilettante Right, as I now call them, and which I think you would agree is appropriate) have cast away all basis for saying anything and have seem to have accepted every one of the premises that made the modern Left: atheism, Darwinism, utilitarian ethics, materialism, crude appeals to misunderstood biology and history, and philosophical naivete. There is no explanation for this other than the recognition that the DR does not represent any sort of break with the dominant modernist culture. It is simply a disaffected branch of… Read more »
Quite correct. The great contribution of Strauss’s work was to encourage us to re-consider the ancient philosophers. Strauss understood that modernity was fundamentally flawed.
Today’s is why I say we must break the most terrible deception: That God is the same as the Creator. No. No. That is a moral claim of ultimate authority, that one people’s god is the highest, therefore ALL must kneel to that one people. I’ve got my gods, you have yours- now we can understand and respect the ground rules of each other, and go from there. How? By white man science. By understanding what we’re looking at , how it works, and why…what is the function? As in, not “if” there’s a Heaven (or Hell), but why? What… Read more »
Simply put, the forces of Creation are above God.
Tying the two together forces contradictions that confuse and blind us as to what we’re dealing with; we have a false starting point, and run in circles.
Believers and secular, we must learn to translate between each other–we need each other’s strengths to survive what is rising, lest Heaven itself be lost.
The gate is being closed.
I’m so confused. Everything I believe is obviously false and when I die, I won’t be aware of anything that I believed when alive so something, something. something. Got to stop posting after two double vodkas.
Don’t beat yourself up too much. I quit the stuff nearly twenty years ago and still often type things I regret. 🙂
All I know is I’m glad to not be an egg head.
[…] ZMan peers behind the curtain. […]
No. Liberalism and individualism are self-contradictory and self-refuting like the modern concept of rights. These were only propaganda slogans of the bourgeois revolutions and there were never meant to be taken seriously. The fact that the revolutions won and enshrined them as dogmas of faith is the cause of all our problems. When you build a society over an absurd, all things go to hell. There is no right without duty. The right not to be harassed in the subway is the duty of people not to harass other people in the subway (and the other way around) .The right… Read more »
Yes. Mao at least had the power thing correct, and rights require power to exercise.
Nobody is born alone.
Jack Dodson: “Mao at least had the power thing correct”
Alzaebo: “Nobody is born alone.”
==========
It takes a village to castrate a boy and invert his penis and to inflict radical mastectomies and hysterectomies upon his sisters.
Well said. In a similar vein Nietzsche took the Stoics to the woodshed. For those interested, click on the link and search for “Stoic”. It’s only one paragraph. Substitute any other philosophy you like for “Stoic” here and it will probably remain just as relevant. I suspect that trying to impose one’s will on other human beings will only be slightly less successful than attempting to fit Nature with bit, bridle and the saddle of your choosing 😀
https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/4363/pg4363-images.html
imnobody00: “Liberalism and individualism were… only propaganda slogans of the bourgeois revolutions and there were never meant to be taken seriously.” They were meant to be taken seriously by the NPC goyim at precisely the times & places & historical epochs when it was necessary for the NPC goyim to take them seriously. When it was time for the Bourbons to go down, the NPC goyim were proselytized in Jacobinism. When it was time for the diamonds to be seized in South Africa, the NPC goyim were proselytized in Ricardianism. When it was time to destroy Henry Ford, the NPC… Read more »
I think that “natural rights” was invented by the rising middle and educated class. Because that’s how they want to interact with society, as responsible individuals.
But lower-class ethnic groups have a different notion of rights, which issue from ethnic solidarity.
Thus Daniel Penny thinks like a middle-class guy who responsibly restrains a crazy guy on the subway. Blacks and their activist leaders say you don’t get to mess with one of ours.
Then how do your explain wealthy Jews, Indians, Asians, etc., that also think ethnically?
They are hardly lower-class. No, I’d say that whites have a peculiar affinity to individualism and the hubris to considers the protection of individual rights granted in (some) white societies as “natural rights.”
And yet, the natural rights types would insist that white rights are human rights, and that the PoC are going to get them whether they like them or not, so they’d better just get used to it. Natural rights are Platonic realities that, alas, can only be discerned by the initiates. Just trust them on this…
Reply to Citizen of a Silly Country: “Then how do your explain wealthy Jews, Indians, Asians, etc., that also think ethnically?”
Inner Hajnalian Whites were the only race to ever evolve to the point of accepting & adhering to & cherishing universalist principles.
Universalism is a form of suicide utterly unique to Inner Hajnalian Whites.
Even geographically neighboring hominids, such as the Potato Kneegr0ws, and the Slavs, and the Eggplants and the Basque, never came anywhere close to contemplating universalist principles.
Having said that, we will soon learn whether [or not] the Saxon has finally begun to hate.
Part of me thinks its the women in each group that are the deciding factor. Asian, indian, and practicing jewish women let the men run the show. That allows for ethnic collectivism. White gentile women will stab their men in the back at the drop of a hat. I may be biased.
And we do have a “folk religion” that defends people like Daniel Penny. It is called The American Way.
Only problem is that our rulers insist that The American Way is nothing but racist-sexist-homophobia.
The irony of individualism is that (outside of the crazy hermit living in the woods) it can only exist within a community. The individual is simply too vulnerable to the group. No matter how tough you are, a group can beat you up. Economically, physically, politically, a group will always beat the individual over time. Therefore, you must ally yourself with other, similar-minded people to form a group to protect the individual rights established for within that group. Within the group, you can be an individual. Indeed, having well-defined groups with well-defined territories (economic, political, geographic, etc.) also helps individuals… Read more »
If we need a God to organize around our people’s individual and natural rights, maybe instead of the God that loves every swarthy little hominid that comes crawling to Him, we should look to that one-eyed guy with the +5 spear and the eight-legged horse.
Heh. As an atheist born, I pray every day to Cerunnos, to Herne, both stag and hunter, the antlered god of my people.
For strength, for patience, to shun anger and turn away from negativity.
It’s a trick, an idol, a focus point. It works, well enough.
Gods are just the middleman, anyways. Gratitude and awe are us hearing the power above the gods.
(Not a trick, really- a shield.
A shield against the Trap.)
Universal religion is a fantasy anyways. One’s gods simply reflect the people, as Christianity was rapidly transformed into something European and distinct from the Jewish Blood-Drinking Lord of the Old Testament.
The problem is that annoying tether to the Middle East that binds our people and lets the Goblins nose their way into our civilization.
There is a certain amount of truth in the perception that libertarians are naive. But like so much else in this world, the most vocal zealots in any movement tend to recent converts, ones who often have not had enough time in grade to have thought it all through. Those who do tend to end up as anarcho-capitalists. So, yes, you can’t swing a dead cat on the internet without smacking some guy with an idealistic view of a libertarian society. So listen to those who are a bit more seasoned. Aquinas makes a much better argument than does the… Read more »
“if you want to live in a society in which individualism and natural rights are respected by everyone, then you need to come up with a folk religion that sacralizes those things”
We had such a folk religion from 1789-1965 (Negroes excepted).
Today we have a folk religion that says that Jews are God’s Chosen People, and Israel is the Promised Land, and the American goyim must be subservient to it:
https://www.timesofisrael.com/liveblog_entry/us-second-gentleman-meets-jewish-white-house-staffers/
And another off topic: Claudia Conway, now 18, is peddling her dubious charms at PlayBoy online (undoubtedly planning to join OnlyFans once she has enough name recognition).
Mixed-race kids are almost universally screwed up.
Who is she when at home?
mixed race? both parents look white, although the father looks like a hebe (if that is what you are referring to).
karl von hungus: Father, whom she resembles, is half Filippino. Not an attractive guy, totally aside from his respectable repuke/Lincoln cultism.
3g4me: “Claudia Conway, now 18, is peddling her dubious charms at PlayBoy online”
How does that differ substantively from what Kellyanne does on Fuchs News?
Is Claudia flashing the aureole areola?
Possibly the shaven labes?
Cluster B gonna Cluster B.
She’s not mixed race, is she?
Her father is mixed; she’s a quarter asian.
i.e. she’s mixed race
One doesn’t have to be a true believer to support a Liberal Theocracy. Deism and atheism are both matters of faith, not testable and hence not provable one way or the other. There’s much to suggest many of the signers of the Declaration of Independence, many of the founding fathers, not all by a long shot of course, were agnostic, none the less they sold, and bought into the whole cloth of God given rights. If one’s agnostic, a damnedifIknower, the rational thing to do is hedge your bets; not murder, not rape and keep pillage to a minimum, -just… Read more »
The Founding Fathers were careful to distinguish liberty from libertine behavior, with the background morality created by Christianity..As society discards Christianity, it’s the libertines who are taking over…
I only dispute the idea that they are not testable. If it can be quantified, it can be measured, and its mechanism understood.
Oh, yeah- it can be quantified.
That’s why I say the phenomena are real, it is the description that is in dispute.
Thus, both are right, both are wrong: they’re trying to talk about something, but they don’t know what it *is*, or is not.
I’ve come to the conclusion that I hate ideology and philosophy. All this blather and words to articulate what should be simple and easy. Good society = no joggers, fudgepackers, and other usual suspects; support healthy, strong, and intelligent families (no feminism), let people be creative without being degenerate, let people make money, but don’t let there be exploitative billionaires and controllers. The End.
Yeah, but to the extent that you want those things must be to the extent you band together with others of like mind and reject those of non-like mind. This logically leads to exclusion. So a quick and dirty exclusionary rule would indicate one remains culturally and racially homogenous. (Which I assume you are implying.)
I believe this occurred in early America with most immigrants being from Northern European stock and Christian, so we have some evidence this is/was possible.
The second problem is universal—regardless of homogeneity—spiteful mutants proliferation. That is a 5th column developing and undermining from within.
You exclude the others and create your rules, then you come up with the “philosophy” giving you post-hoc justification for what you’ve done. Not the other way around.
Conservatives and other natural rights normies put the cart before the horse.
Compsci: “The second problem is universal—regardless of homogeneity—spiteful mutants proliferation.”
The Ghost of Charles Darwin never sleeps.
NEVER. SLEEPS.
Off topic, but I have to insert this: Breaking news! Latest White supremacist/notsee is a ‘Missouiri man, Sai Varshith Kandula.”
Gawd.
“Missouri man.”
Heh.
well, there have always been “indians” in Missouri 😛
Spitting Vulture Kandula
Just think, the so-called ‘greatest threat’ to muh ‘democracy’ is in such short supply, they need to use this tier of ‘soup-reem-a-cyst’ to fake their big crisis.
Dude is just doing the job Americans won’t do, according to W.
Incidentally: could the FBI get any more clownish is they deliberately tried?
Its the year of POC Nazis.
First Kanye, then the Allen shooter, now this Missouri man.
Regular, patriotic, MAGAtard white people are still to blame, of course. Clown world.
Spread the blame, destroy individualism, atomize society.
That is the new type of equality. Equity doesn’t apply.
Just keep looking at the spectacle, not over there.
I saw where all the fake news sites this morning were trying to push a narrative that a “Nazi flag” was found in this guy’s U-Haul. Now that we know “Missouri man” is a dot Indian, a thought has occurred to me. The swastika is originally an Indian symbol that long predates any Austrian paper-hanger. Maybe they did find some kind of Indian rug or wall hanging or some such in this guy’s U-Haul that had the dread (albeit reversed) symbol on it. This whole incident is going right down the memory hole so we’ll never know, but maybe this… Read more »
World War II kicked off in the middle of the Indian independence movement against England. Ghandhi and Hitler had a sort of alliance. And, yes, that was the swastika has Hindu origins.
The bigger point here is no matter how deranged or stupid, the police state apparatus will try to demonize whites. They have big, big plans although their ability to accomplish them seems dubious due their utter incompetence.
Gandhi and Hitler were both vegetarians.
If only it were that plausible. If you see the totally-not-staged photo of the “crime scene”, there’s a perfect, Leni Riefenstahl caliber Nazi flag just conveniently lying on the ground a few feet from the driver’s door.
I grow more confident of our eventual victory with each passing stunt.
I’m late to the party I see. I just read it in NY Post. While I grant that nothing’s impossible, I suspect immigrants from India are not prime recruits for true White Nationalists. One thing, alas that does ring true however is his age: Young men believe and do really stupid shit at age 19, and I speak from first-hand experience.
As is my wont, I must depart with an awful pun: I admire the suspect’s Kan-dula attitude.
“The first thing that must happen is that such a society exclude anyone who does not accept these principles.” The Left calls this “intolerant tolerance.” Conservatives, of course, duck the issue and cite some strained interpretation of the long-dead Constitution. “What you need to maintain a society based on individualism and natural rights is a folk religion that sacralizes those rights and the people who possess them.” See above. To go full-commie, the inherent contradictions of the American regime have run their course, hence black-run cities without running water, jets falling from the sky, and military loss after military loss… Read more »
The phase is “repressive tolerance”, coined by Herbie Marcuse.
The term is “repressive tolerance”, coined by Herbie Marcuse.
This is your best exposition on this topic yet. Some libertarians have discussed criminal code. Walter Bloc has discussed this and has an extremely harsh criminal code. The problem is, it is all based on property and does not address the greatest crime that can be committed – the treason of subverting and undermining the system. Our state is illegitimate. A primary reason for the state is the definition and administration of justice. Since the Civil Rights Regime took hold the state favored a minority population who hates the majority population’s justice system and the majority population itself. The ultimate… Read more »
I meant, “to cause of the truly heroic Marine?”
Heroic, I guess. But smart?
Was he protecting other white people from neely? Would the people he protected have done the same for him? Will his society reward him?
Look, I’m sure Penny is a decent guy and all that. But he’s just another doof who claims race has nothing to do with it (it has EVERYTHING to do with everything) and that he was looking forward to his walking trip in Africa. Well, he got one.
It is grimly amusing to see how whites vilified by the Power Structure for daring to defend themselves or others from the depradations of nuggras pathetically brandish their Leftist bona fides in a feckless attempt to ward off condemnation and destruction. They simply do not realize that their race is their guilt, and there is absolutely nothing they can do about it.
ya, it’s the same as rittenhouse saying he supports the ideals of blm.
Doing what their lawyers told them to do. The system is rotten because it repeats itself mindlessly.
The most simultaneously infuriating and heartbreaking thing to watch is the mothers of beautiful white children murdered by black savages and telling the camera their children were not racists. The levels of derangement and conditioning required are breathtaking.
Making the ritual confession of his total commitment to diversity, pan-racialism, blah.blah.. in the vain hope of exoneration.
The days of Bernie Goetz in NYC are long past despite the the 16 years of Giuliani and Blomberg.
The law of averages says that there are still a few Goetz-types riding the rails. Not enough, for sure, but one has to think that with the ever-increasing brashness of groids an incident involving one of them is inevitable.
I didn’t realize he had said race had nothing to do with it. He is heroic. He put himself in mortal danger to remove other people from a physical threat to life. That makes his action heroic. The other points are valid but they do not invalidate his heroism. I think the better point that we can make that will help our side look and be not so spiteful is as follows. Fellow white men. The system hates you and its sole purpose is to expropriate, dispossess and persecute you. Do not waste your heroism or any effort and energy… Read more »
$2 million was raised in a matter of days for his defense. That says a lot for our thing, I’d say. (I do hope the money finds its intended uses.)
Best discussion I’ve seen of this. Put it in your book.
Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
-Paul, 1 Timothy 5:8
Greater love has no one than this: to lay down one’s life for one’s friends.
-Jesus, John 15:13
>After all, if God gave them the same rights, why would he then not give them the same talents? Why does this follow? I’m curious why the second thought follows upon the first. Would not an equally-plausible alternative follow, viz., that part of natural right is an unequal distribution of talents, which is blatantly obvious in the observation of the different types of man found in nature? This is not a theoretical Utopia being proposed by central planners. Natural right is derived not in the faculty philosophy lounge — as I fear you think it was — but from the… Read more »
While I agree with you about Z Man’s inference, I strongly disagree that natural rights can be derived by “the observation of nature itself.”
You are the white guy being killed by non-whites whose last words are, “at least I still have the Constitution.”
You don’t agree because, like the Z-Man, you don’t understand what’s really being discussed here. Natural rights have nothing to do with the US constitution; they were not the inventions of a few quill-toting quietist heretics in 18th century America or their French philosophe pen-pals. Natural rights, very simply, are the the predicates proper to a subject according to the nature that it has. They are not “claims upon society” but correlates of existence. They are few in number, and they are quite different in substance from the rationalistic contrivances of the Enlightenment. The natural rights of man are pretty… Read more »
You have the same problem as Anton, in that you insist you can appeal to nature as a moral authority when you know nothing about nature and nature can never be a moral authority. You cannot get an ought from an is.
Ought you act in self-defense? Should you?
Remove normative terms from your vocabulary, then, Z Man, if this is your position. No more prescriptions on how one should act.
Your position seems to be that you cannot find a physical object called “natural right” in nature, and that therefore, there is not. I never took you for a reductive materialist, but it appears you are. That man is the political animal, the animal WITH SPEECH, who discusses and fights over the best way of life, seems lost on you.
This is the disenchantment of nature at the outset of modernity, still alive and well on the dissident right. As if this very thing did not lead to legal positivism, man-made laws without any persuasive content other than force and violence, the very world in which we now live and which — by your own account here — you should approve, not condemn. The destruction of anything noble and beautiful — philosophical fantasies, nothing more — in favor of the low, common foundation of rabble democracy, a war of all against all.
You have that world now. Enjoy it.
Bingo, Z. I draw a similar lesson from the Stoic comment I posted above.
No answer to my question, eh? Telling.
I have addressed your flapdoodle many times.
Self-defense is a natural right. Why invent straw men? It is so irritating to discuss this subject when one’s interlocutors insist on putting one’s positions in the worst light. I said nothing about the Constitution.
I used the Constitution as a specific example of the more general case of natural rights. It’s an analogy.
My example is not a straw man. It is a specific example of what a belief in natural rights that are recognized by all people leads. This is the end result of whites believing that non-whites will recognize their natural rights.
I’ve asked several times without an answer about the natural right of self-defense. That is the fundamentum inconcussum of natural right, and you are all wise to avoid touching it, because it destroys your attempts to move this discussion from what you dishonestly portray as a philosophical one away from the very real, very flesh-and-blood political conditions in which man has always found himself, and always will, and from which natural right takes its original bearings.
Yep, even my dog bit me when I tried to dress a wound. It is completely *Natural*.
Lots of folks in jail and in prison for exercising the “natural right” of self-defense, my friend.
All rights come from the barrel of a gun. All of them, and that is unfortunate for us because the other side controls and has exclusive use of state force.
If self-defence is a right then why isn’t murder?
People are capable of both and will do both.
Why is one a natural right and the other is not?
It does not follow. The Prophet Isaiah spoke the Lord’s true opinion of the subject when he said: Woe to him that gainsayeth his maker, a sherd of the earthen pots: shall the clay say to him that fashioneth it: What art thou making, and thy work is without hands? Then St. Paul confirmed it with his Epistle to the Romans: What shall we say then? Is there injustice with God? God forbid! For he saith to Moses: I will have mercy on whom I will have mercy. And I will shew mercy to whom I will shew mercy. So… Read more »
Do you agree that there is nothing in Nature to prevent you from being killed by someone who doesn’t recognize natural rights or Christianity? That all of the people who share your beliefs can be eliminated and there will be literally not a person on the earth who shares your outlook?
Natural right includes the natural right of self-defense, which I will exercise, or at least could, until this rancid, materialist utilitarianism overtook the American Right, and left us with no foundation. Fast forward to 2023 and you’re dishonestly portraying me as someone clinging to muh Constitution, in total bad faith, sophistic to the core.
I’ve walked into a Hobbes Society meeting, apparently.
“one cannot just stand up new folk religions and make them say as one pleases”
Transgenderism says “hi.”
CRT says “hi.”
Lots where those come from.
I’m starting to think you can no more trust a Christian than you can conservative. Not there quite yet, but getting there.
If a thing acts in accord with its eugenic nature, then it acts as it ought. Such can be thought of, if you like, as natural right (singular). The ultimate source of which, being non-falsifiable, I leave to the more theologically inclined.
If you’re going to observe “nature” then you can’t pick and choose only a small subset of behaviors to note. You have to be equally observant of all behaviors being exhibited. For example, if you observe that there are many types of social organization models all over the planet, and these various systems are uniquely different from each other but nevertheless persist, then you have to conclude that “nature” has evolved many such systems and not simply a “one size fits all” singular model endemic to all Homo sapiens. It is truly arrogant to presume that the “natural rights” model… Read more »
The diversity of ways of life does not exclude the possibility that there are better and worse ways of life.
I have to insist that you put more thought into your assertions before writing them, and think of the possible objections to them in advance. Otherwise these discussions — which could be thoughtful — resemble sophistic agons, one party interested in the truth, the other party interested in winning a debate.
William – I’m sure you mean well, but I did exactly what you requested; that is, provided a thoughtful and well reasoned critique of your position with regard to the primacy of a single model of social organization. Reality itself refutes this assertion repeatedly, which is easily observable if you just look around at all the other societies functioning on the planet, many for centuries if not millennia (China, for example).
Please provide an explanation as to why — why, in the normative sense, meaning you must make a persuasive moral argument for your claim — I should observe all behaviors in nature in order to derive a moral lesson. Why must I be observant of all behaviors in order to know which of them is best, or — more broadly — the Good?
Must I drink every wine on earth in order to know a noble vintage?
But there is a logic to Z’s proposition. Hence, if God grants equal rights, why wouldn’t he grant equal ability? Equality as an organizational dynamic, after all, has been established by the first clause, and it is the only one.
What’s more, natural rights people–philosophers or not–hold that all the world’s peoples are capable of flourishing under a natural rights regime. Now that may not imply strict equality, but it is certainly a decisive nod in that direction.
Why wouldn’t he? He didn’t, that’s why.
We are not all the same height nor weight nor skin color. This is evident through the use of one’s senses in gazing upon nature.
Take it up with God. All we have is the instructions we can read off the book of nature.
I’m speaking more in terms of intellect, psyche and character, all of which are not quite so easily differentiable through sensory perception. Now granted, the intellectual disparity between Somalis, and, say, Japanese seems self evident. And yet a proponent of natural rights would simply state that the disparity is apparent rather than real, and stems from poor Somalis laboring under a regime less consonant with natural rights than that experienced by the Japanese. In a natural rights regime, the apparent differences between the two groups would largely equalize.
Every citizen, as a part of society, has listed rights and privileges that are implicit in being a member of good standing. As it’s become more multicultural, the obligation of whites has increased exponentially, while their rights have eroded to practical nothingness. Not only do we now have an obligation to invite minorities to every white space, we are not obligated under the new rules to be anti-racist, which means stabbing your fellow white in the back. Blacks have literally no obligations anymore, and right the verge on worship. The Brahmins have kept their obligations to their own people while… Read more »
A folk religion is absolutely impossible in modern America. Even a folk religion needs a people. America is made up of visibly different peoples, many of whom hate each other. Some of these groups define themselves in terms of their hated enemies. America is far too “diverse” to ever come together around some social narrative folk religion. We have large numbers of people who work feverishly to exacerbate inflame the hostilities between the various groups. A hundred dead African American kids could never cause fires all over the country if they are shot by other African Americans who missed their… Read more »
Upvoted, although your use the deferential term “African-American” makes no sense to me.
I’m sure our gracious host wouldn’t appreciate racial epithets on his site. I really don’t consider the term to be deferential, just polite. It is perfectly possible to “notice” and to talk about what you “noticed” without using “racist” terms.
Dude, African-American is not the preferred nomenclature. Basketball-American, please.
‘Upvoted, although your use the deferential term “African-American” makes no sense to me.’ Does to me. People do their cause no favors with the nogger etc. stuff. Plays directly into the hands of your enemies and invalidates you (unnecessarily) to some fence-sitters. It’s possible to point out systemic disenfranchisement, injustice and scapegoating against men — esp. white men, esp. Christian white men — without baiting other races with derogations. For example, I have written extensively about the spiritual ‘nature’ of the African continent. I didn’t do it to derogate or incite blacks, or to build a Whitetopia, but to demonstrate… Read more »
Fine. If that’s how you feel, call them blacks. It’s a neutral term. African-American has the nauseating whiff of obeisance to it. We’ve truckled to the nuggras more than enough already.
I have lots of sympathy for the natural rights crowd, because that was the tradition I was born into. This crowd implicitly believes that everyone in the world will voluntarily agree with the natural rights crowd, because natural rights are “self-evident.” The libertarians are this way with the non-aggression principle as well. A fundamental problem that the natural rights crowd must contend with is that, for most of the people on the planet, racial tribalism commands deeper loyalty than natural rights. A stunning example is that poor, pregnant medical lady in NY who was mugged by the young black scholars… Read more »
I provided a similar example to others a bit over a year ago, using Jon Gruden, the former Raiders and Buccaneers coach who was fired and blacklisted for the illegal release of a personal email from 10+ years prior which said something not nice about a black. Think of how many black players and coaches Gruden mentored over his long career. Think of how many blacks owe a lot of their success as players or coaches to the teaching, training, and mentorship Gruden provided them. But when the mob went after him, not a one stepped up to defend him… Read more »
Lucius Sulla: Vital point, which too many choose to ignore. They prefer to focus on the rare right-end of the bell curve individuals they know or have read about, insisting they actually represent the mean. They think their special blaq friend from college would step up and defend them from the mob. They think their mestiza wife will give them an ‘in’ with the cholos. And they love to imagine themselves standing in front of an imaginary rayciss White mob, defending their non-White buddy or ‘like a member of the family’ maid. Most Whites won’t stand up for each other… Read more »
Amen. I would like to know the races and backgrounds of the people the Marine thought he was defending. I have yet to hear (and may have missed it) one of those people defending him, and let’s face it, if that does happen or has happened the person likely was non-white. Therein lies our problem.
i don’t see any faces, but the passengers in the car are universally defending the marine. Nice to know not everyone has gone insane.
I know nothing about the case, but…I immediately thought that *he* was as fed up as anyone on the train and acted upon his frustration (Bernie Getz?). Nothing wrong with this as I believe in such actions. But I don’t award “hero” status easily.
Thank you, Chet. That’s a bit of a white pill.
They fear exclusion from their tribe, yes. Most people are herdish.
That attempted bike theft really got me steamed the other day too, but it may be part of an even bigger phenomena. It looks like scholars around the world are trying to provoke confrontations to film and post to social media. Check out this clown in the UK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=60CFkHl2_AM
Long term, this is a good thing, as it forces a reckoning with something everyone knows.
Saw that yesterday. Just look at the physiognomy of that thing. We’re not even the same species.
Mizzy was protected until he made a small hat his target. Then the cops came and arrested him.
He’s been arrested after “posting videos of himself harassing and jumping over Orthodox Jews to social media sites.”
https://tinyurl.com/32af2jjd
Erstwhile “conservative” Colon Bowel voted for BO. Hutus are the most tribal people on the planet. Whites the least. That latter, obviously, must change.
They sure don’t treat each other well for all their tribalism. They are their own worst enemies.
For whatever reason while reading this essay I thought of the death of a man in a Carthage Missouri jail, his name was Joseph Smith.
The Baptists of that age had no intention of allowing Mormonism among themselves, so Smith was killed.
There is none of that ferver today within anything we call traditional religion. The Imperial butt sex religion has it though, just look up the apology issued yesterday by the LA Dodgers.
My sad face is not because I dislike your post. Rather, it is a miniscule representation of how bad reading that grovel before Satan the Dodgers did. I think Mexicans are going to succeed in extorting them because Dodger Stadium is built on some eminent domain land that the Mexicans in former America claim it was promised to them but, “taken”, by the Dodgers.
When are white people going to not boycott sports, but walk away forever and spend the time preparing for the struggle to get the red dot off of our foreheads?
When are white people going to not boycott sports, but walk away forever and spend the time preparing for the struggle to get the red dot off of our foreheads?
They won’t.
Slightly disagree that nature has no moral imperative. There is the eugenic and the dysgenic. Both can be cruel, and neither is universal. What is good for one species may not be good for another. Possibly that doesn’t qualify as morality, but fitness is the one slim empirical thread on which natural law hangs.
As for rights, they exist only within the circle of your sword.
Society is an evolutionary construct, not the product of a brainstorming session by a bunch of eggheads on crack cocaine. What “exists” at the macro-social level is what “works” in a particular place and time. Which is why there are so many different types of societal organizational models on the planet. There is no “one size fits all,” but rather the end result of millennia of social experimentation culminating in a system that persists because it works in that place and time. The USA has evolved its penchant for individualism-based models as a result of its original pioneer history and… Read more »
The USA has evolved its penchant for individualism-based models as a result of its original pioneer history and wide open spaces continental environment. Urbanization didn’t kick in until the early 20th Century, at which point a high density living environment came to dominate societal affairs and has been forcing changes ever since. But the process is slow and fraught with wrong turns and dead ends. Where we end up is anyone’s guess.
Sort of “geography is destiny”. But the geography is different now, where do we go from here?
Looks like Anton woke up this morning ears a-burning’!! In all seriousness I’m thinking about some Anglo history that I’ll admit I’m not an expert on, so if any Anglo is reading this and wants to set me right I’ll be more than happy to be corrected. I’ve always been struck by what seems to be meant by “common law” in British history. It seems to me that for many many years what it involved was that some random – and quite potentially criminal – event would happen and then a bunch of locals – judges and advocates and possibly… Read more »
If nobody wants to be a gong farmer, the supply of gongs will go to zero. What would that do to the price of gongs? Let’s see. If the price of gongs goes up, that might make farming gongs more desirable. So, perhaps the reason nobody wanted to farm gongs was that the price of a gong was too low.
Hmmm,,,
This comment is truly magnificent sarcasm. I’ve been laughing for 5 minutes. Yeah baby, and let’s vote harder too.
Genius sarcasm. Take a bow. You should make a guest appearance on the Tom Woods Show.
Rich Lowry is hiring.
Brilliant.
The “natural rights crowd” seems to consist mainly of those types who relish theorizing at endless length without ever considering the implications their ideas have in the real world. And few if any of them wish to deal with any racial/ethnic realities, as exemplified by Zman’s famous recent squabble with one particular member of that crowd. These folks spend inordinate amounts of time in Philosophy Land; actual life is, at best, a secondary concern. Though Jordan Peterson is a spotty character, one thing he says that makes a lot of sense is (I paraphrase) that we could probably benefit from… Read more »
Wkathman: Cue a boomer/silent thread about ‘MY’ social security. God give me strength, but I detest that with every fiber of my being.
The best trick the government pulled was to take a chunk out of everyone’s paychecks for SS and Medicare so they feel entitled to the coverage in their old age. Despite the fact that the government already pissed all the money away.
… how can there be such a thing as natural right(s) if half the world does not subscribe to this idea(l)? No natural rights for muslims, bantus, chinese; other kinds maybe but not our vaunted constitutional ones …
“True power comes from the barrel of a gun.”
– Mao
How can there be such a thing as logic when 99.99% of human beings on earth would be unable to identify a minor premise?
Do you see any potential fallacy in your statement?
Beyond the “right of self defense,” please enumerate the other natural rights.
Before I do that, please recognize the right of self-defense as a natural right. I will then proceed from there.
Done. Please proceed.
Why would you need to reinvent Christianity when you could simply clean the filth off that has been stuck to it?
You have an immortal soul, you have free will, an instruction manual and a clear, noise free Q/A channel, if you would only use them.
Ymmv.
The people are too corrupt. All that filth was put there by us. Granted, most were the worst of us, aided by people who aren’t us but hate us. But they couldn’t have done it by themselves. We have nobody to blame but ourselves. People who warned us at the beginning, that doing A would lead to Z were ignored and even ridiculed. We are probably nowhere near Z yet.
One of the corruptions is the doctrine of the immortal soul. You are mortal, the wages of sin is death, and you will be utterly destroyed, unless you receive the gift of eternal life.
Ultimately I don’t think there are any inalienable “natural rights”, there are only rights that people are willing to physically defend with their own bodies and lives. If rights were indeed “natural” then they wouldn’t have to be physically defended in the first place…and when people forget the brutal nature of reality is when decadence really sets in…but as Gustave Le Bon said, “The masses have never thirsted after truth. Whoever can supply them with illusions is easily their master; whoever attempts to destroy their illusions is always their victim.” Re: the cult of individualism, it seems like the cult… Read more »
individualism is not all bad. individualism is one reason why whites have a greater tolerance for eccentricity than other ethnic groups do. This has protected dissenters and reformers while boosting white people’s already-high creative output and innovation. Moral conscience is inherently an individual thing, and so is Christian salvation/damnation. Traditionally, European individualism has been balanced out by a high-trust, cooperative spirit and a Christian moral code that emphasizes caring for others, giving us the the sweet spot, the best of both worlds. Libertarianism and socialism both move away from this ideal balance toward destructive extremes where either the individual is… Read more »
It’s easy, individualism within the group, collectivism without, and a hard crunchy shell to separate the two.
One of the more aggravating aspects in relation to the dislike of you-know-who is the lack of desire on our side to steal from them what works.
It is an outrage that white middle class families do not support their children. That worked in the frontier world. It was devastating in the world where higher levels of education and pedigree were crucial to success. I come from such a family. I’ve done well, but compared to my peers in the ethnic groups you describe, I am truly disadvantaged. It is even worse when you see your parents embracing the invasion, destroying their churches, indoctrinating their grandchildren. There is a sickness in our people. We now face the final test. I assume the current crop of parents are… Read more »
Nice response, RR, and sorry you had to you experience that with your parents. It really does suck how white parents completely don’t get it, and they’re unwilling to adopt a tribal view even when it comes to their own family. Hopefully you will be able to avoid the same pitfalls with your children if you have them.
Re: millennials, I really enjoy this takedown of them in a post called “millennials, the dying children”: https://archive.is/7VPGE
Thank you NF. My patrilineage was strong and supportive. My matrilineage had this bizarre fend completely for yourself mentality. The no-fault divorce regime made it easy for the maternal side to subvert and severely harm what was once a very strong family. My goal and a primary effort is to reconstitute my family, immediate and extended, and build a House that will be a part of our people’s new homeland. I am leading the horses to water, and pray every day for the ability to forgive the weakness and selfishness of my maternal line. Our people have it hard enough… Read more »
Yo NF – That was a great piece. Thank you for the reference. It is interesting that his take is that the “Greatest” Gen indulged their kids to spoil them after the depravations of the Great Depression. That is interesting. My maternal line did the opposite. It was as if we had to suffer the same depravations in terms of lack of support once 18 as they did during the Great Depression. It seems like both responses are very unhealthy. You throw onto that no-fault divorce and the de-industrialization of America and, well, here we are. With every Asian and… Read more »
Yeah, problem is God never gave created beings (including us) any ‘rights’. That’s conjured political jargon. Nothing in Scripture about you got this right and you got that right. So if you want to claim endless rights, like the members of our New Victimocracy, you must base them upon your own will and wisdom. God isn’t part of this discussion. Likewise, the Lib Theocracy or Woke-Fem Politburo rests on the satanic principle of post-Enlightenment egalitarianism, currently expressed as Equality or Equity. Holy Grail of the lib cult. Again, reality proves a problem. Heaven and Earth are strictly hierarchic — nothing… Read more »
Right of the chute, the ZMan commentariat will hard pressed to improve on this one today.
Vizzini comment that is
I have to admit my brow was furrowing after the first couple paragraphs, but at the end I leaned back and exhaled. “Yes,” I thought to myself.
As a practical matter, people who choose or find it necessary to live in community, freely chosen nor not, realize or have the realization forced on them that they can’t be laws unto themselves whatever the status of “natural rights.” At times, coercion will be necessary, hopefully not too often or too much.
“If you want a society with the least amount of coercion, then you want the least amount of biodiversity.”
I don’t see that this follows. The Native Americans, prior to and during European settlement, are a stark counter example.
It’s the difference between a necessary condition and a sufficient condition.
The Native Americans lived in Y-haplogroup tribes that practiced exogamy.
The classical liberals imagine a creedal, libertarian nation, but won’t acknowledge that enforcement of the creed would require strict, anti-liberal, authoritarian measures. So there goes your creedal libertarianism.
The light bulb went off for me in 2008. Back when I blogged, I wrote several posts about our new, post-ideological age.
But ideology remains a powerful, practically instinctive drive in people. Christians used to engage in bloody street fights over hair-splitting theological debates. Ideology is mankind’s curse. Maybe even its Great Filter.
What “natural rights” there may or may not be seem to apply to everyone except Whitey these days, in the glorious cannibal’s melting pot aka AINO. The natural rights crowd can stick it up their collective asses, as they’re among those complicit in believing ALL men are equal in every which way, despite that being observationally false. And here we are.
What liberalism needs is not a Karl Marx, but a Moses, someone who lead his people to their promised land where they can create their liberal theocracy as God intended. We called him Jesus. The liberal theocracy he espouses is, however, rife with obligations, perhaps more than “rights.” From “Thou shalt not murder” we can infer that one has a right to not be unjustly murdered. From “Thou shalt not steal” and “shalt not covet…” we can infer that one has a right to one’s property. But in both cases, the obligation is on the individual to not transgress, not… Read more »
Agreed. This is a way of saying that good people don’t need governing, or hardly any at all (Cormac McCarthy). Good people just minimal policy regulation e.g. how much setoff for properties, uniform weights and measures, fair trade practices, etc.
Bad people, you just have to constantly throw the book at them until they learn to keep their impulses in check or get killed in the process. They will lie, cheat, steal, and maim incorrigibly. We have let mutational loads build way up. Sorry, but there’s no polite way to put this.
I Timothy 1:9 “Knowing this, that the law is not made for a righteous man, but for the lawless and disobedient, for the ungodly and for sinners, for unholy and profane…”
The noted philosopher Charles Barkley once said of his Philadelphia 76ers teammate Bobby Jones that, if everybody was like him, there would be no need for police forces and militaries.