Note: Behind the green door I have a post about our robot overlords and a post explaining how you could have won millions on sports betting over the long holiday weekend, but the was no Sunday podcast. Subscribe here or here. Instead, I was on the Coffee and a Mike podcast and the J. Burden Show.
The title of this post comes from On the Laws, a Socratic dialogue written by Marcus Tullius Cicero toward the end of the Roman Republic. The title is from Plato’s famous dialogue, The Laws. In this work, Cicero creates a fictional conversation between himself, his brother and a friend about the law and social harmony. Salus populi suprema lex esto is a famous line that means, “The health of the people should be the supreme law”. Sometimes “health” is translated as “welfare.”
It is a famous phrase that turns up all over America. You can often find it in the official seal of cities and towns. Manassas Virginia has it in the town seal. A number of states have it in their official seal. It is not just in America where you will find it. All across the English speaking world this line turns up in the official branding of tiny villages, big cities, and important institutions. This concept of the ruling class being duty bound to the welfare of the people is near universal.
The reason for the ubiquity is it turns up in the foundational works of what we have come to call Western liberalism. It is the epigraph of John Locke’s Second Treatise on Government, arguably the most important influence on the Framers. Hobbes and Spinoza, influences on Locke, also used the phrase and embraced the concept as presented by Cicero. The Roundheads in the English Civil War also embraced the phrase and the meaning behind it.
Despite most Americans never having heard of Cicero, the spirit of this age is animated by the simple concept behind that Latin phrase. It is what lies behind the urge to censor speech online, for example. The welfare in question when demanding you get booted from social media is the psychological health of the people. The censors assume that they are the guardians of the mental peace and tranquility, so they must make sure that deviationists like you are silenced.
It is what lies behind the persecution of protestors in America and the UK. The striking similarity between the draconian punishments handed out by the UK government against those protesting immigration and those being persecuted in the United States over January 6 is not an accident. The people doing this are sure they are defending “our democracy” from hooliganism. They can think this because they assume their position requires them to defend the welfare of the people.
Of course, Cicero would have been baffled by what is happening in this age, especially since he was murdered by agents of the Second Triumvirate, for the crime of speaking out against the tyranny of Mark Antony. The modern notion that the state must safeguard the moral health of the people to the point of jailing those who dare question public policy would have baffled the ancients. From the perspective of the ancient world, what we are seeing today is the worst form of government, democracy.
As for John Locke, he was a man of his age and in his age the state, in the person of the king, was responsible for the material wellbeing of the people. It was the duty of the state to defend the lands of the people from outsiders. It defended the people from internal threat through the execution of the laws. The spiritual well-being of the people was in the hands of the church. John Locke would have been as baffled as Cicero at the Roundheadism of the current age.
In fairness to the modern age, the collapse of the Christian churches leaves a void as far as the spiritual guardianship of the people. Even a century ago, most Americans would have shared the same ethical outlook, because their ethics would have come from the Christian churches. Doctrinal differences aside, the ethics of the New England Congregationalist were not all that different from an Appalachian Presbyterian, a Southern Baptist, or a Midwestern Methodist.
The collapse of Christian institutions in the twentieth century meant something had to replace them as far as the ethical instruction of the people. Being the most powerful institution, it was natural that the state should take on this duty. Of course, the state was also responsible for the destruction of the churches. The peculiar composition of the post-war ruling class made Christian ethics a bit of a problem, so the ruling class slowly replaced those Christian ethics with a new set of ethics.
It is why it is important to understand that what we see happening is not merely the desire to hold power, but a religious revolt against the people. The bizarre outbursts we see are on the one hand an effort to demonstrate the weakness of the old ethics and the religion behind it, but on the other hand an effort to clear the path for the embrace of the new religion and its new ethical code. Woke is nothing more than proselytizing on behalf of the new religion, even if they do not realize it.
This is why the state has reacted with increasing ferocity at resistance to the cultural revolution from the top. Your efforts to reason with them or point to tradition are viewed by the ruling class as a radical rejection of their primary duty, which is to safeguard the welfare of the people. In the minds of the people in charge, they are on the side of a long tradition dating to the ancients. It is you and your weird adherence to out of fashion faith and custom that is subversive.
In the end, the present ruling elite of the West will not be judged by how well they upheld the traditions and ethics of the ruling class they displaced. It will not be their authoritarianism or anti-Christian bigotry that is their undoing. It will be how well they safeguard the welfare of the people. Since they have taken on the spiritual wellbeing of the people, they will be judged at how well they perform their priestly roles and the reasonableness of their new religions edicts.
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The Western welfare state has eclipsed the Church. A large portion of the Church’s success was not necessarily its theology or its mythology, but the actual parallel society it created and the social services it provided when the government served no purpose other then to kill you and take your money. As Augustine wrote, “What are kingdoms but a great band of robbers?” Church provided entertainment, festivals, meals, and care for infants, the sick and the old. Over time politicians, starting with Constantine, saw the appeal of this and aligned themselves with Christianity. (As Machiavelli pointed out, this was not… Read more »
This was excellent thanks! I would only add that these Elites care only for power and define the “people” and their “welfare” way differently from what our definitions are.
A lot of commenters here have the odd belief that every thing needs to be practical or useful . Christianity “works” so let’s use it.
humans want to know. Having a fake religion that works for entertaining or collecting and distributing charity is worthless. A religion s either true or it isn’t.
if a false religion just works than to hell with it. Where’s the real thing that’s what I want.
The problem as I see it, Hi-ya, is in trying to use a political history and language as a framework for understanding the afterlife or observed spiritual phenomena.
It’s like trying to write an engine manual using a woman’s romance novel as the scientific foundation, instead of metallurgy, fuels, machining, etc.
You’re right, we want to know. What, how, why- what’s it for?
Erwin Chemerinsky is the dean of Berkeley’s law school, the most prestigious on the West Coast. He was a student at Harvard Law with Merrick Garland, where both were taught by Lawrence Tribe. There’s a video of C. telling students to ignore court rulings agains affirmative action, and just do it anyway, but don’t tell anybody. C. just came out for entirely junking the Constitution because it is “undemocratic” and starting over with what inevitably would be a Bolshevik document.https://www.latimes.com/opinion/story/2024-08-23/constitution-undemocratic-amendments-rewrite
A very similar article, that even referenced Chemerinsky and people of similar ethnic origins, was put up by the New York Times a few days ago. I doubt it is a coincidence. They are trying to lay the groundwork for something.
The first open call for internet censorship I remember seeing, a column at Slate or Vox or whatever (same people), had an odd honesty: The First Amendment must be destroyed because Laurence Tribe looks stupid on Twitter. America’s greatest legal mind does nothing but get “owned by randos” (refuted by any slightly knowledgeable layman) and repeat stupid nonsense he half-overheard on MSNBC. The public being able to see that this man held up as our most rightful leader is just another retarded propaganda victim undermines Our Democracy—the faith of the people in their rulers’ election. It cannot be that the… Read more »
Every. Single. Time. again? One wonders which of the world repairers have the right stuff to become the Hugo Preuß of the USA.
Probably many readers here still don’t know the significant role of EST in the rise of the so-called Third Reich. Hugo’s centralizing, authoritarian constitution was designed with despotism in mind and imposed in 1919, same year as the Bavarian Soviet Republic (also very EST). The constitution of the “Weimar” republic remained the basic law for almost 26 years.
Wikipedia: “The Jewish background of the main author of its constitution was one reason why the Weimar Republic was referred to as Judenrepublik (“Jews’ Republic”) by its detractors on the right.”
Wait, what? Weimar Germany was internally occupied, in the same vein as MacArthur’s Japan?
Further, “Only a few days after the abdication of Emperor Wilhelm II had been announced during the German Revolution of 1918–19…”, when the Eastern commies, in overthrowing the Russian monarchy (Tsar), then went for the German Kaiser…
Don’t upset Zed-man by mentioning these things.
TL;DR they’re all jewish. The framing of why they wanted something Bolzhevik isn’t terribly important, the point is the outcome they are seeking*. If it was framed as Libertarian open-borders, the intention is the same even if one wants to argue those are theoretically diametrically opposed ideologies. Whatever reasoning or story the car salesman gives you is almost entirely beside the point; the essential piece is the goal of getting you to buy. Similarly, I don’t agree with Zed’s thrust in this post, such that the rulers are fanatically tied to their goal of Public Welfare or whatever, but are… Read more »
Unfortunately is is basically a fait accompli — they already ignore the Constitution, and it has already been scrapped, starting with Lincoln.
Look, I admire and support the republican principles outlined in the Constitution as much as anybody, but let’s face it, the document was written by and for white Protestants.
When you have the likes of (((Chemerinsky))) and (((Tribe))) instructing legions of law students on what the Constitution supposedly does or does not mean, it’s already been lost.
Conservatives need to start understanding this reality.
I replied to the wrong comment.
Erwin Chemerinsky used to be a regular on the Hugh Hewitt show when based in CA. Hugh would have him and a fellow prof from Chapmen University on his show. It was sort of a Mutt and Jeff (faux) debate. In any event Chemerinsky always appeared to be a rabid Leftie and could be sure to take the opposite position from anything even remotely resembling the conservative point of view. Those days the discussion was most often upon how SCOTUS ruled on a particular case or perhaps the selection of new justices. Even in those days of my benightedness, I… Read more »
Paris Nov. 13. 1787.
Jefferson to William Smith.
Trees. Must. Be. Watered.
“It will be how well they safeguard the welfare of the people.”
I find it extremely hard to believe that they think they are safeguarding the welfare of the people. Everything they do shows how much they hate us. They would not be doing most of what they do if they didn’t hate us or even gave a minor thought of our welfare.
They are the sworn enemies of the people, not our protectors.
“Everything they do shows how much they hate us.”
We are not the people whose welfare is being safeguarded.
Exactly, Line, and once official history had been re-written to hide the crime, the ethnic origination was also forgotten, even by its writers. The allegiance becomes one of class rather than “race”.
Just as the conservatives think as themselves as a New Israel of the New Covenant, the liberals also identify as a New Israel, under a New Covenant. Thus we have our own people seeing themselves as a new Volk, and our old rules don’t apply to their morally superior selves.
We are very near a point in the Ukraine where we either have to accelerate or withdraw. Acceleration will burden and harm the American public as well as Europes peoples. Withdrawal will harm NATO and the American empires hold on Europe.
I am hoping Europe can somehow break away from our caretakers of the new religion and stand on their own feet again.
We are heading for hard times but perhaps hard times is what we must have to break this new religions power.
The ruling elite here will destroy Europe before they let them go. In a supreme bit of insanity, the ruling elite in Europe are happy to go along with that plan. You can tell that this has left Russian foreign minister Lavrov gobsmacked. How do you discuss anything with this kind of western leadership?
“The ruling elite here will destroy Europe before they let them go”
And all because the Czar was mean to somebody’s ancestors! Lavrov be like, ‘We got rid of the Czar 107 years ago! Cut us a break! ‘
Only a collapse of the current system can save us now. Once (if) Europe becomes a backwater, it will be possible to hang the traitors and kick out the invaders, while new invaders will not be even interested in coming.
We will withdraw, we are simply looking for an off ramp. If this was not already decided, we’d be escalating immediately as time is not on our side. If the neocons were not so decided, they’d drive the war up into a conflict that the new government come next year could not afford to lose. This is not saying the neocons have been defeated, just that they’ve turned their future intentions elsewhere.
Yes. The neocons cannot be embarrassed. The political actors, despite their sociopathy, can be. They will try to delay the utterly predictable outcome until after November. I have no idea whether this is possible, but it is the plan.
And Putin will continue to strengthen his military forces and economy and not be goaded into any precipitous actions. The man has no ego to assuage. He’s already thinking to futures and that lies within Europe as a trading partner. Europe “may” be on the verge of change as well as seen by nascent political movements.
That’s the problem with short term, next election thinking, as we have in the US. It’s really not conducive to 3D chess.
It seems to me that the global economy has did it’s job, too well for our ruling elites. The citizens of the West will not tolerate a real war. The military can play in the desert and drone sheep herders but they can’t go to war with China or Russia, because it would have too much of an impact on the economy. There is a lot of economic inertia that will have to be overcome to have a war. Perhaps this is why they are swamping the West with people who have much lower expectations. A ruined economy is much… Read more »
I think you are giving them too much credit Z about caring for anyone when they only care about themselves and what benefits them… Most just can’t grasp how evil those who rule over us are and so they come up with all sorts of explanations to justify why they hate us and want us dead…
I commented too soon, it appears many other commenters already basically made my point.
So, are we saying that Zed-man does not grasp the situation?
Here’s the thing: Any casual reader of Zman knows his dissatisfaction for what is known as democracy. Fine. The problem is that the governing bodies currently in control of the US, GB, and most of the rest of the West are not democracies. The US was never a democracy to begin with. Even most of the more loony leftist normies in the US never physically voted for unchecked immigration and or sending billions of dollars to Ukraine. I’m not sure any political candidates have recently campaigned on “vote for me, and I’ll ensure your tax dollars get sent overseas to… Read more »
Calling a me a liar is a good way to get booted, but I know that by “dishonest” you really mean “boo!” You do not like what I wrote, so you pack all of the words that to you mean “Boo!” into a comment. Further, you are projecting onto a me a fault you sense in yourself, which is that you cannot think beyond the flickering images on the screen. Today’s post is all about the upstream causes, but you are too myopic to grasp it.
He does have a point about the current western system not being an actual democracy, but the same can be said about the formerly communist countries (“real communism has not been tried”), and while we’re at it, UK is not a real monarchy either.
The error here is in thinking “democracy” only means the mechanism, as in voting. That is not how our rulers use the term. They use it to mean the general will of the people, even if the people do not realize it. All ideologues must embrace the concept of false consciousness, as it is the only suitable explanation for why the masses do not agree with the ideology.
I don’t think our rulers (or the actors representing them) use “democracy” as anything else than a buzzword. It’s all fake. Which was also the point of my previous comment.
This is a congenital defect of right-wing people. You assume these people are rational and therefore know what they are saying is false, which means they are cynical in their presentation. In reality, these people believe what they are saying. It is the parsimonious explanation for what we are seeing.
We can agree to disagree. “Saving our monarchy” or “saving our communism” wouldn’t make sense. Hence, we must “save our democracy”. It’s just a thing they say. When I talk to someone who spouts this nonsense, they can’t really explain why they say that. They just “know” that the other side is bad and they were thought that democracy is good. They are not necessarily rational. In my experience, the true believers are usually at the lower ranks. Like the local bureaucrats or regional politicians. This was obvious even during the Covid fiasco. There is no way the actual decision… Read more »
One may be cynical about one’s particular policy machinations and still be a devout believer in the ideology that undergirds them.
Perhaps. However, if I call you antisemitic, it doesn’t have to be because I think you hate jews, but because it’s an effective way to shut you up and if I “defend democracy”, maybe it’s for the same reasons and it gives me an advantage over you. For example when my name is Zelensky and I am banning and locking up all opposition. That’s because I believe in democracy. Words have meanings, but in the current year, those meanings are a little more flexible than usual. Full disclosure: I don’t care about the arguments whether the US a republic or… Read more »
You are absolutely correct. If I didn’t have close family who fall squarely into the category of “these people” who I have been analyzing and attempting to un-social-engineer for a decade now, I might have fallen into this mistake too. The meaning of labels change. 200 years ago if a European called himself a ‘conservative’ then other Europeans and the educated from other civilizations would have know exactly what he meant: he was self-identifying as a monarchist. Later, in an American context at least, it changed to mean someone who opposed the excesses of progressivism, but only to the extent… Read more »
I consider rootlessness even more of a contributing vulnerability than the godlessness. Ethnocentrism and the expulsion of transnationalism is the only way to preserve the civilizational immune system.
Truer words. Blood and soil nationalism alone is the answer.
Exactly. How I tired of these midwits pointing out that the term “democracy” is specific to a bunch of ancient Greeks sitting around the agora to vote on political matters and therefore we are not a democracy.
The term “democracy” is used conventionally to mean *any* political system where the citizenry have a voice in their leadership. This takes many forms, electing representatives to voice one’s concerns and desires being one of them. That our present form of democracy works poorly—or not at all—is not the issue.
“When I use a word…it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
–Lewis Carroll
Our betters have internalized this. Not cynically. Like our host, I agree the most parsimonious explanation is that they are true believers. They genuinely believe there is no difference between boys and girls.
From the same author, “What I tell you three times is true.”
While the observation is hardly original by me, our rulers currently define “democracy” as preservation of institutions that protect and enrich them rather than anything to do with the individual. This wasn’t a widely accepted definition in the West even a generation or so back although there was truth to it even then. The “general will” you reference are those institutions and while the ideology evolves as needed, those power monopoly mechanisms do not. Information and to some extent voting is harder to control now so the Ruling Class is doubling down on protecting the institutions and will redefine “democracy”… Read more »
“Democracy” is more of a malleable process, or even a fungible, collective state of mind than it is an actual form of government. That is one reason it has historically been held in such low regard. Universal suffrage, in particular, is especially noxious, as it is always nothing but camouflage for a plutocratic type of oligarchy. The poor sell their votes to the rich, and the rich, who didn’t get rich by being stupid, pay for those votes with the money of the middle class (or borrow it, which is the same thing). Voting, to the extent it exists at… Read more »
the rich, who didn’t get rich by being stupid
I posit that in the GAE, even stupid people can be rich, and often are. I’ll agree that no self made billionaire is stupid.
No, but many of the nouveau rich are *lucky*. Take Zuckerberg for example. He dabbled on a piece of software while at Harvard to attract an audience of his peers (and perhaps get laid at the same time). The timing and conditions—technology & social media beginnings—coincided. He got there basically first, but that was never his original intention—MySpace notwithstanding—and here he is today, using his wealth (power) to change election results, dealing with the Fed’s (i.e. the devil) to the detriment of free speech, and selling our personal data to the highest bidder. All while we squabble over whether he… Read more »
Facebook was ‘founded’ on the same day that the DARPA Lifelog programme was cancelled.
True. When reality fails to comport with Leftist dogma, new theoretical terminology must be coined to explain away the disrepancies. That’s far easier than simply admitting you’re wrong.
The raison d’etre of the Left is accretion of raw power. Things are defined and redefined with that endpoint in mind. If a change in terminology will not suffice, something like “mistakes were made” will be deployed. With power accumulation as the only goal, any tool or mode of thought that helps is used. Democracy is a train to a certain destination, and if not that, Leninism or any other mode of transportation. One will be called the other as needed.
Why would you admit you’re wrong when you cynically don’t care?
Perhaps you should have waited a bit longer and calmed down before replying to my comment as to avoid looking like a petulant asshole. Using the term democracy in any sense other than what it really means is in fact, dishonest. YOU saying that I called you a liar is also, in fact, dishonest. I did no such thing. And our rulers absolutely do not use the term democracy to mean “the general will of the people.” – they could care less what the will of the people is. If anything they use it to mean the will of their… Read more »
The sheer number of points that you have missed, while trying to prove how smart you are, is incredible.
Apology accepted.
Tre, you could’ve made your point without spitting at the audience.
I’d be interested to understand how I spat at the audience.
Mike Tre. You had an implication wrt Z-man being intentionally dishonest. I myself overlooked it. Hell, this is a forum and with time constraints, we can’t spend hours writing and rewriting because someone’s “feelings” might be hurt.
Which brings us to the second observation, Z-man has loyal followers who are most often more sensitive wrt “feelings” than Z-man himself. This is also normal and expected.
Your follow up reply to Z-man clarifies things greatly—your comment was a valid observation worth sharing, whereas strongly felt, but not designed to gratuitously attack. I’d let the initial reply from Z-man go.
I actually enjoyed the article, but disagreed with that point. I promise to do nothing but heap praise upon your sacred texts from here forward!
You do realize that whatever insights you might have are completely ignored because you are such an unlikable fellow, right?
No one expects or respects a hagiography, but a little civility would go a long ways.
Oh give me a break. You’re just like the Communists who bleat about how “real Communism has never been tried!” I am so sick and tired of being told that every abuse against us by the monied elite isn’t “true Capitalism.” The problem with any abstract ideology or system of polity is they never deliver on their promised ends because human nature will always, always find a way to mess things up. All you do with this “well ackshully” BS is divert people from focusing on the problem of our evil masters who never cared about your precious ideology to… Read more »
I never said capitalism hasn’t been tried. All I said was what is called capitalism now, isn’t acksually capitalism. You have a point about what you call abstract ideologies, but be serious, are we in the US right at this moment living our lives under the workings of a legitimate constitutional republic? Be serious. You’re just white knighting like so many people do when another person dares not completely agree in lockstep with the article’s author.
I can’t find it, but there was a great democracy-talk apothegm or precis here (post to main Z blog), went something like: voters define “democracy” as getting what they want via hired officials, and hired officials define it as getting what they want via persuasion of the voters. Saying that low-quality input deciders leads you to the same hijacking status quo is merely a semantic point– professional democracy detractors already agreed with that. It’s an inherently defective system. End of quote, as Brandon might say
Boomer, the fact that the ideas of Democracy and Capitalism have failed proves that either they were faulty or the people were faulty, either way arguing that we just haven’t tried democracy/capitalism hard enough yet is….. tiresome. I personally, believe that the people are the secret ingredient and nearly any system will be made to work by an honest, and intelligent people. Remember the Scandanivians make socialism spin like a top, but we’re about to bankrupt the country trying to follow their example.
I never even came close to implying that cap/dem haven’t been tried hard enough, so you need to work on your Gen Z level of reading comprehension. I am Gen X, and I guarantee I am more black pilled than most people here. I am literally just killing time on the internet while waiting for the shooting to start.
Not true. Sweden frittered away basically all the capital stock including most of the social capital before wisely pivoting away. Their fortune was at that time, they still had not been overrun by the darker and swarthier. They have been more capitalist than the US for decades. Norway is running behind Sweden, but, like the Gulf states and Venezuela, they have massive oil income that lets them conceal the loss of capital, but the capital consumption is nonetheless real.
“Despite most Americans never having heard of Cicero, the spirit of this age is animated by the simple concept behind that Latin phrase. It is what lies behind the urge to censor speech online, for example. The welfare in question when demanding you get booted from social media is the psychological health of the people. The censors assume that they are the guardians of the mental peace and tranquility, so they must make sure that deviationists like you are silenced.” It pleases you to jest with us. That may be the ostensible reason given but not the real one. “Of… Read more »
If the ruling elite were to take the task of protecting the welfare of the people seriously, they certainly would not tolerate an invasion by foreigners, sacrifice the people’s blood and treasure for the sake of imperial adventurism, and permit the enervation of vast swaths of the people by opioids. So, “what people” indeed. The function of the ruling class is to promote, or at least defend, the welfare of the people, where the people is understood as the citizens of the country. Suppressing speech or incarcerating citizens for complaining can in no way be construed as being in service… Read more »
“Your efforts to reason with them or point to tradition are viewed by the ruling class as a radical rejection of their primary duty, which is to safeguard the welfare of the people.” If the above is to be believed, then one must assume benign intentions on the part of the ruling elite. However, that is an assumption not in evidence. Rather my perception is that “safeguarding the welfare of the people” is mere pretext for power and control meant to benefit themselves, rather than the “people”. Yes, there are those in the service of the elite who actually believe… Read more »
There is not proving or disproving something like “benign intentions.” They can sincerely believe what they are doing to for the general good, while you believe what they are doing is evil. There is no “right” answer here.
That’s the real question are they really “benign intentions” and I would say for the puppets maybe but for the shot callers no they know exactly what they are doing and it’s not benign at all…
To be honest though does it even matter why they are doing it? The real question I think is does it cause you harm and then what are you doing to minimize/mitigate that harm…
The “Not Vaxx” would be an example. A research team in Japan has published a report that shows the not vaxx actually had nanoparticle assemblers in it, at least in the samples they tested.
So how can we conclude that the so called elites do not intend us harm?
No, george1, they aren’t harming us, they’re saving humanity. *ahem*
This has always been the case. The poor, since they don’t have anything, are free to focus upon their faith, but the ruling class are forced to balance faith against the pragmatic demands of maintaining the institutions, and if they make a meager profit from those efforts then surely it can be justified by the importance of their work.
As Hemid pointed out last week, it is not a luxury belief unless it hurts the deplorable. In other words, a status marker, a demonstration of power.
What they believe in is their right to correct you.
Their moral sentiment is their legitimacy.
I believe I take exception to your assertion of “primary duty” and that being the “welfare of the people”. I reject this assertion. I don’t believe they care one wit about the people, as in the masses. They do care about themselves and their position within society—as in sitting on top of it and controlling it to “their” benefit. The “welfare of society” only interests them as to their own benefit, not society’s. We may be talking past each other here. I’ve mentioned the elites’ “useful idiots” who may indeed think they operate from benign intentions. Those folk would be… Read more »
While I am extremely sympathetic to your view here, it’s not really in evidence. We suspect there is a shadowy cabal (the real power) behind the scenes, even if we have guessed right, it’s not like we know who these people are (as opposed to the deepstate). There are too many rich people to say it’s just a cabal of the wealthy. Different rich people have different interests that are often at odds with the interests of other rich people. While we can be sure our owners are rich, we don’t know which ones. When we see the “elite” talking… Read more »
Being rich isn’t enough for entry into the Power Structure. You have to be mega-rich (such people are rare), and hold the korrekt views. Alternately, you must hold a position of very high status in academia or the media.
True. There also is something of a caste system at play. Bill Gates, for example, checks all those boxes yet he gets dragged as needed. For example, he is one of the more prominent Clouds swept up in the Epstein op. His Beyond Meat is on its death bed. Public divorce with hints of perversion. Etc. My take is he never can be one of the elect despite his money and views. It may be due to something as ridiculous as his lack of academic credentials, but regardless he will never be part of the club. It likely makes him… Read more »
No, they don’t have conference calls to discuss “affairs”, but they have great wealth, which translates into power—and their number one interest is to retain that wealth. To that effect they do what they need to do for themselves to retain/increase such wealth. I do not believe there is thought wrt the “little people”—either for society’s benefit or otherwise. That rich folk squabble among themselves means little to me. That there are even some elites who seem to profess the common persons’ interests—example, Musk lately—is the exception that proves the rule (IMO). Perhaps I’m too much into “the banality of… Read more »
Pretty sure you are right. I used to rub shoulders with deca-millionaires back when that was enough to get on Forbes’ List, and they were nothing like the popular characterizations. They weren’t grasping to maintain wealth. They knew if hard times struck, it didn’t really matter. They would rise above it again. Lot of truth to that. Most of them were objectively better than the common man. But they also genuinely thought that their business acumen meant that whatever other opinions they had were right, too. Even the beliefs that were objectively Satanic. The biggest hurdle for most or maybe… Read more »
I don’t think so. There exist sociopaths, sure, but not in numbers sufficient to explain it. The caricature that gets drawn of them is almost always wrong, IMO. They genuinely see themselves as saviors of society. The good guys. Even the full-on commies do this, via the rationalization of “mystification” or “false consciousness”. To them, J6 really was an “insurrection”, a coup to overthrow the country.
“Science” says 1 in 100 of us are sociopaths, at the low end. That’s a lot of people. 3 or 4 million in AINO alone. Some say as high as 1 in 25. Now we’re up to 12 million. In current year, I can believe the bigger number.
Fair, though I take that with a grain of salt. The shrinks only get paid if they treat someone for something, so obviously their incentive is to expand the number of people who are in need of their help. Heck, one of the more recent entries in DSM is ODD, Oppositional Defiance Disorder. Anyone who questions the authorities is presumptively suffering from ODD unless proven otherwise.
Oh, and forgot. Sociopaths are all over the economic spectrum. Some are highly intelligent, high functioning individuals, while others are trailer trash. And nogs are disproportionately affected, as one might predict from violence propensity.
Ah. So all those Leftists who plastered “Question Authority!” stickers all over their Volvo hatchbacks back in the oughts are mentally ill. Got it.
Sure, there’s variation in sociopaths, but typically we find an unusual—as in nonrandom—distribution among top leaders in the business world and other essential areas. To me this makes sense as often a strategy to get “ahead” is to use and abuse people in your way to the top.
Maybe. I tend to think most cases of “mental illness” are just cases of “first world problems”. The shrink boom of the 70s was driven by it becoming trendy for one to speak of “his therapist”.
Similarly, “sociopathy” is probably not to the degree we are told, any more than is trannyism. It’s just that there are situations where it is to one’s advantage. No sociopath cares about his employees, so presenting as an aloof sociopath can be a winning strategy in labor disputes.
There’s a reason the officers don’t fraternize with the enlisted. And it’s not mental illness.
And a sociopath believes in one thing above all else- him or herself, and the rightness of their cause. You can’t argue them out of that fundamental foundation.
Those around them, like have self-doubt, because they’re normal. The confidence of a socio draws us in like moths to a flame, as we’d all like to share some of that confident certainty.
5% is a typical number for sociopaths. See “The Sociopath Next Door” written by Martha Stout. Now of these, we have a subcategory of “psychopaths”. We often confuse the two.
I don’t understand the disagreements today.
The “they” feel that their earnest righteousness trumps any complaint, and they are affronted when anyone would oppose their innate goodness.
How dare you bad people accuse them of being bad people!
What’s wrong with you, there must be something wrong with you!
You’re trying to re-define what they feel!
The point of a system is to do what it does. In this case that is maintenance of power. The subjective beliefs of the rulers may be and are often delusional, but their efforts to maintain the system are rational.
Fair enough. In the end, a distinction without a difference. We are both being screwed, but there won’t be a “Forgive them for they know not what they do” as my last words.
Very well said.
I think that “forgive them” part may be the defining difference.
Sympathy. We really do try to walk in their moccasins, while they “just know” we benighted types can’t be reasoned with.
Yep. More like, “Tell your father I said, “Thanks for the fiddle.”
Amen Brother…
Oh, but the Power Structure does believe in safeguarding the welfare of the people. Just so long as those people aren’t white.
Let’s not lose sight if the racial and demographic basis of the Power Structure’s behavior.
I always note that morally, or in any schema, the anointed try to outdo the normies. To be betterer in whatever they’ve concocted.
I’m not going to adopt some poor white’s baby, I’m going to adopt a Haitian with AIDS!
I’m not going to mow that old lady’s lawn down the street, I’m going to save heathens in Africa!
I’m not going to get a 40% reduction in pollution with natural gas, I’m going NetZero to save the planet!
Sowell says liberals want to eliminate all imperfection, while conservatives know everything’s a tradeoff, and there are no final solutions.
Judge now, lest ye be judged:
Visit a 24-hour Wal Mart at 2345 on the last day of any month and judge for yourself how well the parasites who rule us have performed their duties with regard to the physical, psychological and spiritual welfare of the people.
I suspect Europe, and probably the US will over the next 40-years turn into some form of what we are all familiar with in South Africa. Of course the US will fare much better since it is a more resource rich country and is energy independent. Of course Europe could return to nuclear, but until then, our economy will remain stunted with businesses closing due to higher energy costs making it impossible for us to compete in cheaper energy countries. In both cases, the local brain power to keep the lights on and the water running will begin to disappear… Read more »
Perhaps it is the sunny optimism for which I am known, but I think things break long before the great extinction many assume is an inevitable end to what we are seeing. The West will get suddenly poorer in the next decade. This will change the math of immigration. If Germany, for example, is unable to provide generous social welfare benefits, will the migrants stay? Will the native population remain passive about such policies? Much of what has happened over the last three decades was made possible by the relative high standard of living in the West. This bourgeois ideology… Read more »
I hope you’re right, especially with your timeline, and I hope that countries like Germany don’t find some external source to fund the migrant welfare programs.
Currently, these kind of external sources exist in poorer EU countries, like Portugal and former commie block. The EU is providing money to allow Indian and African invaders settle in their cities and rural areas. Germany won’t have that option, unless the ECB is willing to destroy the Euro for it or the US decides to print a few trillion more to help out.
The response of the Wogs to the disappearance of gibs will be interesting. On the one hand, they could pack up their ol’ kit bag and beat a retreat to the Stans and the jungles. On the other, they could engage their penchant for violence and destruction by burning Europe down to the studs and stealing anything of value. It’s not as if anybody will say boo to them if they do.
Which outcome is more likely? Difficult to say, and I wouldn’t want to live on the difference.
Say you are right. And then what? Whitey can rebuild his homes and businesses, the rest cannot. They can’t even maintain what whitey built.
Even the useless whites will become obvious, and they are cowards, so when they come to us demanding “their fair share”, we “win” with nothing more than saying “GTFO”. And however many unmarked graves are necessary.
Hard to rebuild your business after your throat has been slit.
True enough. Which is why the priority is (and should have been for at least the last year) to get the hell out of Shitholia. Anyone within about a half tank of gas from a blue stronghold is at serious risk of dying in the first wave.
Actually, Steve, we could copy our betters:
We could sell the woke to the dusky darkies as slaves and sex toys, and have them giving us money instead of the reverse.
Even better, we could pay for their resources in wokies.
I’ll give you ten shitlibs for the rights to drill a hole in that that unused patch of ground right over thar.
That is frikkin’ hilarious! And if we started off demanding payment from the wokies not to sell them into slavery, then went ahead and did it anyway, ka-ching.
The theft and looting will happen. As we have seen with the indigenous Brits lately, the only brake on them responding in kind is the State. Wither the State, wither the whip hand that does not allow the invaded to do as pleased to the invaders.
Agreed. String up the Starmers and Soroses of the world and then turn your attention to the Wogs. We may be getting to the point where a great many BEIDs are thinking along those lines.
I believe immigration reform across Europe is inevitable at various levels as we are seeing with Poland, Hungary and now Denmark. Not so much because of the concerns for human rights or to reduce crime against European citizens, but because politicians are terrified these recent knife attacks and published crime statistics will promote public sympathy to far-right wing group; aka – the AfD. These changes in policy have nothing to do with the will of the people, but the desperate and deliberate attempt by the established elites to remain in power. The following article may be of interest. Sorry, this… Read more »
Agree with you but remember that Hungary and Poland have never encouraged mass immigration, so I don’t know how they’re “reforming.” Denmark is another matter.
“The West will get suddenly poorer in the next decade. This will change the math of immigration.” Yes, I find this eminently plausible. Until now the chasm between the living standards of Western Europe and North America (along with welfare state provisions, mostly in Europe) on the one hand and the rest of the world on the other, has been a draw for migration. When that divide between the West and the rest of the world becomes less pronounced — as it was a few centuries back — the impetus to migrate will dwindle. At the same time, when living… Read more »
As long as there are White women to seize, they’ll stay. There is one prize worth more than all the welfare benefits in the world. There are no Homeric paens to Beyonce, for good reason.
totally Hispanic now
Maybe those Mexican Civil War re-enactments will have cool uniforms and cannons!
Ironically, Cicero was a reactionary defender of a republican system that was already rotted out by Roman imperialism and therefore an enemy the health of the people. A republic requires a large class of freeholders. Roman imperialism and the civil wars had created a large slave class and driven Italian freeholders off the land and into the cities. The land was increasingly in the hands of the wealthy who ran their latifundia with slave labor. Attempts to reform this system had been crushed by the Roman elite, which played into the hands of ambitious generals like Caesar. Our current situation… Read more »
The protestors being jailed in the UK are going to come out on the other side in a few years hardened dissidents ready to do some very nasty things. The UK has no idea what it’s creating. They should listen to Machiavelli on this. You should either destroy your enemies or treat them fairly, because if you injure them just a bit then they will seek revenge.
Little sign of such yet from the J6ers. Perhaps I’m not paying close enough attention
I think our government was a bit smarter. I heard a lot about solitary confinement. They need to be free interact and form connections. I heard that the UK was dumping them into the general population. The average punk will learn how to be a criminal there and these guys will get together and learn how to be dissidents in the same way.
“The peculiar composition of the post-war ruling class made Christian ethics a bit of a problem”
Boy, talk about subtle! I have never seen it said better.
I would add, that “our democracy” as the elites like to proclaim, is their vision of themselves as morally superior and more intelligent supreme technocrats controlling the lumpenproletariat towards “usefulness” which generally involves the extinction of said lumpenproletariat. This is why Fauci, a man redolent of failure, evoked such a response of religious ecstasy, particularly from Karens. Here, here was the man they had waited for. Credentialed. “He is the science!” Having authority of both position and holy sacred Academic degrees. “Our democracy’ is nothing more than unfettered, Aristocratic Rule by semi-hereditary “experts” with credentials and a bureaucratic position of… Read more »
Z argues that after Christianity fell, the state took on the duty of dictating ethics. I say the media, not the state, took that role. The owners of the media.
media > the state. Who is more scared of whom? The actors of the state are more scared of what the media says about them than the reverse. “We don’t have a state run media. We have a media run state.”
Why is it important to put the blame on the media owners instead of the state? Because we may only get one shot and it needs to be aimed at the head of the snake.
This is the Greg Hood argument. I am sympathetic, but the thing is, the media exists because of the state. It is all access media now, where media members compete for access to people with power. If you are working the State department desk for the WaPo, your life depends on having and keeping friends in the State Department, who reward you with copy for your reports. That said, I would agree that the media compete with one another to amplify the current trends and often these trends originate outside of the state, but ultimately power lies with the state.… Read more »
I agree that there is a back and forth between the media and the state and that, on paper, the state holds the ultimate power. But then, look at Trump’s term and judge the value of the words in the Constitution and laws.
Where do the ethics of anti-white and anti-tradition emanate? My best guess is that it is the owners of the media.
(On a recent podcast, Hood said that he didn’t originate the phrase. He guesses he picked it up from Mike Enoch, but isn’t sure.)
Those “ethics” originate with professors and other Leftist intellectuals beginning in the second half of the 60s. The media learned those ethics from the profs.
The relationship between media and state is incestuous. It is certainly not a boss/underling dyad.
The media is part of the state. It is its propaganda organ.
But from where do the ethics emanate? When actors of the state ignore or reinterpret our laws, what ethics justify their actions and who propagates those ethics?
Who has the whip hand, the owners of the media or the state?
Reporters and politicians don’t have the intellectual candle-power to whomp up a system of “ethics.” This was done for them by academic intellectuals, most of them postmodernists.
I would argue that you are incorrect, insofar as the ruling elite in “our democracy” does NOT have the health of the people as their goal. Only some people, and very much not others. You are quite correct in that the State has taken over the Spiritual duties of the Church, but those spiritual duties are quite different. The Religion of the Elite is totally post-Christian, based on the absolute depravity and genetic evil of White people, the hereditary blood guilt of all Whites for everything bad particularly 1933-45, and the redemption of black and muslim peoples from Whiteness. THIS… Read more »
By convenient coincidence I just finished reading chapter 22 in the Dispossessed Majority by Wilmot Robertson titled “The Three Phases of Democracy” which is very simpatico with today’s post. If anyone has the book, it’s worth a reread. It’s hard to believe it was written 50 years ago as it reads like it was written yesterday…
How can a society be “healthy” if it’s infected with pathogenic parasites? It cannot. Either the antibodies arise or the body dies. The elites want to proactively direct these antibodies at healthy tissue (blue on blue) in a mutual slaughter that kills off all means of remedy. This is why they spin up the anger. They want the pitchfork mob to confront the police line in a fury of revenge, while they hide in dark bunkers. No! No! No! Bunkers first. LEOs and NGs must turn and march with us. It’ the only way to be sure.
they will be judged at how well they perform their priestly roles and the reasonableness of their new religions edicts It will depend on who writes the history. That normally is who wins. Grotesque sycophants such as Michael Beschloss and Jonathan Meachum had assumed it would fall to them to render the judgment but their object of desire was vanquished. Along these lines, the thuggish authoritarianism of the Wilson Administration was hidden until that no longer was possible (the revision was not because of the pogrom on German Americans, for example, but the race realism displayed toward blacks–quite fitting). We… Read more »
Christianity= Jesus is lord + whatever someone else convinced me of!
I enjoyed today’s post and subsequent discussion without the need to comment myself. I do wish to say that your interview on Coffee and a Mike was great. That young man certainly punches above his weight class and has most of the heavy hitters from our side on his show. I would suggest that you keep your phone with you when wrestling heavy timber in the back 40.
Since waiting for approval, you’ll see this Herr Zeeman, do go for a bike ride, goober.