In the chattering classes, the line dividing the Left from the Right is over means, not ends. Watch cable news for a while and inevitably they will have one of those mini-debates they like staging to illustrate the two extremes of what is acceptable opinion on some issue. After the Dallas shooting, for example, a liberal and conservative would offer their take on the incident. What we are supposed to take away from these exchanges is that your opinion better fall somewhere between the two offered on TV. Otherwise you’re some sort of fringe weirdo or worse.
The acceptable window varies from station to station, but there’s not a lot of diversity within the dominant political culture. The liberal channels set the window closer to their preferred opinion while Fox is slightly to the right of them. The thing is, everyone agrees on the ends. You never see two people debating an issue where one has an entirely different goal in mind. Both sides always start from the same premise and have the same ends in mind. By “ends” I mean esoteric concepts like world peace, racial harmony or economic equality. They both talk about “solutions.”
If I were to describe what it is that drives those on the dissident right away from conventional politics, into the arms of various alt-right groups, I think I’d start with the ends in mind. People in the various refusenik camps, on the fringes of society, simply reject the ends that the conventional Left and Right accept as their starting point. It’s not that the trouble makers want the opposite of those Utopian goals. It’s that they reject the assertion that those goals are possible. Humans are imperfect and there is no solution to that bit of reality.
An example of how this works is in this piece from The American Conservative on the problems of Baltimore City.
From near and far, too many people who felt qualified to offer an opinion or exercise power to help didn’t take the time to appreciate the history that has shaped West Baltimore or the variety of people who have been working for decades to improve this place. Accounts of a place like Sandtown have to start with policies forged decades ago regarding redlining and lead paint—policies that handicapped the value of many residents’ homes or did likewise to their children’s brains. The harm is ongoing: conservatives can easily recognize how the welfare state disinclines people to work, but it is hard to blame recipients when most of the wealth transferred through government goes straight to property managers and hospitals, not to the people themselves, who have little opportunity to accumulate wealth. The institutions that are accessible to people in West Baltimore—primarily churches and gangs—are trusted because other institutions don’t maintain any reliable order or support.
Ask any liberal why Baltimore is a dumpster fire and they will make the exact same claims. They blame it on magic. Redlining, as a real practice, never really existed. In fact, banks have been under pressure for generations now to lend to unqualified minorities. Even if we pretend it was a real thing, it ended two generations ago. Blaming long dead bankers for the problems of today is the same as blaming ghosts. No one ever tries to explain how not getting a mortgage causes T’Quan to murder Terrelle for his sneakers. Blaming redlining is no different than saying Allah wills it.
There’s a similar problem with lead paint. It was banned in 1971 and government has been removing it from housing for two generations. There’s also the fact that there are no studies showing increased levels of lead in the residents of Baltimore, compared to the surrounding areas. It’s an interesting theory, but that makes it a good example of how statistical correlations can lead you down a blind alley. But, blaming magic means not facing reality so the Left and Right embrace crackpot theories like lead paint as the cause of black crime.
Rebuilding institutions requires local leadership as well as outside aid. Great hay was made of some $130 million spent on a public-private partnership in the late 1990s and early 2000s to revitalize the neighborhood. Much of this money can still be seen in the homes that were rebuilt. You can walk around whole blocks that were vacant 30 years ago and that now have clean sidewalks, no drug traffic, and the sort of neighborliness that New Urbanism celebrates. As deep as the problems of Sandtown are, much good has been achieved using outside investment directed by people from within the community.
This is the sort of stuff black radicals like the Black Panthers used to demand back in the 60’s. They wanted no-strings attached money from white people so they could build their Afro-paradise. When they got it, they stole most of it and used the rest to build out their criminal enterprise. Well intentioned white people supported these groups because they assumed the fairy tales were true. If you just gave black people money, they would create a black version of Mayberry USA. It was just assumed that all human capital was the same, because after all, all humans are the same and only racists would say otherwise.
West Baltimore is what it is because it is full of West Baltimoreans. The people who built and maintained the city’s institutions left a long time ago for suburbs. The current residents moved in, like animals taking up spots in abandoned buildings. They did not build it. They could not maintain it. The result was that nature took its course. The institutions decayed and collapsed. The habits and ways of the new inhabitants took over. There’s no solution to this reality. You don’t fix human biology with a government program or pseudo-prayers to the gods of diversity.
The line dividing the New Right and the Buckley Conservative is between those who accept the reality of the human condition and those who don’t. The writer of that piece thinks all people are the same and that the observable differences are due to various forms of magic like racism and lead paint. It’s why they are called the Wuss Right. They inevitably give into the Left because they share all the same assumptions about humanity as the Left. They share the same goals. Convergence in the form of orchestrated surrender is the inevitable result.
A good article with the exception of the huge load of horse crap about “Buckley Conservatives,” by which I expect you mean people who do not participate in /4chan/ white supremacist discussions and who are not stupid or corrupt enough to support a clown like Donald Trump for the presidency, having identical views with liberals concerning the culture of racial complaint.
No, I did not mean any of those things.
Well, I’m a Movement Conservative and I knew Bill Buckley and I basically agree with your criticisms of the liberal perspective. So would pretty much every conservative commentator I can think of this side of David Brooks.
I’m sure I have a few posts here on my view of Buckley Conservatism. In short, I think it ceased having a purpose when the Soviet Union collapsed. It was all about fighting communism, which was a noble cause. The Buckley people were willing to trade just about anything in order to have the whip hand on fighting communism. Now that communism is gone, what’s left is giving the Left everything in order to sell books and magazines. The modern conservative conserves nothing because he believes in nothing.
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This race thing won’t go away, will it? I have a distant relative who is black, and she has (from what I am told via her posts on FaceBerg, but as I do not belong to that cult I cannot comment directly) gone ballistic over the BLM issue. She is daily incandescent with rage. She was pretty wound up over Brexit (or at least at those old bastards who wanted Britain to make its own way in the world) but when it comes to the current black outrage she is way out in front on this one.
Yet she is not American. She lives in the UK where she has been fully accepted for herself, but argues incessantly for black this and black that as if all the whites who have accepted her into their world are somehow to blame. She recounts with glee lurid stories of blacks being victimised by the whites but never the whites attacked by blacks, or even blacks murdered by blacks. She argues loudly that blacks must rule this and that and have their own way here or in the States which she may or may not have visited.
This could all be, I accept, virtue signalling to her numerous black relatives and friends. However I do wonder how her white husband copes. He either goes along with it to keep the peace or quietly resents that he has to listen to those tirades first hand. But I bet no one tries to reason with her: it would be like sitting on a volcano.
Eh, sounds like my sister, except in her case it’s the homosexuals she’s always championing. Again, NOT American herself, and not even British, yet that didn’t stop her peppering me with mocking internet memes about how stupid the Brexit voters were. When she forced a political conversation on me by asking if I liked Donald Trump I said yes and she reacted as if I were Jeff Goldblum at the end of “The Fly”. When she trotted out the “fascist” word I simply said “Very likely.” Dammit, I’m sick of having scare-words thrown at me and being expected to quiver, stammer and apologize. I’m not playing that game anymore. It seems to me that the mere act of *denying* these bad-faith accusations plays into the other side’s hands. Since it NEVER works, I’m not going to bother doing it anymore.
Anyway, I haven’t heard from her since, and maybe never will again. (Funny that someone so progressive makes use of the good, old-fashioned *shunning* technique.) We’re both in our fifties, but SJWs don’t see value even in relationships that longstanding if they run afoul their religious tenets.
This is very good stuff!
In the 1980’s I made the observation that blacks were “self-segregrating.” They were not so much being discriminated against in housing, etc. but choosing to form their own communities. And now after many more years and seeing how that has worked out in concert with both the civil rights movement and the race hustlers we all know, and the wasted investment in “black” communities, it is apparent that all of this has simply been one big criminal enterprise.
It is my belief that this “self-segregation” was instituted as a way of raping and pillaging their own people because they were not smart enough to do it in the white world. Sure the race hustlers caused corporations to have their legal beagles settle out of court rather than be dragged through the media and court of public opinion (for we know which side the MSM in on), but the scam was on to make the black folks the recipients of government largess but it was others who got most of that loot. Without an education, most of the loot that did make it to the ghetto went for crap drugs, crap music, crap clothes crap food, etc. that was sold to them as a “culture” but was nothing more than the leftovers from gangland and prison style living. Wow, talk about raising people’s hope and dreams.
I did some property management in Lost Wages and saw Section 8 housing at it’s finest. One, two year old homes being literally destroyed by black “families” if you want to call them that. A waste of tax payer monies, policies not upheld by a housing dept. staffed by blacks for blacks and it was simply a merry-go-round. Destroy one house which should get you disqualified from getting another, and then move into another because you are such upstanding citizens. Anyway, you get my point. A net loss for everyone.
And now there is a call for blacks to move into southern states and take over them as whites will move out not wanting to live next to blacks. Well, I think they have another “think” coming to them and an ass whooping. But just imagine, that did happen. What do you think would happen? It would simply be Detroit, Chicago, etc. the black ghettos only on a larger scale after all the infrastructure, businesses and housing collapse and decay. Kinda like the Mexicans who think they can reclaim territories lost to the US back in the day. What the heck are they going to do with them? They couldn’t make anything work in Mexico. What makes them think they can make a go of it somewhere else?
My vote is that race comes first. The culture, in what I am discussing here has been completely manufactured. Actually, it is not a culture, it is a sickness.
I really don’t see why Doug Ross remains on your blogroll.
Who is Doug Ross? And who are you Mr. freedom of speech, teapartydoc?
I was making a suggestion and stating an opinion, asshole. Not making a demand. Read the fucking article and look up and read the blog referenced and you will understand what I am talking about. And next time think and read before you make an ass of yourself.
There’s no call for calling LetsPlay an ass. That’s just plain hatefulness.
Doug Ross was one of the original alternative media blogs and news aggregators. He deserves recognition and consideration for his courage. I was a long time reader of Doug Ross, the guy has put out some great stuff, but lately it was becoming more difficult to go to his sight due to his vehement anti Trump campaign he was waging. It just seemed out of character.
That is his business. Doug still puts out great stuff. Very creative fellow.
Yeah, well, I don’t read Doug Ross regularly so it didn’t “click” when I saw him mentioned in your “suggestion. What did “click” with me was the contradiction in your name and calling for the censure of someone giving their opinion. You sound like righteous supporter of individual rights, so long as they agree with yours! So just who is making ASSumptions here?
I think the thing you have to keep in mind is our society because of the illegitimacy of the elites, from all sectors, because of their meddling in our affairs and cultures, so much has been purposefully skewed for their enrichment and power, and the natural reaction is devolved into extremes at each end of the political, social, and economic spectrum, that in order to come out the other end of whats going down, you must keep on the straight and narrow, keep to traditions, yes be a bitter clinger, because either extreme is ultimately an unmitigated disaster.
There is everything to be said for and taking the middle road when it comes to our freedoms and self determination. That was how we became a nation of Freemen to begin with.
Sure, we are going to have to take extreme measures if we are to fight both ends, but that isn’t about living straight and right, its about defending and winning straight and right. It’s pretty basic.
Take Donald Trump, don’t get me wrong, I personally like the guy, have respect for his accomplishments and see Trump as a basically honorable kind of guy. But he is a creation of the equation of human terrain and our traditional American culture trying to balance itself out. It is the pendulum swinging the other way, not Trump, but the dirt people searching for resolution and redress. Is that a good thing? Gee, I have no idea, but extremes always have unintended consequences of some kind.
But the more I see and hear, the more I believe the answer only lies with ourselves, and that that begins with each of us. There is no voting our way out of this. Maybe generationally there is, but it’s looking like the luxury of time is a train that departed long ago.
So Trump is The Great Fuck You, to almost everyone, and even the fuck you’s have taken extremes at both ends of the human terrain.
At some point the only way out of such extremes is there’s going to be a fight to the death, like war of extermination. One extreme just can not tolerate the other and remain an extreme power, one is not about power for powers sake, but it has enormous latent and inherent power, and it must be destroyed by the first extreme if that extreme is to remain all powerful.
It is those who refrain from extremes for tradition and the human terrain’s sake who will become more powerful than both combined. It will become indomitable, it can not be denied it’s legitimacy. That is the power of the dirt people, the unseen, the unmentionable, the unspeakable, the untouchables of this America.
The motive power and audacity of the dirt people is their withdrawal of consent, their guns, their traditions, their basic good natured grace, and tolerance. It is what makes the dirt people the middle of the road between these two extremes. They can not be pushed or prodded, coerced or threatened, their private motto is I won’t and mind your own business.
It is the real silent majority.
They are the most peaceful, and the most dangerous people on Earth.
“People in the various refusenik camps, on the fringes of society, simply reject the ends that the conventional Left and Right accept as their starting point. It’s not that the trouble makers want the opposite of those Utopian goals. It’s that they reject the assertion that those goals are possible. Humans are imperfect and there is no solution to that bit of reality.”
Americans have never shied away from seeking Utopian goals. However, our foundational cultural and political understanding was that you did so voluntarily using your own, private resources. The idea of building various public Utopias with other people’s money via government taxation and spending is relatively new (20th century). IMO it is this new idea that both the “conventional Left and Right accept as their starting point” and that today’s refuseniks reject more and more.
100% off-topic, but i just discovered your blog via alt-right twitter about a week ago. great stuff.
This is why I’m starting to favor Universal Basic Income. Liberals and Cucks (BIRM) are religiously devoted to equality of outcome. In the real world, we know that’s impossible. Solution: Give everyone their allowance, let the chips fall where they may, and when the inner-city dindus spend their allowance on Air Jordans and crack, label any attempts to further “help” them racist. And look, Cletus up the holler made the same decisions, so it’s obviously not a race thing! Let the bleeding-heart world-savers get their virtue fix by running basic fiscal responsibility classes out of Teach for America. So long as you take away the vote of anyone who agrees to get his allowance, problem solved.
@ Severian – Doesn’t the state of Alaska already have a system very similar to basic income? If this works under the governorship of a conservative republican like Mrs. Palin, why would the rest of the US not also benefit from a similar program?
Yes! It’s not that I have any real policy ideas to improve Chicago or Baltimore other than an end to the subsidies that support the current situation. It’s that I don’t care. All that matters to me is that my tax-dollars and some of our national wealth is being wasted on those places.
When I here “conservatives” like Bill Bennett talk about urban policy, all I hear is a buzzing noise.
It’s important to remember that Buckley Conservatism didn’t start out cucked on race. Admittedly, the movement started by Buckley wasn’t really focussed on race at all; it was primarily concerned with uniting rightists of all stripes in order to 1) Oppose international Communism, and 2) Oppose the metastasizing New Deal state. But within that framework, Buckley”s original outfit was not averse to race realism. Close Buckley collaborator James Burnham listed equality of the races as “one of those liberal beliefs that is, on the evidence, false” in his book “Suicide of the West”. National Review supported southern efforts to resist forced integration, and Buckley himself stated that Blacks in Africa “were not ready for self-government”. As late as the 1980’s, NR opposed the Martin Luther King Holiday.
What really seemed to cuck NR on race was Buckley’s relentless social climbing and desire for good press, the gradual death or retirement of his original collaborators ( the magazine really started to go downhill after Burnham died and Ernst Van den Haag retired in the late ’80’s), and their replacement with younger, less talented, more brainwashed people. The decline was such that I dropped my subscription in the early ’90’s.
Robert Conquest once said that any organization not explicitly right-wing became left-wing over time. Looks like this has to be amended somewhat…
In the Cloud, the political demarcation lines are there for all to see. Yet, the battles are intermural and the war is for exhibition.
I often find myself wondering if even talk-radio conservatives like Rush Limbaugh are, likewise, mere judas goats braying “conspiracy, conspiracy, conspiracy” against the ideological wolves of critical thinking and true liberty.
Also, consider “conservatives” such as Glenn Beck, Chief Justice John Roberts, Paul Ryan, the Never-Trump Crowd, etc, ad nauseam.
Given today’s surveillance capabilities, as revealed by Snowden, and the ensuing Barry-care, Omnibus, TPP and, most recently, Too Rigged to Jail: It is not hard to see (for those willing) the dark powers in the Cloud possessing photos in vivid color, of the entire Wuss Right and Devoted Left, together, lovingly in flagrante with farm animals.
This lines up with the Cult being the party of death—abortion, assisted suicide, no real health care for the old and dying, etc., being among their most cherished principles. Do they realize that perfection, that is, the total lack of contrast, of duality, would result in the death of the human spirit, followed quickly by physical death, by the end of the species? Who knows what they realize and don’t realize. They’re all crazy.
It appears that the left, in general, do not understand human nature. They also do not seem to understand the simian mind of America’s Negroes. They grossly misjudge and vilify all things right without a shred of evidence to back their slaggings. Trump must win or civil/race war is certain.
All this caving to, and acceptance of the ideology of “Everybody’s the Same” by the “Conservative” rulers is folly and they know it, yet they still maintain the go-along-to-get-along mantra. Deep down the people know it’s all a lie. This is what made Trump the nominee, without question. It also was the core of the Brexit vote.
The bad whites, in their gut, are angry, scared and they have good reason to be.
Here’s a good example of what’s been waiting in the wings and nibbling around the edges since the 1920s. It’s known as the “Kalergi Plan” and it’s some evil shit.
https://fellowshipoftheminds.com/2015/11/12/europes-refugee-crisis-and-the-kalergi-plan-for-white-genocide/
Add onto that “Critical Theory” spawned by the Frankfort School and implemented by the institutional Left and you’ve got the perfect storm for a “Fundamental Transformation” of American culture.
Nobody talks about (or even around) it for fear of denouncement, physical harm or the very real threat of losing their livelihood (remember Brandon Eich losing his gig at Mozilla and the manufactured hoopla over his very modest support of Prop 8 in California? Or the denouncement of one of the authors of “The Bell Curve? Or the forced resignation of that Harvard U. president for the mere suggestion that women can’t cut it in STEM fields? Even Francis Crick, the discoverer of DNA, has suffered because of his “Bad Think”).
The only thing that slowed this effort to dilute down the White gene pool
from full implementation earlier in Europe was Hitler’s rise to power and WWII. After he was defeated it cranked back up again.
Oh, and that scrunt Merkel has already received the prize from some elite committee with this theory at it’s core.
Quick, everybody, avert your eyes from what’s behind the curtain,
Good point Fuelster. It really pissed me off that Eich could lose his job, especially for something that happened 8 years beforehand. Talk about Wusses. More like a bunch of pricks.
To all, more info at:
http://kickasstorrentsan.com/coudenhove-kalergi-praktischer-idealismus-practical-idealism-1925-t11325359.html
http://www.infowars.com/the-kalergi-plan/
Interesting to contrast the machinations of these early twentieth century “Daddy Warbucks” and their global aspirations with the twenty-first century types. The ego jaded, god-like desires of the elites is truly megalomaniacal. Evil aspirations transferred from one generation to the next and yet they are revered because of their wealth.
debating leftists – exploiting mental differences – anonymousconservative.com.
discomfort of being out-grouped, of having it pointed out what a deviant/ weirdo/ traitor/ narcissist the leftist is.
The site has a fascinating series of articles with an explanation of the narcissistic tendencies of leftists, and how to shut them up and rescue the many lemmings who are susceptible to the leftist’s manipulative tactics. Using their own tactics against them – they are highly susceptible.
http://www.anonymousconservative.com/blog/touching-the-raw-amygdala-part-i-foundational-understandings/
This is not a new problem. Just finished reading “Blacklisted by History” by M. Stanton Evans. A mountain of facts….McCarthy was done in by Republicans eager to accept the new deal and “move on.” He was right on almost every detail, actually did have real lists, and his charges were pretty much completely correct. But anytime a Republican populist closes on a leftist throat his party establishment fades away…Tim
I’ve heard that the dirt in Liberia is “Magic Dirt”
Maybe that’s why so much cash was “invested” there.
Like Edward Long Shanks said in Braveheart. “The trouble with Scotland is that it is full of Scots.” Same can be said about migration. People migrate to escape something. In the 21st century it is invariably an aspect or symptom of their culture; which they typically deny and therefore will not shed, thereby poisoning the native culture in which they seek refuge. Multiculturalism means one culture must die, “Neither can live while the other survives.” Neighborhoods, cities, nations; it all works the same. It only tangentially involves skin color, culture is everything.
I agree, Tom. It’s all about culture. I don’t think we have a race problem, we have a culture problem.
I must say, Zman has an effortless way of explaining things that others, like me, need a three volume set to work out.
I disagree, we have a race problem. Culture is the unique creation of each of the distinct races. With the exception of eating and seeking shelter, there is little commonality between the western white culture and the black african culture. A culture which allowed even the wheel to escape notice appears to be alien to white westerners. The opposite is of course also true.
Yes, culture follows race, or more precisely, ethnicity. Tiny differences in peoples will play out with the enormous leverage of time and borders, be they nations or ghetto walls. Germans are not Italians, even though Romans may have been a German tribe who displaced the Etuscans. No one would mistake the habits the language, or arts of the two, or often of their descendants in America. If only that were the gulf separating Africans from everything else. For all of human history people too badly damaged to leave West Baltimore suffered the consequences of natural selection. The Progressive experiment is with unnatural selection, and it is fifty years on.
A.T. – I see your point, of course, but I have known and worked with too many Blacks, Hispanics and Asians who precisely shared the same traditional American culture that I did. Obviously the African gene pool and the European gene pool developed separately and apart up until very recently, so the distinct nature of each must be naturally and profoundly different. Yet I have seen those traits overcome by traditional American assimilation, not that Africans became Europeans, or the other way round, but that we have here in the US found a way to live together. It ain’t perfect, but what is the alternative?
Hi Terry, I was not discussing asians or hispanics, most asians and a majority of hispanics can get along with whitey. It is specifically the negro who will never sign the truce, the disparity of IQ and their very nature preclude a truce when the feral 90% sense weakness in our ranks.
I believe an all out race war can only be avoided by some type of separation. Very few whites can have contact with feral negroes and not realize their hatred of us, all you need do is observe their patterns of attack, which are consistent. Separation or war.
A.T. – Thanks for reply. I understand exactly what you’re saying – I lived in Chicago long enough to have had a few run-ins of my own with feral black individuals from what was then Cabrini Green. We lived in the De Paul area and had “visitors” rob and intimidate us from time to time. I saw the hopelessness of integration up close.
But what do you mean by “separation”? Is it not already in progress naturally? How would such a thing transpire if made a policy? And what of those who rightfully wish to remain within the dominant culture?
Hi Terry, if you lived near Cabrini Green I am sure you are familiar with TNB (Typical Negro Behavior) so I will not preach to the choir. They, as the minority, must be given an area, perhaps in the US or perhaps somewhere else, where they are not exposed to our hateful racisms. They should be provided a subsistence existence by the grateful taxpayers of this wonderful country and nothing else. They must all go. If we allowed some well behaved negroes to stay we would have the same type problem in just a few generations. Deviation to the mean ( mean IQ 85 ) would see to it that the bulk of the well behaved negroes would once again be feral criminals and a danger to our future generations. I suppose sterilizing the ones who would stay could work but a clean break would be beneficial to all parties. Any whites who wanted to go could do so with my blessings.
So, Clarence Thomas, Walter Williams and Thomas Sowell should be shipped off to the reservation, no?
Hi Terry, unfortunately yes, not because they present a danger but their black offspring may. All races are subject to genetics, so even these august individuals are capable of producing offspring which appear to be straight out of Africa. You could visit them if you wished.
Sorry, got sidetracked and didn’t finish.
The difference between the Uber (Democrat) and the Quisling (Republican) branches of the Party is mostly a matter of method rather than destination. The Ubers are fine with stampeding the herd, and if a few get trampled or a few pounds are run off no big deal. Speed and direction are everything; can’t let anyone think about what’s ahead (progressivism) just make sure they fear what’s behind. The Quislings want to mosey the herd along, let them graze as they go, get there with the most meat on the bone, and when they arrive they’ll not balk at the gate. In both cases the herd members will compete to be the first down the tunnel. The end is the same; the knocker doesn’t care how the cowpokes got them there. Literal example: In Eastern Europe the SS conducted mass sweeps for Jews and other “undesirables” and force marched, sometimes actually double timing, them to train stations for “transport”. In France the local beat cop would deliver an official letter declaring the Jews non-citizens and instructing them to report to a particular train station and track for “relocation”, sometimes as much as a week ahead of departure. The French method was just as, if not more, effective than the Eastern model.
Another excellent piece.
“The line dividing the New Right and the Buckley Conservative is between those who accept the reality of the human condition and those who don’t. ”
This is the dividing line and there is no talking through it. Either you accept that poverty ridden places are that way because of the people themselves… or you think can you re-engineer the world. Unfortunately, the later idea is so seductive and highly narcissistic in nature.
Christianity doesn’t say “solve the problem of the poor”, it says “help them out as you can”. It calls for engagement, not re-engineering human society. Yes, build a soup kitchen. Do not expect to make a shiny suburb out of people who think 2 hours ahead at most. That belongs to God alone.
Yet, the almost universal agreement on TV and in the pundit class is that not only is such a thing possible, we have a moral duty to achieve it. In that the liberals and conservatives only bicker about methods. That’s part of the reason for the #NeverTrump melt downs in the pundits. Trump is accepting the world as it is and moving forward, rather than attempting to create a (distinctly white, upper class) utopia on mass scale.
Good point, Piffle. Shoot, so why can’t everybody be upper middle class human perfection? I think another difference is this – collective salvation vs individual salvation. One can argue that there may not be any salvation possible either way, but we seem to be hardwired to believe otherwise. The collectivists want you to change toward perfection, the individualists will leave you alone. That, to me, seems to be the big difference.
@ Piffle4Me – Your statement “Do not expect to make a shiny suburb out of people who think 2 hours ahead at most.” is actually a very global perspective and is why much of the rest of the world is where it is today.
In a population which revolves primarily around a gun-culture and lacks the ability to adapt and advance through the use of their intellect, no amount of Christian charity is going to change anything. They acquire (notice I didn’t say work) only what they need for today and the next day, they repeat the process. Multiply this behavior several billions times and the results are predictable.
Karl, “gun culture” may mean something else in Germany (or simply the intent with which you use the phrase), but in the US the overwhelming majority of persons who are members of Gun Culture are firm believers in individual responsibility and rule of law, and are in general less prone to crime than the aggregate US population. Now if by “gun-culture” you meant people who demand “respect” by making threat-displays (whether via shouting and posturing or actually brandishing firearms), and act as if violence is the default means of settling disagreements, you’re describing something other than US Gun Culture. Predatory, ghetto-thug (of whatever skin color) culture would be a more apt description.
@ Mike_C – What I meant by ‘gun culture’ is more to the ghetto-thug you describe. However ghetto-thug is a limited definition that would only fit American blacks. I use the term ‘gun culture’ to describe any number of countries that as you say, openly display weapons as a show of force and power. Mozambique is a obvious example given they have the AK-47 in their flag. America may have guns as part of their culture, but is not what their culture is based upon.
By definition culture is “The customs, arts, social institutions, and achievements of a particular nation, people, or other social group..” For many people around the world, the gun is about as far as they have been able to develop intellectually, even through they have no concept, let alone the skills, for how to design or even manufacture one themselves.
From several comments in here on the gun topic, I think Americans tend to think they are the only people who can legally own firearms. This idea is completely false. While the laws may be more strict, many Europeans, including Germans, French, Austrians, Czechs, Italians and Swiss own firearms. In fact the Swiss military allows their soldiers to keep their weapons at home and to even travel with them in public when on duty.
I have always found it curious that American soldiers are not actually issued weapons as part of their kit. Lack of trust by their government? Concern for public safety? Perhaps one of you who is ex-military can comment on this point. The Swiss trust their soldiers to openly carry fully automatic weapons in public, but the Americans do not. This is not a criticism, just an observation. To the point – what good is an unarmed soldier? I must also ask, how would a shopping mall full of Americans react if four or five soldiers appeared with full kit, and fully armed? I know how the Swiss react – they don’t. It’s normal. They expect their soldiers to be armed.
Guns have been very much a part of European culture, and our history, but we have a different attitude towards them. We even have civilian technical schools which promote and teach weapons technology in order to train young people for a career in the arms industry such as Glock, Heckler & Koch, Krupp or Rheinmetall . Does this type of technical school exist in the USA? http://www.htl-ferlach.at/en
Karl, I am glad to see that you understand a bit more about Americans and the gun culture we have.
I also think your example of Mozambique is the penultimate example of “arrested development.” I mean, really, who puts an AK-47 on their country flag?
As to why American soldiers do not carry weapons in public, that I cannot really answer except to say that the military is not authorized to operate within the US in full military mode. Something to do with The Posse Comitatus Act of 1878 I believe. However, until recent attacks on military bases within the US, it is a good question as to why soldiers are not allowed to defend themselves and their base from attack since it only makes sense that the bases would be logical targets for enemies to attack.
One question for you. I notice in many of your comments, you use the Swiss as an example many times. Why is that? They are on 8 million out of some 190 million western Europeans, around 5%. Germany is your country. What is the policy in your country?
@ LetsPlay – The Swiss population is made up of about 25% foreigners (non-Swiss citizens) like myself, so I follow what’s going on here as I do in my own country. Switzerland is a bit unique in it’s relationship to the rest of Europe. Among other things, it does not have open borders (as exist between France and Germany or the Netherlands), it has strict import control at the borders for items brought into the country (and tariffs must be paid upon entry) and it also maintains the Swiss Franc (CHF), not the Euro.
Switzerland also practices what I would call “active participative democracy” down to the Canton level. A Canton is the smaller division of the country at the state level. Due to its small size, a Canton here would be closer to the size of a county in the USA.
Many important things are put to a vote in Switzerland, rather than decree by the government as is the case in most of Europe or the USA. Only in Switzerland are the people actually given the opportunity to vote for national defense spending, such as whether or not to buy fighter jets. This is very unheard of in Germany, and I believe also impossible in the USA.
With regards to gun laws in Germany and Switzerland here is a direct link to our legal requirements – in English for your reading pleasure. 🙂 The second link is the website for Swiss weapons regulations. Unfortunately it is not available in English, but you could copy paste the text into Google translate or use http://itranslate4.eu/en/
https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/englisch_waffg/englisch_waffg.html
https://www.fedpol.admin.ch/fedpol/de/home/sicherheit/waffen.html
I see. Danke.
Hey you guys, this is an excellent treatise on why the 2nd in the first place.
Below is the conclusion of that piece.
http://www.guncite.com/journals/vandhist.html
1994 Valparaiso Univ. Law Review
THE HISTORY OF THE SECOND AMENDMENT
David E. Vandercoy
VI. Conclusion
English history made two things clear to the American revolutionaries: force of arms was the only effective check on government, and standing armies threatened liberty. Recognition of these premises meant that the force of arms necessary to check government had to be placed in the hands of citizens. The English theorists Blackstone and Harrington advocated these tenants. Because the public purpose of the right to keep arms was to check government, the right necessarily belonged to the individual and, as a matter of theory, was thought to be absolute in that it could not be abrogated by the prevailing rulers.
These views were adopted by the framers, both Federalists and Antifederalists. Neither group trusted government. Both believed the greatest danger to the new republic was tyrannical government and that the ultimate check on tyranny was an armed population. It is beyond dispute that the second amendment right was to serve the same public purpose as advocated by the English theorists. The check on all government, not simply the federal government, was the armed population, the militia. Government would not be accorded the power to create a select militia since such a body would become the government’s instrument. The whole of the population would comprise the militia. As the constitutional debates prove, the framers recognized that the common public purpose of preserving freedom would be served by protecting each individual’s right to arms, thus empowering the people to resist tyranny and preserve the republic. The intent was not to create a right for other (p.1039)governments, the individual states; it was to preserve the people’s right to a free state, just as it says.
Karl, There is an important aspect about guns I think you are missing like to point out to you. Guns are property. Owning property, that is a fundamental right of free people. That is something I believe no one or any state but the owner of property has any business deciding.
As soon as some one or something decides they have special power to decide this regardless of the property owners consent, tacit or otherwise, you have tyranny. It is like the Wuss Right, they have abrogated their duty to protect and defend the rights of property.That is all they had to do, and in keeping to that duty, none of what is happening would be. Because property is the first thing. It has nothing to do with a persons IQ, their culture, their faith, education, skill, nothing. It is a primal thing, owning property. Where does it stop carl, guns, freedom to speak, life?
@ Doug – As with any property, governments determine what you can and can’t own. And there are no absolutes – such as in the case of eminent domain, even your land can be taken. In the case of firearms, the US and a few other countries, have decided to include ownership of these particular items in their Constitutions as a right. For others, ownership is a privilege based on certain conditions which must be met first. Like a drivers license, where driving is a privilege, not a Constitutional right.
And if the left can’t win on a complete gun ban, then they go for the “death by a thousand cuts.” Example, Gov. Moonbeam in CA. Recently the CA Legislature passed a passel of new laws on magazines, push button extractors for magazines, etc. Their aim is two fold: 1. to make it prohibitively expensive to be a gun owner in CA and 2. to make the guns owned and sold in CA (or even brought into CA) less capable than originally designed. And of course, the never ending push to “register” and know who owns what and where you live for when they get up the cajones to try a gun-grab.
@ LetsPlay – I find it very dishonest that American politicians attempt to disable the intent of the 2nd Amendment (2A) in a way that does not impact criminals, but only law abiding gun owners. While I do not necessarily agree that the purpose behind the 2A still exists as it once did, (for reasons I have mentioned previously) the logic is clear that a nation that does give it’s citizens the right to own firearms, must allow those same citizens the ability to protect themselves from criminals who can and do use firearms against them.