Back in the heyday of conservatism, Bill Buckley would often say you can know everything about a person’s politics from their options on abortion and Israel. It was true to the extent that it put them one side or the other of the consensus. By the late 20th century, the ruling consensus in Washington was pro-abortion and pro-Israel, but not publicly enthusiastic for either. These two issues were useful proxies for foreign policy and social policy at the time.

Something similar can be said of race and culture. Those who deny the reality of race are on one side of the great divide, while those who accept biological reality are on the other side of the divide. There is no middle ground. Those who think culture is a manufactured good are on the side of biology deniers, while those who think culture is the product of biology and time are on the side of the realists. Again, these are mutually exclusive positions that cannot be reconciled.

That is what makes this post over at the American Mind interesting. According to their website, “The American Mind is an online publication of the Claremont Institute dedicated to the ideas that drive our political life.” Claremont was founded in 1979 by four students of political theorist Harry V. Jaffa, the man responsible for the second founding thesis. He is also why so-called conservatives preach the glories of Lincoln to their mostly Southern supporters.

The title of the post is the first clue that the writer is not only on the denialist side of the great divide, but in their left-wing camp. The first sentence sounds like something from a grievance studies paper. It is pure cultural Marxism. “The fabricated black race should never have been born. It was confected out of false biological taxonomies by Europeans to justify a system of human physical bondage that, paradoxically, brought black people into the historical process.”

Whenever you see the phrase “historical process” you are almost always dealing with a man of the Left. This is right out of the Young Hegelian view of history that was allegedly rejected by Strauss. If there was any doubt as to the views of the author, the next sentence clears it up. “It was a cruel, artificial construct, and blacks have suffered enough under it.” When someone speaks of race as a social construct, they do so not to clarify, but to obscure the reality of biology in human affairs.

A further example of that desire to obscure reality in the fog of rhetoric is this sentence further down in the post. “A taxonomy that makes human distinctions based not on cultural differences—which can objectively be defined as the set of dominant beliefs, customs, and traditions of a homogenized or non-homogenized group—but based on race, which none of the conceptual markers that allow us to predict or pick out any moral characteristic of a human being, is valorized by most blacks.”

This is another habit of the far-left. They conflate issues so that the easy to defend can be blended with the impossible to defend. In this case, he claims cultural differences can be quantified. This is true to a point. Then says racial differences tell us nothing about moral characteristics of people. This is also true, but it is incorrect to compare culture with morality in this way. It is a false comparison. Further, race helps us explain cultural differences and is quite useful at predicting them.

Then we get this sentence. “Holding a racial identity turns one into a practicing racist. White supremacists of all stripes, either of the North American variety or the Nazi counterpart, have given us ample evidence of the nefarious nature of strong racial identities, especially when they are wedded to a political ideology that demonizes racial/ethnic minorities such as blacks or Jews.” That is jargon right out of the grievance studies department of a state university.

It is tempting to dismiss this as irrational ranting or maybe a display item used by the Claremont people to show they are not racist. The conventional Right has always loved putting the intellectual version of a lawn jockey on the pages of their publications to own the Left by being to the left of them on race. Donald Trump spent a good deal of his presidency celebrating his gifts to people who hated him just to prove that he was not the evil racist his enemies claimed.

Beyond that, it suggests that the path of civic nationalism, the sort preached by people like Ben Shapiro, must end up in cultural Marxism. Once you deny that biology is real and has a real impact on social organization, you are left with a problem. How does culture come into existence, if it is not a function of blood and soil? The answer they are left with is that it is a product imposed on people by other people. Culture is just ideas, and they can be anything you like.

There is nothing more Marxist than this interpretation of culture. The cultural Marxist seek domination of the institutions for this reason. They believe culture is the product of societal institutions. If you control them, you can control the culture. The civic nationalist, like Strauss, believe there is an ideal culture. If you get that right, then the institutions fall into place. In both cases, the underlying assumption is that the nature of man plays no role in the final outcome.

To deny that biology is the prime mover of both history and culture inevitably leads to man declaring himself the prime mover. This is what we see here. The writer assumes humans can be talked out of their racial identity. There is a short hop from there to thinking that humans must be compelled to abandon their natural identity. This is the same path that all such thinking takes. If man is free of nature’s god, then he can recreate himself and his fellow man by his own lights. He becomes man’s god.

The end of most journeys is determined by the starting point. It is why intellectuals of all types talk about first principles. It is that starting framework that lays out the path forward and ultimately sets the destination. When the first principle is a denial of observable and measurable reality, the road suddenly opens up to wherever the imagination can conjure. So far, all of those imaginary destinations have not been the utopia, but rather a hellish bloodbath of murder and mayhem.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

When you are living through an age, it is very difficult to see the currents with which the age will be identified. Few people living in the Jazz Age would have guessed they were living in the Jazz Age. In this age, society is whipsawed by one trend after another, so it seems impossible to know which one will be remembered. Maybe this is the geriatric age where aging Baby Boomers ruled the day. Perhaps the democratic age, where mob rule plunged the West into darkness and chaos.

One option may be the age of meaning. This is the time when people are always searching about for meaning and purpose in their lives. They turn the trivial into all-important moments, so they can pretend to be in a struggle. They invent victims of imaginary oppression so they can play the white knight. Every crisis, it turned into a crusade that quickly takes on the trappings of religion. Ours is an age where everyone is on a vision quest and they force the rest of us to play along.

For example, lost in all of the handwringing about Afghanistan is how some became emotionally attached to a place they ignored for two decades. Suddenly, getting our “allies” out was a holy mission. They spent all day on-line playing “digital Dunkirk” as if they were really doing something heroic. All of a sudden, the media was full of stories from people who claimed to working to get their friends out of the country. Of course, those friends were always heroic Afghans, not Americans.

This quest for meaning was not limited to LARP’ing on-line. Two congressmen flew over there against the wishes of the government in order to play hero. They were not satisfied with making noises about it on the House floor. They had to be in the middle of the action. Rep. Markwayne Mullin of Oklahoma decided to play Rambo and went over to personally rescue people. These pointless and foolish acts are driven by a need to be seen as men with a purpose beyond the role they play.

Of course, for close to two years we have been hit by a tsunami of this from women claiming they are in the “front lines” of Covid. Just look at the language. They imagine they are in real trenches fighting real monsters. When it started, every nurse and doctor went on-line every day to tell us how exhausted they were, as if they were rescuers working day and night to save people from a collapsed building. Many got swept up in their fantasies on-line for the same reason.

The main reason the Covid panic is not old news is the people swept up in the cause cannot let go of it. For many, this was the first time in their life they woke up in the morning with a sense of purpose. There are nefarious reasons behind the government response, but it is aided and abetted by the quest for meaning. There are many more people who want to believe the stories are true than those who are offended by the assault on their liberty by the state in response to the problem.

The best way to see this quest for meaning is in things that are not driven by a sense of crisis, but by history. Here is the ridiculous governor of Virginia inserting himself and his co-religionists into the history books. They get to feel like heroes for righting a past wrong, that was probably not wrong. The facts are not important. They need to be part of the long gone struggle. Since the line for the Emmett Till ride is way too long, they picked a different event to exercise their quest for meaning.

This is one reason events like the civil right movement are talked about as if they happened yesterday. Part of it is nostalgia, for sure, but a big part of it is a secondhand nostalgia by people who have no direct connection to the events. Instead, they seek to fill the need for meaning and purpose in their present lives with fantasies about having experienced emotionally important events of the shared past. This allows them to feel like they are part of the struggle from the safety of home.

Bourgeoise restlessness is not a new thing. This desire to do something important seems to be the result of leisure. Young men from good homes have gone off to seek adventure since there have been young men from good homes. We live in an age in which large swaths of the population are idle. Poverty is no longer a threat, as even the poor have more than they need. In one respect, the quest for meaning in a post-scarcity phenomenon driven by an excess of middle-class people.

Another driver though is the devastation wrought by liberal democracy. Social capital in the form of family and community has been used to fire the great engines of the technological state. The transactional replacements, on-line community, social media groups and mass media, are a poor substitute. Like emergency meal replacements, manufactured community can keep you going for a while, but it is a constant reminder of the loss of the real thing, as well as a poor substitute.

At the end of the Time Machine, the protagonists realizes that the future he witnessed was not the failure of man, but the result of his success. “It is a law of nature we overlook, that intellectual versatility is the compensation for change, danger, and trouble.” Once those challenges were conquered, there was no need for the sort of men who rush to the sound of danger. Over time those types faded away and were replaced with the type who easily lived a carefree life as food.

We are learning a similar lesson. Like all living things, humans are wired to do what is necessary to reach sexual maturity. What has always made man unique is the desire to live beyond that point. To look into the heavens for purpose and then manifest that purpose on earth for the benefit and admiration of our people. The dream may be small or grandiose, but it is the dream that gives meaning to life. We are not meant to live in adult daycare centers, marking our days consuming the latest products.

Perhaps the tech overlords will make the virtual quest for meaning good enough to keep the species going for a while longer. We will plug into the machine and have our dreams made true by an algorithm. Maybe we simply make ourselves insane in the increasingly chaotic quest for meaning. Whatever happens, there is a good chance that people look back at this age and know that we were spoiled for choice in the material realm but starved for choice in the spiritual realm.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

There are two ways to look at the rules. There is the spirit of the rules, the intentions of the rule makers, what they were trying to achieve. Then there is a narrow interpretation of the rules as written without any thought as to what it was the ruler makers were trying to create. The former option assumes the ability to discern the intent of the rule makers from resources often unrelated to the rules. The latter assumes the ruler makers were without error when they created the rules.

This should be how legal disputes are framed. One side argues intent, and the other side argues the letter. The reason is both sides acknowledge the primacy of the law, but disagree as the its meaning. Their dispute can and often does result in a compromise where the letter of the law side agrees to a change in the wording in order to clarify the meaning, such that both sides can agree on the implementation. The dispute is a form of improvement on the law and its consequences.

That should be the nature of the law in a civil modern society. Instead, the law in modern America is a battle where one side conjures imaginary constructs in which the rule makers could have created law and the other side rigidly defends the last set of imaginary constructs that were miraculously embedded into the law. One side argues for a living constitution, an imaginary framework that is always spawning new legal models, while the federalist side defends the law as written.

An example of the imaginary construct is this ruling by the Ninth Circuit which ruled 7-4 against George Young, a man who was twice denied an open carry permit. The court found that Hawaiian law predates and supersedes the Second Amendment. “Hawai‘i law began limiting public carriage of dangerous weapons, including firearms, more than 150 years ago — nearly fifty years before it became a U.S. territory and more than a century before it became a state”.

In the opinion, they rely upon a philosophical claim that the present is the result of the long march of history. The pro-gun side only goes back to the 18th century and the writing of the constitution. This new theory goes back to medieval English law to argue that the default position has always been a strict regulation of weapons. They also acknowledge that they could go back even further, presumably to dawn of writing, to prove that history moves toward an unarmed society.

To the untrained mind, this sounds like a weird new form of animism, in which the intent of history is discerned by a specialized examination of the historical record. In this view, the law itself becomes meaningless. What matters is the esoteric debates among a specialized class of clerics. They compete with one another to conjure novel theories of history to determine public policy. The assumption is always that some animating force lies behind the movement of history.

More important, the people writing the law cease to matter. In the case of the Second Amendment, we know the intent of those who wrote it. Despite the crackpot claims about it applying only to militias, we know what the Founders meant. They wanted a society comprised on armed men willing to defend society from tyrants. Jefferson imagined a society that had regular rebellions in which tyrants were hanged as a way to keep the tree of liberty properly manured.

The intent in this mystical legal theory does not matter, as the people writing the laws are just flotsam on the tides of history. The Founders may have thought they were on the right side of history, but history clearly shows they were not, so history demands their intent be ignored. They fought the tides of history, with their crazy ideas about liberty, but they and their creations must be swept aside as the mighty river of humanity flows towards its inevitable destination.

Another example of this mystical view of history is the claim that the Second Amendment is the result of racism. You see, the concept of racism may not have existed in the 18th century, but it is a thread running through history. It is the invisible hand that guides the white race. Because everything white people have done can be motivated by this dark spirit force of racism, nothing white people have created can have authority, including their intent when writing laws.

In practice, this shamanistic legal theory is the overturning of law itself. If the letter and spirit of the law are products of history and history can only be understood by the shamans of the faith, then there is no law. The Soviet Union had a constitution that looks like something the modern democrats demand. In reality, everything in that document was interpreted by party theorists. The text was meaningless and so was the political theory behind it, because they existed to serve party goals.

Ironically, history tells us where this must end. The clever use of language by people bred to argue esoteric points of moral philosophy does not alter reality. The law in America is now a tyranny of the invisible hand of history, as interpreted by a shadowy class of clerics that never step into direct sunlight. The law is a conspiracy against the people, as corrupt as every other Western institution. Like politics or economics, the law is a tool. The hand that wields that tool is what matters.

At some point, the hand behind the present madness will become clear.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.

Note: The weekly post is up at Taki. This week is a cranky rant about wanting to be left alone in a world full of busybodies. Sunday Thoughts is up behind the green door, along with some other things.

Inside the microwave oven there is a microwave generator, which takes electricity and converts it into high-powered radio waves. The magnetron blasts these waves into the food compartment. The microwaves bounce back and forth off the reflective metal walls of the box, just like light bounces off a mirror. As these waves travel through the food item, they make the molecules inside it vibrate more quickly, which generates heat and that is what causes the food to get hot.

It is not only a brilliant way to quickly heat food in the home, but it is also a good way to think about what is happening inside modern America. Instead of a magnetron generating microwaves, we have the mass media which generates lies, fabrications, and propaganda. These waves of false information bounce around within society causing people to act. Since these waves of data are at odds with reality, this causes friction within society and the people inside get increasingly agitated.

As an example, consider this story in the sporting press about mascots. The claim is that a survey was conducted and the Notre Dame mascot, an exaggerated leprechaun, is the fourth most offensive mascot in college sports. The top three most offensive mascots were from Florida State, San Diego State and Hawaii. According to the story, these mascots are offensive to Native Americans. The survey was conducted by a company calling itself Quality Logo Products.

For starters, the whole thing is based on the lie that it is possible to be offended by a team mascot. This is a lie created in the last half century. For ten thousand years of human history, no one thought to be offended by such things. In fact, no one looked for a reason to be offended. Personal offense required intent. The person causing the offense was either trying to insult someone or was reckless in their opinions so as to cause an offense to social norms.

Putting that aside, what are the odds that this company, which sells marketing materials, actually conducted such a survey? What are the odds that anyone knows the name of the San Diego State mascot? Most American sports fans would know the Notre Dame mascot, as their football team is nationally famous. Few people probably know there is a college called San Diego State. The same can be said of Hawaii. In other words, the survey is completely fake.

The way these things work is the company probably thought this was a good way to get attention for their services. If you beam some lies into the college sports oven, you will get some of the fans agitated. In this case, the mass media is the mirror reflecting this stream of nonsense back to the intended target. Other media picked up the original “story” and beamed that back onto the target. In this way, a deliberate lie is turned into another social irritant, agitating the public.

Joseph de Maistre said, “False opinions are like false money, struck first of all by guilty men and thereafter circulated by honest people who perpetuate the crime without knowing what they are doing.” This is the modern age, accept that most opinion is false, and it is produced on an industrial scale. The people are assaulted by a constant stream of lies and falsehoods that comes from all directions. Even the escapism of sports entertainment is weaponized against them.

Some people sense that they are in a sea of contemptuous disregard for truth and unplug as best they can from the system. They don’t consume television and avoid what passes for mass culture. The person who does this chooses to live outside of society, however, so it brings its own challenges. Still, everyone has experienced the peace of going on holiday and unplugging from the system. It is like being unchained from a lunatic for a few days.

Another aspect of this is that the modern age selects for the sort of person who enjoys trafficking in lies and the madness it creates. This is a feature of political systems that claim to express the general will of the people. Communist societies bombard the people with propaganda to break their spirit. By forcing the people to nod along with the lies, they force the people to be party to the lie. As Theodore Dalrymple once said, “A society of emasculated liars is easy to control.”

In liberal democratic societies, this is not a part of the design, but a byproduct of the conflict central to democracy. That conflict is the assertion that all opinion is equal and must have equal weight. Equality is itself a nonsensical term as no two things on this plane of existence are truly equal. When it comes to humans, it is like comparing snowflakes, as everyone is slightly different. In order to maintain the fiction of equality, liberal democracy must paper over reality with lies.

What starts as a polite fiction soon becomes an obsession for the true believer, who becomes obsessed with covering the truth of nature. This creates the demand for people who enjoy lying. At first, the best liars rise in status, as they serve the interests of the system and the people atop it. This inverts the natural moral code of the people, rewarding the falsehood at the expense of daily reality. Quickly, democracy turns into a madhouse of lies and heated reaction to those lies.

Equality is the great crime against civilization. The evidence of this crime is reality, which like the corpse from a homicide, is impossible to hide forever. No matter how hard the perpetrators try to weigh it down with lies, it keeps turning up. This fact drives the egalitarian mad as he becomes obsessed with hiding this truth. His madness becomes the madness of the people over whom he rules, but the reality of the human condition will not stay hidden. It is an immutable truth of life.

The crackdown by the oligarchs on dissidents has had the happy result of a proliferation of new ways to support your favorite creator. If you like my work and wish to kick in a few bucks, you can buy me a beer. You can sign up for a SubscribeStar subscription and get some extra content. You can donate via PayPal. My crypto addresses are here for those who prefer that option. You can send gold bars to: Z Media LLC P.O. Box 432 Cockeysville, MD 21030-0432. Thank you for your support!

Promotions: We have a new addition to the list. Havamal Soap Works is the maker of natural, handmade soap and bath products. If you are looking to reduce the volume of man-made chemicals in your life, all-natural personal products are a good start. If you use this link you get 15% off of your purchase.

The good folks at Alaska Chaga are offering a ten percent discount to readers of this site. You just click on the this link and they take care of the rest. About a year ago they sent me some of their stuff. Up until that point, I had never heard of chaga, but I gave a try and it is very good. It is a tea, but it has a mild flavor. It’s autumn here in Lagos, so it is my daily beverage now.

Minter & Richter Designs makes high-quality, hand-made by one guy in Boston, titanium wedding rings for men and women and they are now offering readers a fifteen percent discount on purchases if you use this link.   If you are headed to Boston, they are also offering my readers 20% off their 5-star rated Airbnb.  Just email them directly to book at sa***@*********************ns.com.