The basis of law is justice not obedience

Apr 21st, 2014
by Ted Swanson.
1 comment

enforcing_the_law

In order to gain perspective, it is useful to divide the world in two: those things that were created by man and those things that were not created by man. Buildings and trees both exist, but buildings do not grow out of the ground. It is civilization on the one hand and wild nature on the other.

Similarly, there are two sets of laws: the laws created by man and the laws not created by man, the laws of nature. Within the laws created by man we can include official laws, but also unofficial laws such as etiquette or custom. The laws of nature include physics and laws of necessity such as eating food and drinking water in order to survive. The laws of nature are impossible to break. Man-made laws, on the other hand, can indeed be broken if one chooses to break them. Deeming something legal or illegal does not carry the same force as a law of nature.

With this in mind, we may ask: what did man do before man-made law and how did man conceive of law to govern society in the first place? Who wrote the first laws? They had nothing to refer to; someone had to divine them first. A book of laws did not just fall from the sky.

At some point, people simply used their minds to work things out in reality. By observing nature and paying attention to how people interacted, they bottom lined it and created official laws for how man could act in accordance with reality and the laws of nature. Thus the first man-made laws were created.

People first used their minds to divine what was right and just, and second, recorded these observations as official codes of conduct. What is right and just is not dependent on what is deemed official law or code, rather, it is the other way around, laws and codes are dependent on what is right and just as divined by the mind. Man-made laws are always secondary to the laws of nature.

What is right and what is just, is primary, and what is lawful is secondary. The goal is to have the secondary in accordance with the primary. But, again, a law is not right and just, merely by virtue of the fact that it has been recorded or deemed as such. And on the other side of the coin, something may be wrong even if it is technically legal.

To resort to justifying what is right or wrong by referring to law or a hand book is the “I was just following orders” alibi. It is a convenient way to shut off your mind, obey your master, and ignore the grand scheme of things. To do what is right and just, even if it be unlawful, or to refrain from doing wrong, even if it be lawful, is a responsibility too great for many men.

Plato noted this many years ago when he pointed out that wisdom is not found in a book. Any man who merely recites what is written down as justification will be a burden to his fellow man. The upside to records is that experience is streamlined and we do not have to suffer the folly of our ancestors. The downside is that we do not experience these things first hand and we take things for granted. We move further and further away from reality itself.

The mind becomes feeble when it relies exclusively on records and codes of conduct that are “just so.” Eventually, people begin to base what is right or wrong on what is law or custom, rather than the other way around. A law based on a law, based on a law, eventually begins to have no grounding in reality.

Apply this logic to the Bundy Ranch situation or to the Weev situation. Who is acting according to natural law and who is acting according to man-made legal law? Imagine it was the days before laws or books or writing, who looks like the aggressor and who looks like they have righteousness and justice on their side? In fact, the federal government is not merely using a single, simple law as justification; they are using law based on law based on law. It is a labyrinthine mess of precedent, statutes, provisions, additions, citations, ABC, and XYZ so far removed from nature and reality it is not even funny.

The story of history and civilization could be seen as the tension between what is right and what the official man-made law is. Many a hero was made by breaking the law. The law is always secondary to what man feels, in his gut, is right and just. Man-made law can be broken whereas the law of nature cannot. What is right and just produces the law and is the basis for law in the first place.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · ·

Burying the past and discovering the future

Apr 20th, 2014
by Brett Stevens.
7 comments

waking_up_from_history

When I look over vast mistakes, the great question is Where does it all begin?

However, I think this is a mistaken way of looking at the situation. Most great errors are always with us, and can be entered upon like a path. You can begin walking at the start of the path, or halfway there, and thus the distance between you and oblivion is variable.

I base this on what I’ve learned of evil. Most people want to externalize evil into a scapegoat, like Satan, the Rich, the Jews, the African-American, the Conservatives, drugs, alcohol, PTSD. But evil is a choice. It is a choice to deny reality for the benefit of the self. It is a denial of consequences or of their importance. Evil does not occur because we intend to do evil; evil occurs because we stop trying to avoid evil, believing that it isn’t within us.

But it walks besides us like a shadow and is attached to us, because any decision we make that is evil results in evil. Nietzsche’s point, in attacking good/evil, was that these are externally defined things much like Satan himself. Instead, we should look at the consequences of our proposed actions, and think whether we would consider the result an evil or not.

Contrary to what the crowd thinks, this is not a mystifying assessment. We do not lack compassion, nor need it. The question is logical: did this outcome make more of the good, the beautiful and the true in life, or did it reduce that amount? Sometimes, seemingly evil acts — taking of a life — result in greater beauty. It may be that if we knocked every hipster to the floor and suffocated them with greased sofa pillows that life would be more beautiful, good and true, and at that point, it’s hard to argue with killing as an act of good, because its consequences would be good even if its method was evil.

People will be talking about Hitler on this day because he went down a path beyond good and evil. To him, the only good was a stronger Germany without Jews and Bolsheviks; he ended up causing the deaths of Germans by the millions, forcing Bolshevik rule on Germany and leaving a people wracked with guilt over mass murder of Jewish men, women and children. Men, women and children… whole families… where have I heard of that before? Oh yes, it was the French Revolution, where for the non-crime of being aristocrats, whole families were beheaded to the cheering of the crowd. That is not beyond good and evil. It is an externalization of evil, or the bad choices we as a society have made, onto a small group so that like the scapegoat we can drive them over a cliff and declare ourselves 100% pure and moral.

As we look back over history, I suggest we stop. Stop looking for the origin of all that went wrong. Realize that what goes wrong is with us always. It manifests in liberalism, but its origin is in the moral choice of individuals to deny reality as a whole in order to focus on the desires, judgments and feelings of the individual. When individuals get together in groups to demand this “right” from society, they form a mechanism known as Crowdism which uses passive aggression as a weapon. By declaring itself good, in that it creates equality and brotherhood among men, it styles anyone else as the enemy. It then destroys them so it can grow like a cancer, making kings out of peasants and hateful tyrants of us all.

Noted British philosopher Roger Scruton wrote about this recently. He has come to realize, as have others before him, that the crisis before us is not the outsiders, but the insiders. It is the Crowdism elites and their support from the groundlings that allows this phenomenon to snowball, crushing all who dare object in the name of common sense. As Scruton writes:

No one could possibly want to attack us, the liberals insist, since we are so obviously nice – at least, the liberals among us. Our enemies are not those who threaten Western civilisation, but those who defend it, since their words are a ‘provocation’ and their presence an affront. Thus is blame redirected from the aggressor to the victim, and the duty to defend our inheritance turned into a duty to reject it.

Amerika.org has pointed out since its inception that our problem is not the scapegoat of diversity, which would be the minority groups among us, but diversity itself. Further, that diversity is part of the Crowdist impulses to destroy any majority culture or shared values system or heritage that exists, so that individuals have more license and are not constrained by any social order. The enemy is intangible. We must be beyond good and evil, but that is useless if we externalize. This demon cannot be killed. We must reach into our souls, cast it out, and then bring to others the possibility of life without the tyrant within.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · · · ·

Life simulator

Apr 19th, 2014
by Forest Johnson.
12 comments

human_brain_surface_pulsing

The human brain is actually a life-simulator. Did you know?

It runs simulations of what could happen in real life. What would happen, if…

But people have largely forgotten it is only a simulation, and has, in itself, no life.

They concern themselves with gathering ever more data to input, in order to run the simulation, because the simulation never gets quite life-like enough. But they often demand the data be unquestionably accurate, and verifiable, depending upon how intellectual they happen to be. They demand proof of it being virus-free, and certified, by others, before they will touch it, and load it into the simulation.

Meanwhile, actual life never happens.

Originally, the simulator was a superior way of deciding how best to kill a mammoth, without winding up dead.

Dangerous days, those. Crouched in a draughty cave, with saber-toothed tigers lying in wait, just outside. Only a flint spear for protection, and no armor to speak of. A man could get seriously hurt, trying to feed himself and his grubby clan, without a proper plan of action.

Later, a few thousand years on, the simulator morphed into a sort-of last-ditch means of living a sort-of last-ditch life, if one could discern no actual life to live. Deaf, dumb, noseless and blind, the quadriplegic could still enjoy some kind of existence, by living inside his skull. No need, any more, to venture forth. The mind supplied every need. Well, almost every need. Even it still needed some physical input, occasionally.

Knowledge, truth, wisdom, well, who had any use for things like those, when opinion seemed to serve just as well.

When everything could be rubbed-out, edited, and run as a new instance, who really cared about the effectiveness of anything, or the utility of decisions taken? Not a place of consequences, this simulator. Just reload…

These days, the simulator has all but completely replaced life, and is a highly unsatisfactory end in itself.

People actually believe that there are many realities, and every one of them is completely arbitrary.

You can see how they came to this, and even, to an extent, sympathize.

When safety, security, comfort, and longevity are the overarching concerns, who in their right minds would ever want to take any risks? Clearly, only the insane.

Thus did insanity come to replace sanity, as the barometer of so many societies.
Get enough fakes together, and fake becomes real, while real becomes fake.

Being able to exist outside the termite mound becomes a crime punishable by incarceration.

Bring him back into the fold! For his own good! Take away his life, for a better tomorrow!

So much for thinking. Which is really nothing more than ego, manufacturing its manipulations of what-is, for its own gain and standing. Intellect is not the noble thing it poses as. Not at all. It is ego made Godly. Idol worship, with itself as God. The seedy nirvana of the atheist.

I’ve often wondered, you see, what thinking actually is, since I do so little of it.

The only way to get an objective view of it is to stand somewhere outside the process.

I have. And I do. And now, with a little consideration, and a little contemplation, along with a fair bit of practice, so can you.

Posted in: Ontology.
Tagged: · · ·

Networking

Apr 18th, 2014
by Brett Stevens.
10 comments

social_isolation

Supposing I say what everyone is afraid to think: that our society is dying and that only a few remain who can understand any of importance whatsoever. That most people are committed to the avoidance of any truth in this regard and flee it when it appears.

What is left to do? I argue that the question is answered by quality, not quantity, thus the answer is not that we need another political party, but that we need to fix the ones we have. That requires all of us work with them and point them in the right direction.

Secondarily, I think it’s important to network. Your goal: to find others of the “remnant” who can think the way you do.

There’s a paradox here however. You’d like to reach the few, but to do so, you need to go through the many. That is because each person is like a wagon wheel with only so many spokes, so in order to meet a large number of people you need wheels connected to wheels connected to wheels. You need to meet a large number of people because you’re looking for perhaps 2% of the population, and this group will tend to be a bit furtive as they fear the Crowd just as much as you do.

Thus if you are lonely, and/or want to find others who can share your vision, do this: join activities and continuing education, partake in church and community doings, make sure you’re active in the least destructive political party where you live. Meet as many people as possible and impress upon them the media image that they can understand: you are a quiet person who likes books and unorthodox thinking. That’s all your average person needs to put two and two together and figure out which of their acquaintances you might like.

People will do this. For whatever reason, most of them are still struggling to have souls, and they mean well, when their meaning is not occluded by their addiction to untruthfulness. What you want the normal person to do is understand you as a personality type, and introduce you to others that also hit their filter for outside of the mainstream. Not all of these will be to your taste; sadly, most will be posers, nutjobs, and rubber trenchcoat types. But among those you will find the people you need.

Posted in: Socialization.

Redefining a woman’s role in traditionalism

Apr 18th, 2014
by James Harmon.
24 comments

women_in_offices_bored_with_abstractions

I consider myself a traditionalist in that I believe in traditional demographics, culture, marriage, living and morality. I am skeptical about economic liberalism, multiculturalism, mass immigration, materialism, consumerism, “equality” and their gender-related offspring: feminism.

My upbringing occurred at the hands of an ultra-liberal mother and an ultra-conservative father. My mother, an Atheist, taught me to believe in women’s rights, equality, and tolerance. My father a Lutheran, taught me the value of faith, folk and family. They quarreled often: my father ranted about how women shouldn’t be allowed to drive or vote, my mother laughed him off as too cranky. My mother went on about tolerance and diversity, yet has never dated anyone but white men. My father however, has dated a multitude of ethnicities, and was skeptical about the long term prospects.

I tended to take my mother’s side at first, naturally, because I was inexperienced in the world. My father’s anger at being a marginalized white Christian male struck my indoctrinated mind as stodgy and old fashioned. In time, my father’s frustrations became exceedingly clear to me. I entered the same field he did — within the ultra left wing of the art world — and from the beginning, I became radically angry at the liberalism imposed on me. For simply being masculine and daring, I was castigated as a typical “macho” guy. Despite my liberal views, my masculinity was far too threatening.

I eventually grew to realize that liberalism is inherently incompatible with a stable society and rebelled against it, first by venturing into extremism but later by moderating my angry young man tendencies and pulling from my time as an extremist valuable ideals. I realized, almost too late, that the only way to counteract my frustration was to find myself in tradition. By trying to live a more traditional and spiritually active life, I gradually saw that the idea of the family, children, a loving wife, and belief in God are wholesome things that bond us to life. The traditional masculine and feminine archetypes for man and woman are harmonizing things not oppositional ones. Being a strong man, and having a beautiful and caring woman, is the path to happiness and stability in our society.

There was just one glitch: believing this way is not tolerated in today’s society.

I used to support feminism, because I bought into the idea that women were “oppressed” in our society, but this is largely untrue. The state is on their side for virtually everything, providing subsidized health care, aid for their children so they do not need a man, abortion on demand without the father’s consent, coercive enforcement of child support payments and alimony sometimes even if the woman made more than the man. Our media-driven culture tells women it is good to be strong, independent and smart, while it tells men to know their place, not act rude, and stay in line.

To further complicate the issue, American men are still expected by American women to pay for things, be chivalrous, be manly, but also be sensitive, caring, understanding and docile, but exciting and strong. These contradictions are supported and enforced by the movies and TV we watch and popular tropes in literature and news media. Women may or may not have had legitimate grievances, but the pendulum has swung back too far in the other direction.

But men also need to accept our own hand in the way things have gone. We often live a life of easy sex and drinking instead of trying to start a family, and so women are less likely to enter long-term relationships with us. Even though women have more control over entry into relationships, many men also don’t care about the long term anymore; they buy into today only. They focus on sex alone and ignore a woman’s contributions to our society. This is every bit as much chauvinism as the worst “Mad Men” portrayal of lewd office behavior.

We cannot rebuild or reclaim a traditional society without the family, and there is no family without the woman. I have met many traditional women that are beautiful and intelligent and truly inspiring. They are good-hearted, loving caring people who want families and want our traditional culture and our traditional world back. We need a harmony between the sexes instead of another battle. Men do not need to simply dominate women; we need to work with them to reclaim our birthright.

We blame women for the damages of feminism far too often. The situation is much more complex than that. The traditional world had many strong females who were still feminine. Crass, male chauvinist rhetoric disgusts me just as much as women acting like men and justifying their grotesque physiques or grating personalities. But “feminist” men who simply use women for disposable sex are just as biased. Chauvinism of either sort isn’t the answer.

Working together is.

Posted in: Socialization.
Tagged: · · ·

The problem of passive aggression in far right personalities

Apr 17th, 2014
by Brett Stevens.
9 comments

white_nationalists-passive_aggressive

Of the various forms of far-rightist, a personality type keeps emerging. It is not inherent to rightism, but rather to any marginalized belief that is also messianic.

In this personality type, the mind becomes fixated on a perceived truth, for example the notion that The JewsTM control the world and are behind the downfall of the West. What becomes important then is bringing this idea to others. So important that all conversation must relate to the idea.

However, the idea is chosen in part because others cannot accept it. It is hopelessly divisive. This serves the purpose of the person speaking it, as they are able to act out a familiar pattern: tell the “truth,” have others recoil in horror, and be ostracized and thus retreat in justifiable alienation.

This keeps the idea-teller in a position of perpetual victimhood, and simultaneously gives them a reason to believe they are being martyred for truth. They told the most important idea; it was rejected, thus it was the fault of others for being weak (“wake up sheeple”) and the idea-teller is the messianic figure who sacrifices all to tell this truth.

For such a person, the ideal conversation is drive-by. “Your toaster failed? It’s the Jews. What, you don’t believe me? You’re just not ready for the truth. Nevermind, I understand; you’re weak. You just don’t want to accept the obvious. But me, I need to tell the truth as it is, so I hold myself to a higher standard than you.”

Where did they get this idea? From liberalism, perhaps, but it’s older than that. Even mothers use this idea with their children as a form of manipulation. “Son, you need to study more. You reject this? It’s because you’re immature. Never mind, I tried to tell you.”

An additional benefit of this approach is that no one is required to do anything. The far rightist comes in, says his or her piece, and then retreats to glorious victimhood. But, since the “sheeple” are unreceptive, nothing more can be done so the retreat is all that happens. This enables the far-rightist to go find some like minds, hoist some beers and listen to some droning angry punk music.

If I were opposed to right-wing ideas, I would endorse as many of these people as possible. I would give them money and keep them out of jail. I would get them housing in hip and happening urban areas. They are excellent marketing against right wing ideas because their goal is always to alienate other people and then be unreasonable.

They convert more people from vaguely right-wing positions to liberalism with their behavior than could be done with a million Superbowls of ad coverage. The only possible solution is to legitimize far-right ideas by removing them from the messianic approach and transferring instead to a more workmanlike offshoot of regular conservatism.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · · ·

Galactic rim

Apr 17th, 2014
by Forest Johnson.
22 comments

across_the_universe

I’ll give it to you straight. Nobody understands anything I write, anyway.
Give me a few moments of your day, and you’ll wander off, stunned at what you never knew.
Nothing personal; nobody else knew, either.
Do not imagine this to be either science-fiction, or theory.
Some journeys extend farther than expected…

The entity formerly known to itself as <lost in translation> gave birth. And as It did so, so was It born. A moment of certain death became non-event, and event One crystallized into being.
It stood at the threshold, although ‘stood’ is not remotely what It did. It existed, at the threshold, and moved without moving, from unspecified vantage, to unspecified vantage several parsecs removed.

It gazed with nothing that could gaze, upon a low-albedo planet, tirelessly rotating not far off. Far and wide, stars arrayed themselves, and It with them. The void throbbed. Hummed. Chimed. Softly singing in the microwave band. Echoes came and went, vanished and returned. Whispering from their eternal journey – at light-speed – through nothing, back into nothing. And all around lay nothing, packed to bursting.

Stately vessels of luminescence, hove and heeled, delicate as ballerinas in zero gravity. The solar wind whispered. <lost in translation> saw it all, and it was good. It was now. It was always. It was new and old, and near and far, and though It had just now joined it, it was flushed, still, with its first living breath.

It was. And so was It. One for All and All for One. They were It and It, they. All of them were It.
It lingered several millennia, and waited for the moment to pass, although, as It knew, the moment never would.
More aeons unrolled, silently, and without movement, and still the moment lingered.
It did not smile at this, for why should It? It was neither happy, not sad, hopeful nor dismayed. It simply was.

It considered Its past, and could find none to consider. It considered Its future, and likewise found no trace.
Again It was pleased, but there was no manifestation of Its pleasure. No memory marred Its balance.

It breathed, although there existed nothing to breathe, nor the means with which Its breathing could occur.
But Its breathing continued, regardless. In, out. In, out. Universes spawned, grew, waned and winked out. Until the next breath renewed it all again. All, in the absence of time.

It knew all. It was all. It knows all. It is all. Endless, without conception. Conception, without end.
Luminous blue, luminous white, quanta without limit, souls in the light.
Satisfied, <lost in translation> turned, without turning, moving without moving…

…The sun was setting in orange splendour, behind the mountain where God lives. The air was warm and scented, the grass fragrant and soft. He smiled. Then laughed. And still, the twelve nightjars, arranged around him, facing in, as the hours of a clock, did not move. It was a laugh rarely heard, with a quality rarely present, for the laugh was one of incredulous bliss, and foolish discovery, of the kind so rarely released from human lips.

So obvious. So near. So visible. So dear.
Some things are never seen. Humans do not know of them. Yet those things of which they do not know, are scarcely hidden from view.
Satisfied, the twelve nightjars rose, as one, and rustled off, through the evening air, to do what nightjars do, on perfect evenings.
To live.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · ·

What neoreaction should have told young men

Apr 16th, 2014
by Brett Stevens.
50 comments

world_detritus

The neoreactionary (and insert other trendy names here) movements are designed for media zombies. The groups behind them attempt to use re-naming as a way to avoid association with conservatism, and with the lowercase-conservatives Conservatism, Inc. types who are quick to tell us all to “be responsible,” shuffle off to careers, marry slutty women and produce a new generation of grist for the mill.

For this reason alone they’re not credible unless you think that people manipulating you with clever terminology is a good thing. However they tap into something that young men across America and Europe can feel but can’t articulate: they’ve been had. Worst of all, this isn’t a one-time ripoff. It’s slavery for the rest of your life.

The problem for young men is that for them to face this requires they reject the dominant lie of our time. This lie is so pervasive that it is a meta-taboo to even mention it in most cases. It is something we are taught from birth to avoid speaking of, by parents, teachers, employers, police, media and even our friends. It is what blinds us and keeps us enslaved.

Most people lack the will to break this taboo. Doing so requires too much honest courage for your average person, and it’s easier to be an iconoclast by throwing around some edgy ideas before drinking yourself silly, playing video games, smoking a little sinsemilla and humping an unpaid prostitute before getting up the next day and marching off to your job, where you’ll serve in tedium for the rest of your life.

Before we talk about the taboo, let’s talk about the high cost of parasitism. Before the 1950s mania for selling things to each other descended upon this country like airborne Ebola, people worked less. They got up early, got to the shop, and gave it a hard go for about six hours and then headed home. They took long lunches, smoked whenever they wanted, drank like fish and ate delicious high-fat foods. They also lived longer that we’re going to, in the biggest part because they were less stressed.

You could be working French Socialist-style hours at 25-30 hours a week, and having more time to just be yourself. You’d get tired of the booze and video games quicker and move on to better things. Maybe some real hobbies, adventures with friends, getting to know some better quality women than whatever staggered into the local watering hole and rasped out the name of your favorite alternative band and a drink order.

You’d be fitter too. People walked more then, just wandering around. Parks, wildlife, jaunts with companions. It was healthier all-around, and less ugly too. Cities were less violent in their non-ghetto areas. Architecture was less pointlessly trendy and uninspired. There was a sense that people should live whole lives, not just be function. When we’re all function, all that matters is who you can boss around in order to make yourself feel powerful.

The sad truth is that you work most of your life paying for others. Some are rich, some are poor; who they are and whether or not they deserve the money doesn’t matter. The fact is that it is taken from you to support that which otherwise could not support itself. Time is money, as Marx said, and it’s your time they are stealing. Like stabbing you in the chest at age 50, taking forty years off your life. Or jailing you from age 17-27. That’s the kind of loss you have, spending all your time working to support parasites.

Conservatism is taboo because it seeks to un-do the parasitism. You are slaving away for the pretense of others. They are radical individualists who believe they should not be accountable to the collaborative need to create civilization and work within reality. Thus they launch off on ivory tower pursuits, neurotic lives, self-indulgent lifestyles and invent “moral reasons” why you should pay for them and their bloated governments, their fat inefficient corporations and their media products.

When these people form groups, they take over societies. These groups aren’t majorities, but they are fanatically active because such people have nothing else. With their ideology, they’re big cheeses and important people who can vote for the creation of new roles for them to have lucrative jobs on your dime. Without their ideology, they’re just lumpy mundane neurotics sweating away in anonymous apartments.

In fact, their whole game is to avoid being top dog at all. It’s to make being top dog illegal. They hate anyone on top, unless that person got there through the system they’ve designed. They like rules, lots of rules. They like competition, which is basically a game to see who can stay in the office longest. They like making you jump through hoops, cutting your balls off with speech codes and PC taboos, and otherwise humiliating you so that you recognize their power and importance.

The taboo in this all is radical individualism, which in groups is expressed as “equality.” To these people, equality means that they can be crazy and you can be sane, but it’s still your job to pay for them, because they’re equal. Make sense? If you give it anything more than surface thought, it’s obviously crazy. It’s like mosquitoes demanding that every night you strip down and stand on your porch with the light on so they can get some blood because, hey, you have some and they’re like, starving, man…

Neoreaction, the Dark Enlightenment, the Red Pill and other such “new name, old ideas” philosophies are designed to help you see this. They dance around the real issue though. They flatter you and tell you that you should be a king, while endorsing the philosophy that keeps you a slave. Keep going to that boring job, chatting up those women who are far beneath you, and wasting your time in activities that are basically a receptacle tip for the masturbatory wasting of your vitality, youth and abilities. Oh, and buy their stuff.

At the root of all of this is a sickening pretense developed during the EnlightenmentTM. That pretense is that each and every one of us is important for just existing. Realism is the opposite principle: nothing is important “just because.” We make ourselves important by doing good things, and make ourselves irrelevant by chickening out and failing to rise to that challenge. But the irrelevant will always want your money, your time and your humiliation to salve their own rotten souls.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · · · · · ·

Where Conservatism, Inc. went wrong

Apr 15th, 2014
by Brett Stevens.
4 comments

defending_the_convention

In the USA, we have three silos of political reasoning: Liberal, Conservative and conservative. Note the lowercase “c.”

The main party of lowercase-conservatives is the GOP, which many refer to as being part of “Conservatism, Inc.” or those who profit from offering conservative opinions, stirring conservative rage, selling conservative products, and then losing elections or otherwise fumbling it so that the politics of outrage can continue. They are a parasitic thing, industries, and making conservatism into an industry was no exception.

What defines the lowercase-conservatives is that they have accepted liberalism as bedrock. They are inclined toward compromise and working within the system. You will recognize them by statements such as this:

The idiots are running amok in Washington again, so we’ve got to double-down on the fundamentals and hold that line. We need a strong economy and strong defense. Free market capitalism and American military power will save the day. We need to be inclusive and reach out to the common man, the minorities, women and homosexuals. It’s a different world than the one my grandfather grew up in, but like any good business, we need to adapt and move forward. The liberals get these people in to vote, so we can do the same. Just give them what they want. If we can compromise with the liberals on the big issues, we can hold that line on the economy and military. We can all get along.

If you think you recognize a zombie in those words, you are right: this is someone beginning the zombie ritual. The zombie ritual is the modern march to the end that is best exemplified by World War I: “This sounds insane, but everyone else is doing it, so I guess I’ll follow along in the assumption that someone somewhere thought about this and not just their own prestige, power and wealth.”

Several types of zombies populate the American countryside. The most dangerous are the infectious ones who actively patrol around looking for brains to eat. These are generally of the type that want nothing to come before their egos, so they invent a crowd-based philosophy which boils down to everyone doing whatever they want, and enforcing this “right” via group retribution. When they bite into your brain, you see a glimpse of heaven you will keep chasing for the rest of your undead life. But really, you’ll just be stumbling about looking for some brains to replace the ones you lost. Nasty business, those.

Then there’s the helper zombies. These are like enablers in quit-drinking programs. They help hold others down for the bite, and feast on the leavings. These are the ones you see standing in the shadows of the doorways of places they used to know, vacant-eyed and drooling, often holding the half-eaten forearm of a loved one. Conservatism, Inc. fits into this group. They can’t stop the infection, so they’ve “learned to live with it,” but as a result they have no direction. Thus they keep going through the motions, taking in the money and dishing out the product, with no endgame in sight. They do not believe they can ever escape zombie status, and so they do not act boldly, cleanly and decisively. Their best hope is for coexistence and that the inevitable nightly beatings, gulags, mass executions, etc. are “kinder and gentler” thanks to their bipartisan approach.

The zombie ritual encloses us all. Every day, we walk past its destruction and have to endorse it because it is what we have for a society. We have to shop in the same stores that sell products for zombies, whether big blockbuster films about the bittersweet lust for human flesh, or the more extreme variants that populate convenience stores across the country. We have to use government institutions, and comply with their regulations, even though we know they’re insane and in that intention, totally destructive. Even more, we see zombies among us and we’re not allowed to lock them up and administer medication to cure them of their lust for human flesh.

Conservatism, Inc. went wrong because it settles for compromise. There is no longer any active principle in it; it exists to defend, and to coexist, but never to remove the unseeing eye of the zombie from the land. It doesn’t even strive to actually better life in America. It has rejected everything radical about the conservative tradition, which is actually the only radical tradition there is. Conservatism starts from the principle that a society is the sum total of its people, not the product of institutions. Thus high moral caliber must be maintained on every level. Liberals try to replace this with institutions, rules and equality, but that translates to license to behave badly for most of society and so unleashes social decay so profound it crumbles once-thriving societies into third-world ruins.

Remember when France was the world leader in military and economic power? Remember when Russia was the cultural capital of both Europe and Asia? Something went wrong, and kept going wrong. Remember when Athens was the pride of Greece? The victim-states of zombie attacks never even get a chance to scream. A zombie arrives, and they tolerate him out of good intentions, but then zombies start appearing everywhere. The inspector who licenses your shop is a zombie; the local car mechanic is a zombie; your maid is a zombie, and your local rich man has a daughter who’s a zombie too. Soon to be anti-zombie is to be anti-patriotic and you’ll end up in jail. The ritual begins yet again, with unseeing eyes and the insatiable thirst for blood.

Conservatism, Inc. went wrong when it stopped the conservative tradition of order and moral basis to government. No one can be both moral and a zombie; zombies are allies of Death and Evil, not growth and health. They are a cancer within the civilization in which we are each cells. What held the zombies back was strong culture rooted in the idea of a constant moral duty toward every task we do, and this is the essence of conservatism. Conservatism, Inc. forgot this, and it’s why they hate themselves and drink alone in the dark.

Our new future involves replacing this self-pitying and empty emotion with a resurgence: neither you, nor I, nor anyone else needs to be a zombie. It’s just part of the ritual, following others to our doom, trusting in the system. Conservative renewal begins when we attack this notion and show its empty core to the world.

Posted in: Politics.
Tagged: · · · · ·

Utopia

Apr 14th, 2014
by Forest Johnson.
33 comments

city_in_the_clouds

Yet another thread, on yet another forum, eliciting yet another comment, containing yet another cheap-shot.
I felt like replying: “How does it feel to be on the losing side, in a war that doesn’t even exist?”
But I didn’t.

Instead, I do what I always do, with anything anybody writes. I considered it…

This ability to consider, lies at the heart of all that is amiss in our current state-of-society.
It is an ability remarkable for its near-complete absence.
I have discovered that, no matter what I write, or how it’s put, or which words I choose, no matter the topic, it is never seen for what it is, or what it says, but instead is seen as anything other than what it is.
In fact, very, very little of what I write, is responded to with anything other than a blatant attempt to ridicule, misinterpret, or undermine. As far as figures go, approximately 0.1% of responses indicate that the reader even understood my post. And so I am left with the undeniable fact that 99.9% of readers are completely unable to receive my transmission.

As you can see, this is not because I do not write well, or clearly. In fact, according to a silly grammar software program I once owned, many years ago, I write in a way that even five-year-olds can understand, and I might want to – it suggested – raise my ante a bit. God only knows what my percentage of comprehending readers would have fallen to, if I had taken that little snippet of critique to heart.

“Why do you do it?” my wife is fond of asking me. “With all the abuse you get, how can you possibly keep it up?”
I always attempt to explain that this is something I must do, not because I enjoy it, but because someone must, and almost nobody else is going to. Besides, as I so often point out: how else would I get to experience all that is so wrong with people, in so concentrated a form, in actual, day to day life?

And so I drone onwards, through the spears and bear-traps, and the utter stupidity and boorishness of that 99.9% of readers, to that unforeseeable result that I had been searching for, all along…

What is it like, to be on the losing side? In a war that not only does not even exist, but to which there can be no possible conclusion? What on earth is that like? Which is a very good question, in that unless you happen to be on that losing side, there is no way you can possibly conceive of why anyone would, voluntarily, be.

Let’s see…
Pick a loser. Any loser. No need to be specific. But, remember, the more losers you pick, and the more diverse they are, the better the chance of being on that elusive losing side:

Feminists. They lose out because the stinking patriarchy is aligned against them. Vilify men!
Homosexuals. They lose out because there are some that do not like what they do, and that’s not fair. Declare war on non-gays!
Medieval French Peasants. They lose out because they are not all aristocrats. Get out the guillotine!
The Poor. They lose out because they are not rich. Eat the rich!
Black people. They lose out because they are not white people. Exterminate white racists!
Brown people. They lose out because they do not live in our country. Open the borders!
Illegal immigrants. They lose out because they must do stuff to have our stuff. Pack ‘em in and give it all away!
Leftists. They lose out because, well, they always feel they lose out. Make sure they win!
Losers. They lose out because they are losers. Criminalize winners!
And on, and on, and on…

I met a woman, just today, who told me she once had an Iranian friend. She realized, one day, that she had treated her friend graciously, and with an exaggerated respect, that had that friend been white, she never would have been so kind. She was horrified at this realization, so she said, because it showed her how subconsciously racist she was.
I studied the woman, unsure of how to proceed. Then, being me, I dove in to an empty pool, headfirst, and told it like it was…
“That’s terrific. Why treat anybody with graciousness and respect, just because they are not like you? Why not just treat everybody, from anywhere, in exactly the same shoddy, disrespectful way you treat your own kind?”

And that’s equality. That is where it goes. Down.

As always, it really comes down to Heaven versus Hell. We are a lot like sharks. We must be ever-moving, or we die. We either move, purposefully, by degrees, Heavenwards, or move, purposefully, by degrees, towards Hell.

Society builds itself, over centuries, the gifted alongside the not-so-gifted, each contributing according to his differing abilities. Until the point of comfort is reached, where the gifted lose track of what it is to be gifted, and extend the fruits of their labours to the not-so-gifted. This is often referred to as ‘education’.
Intellect becomes something available to all, regardless of innate ability. The intellect replaces God as the highest aspiration a man may have. Even dolts come to see themselves as intellectuals. Which, in many ways, is understandable, since intellect, without God, really is a dolt. Disaster follows quickly on its heels.

Utopia? It sounds so good, doesn’t it? But what is it, exactly?
A state of having whatever you want, whenever you want it, without the inconvenience of ever having to do anything at all in order to get it. A dolt’s paradise. And what is a dolt? One who simply can not understand that if all the members of his country contribute nothing to that country, and instead, endlessly take from it, at some point, there will no longer be a country.

That’s fine, says the dolt. Countries are obsolete now. It’s all global, man.
Ah, says I. I see. Not only do you not give a toss about destroying your own country, but now, you operate globally as well. Contribute nothing to your planet, and instead, use up everything upon it and within it, until…

Utopia is reached.

Posted in: Socialization.
Tagged: · · ·

← Earlier Posts
39 queries. 0.978 seconds