Every time you twit a leftist with the Trayvon Martin incident, he will list how the evil racist George Zimmerman provoked Martin by the horrible racism of suspecting Martin of criminality – which implicitly admits what is explicitly denied, that the six foot one black Martin attacked the five foot seven mestizo Zimmerman, which in turn implicitly admits that leftists approve of the black racist attacks on whites that they so enthusiastically encourage.
Similarly, if you twit a leftist with “trick to … hide the declineâ€, they will patronizingly explain to you that “decline†does not mean what it sounds like it means, but resist explaining “trick†or “hide†no matter how vigorously you twit them on it, implicitly admitting that they know full well that “trick†and “hide†mean exactly what they sound like they mean – which in turn implies that they don’t care whether global warming is true or false, only that it is a way of getting the power to create a totalitarian world terror state and get rid of a few billions of excess population.
Over time, leftism has been getting more and more evil.
Leftists like to trace leftism to the left side of the french Estates General. Like every version of history that leftists like, this does not seem to be true. French leftism repeatedly dead ended disastrously, swiftly winding up in Bonapartism, and had to be repeatedly re-created by the English left, in much the same way the anti colonialist movement was manufactured by the imperial powers and forcibly imposed on the third world, much as Soros and the CIA are trying to restart leftism in the countries of the former Soviet empire after it dead ended in Stalinism.
The English left, not the Jews nor the French, is the source and origin of the world’s left. What we now call progressive or reform Jews merely got in on a good thing during the twentieth century, but the greatest glories of the left predate the twentieth century, and thus predate significant Jewish participation in the left.
Before and shortly after World War II, English leftism was progressive protestantism, was nominally Christian, although for a century or so Jesus Christ had been demoted from the incarnation of God to chief community organizer, so that progressive protestantism was well on the way to becoming Universalist Unitarianism, and Universalist Unitarianism was already scarcely distinguishable from militant atheism.
Reform Judaism was a conversion to leftism, and thus a conversion from Judaism to progressive protestantism, with the result that reform Jews, like progressive protestants, are not reproducing, while Orthodox Jews continue reproduce industriously as they always have.
The greatest glories of the left, and their most plausibly righteous accomplishments, were the emancipation of women, the emancipation of blacks, and the abolition of slavery. Every leftist project since then has been ever more dubious. Leftism requires ever more reforms, and thus, with the passage of time, pursues reforms that are ever less credible. I have already argued that the emancipation of women was an intolerable mistake, and a disaster that must and will be reversed, possibly through the collapse of our civilization, certainly through the collapse of our government. Haiti and South Africa suggest that black emancipation also was a disaster, that blacks are better off ruled by whites than ruling themselves. What about slavery?
Of all the left wing projects, abolishing slavery was the most plausibly good, and the least plausibly evil. Debt based slavery is reasonably defensible, since the incompetent and improvident wind up with someone else making decisions for them, as they should. In practice, however, slavery tends to be war based, with members of incompetent and improvident groups being enslaved, regardless of individual competence and providence.
If some people are naturally slaves, and others naturally masters, which I rather think is the case, it seems unlikely that recently existent slavery was very precise in putting people in the right categories. So I would say that abolishing slavery was not too bad, but everything else was bad, and has been getting steadily worse.
Don’t forget that war is usually pretty terrible at producing reform. If it succeeds in getting rid of slavery – which is historically dubious – it just means it would have disappeared on its own in due course, only without killing a few hundred thousand people.
Like every left project, the abolition of slavery somehow wound up increasing the power of the state, providing lots and lots of jobs for the boys, and radically reducing the freedom of free men, so even if no war had been required, it would have on the whole still been a great and terrible loss for freedom, but the rationale (slavery bad) was plausible enough.
The real goal of the war was never about slavery. It was about turning the southerners and blacks into good little puritans. That’s what reconstruction was really all about. The puritans gave up trying to get it done the fast way after 10 years or so and then created schools and churches to convert the south slowly.
Slavery was a particular and conspicuous example of the sin of not being a puritan.
Not sure that they were still calling themselves puritans at the time of the civil war. Protestants, I think, that being more inclusive. They were keen on inclusivity.
The left, what is now the left. is a direct lineal descendent of those that originally though of themselves as puritans, the left is the descendent of Cromwell, but I would like to have a detailed map of how they thought of themselves, the transition between thinking of themselves as primarily a religious movement, thus, Jews tolerated but unwelcome, to thinking of themselves as primarily a political movement, and atheistic political movement at that, thus Jews welcome.
From 1830 to some ill defined time, Evangelicalism, anti slavery, temperance, the Young Men’s Christian association, various benevolent movements to better the condition of the working classes, limit child labor, and so on and so forth, were almost the same thing, indeed, were the familiar form of left wing organization, one hundred nominally separate organizations all with the same postal address. So I think “puritans” became, with the multiplication of organization names over the same postal address, “evangelicals”, which in turn became “protestants” – albeit by the time they became “protestants” Jesus was already chief community organizer, rather than the incarnation of the lord and redeemer of mankind.
You are correct about the actual structure of the organisation and they sure didn’t call themselves puritans by the time of the war. I used the term because the ethos is the same: Southern’s don’t work hard enough, they like to drink, gamble, fight, and have a good time. They need to be reformed and purified into hard working new england types.
Southerns accepted that people are people. You can’t go around making them into something better. Best you can do is find a system that works for them and stick with it. Practical folks. The left fundamentally believes that the power of christ/the left/marxism,ect can change human nature and make people into good puritans. When the south didn’t fail on it’s own it had to be made to fail as sure as South Africa had to be made to fail.
“Somehow” indeed. It’s frightening.
> If some people are naturally slaves, and others naturally masters, which I rather think is the case,
This seems to be a more popular point of view these days. Disturbing.
If it is true, it is one of those things in human nature we ought to resist. It is natural to rape and slaughter the people in the next village over if they’re weaker than you are, but we consider it unacceptable anyway.
However I doubt that some people being permanently natural slaves is a good description of human nature. People may tend toward a subordinate or leader role, but switching roles is also common. Pathetic geeks end up as leaders and golden boys end up as washed up has beens. When we look at chimps we don’t see one alpha stay on top permanently, instead there are coalitions that form to undermine and replace him. I think moderate social mobility is nearer the reality than “natural slaves”.
It may not be true, but it is closer to the truth than “all men are created equal”, which doctrine has got us into the trouble we are in. To say that some men are naturally slaves is a way of fundamentally rejecting equalist doctrine root and branch.
Actually enslaving people is apt to lead to more trouble than it is worth, because identifying those who are naturally slaves is inherently error prone, but if we accept that some people are naturally slaves, then observed inequality is less apt to lead to covetousness, since covetousness announces the inferiority of he who covets, rather than the sinfulness of the person who possesses what is coveted.
Matt,
Have you spent some time at a lower class black apartment complex? I dated a girl who lived at one. I came in thinking the poor where just like regular middle class folks and by the time I stopped dating the girl I wanted to nuke the complex from orbit. There are worthless people in this world who live for nothing more than momentary pleasure, causing others pain, and screwing up their kids lives. Every last person I met at that complex would have happier, healthier, and more secure if they had someone in charge of them telling them what to do. Freedom brought out the worst in them and turned them into salvages.
This was Thomas Carlyle’s argument – that blacks needed masters. In the same pamphlet, he predicted that the alliance between economic liberals (“the dismal science”) and the conspiratorial entryist left (“Exeter Hall”) would bring forth monsters, as it did. Inevitably the leftists devoured the economic liberals.
This is a corollary of the fact that all organizations always move left, for example National Review with its firing of Derbyshire for telling forbidden truths. “stay out of heavily black neighborhoods”
All organizations always move left, because that is where the power is, so all conspirators and entryists are leftists. Indeed leftism is precisely the business of using plausible or implausible political reforms to take control of power and wealth. Leftism was theocracy, got rid of its remaining Christian elements in the 1940s, and is now atheocracy.
Do you mean tweet? Anyway, I did a youtube rampage. I searched for “Trayvon”, then sorted by upload date (this was some time ago). If that community is representative, then we have significant racial problems in the future. Mainly that mobs can be apt – with no rationale whatsoever – to think, believe and act in stupid ways. What else will kick-start this mob? What else can happen? Their acts of insanity appears to be endless.
90% of videos found, but probably higher, were videos declaring that Trayvon is innocent. Often times I found that the videos went the race baiting route. This is disturbing.
Jim, your first paragraph appears to be absolutely true. Wherever I could take this incident, I was met with madness. Truly.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/twit
It seems to be used more in England.
A small aside… if I bring new people to this blog and if I haven’t already explained to them the supposed “liberty axiom,” then, they will most assuredly see a lot of content here that will piss them off. But this is a knee-jerk reaction to straight talk. Not surprising in the least.
For example, this is completely reasonable:
“If some people are naturally slaves, and others naturally masters, which I rather think is the case, it seems unlikely that recently existent slavery was very precise in putting people in the right categories. So I would say that abolishing slavery was not too bad, but everything else was bad, and has been getting steadily worse.”
But the above could – and most likely will – be taken out of context by a great many people. My point is hallow. I’m merely saying this is telling.
No free country would have slaves. An obvious point, but something that would fly over the heads of the ideologists.
I disagree. The great majority of Southerners were free men. To guarantee that no one can be enslaved requires a dangerously great monopoly of force, just as to guarantee that no one can starve requires a dangerously great monopoly of food. In practice, in societies that guaranteed that no one could starve, for example China’s “iron rice bowl” very large numbers of people starved. I am “pro slavery” in the same sense as I am “pro starvation”: I think that government action to eliminate slavery, or eliminate starvation, is apt to be counterproductive, for the government’s solution to both problems is going to be to take power away from individuals and give it to itself.
No free country would have slaves. (by definition)
Yet, reading old books, I get the compelling impression that the class of people that wrote and read those books were a lot more free than we are.
If you say that in no free country would some bad thing happen to anyone at all, that implies a government that, like God, watches each sparrow fall. Abolishing slavery is like “It is for the children” – an end that no decent person can disagree with, but which somehow always seems to require dubious means. I am for slavery in the same sense as I am for letting children starve. The “save the children” people are typically criminals who urgently need killing, and the slavery abolitionists were typically criminals who urgently need killing. Their behavior was furtive, sinister, and conspiratorial. They acted like people plotting for evil ends. Among the abolitionists you see familiar symptom of a multitude of supposedly separate organizations with a single postal address, which is an organizational form that tells us of nefarious and hidden means and intentions.
I was adding to my short comment below.
It appears I understood you correctly. You just replied faster than could.
“If you say that in no free country would some bad thing happen to anyone at all, that implies a government that, like God, watches each sparrow fall.”
You’re right.
Unfortunately that is what I was saying then but not what I was meaning to say. A “free country” in the sense that I said it and used it, doesn’t exist and can’t exist. Rewind the tape, and ten beers earlier, I think I meant something more like this:
“Liberty tends to decrease evil, but not eliminate it.”
In my opinion, it is obvious a free society does not foster slavery or tend to produce slavery. Which leaves me with what I said earlier:
“Ultimately I think you mean you would prefer a whole lot more freedom with some slavery, than a whole lot of unfree people, with no slavery at all.”
But I’m curious if you think a free society tends to produce slavery? If so, how? How much?
For example we can imagine a make believe system. I’m thinking of the poly legal system David Friedman explains in his Brazil lecture:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmXDrm5Q-eQ
I have great difficulty imagining how slavery might come to be in that societal system, but I don’t want to drag this little bit of commentary on too long.
David Friedman assumes that everyone is signed up with an agency, all agencies behave rationally and honorably, and all agencies are more or less at peace with each other.
Not everyone is going to be signed up, some because they are too feckless, some because they are too criminal. Not all agencies will be rational nor will all be honorable, and not all agencies will be peaceful.
I analyze the system with more concern for incentives and bad behavior than he applies, and conclude that at equilibrium, there has to be a certain amount of semi tolerated predation against those whose defense arrangements are unsatisfactory – indeed, if there is not, people lack incentives to sign up with an honorable and rational agency.
“To guarantee that no one can be enslaved requires a dangerously great monopoly of force, just as to guarantee that no one can starve requires a dangerously great monopoly of food.”
We are using “free” in a different context, I think. But that’s a good point you made. Still, I’d have to do a lot of research to ascertain how “free” the Southerners were, and what the societal organization was at that time to much greater depth. Obviously I’m not the freedom guru.
As I see it: starvation and slavery are not equivalent in a free society. One requires coercion and one does not. Thus starvation and slavery are derived from different principles. It may true that in a free society one can’t guarantee that no one will be enslaved but it is also true that such a course of action would not be a principled action to take.
Ultimately I think you mean you would prefer a whole lot more freedom with some slavery, then a whole lot of unfree people, with no slavery at all. Correct?
In most of America during the nineteenth century, and in parts of America during the early twentieth century, a great deal of private violence was tolerated, particularly private violence by groups of vigilantes under the leadership of property owning white males. Stories about blacks being lynched for whistling at a white woman were, of course, total bunkum, but such violence did make slavery possible, and doubtless made all sorts of lesser injustices possible. It meant that crimes against property were apt to be severely and swiftly punished, for example death for stealing a horse. It also meant that it was pretty much impossible to forbid recreational drugs and so on and so forth, pretty much impossible to forbid anything that a white property owning male might possibly do, short of theft and criminal violence, and difficult to tax anything.
We are now moving to the reverse system where violent acts by underclass black males (or black Harvard graduates pretending to be underclass black males, the New Black Panthers) are tolerated, but violent acts by property owning white males attract the wrath of god. Because propertyless people lack strong incentives against preying on each other, and blacks are inclined to prey on each other regardless of incentives, it seems unlikely that this system will work as well the nineteenth century system did.
It is very noticeable in California that white males are burdened by all manner of regulations, but there is no real effort to enforce these regulations against Mexicans. A white male needs a license and insurance to drive, a Mexican does not. Pollution laws and building codes are strictly enforced on non Mexican Californians, not enforced against Mexican Californians, probably because regulators could get hurt trying to enforce them, the Mexicans do not have much property to confiscate, and if the state does confiscate it, agents of the state can get killed trying to confiscate it.
I had a property in California that was overrun by squatters. I sold it to Mexicans with squatters still resident because they could take care of the squatters. However, property owning Mexicans are apt to find themselves classified, like Zimmerman, as honorary whites.
[…] Donald in a comment on his own […]
(to Jim)
I’ve devoured everything in the Liberty File Collection long ago. To me, the Lysander Spooner bits are the standouts, even though it appears that it was typed-out because of small errors made by one person or another. The source material was probably found in an online library that scans pages as pictures then converts to PDF, like the “Sex and Culture” PDF floating around.
Most of the liberty collection is excellent. All of it is beneficial. I was just there today and found the first paragraph of your Natural Rights bit to be a perfect introduction. Much easier to pass something like that along, then to pass something a little more rigorous, slow and thorough, as Lysander Spooner so eloquently is.
ahem – *than to
My…
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