Some time ago, democracy in the Ukraine produced the wrong result. The Cathedral violently and conspiratorially overthrew the elected government, installed a new government, which then held elections, which elections, predictably, produced the right result.
Revolution ensued against this democratically elected government, and is spreading
Meanwhile in Britain “antifascist” thugs, who are all full time employees of government unions, operating with impunity under police protection, use violence and the threat of violence to disrupt the political activities of the UK Independence Party.
I think I’m going to have to modify my ‘no grassroots movements’ principle. Essentially, this isn’t really a movement. It’s sure movement-esque, though.
Compare OWS or Tea Party: it has to enter government or influence existing rulers to succeed. Draft dodging -can- succeed that way, but doesn’t need to. Individuals can successfully dodge the draft by themselves. As a result, a mass of individuals have all unilaterally decided to do just that. Perhaps there’s some low-status local leaders who got on board so the hobbits would get off their asses, but that’s it.
OWS absolutely needed to be unified. In principle the Tea Party didn’t, but in practice they failed despite substantial unity, and needed more. Draft dodging needs no unity. Similarly, [buying pop songs] doesn’t need unity – one ends up popular regardless.
Seems like a substantial enough difference, but means I have to be careful about what I call a ‘movement.’
Also this is certainly strong evidence that Cathedral strategists are kind of dumb. Still persistent and destructive, though. Still, I’m going with the hypothesis that foreign operatives are B or C tier clerisy. We’ll see how long that idea survives.
Oh horrible! The people who have the power run a dictatorship you don’t happen to fancy, tell noble lies in the Platonic tradition that are the opposite of the narrative you would favor and have the nerve to define who the enemy is differently from the opinion of some blogger…The world’s gonna end! The world’s gonna end!
The Union goons who are shutting down UKIP electioneering don’t look much like they are being administered by philosopher kings in service of a noble lie.
Demotism is never a noble lie.
The philosopher king, if he existed, would have children who would with half their mind believe the noble lie and with the other half believe in nothing at all, managing to combine the worst parts of fanaticism and nihilism. Which is, in fact, an accurate description of Western society today.
Hidden Author is correct in that you are really no better than the people you claim to oppose, except that you don’t have their power. In fact, you may be worse: they have power and haven’t yet set up camps to kill their opponents, relying on ostracizm and attacks on their enemies’ livelihoods, while we have no idea how NRx would act if given power (though I suspect I know what Aspermint and co would do.)
The Dark Enlightenment is not yet another religious system, but the scientific method applied to society, history, and politics.
The difference is that we understand the mechanisms that lead to crazy military adventurism, economic ruin and frequently lead to mass murder. The Jewish perspective is false and distorted, because Jews understandably focus on mass murder of outgroups, Jews being killed by non Jews, but what is interesting and revealing, and usually kills a lot more people, is not near murdering far, but near murdering near. Mao killed more peasants than anyone, and a larger proportion of the party was murdered than peasants were murdered.
Theocracy was stable among the Hebrews because priesthood was inherited in the line of Aaron, stable among the saga period icelanders because temples and holy places were, as in Japanese Shinto, privately owned family businesses. When Rabbis became too powerful Judaism destabilized, forcing their neighbors to exile them, thus depriving the rabbis of coercive political power. But Judaism, inherently, needs to be a state religion. Judaism needs a nation, and the nation of Israel needs a religion. But if you have too many, and excessively influential, rabbis, this is only going to work if, as in the time of David, warriors have the upper hand over priests. If a rabbi dominated theocracy, and any glib talker who can torture the Talmud to his ends can become a rabbi, Judaism will repeat the disaster of the first century.
>The Dark Enlightenment is not yet another religious system, but the scientific method applied to society, history, and politics.
>The difference is that we understand the mechanisms that lead to crazy military adventurism, economic ruin and frequently lead to mass murder.
Well, this is exactly what the Cathedral has been saying about itself, isn’t it? The fundamental idea of Communism and socialism is that society ought to be run by scientists, using the scientific method to manage society, politics, economics, etc. But, you know, if you say your science is more science-y and your noble lies more noble, who am I to doubt you?
Your attempt to derail the conversation by returning to your theories about the Jews is duly noted.
No. The Cathedral says that All Men and Woman are Created Equal, and what makes that supposedly scientific is that anyone who doubts it, or even inadvertently and indirectly casts doubt on it, as Chagnon did, is apt to lose tenure
but the scientific method applied to society, history, and politics.
Marxists say the same thing; Moldbug says that there is not one true way of thinking. The scientific method as taught in school depends on experiments, so what we do is closer to a subset of paleontology and ecology focused on the last few thousand years of environments inhabited by the genus Homo, with particular emphasis on the Aryan species
Marxists say that they have a method of ascertaining the truth better than merely observing it. They claim to be materialists in that supposedly if anyone bothers to take the entirely unnecessary step of actually observing reality, the observations will supposedly confirm Marxist theory, but if anyone observes, and sees reality disconfirming Marxist theory, that observer is an enemy of the working class.
historical materialism is to neoreactionary analysis as pre-Darwinian biology is to modern biology
Eh, the obsession with equality is not the essential substance of Socialism. The essential substance is that the people should be governed by scientific rules applied by scientists/social engineers, and tht lies are okay in this service. Carlyle’s Chartism. You are merely saying that your rules are more scientific because they are based on plainly observable inequality, which doesn’t strike me as either evident or inspiring of confidence.
Observe that academics routinely lose tenure for indirectly and unintentionally casting doubt that people are in fact equal. So equality certainly is the essential essence of progressivism.
And one can be neither a socialist nor a progressive if one believes that rising standards of living result from technological advance generated by Rand’s heroic scientist/engineer CEOs. So socialists don’t like some technocrats.
» The essential substance is that the people should be governed by scientific rules applied by scientists/social engineers,
is it? Shafarevich didn’t think so. He couldn’t figure it out and ascribed it to some bizarre death instinct, which is obvious bullshit as is, but could be interpreted as envy, which makes sense. Christians ascribe it to envy. Marx, read carefully, says envy: workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your chains.
But it isn’t that simple, is it? There’s also the idea that people should be governed according to theory instead of economics.
Of course, as implemented in a number of countries, such as the USSR, communism was in fact a Jewish coup, which accomplished the destruction of the best of the goyim, as the Talmud instructs. Donald Day, reporter for the Chicago Tribune in the Baltic region, reports that
» In Libau the entire St. Petersburg hotel had been taken over by the Soviet consulate. There were more than 100 people on the staff. With th exceptionof the consul and a few assistants they were all New York Jews. Naturally the consul and these assistants were also Jews, but of Russian nationality… The consulate found it impossible to provide sufficient roubles for all the money they exchanged. So for all sums above fifty dollars they gave a check on a Moscow bank. This bank had been nationalized and closed.
» Visiting the Soviet legation, I filled out the long questionnaire applying for a Soviet visa. The official was a Whitechapel Jew from London who told me his name there had been Marshall. When he went to Russia to help the revolution he changed it to Markov.
oh, here we are. Page 46:
» After my incident with Weinstein I seldom visited the Soviet legation in Riga. Therefore I had no opportunities to continue my search for a Soviet foreign official of Russian blood. When M. Chicherin, Soviet foreign commisar, arrived in Riga enroute to Rapallo, I attended the interview he granted to the press in the legation. M. Florinski, his secretary and chief of protocol in the Moscow foreign office, officiated at this ceremony. Both men were Russians. Florinski was the most effeminate person in male attire I have ever met, with the possible exception of ambassador Bullitt’s secretary.
Donald Day sees communism as Jewish subversion, since he is neither Christian nor neoreactionary, and saw communism in Russia and the Baltic states. Jim thinks that as bad as Donald Day reports that the Jewish GPU was, Zhang Xianzhong was worse; if the USSR didn’t quite do as much as they after the war baselessly accused the Germans of having done, other communist movements have done far worse without Jews.
Wherever the ultimate answer is somewhere between ‘rule of intellectuals’ or ‘envy’ – Shafarevich also records ‘Oriental despotism’ that appears to be neither as examples of socialist phenomena – Jewish subversion can not be ignored as a puzzle piece where it arises.
by the way, to keep this quote somewhere outside of the book,
» It was not advisable for a Christian traveler to ask directions from a Polish Jew. After being misdirected on two occasions I investigated and discovered there is a prevalent superstition among Jews that if they can give false directions to a Christian, they will have good fortune in their next business enterprise.
>Observe that academics routinely lose tenure for indirectly and unintentionally casting doubt that people are in fact equal. So it equality certainly is the essential essence of progressivism.
This is a very poor way to prove an argument. Equality (of a certain sort) may be a present shibboleth of progressivism (while in other aspects, it is a key principle that women and minorities are not equal but superior, in immeasurable ways which must be taken on faith, and you can lose your job for casting doubt on that shibboleth just as well.) This tells us nothing about whether equality is a key principle of progressivism, or just an epiphenomenon of such principles (which it is).
For instance, Abraham Lincoln, the Oneida Community and your beloved Raffles were quite progressive without any belief in equality, and needless to say, the Puritans who chopped off the king’s head and then conquered America did so without any belief in innate human equality while being the most progressive people on the planet.
>And one can be neither a socialist nor a progressive if one believes that rising standards of living result from technological advance generated by Rand’s heroic scientist/engineer CEOs.
First, the belief in a society run by heroic scientist/engineer CEOs where rising standards of living are the ultimate good is quite progressive, being just an extension of Manchester liberalism and what Carlyle called Pig Philosophy: ” We
recall our friend Sauerteig’s exposition of Pig-Philosophy. The Universe is a Swine’s-trough ; the Whole Duty of Pigs is to increase the quantity of attainable ; Justice exists to prevent quarrelling and loss of Hog’s-wash ; the share of each is what he can contrive to get without being hanged, etc., etc.”
Second, Rand’s heroes, the magnates of capitalism, stood on the shoulders of scientists who stood on the shoulders of mystics such as Leibniz and Newton, and the achievements of every successive generation were less impressive.
Those magnate-heroes created the foundations and public institutions which have been at the forefront of progress ever since their day: the Rockefeller, Carnegie and Ford Foundations, for instance. Everything NRx cries about in modern Western society has on it the fingerprints of those men, who are the heroes of NRx!
Since those days, progress has, of course, progressed, and left Rand’s progressivism behind, which doesn’t make her brand of progressivism right in any absolute sense, only relatively. If you demand a social return to Manchester Liberalism, you are no different from the Republicans who demand a return to the mainstream of the 1950s, but with your reference point moved back a century, and the answer is the same: we’ve already been there, it got us here, and you don’t like it here.
But they were, however, the holiest people on the planet, and rapidly becoming ever holier. Hence, incapable of the scientific worldview.
Further, they did in fact believe in equality. During the commonwealth, the most holy were the most equalist, which eventually so alarmed Cromwell that he cracked down on those holier than his extremely holy self.
But the specifics of what they believed hardly matters. What matters is that they believed that believing in it made them extremely holy, much more holy than anyone else, which prevented them and still prevents them from engaging with reality. That belief in equality was and is an important part of the superior holiness that made them so much superior to everyone else is a mere detail
The belief that rising standard of living are the ultimate good is quite progressive. The belief that whether or not rising standards of living are the ultimate good, rising standards of living are caused by heroic scientist/engineer CEOs will lose you tenure in any university.
Peppermint: “Some experts view the long-winded and one-sided conversations as one of the most prominent differential features of the disorder. The child or adult may talk incessantly, usually about their favorite subject, often completely disregarding whether the listener is interested, engaged or trying to interject a comment, or change the subject. Despite such long-winded monologues, the individual may never come to a point or conclusion. Usually the other person can’t get a word in and is unable to change the conversation.”
>But they were, however, the holiest people on the planet, and rapidly becoming ever holier. Hence, incapable of the scientific worldview.
I have a certain Puritanical mystic, a Mr. Newton, on the line for you. The connection is a bit noisy, but I believe he is telling you to take your “scientific worldview,” and…something, I can’t quite make it out.
>Further, they did in fact believe in equality. During the commonwealth, the most holy were the most equalist, which eventually so alarmed Cromwell that he cracked down on those holier than his extremely holy self.
Calvinism and its doctrine of the Elect is the ultimate opposite of equality.
>But the specifics of what they believed hardly matters.
Jim 5 minutes ago: the essence of progressivism is believing in equality.
Jim right now: it hardly matters what progressives believe.
>What matters is that they believed that believing in it made them extremely holy, much more holy than anyone else, which prevented them and still prevents them from engaging with reality.
It is difficult to say that they were unable to engage with reality while simultaneously bemoaning their conquest of the globe and total domination of your society. Crazy like a fox.
>The belief that rising standard of living are the ultimate good is quite progressive.
Well, you don’t have any other candidates for the ultimate good, do you?
Newton did not derive his status from his superior holiness, nor did he attempt to do so, and if he had attempted to do so, would not have been allowed anywhere near academia, since the crown engaged in a pretty thorough purge of real and suspected puritans from Academia, the Church, and the public service.
Nor was Newton a mystic. Newton was the last alchemist, which is not the same thing as being a mystic at all. Alchemy is chemistry done without pure substances, or an adequate concept of pure substances. Confusion, but not mysticism, ensues. (Not counting the infamous alchemists that promised to double other people’s gold.)
But alchemists were building equipment and figuring out ways to purify substances, which techniques and equipment made chemistry possible.
Diggers, Levellers, etc.
Just as all aneuploid metastatic malignant cancers evolve to look much alike regardless of tissue of origin, the most holy varieties of puritanism had already by Cromwell’s time mutated to something easily recognizable as modern leftism, with equalism as their central doctrine, and Jesus left behind as insufficiently holy.
Any time priests struggle for power though being holier than thou, the end result always winds up looking remarkably like twenty first century social justice warriors, no matter what the original religion.
When the cancer takes over the body, should one conclude that the cancer was more evolved, or more intelligent, than its host? Leftism is the triumph of entropy over life. Leftism triumphs, but leftists do not, since they devour each other.
>Newton did not derive his status from his superior holiness, nor did he attempt to do so
You said that holiness was incompatible with a scientific worldview. I pointed out that Newton and Leibniz, two of the great creators of this worldview, were quite dedicated to holiness. Now you attempt to mislead with a non sequitur, pointing out that Newton did not derive his status from his holiness. Newton derived his status from the fruits of his scientific endeavors, which were completely motivated and enabled by his religious views.
>Nor was Newton a mystic.
I beg your pardon? Are we speaking of the same Isaac Newton?
http://isaac-newton.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isaac_Newton's_occult_studies
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/9085812/Israeli-library-uploads-Sir-Isaac-Newtons-theological-texts.html
>>Calvinism and its doctrine of the Elect is the ultimate opposite of equality.
>Diggers, Levellers, etc.
Yes, those infamous Diggers and Levellers of New England, Cotton Mather at their head, Digging and Levelling their way Westwards.
>When the cancer takes over the body, should one conclude that the cancer was more evolved, or more intelligent, than its host? Leftism is the triumph of entropy over life. Leftism triumphs, but leftists do not, since they devour each other.
Declaring your opponents a cancer and calling for their excision so that the body may live is a standard feature of progressive discourse. Along with calls for a noble lie in the service of a greater truth, and the demand for society to be rebuilt in accordance with science and under scientific management.
Newton cannot have been all that dedicated to holiness, since the restoration purged the puritans from academia and government employment.
Before Darwin, only clever sillies doubted the existence of a creator God. That Newton and Leibniz believed in God does not make them dedicated to holiness.
Newton, like many of the successors of the puritans, may well have been a unitarian. Or perhaps a Deist. But, if so, politely declined to tell anyone. Whereas a social justice warrior, or a leveler, cannot stop telling everyone.
The Unitarian does not believe in Jesus, because he thinks himself holier than Jesus. The Deist does not believe in Jesus because he thinks the creator god cares more for beetles than for men. What evidence do you have, does anyone have, that Newton was Unitarian rather than a Deist?
Newton discussed the interpretation of the bible, and how close the writers of the bible were to the original witnesses. And I also discussed the interpretation of the bible, and how close the writers of the bible were to the original witnesses. Would you conclude that I was dedicated to holiness?
It is clear from those tracts that Newton believed in God, but then, back in those days, before Darwin, every intelligent man believed in a creator God. Not every intelligent man worshiped a creator God, and it is not at all clear from those tracts that Newton worshiped a creator God.
Exactly so: Plymouth settlers were clearly and unambiguously to the left of Jamestown settlers. And if they were not exactly modern left, neither was 2008 Obama.
People examining those texts continue to argue whether Newton was a Christian, a Unitarian, or a Deist. If dedicated to holiness, it would be obvious which one he was. Hey, I even see Jews arguing he was a convert to Judaism. We may conclude he was curious about the creator God, but not that he was dedicated to holiness.
When Cotton Mathers discusses Jesus, he discusses Jesus redeeming Cotton Mathers’ sins. When Newton discusses Jesus, he might be discussing Napoleon.
My impression of Alisa Rosenbaum’s (aka Ayn Rand) ideal world is one of utopia.
Firstly, in the modern Western world, one of ever-increasing automation, there is the structural problem of unemployment. In a prosperous society based in a country that has the industrial (and natural resource) capacities to, essentially, bring its trade balance to 0 (and above) and still prosper with under-employment, it is easy to have much more people than are needed for both private industry and essential government functions. Even including those commonplace restaurants (as Americans love to eat out) won’t help that much.
Secondly, I don’t notice the presence of children in her world. In her world, people live for themselves, for their self-interest. At most, they’ll love a partner, but having a family and procreating is not really that selfish, hence somehow things are supposed to work out long-term?
Solution for point #1: government/private foundation create jobs. Which jobs? Jobs for digging ditches are obviously taken by excavators, and it’s silly to “stimulate” those. However, I see two other possibilities:
a) Jobs for scientists/mathematicians/engineers, based on very long-term investment made by private firms/foundations, with government taking up the slack
b) “Jobs” for priests and sages, based on guaranteed payments for Torah/Talmud study.
Solution for point #2: it is mostly not merely the financial, but cultural incentives that matter. Self-interest being the ultimate god to serve, should give way to something bigger and deeper. See point 1)b) — the priests and religious scholars, by encouraging long-term horizons of society, ought to make this happen.
The question then, becomes: which priests/scholars, which system? So far, Christianity has shown to be a system that has great difficulty surviving uncompromised when exposed to urban, prosperous way of life. Islam’s answer is to revert back to barbarian existence. Buddhism? Not a chance. Confucianism? What’s that again? Etc etc.
I only see Judaism, Orthodox Judaism surviving intact (with, perhaps, some silly but non-violent technology-denying sects, like the Amish, stabilizing at some few millions or so.)
This is just amazingly dishonest, in a very communistic fashion.
You claim that the scientific worldview is incompatible with holiness. I point out that it was invented by men like Newton, who was deeply religious, who spent a huge part of his energy and time thinking about religious and mystical concepts, like the Temple of Solomon and its proportions and how they are a map for the universe, and whose scientific endeavors were not the product of idle curiosity but religiously motivated. And I suspect his celibacy was as well-many mystics have this. And you say, “well, according to my personal, highly convoluted definition of holiness, Newton wasn’t holy”. This is like when the USSR would castigate the US for being racist for having separate drinking fountains, while deporting entire nations-according to its definition of racism, it was correct. Well, words have meanings. And you can’t just reassign new ones, especially not in the middle of an argument.
To a larger point, in a worldview such as yours, where holiness doesn’t exist in any objective way except as a maneuver in a chimp power struggle, there is no room for anything but Pig Philosophy. Not coincidentally, your objections to Communism are all in line with its tenets: there were grievous deficits of slop, frequent internal quarrels resulting in the losers being sent off to the butcher, etc. Nothing a talking, intelligent pig would have difficulty grasping.
I am using a definition of holiness, which explains the tendency of religions to go horribly wrong. Since the Dark Enlightenment is the bad news, it is natural to use such a definition. Also I see a great deal of such holiness, and I really don’t see too much of what you think is holiness, and when you think you see it, you are frequently deluded by men who intend you harm.
Since this offends the believers in my audience, I shall in future use the word “phariseeism”. However we have a well known and much used phrase “Holier than thou” which conveys the same meaning, and I will continue to use that phrase. Also the phrase “ostentatious humility”, to which the papacy is notoriously prone, and will continue to describe social justice warriors as “each one holier than all of the others”.
You are arguing that communism is unclean, and that to the extent that it was a Jewish heresy and a Jewish plot, those Jews became unclean. You don’t like communism for much the reasons that progs don’t like Christianity. It is a closely related religion which uses much the same approach and methods. You apply Talmudism, communists apply dialectics, you torture the texts of your holy books, they torture the texts of Marx, Lenin, and Engels.
Naturally, people who are not Jewish are apt to find that criticism of rather silly.
Nor is the Dark Enlightenment criticism of communism and socialism that there were grievous deficits of slop and frequent internal quarrels resulting in the losers being sent off to the butcher. We inherit the Hayekian criticism of communism, socialism, and state intervention which explains why there were frequent internal quarrels resulting in the losers being sent off to the butcher, and the Misean criticism of communism, socialism, and state intervention which explains why there were grievous deficits of slop.
The Hayekian criticism is about evil and lies, not about slaughter, the Misean critisism about freedom and choice, not about slop shortages. The evil causes the slaughter, and lack of freedom causes the slop shortage.
Eli,
It is forbidden according to some pretty authoritative opinions to make a living from learning Torah. It would be harmful to Torah learning to make it the default occupation of those members of society who can’t find productive employment, both because it would lower the average level of Torah discourse and its prestige.
Torah Judaism is in fact the solution for Jews, but for non-Jews it doesn’t work at all, because of their different makeup. Something very different will emerge (not Icelandic Shinto Unicorn Worship.) I suspect it will emerge after the total collapse and bankruptcy of Islam, which ISIS is working very hard to achieve.
I don’t like communism for the same reason I don’t like any of the modernist philosophies, including progressivism, Manchester liberalism/libertarianism, utilitarianism, etc. Which is the same reason Carlyle (whom you seem not to have read) didn’t like them: they reduce humans to intelligent pigs and the universe to a giant pigsty. All the other effects, including mass murder, are secondary derivatives.
That you don’t see the type of holiness I am describing is natural, because in your system of thought, its existence is Crimethink, in the same exact way that to a progressive, the existence of innate inequality between different sorts of people is Crimethink. Therefore, you both practice Crimestop.
>The Hayekian criticism is about evil and lies, not about slaughter,
This has nothing to do with you. You don’t believe in G-d, so can’t consistently believe in evil-what is evil if there is no good? Only relative evil can exist in your system. And you’ve been advocating for an official system of lies (Iceland Shinto Unicorn Worship) to be instituted to serve your ultimate end. So you have no leg to stand on there.
>the Misean critisism about freedom and choice, not about slop shortages.
“Freedom” and “choice” are not really an independent point on the moral compass, unless you are a progressive. If taken as an absolute, they just give you utilitarianism, with the idea that everyone knows best what their utility function looks like, and thus will maximize it if given freedom, and that the ultimate good is the maximization of total freedom. Well, I think we’ve all eaten at that restaurant before and know what’s for desert.
If your main objection to the French Revolution is that Egalite and Fraternite should be taken off the menu, with only Liberte remaining, you are really in Aleister Crowley territory.
See my article on natural law and natural rights, and Constant on Good and Evil from self interest. Ayn Rand had no difficulty believing in good and evil, and good and evil as colorfully and dramatically depicted by her sound a lot more good and a lot more evil than double dishwashers, and if her heroes are a little too heroic, her villains are instantly recognizable from life. Talmudic good and evil, on the other hand, is disturbingly bloodless and legalistic. Clever verbal agility and unscrupulous text torture can legalistically weasel you out of any inconvenient Talmudic obligation while pharisaically displaying superior holiness. Rand’s heroes easily beat double dishwashers.
See my proposal for the next religion: Not based on lies.
>See my article on natural law and natural rights,
In which you argue that natural law has an objective existence and insofar as we succeed in determining its shape, we are rewarded with material success, and the converse (the example with the deer.) There are two answers to this, first, that the vast majority of humans who ever existed were very poor at discerning natural law by this measure, including your Greeks, and the second, that the most rationalist objectivist positivists have been the very worst. I mean, if the deer doesn’t get eaten by a tiger but fails to reproduce, it is the same thing, and we see the rationalist objectivist positivists failing to reproduce or getting sex changes.
>and Constant on Good and Evil from self interest.
This is Pig Philosophy in the purest, clearest form. He explicitly starts off reducing humans to intelligent pigs.
>Ayn Rand had no difficulty believing in good and evil, and good and evil as colorfully and dramatically depicted by her sound a lot more good and a lot more evil than double dishwashers, and if her heroes are a little too heroic, her villains are instantly recognizable from life.
Your third attempt to derail the conversation into Jew talk is duly noted.
Oddly enough, the Communists and the Nazis also had no difficulty believing in good and evil and depicting them dramatically (I read quite a bit of these depictions as a child and can attest to it.) Their villains were also instantly recognizable from life. In real life, the closest analogues to Rand’s heroes, the Carnegies, Rockefellers, Einsteins and Oppenheimers, were great supporters of the closest analogues to her villains.
>Talmudic good and evil, on the other hand, is disturbingly bloodless and legalistic. Clever verbal agility and unscrupulous text torture can legalistically weasel you out of any inconvenient Talmudic obligation while pharisaically displaying superior holiness. Rand’s heroes easily beat double dishwashers.
This is strange coming from somebody using the deer metaphor. The application of Talmudic good and evil on a national scale has produced a people capable of surviving the harshest conditions in endless permutations over millennia, and of laying down their lives en masse for their beliefs (see the Martyrs of Mainz, for instance.) If I go into a religious Jewish neighborhood today, whether Haredi or National Zionist, I see lots of kids playing outside with no fear, their mothers walking around with lots of babies, and know that I can leave my property around without anyone stealing it, or walk into a store and make a purchase without being cheated. The application of Rand’s good and evil to her own life (she couldn’t convince many others that her principles were worth living by) produced an insane, sterile, polyamorous, meth-addicted cat lady producing endless unreadable screeds. A sort of female Eliezer Yudkowsky. So who is closer to your Objective Natural Law?
(I might point out that from your own words, you yourself seem to have spent your life with a powerful intellect, vast quantities of knowledge and more than adequate resources at your disposal, which you’ve parlayed into one child, some mistresses, a certain quantity of barramundi and other delicacies consumed and some adventures, vaguely alluded-to, which would have landed you in prison had it not been for expensive lawyers. This is hardly an impressive return on investment, and doesn’t suggest that the principles guiding it are very good or close to any objective natural law. I would certainly not be so arrogant and self-assured if this was my track record.)
>See my proposal for the next religion: Not based on lies.
Pardon me, but that’s not a religion you’ve got there, but a box of cat shit. You can’t have a religion based on the premise that god is dead. A religion whose tenets are only things we can reasonably assume might be good for us is not a religion but a boy scout handbook. Since you don’t believe in the holy, you can’t have a religion, unless you base it on lies.
The question is whether those that doubt God can have a basis in morality. But you are not talking Christian morality, or Muslim morality. You are talking Jewish morality. And Ayn Rand was talking a variant of natural law morality.
The question then is which is more inspiring. Jewish morality or Ayn Rand’s morality. If you claim the superiority of God based morality, of course I am going to talk Jew talk.
If you were a Christian I would taunt you with slave morality and turning the other cheek. Since you are a Jew, I taunt you with double dishwashers.
But either way, God based moralities really don’t seem all that inspiring.
John C Wright is a Christian. He has his heroes fighting demons. But in order to make a rattling good yarn, is apt to make his heroes as non Christian as Ayn Rand’s heroes, because Christian morality is kind of drab and depressing. And Jewish morality is not so much drab as bureaucratic and legalistic.
Chinese and Japanese seem to have something mighty like religions that lack God. Of course, you might well point out that the Japanese are about to vanish from the face of the earth due to failure to have sex, but until MacArthur made certain changes in their laws and religion, they were breeding like rabbits.
Pre MacArthur, Japanese religion worked the way Israeli Judaism is supposed to work.
You correctly point out that Orthodox Judaism is doing fine as a non state religion, perhaps because of its inherent virtues, perhaps because the Cathedral is embarrassed to repress it as forcefully as it represses equivalent Christian religions. But in the long run, for Israel to survive, needs a state religion more martial than progressivism, because you need to bring a gun to gunfight, and a religion to a holy war.
What is good is what is good for the White species. That’s enough.
Neoreactionaries mostly analyze history, not try to build something new, thus don’t need to really think too much about what is good and how to attain it. Thus Thor-Confucianism, which is to say, ‘try to do these things that seem to have worked i guess lol’; a cargo-cult religion.
Once you’ve read some real history, of the kings of Europe, and the socialist phenomenon, then you think that maybe we need to restore some religion and get rid of nationalism, as the kings of Europe thought; this perspective is shared by Solzhenitsyn. Once you read the things that aren’t on the usual neoreactionary canon, like Donald Day’s /Onward Christian Soldiers/ and Revilo P. Oliver’s /The Jewish Strategy/, replacing religion and feudalism with nothing but pure racism starts to sound like a great idea.
The Platonic philosophy is not a single perspective so much as a template on which people can put in their own perspective based on their personality, place and time. Thus Communists, neocons, etc. can have their own take on it. Basically any lie in pursuit of power is a noble lie since the egotistical pursuer of power dubs his vision for society as inherently noble. And you’re envious towards the Left because you lack the power to decree your vision the way, the truth and the light for society.
You say noble lie or ideas or whatever, but now racial science has advanced to the point at which we can not only identify the Jew as a parasitic ethnicity attacking White civilizations over thousands of years, and appreciate what they did to Egypt (under the name Hyksos), but ask just how much damage the Jews did to Poland between the Statute of Kalisz and the Partitions. Poland may be impossible to save, and if Sweden could be destroyed so easily, there’s no reason to be so sentimental about the blondies. There are ideas and ideas, but genes are what really matter, except to the extent that Jews use ideas to adulterated and destroy White bloodlines; we must calmly take stock of what remains and work from there. It’s an open question whether the Anglos of Arizona are more or less criminal than Polacks, or whether the Mormons or the Swedes are the most credulous of Whites, but just as the dragons disappeared from the map of Africa before it was filled in with Dutch, English, Belgian, German, and Portuguese borders, so too did the race maps disappear before being redrawn with DNA sequences.
That has nothing to do with my point that Jim is also anti-democratic and that he opposes the dictatorial means used by global elites solely because it is not *his* brand of anti-democratic politics. What he doesn’t realize is that anti-democratic politics by its nature shuts out the sort of random dissent like himself that would point flaws in political operations…
During the rule of Queen Elizabeth the first, we saw far more dissent that is tolerated today.
Today, every movie, every song, every comic strip today, is made withing the excruciatingly narrow, rigid, and small progressive world view. For example every comic strip has a heavy handed routine obeisance to how wonderful homosexuals and homosexuality are, and how homosexuals should be open about it, and their openness should be welcomed. There is a continual barrage of arrogant angry shouting propaganda for the official worldview, full of venomous undirected rage, undirected because the dissent at which the rage is secretly directed cannot be admitted to exist.
The official belief system of Elizabeth’s time would be the Church of England World view. Shakespeare’s plays are written from the Roman Catholic worldview, or the pagan world view, or the materialist world view, or pretty much anything except the Church of England worldview of its time.
In Shakespeare’s plays, leftism is ridiculed, but it still gets a fair shake. Jack Cade is allowed to make the arguments for leftism, equality, and socialism. Shakespeare then rebuts him, correctly predicting that these will lead to disastrous economic outcomes and murderous totalitarian political repression – but nonetheless Jack Cade gets his say. Today, no alternative voices are heard in any mainstream medium. Shakespeare rebutted equalist dissent. Today, no rebuttal against unequalist doctrines, no rebuttal against doctrines for privilege, because no one is allowed to admit that anyone anywhere ever doubted equalism. Supposedly the South favored slavery because they hated blacks, not because they honestly believed that most blacks need masters to make their decisions for them, not because they honestly believed that unowned blacks, and unowned women, will make bad decisions for themselves.
The repression that Shakespeare correctly predicted is today obvious. Shakespeare could give leftism a fair shake, and Roman Catholicism, paganism, and materialism a good deal more than fair shake. Today in mainstream entertainment, you cannot get away with giving non leftism a fair shake, or traditional Christianity a fair shake.
so what, there are many ways of being wrong
Yes Jim the Southern plantation owners imported black slaves as an act of charity. It certainly wasn’t because exploiting foreigners who were exotic to the point of seeming alien provided an opportunity for exploitation more complete than exploitation of poor whites, who, for all their low socioeconomic status were still free-born subjects of the Crown (or voting citizens of the Republic).
I observe the standard zero sum socialist theory. That whatever is done out of self interests hurts someone else – so no one should be allowed to do what he wishes.
If slavery was so good, coercion wouldn’t be necessary. When people support slavery, they support it for people they consider inferior to themselves. Or you could suffer from penis envy towards big black bucks!!! 😀
For the most part, a black will not work hard, nor refrain for stealing stuff and beating people up, even though it is in his interest to work hard and refrain from stealing stuff and beating people up.
» If slavery was so good, coercion wouldn’t be necessary.
this depends on the impulse control and future time orientation of the slave in question. Poor impulse control, future time orientation, intelligence, and other vices, is how people end up enslaved, and slavery is the best way for people who suffer from these deficiencies to live.
>>FOR THE MOST PART, a black will not work hard, nor refrain for stealing stuff and beating people up, even though it is in his interest to work hard and refrain from stealing stuff and beating people up. (Emphasis mine.)
And yet you were so indignant when I called you out on your anti-black attitudes and how they intersected with your pro-slavery attitudes. Admit it! You want black people to be slaves because you were jealous of their big, beefy penises!
The prog theory of slavery, segregation, etc, is that people favor such measures to do blacks harm – though progs are not lining up to live in Detroit.
I doubt anyone here is jealous of blacks’ members. You’re not exactly taking the high road with your argument here.
I personally would like slavery to be legal. There are people who are, for whatever reason, incapable of being responsible for their own behavior and upkeep. They don’t have families capable of taking responsibility for them (or their families have the same problem.) They tend to cause damage to themselves and their surroundings constantly. The sum of that damage can be simply enormous: see Detroit and its franchises in every American city. It’s obvious that someone has to take responsibility for these people, and I would prefer that responsibility to devolve to individual persons rather than bureaucracies, which is the way it’s done now. Like the saying goes, Lincoln didn’t free the slaves: he nationalized them.
Rather than having these people be the property of a series of bureaucratic welfare, law enforcement and incarceration institutions, spending their lives moving between human closed and open zoos, I would rather have private individuals be responsible for them, in a system with established legal boundaries.
Strangely, one of Jim’s heroes, Raffles, abolished slavery everywhere he went, and had there not been an American revolution, slavery would have been abolished there earlier.
You say, B, that my assertion that saying Jim is jealous of blacks’ members is not the high road but how else do you explain his loud insistence on reviving slavery even though it only makes him look ridiculous. What one person, e.g. a racist, may see as animalistic, others will see as ballsy. Thus when racists denounce blacks as animalistic, they may in fact be jealous of the blacks’ members!
yes, Blacks have different behavior patters from Whites. Those behavior patters are not conducive to civilization. Therefore, they must be excluded from civilization, or enslaved to ensure that they are forced to behave in a civilized manner.
The reason they have those behavior patterns is that they evolved differently.
I mean, this is just obvious. If you actually take Darwin seriously, it’s unavoidable.
>You say, B, that my assertion that saying Jim is jealous of blacks’ members is not the high road but how else do you explain his loud insistence on reviving slavery even though it only makes him look ridiculous.
Perhaps Jim has certain principles which he holds to even in the face of ridicule. Is this a new concept to you?
>What one person, e.g. a racist, may see as animalistic, others will see as ballsy.
Yes, until they have a delightful personal encounter with their pets. Waka Flocka Flame is wonderfully boisterous and ballsy in his videos. Having him for a neighbor is very much a different experience. Good luck being mugged by reality.
B,
I find your and Jim’s view on slavery to be reasonable. I do, however, have some concerns:
1) in times of agrarian life, lots of manual, hard labor was a necessity. Now? (For custodial services and dishwasing there are much more reliable Mex/Guatemalans).
2) I can see some of the female portions of population being used in sex service industry, but despite my respect for some of theirs full physiques, overwhelmingly they are repulsive.
3) some of the black/white unions produced offspring. What to do? What to do with offspring from free man and slave woman. And, if course, what of vice versa?
I would prefer the sex service industry to be illegal, and poorly behaved women to be assigned permanently and indissolubly to particular males who they have a duty to obey, respect, and have sex with and who have a duty to protect, support, supervise, have sex with, and control those females – in particular to restrain them from immoral behavior – if you prostitute your slave girl or your wife, you get punished, and you lose her to someone else. If she sneaks off and prostitutes herself, you still get punished and lose her to someone who can and will restrain her from such conduct.
I kind of visualize a strip bar being raided by the cops of the one true official church, who give the strippers twenty four hours to get married to someone suitable of their choice, or they get assigned (slavery or close to it) to someone of the cops’ choice. If they catch the girl being too friendly with a customer, the customer has to take the girl permanently if he meets certain requirements, or suffer a penalty if does not or will not.
Sorry, see my post below.
Jim,
I think that the economic utility of blacks, even as personal servants, is fairly low in modern age. As I’ve said maybe some of them can serve as concubines.
Given all the technology and general unattractiveness of that segment of population, maybe having the authorities assign them to people, even despite the latter’s wish, is a good idea.
Still, the question remains: what to do with mixed spawn?
jim, does your blog not allow links to moldbug or something?
Linking is rather broken. Don’t use html. Just type in the link with the initial http://
I have been trying to fix this, but cannot.
no, doesn’t work. Let’s try this. Add unqualified-reservations dot blogspot dot com before these
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/11/dire-problem-and-virtual-option.html
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/11//2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html
to see Moldbug’s commentary on the Dire Problem.
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com
Works for me.
see, your blog is anti-Semitic.
anyway, Moldbug appears to be the only neoreactionary to have commented on the Dire Problem, both because his commentary is exhaustive, and because this is speculative where neoreactionaries have usually contented themselves with historical revisionism and conspiracy theories, and also it’s not something we can write something short and obviously. We love writing things that are short and obvious.
Andrew Anglin says that these people should be put in concentration camps, which might be Moldbug’s Solution C or D, but it also might just be mindless trolling.
Great links, thanks!
haha, mindless trolling.
Are you perhaps one of the toothless members of ANTIFA? I hope that union check cleared.
And what makes you so special that you should be counted among the elite?
For one, I didn’t spend more than I earn and run up ridiculous credit card debts like the modern day peasants do. Or give a shit about Kim Kardashian’s wardrobe like modern peasants do.
That just means you get executed by the GPU first.
Peasants are supposed to run up debts and stuff. They’re also supposed to have constant infusions of high-born to keep them from devolving. 600 years of not having a middle class damaged the Polacks and turned them into what they are today, which is worse than the Russkis.
Given my occupation, I would be doing the executing.
Peppermint, the cleansing of our elite first by Germans (Operation Sonderkrakau is perphaps relatively known; There were hundreds of similar operations) then by Boltscheviks followed by installation of their own elite composed of traitors turned us into what we are today. Still, given all of the above we are still breathing, unlike Swedes, for example.
Generally, being the one doing the executing is followed by being the one getting executed in these things.
@B
“Generally, being the one doing the executing is followed by being the one getting executed in these things.”
That’s why god invented nuclear weapons.
“tell noble lies in the Platonic tradition that are the opposite of the narrative you would favor”
That is just it. The lies are not noble.
Fertility in almost every developed nation has collapsed. Meanwhile, the fertility among people who have historically not sustained civilization is far higher. Meanwhile, these primitive people flood into countries that have civilization and cause them to lose it.
Civilization is disappearing and the ‘noble’ lies specifically block discussion of the problem and specifically eat away at the structures that sustain civilization.
These are not like the ‘noble lies’ of the past, for they have not been proven to work and they have not been proven to be helpful.
The Dark Enlightenment is primarily a recognition of official lies and their deep destructiveness in many areas of society. Solutions by DE types primarily involve reflections on what has worked in the past. History is full of examples of societies that were more civilized than ours.
Indeed the tyranny that the left fears is much more likely to come as an after-effect from failed leftist policy. The modern police and incarceration state in America is not a construction of right-wing monsters but of Democrat Mayors in America in response to the astonishing crime rates that were unleashed in the 1980s and 1990s by corrosive leftist policies. Blacks didn’t need to be incarcerated at such a rate in the past when traditionalist norms were in place. The modern surveillance state was necessarily constructed after allowing into America by the left untold thousands or millions with attributes and values opposed to our own.
Were the noble lies of the medieval period contributing to a healthy society? Yes, feudalism sounds fun when you are of high socioeconomic status but the majority of the population lived in cramped, filthy, flimsy housing with their animals, generating plagues and being malnourished (only in modern times have the common people regained the height of their pre-state ancestors because of the tendency of state elites to take up to half the produce the common people produce).
Generally racists in general and neoreactionaries in particular sneer at such dysfunction as African and yet even Africans have improved from the economic level of medieval times (the population growth in the Third World beginning in the period 1920-1960 started because it was then that the economic limitations that cut down fertility ended, the same ones that ended in the First World two centuries earlier).
Today, the state elite takes about half of what people like me produce, but back in the day’s of feudalism, the proportion skimmed by the aristocracy was by any reasonable measure minute.
The restoration represented in substantial part a restoration of the power of the aristocracy. From 1680 to around 1810, Britain did not have feudalism, but did have aristocratic rule. In that period, Britain attained the highest living standards ever attained for the common people, conquered the world, and started the scientific, technological, and industrial revolutions.
Chances are, if was not for restoration Britain, people would still be living in mud huts.
No doubt restoration England was relatively prosperous and was indeed the prelude to the Industrial Revolution. But more often over the centuries and especially over the millennia the aristocratic owners of the land used their ownership rights to take the wealth from the common people up to and including the food they needed to avoid malnutrition. I mean, let’s be real: If you look at the height differences between the aristocracy and the commoners, it was 2-6 inches in difference. Even in 19th Century America where most peasants were yeomanry, the furniture, if you look at it, seems designed for midgets!
And this is talking about 19th Century America, part of the rising Anglosphere where common people did relatively well. More frequently, the aristocracy took a third to half of the common people’s wealth. Granted taxes in and of themselves were minuscule because relatively little made its way to the Crown. Far more significant was the revenue that went to the landlord and to the Church/Temple.
Again, your theology shows, that inequality supposedly equals injustice. Remember, you are talking to people who just don’t believe that all men, let alone all men and all women, were created equal.
Utterly unserious. The peasants had tons of days off. Would you tell them to instead work? Would it make them taller? There was less stuff, period, and conditions were essentially Malthusian in most of Europe. Maybe you could go back in time and educate peasant women and hand out condoms.
No, it has to be because those fat cats were stealing everything. That’s all we need to know about feudalism: fat cats that weren’t even elected.
So the produce that went to the Crown, the Church and the Landlord would not have helped the peasants who grew it?
Socialists back then had the same record as socialists now: Today, they create famine, they don’t remedy it, and back then they created famine, they did not remedy it.
No, it would not have. And to your point about negroes, as well: can you imagine that it is possible to have an arrangement that is coerced and beneficial? I mean, of course you can. But not when the person doing the coercing is not holy enough.
The arrangement between negroes and planters was mutually beneficial in he short run. In the long run, it meant Puritan and Jews could use those negroes against them.
The current arrangement most African-Americans have is much less beneficial and arguably no less coercive.
But at least Mitt Romney can’t tell them not to litter.
You spout unsupported assertions and frivolous jokes. Then you rebuke me for not being serious.
Well, as long as you’re saying words, you haven’t lost yet, and your female relatives remain undefiled. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.
You yourself admit that the aristocrats, businessmen and imperialists you lionize have pillaged people. Obviously envy towards people who are more successful just because they are more successful is a vice; however opposition to pillaging is NOT a vice.
Inequality because you have produced something better is one thing; inequality because you and your people control the land (something aristocrats, bureaucrats and commissars have in common) is another thing entirely.
It occurs to me that you use the specter of Communism like fascist dictatorships do: to smear by association anyone who opposes your favored regime for domination and extortion. That kind of anti-Communism does not discredit Communism; on the contrary, it gives Communism credibility it does not deserve!
You keep using communist ideology – for example it is supposedly unjust that one man gets more than another because he owns land and the other does not.
OK. Imagine nobody owns anything, and everything is up for grabs. Been tried.
OK. Imagine the government owns everything. Been tried, still sucks.
Any other ideas?
we need a king. Our king will have no justification for being king other than that he is king. That is not good enough for you.
Go harvest your wheat and give a third to half of it to the government so it can be redistributed to niggers so you will know that your king is holy and/or because it is the will of the electorate as demonstrated by voting (through a corrupt process involving Jews).
At least you will not be pillaged by anyone who is not holier than yourself that way.
No, no, no, you insist on reading me as a Communist, even though my approach is closer to classical liberalism. Homesteading the land in an Lockean manner is a legitimate way to acquire land because it creates property through hard work. Conquering a country and then giving the best land to yourself is pillage; if giving a single mother who irresponsibly spawned five bastards taxpayer money is pillage, then creating a government to seize land worth a hundred or a thousand times the single mother’s yearly welfare grant and give it to you is also pillage and a form that is a hundred or a thousand times greater than the single mother’s welfare grant.
The commie position is that old thefts of land justify new thefts of land. Lockean position is that new thefts should stop. You are taking the commie position.
Also do you deny that the common people before the 20th Century were 2-6 inches shorter than modern people due to malnutrition? Do you doubt the archeologists who say that the pre-modern people who had the same height as modern people were the prehistoric people whose fossils they dug up? (Not that prehistoric life was rosy: pre-historic people, especially the males, were FAR MORE likely to die from violence than people ruled by hierarchies and states.)
The improvement in height and living standards is not the result of democracy, for it began about the thirteenth century, when England began to pull away from what is now the third world, and rapidly accelerated with the restoration.
Rather, the improvement in height and living standards is the result of technological advance, the result of the industrial, technological, and scientific revolutions, all of which have their roots in the restoration, in the pro science measures of Charles the second, and his willingness to grant freedom and personhood to corporations.
» you insist on reading me as a Communist, even though my approach is closer to classical liberalism
You say that you don’t want to be ruled by someone who is less holy than you. This argument is shared by communists and classical liberals and was made by both in the same age (there were small-scale communisms in the age of classical liberalism).
Your ruler by the grace of Gnon is not holy enough for you. Fine. Being in charge is a tricky thing for humans. How about we split the United States into a bunch of principalities, so your principality can be ruled by someone you can respect.
Oh granted, economic modernization did more than democracy to raise height and living standards. But then it took until the 20th Century for height to rise to the standards of pre-state ancestors (who were relatively egalitarian and without much hierarchy besides age and gender). But I note the increased violence to make clear that this is not meant by archeologists or myself to whitewash their way of life.
Jim, you argue as if I should care about the murder, rape and robbery that will inevitably result from deviating from your vision and yet you do not care about the murder, rape and robbery that comes from propping up your vision.
Our vision can be supported with no rape, minimal numbers of executions, ad no robbery.
Unless you say taxation is robbery when it’s done by someone less holy than you. Because you prefer to pay more in taxes, and be randomly robbed as well, as long as the people who tax and rob you are holier.
And unless you say any sex is rape when the man is less holy than you.
And – oh – murder is extrajudical killing plus power, so kulaks can’t be murdered. Well, no leftist has actually advanced that line, but then again, you’re not a leftist, you just don’t want to be governed by people who aren’t holy enough.
(1) feudalism wasn’t as bad as people make it out to be
(2) Africans are different in a number of behavioral traits from Europeans, not just IQ, and in fact many features of their appearance bespeak their different evolution from us. Which you would know about if you could graduate from looking suspiciously at type-1 racism and take Cochran and Harpending’s thesis seriously.
(3) Lagos has ten million creatures of genus Homo and no sewer system. Detroit was handed a functioning sewer system, but it is falling apart due to lack of maintenance. 50 and 100 years of giving things to Africans has not caused them to have things because their behavioral traits are not conducive to having things.
Peasants are too stupid to avoid malnourishment even when good food is available to them… See Obamaphone Lady and Honey Boo Boo’s family.
But, can we really blame them for trusting the food guide pyramid and nutritionists? Large-scale social organization depends on trust.
Trust is exploited by liars. Society breaks down, and everyone loses, except for the Jews. NPR smugly reports about how much better things were at the apex when there was enough production to be able to tolerate lying.
Yes because the people whose hard work was behind everything are equivalent to welfare trash. Very insightful! Tell me against how you differ from limousine liberals…
I meant to say “Tell me again” when I said “Tell me against”.
Or, peppermint, I could ignore your ramblings about Gnon as the rants of an irrelevant fringe blogger…
Peppermint, you talk to B and I, about matters of minimal relevance that is frivolous yet delivered with a serious tone. I think you need to calm down and see a therapist.
You are a leftist or a fool. Only a leftist or a fool would argue in the comments section of a fringe blog, then end their argument by naming the other an “irrelevant fringe blogger.” And then recommending a therapist. How holy you are. Good signalling. Git.
Zerohedge is generally horrible … but this is a good piece. I’ve spent a lot of time in Ukraine and it’s quite clear that the vast bulk of Ukrainians do NOT want to be subsumed into Russia. But if the choice is “fight the Russian army or go hang out in Romania or Russia til this blows over” that’s a pretty easy choice. The Ukrainian government is a trainwreck. Has been for years. It actively feels like a trainwreck when you are there, too. It engenders no loyalty from the citizens. That said, there is something of a Ukrainian nation, particularly in the west. But again the issue is whether you want to fight for it. The answer is coming back “no.”
That said, the IMF et al just set up a $40 billion financing deal with Ukraine, so we’ll have to see how that impacts things.
Sadly this nugget is behind the WSJ paywall, but it intersects with the topic of female sexuality: To pay for the reconquest of the Donbass, Poroshenko months ago cut off all aid to disabled persons and single mothers.
This should be required reading for any woman considering raising a child out of wedlock. If your government gets into a major war, your make-work government job and all your welfare benefits will be zeroed immediately without debate. A government in peril needs men who can fight, not women who can vote.
“A government in peril needs men who can fight, not women who can vote.” +1
The WSJ paywall is easy to bypass. Can you give me the link of the article?
I lost the original link, but I think it was this one:
http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB10001424052702303949704579457591983371478 “Ukraine Battles to Rebuild a Depleted Military”
I used to bypass their paywall by going through a Google search, but they closed that loophole months ago. How do you get in?
“With Ukraine already teetering on default of its debts, money is hard to find. Still, the new government raised an extra $610 million in emergency defense funding by cutting spending on social programs—aid to the disabled and to mothers with dependent children.”
Thank you for the link. I just forge my http referer to http://www.google.com/ so this way wsj thinks i come from google. If you are using firefox you can use a addon call refcontrol that makes it easy to do this or you can just do it manualy if you like.
“The Dark Enlightenment is not yet another religious system, but the scientific method applied to society, history, and politics.”
well, if you know the theory of society, history, politics and everything else, and want to share your knowledge with the world ( otherwise you wouldn’t be blogging) you shall be able to make actual and correct predictions of future trends and events, short and long term.
Like Marx did, when he predicted falling rate of profits, immiseration of working class, decline of middle class and monopolization of industry.
The main prediction of the Dark Enlightenment is movement ever leftwards, every faster, which prediction seems to be doing a whole lot better than Marx’s predictions.
Marx got all his predictions wrong because dialectical materialism is not, in fact, connected with fact. There was nothing scientific about Marxism.
We also get our retrodictions right – not that it is hard to get redtrodictions right, but Marx managed to get his retrodictions wrong, misplacing feudalism by several centuries.
True, industry cartelized more since Marx’s time but the worker’s living standard went up, the middle class increased in number and profits humped along according to a boom and bust cycle. So not very accurate…
Material profits went up, and spiritual ones disappeared. Material profits and spiritual losses. This is the fruit of modernism. Read Evola.
no, don’t, Evola makes as much sense at Pat Buchanan or Ann Coulter.
But what’s up with the Right Sector?
[…] Jim on Greece. Jim on Ukraine. […]