Monthly Archives: August 2014

My Rock

I’m busy, so here’s a psalm:

Blessed be the LORD, my rock,
who trains my hands for war,
and my fingers for battle;
he is my steadfast love and my fortress,
my stronghold and my deliverer,
my shield and he in whom I take refuge,
who subdues peoples under me.

O LORD, what is man that you regard him,
or the son of man that you think of him?
Man is like a breath;
his days are like a passing shadow.

Bow your heavens, O LORD, and come down!
Touch the mountains so that they smoke!
Flash forth the lightning and scatter them;
send out your arrows and rout them!
Stretch out your hand from on high;
rescue me and deliver me from the many waters,
from the hand of foreigners,
whose mouths speak lies
and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

I will sing a new song to you, O God;
upon a ten-stringed harp I will play to you,
who gives victory to kings,
who rescues David his servant from the cruel sword.
Rescue me and deliver me
from the hand of foreigners,
whose mouths speak lies
and whose right hand is a right hand of falsehood.

May our sons in their youth
be like plants full grown,
our daughters like corner pillars
cut for the structure of a palace;
may our granaries be full,
providing all kinds of produce;
may our sheep bring forth thousands
and ten thousands in our fields;
may our cattle be heavy with young,
suffering no mishap or failure in bearing;
may there be no cry of distress in our streets!
Blessed are the people to whom such blessings fall!
Blessed are the people whose God is the LORD!

Motte & Bailey Example

To simplify, the Motte & Bailey (M&B) strategy consists of a group using a term or concept in an insane or despicable way among themselves (the bailey), but then, when attacked for their insanity retreating a position where the term or concept means something sane or reasonable (the motte). By this they hope to force aceptance of the term and thereby eventual acceptance of the insanity.

I’ve already shown how feminists use the motte-and-bailey strategy, although, without using the term, but we can see this in action right now, so another helpful little reminder can’t hurt.

Some women have taken taken to react against the excesses of modern feminism by creating the Women Against Feminism (WAF) movement. As with many modern female-controlled internet movements, it consists of taking selfies. Not that I’m complaining, as these selfies are much easier on the eyes than previous selfie campaigns.

Despite the positive aesthetics of the WAF and the generally positive tone of the messages, the WAF does have a problem, it was already entirely pwned before it even began, as this pretty young gal and this older wife well demonstrate:

The WAF are rejecting modern feminism while fully accepting the equality nonsense of first-wave feminism and the women-in-the-workforce concepts as givens, then thinking these are not a part of feminism. Sadly (and to their own detriment), the women are only rejecting contemporary feminism while accepting all of feminism’s original values and goals. If modern feminists weren’t so utterly stupid and evil they’d rejoice and call it a day, they won so very hard that even anti-feminists uphold feminist goals and values.

But of course, feminists are utterly corrupt and the ratchet never ends, so instead the feminists’ answer is, “how dare these ungrateful whores?

You think I’m exaggerating, don’t you? (h/t: VD)

Its tumblr is constructed of selfies of young women, dressed and posed like ads for DIY escort services, holding up bits of notebook paper on which they’ve scrawled screeds against feminism.

Everything about Women Against Feminism suggests it’s a sock puppet for the aggrieved misogynists and pedophiles of the anti-feminist men’s rights crowd. The main clue is that almost all the women on the site are nubile and posed in ways that fulfill dirty old men’s wildest dreams about pliant young things.

Remember, slut-shaming is only evil if it is men or non-feminists shaming actual sluts. It’s awesome when feminists are slut-shaming non-sluts.

I’ll note here that I didn’t see a single picture on on the WAF that would have been out of place walking our modern streets on a sunny afternoon and there was only one picture there that showed more cleavage than Nina Bureligh’s (the author) bio pic.

Of course, from her picture it’s fairly easy to see why Nina Burleigh is expressing hatred towards this pretty young woman:

I guess she never learned that jealousy just isn’t that attractive. But, maybe she can be forgiven, as getting old sucks, especially considering that even when she was younger Bill Clinton still chose this over her. Her calling other women sluts is especially funny given how this adulteress married a guy, then divorced him almost immediately to marry another guy. I guess projection is real.

But now I’m getting mean and off-topic. I still haven’t even started on my original point.

Feminists won, they won a while back and they won hard, but in their victory they’ve only won the original goal of ‘equality’, they have not yet gained what they truly desire: the complete destruction of any civilized restraints on women and the complete takeover of civil society by the state.

So, now they are in the difficult position of having achieved all their even remotely reasonable goals. You can hardly claim misogyny with a straight face when the state pays for your birth control and abortificants, when most employers give you special hiring privileges (affirmative action), when you consistently win in family court (and criminal court for that matter), when your partner can be removed from your home without cause or recourse at a single word from you, and you outnumber men in college by about 3:2, not that feminists don’t still try.

All they have left are their most unreasonable goals, like making it so that men can get jailed with no recourse and no trial simply because a women says rape or forcing men to sit down to pee by law or having all women treat all men like rapists by default.

Feminism itself has become bailey, as many women are beginning to realize contemporary feminism doesn’t actually benefit them.

Whenever anyone posts about how modern feminists, as represented by Jezebel, Feministing, Slate, Salon, Lindy West, Amanda Marcotte, etc., are generally bitter, anti-male, entitled, and looking for special privileges for women, they retreat to the motte.

“Feminism is about equality.”
“Feminism is simply acknowledging that women are people.”

Obviously, Nina above opted for slut-shaming and name-calling rather than the M&B approach, but some feminists aren’t quite so gracelessly, viciously stupid. This one highly linked article put M&B into play quite an entertaining manner.

Basically the article argues that sure, you young woman in North America have a great life free from misogyny and discrimination, but why don’t you think of the Muslim, Indian, and African women who are brutalized?* (Of course, actual feminists almost never talk about the brutalization of foreign women. In fact, they often support the Islamics wishing to bring that brutal behaviour to the West).

But she goes right from gang rapes and forced marriages in third world countries to “women still only fill 24% of senior management jobs”, “comedy panel shows usually only have one female panellist compared to 4-5 male ones”, and “almost every dieting product on the market is solely aimed at women”. (I’m being serious here, read the article if you don’t believe modern feminists are that narcissistically self-absorbed).

Here, she tries to get us to accept the motte of feminism is against horrific evils like mass rape, so we must accept the baileys of the wage gap (which anybody who is not ignorant or ideologically-blinded already knows is a myth) and government enforcement of quotas in comedy panels.

She doesn’t even do so gracefully: a straight jump from gang rape to comedy club panels.

The entire feminist response to WAF is the M&B in action. Pretend modern feminism is about ‘equality’ and ‘women are people too’ to try to convince the average, decent gal to be feminist, while taking a hardline vicious anti-male, anti-child, anti-freedom, anti-civilization elsewhere.

This is the M&B in action, don’t fall for it.

****

* Also, of course, she ignores that the proscriptions against gang rape and forced marriage predated feminism by quite a bit and were actually products of Christian chivalry. I doubt she is going to be happy when she gets her goal and civilized, patriarchical Christian norms are replaced by more primitive and destructive norms.

Lightning Round – 2014/08/06

Just do it.
Related: Advice to prospective writers.

A simple exercise in approach.

Winning an argument with your wife.

Jack Donovan: Why are so many men applauding masculine women?
Related: The 10% law of female pollution.

Moldbug makes his hiatus official.

The progressive perversions of Christian morality.
Related: The death of Christendom.

The traditionalist worldview, Part 2.

How many neoreactionaries does it take to screw in a lightbulb?

The need for neoreactionary boundaries.

On neoreaction and progress.

Men need work.
Related: Post-scarcity is coming.

Radish on the Arab Spring.

Jewish self-immolation.

Surviving an unreliable official society.

War and the ailing health of nation-states.

23 things from rules for radicals.

Why MGTOW should not be an option.

We cannot discuss everyone all the time.

NRx is about dividing the world.

Subsidiarity and freedom are unrelated.

On ideology.

Emotionocracy.

Making it big and material wealth.

Gnon is not God.
Related: Do Gnon and Elua lead to Jesus?
Related: The stupidity of democracy.
Related: Ye shall be as gods.

How Christians could conquer America.

Christians, the world’s most persecuted people.

You killed patriarchy and all you got was his stained t-shirt.

On no-fault divorce.

Answer to Donal’s question: I was romantic (bought my first girlfriend flowers every time I saw her for the month I dated her) and the idea of romance still appeals to me, I like doing things that cause someone I care about to smile, but, until I find the right gal, I avoid it because it doesn’t work and I don’t want to waste time/effort on a gal who won’t appreciate it.

“Lists” missing a key component.

Frigidity and power.
Related: Frigidity is ugly.
Related: A warning for dead bedrooms.

Romancing the personal Jesus.
Related: Fornication and the Personal Jesus.
Related: Advice for the repentant harlot.

The greatest crime against women.
Related: Beta males of the month.

Nothing angers a slave owner more
Related: The article is rather funny.

AF/BB in action.

Equality in action: Women only clubs.

On appearing faithful.

Personality and long-term reproductive success.

Your workout and social class.

Argentina defaults.

On literary envy in SF.
Related: Literary envy and the last redoubt.

Some interesting net worth facts.

The left puts up a convenient list of our enemies.

Government spends $200,000 studying why Wikipedia is sexist.

ESPN disciplining commentators for not being politically correct. Are SJW’s really their target demographic?

Homeland security agents raid home to secure Land Rover for violating EPA regs.

77% of Americans want the illegals gone.

Seems that a company now offers manservants for women and gays.

H/T: RPR, Neanderpundit, SSC, CC

Gnon and Elua

Edit 2014/08/04: A number of Christian men whose thoughts I have come to respect have made objections to this post. I have concluded that whatever my original intentions were, they do not matter at this point as, at best, the execution was flawed and deeply confused. I no longer stand behind or support what was written in this post. I’ll leave this here to read for those that may be interested, but if you decide to read it please use discernment as this post was in error. May God forgive me if this led anyone to wrong thinking. For less confused writing by on the issue at hand, see here.

Scott writes of Moloch, the demon god who traps men into sacrificing what they value most for power, and argues:

When the veil is lifted, Gnon-aka-the-GotCHa-aka-the-Gods-of-Earth turn out to be Moloch-aka-the-Outer-Gods. Submitting to them doesn’t make you “free”, there is no spontaneous order, any gifts they have given you are an unlikely and contingent output of a blind idiot process whose next iteration will just as happily destroy you.

Instead of obeying Gnon, obeying reality, we should summon forth, Elua:

He is the god of flowers and free love and all soft and fragile things. Of art and science and philosophy and love. Of niceness, community, and civilization. He is a god of humans.

Elua is just like “Love as thou wilt” and “All knowlege is worth having”. He is the patron deity of exactly the kind of sickeningly sweet namby-pamby charitable liberalism that Arthur is complaining about.”

Elua, the god of unreality, the god of progressive liberalism, who will usher forth the utopia of free love and endless pleasure. Kipling called Elua by another name:

With the Hopes that our World is built on they were utterly out of touch,
They denied that the Moon was Stilton; they denied she was even Dutch;
They denied that Wishes were Horses; they denied that a Pig had Wings;
So we worshiped the Gods of the Market Who promised these beautiful things.

Scott wishes to create the Gods of the Market, to uplift man with hopes for Elua will make wishes of horses. He hopes that perhaps this time we can have perpetual peace, the Fuller Life, and abundance for all, that this time, prostration before Elua, unlike all prostrations to prior Gods of the Marketplace, will not result in damnation and the return of the terror and slaughter.

This time we can escape to unreality!

What Scott misses is that we are the of Gnon. We were born, evolved, and raised under the rule of Gnon; there is no escape to Elua, for we are not born of Elua, we are born of Gnon. We can not escape Gnon, because we are Gnon and Gnon is us. The only escape is total self-annihilation. He calls Elua a god of humans, but he is not, he is a god of what progressives wish humans were. He is the most inhuman and alien of gods.

Gnon is captured in verse by Kipling, Elua is captured in doggerel by Lennon:

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today…

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace…

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world…

This is the promised utopia of Elua: a life of peace, a life of hedonism, a terrifying hell devoid of meaning. Elua offers perpetual peace if you only value nothing, he offers eternal life if only you reject the bonds of kinship, he offers limitless pleasure if only you sacrifice your future for the hedonism of today, he offers untold joy if only you renounce meaning itself.

When the veil is lifted, Elua turns out to be Nihil, the limitless void. You can only embrace Elua by giving yourself to nothingness. You offer up not just your child, not just your body, but your very soul on the altar of hedonism. You achieve what you love most, pleasure, by sacrificing yourself, your hope, your purpose, your very being.

For what does it profit a man to gain the whole world and forfeit his soul?

If offered, would Scott attach himself to a device that injected dopamine directly into his brain, eternal bliss if only he does not move or think?

For this is what Elua offers: eternal heroin. The god of the poppy.

Even if Scott accepts Elua’s desolate hell of eternal bliss, others wouldn’t. If it meant escape from Elua, I would help Land free Cthulu. Being eaten first would be infinitely preferable to eternal self-nullifcation. I would plunge the world into holy war if Elua were to incarnate, even the most brutal savagery of Gnon is but a tender ministration compared to the blissful void.

If Nihil is, brutal savagery is the only response. If the god of civilization is also the god of the eternal nothing, I will commit human sacrifice on the altar of the gods of savagery. If the god of bliss is the god of emptiness, I will gladly embrace pain to work to his destruction. Death, war, destruction, genocide, violence, blood, savagery, fire, all are superior to the void.

I am sure I am not alone. We men were born of Gnon, it is what were evolved for, it is what we know, it is what we are. Civilization may hold back Gnon, but if embracing Gnon is the only escape from Elua, we will burn it to the ground. Man was made for struggle, man was not made for the void. Struggle may kill the body, perpetual peace devours the soul. Gnon may be a monstrous horror, but he is our monstrous horror, Elua is a greater terror far more alien.

Do not fear those who can kill only the body; fear him who can destroy the soul.

If Scott and others try to bring forth their progressive god of the blissful void, we will work to bring their dreams to ruin. We will burn civilization to the ground and salt the ruins, for savagery is preferable to the void. We will free Gnon to from his chains if only to escape; we will unleash Cthulu and be devoured first if only he will devour Elua after. We will plunge the universe into eternal war between two superintelligences if only to stop Elua from being the only one. Better a god of infinite paper-clips than Elua. We will destroy the universe itself if only to escape into death. Better the grave than eternal self-annihilation.

Gnon may be a terrible elder god from the outer void but Elua is the void itself.

Cyclical History

Vanity of vanities, says the Preacher, vanity of vanities! All is vanity.
What does man gain by all the toil at which he toils under the sun?
A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth remains forever…
All things are full of weariness; a man cannot utter it;
the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing.
What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done,
and there is nothing new under the sun…
There is no remembrance of former things, nor will there be any remembrance
of later things yet to be among those who come after.
(Ecclesiastes 1 ESV, Selected)

History is cyclical. There is nothing new under the sun.

Civilization is in constant war with chaos. Chaos eventually, inevitably, triumphs. The civilizational cycle of growth and death never ends.

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust.

Everything man creates turns to ashes, there is no relief from the curse of Adam.

Man endures until he can’t; death his only relief. His children then endure until they can’t.

Moth and rust destroy; thieves break in and steal. All go to the grave.

Everything man builds collapses; every institution man creates falls.

Every institution but one:

The Catholic Church has yet to fall. It has been corrupted, it has been split, it has been broken, but it has always endured.

This is the light in the darkness man constantly wars against.

There is no hope, there is no relief, there is no victory, but one.

The cycle was broken once: a bloody body upon an instrument of torture, an empty pit of death.

A fire descended, a burning illumination among the horrifying darkness.

The cycle of death and entropy never ceases, but that small fire promises hope that it will.

There is a final escape from the entropic cycle for those who have the eyes to see.

For those that keep their eyes closed, the chaos will follow them beyond the grave.

***

And I heard a loud voice from the throne saying, “Behold, the dwelling place of God is with man. He will dwell with them, and they will be his people, and God himself will be with them as their God. He will wipe away every tear from their eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away.”

But as for the cowardly, the faithless, the detestable, as for murderers, the sexually immoral, sorcerers, idolaters, and all liars, their portion will be in the lake that burns with fire and sulfur, which is the second death.
(Revelation 21:3-4,8 ESV)