Monthly Archives: January 2016

Why Trump?

The GOP establishment has been asking why Trump? They don’t understand why so many are supporting Trump. Why are a bunch of “childless single men who masturbate to anime” supporting “a philosophically unmoored political opportunist who would trash the broad conservative ideological consensus within the GOP in favor of a free-floating populism with strong-man overtones”?

This article shows why:

The two officials described having conversations and asking which candidate a voter supports, whereupon the voter quickly glanced left and right, to see if it was OK to talk, and then said, “Trump.” That happens a lot, they told me.

Normal people in the US are having to look suspiciously around before voicing their public opinion.

The article barely mentions it, but I will repeat it:

Average Americans have to glance over their shoulders and make sure there are no hostile commissars around before they declare support for a mainstream political candidate. This is happening not in the USSR, but in the USA.

This is why we support Trump.

We fucking fear you and we fucking hate you.

Before we can speak candidly we working-to-middle-class white men have to quickly make sure no informants are around to rat us out. We have to be careful, because we know that one wrong word or action at work, in public, online, or even in the privacy of our own homes means losing our jobs and being publicly pilloried. It may even mean being persecuted by kangaroo courts, being bankrupted, or having your home raided by police.

We used to think the conservative machine had our back, that you would protect us from political correctness and left-wing pogroms. We working-to-middle class white men are your base, we thought you’d fight for us us. Maybe you’d let a nazi or two twist in the wind, but you’d at least have our backs. But now we’re the nazis for simply advocating what the people who beat the nazis did.

You don’t have our backs. Instead, you sneer at working-class whites. You call us, your fucking base, illiterate, crazy, and stupid. You attack us, the people you supposedly represent, as racist, the same slur leftists use against us to destroy our lives (and against you to score political points, but your heads are too far up your own asses to see the irony of that). You deride us and sneer at us at every turn.

But you aren’t even content to sneer at us. Instead, you traitorous bastards attack and mock us as cowards for writing anonymously because we don’t want to lose our jobs and be the subject of a national two minute hate. Not once did any of you even wonder why your base, the people you supposedly represent, have to hide behind pseudonyms and proxies simply to talk openly about politics. Instead, you insulted us for not wanting to lose our jobs.

We support Trump because we now know that you’re just like the leftists. You have shown repeatedly you do not have our backs, you hate us just as much as the progressives. You will run us out of jobs, you will engage in the public shaming, and when the time comes, you will happily march us to reeducation camps.

We fear you and we hate you and the media complex you represent and support. And Trump, it appears he’s standing up for us against you. He has the will and the money to speak where we can’t without becoming impovershed and publicly shamed. He can frog-march newsmen (ie: the leftist witch-hunters) out of rooms and insult them to their face, we’re we’d just be burned at the figurative stake. He’s willing to attack leftists, instead of fawning all over them to get invited to swanky DC parties. He’s opening the conversation so that we have slight bit more room to breathe without being purged from society. Through him normal folks have an outlet to speak. He’s standing against those who are trying to destroy us.

We don’t fucking care about your “conservative principles” of hating Russia (the only major power fighting degeneracy and supporting the church), amnesty for invading illegals, corporate subsidies, homosexual marriage, slightly lower taxes, increased debt, and minor hedges of Obamacare. We don’t care if Trump hasn’t been ideologically pure; you didn’t when you forced Romney(care) and amnesty McCain on us. We don’t care if he doesn’t fit in the ever-more-left overton window. We don’t care if his Christian convictions are superficial (it’s been 40 years and you’ve done shit all about Roe, not to mention you’ve done nothing to prevent Christians from having their businesses destroyed by kangaroo courts). We don’t care if he gave money to Democrats a decade ago  (y’all keep importing new voters for them).

We don’t care and why should we when we are living in a country barely above a crowd-sourced communist police state, we are being culturally genocided, our jobs and our future are disappearing, and we are killing ourselves in despair at record numbers?

We don’t care. Trump is fighting for us (or at least acting like he is, but nobody since Ron Paul has even pretended to care about the white middle). We don’t trust your party, we don’t trust your democracy, we don’t trust you, because you have done nothing but betray us.

Trump is rich beyond anything we can comprehend. He could spend the rest of his life drinking champagne from crystal glasses and snorting coke off high-class call-girls’ breasts at his own personal beach-side mansion if he wanted. Instead, he’s spending mounds of his own money and taking the hatred of the entire political-media-bureaucrat class upon himself to fight. Meanwhile, you guys are paid to fight and all you do is fold and compromise.

Trump is absolutely right that he “could stand in the middle of 5th Avenue and shoot somebody and [not] lose voters.” In fact, it could win him voters. This is how much we hate and we fear you: if he took the media class, lined you all up on your knees along 5th Ave and personally put a 9mm in the back of each of your heads, he’d get cheers. Almost nobody would sympathize with you because we know you’d sit by contentedly watching while the left dragged us into the street, if you didn’t join in yourselves to prove you’re not racists (and fail, again, like always).

You are the ones engaging in witch hunts against us. You are the ones driving us from our jobs. You are the ones selling our country out. You are the reason we have to look over our shoulders before we speak. You are the ones destroying our culture. You are the ones bringing in hordes of foreigners to murder us and replace us.

Maybe he won’t follow through. In fact, I doubt Trump will make a difference. Maybe the wall gets built, maybe it won’t. Maybe Muslim immigration won’t be stopped, maybe he won’t change the stifling political culture, maybe he’ll work with leftists. But with you it is not a maybe, we know that you will cave as soon as the leftists call you names and we know you will betray us. You had the chance to pull the trigger on the government machine and you pussied out like the pathetic mewling quislings you are. Trump may change his mind, he may betray us, but he won’t pussy out.

And if he does change his mind, so be it. Better a chance at success than the surety of failure you represent. At the very least, we will get to see Trump beat you, mock you, and humiliate you. At the very least he will tear apart the corrupt, weak GOP machine and show the “convservative” media machine for the quislings they are. Your tears alone are making supporting him worth it. He probably won’t accomplish anything beyond destroying you, but destroying you is worth it in itself.

The country is disappearing, freedom is dying, and our trust is gone. Trump is our hail mary, because we know if nothing is done, we will, at best, be forced to check around for commissars for the rest of our lives.

If you don’t want Trump, then do your jobs. Stand up for us, defend us. If the GOP establishment showed half as much hatred and derision for the leftists attacking us as you do for us, your base, if you spent half as much effort stopping leftists as you are stopping Trump, there would be no Trump. If somebody would actually stand up for us, common people wouldn’t have to flock to the only man who is willing.

The day of reckoning draws near. Repent your betrayal now before its too late, so it can be avoided.

Until then, viva la Trump!

Lightning Round – 2016/01/27

The Duck twittercides fantastically.
Related: 2016: Year of the censor.

In God we Trust.

Bad government.

The decline of community.
Related: An idle class that can only dream.

Against WN leftists.

We are not smart.
Related: Obama: Vaguely smart.

The goal is soft genocide.
Related: Denmark without the Danes.

Neither hot nor cold.
Related: Healthy xenophilia.
Related: Europe is the cost of signalling.
Related: All our times have come.
Related: The Orc refugee problem.

Useful, scarce, ownable.

NRx and the alt-right.
Related: What is the alt-right?
Related: The utility of extremism.
Related: The making of a hard-right-winger.

The daycare fractal of modern politics.

The expert is a pre-fabricated voice.

Alt-right trolls explained.

Consequence time for moderates and nihilists.

On Trump and the collapse.
Related: Trump has had enough.

National Review hoists the white flag.
Related: The NRO takes a firm stand for cuckservatism.
Related: Chickens coming home to roost.
Related: In mala fide.
Related: Opposite day.
Related: NRO risks non-profit status.
Related: Rick Wilson on Trump supporters.

Dorian Gray conservatism.

#ArrestSoros.

Bernie and the death of progress.

Will Putin purge the 5th column?

On right-wing Poland.

The death cult.

The new creationists. Related.

Zippy on King AI.

Dark ancap.
Related: Capital as an AI.

Sportsball: white cancer.
Related: The heroism of football.

Somebody else who hates Imagine.

On Hillary.

Women and gays as military strategy.

All’s fair in the skin game.

The death of an institution.

Feeding the One Bob. Hehe. More.

Christ-centred preaching.

Fearing those working to destroy your family.
Related: Focus on respect not fairness.
Related: Incentives and respect.
Related: Who cares?
Related: Darwin’s pros and cons of marriage.

SJW’s and direct confrontation.

An SJW attack on open source.
Related: The silencing of tech.
Related: No code of conduct.
Related: SJW’s in tech.
Facebook is silencing anti-genocide advocates.

Linux: No SJW’s allowed.

Brendan Eich creates new web browser: Brave. Supposedly, it’s fast, stops harmful adverts and helps privacy. Hopefully it works as advertised.

Mobile affirmation devices.

There is no need to worry about wasting food.

The Vasconic language.

The Zika virus hits Latin America.

MDE (Sam Hyde) gets a TV pilot.

More on the Kabloona.

Southern hospitality.

Eastern English are about 3/8ths Anglo-Saxon.

H/T: SDA, VD

Purging Roosh

Continuing on in my run of alt-right posts.Yet another intra-alt-right battle has begun. The WN’s (mainly) are trying to purge Roosh because he’s a degenerate and not white.

First, Roosh is a part of the alt-right. You may not like that he is, or his part of the alt-right, but the alt-right is a catch all-term for dissident rightests, and Roosh is a dissident rightest.

Second, he can not be purged from the alt-right because there is nothing to purge him from. The alt-right is a loose alliance, not an organization. You could possibly ban him from the next NPI conference, because the NPI is an actual organization, but beyond that what exactly do you plan to purge him from? His own website? Twitter? You can’t purge someone from the alt-right because there is nothing there to purge someone from. The best you can do is ignore someone.

If you want to purge somebody, you have to establish your authority, create an organization, and establish legitimate ownership over the alt-right through that organization. After all that, then you can purge someone. Until you do that, talk of kicking someone out of the alt-right is meaningless.

Third, the white-knighting is pathetic. Why are WN’s going crazy about protecting white sluts from him? He’s not raping these women (and no, whatever feminists may say, drunken sex is not rape; stop acting like feminists), they are sluts who are willingly going to bed with him. If you view him as invading foreigner, you should be disgusted with these women, not white-knighting for them. If he is your enemy, you don’t defend women who “collaborate” with them, you shame them:

All that being said, Roosh is a degenerate. I read his book in which he makes it clear that he is, and I doubt he’d even deny he’s a degenerate. He’s a unhappy, lonely, empty person (that comes through quite clearly in his work) who has sacrificed everything for the pleasures of the flesh. He is not a model of behaviour anyone should follow and he should never be given a position of leadership in the alt-right beyond what he has carved for himself as a PUA. If you do have an organization, you probably shouldn’t let him influence it.

But as I’ve stated before, the PUA’s aren’t the problem, they are a symptom. I again reject the war people are trying to brew between the alt-right and PUA’s. In any decent society, they’d be run out of town with a bull-whip, but we don’t live in a decent society and our allies are few. The PUA’s are useful tools for reaching disaffected young men and inducting them into the alt-right. There has probably been no greater recruitment for the alt-right than then the red pill.

Strategically, we should just leave him and the other PUA’s alone and let them do their thing. The right people will filter through them into us. The rest can keep spreading herpes to club sluts until the restoration, after which we can suppress them like other degenerates. Until then, they’re too useful to go attacking for no good reason.

What is the Alt-Right?

As there was with NRx a while back, there is now some struggle over control of the alt-right label. The fight seems to be going on between the WN’s and everybody else, with the centrepoint on Roosh. The WN’s claim that alt-right is rightfully theirs and non-WN’s are entryists. I don’t particular agree with everybody shooting allies, so I’ll weigh in.

Depending on how you use the term, the alt-right label is somewhat valuable as per Google Trends. ‘Alt right’ dwarfs ‘neoreaction’ (and, to a lesser degree, Moldbug). Although, ‘Alt-right’ is itself dwarfed by ‘neoreaction’ (and ‘Moldbug’), while ‘altright’ is similar to neoreaction. ‘Alternative right’ springs up even before ‘alt right’ and is even bigger than alt-right.

The lefties at RationalWiki (one of the top hits for alt-right) think the alt-right is part neoreaction, but, as with almost everything, they are wrong. Alternative right started getting searches in 2005, a couple years before Moldbug started writing and well before the NRx boom.

The WN’s do have a decent claim to the name. Richard Spencer, WN and creator of Alternative Right has a claim at owning the label as he created was created in 2010 and his the first hit for the label and is one of the earliest uses I can find, but according to Google Trends, ‘alt right’ sprung into existence in 2007, while ‘alternative right’ came a couple years before that. So Spencer was using a label already in existence.

The alt-right has been hitting mainstream presses in the last few months, which makes searching for it’s origins difficult as their flooding the results. The mainstream articles seem to use neoreactionary, alt-right, and white supremacy interchangeably. So, in practice, to the greater world, we’re all the same, probably to the chagrin of everybody on each side. Although, this Quora post is the second-highest ranked on Google for the term and notices the distinction, so its not completely overlooked.

Despite the search troubles, I found some early stuff. The earliest use of alternative right’ I found was in the name of an address by paleoconservative Paul Gottfried to the HL Mencken Club in 2008. He doesn’t use the term in the speech, but the speech is named “The Decline and Rise of the Alternative Right”. In the speech he uses it describe post-paleo conservatives who are opposed to/outside of neoconservatism, libertarianism, and movement conservatism. The post-paleos he describes go beyond a single organization or ideology and he specifically includes vDare and Taki’s. He also used it again in 2009, where he uses it to refer to non-authorized dissident rightests. The second use I found was from Taki’s in 2009, in an article by Kevin DeAnna (founder of Youth for Western Civilization) which uses the term as a right-wing movement concerned with identity, virtue, and culture as opposed to the economic movement of mainstream conservatism. He also links it to the Ron Paul movement. DeAnna himself spoke at the HL Mencken Club (as has Spencer).

So, near as I can tell, ‘alternative right’ and therefore ‘alt-right’ most rightly belong to the group creating the HL Mencken Club. Their list of presenters is all over the non-mainstream right, including Buchanan, Derbyshire, and Sailer. The Mencken Club began in 2008, so there’s about a a bit of time prior to the Club that it was in use, but I can not find any earlier usages. I’m not sure what caused the one-off spike in 2005, or the surge in 2006.

By the best evidence I can find, ‘alt-right’ originally referred to rightests who grew out of the paleoconservative tradition and are dissidents against the neoconservative mainstream. The alt-right is inherently a catch-all term for those on the right who are outside mainstream conservatism and are attacking it from the right.

So, while the WN’s are part of the alt-right, do not own the alt-right and being alt-right does not mean being a WN. As well, both the DE and neoreaction are part of the alt-right, but the alt-right is neither.

Lightning Round – 2015/01/20

The freedom of constraint.

On family and status.
Related: The decline of community.

What happened to neoreaction?
Related: Against consequentialism on the right.
Related:Zippy continues criticizing the alt-right.

Visegrad and mapping.

Anarcho-tyranny in Germany.
Related: Preference is not hate.
Related: After Cologne, feminism is dead.
Related: Cologne is not surprising.
Related: Soldiers of Odin in Finland.

The beauty of Rome.

Invader-American: lessons in rhetoric.
Related: The globalists’ need for immigration.

Already at trade war.

The Happening may not turn out to the right’s favour.

The white death.

Geopolitical arbitrage.

Neoconservatism.

Progressive imperialism.
Related: Humpty Dumpty progressivism.
Related: The old left worrying about being eaten by the new left.

The coming muses of the alt-right.

The three types of protests.

The alt-right guide to Islam.
Related: Welcome to the ISIS guest house.

Smart people overestimate how smart everyone else is.

The Big Bang Theory is not my people.

Study: Shitlibs are slaves to their feels.

The sex trap.

SJW’s are killing rock and roll.

The hippie-conservative synthesis.

Duffers and fanatics.

The pro-abortion wives of hen-pecked anti-abortion presidents.

God as a fan-fiction character.
Related: Worshipping the same God.

On churchian culture.

The Anglicans take a stand against the wolves.

Complementarianism: The pastor is the head.

Saeed Abedini has been freed.

Lessons in rhetoric: Christian edition.

Assessing your place in the hierarchy.
Related: The shame of SJW’s.

Rape is about sex, not power.

Trump: Christianity under siege.

The GOP base must remain loyal, but the elites do not.

The problem with Chinese students.

Al-Jazeera America shuts down.

The left’s war on science: Yanomamö edition.

More on the eskimos.

Trying to re-inflate the housing bubble.

UK debates to ban Trump.

Chuck Johnson warned Milo about Twitter.

Brad Torgeson is being blacklisted.

Fat but fit doesn’t exist.

Venezuelan economic czar: “Inflation does not exist.”

H/T: Land, NBS, SDA

Nationalism

As I’ve previously written, nationalism, or perhaps more approiately thedism, is good.

On the other hand, I am skeptical of white nationalism. Whites exist genetically as a grouping, although there are many sub-groupings within this that are more salient. There is some shared culture, but that is more an artifact of shared Christiandom than any particular intra-racial affinity.

I am skeptical of white nationalism simply for the fact that if I went and asked my Norse great-great-great-great-grandfather if he was of the same nation as a Spaniard or a Bosnian, he’d likely look at me in bewilderment. Individual European nations are different, with different cultures, different values, different Christianities, and different genetics; to proclaim a white nation, a white nationalism for all of Europe is as insane a project as the EU.

White nationalism is far too universalist a concept for me to accept.

That being said, there is always the old Bedouin saying, “I against my brother, my brother and I against my cousin, and my cousin and I against the stranger”. Because of Christendom, proximity, and genetics Europeans have enough shared culture to unite against a common threat of those with fewer shared ties, such as Islamic invasion, but the occasional strategic alliance against outsiders does not a nation make.

On the other hand, there might arguably be a white nation in North America (and possibly South America, but I do not know enough about their racial politics to comment). It’s possible enough intra-European mongrelization and cultural assimilation has occurred to make NA whites a separate independent thede (sort of like NA blacks are a separate thede), but I still doubt it. There are too many separate white thedes in NA who don’t particularly care for each other for white to be a true thede. Even after over 200 years of living together the puritans and cavaliers/reivers still hate each other.

Apart from that, while I say I support nationalism, that is because I do not have a better word. Nationalism grew out of Westphalia and the French Revolution, and is a part of the enlightenment and liberalization.  When it began, nationalism was the ideology of radicals and 1800’s nationalists were often the liberals, until Cthulu swam past them both. Nationalism resulted the destruction of local culture for a more universalist national culture and the end of traditional authorities.

Nationalism, or at least modern nationalism, is too liberal for me to accept as an ideology.

So I support unified communities, nations, and believe that generally each individual nation, whether based on ethnicity, language, religion, ideology, etc., should have self-determination and should govern itself by its own authorities in accordance with its own local culture.

Could that be called nationalism? Possibly, it’s the best existing word I can think of the top of my head. I attempted to use local nationalism on Twitter once, but that it was pointed out that is contradictory. Thedism would probably be more accurate for my views.

So, I’m a thedist. ‘Us’ should govern ‘us’.’Us’ should not govern ‘them’ and ‘them’ should not govern ‘us’.

Alt-right Ethics

Recently, I linked to a TRS post on why the alt-right needs to understand ethics. The writer was a consequentialist who advocated understanding deontological principles. I am not a consequentialist, as I made clear in the debates on Christian genocide I hold to divine command theory, a specific form of deontology, with a smattering of virtue ethics for resolving those areas where multiple goods collide. I linked to the post, not because I consider consequentialism correct but because of the call to understand alternative ethics systems when debating others to be a more effective debater and the posts general anti-nihilism, as nihilism tends to infect some parts of the alt-right.

My philosophical problem with consequentialism is it’s lacking solid base. Why is this particular good that we are pursuing good? Consequentialism generally assigns value to a good (pleasure, pain avoidance, utility, the white race, etc) and makes that value the sole source of morality, without generally given an objective reason for why that particular good is of greater worth than other goods.

In this particular discussion, the good being discussed is the white race (I’ve got a post on WN coming, sometime). But why is securing the existence of the white race and the future for your children such a good that any evil done in its advancement of it is worthwhile? Survival and thriving are good and I certainly support the continuing existence of the white race, but why are they good? Is being a low-melanin gene-controlled meat sack pumping out more low-melanin gene-controlled meat sacks and fending off higher-melanin gene-controlled meat sacks so your particular phenotype becomes dominant among meat sacks really the base good upon which all other good is measured and for which all evil is justified?

What makes your particular geno-/phenotype objectively better than their particular geno-/phenotype?  Would that good that makes your particular geno-/phenotype better not be a greater good then? So why not make that good your consequence? But that new good, why is it good? Then why is that not the good you pursue?

You either run yourself in circles, or you come to the point where there is no answer.

Here Gary argues against nihilism:

Another annoying thing was that Sargon asked that if blacks became majority and took over the US, would it then be morally wrong for blacks to enslave white people? This was not dealt with well. One of the people in the hangout even answered ‘no’ to this question, which is obviously moral nihilism. I’m not a moral nihilist, neither should you be. Of course it would be wrong, but not because it’s discrimination, but because it is slavery, and more specifically because the consequences that would arise from that slavery are negative. Slavery, again, is not immoral inherently. No action is, as we’ve already demonstrated. If the blacks, on the other hand, were to throw whitey out of their country then that would not be morally wrong because it would result in more stability and peace in that country. Of course that’s not really true since blacks are uncivilized savages who actually benefit from white presence, but it is true in the parallel where whites are the majority and Arabs and Latinos are the minorities getting thrown out.

He argues the slavery of whites is wrong, while slavery itself is not, because of the consequences, which he doesn’t spell out. ‘Consequences’ is so amorphous and undefined, that he’s undermining his own point. Also, consequences for who? I’m sure blacks would appreciate having white slaves. Without an objective standard by which to measure ‘consequences’ consequentialism is meaningless.

He speaks positively of stability and peace a little later on in that paragraph, but why are these values inherently better than chaos and war?

What makes these values objective?

You need an absolute to measure morality by or morality is little more than taste preference. It is nihilism gussied up.

It’s God or nihilism. Choose.

And God is a deontologist.

****

As a believer divine command theory my support for nationalism (or more accurately thedism, post coming some time) comes from the word of God:

Then God said, “Let us make man in our image, after our likeness. And let them have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over the livestock and over all the earth and over every creeping thing that creeps on the earth.”

So God created man in his own image,
in the image of God he created him;
male and female he created them.

And God blessed them. And God said to them, “Be fruitful and multiply and fill the earth and subdue it, and have dominion over the fish of the sea and over the birds of the heavens and over every living thing that moves on the earth.”

(Genesis 1:26-28 ESV)

Now the whole earth had one language and the same words. And as people migrated from the east, they found a plain in the land of Shinar and settled there. And they said to one another, “Come, let us make bricks, and burn them thoroughly.” And they had brick for stone, and bitumen for mortar. Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city and a tower with its top in the heavens, and let us make a name for ourselves, lest we be dispersed over the face of the whole earth.” And the LORD came down to see the city and the tower, which the children of man had built. And the LORD said, “Behold, they are one people, and they have all one language, and this is only the beginning of what they will do. And nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and there confuse their language, so that they may not understand one another’s speech.” So the LORD dispersed them from there over the face of all the earth, and they left off building the city. Therefore its name was called Babel, because there the LORD confused the language of all the earth. And from there the LORD dispersed them over the face of all the earth.

(Genesis 11:1-9 ESV)

“The Rock, his work is perfect,
for all his ways are justice.
A God of faithfulness and without iniquity,
just and upright is he.
They have dealt corruptly with him;
they are no longer his children because they are blemished;
they are a crooked and twisted generation.
Do you thus repay the LORD,
you foolish and senseless people?
Is not he your father, who created you,
who made you and established you?
Remember the days of old;
consider the years of many generations;
ask your father, and he will show you,
your elders, and they will tell you.
When the Most High gave to the nations their inheritance,
when he divided mankind,
he fixed the borders of the peoples
according to the number of the sons of God.
But the LORD’s portion is his people,
Jacob his allotted heritage.
(Deuteronomy 32:4-9 ESV)

God made man to spread over the world. He divided them so they to accomplish this goal and each nation was made to inhabit it’s own territory. He made them different and those differences are good.

****

Finally, on a tangent, the ‘murdering baby Hitler’ example is a poor poor way to compare consequentialism and deontology, for it adds time travel to the mix. The murder of millions of Slavs and Jews is an obvious moral wrong for which the death penalty would be a justified punishment. So, when you are ask if someone would be justified in murdering baby Hitler, you are not asking the question of whether it is permissible to murder babies if the cause is good enough.

What you are really asking is: is it okay to pre-emptively punish someone for an action they will certainly commit in the future, which is only obfuscated by the inclusion of harm prevention?

While this is an interesting ethical and philosophical question, it doesn’t necessarily draw a line between the two differing ethical systems. One could think of decent arguments for/against preemptive punishment on both sides of that particular divide.

Lightning Round -2016/01/13

No one cares about your problems.
Related: I don’t want, I will.

The need for a fighting faith.
Related: Submission and conviction.

The anti-American empire.

On Trump. More.
Related: Concerns about Trump.

The alt-right needs to understand ethics.

On 2015 and the right.
Related: The trouble with 1488.

Immigration is rape culture, but women ignore warnings and are on lockdown. Related.
Related: Young women’s xenophilia.
Related: Will pro-refuge Christians repent?
Related: Orban was right.

Bathing in Cologne.
Related: Ivan Jurevic on Cologne.
Related: Germany springs into action against hate.
Related: Rotherham syndrome.
Related: Right-wing riots in Germany.

The Swedish cover-up of a mass sexual assault.
Related: Assaults in Finland.
Related: Norway is culturally enriched.
Related: 7-year-old Swede murdered by immigrant.

Understanding Muslims.
Related: Pronouncing the word ‘Muslim’ and identity politics.

Studies: Diversity + Proximity = War.

Illegal immigrants are more criminal, even removing their inherent illegality.

Diversity policies don’t help women or minorities, but do make white men feel threatened. Working as intended.

Monarchy, revolution, and the bourgeoisie.

Saudi monarch executes US agent.

A code of merit.

Reduce inequality, abolish the Ivy League.

Colonialism didn’t make colonial countries rich.

Zippy’s right. I did get dragged into voting last year because of gun control, even though I know I shouldn’t have.

On outrage porn.

Nightcrawler is modern journalism. A review.

Consanguinity and socialism.

Bronze Age dispersal patterns.
Related: Tentative neanderthal, denisovan DNA map.

Inuit and diet.

Defective identity.

Hard truths on Santa Claus.

Against IVCF and Campus Crusade.
Related: IVCF and Urbana go full SJW.

The overemphasis on evangelism.

A Femen activist repents.

Trading place: Pastor Saeed Abedini and his wife. His erasure and her fresh start.

How do wives petition a husband.

Why feminists hate objective standards.

In NY, you could get fined up to $250k for not indulging someone’s transsexual identity.

Your bitchy comment says your life sucks.

The power of a bad idea.

Practicing practicing.

The LIBOR scandal.

The biggest impediment to forecasting.

A background of the Oregon protest.

Free speech is firable.
Related: SJW’s disemploying people.

No reconciliation in the Puppies fight.
Related: All out war against SJ has been declared.

SJW’s get books banned in Toronto.
Related: The SJW’s strike at Goodreads. BG.

The pedophilic rape apologists of SFF fandom.

The truly new year.

SSC analyzes guns and states.

H/T: MR, Land

Christian Culture

Evo X asks why Star Wars is more popular than God. I’ll answer.

My parents were really into the Christian culture thing (my mom even owned a small Christian bookstore home business for a couple years) and so was I until some time in my early 20’s. I watched Veggie Tales, McGee & Me, the Greatest Adventures, Gerbert, and the rest. I listened to the music of Carmen and DC Talk (but not the Newsboys), and tons of Christian metalcore, punk, and hardcore (FaceDown Records!). I read the Left Behind, Wally McDoogle, Baker Street Sports Club (and spin-off), and Lightning on Ice series, among many others. I owned the Picture Bible (the Bible in comic book format), many of the Archie Christian comics, and Heroes of the Faith bible comics (which I thought were pretty cool at the time, because look at that blood and brain matter. That series was surprisingly gory for the Christian culture industry).

So, you can believe me when I say I know that there are people who do (or at least did) try to keep their kids in the Christian culture industry. As far as I can tell, some people in my church still do. I’ve seen kids in my church carrying around their Action Bibles and Christian manga.

The problems are many. First, it doesn’t work unless you isolate your children from non-Christian children. I enjoyed Veggie Tales, but when your friends at school have no idea what “Whoa I ate the bunny” is and are instead referencing the Simpsons (which you’re not allowed to watch) then you want to watch the Simpsons, just so you can understand what “Hi diddly ho, neighbourino” refers to. When the secular culture is omnipresent, its very difficult to confine your kids to Christian culture.

(This can lead to some ridiculous situations. If you can only listen to Christian music or have Christian cultural products, it becomes tempting to try to define what is Christian as broadly as possible, so you can enjoy what your friends do. Every even quasi-spiritual band is scouted for how Christian they were. I’ve watched as young Christians argued that Linkin Park is Christian).

Second, it’s limited. Sure, there are some comics, some shows, and some movies, but there’s only some (and even fewer which are actually good). How many times can your kids watch Veggie Tales before he gets bored? How may times can you turn on the Greatest Adventure, until you get sick of hearing it in the background, much less your kid? There’s more books, but still it’s limited. There are only so many Christian products being produced, you’ll eventually run out. I like metal, there’s some, but not very many, Christian power metal bands. I couldn’t fill my desire for metal on them alone.

Third, it’s comparatively crappy. Everyone, including almost every Christian, knows that Christian cultural productions are not very good. This is especially so in the area of movies and TV. The only truly good Christian movie I can think of was Gibson’s Passion of the Christ, which was created apart from the Christian culture industry. Most of the rest range from crappy to mediocre. As someone in our sphere (I think, I can’t find the piece), wrote on somewhat recently, it takes the whole support system of Hollywood to make a believable movie, and Christians just don’t have that.

It’s somewhat better in books, because those don’t require as much support, but even so: Left Behind was the Christian cultural phenomenon, but the books were decent at best (I read most of them) and the movies (I haven’t seen) were supposedly terrible. Wright’s the best contemporary Christian fiction author I’ve read (by far) and he’s outside the Christian culture industry. TheChristian talent pool is also much smaller, so the likelihood of a spectacular Christian writer is lower. As well, the need many Christians have for works to have an explicit Christian message and to eliminate vice (no swears or drinking) makes subtler and/or realistic stories more difficult, while also severely limiting some genres such as fantasy (ironic, given the predominance of Tolkien and Lewis in the genre, I know) or SF.

Music is also somewhat better. There are some solid bands, but still, Christian music is generally inferior. Besides the talent pool issue, one problem is the Christian music industry attempts to be relevant, which generally ends up meaning they’re chasing whatever trend is popular at the time. So, by the time they actually get around to writing and producing the music, they’re already feeling like mediocre derivatives of trends from a few years ago. KJ-52 is an excellent example of this. He is (was?) the biggest name in Christian rap, but he put out his first CD a year after the Slim Shady LP, and was signed to a Christian label a couple years later. He sounded like an Eminem clone chasing the trend (and naming one of his main tracks Dear Slim didn’t really dispel this). Most Christian music is like this, copying what was popular years, sometimes decades, before. The only genre I can think of where Christians really lead the fore is metalcore (I don’t know how or why Christians became such a strong presence in metalcore, although it might have something with the influence of Living Sacrifice).

The Christian music industry also has the problem of mainstreaming. There’s a general trend that as a Christian band distinguishes themselves and becomes more popular, they begin to tone down the Christianity and lose their distinctiveness. For example, my two favourite bands a decade ago were Disciple and POD. In their early stages, Disciple had a heavy, distinct, and somewhat vicious rap-metal sound with a very strong Christian message (most of their early CD’s contained a sermon as a closing track), but as time went on, they became more popular and started getting some mainstream attention. The music became more generic, less heavy, and the rap-metal sound was replaced by grungy heavy rock. The Christian message was heavily muted. Same with POD, who got a lot of mainstream attention for a Christian band. A band that had a song called “Abortion is Murder” and explicitly named Jesus in their first album, eventually moved to esoteric talk of Zion and Jah, sounding more Rastafarian than Christian. They also moved from a distinct, heavy rap-metal sound to a reggae-infused generic nu-metal. This process has repeated among countless other bands.

That being said, given the nature of the music industry, there are some great Christian bands out there. In metal, Theocracy is one of the best power metal bands, period, while Tourniquet played unique progressive thrash I have yet to see matched. I’m sure most other genres have similar examples.

Finally, a major issue for individuals is cost and availability. Christian stuff simply costs more and is available in fewer places. A mainstream CD costs from $10-15 (CAD) from HMV, which can be found in any mall. A Christian CD from a Christian bookstore is generally $15-20 (or more, I remember one Disciple CD putting me out $28), and you have to drive out of your way to get there. Even buying from Amazon it costs more. I remember the books costing more and the movies costing more. Amazon may be leveling this out, but I remember the price differences being quite significant.

So, the Christian culture thing is possible and people do it, but there are a lot of factors that pull against it and make it difficult. Bu even if you do do it, in the end, it doesn’t really work. Even if you homeschool, eventually your kid will join the rest of the world (unless you do an Amish colony type thing) and secular culture will get him. There’s a huge trend of Christian kids losing their faith in college and the Christian cultural industry is one of the contributors to it. Antibodies to secular culture needs to be built up while young so the child has a hope to resist it. For example, I’m the only one of my siblings to remain a practicing Christian, despite our upbringing in the Christian cultural industry and my parents attempts to limit secular culture. I’ve seen a number fo other families whose Christian-culture raised kids have strayed upon leaving high school. Some come back, some don’t.

A Facebook Poll asked people to list their favorite books; while Harry Potter came in first, 7.2% of people listed the Bible.

Obviously this is not a good way of comparing affection for Star Wars to affection to the Bible, but having interacted with people, 7% feels rather close to the actual percentage of real Christians.

This one is interesting, because despite my regular quotations of the Bible around here, I would likely not list the Bible as being among my favourite books.

I’m not fully sure how to explain it, but there’s something separate between the sacred and the profane. Important sacred things are measured by different standards than mundane things. I wouldn’t read my Bible for fun and enjoyment and I know of few Christians who actually enjoy reading scripture, yet it’s the book I’ve spent the most time reading by far. I wouldn’t call it my favourite book, but it is definitely the most important and influential book in my life. It’s simply measured differently.

Maybe a more relatable example will help. Amazing Grace is simply the most beautiful, emotionally moving song I know. Yet, I have never listened to it for entertainment. It’s not and has never been in my iTunes or on my MP3 player. I would definitely not call it my favourite song. It’s in a separate category all its own, along with other hymns. It’s set apart.

Relatedly, however much I love heavy metal, I’d strongly object if we added heavy metal worship music to my church. It simply wouldn’t be right.

That might be the problem with the Christian cultural industry, particularly music. It is trying to make the sacred profane and bringing the profane into the sacred. Worship music is set apart; the old hymns have a power and meaning to them. Translating that power, that meaning, into popular music is difficult. The Bible has deep truths, translating those into mundane stories of popular fiction is difficult, something only the most skilled wordsmiths are capable of doing right, which is why so much popular Christian literature is so heavy-handedly clunky.  It takes a lot of skill to produce Narnia, very few writers have that skill. While trying to make a mass market thriller spiritually meaningful is a near hopeless task.

One example of the profane infecting the sacred that really rankles me is Grace Like Rain. It’s a “redone” Amazing Grace in contemporary style that adds a course. The song itself is okay if you like CCM, but churches have taken to adding this to the worship music repertoire. So, you’ll be singing along to Amazing Grace, then all of a sudden, out of nowhere, a pop music course of “Hallelujah, grace like rain…” will interject itself, completely ruining the power and atmosphere of the hymn. The sacred song is profaned by the injection of CCM.

The secular and the sacred are separate. Adding the sacred to the secular is difficult and the unskilled will ruin it. Adding the secular to the sacred ruins the sacred. (also, CCM should be kept out of the church).

Superior and Inferior

The Wright/Malcolm monarchy debate has ended. I’m late to the debate, but I’m not debating, instead I just want to comment on something Wright said and implicated a number of times:

I have never met anyone who talks like you before. Even the zany materialist Dr Andreassen, who thought himself nothing more than a meat robot, did not think himself my inferior. Quite the opposite.

Then you are a slave in spirit, if not in law. If so, there is nothing to discuss: for you are a man willing to have another decide your fate. If so again, I decree that, as a free man who outranks you, I have unilaterally decided you should enjoy, while in America, the rights for which I but not you are willing to die.

If you argue with my high handed decision, then you are either being presumptuous (as you say) or you are secretly possessed of the belief that you should be allowed to participate in the decision about your life as if you owned it, and were equal with me. But this would indicate that you believe yourself possessed of an inalienable right to equality. But If we are equals, and I am free, you are free. In which case you believe in an inalienable equality of rights. This is in directly logical conflict with the legal theory of monarchy, which holds that the civic power passes by inheritance, as a family property, down a bloodline set aside by law as superior to all others.

So merely by entering into this discussion at all, you cast doubt upon your position. Freedom is not something discussed between equals. Superiors need not discuss such matters with inferiors. The superiors merely decide. The inferiors show respect, show deference, and obey.

First, political freedom is not freedom true. Political freedom is the right of the mob to force their will upon the rest. Republicanism is only superior over democratic mob rule insofar as it is anti-democratic and explicitly hierarchical. Whether you are ruled by a king and ruled by a mob, you are still ruled, although, in the former you are ruled only by one, in the latter by all. Having laws outlining how you are ruled and a judge who “interprets” those laws, doesn’t mean you are any less ruled, it simply means you are ruled by an unelected judge rather than a king.

Second, no man is free. We are born into the world the subject of our father, become the subjects of our teachers, and are always the subject of the state, be it autocratic or democratic. “Freedom” is impersonal authority rather than personal authority. The “free man” wishes to be a servant without a master. To be ruled by a constitution (manipulated by politicians and “interpreted” by judges) is still to be ruled, only it is the rule of impersonal forces set in motion by faceless elites, rather than the personal rule of a known individual. The free republican wishes to be ruled by the Star Chamber rather than the king. Base anarchy is the only true freedom, and nobody wants to live in base anarchy because it means getting brained by the stronger man who wants to eat your venison and rape your woman. (Admittedly, the stronger man might enjoy himself, at least until he is no longer the stronger man).

Third, the consent of the governed doesn’t exist. You are born into a society and indoctrinated in its ways from before you can even speak consent, let alone meaningfully understand the concept. The ideas of your fathers control your mind before you are even capable of realizing it. The liberal may respond, ‘but I rebel against the ways of my fathers’, not knowing rebellion is the way of his fathers. The consent of the governed is the consent of a women not protesting because she has inadvertently consumed rohypnol.

Fourth, republican freedom is not a sign of superiority, but inferiority. The superior man’s superiority comes from the responsibilities for the burdens of others he bears. He is free to act only insofar as others trust him to act for them. The free republican man is free because he bears no responsibility for the burdens of others, only his own. Even the inferior man is superior to the free republican man, for the inferior man bears the burdens and responsibilities entrusted him by his superior. (Of course, it need not be said, the slave is lowest of all for he does not even bear his own burdens. Even so, a slave can still be of value and worth).

The defining feature of the free man is that he rules no one as he himself is not ruled. To call oneself superior to another is to deny one’s own freedom.

Fifth, being a subject is not being a slave. A slave obeys force. A subject obeys a man, an office, and a tradition.

Sixth, being inferior to one is not being inferior to all. Kneeling before the king does not imply kneeling before Mr. Wright. Relatedly, being inferior in one aspect does not make one inferior in all. The king may kneel before the priest come mass, but the bishop kneels before the king come court.