Author Archives: Free Northerner

A Eulogy for Rob Ford

SoBL notes that Rob Ford is dead then asks:

How did this guy become a symbol for anyone to use as a top ticket figure? It says more about the donors that they could not figure out how to position someone else as their candidate for mayor. What is the goal of these guys? is it to maximize the value of real estate for the developers? Can the donors just debate onstage their proposals rather than place the fat puppets like Rob Ford onstage? Make Toronto safe? What is it? Do you know, because I cannot figure it out and this is how we get stuck with guys like Rob Ford supposedly in charge of major Western cities.

I’m Canadian, so I know a bit of Rob Ford. In fact, I’ve previously written a paean to Rob Ford.

Rob Ford was not a product of donors, he was a reaction to the elite class. He was a vaisya at war with Canadian brahmin class and he deserves our respect. The closest American politician to Rob Ford is Donald Trump.

Toronto is the largest city in Canada. It is also the cultural and economic centre of English Canada: it is what you’d get if you rolled up LA and New York into a single city and made it Canadian. Most of our major newspapers are centred there, most of our TV and movies are from there, Bay Street is our Wall Street, most of our major corporations are headquartered there (or in the Greater Toronto Area), and so on. It’s centrality has been waning, paricularly in the economic sphere, as Alberta’s oil-powered economy has grown over the last couple decades, but it still remains at the front.

The elites in downtown Toronto are exactly what you would expect if you mixed Manhattan, Wall St., and Hollywood together, then added a bit of Canadian socialism. They are the center of the universe in their own minds, and to them Toronto is English Canada. They are very much in a centre-left bubble.

Back in 1998, Toronto was amalgamated with a half-dozen municipalities into a single metropolitan municipality, against the wishes of those municipalities. The other municipalities are generally more middle-class, with very high numbers of minorities and immigrants. Since than there has been tension between the priorities of core Toronto, made up of the elites, and the amalgamated areas.

David Miller, the mayor prior to Ford, was a tax and spend politician. Increased spending was usually in line with the priorities of the elite Toronto core. Throughout his mayorship, Ford was a strong anti-spending advocate. As well, the Toronto elites were pushing a light rail transit plan that benefited their idea of good transit policy, while Ford pushed a subway plan that would have been more helpful for the amalgamated areas. Smitherman, Ford’s opponent, was more of the same, an elite governing for the elites.

Look at this electoral map:

Rob Ford was essentially the populist, working- and middle-class revolt candidate (like Trump) against the elitist core of Toronto. He wasn’t “respectable”, because anybody respectable would have been from the elite and gone along with elite opinions. He was just your average lower-middle class guy who liked football and decided to take a stand.

He may not have been the most competent or polished fellow, but he did what almost every “competent” and “professional” conservative politician fails to do: hold to his values, fight for them, and stand strong against the enemy. He was probably the strongest right-wing voice in Canada since Ralph Klein died and Preston Manning cucked himself. Because of this he was attacked by every respectable voice possible; he was so strong the brahmins of other countries banded together just to crush the small vaisya rebellion he led. They couldn’t let the other prols get out of line. Despite this he held firm and did not waver until the end. For that he deserves our respect.

Since his death, all we’ve really got left is Brad Wall, who isn’t as powerful, being the premier of puny Saskatchewan rather than mayor of the centre of the universe, but he’s probably the biggest conservative voice now. Stephen Harper was powerful, but he didn’t govern all that particularly right-wing. Other than the Canadian Wheat Board and the gun registry, his government was barely distinguishable from Chretien’s Liberals in the 90’s, despite what the tribal wailing and gnashing of teeth of the Brahmin class may have made you think.

Lightning Round – 2016/04/06

Right-wing activism always fails.
Related: This is not the neoreactionary moment.

A remedy for ressentiment.

Why your attention span sucks.

The enemy endgame.

Ethnic cleansing numbers.

Danegeld to the domestic savages.

Why universities love grievance studies.

Deportation is cheap.

The migration of the rich.

How many Muslims support Islamic terrorism?
Related: Why we can’t have nice things.

Trump, abortion, and the pre-collapse.
Related: Trump’s abortion misstep.
Related: The “pro-life” movement doesn’t believe their own rhetoric. More.
Related: Pro-life motivation.
Related: More irrationalism from Wilson and Russell Moore.
Related: Pro-lifers think women are not moral agents.
related: How does Saletan at Slate make more sense than conservatives?
Related: Spandrell comments on abortion.

The feminine imperative.

NAXALT.

A government program that actually works.
Related: The subway vigilante on policing.

Conservativism and electoral politics.
Related: Elections choose for the ability to win elections.
Related: Supreme Court: Illegals deserve representation.

Foreign masters.

Intelligence and capitalism.

An open letter to Pope Francis.

Kristor on Gnon.

Rob Ford is dead, although, SoBL gets him wrong. Post coming.

The establishment conservatives guide to the alt-right.
Related: Cuck, Robert Tracinski, make enemies to the right.

On Michelle Fields.
Related: Feminist faux-cons.

The cisgender genie.

On SJW’s.

An ancient battle.

Medicine as a pseudoscience.

Henrietta Lacks and black mysticism.

The case for Trump.

A heaping helping of Hitlers.

Japanese problems.

On the Chinese economy.

Liberals hate science.

Racist dress shirts.

Milo might not be real.

A scalp for #Gamergate.

ClarkHat knocks back SJWs.

Tribalism and ideology.

On regional scatterplots.

H/T: Land, VD

Natalism and Status

Natalism has been going around lately. TRS has linked the problem to affluence, Yuray has made the fairly obvious observation that minor tax incentives are not enough to raise the baby-making rate, while Spandrell has linked the the fertility crisis to kids costing lots and recommends making it profitable with major tax incentives.

I’m actually rather surprised by Spandrell’s answer. He’s the one who’s been pushing Status Points theory the hardest around here and has noted that any kind of insanity can be accomplished when status is on the line. As we’ve seen, people will go to almost any length for status.

It’s obvious that women want to work rather than procreate, but this is not because (most*) women particularly like working or because they prefer work to marriage and family. It’s not because housework is drudgery, most women who work do something similar to housework in their jobs.

The reason women want to work is because working is high status.** The reason women don’t have children is because having children is low status, and the more children the lower the status.

Examples of this abound: When you read about the Duggars or another large family, you will almost assuredly find criticisms along the line of ‘use a condom’ or ‘brood mare’. Women who stay home to care for their family are ‘stepford wives’. Women who spend their lives on home and family are ‘wasting their lives‘. Relationships show a lack of ambition and too much traditionalism (which is negative). Young marriage is discouraged. Etcetera, etcetera. Feminists have been working very hard to destroy any status attached to motherhood.

You’ve no doubt heard the blatant lie that motherhood is the toughest job in the world? Nobody could honestly believe taking care of a child is tougher than working in a coal mine or as an infantryman in Afghanistan, but everybody spreads that lie because it bolsters the low and declining status of women with children.

Having children is low status, but even beyond that status games pervade all of motherhood. The mommy wars aren’t about whether children are better off being raised by their parents or by daycare workers, it’s about who gets good mother status points: stay-at homes or working mothers.

Before you thinks that good mother status contradicts my thesis, know that low status is still some status, while having no children is no status. Have you ever read an article by childfree women? I can almost guarantee you it was complaining about how others expect them to have kids, think them odd that they don’t, or using the status of having kids to one-up them. In other words, their primary complaints are about the status hits they are taking for not having children. These status hits gnaw away at them despite having an ‘exciting, meaningful’ life of travel, work, and leisure. (Notice how they will always status signal other areas in their life to make up for this lack of status).

Having children is lower status than eduction, working, travel, or having status-giving interests. Being a stay-at-home mother is low status compared to being a working mother. Having many children is lower status than having one or two children. Having children young is lower status than having them once infertility hits.

This, more than anything, is why he have such low birth rates.

So, the answer to the fertility crisis is not tax changes, natalism benefits, or motherhood welfare. The way to get women to want to reproduce is to make children the ultimate status symbol.

Read the story of Leah and Rachel in Genesis 29 and 30. Having children was high status, so they did everything they could possibly to produce more children so they could win the status competition against each other.

We need to make it so that instead of the culture lauding whorish celebrities and woman CEO’s, mothers are celebrated. We need news reports to make glowing reports on women having their 6th child, rather than shows idolizing women who adopt foreign children or ~~slutty~~ daring dresses. When Mrs. Duggar has more status than Hillary Clinton, that’s when we will turn this ship around.

Sadly, we don’t control the levers of the culture-industry, so there’s not much we can do for society as a whole, but there are things you can do in your own little circles.

Make a point of praising women who have kids and their mothering skills. If a family is thinking of having another kid, make a positive comment. Praise young men and women you know who are thinking of young marriage, and otherwise encourage young people aroudn you to marry early. Let some disappointment slip out if people say ‘two’s enough for us’. Register some thinly concealed disapproval or contempt if someone says, ‘we don’t want children’. If you can smoothly do backhanded compliments or negs for the self-sterilizing, that would work too. And so on.

You’re working against the combined forces of the media, academy, bureaucracy, and culture, but you might be able to have some influence. Status is mainly an abstraction of a multitude of positive and negative social interactions. If you add to the interactions around you, elevating motherhood and deriding self-sterilization, you might indirectly change a few minds in your local communities. If enough people do it, maybe the trend could be reversed.

One warning, try to keep it subtle enough. Push too hard or too blatantly and you it might backfire if they get defensive or if you look like a jerk. You want to subtly influence their general perception of status, not come off as someone pushing a low status opinion.

****

* Before some idiot brings it up: yes, not all women are alike, yes, there are some women that like their jobs, and yes, some women just don’t like children. A generalization is not an absolute, spare me.

** And yes, because they need cash, but the need for cash came after the desire for status. The drive of women into the workplace was due to status, but once women entered, it drove wages down and costs up, forcing more women into the workplace for monetary reasons.

The Economy Doesn’t Exist

I said last post, I plan to have an economic post upcoming. This is not it. This is some basic foundation for the upcoming post.

The economy does not exist. There is no such thing.

Hyperbole, but true hyperbole.

The economy, despite the absolute importance we place on it in our mammon-worship, is not a real, existent entitity. It is an abstraction and simplification of millions of humans making billions of trade decisions.

It does not stand alone. It should not and cannot stand apart from the people and decisions it abstractly represents.

The economy is the be all and end all of the liberal state. Almost every political decision comes down to: ‘will this grow the economy?’

But the economy is not an end. All these abstracted trade decisions exist, or at least should exist, to better human welfare. The flourishing of humanity is the goal, the economy is merely an abstraction of the trade decisions and processes we use to help bring this about.

The question government should ask itself is not, ‘will this grow the economy?’, but ‘will this benefit the people being governed?’

Growing the economy for its own sake is pointless and counterproductive.

To misquote Jesus, “The economy was made for man, man was not made for the economy.”

Which brings us to a sort digression on GDP.

GDP does not a measure human flourishing. It is a measured abstraction of the production of goods and services within a country, that is somewhat correlated to the economic health of a nation.

GDP was a moderately useful measure for ascertaining one small aspect of human welfare (goods), but it has become a goal purported to be the primary measure of welfare, against it’s creator’s advisement. Once a measure becomes a goal, as GDP most assuredly has, it ceases to be a useful measure. In addition, a measure is useless for measuring that which is was not designed to measure.

GDP was not designed to measure well-being and it does not do so. It measures economic production and to some degree economic health. Economic health is a part of well-being but definitely not the full measure, it ignores community, relationships, culture, and all those other things that make us human.

But even in that, GDP is insufficient. It counts the use of capital for consumption as economic gain, even though, long-term, capital loss is economically draining.

It doesn’t include productive activity if no one is getting paid, so making a beautiful wooden table for yourself does not add to the GDP or the economy, but buying a plastic table from Walmart does both. Making a home-cooked meal does not add to GDP, buying McDonald’s does. Raising your own children does not but paying a stranger to do so does. In each case, the former is probably superior for both economic production and human welfare, yet the GDP and the economy only recognize the latter.

More interestingly, the movement of women from home to the home to the workplace helped the economy, even though women generally do the same work in both.

Beyond this, the economy, and it’s measurement, GDP are not necessarily positive goods themselves, even in the limited areas where they are useful. While more widgets are usually, all things being equal, better than fewer widgets, all things are not equal. All goods and services come at their own cost, of which time is the most obvious, but the focus on the economy doesn’t measure time apart from the wages spent hiring them (if the income approach is used) (ie. More time spent working leads to a higher GDP, ceterus parabus).

Look at these charts (keep in mind the y-axis labels):

Labour productivity (ie. comparitively how many goods/services workers in an hour) is five times what it was 70 years ago, on the other hand, the average work week has only dropped by about 4 hours. We can make 5x as many widgets per an hour as we used to be able to, but we still spend almost the same amount of time working.

The more we work and the more efficiently we work, the more the economy grows. If people started working less, the economy would shrink. Our government and almost every mainstream analyst would consider this shrinking a bad thing.

But wouldn’t life be better for everyone if a 5x increase in productivity led to a more than a 12% decrease in work hours? Full-time hours could be only 8 hours a week and we’d have the material standard of living as our grandparents, we could work 16 hours a week and have the same material standard of living as our parents. This doesn’t even include that during your grandparents’ time, women mostly didn’t work. Ceterus parabis, two parents could each work 4-hours per a week and have the same material standard of living as their grandparents.

Yet, more free time would kill the economy, because fewer widgets would be produced and fewer wages would be paid, even though many people would be happy to live like their parents if it meant only working two 8-hour shifts a week.

If GDP measures free time at all, it measures a lack of it, through money spent on wages.

Finally, GDP treats increases in the nominal value of goods as an increase in production. As an example, housing makes up 15% or so of GDP (real estate is the largest industry in the US, other than combined government). As I’ve argued before, housing, is a positional good. What this means is that, as housing costs (captured by rents or imputed rents) go up due to competition, GDP goes up. So, if the cost (as shown through rents) of the same house doubles, GDP would increase, but there would be no difference in production. Other industries where the goods are positional, or that are mostly services suffer the same fate. For example, primary and secondary education costs continually increase, but it would be hard to argue anybody is receiving better education.

For many sectors of the economy increased GDP is not actually reflecting an increased quantity or quality of goods or services which may contribute to well-being, it is only reflecting an increase in costs and competition.

For all these reasons, the economy doesn’t exist, growing it is not an end goal, and the GDP is a narrow measure not an all-consuming goal.

Lightning Round -2016/03/30

The esoteric masculine journey.

Yarvin responds to controversy over his appearance at Lambda. His AMA.
Related: RIP programming.

The neoreactionary position on Akhenaton.

The lion and the ox.

Terrorism matters less than demographic changes.
Related: Brussels.
Related: Backlash in Brussels.
Related: In Flanders Fields.
Related: Keep digging.
Related: Ants of Islam.
Related: The fruits of compassion.

A speech from Orban.

The evolution of equality.

Do #WhiteTrashLivesMatter?

Toxoplasmosis and Marx.

Anti-PC is a fool’s errand.

Microsoft’s Tay of pigs.
Related: Microsoft AI chatbot turns nazi. Mecha-Hitler.
Related: “They also appeared to shut down her learning capabilities and she quickly became a feminist:”

Dysgenic idiocracy.

The hammer of tolerance in the furnace of liberty.

Land on liberalism.

Conservatism in Georgia.

Wahhabism: the world’s most successful revolutionary ideology.

On New York slashing attacks.

An excerpt from Popular Government.

Social signalling through megaliths.

The collapse of nationalist China.
Related: How America crippled South Korea.

We only believe what we carry into practice.

For witch-burning.

How the pope got pwned.

Bulgakov on Good Friday.

Complementarianism is egalitarianism with a veneer of headship.

Why rich people are miserable.

Vox releases “On the Existence of Gods”.

A world of niches.

How to tweet like Trump.

Scott Alexander talks about my High-IQ Homo Economicus post.

The science of slurs.

An analysis of an update to the Colour of Crime.

The FDNY’s new entry exam.

Easter

The Resurrection

Now on the first day of the week Mary Magdalene came to the tomb early, while it was still dark, and saw that the stone had been taken away from the tomb. So she ran and went to Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved, and said to them, “They have taken the Lord out of the tomb, and we do not know where they have laid him.” So Peter went out with the other disciple, and they were going toward the tomb. Both of them were running together, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. And stooping to look in, he saw the linen cloths lying there, but he did not go in. Then Simon Peter came, following him, and went into the tomb. He saw the linen cloths lying there, and the face cloth, which had been on Jesus’ head, not lying with the linen cloths but folded up in a place by itself. Then the other disciple, who had reached the tomb first, also went in, and he saw and believed; for as yet they did not understand the Scripture, that he must rise from the dead. Then the disciples went back to their homes.

Jesus Appears to Mary Magdalene

But Mary stood weeping outside the tomb, and as she wept she stooped to look into the tomb. And she saw two angels in white, sitting where the body of Jesus had lain, one at the head and one at the feet. They said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping?” She said to them, “They have taken away my Lord, and I do not know where they have laid him.” Having said this, she turned around and saw Jesus standing, but she did not know that it was Jesus. Jesus said to her, “Woman, why are you weeping? Whom are you seeking?” Supposing him to be the gardener, she said to him, “Sir, if you have carried him away, tell me where you have laid him, and I will take him away.” Jesus said to her, “Mary.” She turned and said to him in Aramaic, “Rabboni!” (which means Teacher). Jesus said to her, “Do not cling to me, for I have not yet ascended to the Father; but go to my brothers and say to them, ‘I am ascending to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God.’” Mary Magdalene went and announced to the disciples, “I have seen the Lord”—and that he had said these things to her.

Jesus Appears to the Disciples

On the evening of that day, the first day of the week, the doors being locked where the disciples were for fear of the Jews, Jesus came and stood among them and said to them, “Peace be with you.” When he had said this, he showed them his hands and his side. Then the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord. Jesus said to them again, “Peace be with you. As the Father has sent me, even so I am sending you.” And when he had said this, he breathed on them and said to them, “Receive the Holy Spirit. If you forgive the sins of any, they are forgiven them; if you withhold forgiveness from any, it is withheld.”

Jesus and Thomas

Now Thomas, one of the Twelve, called the Twin, was not with them when Jesus came. So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord.” But he said to them, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

Eight days later, his disciples were inside again, and Thomas was with them. Although the doors were locked, Jesus came and stood among them and said, “Peace be with you.” Then he said to Thomas, “Put your finger here, and see my hands; and put out your hand, and place it in my side. Do not disbelieve, but believe.” Thomas answered him, “My Lord and my God!” Jesus said to him, “Have you believed because you have seen me? Blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”

The Purpose of This Book

Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.

(John 20 ESV)

Good Friday

Jesus Delivered to Be Crucified

Then Pilate took Jesus and flogged him. And the soldiers twisted together a crown of thorns and put it on his head and arrayed him in a purple robe. They came up to him, saying, “Hail, King of the Jews!” and struck him with their hands. Pilate went out again and said to them, “See, I am bringing him out to you that you may know that I find no guilt in him.” So Jesus came out, wearing the crown of thorns and the purple robe. Pilate said to them, “Behold the man!” When the chief priests and the officers saw him, they cried out, “Crucify him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Take him yourselves and crucify him, for I find no guilt in him.” The Jews answered him, “We have a law, and according to that law he ought to die because he has made himself the Son of God.” When Pilate heard this statement, he was even more afraid. He entered his headquarters again and said to Jesus, “Where are you from?” But Jesus gave him no answer. So Pilate said to him, “You will not speak to me? Do you not know that I have authority to release you and authority to crucify you?” Jesus answered him, “You would have no authority over me at all unless it had been given you from above. Therefore he who delivered me over to you has the greater sin.”

From then on Pilate sought to release him, but the Jews cried out, “If you release this man, you are not Caesar’s friend. Everyone who makes himself a king opposes Caesar.” So when Pilate heard these words, he brought Jesus out and sat down on the judgment seat at a place called The Stone Pavement, and in Aramaic Gabbatha. Now it was the day of Preparation of the Passover. It was about the sixth hour. He said to the Jews, “Behold your King!” They cried out, “Away with him, away with him, crucify him!” Pilate said to them, “Shall I crucify your King?” The chief priests answered, “We have no king but Caesar.” So he delivered him over to them to be crucified.

The Crucifixion

So they took Jesus, and he went out, bearing his own cross, to the place called The Place of a Skull, which in Aramaic is called Golgotha. There they crucified him, and with him two others, one on either side, and Jesus between them. Pilate also wrote an inscription and put it on the cross. It read, “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” Many of the Jews read this inscription, for the place where Jesus was crucified was near the city, and it was written in Aramaic, in Latin, and in Greek. So the chief priests of the Jews said to Pilate, “Do not write, ‘The King of the Jews,’ but rather, ‘This man said, I am King of the Jews.’” Pilate answered, “What I have written I have written.”

When the soldiers had crucified Jesus, they took his garments and divided them into four parts, one part for each soldier; also his tunic. But the tunic was seamless, woven in one piece from top to bottom, so they said to one another, “Let us not tear it, but cast lots for it to see whose it shall be.” This was to fulfill the Scripture which says,

“They divided my garments among them,
and for my clothing they cast lots.”

So the soldiers did these things, but standing by the cross of Jesus were his mother and his mother’s sister, Mary the wife of Clopas, and Mary Magdalene. When Jesus saw his mother and the disciple whom he loved standing nearby, he said to his mother, “Woman, behold, your son!” Then he said to the disciple, “Behold, your mother!” And from that hour the disciple took her to his own home.

The Death of Jesus

After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), “I thirst.” A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, “It is finished,” and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Jesus’ Side Is Pierced

Since it was the day of Preparation, and so that the bodies would not remain on the cross on the Sabbath (for that Sabbath was a high day), the Jews asked Pilate that their legs might be broken and that they might be taken away. So the soldiers came and broke the legs of the first, and of the other who had been crucified with him. But when they came to Jesus and saw that he was already dead, they did not break his legs. But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness—his testimony is true, and he knows that he is telling the truth—that you also may believe. For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: “Not one of his bones will be broken.” And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.”

Jesus Is Buried

After these things Joseph of Arimathea, who was a disciple of Jesus, but secretly for fear of the Jews, asked Pilate that he might take away the body of Jesus, and Pilate gave him permission. So he came and took away his body. Nicodemus also, who earlier had come to Jesus by night, came bringing a mixture of myrrh and aloes, about seventy-five pounds in weight. So they took the body of Jesus and bound it in linen cloths with the spices, as is the burial custom of the Jews. Now in the place where he was crucified there was a garden, and in the garden a new tomb in which no one had yet been laid. So because of the Jewish day of Preparation, since the tomb was close at hand, they laid Jesus there.

(John 19 ESV)

Lightning Round – 2016/03/23

The American colonial office.

How your ancestors would view the 21^st century.

An old one from Foseti as a reminder: Harry Dexter White.

Rightward Ho!
Related: Order and economics.
Related: The cephalization of man.

The sliding scale of BS jobs.

Male territoriality.

The nu-male.

Training yourself out of confirmation bias.

Leftists lying.

Pay up or face the consequences.
Related: One last chance for leftists to wake up.

Monarchists for Trump.
Related: Trump is a flashlight.
Related: The Trumpening.
Related: Why Trump will crush Hillary.
Related: Brownshirts and Republican wimps.
Related: Why Kasich?
Related: Trump’s troll army.
Related: Conservative losers.
Related: An anecdote from Schwarzenegger’s governorship.
Related: Trump’s speech to AIPAC.
Related: Scott Alexander reviews Art of the Deal. In the comments, people are turning towards Trump.
Related: The hypocrisy of Trump’s enemies.
Related: The Chicago police union on the irregularities of the anti-Trump protests.
Related: People prefer lecturing to results.

How recent are open borders?

Sons of immigrants.
Related: The challenge of Hispanics to blacks.

Belgian terror and evolving police tactics.
Related: Bombs in Brussels.

Sins of the fatherland.
Related: Swedes cancel virtue signalling event due to rape fears.

The Weimer elections.
Related: What is brittle breaks.

Anarcho-pessimism.

The social conservatives alliance with the business class.

American Icarus.

Techno-commercialism and markets in morality.

Against universalism.

Roman morals.
Related: Europe before Rome.
Related: On Gotland.
Related: Economics old and new.

A review of Do we need God to be Good?

Consent.
Related: Female self-sufficiency decreases marriage.
Related: Roissy comments an amusing article.

Hillary the scold.

Lessons from otome games.

A custody dispute in Canada.

Rule or ruin Republicans.

The terrified enemy.

Breeding with Neanderthals and Denisovans.

Non-shared environment doesn’t just mean schools and peers.

American College of Pediatricians: Gender Ideology Harms Children.

Many scientific “truths” are false.

The Rabid Puppies 2016 list. I’m voting for Space Raptor Butt Invasion and My Little Pony.

H/T: Land, SM

The High-IQ Homo Economicus

You may have read parts of the Kevin D Williamson NRO article attacking the white working class. It’s behind an NRO paywall and I refuse to pay them for anything, so I haven’t read the whole article, but the excerpts I did read lead me to make to Twitter tirades. I have since found an version of the original article here.

The first rant was about how Kevin is an ass for attacking the white working class for being what it is after decades of prolonged government attack, which he partially supports, destroyed it. The second is was a rant on how soulless high-IQ homo economicus, like Kevin and his ilk, set up an inhuman system designed for them, then sneer at how others the system is not designed for fair poorly under it.

This gives me the opportunity to write something I’ve planning to write for a while now, but haven’t got around to yet.

Now, before I begin, because some cucks like Tom Nicholls argue like 14-year-old socialists, I will clarify my personal position. I come from the working class. Through the luck of genetics and the grace of God, I happen to have be born with high intelligence and an impersonal, homo economicus sperginess, so I am now personally comfortably middle-class, but I see second-hand through family the degeneracies of the lower classes. As well, I am not a Kremlin troll (although, if a Russian psy-ops happens to read this and wants to pay me…)

The current socio-economic system is designed by rootless, soulless, high-IQ, low-time preference, money-/status-grubbing homo economicus for benefit of those same homo economicus. It is a system for designed for intelligent sociopaths. Those who are rootless with high-IQ and low-time preference can succeed rather well in this system, but it destroys those who need rootedness or those who are who are low-IQ or high time preference.

Kevin says, “Nothing happened to them. There wasn’t some awful disaster.” But he’s wrong, there was a disaster, but no just one, multiple related disasters all occurring simeltaneously. Ones that would be missed by a rootless cosmopolitan like Williamson. These disasters include the sexual revolution, the long march, feminism, mass immigration, globalization/off-shoring, forced integration, the drug epidemic, mass TV propoganda, governmental growth, and cultural genocide.

Within a span of a few decades working-class whites saw their communities invaded and destroyed by immigrants and integration, the traditional sexual/moral framework destroyed and replaced by degenerate Hollywood mores, the collapse of restraining institutions such as the church and local community, and what forced into competition for what jobs weren’t off-shored to foreign places paying starvation wages with imported illegals willing to work for almost nothing.

Every support the white working class (and for that matter the black working class) had vanished within less than a generation. There was a concerted effort to destroy these supports, and this effort succeeded. Through minimal fault of their own the white working class was left with nothing holding them up.

Now, some people can succeed in this. Low-time preference, high-IQ groups and individuals, like New England puritans and myself can more or less get by without too many supports. Rootless homo economicus, like Williams, New York bankers, and hipsters, can have satisfying(?) lives living in a rat utopia, grubbing for dollars and status, anomie won’y affect them much. Sociopaths (in the colliquial sense), like most politicians, are made to survive in soulless, inhuman system.

For these types of people this is functional, but different people and groups naturally have differing temperment, intelligence, and time preference. Most people are not high-IQ, soulless homo economicus, most people are of average intelligence and have a strong need for communities and community support. Just as with corporal punishment, differing people require different socio-economic structures and controls.

A high-IQ Jew can probably have a dozen sex partners without becoming a single mother, then go on to either economically-productive bitter cat-ladiness or a stable low-sex marriage. A high-time preference Scots-Irish or black with a dozen sex partners is probably a single-mother with multiple baby-daddies and either a Wal-mart job or welfare payments. In a realm of easy divorce, the marriage of a low-time preference post-puritan will probably survive, but that of a low-IQ trailer park resident won’t. In a town with minimal economic prospects and easy access to welfare, the high-achieving, socially-isolated nerd will probably find it easy to ditch town for university and a Silicon Valley career. The low-achieving stoner or the son of a tight-knit farming clan won’t, and will likely choose the path of least resistance. The low-time preference WASP with good job prospects from an intact, single-child household may snort a line or two of coke on occasion and he’ll be fine, the high-time preference Scots-Irish from a broken family with an unemployed father will follow that first hit of meth down to destruction.

Working-class whites (and blacks, and hispanics) are not able to and can not be expected to function in an inhuman, cutthroat, anomic socio-economic system designed by and for upper-middle class WASPS and Jews. They are no more constitutionally endowed to be able to than women are to be marines. Some of the working-class on the right-side of a bell-curve or two may be able to extract themselves from the cultural collapse and some others may be passed by, but most are no more able to escape than a baby is to swim.

People are not equal. Differing people and groups have differing levels of in-born ability to be responsible. You can talk personal responsibility all you want, but most people require cultural and institutional structures to help hold them personally responsible. Those structures are gone, they’ve been destroyed.

You can not expect natural peasants and yeomen to be able to properly hold up the responsibilities of natural aristocrats or priests.

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Nature-defying leftists think they can remodel men and make them all into perfect new socialist men. All men are blank slates that can be molded by education to become perfect. Man is perfectable. Of course, every attempt at perfecting man has failed.

Modern conservatives, having whole-heartedly adopted liberalism, fall into the tabula rasa trap from a different angle. All men are capable of perfecting themselves, they just need to become rugged individualists and pull themselves up by their bootstraps. While personal responsibility and individual effort are important, to think that all men are capable of self-actualization in anomic isolation is just as nonsensical the New Soviet Man.

Most men need community, cultural, and institutional support to self-actualize.

Now, there it is possible to just say, fuck them, they lost the darwinian struggle and deserve to die. Rootless conservatives like Kevin certainly do, as they propose that the broken white working class just move and gets jobs. Rather than trying to fix a system that was designed to destroy working-class communities, he glorifies a system where men’s only hope is to leave behind their families and the towns where their ancestors lived for generations to move to anomic, demographic-shredding urban centres to simply to be able to provide for themselves. Whatever you might call such inhuman mammon-worship, it is nothing anyone sane would recognize as conservatism.

Real conservativism and reaction recognizes that not all people are equal. You can’t just abandon whole swaths of people to anomie, poverty, and economic misery. Superiors have a duty to protect and care for their inferiors just as the inferiors have a duty to obey and respect their superiors. Conservatives can not abandon the idea of noblesse oblige.

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None of this is to say that we should adopt socialist or communist policies where everybody gets free government handouts. That’s just another form of anomic, inhuman mammon-worship. There are other options besides anomic socialist mammon-worship and anomic corporatist mammon-worship. I’m planning another post on economics, hopefully soon.

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Finally, just to make it clear, there is nothing shameful about not being an aristocrat or priest or with being a yeoman, peasant, or even a slave. While our modern status structure prizes the priestly class (ie. the educated, the academic, the high-IQ, the journalist, the bureaucrat, etc.) as having status above all, primarily because the priestly class seized the status hierarchy for themselves through their control of modern mass communications, this is a corrupt and degenerate status hierarchy. (The aristocratic class is all but dead). The denigration of the admirable yeoman or peasant and the loss of the status that used to be given granted to an honest blue-collar family-men is an evil corruption.

Anybody, who knows their proper position in the hierarchy and faithfully renders their duties should receive the proper honour and status. Such is right and noble. The priestly class should and will pay dearly for their destruction of the natural status hierarchy.