Tag Archives: Politics

Abolish Prison

Count Nothingface made a crack at libertarians wanting to abolish prison on Twitter. I happen agree with the libertarians on this one, prison should be abolished. On the other hand, I think it should be replaced with things those same libertarians might not agree with: public whippings, executions, and restitution, depending on the crime. Prison should be abolished for a few reasons: it’s cruel, it’s costly, it’s actively harmful, and the alternatives are more useful.

1) It’s cruel:

Prison is unnecessarily cruel, yet everybody seems to accept it as normal, while thinking its alternative as cruel. Why is locking someone in a hole with the scum of society somehow less cruel than a few moments of pain. If you were given the choice between 20 lashes spread over 5 days or 3 years in prison, which would you choose?

Obviously, the former. Everybody I’ve asked would choose the former. I’m sure if you even gave just criminals the option, the vast majority of them would choose whipping.

If everbody would choose whipping then that then why is whipping considered cruel while prison is not? It makes no logical sense.

(It does make societal sense though. We do it for the same reason we send old people to die in old folks homes and hospitals: decadence. We have become so soft we hate to see pain and death in the open, so rather than accept that, we inflict greater cruelty on criminals [and old folks] by locking them away where we don’t have to see them.)

2)  It’s costly:

It costs $20-50k per year to house a criminal in a prison. A bullet costs a buck or less. A bullwhip costs a few hundred dollars. A person to execute the punishment will probably cost under $50/hour. We could save a lot of money by eliminating prison. Restitution pays for itself.

Now, the standard argument is that death row inmates cost a lot to execute, but that is only because of the insane legal process involved in executing someone and holding them in prison until they are executed. If we streamline the process, the cost would not be so insanely high.

3) It’s actively harmful:

Prison is actively harmful in three main ways. First, it separates children from their fathers and destroys families. A man in prison is not raising his children; his kids are being supported the state and single moms. This is not good for children, it’s not good for families, and it’s not good for the state.

Second, it separates a man from his community. Instead of being able to get a job, learn a skill, or otherwise doing something that would help him become a productive member of society, he is forced into prison where he becomes a parasite for years. Then, when he gets free form prison, he has become so used to the prison lifestyle that he can no longer function productively in the real world.

Third, it turns minor criminals into major criminals. Prison takes minor criminals and/or misguided youths, who with a bit of guidance or stern correction could be set right, and forces them into spending months or years interacting with nobody other than other criminals. This turns minor problems into major ones.

4) The alternatives are better:

The immediate objection to eliminating prisons is ‘how do we keep criminals from law-abiding citizens?’ The answer is execute them.

If an individual is so anti-social that society can find no better use for him than to store him in a warehouse to keep him from being around other people, he should be executed. It is of no benefit to society to keep a useless criminal alive in prison for years and I don’t see how keeping someone hopelessly caged for his whole life in conditions worse than we treat zoo animals is less cruel than a quick death after a good meal and an opportunity for repentance to save his immortal soul.

So, for perpetual criminals and the fully evil, execution is the superior alternative to a life of caged parasitism.

For those criminals who commit lesser violent crimes whipping is the preferable alternative (possibly castration for sexual crimes). It is at once less cruel and less destructive, yet also more of a deterrent. While everybody knows abstractly prison is bad, the full scope of imprisonment is somewhat abstract and not all that easy to grok. On the other hand, a whipping is real and visceral, it is easy to picture and the pain of it is easy to imagine. The sight of a public whipping would be a much stronger deterrent than knowing bad guys are locked up somewhere away from here.

As for the petty criminals and property criminals restitution is easily a better alternative. Make criminals pay monetary damages for monetary and petty crimes. In the case where they cannot afford to, garnish wages over time until the debt is paid. If they are unwilling to find productive work, put them into forced labour until their debt is paid.

This is better for a number of reasons: First, it avoids the problem of prison making petty criminals into greater criminals. Second, it keeps a man with his family and his community. Third, it helps, or forces, a man to become a productive member of the community. Through forced labour, he’s forced to contribute to society and forced to learn a useful skill of some sort.

For the above reasons, I think that any wise society would end the wasteful, inhuman, and cruel prison system and institute a humane, human system of execution, public whippings, and restitution.

Abolish prisons now.

Je Ne Suis Pas Charlie

As of my writing this the Google news search of Charlie Hebdo shooting nets “About 21,700,000 results“. Rotherham abuse nets “About 27,800 results“. Rotherham rape “About 9,520 results“. The latter story has had four months for stories to be written, the former a couple days.

Here we can see the West’s priorities: a dozen left-wing journalists get killed by the same people they fought so hard to import and it is an international crisis that everyone must care about. 1400 innocent children get raped by those same imports and nobody gives a shit.

You should have been angry months ago.

Anyway, here’s my opinion on Charlie Hebdo: they got what they deserved  the natural consequences of their pro-immigration beliefs (Ed: Ill-phrased and added a clarification) and I’m not going to shed a tear. May God grant them mercy in the next life.

Charlie Hebdo was a vile left-wing rag that regularly engaged in anti-Christian blasphemy. They are not ‘us‘. The Muslims aren’t us, but neither are Charlie Hebdo. If our enemies want to start killing each other, why should we involve ourselves? Let them take each other out.

I do have some sympathy for free speech and I might be sympathetic if Charlie Hebdo was staunch ideological pro-free speech organization but like most left-wingers Charlie are very selective in their desire for free speech. From Charlie Hebdo’s wiki:

In 2008, controversy broke over a column by veteran cartoonist Siné which led to accusations of antisemitism and Siné’s sacking by Val. Siné sued the newspaper for unfair dismissal and Charlie Hebdo was sentenced to pay him €90,000 in damages. Siné launched a rival paper called Siné Hebdo which later became Siné Mensuel. Charlie Hebdo launched its Internet site, after years of reluctance from Val.

Charlie gutlessly sacked a cartoonist for violating a more-untouchable taboo. I guess they fear Jews more than Muslims. They are not pro-free speech, they are simply anti-religion. Why should I, or any religious person, support them in this?

To add is this:

On 26 April 1996 François Cavanna, Stéphane Charbonnier and Philippe Val filed 173,704 signatures, obtained in 8 months, with the aim of banning the political party Front National, since it would have contravened the articles 1, 2, 4, 6 and 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen.

The people at Charlie loved free speech and free assembly so much, they literally tried to ban a political party* and silence 15% of the population. (I wonder if they would/will reconsider their dislike of FN now?)

There is no reason to support Charlie. All this is is a left-wing organization, a supporter of diversity, receiving the natural consequences of diversity. If you invite savages into your country, do not be surprised when savagery results. Mourn not for those who helped engineer the invasion, but for those innocents who suffer due to it.

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* Mike Anissimov indicated on Twitter that it may have been a joke (as did another rude person), but I haven’t been able to find a source for that. Wikipedia and the article wikipedia sources seem to be playing it straight (‘pilon’, translated ‘drumstick’ at the end, also means to pulp a book). Other sources than wiki seem to take it seriously as well. The translations of a random set of these forum members seem to take the attempted ban seriously. Now, I can’t read French very well, so I would miss any subtleties to these stories that would indicate humour and this story is from two decades ago, before the internet went mainstream, so I am having a hard time finding much. It’s possible that this is a joke, but 173k signatures is a long way to go for a joke, and there was an official inquiry into banning FN that followed soon after. I’m accepting it as legitimate until such someone shows otherwise.

The Law is a Death Threat

VD linked to a post by law professor Stephen Carter that makes a point that can not be made enough, so I’m going to reiterate it here:

That’s too bad. Every new law requires enforcement; every act of enforcement includes the possibility of violence. There are many painful lessons to be drawn from the Garner tragedy, but one of them, sadly, is the same as the advice I give my students on the first day of classes: Don’t ever fight to make something illegal unless you’re willing to risk the lives of your fellow citizens to get your way.

The government exists solely to force people to do something they wouldn’t do otherwise. No matter what the government is doing: public health care, economic redistribution, taxation, fighting obesity, etc., it is doing so by force. At the very least, they have forcibly taken taxes from the citizenry to pay for whatever activity they are doing.

Every law is a threat of violence: Do (or don’t do) this or we will sic the police on you.

The police’s sole purpose is violence, they exist solely to enforce the law through the use of the threat of violence and, failing that, violence.

But even further than that every law is at heart a death threat: Do (or don’t do) this or we kill you.

Don’t believe me, consider the one thing every government needs simply to exist taxation.

Pay your taxes or the IRS will fine (or jail) you. If you refuse to pay the fines, they send police to take you to jail. If you refuse to go to jail, the police will threaten you or forcibly move you to jail. If you do not bow to their threats or rseist them forcibly moving you, they will shoot you. If you resist being shot, they will shoot you until you are dead.

If we remove all the intermediary bureaucracy, the law is: pay your taxes or we will shoot you until you are dead.

Smaller laws and regulations hide this behind layers of bureaucracy. You might have to deal with the Department of Administrative Affairs, then the DAA’s enforcement arm, then the courts, then the Department of Justice, all before finally meeting the police, but if you refuse the law long enough, eventually the police will be there (if they’re don’t eventually arrive, then you simply don’t have to obey, but anarcho-tyranny is another topic for another time).

The police are the eventual enforcement mechanism of any law or regulation, however many layers government may use to muddy the waters, and the police’s job is, at base, to kill you if you don’t obey. Again, the police’s job is muddied as are society is soft and unable to deal with reality, but everything the police do, the Miranda Rights, the “please come with us”, the “do you mind answering a few questions”, the handcuffs, the tasers, the “stop or I’ll shoot”, all of it, is predicated on: if you don’t obey, we will kill you.

Most people in the West abide by the law and so they never go farther than a layer or two into the bureaucratic swamp; even most criminals generally obey the police before it becomes necessary for the police to kill them, so this reality is obscured by common social delusion. This delusion is how leftists can always cry for more laws but whine when the police enforce the laws on the likes of Michael Brown or Erik Garner.

Now, just because every law is a death threat and the police’s job is to kill you if you don’t obey, doesn’t make the law necessarily evil. Sometimes death threats and killing are justified. If someone was trying to rape your daughter, “stop or I’ll kill you” is justified, as is following through on the threat if necessary. Arguably, it’s the only just course of action. So, by calling the law a death threat and saying the police’s job is to kill is no indictment against the law or the police, it is simply a recognition of reality.

This reality is important to remember whenever we theorize on politics or call for more laws: more laws means more death threats and more reasons for the police to kill. It is also important to remember when someone gets themselves shot by the police: the police exist to kill, that is their job.

So remember for all political philosophy or law-making:

The government’s sole purpose is violence and every law is a death threat. Unless you are willing to kill for something no law should be made over it.

A Winning Conservative Strategy

I had a couple Twitter conversations on how the GOP can significantly cripple the Democratics and gain some actual permanent wins. One single PAC spent $142 million on Romney and received nothing to show for it in the end. With that much money I could signficantly cripple the Dems and win the next decade or two for the Republicans.

Being a reactionary monarchist, I generally avoid partisan politics here, but I thought this would be an enjoyable intellectual exercise.

Since I’m in a generous mood, I’ve decided to share the basic strategy for the GOP to steal and use (or more likely ignore) however they want, but first a little groundwork.

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The most interesting fact about American politics is how the Republicans totally dominate all levels of violence, yet are always in a perpetual state of losing. The military is primarily Republican, the police are more split but, at least in terms of front-line workers, are generally Republican, and the NRA, while officially non-partisan, is primarily composed of Republicans. The vast majority of people who own and can use a gun are conservative, yet, in the long run, conservatives always lose to their weaker, unarmed brethren.

It is baffling until you realize it is because conservatives refuse to play by the rules the progressives have set. Democrats can steal bags of votes, implement gang-run politics, destroy crimethinker’s careers, and stage shit-ins (among many other things) with impunity and the Republicans refuse to respond with anything worse than requiring ID to vote (and then getting called evil when doing so).

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First, some theory. In “To Win a Nuclear War” Michio Kaku outlined the concept of ‘escalation dominance’.

Escalation dominance essentially means the actor controlling the highest level of violence (in the book’s case, nuclear weapons) can control all lower levels of violence by threatening to escalate the conflict to a higher level of violence. By controlling the tempo and threat of escalation, this actor can steer a conflict in such ways as to win lower level conflicts even in areas where he may be weaker.

As I stated above, the military, the police, and the NRA are conservative institutions. Conservatives, and thereby the Republican party, control the highest level of violence in American political disputes.

Using this, the Republicans should be able to control the escalation and tempo of lower-violence political conflicts.

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Note: This does not mean Republicans should start shooting Democrats. The primary point of escalation dominance is to control the lower levels of violence so you don’t have to escalate.

The primary reason for controlling nuclear weapons is not to use nuclear weapons. Controlling lower levels of violence without having to resort to using nuclear weapons through the implied threat of nuclear escalation is the purpose of nuclear weapons.

Controlling the highest level of violence in American politics means that Conservative can control the tempo of lower-violence political conflicts (voting, law-making, regulation enforcement, etc.) and control the escalation of political violence (ie: voting to voter fraud; debate to ideological firings) through the implied threat of further escalation (you witch hunt me and take my job, I witch hunt you and take your job and reputation; you escalate to assault, I escalate to shooting).

I repeat: I am not advocating shooting liberals or doing anything illegal. My strategy does not include physical violence or criminality. I am simply explaining a concept that will under-gird the strategy.

Also, for the purposes of this post any political act, whether it’s voting, protesting, debate, law-making, etc., will be considered a form of violence.

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Conservatives already have implied a willingness to escalate. “Cold dead hands” is pretty clear, the occasional fringe rant by people like Alex Jones shows that conservatives can be pushed too far, and liberals still bring up McVeigh and the abortion shootings from the 90’s.

So, the base has created a climate where the implication of escalation is clear. Republicans need to use this implied threat to control lower levels of violence so violence does not escalate, but they don’t.

Despite controlling the highest level of violence, Republicans are allowing the Democrats to set the tempo of escalation. In fact, Republicans are allowing the Democrats to escalate while never responding in kind.

This is why they lose. This is why they always lose.

If they want to win they need to match the Democrats escalation, then control the further tempo of escalation.

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Enough groundwork, now we get to the real stuff. Let’s say I had the $142-million Restore Our Future wasted on Romney or the $54-million American Crossroads used opposing Democrats. $142M over four years is $35.5M each year. Here’s how I’d spend $35M.

Create an information network. $3M*

Instead of wasting money on ads, support the dissemination over the internet. You can reach more people through FB than through some network cable slot. Create a network of cross-linking quasi-official aggregators of content and a quasi-official Republican news source.There are tons of young ideologues willing to do the Republicans propaganda grunt work for them for peanuts. Create a small fund to pay some of the best of them, say $25k each, to do it full-time. Create a small emergency fund for unpaid amateurs (your computer busted and you need a new one, here’s $1000, that kind of thing.) This could all be done for less than $1M. Easy enough.

Create an investigation network. $5M

Create a small fund (say $500k) that the aforementioned bloggers (or just regular Joes) can apply to have expenses paid for doing investigative work on a potential anti-leftist/Democrat lead.

Next, hire a couple dozen ideologically conservative reporters at $50k a piece (plus investigative expenses)  and have their sole job to dig up and publish dirt on Democrats, Democrat supproters, liberals, liberal organizations, and the like. Have them work in concert with aforementioned information network.

Next hire a few dozen private investigators. Dedicate them to uncovering the personal information and secrets of leftists. Everybody has secrets they don’t want others to know; find it if possible. Do they cheat on their spouses or their taxes, do they look at weird or illegal pornography, any “emberassing” photographs or incidents in their past, any criminal actions in the past, etc. Have them find it.

Create a quasi-official Enemies List $200k

Create and maintain a database site that’s a catalogue of the the personal information of every remotely public Democrat, liberal, or anti-Republican person or organization. Keep it inside the realms legality of privacy laws, but absolutely no more than that. If it would give more latitude make it a private operation with no official ties to the party. It would include pictures, phone numbers, addresses, family, any wrongdoing or humiliating things from their past, etc.

Publish all the personal/organizational information gained from the investigation network on this list.

Create a legal war team. $20M

The leftists are engaging in lawfare, hit back but harder and more organized. Create two Republican legal firms (make them legally independent if need be).

Have one whose sole responsibility is defending any conservative/Republican who’s in trouble due to their politics (such as any troubles that may happen while enacting this plan). Make this firm small but top quality. Defend your own with the best.

Have a second firm that’s large, sacrifice on quality. Have this team find and bring to court any actionable lawsuits against Democrats, leftists, left-wing organizations, leftists’ businesses, etc. The purpose here is not to win, it is to use the courts as methods of persecution and to drag court cases out. Remember, in lawfare the trial is the punishment and you are looking to punish these people/organizations for being leftists. These cases can be anything; any kind of civil suit that can be concocted to be actionable.

Also, create a fund for paying the legal fees for cases that are lost and avoid cases that would get summarily thrown out.

Create a street team. $2M

As Kate always says, failing to show up for a riot is a failed conservative policy. Hire a bunch of young conservative/Republicans (at low wages) as organizers. Anytime leftists protest, the hired organizers would create a counter-protest. They would then organize their own protests. Do what leftists have learned; don’t protest in public streets, target. Is there a particular individual, protest in front of his house/place of employment for a week; is there an organization, protest outside the organization during the day, outside the home of the CEO/Director/Manager during the evenings. Remember, the leftists made the personal political.

Make sure to give clear instructions to avoid illegal actions and avoid stepping frmo “free speech” into “”harassment”.

Create a phone/e-mail team. $2M

Hire a few coordinators for different ideological areas to create a lists of volunteers. Every time it becomes necessary, have the coordinators coordinate a phone team. Have the each volunteer phone a leftist being targeted once a week (make the call polite: “Hi, sir, I would like to respectfully disagree with you or your organization’s policy on), but have enough volunteers that the person is getting a phone call every hour for the entire week. Keep this up for a few weeks. You are not phoning the PR people, you are not phoning secretaries, you are phoning these people directly. Get their numbers from above. Then have the volunteers phone their boss, the organization they volunteer with, etc. to register their displeasure.

Also, if there’s a leftist being targeted, have everybody e-mail bomb them and where they work registering displeasure.

Create an employment network. $300k

Spend a few hundred thousand to hire a few guys whose sole job is to help Republicans/conservatives who lose their jobs due to their ideology find new ones. One advantage the left has is that a leftist who does something leftist and stupid can always find employment with some leftist organization. Many conservatives don’t have that, so they are forced to curtail their political activities or hide behind screennames. All these guys have to do is find some Republican employers to participate, then link cosnervatives in need to them.

Hire a coordination office. $1M

Hire a coordinator to coordinator, and if necessary some office staff, to coordinate all these different teams.

Ad Hoc. $2M

A small fund for the coordinator to take advantage of any unforeseen opportunities that may present themselves.

With more, simply do all this, but bigger.

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With everything in place, have the coordinator run ruthless personal campaign after ruthless personal campaign.

Find a leftist and destroy him/her on a personal level. Targets can include actual elected officials, bureaucrats abusing their positions for partisan reasons (ie. the IRS), leftist bloggers, leftist media figures, leftist academics, leftist activists, leftist businesses, leftists NGO’s and non-profits.

The investigation network will find out everything they can about it, they will pass it to the information network who will distribute it, and it will be logged in the enemies list. If the pesron has done anything actionable, the legal war team will pounce on it. The street and phone team will protest in their own manners.

You could have dozens of these campaigns running at once.

For an example of how it could look, let’s go back to John Cook, who published the names of every gun owner in New York and let’s pretend this network is in place.

The investigation network would find his address, his personal phone number, pictures of his home and kids, his porn habits, his marriage therapy sessions, whatever they legally could find. The information network would distribute this widely. A dossier of him and his family would be written up on the enemies list. So, now everything about him is freely available on the internet.

The legal war team would find whatever arcane law or “injured” they could to make a civil action of this. They’d bring John to court personally and tie him up in months of legal battles. Every hour of every day for weeks, both him and his wife would receive a polite phone call from a different person expressing polite disapproval; their personal inboxes would load with polite e-mail expressing disapproval. His boss at Gawker would be receiving continual calls and e-mails to fire him.

A small group of (non-harassing) protesters would show up on the sidewalk outside his house in the morning as his children are leaving for school and in the evening as they are getting home from school, having dinner, going to bed. They’d be in front of his place of work during the day.

After a month of that peaceful, legal attack, do you think anybody would be stupid enough to try to publish gun owners name’s again. Even after the rather weak, uncoordinated response to John the alst time no one has since published another gun owners list. Now repeat that for every offending leftist, every offending organization, and the occasional random leftist, how long until the public action of the leftists can’t sustain itself anymore.

Without the constant leftist campaigns and organizations, the electoral support of leftists begins to whither over time. A few elections down the road, Republicans are consistently winning and getting their agenda through because most leftists are too cowed to fight back.

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Now, if you find this distasteful, remember, leftists are already doing this. They already fully agree that this is kind of personal action is acceptable practice. They’ve done it many times, and will continue to do it. The recent dust-up at Mozilla makes that clear. So, it is either respond in kind or lose.

Right now, the leftists have escalated to a higher level of political violence than the Republicans; the Republicans need to match it and escalate a step further.

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The obvious question then becomes, why won’t the leftists/Democrats organize, then escalate further?

They will, to which the Republicans respond by escalating again.

This is where we get to escalation dominance.

At some point of escalation, the left will be to afraid to escalate further, because the right controls the highest level of violence.

While the reaction to the Gawker story wasn’t enough to do more than irritate John Cook, a similar reaction to a similar piece in for a newspaper, resulted in the paper hiring armed guards.

Once the escalation has been pushed high enough, the left will blink at the implied threat of physical violence and then perhaps deescalation can occur.

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That’s the basic outline for a long-term win for the GOP.

If any higher placed GOP flak with the funds would like to win, win hard, and win permanently rather than throw massive amounts of money down the RINO-hole, I am willing to sell my services. I will gladly be hired to write up a detailed plan and I would be happy to be hired to implement it (for appropriate compensation of course). I might not believe in democracy, but Democrat tears are their own reward.

Also, my offer of selling my services applies to other country’s conservative parties. I do live in Canada after all.

Think about it GOP operative or rich conservative donor reading this. You can hire me for peanuts (relatively speaking) and win, or you can continue to throw millions upon millions at candidates that always seem to let the country continue left.

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For this strategy, I’ve stayed within the realm of legality.

Now the Democrats have already escalated into illegality through ballot-stuffing, voter fraud, voter intimidation, and gang politics. If certain GOP operatives were willing to escalate into the realm of illegality the possibilities would be near endless.

I am not going to give any advice on illegality and will not condone or encourage illegal actions, but I would note I do love intellectual challenges and might be willing to engage in hypotheticals for a hefty payment.

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*All numbers are very quick and rough estimates. I’d need to be paid more than nothing for greater accuracy.

On Triggers and Bullies

Scott Alexander has a interesting post on triggers and safe spaces (h/t: Jim), in which he writes:

The rationalist community is a safe space for people who obsessively focus on reason and argument even when it is socially unacceptable to do so.
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If you are the sort of person with the relevant mental quirk, living in a society of people who don’t do this is a terrifying an alienating experience. Finding people who are like you is an amazing, liberating experience. It is, in every sense of the word, a safe space.

If you want a community that is respectful to the triggers of people who don’t want to talk about controversial ideas, the Internet is full of them. Although I know it’s not true, sometimes it seems to me that half the Internet is made up of social justice people talking about how little they will tolerate people who are not entirely on board with social justice ideas and norms. Certainly this has been my impression of Tumblr, and of many (very good) blogs I read (Alas, A Blog comes to mind, proving that my brain sorts in alphabetical order). There is no shortage of very high-IQ communities that will fulfill your needs.

But you say you’re interested in and attracted to the rationalist community, that it would provide something these other communities don’t. Maybe you are one of those people with that weird mental quirk of caring more about truth and evidence than about things it is socially acceptable to care about, and you feel like the rationalist community would be a good fit for that part of you. If so, we would love to have you!

But if you want to join communities specifically because they are based around dispassionate debate and ignoring social consequences, but your condition for joining is that they stop having dispassionate debate and take social consequences into account, well, then you’re one of those people – like Groucho Marx – who refuses to belong to any club that would accept you as a member.
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This would be a good time to admit that I am massively, massively triggered by social justice.

I know exactly why this started. There was an incident in college when I was editing my college newspaper, I tried to include a piece of anti-racist humor, and it got misinterpreted as a piece of pro-racist humor. The college’s various social-justice-related-clubs decided to make an example out of me. I handled it poorly (“BUT GUYS! THE EVIDENCE DOESN’T SUPPORT WHAT YOU’RE DOING!”) and as a result spent a couple of weeks having everyone in the college hold rallies against me followed by equally horrifying counter-rallies for me. I received a couple of death threats, a few people tried to have me expelled, and then everyone got bored and found some other target who was even more fun to harass. Meantime, I was seriously considering suicide.

But it wasn’t just that one incident. Ever since, I have been sensitive to how much a lot of social justice argumentation resembles exactly the bullying I want a safe space from – the “aspie”, the “nerd”, that kind of thing. Just when I thought I had reached an age where it was no longer cool to call people “nerds”, someone had the bright idea of calling them “nerdy white guys” instead, and so transforming themselves from schoolyard bully to brave social justice crusader. This was the criticism I remember most from my massive Consequentialism FAQ – he’s a nerdy white dude – and it’s one I have come to expect any time I do anything more intellectual than watch American Idol, and usually from a social justicer.

Scott hovers around a good point and gives it a light jab or two, but doesn’t go for the throat, so I will.

Bullying is not a regrettable by-product of social justice, social justice does not resemble bullying, rather:

Social justice is bullying.

The purpose of social justice is, was, and always will be bullying. Social justice warriors are bullies, nothing more, attempting to use social, economic, and, occasionally, physical force to enforce group conformity in favour of their ‘one true faith’ of ‘equality’.

SJ is the attempt of the weak and vile to force their abnormalities and disorders on the rest of us to make us as broken as they are. When we are all as pathetic as they are, we will all be equal.

To put it in social justice terms, the purpose of the non-normative discourse is to colonize and occupy white male space.

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This is why you never give the SJW’s an inch. These are not simply well-meaning but broken people who need a bit of respect. These are not simply sensitive people who should be given a bit of compassion out of politeness. In normal life some minor accommodations to those naturally predisposed to sensitivity driven discourse is simple politeness, but SJW’s are not these types of people and they should not be given even the smallest of accommodations.

How can you tell that the SJW’s are bullies, rather than simply broken, but well-meaning people?

Simple, they seek to enter where they don’t belong. They purposefully seek out things to feel victimized.

A normal person who is sensitive to something (and might be worthy of some accommodation) generally seeks to avoid that something. As a trite personal example, I find emotional outbursts and certain forms of strong emotionalism uncomfortable; it could be fairly said, I am ‘sensitive’ to them. Because of this I tend to try to avoid situations where they occur and I avoid the type of people who are prone to them. It’s basic common sense.

The SJW, on the other hand, purposefully goes out of her way to intrude in other people’s spaces where she knows she will be uncomfortable and condemn them for making her uncomfortable.

We can see that in Scott’s example above: an SJW tries to enter a rationalist community devoted to a safe space for dispassionate discourse and demands that everybody stop with the dispassionate discourse.

You can see it in all the women offended by RoK or Matt Forney. They intrude on a male space dedicated to masculine discussion, where they know they will be offended and feel ‘victimized’.  We can see this with SRS on Reddit, who intrude into RPR and act offended.

In real life, the colonization of male space can be exemplified by the current concerns of the military; the SJW types demand women be allowed into the military, then whine when the military doesn’t bend over backwards to cater to their every whim.

It would be like me going to an Emotions Anonymous (I was only mildly surprised that existed) meeting and demanding they all stop being so weepy and emotional. It would be simply wrong. It’s not my place to be there and, if I am there as a newcomer or guest, it’s not my place to demand they change for me.

This is who you can know the SJW’s are bullies. They refuse to live and let live; they barge into other’s spaces and demand that these spaces change for them.

Never accommodate them.

****

I’ve outlined a number of ways they attempt to bully their allies (and others) into conformity, but of all these, the trigger warning is the most insidious attempt at colonization.

Not only does the SJW demand you kowtow to her will in her own spaces, she demands you kowtow to her will in your own space.

****

As an aside, Scott, if you end up following the backlink and reading this, I know I still haven’t got around to addressing your response to my response to the antireactionary FAQ. I still plan to. Hopefully, eventually.

What’s in a Name?

The best way to identify the goals and predict the actions of a leftist or bureaucratic (redundancy) organization is to assume they are the opposite of what the name of the organization would imply if the organization were named honestly.

Thus, an organization with social justice in its name is generally both both rending social bonds and committing mass injustice.

A leftist organization with community in the name is usually destroying said community.

An organization evoking peace is generally dedicated to spreading chaos.

A leftist organization labelled Christian can generally be found destroying Christian values and hollowing out churches.

A leftist organization with prosperity or anti-poverty in its name will be creating as much poverty as possible.

The Monarch and the Poor

Calvin on the monarch and the poor:

“As God had promised to extend his care to the poor and afflicted among his people, David, as an argument to enforce the prayer which he presents in behalf of the king, shows that the granting of it will tend to the comfort of the poor. God is indeed no respecter of persons; but it is not without cause that God takes a more special care of the poor than of others, since they are most exposed to injuries and violence. Let laws and the administration of justice be taken away, and the consequence will be, that the more powerful a man is, he will be the more able to oppress his poor brethren. David, therefore, particularly mentions that the king will be the defender of those who can only be safe under the protection of the magistrate, and declares that he will be their avenger when they are made the victims of injustice and wrong. . . .

“But as the king cannot discharge the duty of succouring and defending the poor which David imposes upon him, unless he curb the wicked by authority and the power of the sword, it is very justly added in the end of the verse, that when righteousness reigns, oppressors or extortioners will be broken in pieces. It would be foolish to wait till they should give place of their own accord. They must be repressed by the sword, that their audacity and wickedness may be prevented from proceeding to greater lengths. It is therefore requisite for a king to be a man of wisdom, and resolutely prepared effectually to restrain the violent and injurious, that the rights of the meek and orderly may be preserved unimpaired. Thus none will be fit for governing a people but he who has learned to be rigorous when the case requires. Licentiousness must necessarily prevail under an effeminate and inactive sovereign, or even under one who is of a disposition too gentle and forbearing. There is much truth in the old saying, that it is worse to live under a prince through whose lenity everything is lawful, than under a tyrant where there is no liberty at all.”

Labels and Libertarianism

Michael Anissimov has put out the 5 premises of neoreaction with which a someone must totally agree to be a neoreactionary. He argues that “anyone who disagrees with any one of them is almost certainly not a reactionary.”

I agree fully with all the points except possibly #4, which got me thinking about the rather petty problem of self-labelling. Particularly the fact that my self-descriptive label on my about page has been “reactionary libertarian” since I last updated it months ago.

I hold to a form of libertarianism, anarcho-monarchism, as the optimal form of government for English people, something which I just commented on that a couple weeks back. If asked I’d describe myself as a reactionary anarcho-monarchist.

But then again, I don’t “make personal freedom axiomatic“; rather I hold to the principal of subsidiarity. I do not “refuse to consider the negative externalities of that freedom to traditional structures” but rather I believe these structures are best preserved by distributing power primarily to the individual, family, and the community to best “foster community, family, and social cohesion”.

I definitely do hold to the “socialism” of “family and friends helping each other of their own free will.” (I wouldn’t call it socialism though).

Rather than not caring “if a libertarian society would leave many out in the cold” I have thought of the problem of natural slaves, although, simply having strong community values and mores from birth would probably take care of the problem.

I don’t think any who have read my blog are overly concerned about me being “excessively materialistic” in my outlook.

It would seem his criticisms of libertarianism do not apply to me or my thinking.

So, maybe I fall into the category of “theoretically compatible with libertarianism, but is not compatible with the mood and spirit of libertarianism”?

Or am I simply an unwitting entryist?

Could it be possible I’m “lonely and want friends to debate politics with, or [am] intrigued by the personalities of reactionaries, though they are not one”?

Or maybe by rejecting the axiom of a natural right to freedom, I am simply not a libertarian, whatever the similarities?

Maybe it’s time to retire the libertarian label.

I’ve worn it for many a year, but maybe I’m in the ideological territory of post-libertarianism and the label no longer fits.

Cheers to Rob Ford

Some of you may have heard of Toronto mayor Rob Ford and his current cocaine scandals. Its one of the few times that a Canadian politician has gotten this much international attention, and from a simple mayor no less.

Fellow traditionalist Richard Anderson thinks he should leave his office, but I disagree.

Sadly, Rob Ford is one of the few vaisya politicians in Canada willing to stand against a political culture made almost entirely of Brahmin. Because of this he’s popular, at least in Toronto’s suburbs, which “aren’t part of the real Toronto” if you ask any of the elitist Brahmins who oppose Ford.  Some thought Harper and his conservatives might fight, but aside from a few minor changes (the gun registry and dismantling the wheat board) their rule has been almost insignificantly different from those of the Liberals prior.

He’s not a reactionary in any sense, but he is a vaisya’s vaisya, because of this he has earned the enmity of the brahmins far out of proportion to his actual power and status. He has been hounded mercilessly by the Cathedral. Really, has any other Canadian politician, even our prime minister, received as much international attention, all negative, this year as this one mayor?

His cocaine scandal has dwarfed that of a national (socialist) party leader being caught naked by police in a massage parlour known for trafficking in underage prostitutes. In fact, shortly after those revelations, “Smiling Jack” was all but deified upon his death. They dwarf the revelations of another national party leader. Trudeau, who admitted to smoking weed while working as an MP. despite this, his hereditary assumption to the liberal throne was all but a given despite his sole qualification consisting of being substitute teacher (and being named Trudeau).

Nope, Rob Ford has been demonized because he is not one of them. He is not the inner party, the enlightened. He is an outsider that dares defy the brahmins in their Citadel; the home of the (Red) Star and the state controlled CBC. Even worse, he has the unmitigated gall to be successful in opposing them and being popular while doing so, turning democracy against the champions of it.

The fight over Rob Ford is one of the prime examples of the democratic, class war between the vaisyas and the brahmins. The brahmins control every bit of leverage, almost all the press coverage, most of the major blogs, all of the universities, and the bureaucracy. The entirety of the Cathedral in Canada, along with parts of international Cathedral, has been been arrayed against him, yet he stands against them where they are strongest, with only the quiet support of his class.

So here’s to Rob Ford. Long may he govern.

Is Rob Ford a good politician? No, not really. But, he is the best the vaisyas have in Canada. He is the only one sticking it to the Cathedral; the only one even trying to fight the left.

Every day he remains in office is one more day the brahmin’s are blasphemed in their strongest cathedral. That alone makes him worthy of support, whatever his other failings.

The system has failed, as it was designed to, and the collapse is inevitable; at the very least we can enjoy the mockery Ford is making of of our self-proclaimed betters.

The only sad part is, that this is what one bumbling man with a spine fighting for the vaisyas can accomplish. What if the vaisyas could actually produce real politicians that had the courage of their convictions? What if we had a charismatic, competent leader who was ideologically strong and firmly loyal to his class?

Think of how successful he could be; we might even be able to turn the tide against the collapse.

If only better men of our class would stand and fight as Ford has.

The Communists Won

This post has been loosely in the works for a while and was created to prove empirical claim #1 of neoreaction from Anissimov. Scott at Slate Star Codex used a computer program to analyze the results, but the graph is prima facie ludicrous. It is simply logically impossible that the US has ideologically stayed the same while the welfare state has grown as much as it has.

Recently Handle has done a little history of communism in the US for us, which prompted me to dust the post off and finish.

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The United States, and most of the rest of the West, are communist. Not in a pejorative sense, but in a simple ideological sense. The majority of people in the west accept communist politics and most western countries are communist in practice if not form.

Note, when I say communist, I do not mean Stalinist, Leninist, Maoist, etc. Just as communism took different forms in Cuba, the USSR, China, et al., North American communism took its own form.

I know the immediate objection: “But the US is run by the Democrats and Republicans, both right-wing parties of capitalists. The socialist party is a joke, and the communist party almost non-existent. How can you call the US a communist country?”

Again, America is communist in ideology and function, not necessarily in form. To prove that I am going to go back about 85 years ago to 1928. The Communist Party USA released a platform (Google Books version) for the election of William Z. Foster to president. He ran against Herbert Hoover and Al Smith getting 0.13% of the vote.

Let’s look at their demands (summarized) and compare them to our modern world:

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II*: The Curse of Unemployment

  1. Unemployment insurance.
  2. 40-hour, 5-day workweek forbidding overtime.
  3. Unemployment insurance of 8 weeks wages.
  4. Public kitchens providing free meals to the unemployed.
  5. Free medical care of the unemployed.
  6. Public works to create employment.
  7. Abolition of vagrancy laws.

The US currently has EI, a 40-hour workweek (with optional, paid overtime), SNAP, Medicaid, and numerous public works.

The federal government no longer has vagrancy laws, although states and municipalities do. Vagrancy laws have been narrowed considerably.

The US has adopted 5 and a half out of 6 Communist demands related to unemployment. (I counted #1 & 3 as a single demand).

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III: The Offensive of the Bosses

  1. 40-hour, 5-day workweek with 48 hours consecutive rest.
  2. High wages.
  3. Fight against capitalist rationalization and mass production.
  4. Organize the unorganized.
  5. Destroy company unions.
  6. Amalgamate craft unions into industrial unions; democratize trade unions.
  7. Political struggle in addition to union struggle.

These points aren’t as clear-cut, many being calls to struggle rather than specific demands.

Of these demands, they’ve achieved a 40-hour week, high wages, and destroying company unions. The democratization of unions and amalgamation of unions has mostly been accomplished (minus one or two industries). Given that the unions control huge swaths of the Democratic Party, the last point has been achieved as well.

The communists failed to stem mass production and rationalization and unionization rates peaked at almost 35% in 1954.

The US has adopted 5 of the 7 points related to fighting the bosses.

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IV: The Heroic Struggle of the Miners

  1. Build a new militant union in the industry, eliminate Lewis.
  2. Organize unorganized.
  3. Support two local strikes.
  4. Organize relief for struggling miners.
  5. Railroad workers don’t haul scab coal.

The third is a local problem and fifth an outdated problem, not national political problems, so I won’t count those.

In the 1970’s most miners were unionized, but unionization rates have fallen to only about 42% since and relief has been organized through more general government programs for struggling miners.

On the other hand, Lewis was not eliminated and the UMW is still the dominant mine union today.

So, the Communists obtained 2 out of 3 of their long-term, national demands related to the coal industry, although, one of them since slipped away.

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V: Colonies and Imperialist War

  1. Abolish the imperialist army and navy.
  2. Stop fighting against the revolutions in China and Nicaraugua.
  3. Withdraw from Latin America and the Pacific.
  4. Independence for American colonies.
  5. Hands off Mexico.
  6. Withdraw from puppet government in Latin America.
  7. Abandon extra-territoriality privileges in the Third World.
  8. End current military, set up democratic military.
  9. Withdraw from the imperialist peace treaties, the world court, the League of Nations, and cancel war debt.

Here the communists did not get their desires. The army still exists and isn’t democratic. The US is in the UN and world court and still has imperialist peace treaties. The US still has extraterritorial jurisdiction throughout the world. The war debts have not been cancelled.

On the other hand they have stopped interfering in China and Nicaragua. They mostly leave Mexico alone; puppet governments in Latin America is debatable.

Puerto Rico is still colonized, although most other colonies have been freed but still heavily influenced. So, maybe a half for this one.

So, the Communist got only 2.5 out of 10 here, and the two they did get were local ones were they started interfering in the ME instead. Replace Mexico, China, and Nicaragua with Pakistan, Iraq, and Afghanistan and the Communists get 0.5 out of 10.

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VI: Defence of the Soviet Union

The USSR collapsed; so we’ll just say the communists failed totally here. All four demands were not met, but this was related to the failings of the USSR, rather than the US, so we’ll just leave these out of the calculations.

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VII: Capitalist Democracy and the Government Strike-Breaker

  1. Abrogation of government by injunction.
  2. Prohibition of federal troops in labour struggles.
  3. Unrestricted right to strike. Unrestricted right to free press, free assemblage, and free speech for the working class.
  4. Abolition of the Senate, the Supreme Court, and the President’s veto.
  5. Elected judges; free legal aid.
  6. Franchise for youths 18-21 and negroes.
  7. Abolish anti-syndicalist laws and the Espionage Act.
  8. Repeal industrial court laws.
  9. Abolition of secret anti-labour organizations.
  10. Abolition of media censorship.
  11. Immediate release of all political prisoners.

The government by injunction mostly ended and military and quasi-military organizations no longer intervene in labour struggles. The right to strike is generally unrestricted (except a few key industries), the working class retains free press, speech, and assemblage (at least if they’re left-wing), and the media is almost entirely uncensored these days.. 18-year-olds and negroes have the vote. This biased article from Wikipedia seems to indicate secret anti-labour organizations is mostly a thing of the past.

I can’t find much on industrial courts, other than the Kansas courts which are gone. I guess this is a win for the communist.

Anti-syndicalist laws still exist, but were neutered and are almost never used. The Espionage Act still exists but has been watered down in some areas. So we’ll say they got half of this one.

Union leaders don’t go to prison anymore, but Edward Snowden might be considered a political prisoner. Overall, we’ll ignore this as a product of its time.

On the other hand the Senate and Supreme Court remain and federal judges are still appointed (but there is free legal aid).

So, 7 and a half out of 10 demands were met relating to labour relations.

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VIII: A Labour Party

  1. A labour party on all levels.
  2. Exclude businesses from the party and base it around unions.
  3. Join the workers party.

Hard to say. The Democratic Party and the unions are now so inseparable it can sometimes be hard to see where one begins and the other ends, but the Democrats play with big business a lot as well (as do the unions).

The third point is more a call to action than a demand.

Overall, let’s give the communists 1.5 out of 2 for this section.

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IX: Social Legislation

  1. Old age and unemployment insurance.
  2. 40-hour, 5-day work-week forbidding overtime.
  3. Compulsory safety and sanitation rules.
  4. Effective labour inspection elected by the workers.
  5. Free health care for all.

The first three demands have all been met. There is labour inspection, but they are not elected, so that gets a half-point.

Free healthcare for all does not exist, but Medicare, Medicaid, and Obamacare go a long way to providing “free” care, so we’ll give that a half point as well.

So, a functional 4 out of 5 demands were met here.

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X: Tariff and Taxation

  1. Abolition of indirect taxes.
  2. Exemption from taxes for wage earners.
  3. Exemption from taxes for farmers.
  4. Graduated income taxes with full confiscation of incomes above $25k.
  5. Abolish exemptions for bonds, stocks, and securities.
  6. Graduated inheretance taxes.
  7. Tariffs on working class necessities abolished.

Tariffs have almost entirely disappeared, so the last demand is met. The most hated indirect tax, the tariff, was mostly eliminated, but other forms of indirect taxation abound, so we’ll give the first a half-point. A graduated income tax exists, but there’s no full confiscation, so another half-point.

The bottom 2 quintiles have effective negative income tax rates, but pay payroll taxes so we’ll give that one a half-point. Farmers have a lot of tax benefits but not full exemption, so we’ll give that a half-point as well.

Capital gains are taxed,as are estates, so there’s two wins for the communists.

In tax policy, the communists had 5 out of 7 demands met.

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XI: Plight of the Farmers

  1. Five-year moratorium on farm debt.
  2. Protection from monopoly prices on farming supplies.
  3. Protection from special explotation by various farming related industries (like railroads).
  4. $1 Billion farm relief fund.
  5. Federal law against enforced farm foreclosures.
  6. Abolition of taxes on farmers.
  7. The land belongs to its users.
  8. Freedom for agricultural workers to strike and various benefits.

The first will be ignored as it was a temporary demand, as will the land belongs to users as is not really a demand.

The trusts have been beaten. Some people think Monsanto is a monopoly, but they aren’t really a monopoly in the traditional sense. We’ll say the communists got that one, but with the Monsanto caveat.

Other than the occasional, half-hearted, ritualized complaint about the railroads (Joke: A Saskatchewan farmer walks outside on the first day of harvest to see that it hailed overnight, destroying half his crops. He looks towards the heavens, raises his fist, and yells aloud, “Damn you, CN“), I haven’t seen any complaints about the special exploitation, so we’ll say the demand was met.

The US farm bill totals $500 Billion, although, most of that is food stamps, so I guess the farmers for their relief.

Banks can still foreclose on farms and farmers still pay taxes, so those are two demands not met.

Agricultural workers do have the right to strike.

So, the communists had 4 out of 6 demands met (with the Monsanto caveat).

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XII: Oppression of the Negroes

  1. Full racial, social, and political equality for Negroes.
  2. Abolition of segregation.
  3. Abolition of disenfranchisement laws.
  4. Abolition of laws preventing negro schooling.
  5. Allow Negroes full access to restaurants and related facilities.
  6. Ban lynching.
  7. End discrimination of Negroes in the courts.
  8. Abolish convict lease system and chain gang.
  9. Abolish Jim Crow in federal employment.
  10. Remove Trade Union restrictions on Negroes.
  11. Equal opportunity and equal pay for equal work for Negroes.

Obviously, all of these have been met, with the minor exception of chain gangs which were revived in Arizona.

So, all 11 demands related to Negroes were met.

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XIII: Foreign-born Workers

  1. Abolish all laws discriminating against foreign-born workers.
  2. Workers must unite with foreign-born workers.
  3. Immediate repeal of immigration laws.
  4. Equal pay for equal work for the foreign born.

The second demand is more a call to action than an actual policy demand.

The first and third demand were all met for foreign-born workers that are naturalized, but not for illegal immigrants.

The third was not met, but with the quasi-official acceptance of illegal Mexican immigrants, they might as well have.

We’ll say that the communist got 1.5 out of 3 demands met.

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XIV: Working Women

  1. Eliminate night, overtime, and job work for women.
  2. Paid maternity leave during pregnancy.
  3. Paid maternity leave during nursing.
  4. Organize women into unions and eliminate discrimination against women in unions.
  5. Equal pay for equal work.

Night, overtime, and job work haven’t been eliminated, but there are restrictions and they are optional, so  we’ll say that demand was half met.

Mothers have 12 weeks unpaid maternity leave, so maybe 0.5 out of 2 for the two demands.

Women are not free to join unions and aren’t discriminated against, so that’s another demand met.

Despite the false claims of feminists, women do get equal pay for equal work (equal work is key here). So that’s another demand met.

So, the equivalent of 3 out of 5 demands met.

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XV: Youth, Child Labour, and Education

  1. Abolish child labour.
  2. $20 minimum wage for young workers.
  3. Establish work-schools in factories.
  4. Use schools as feeding centres for the unemployed.
  5. Right to vote for everyone over 18.
  6. Schools must be free, more schools built, free of religious or jingoistic instruction, free of Jim Crow, and allow teachers to organize.

Child labour was abolished, 18-year-olds can vote, and there are nutrition programs in schools, so that’s 3 demands.

Out of the five demands in one, schooling is free (except university, more schools have been built (but probably not as many as they’d like as people still complain of over-crowding), there is no religious instruction and jingoistic instruction is almost gone, there is no Jim Crow, and teachers can unionize.

So, the first two get a half point, while the others get a full one.

I don’t think work-schools have been established, but there are apprenticeship programs, so we’ll say that’s half-met.

In total, 7.5 out of 10 demands have been met.

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XVI: Housing

  1. Municipal fixing of low rents for workers.
  2.  Municipal housing for workers without profit.
  3. State laws against immediate eviction.
  4. Compulsory repair of working-class homes by landlords.
  5. Shelters for the unemployed.
  6. Municipal aid to workers’ building cooperatives.

These are all local, but most large municipalities have rent control, subsidized housing, tenant regulations. and homeless shelters.

I have no idea about the last point, but I have heard of no such thing, so we’ll say the demand wasn’t met.

So, 5 out of 6 demands met in housing.

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XVII: Prohibition

  1. Repeal prohibition.
  2. End local and state prohibition.
  3. Energetic propaganda against alcoholism.

All 3 of these demands were met.

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In conclusion, of the CPUSA’s 1928 platform, 66 out of 94 demands were met, or about 70% of demands. In relation to foreign relations through, 0/10 were met.

So, if we only look at domestic demands, that’s 65.5 out of 84 demands met, or 78% of demands.

Of those demands most desired by communists (ie. 40-hour, 5-day week and social programs), which were mentioned multiple times, they were all met.

Given that almost 80% of communist demands for the US were met and a number of those not met are on their way to being met (ex: paid maternity leave), we can say that the US is a communist country, in the vein of American communism.

I don’t have time to analyze the Democratic and Republican platform demands of the same year at this time, but I would bet significant sums that less than 80% of their demands were met and upheld by our present time.

Note that many European countries would have met even more of these demands, and would be even more communist than communist America.

The USA is a communist country, of that there can be no doubt.

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* There are no demands in sections I or XVIII.

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A few pieces have been edited (20/10/2013): Thanks to Michael Anissismov for pointing out the errors for correction.