The View From Olympus 33: Islam's True Face

Boko Haram's abduction of some 250 Nigerian schoolgirls has again, with good reason, focused attention on the real nature of Islam. Even al Qaeda is reportedly trying to distance itself from Boko Haram. But this is dishonest. Boko Haram represents Islam's true face.To be sure, much of the response in Nigeria to the abduction is also an act. Sources inform me that Boko Haram was created by the Nigerian government, which retains ties to it. Why would a state create a Fourth Generation entity? Beyond stupidity and hubris, the apparent reason was so that Boko Haram could serve as a bogeyman, used by the Nigerian government to distract attention from its own crimes. Such is politics in black Africa's pseudo-states, where the state is merely one criminal gang among many. No wonder the governor of Borno state, where Boko Haram is based, was quoted in the May 12 New York Times as saying, “Honestly, I am so desperate, if the Americans were to colonize, I say so be it.” The best times most of black Africa ever knew or ever will know was when they were European colonies.Islam promises relief from the endless corruption of African states, but what it actually offers is the puritan tyranny Boko Haram represents. This is inherent in Islam. The problem is that the Koran is to be read literally. Biblical literalism in Christianity is both new and very much a minority view. While the statements in the creeds are to be believed literally, the church as a whole has always understood that the New Testament is heavily metaphorical. That is not the case in Islam. Any Islamic who does not take the Koran literally is a lax Islamic (peace be upon them). Taking the Koran literally, however, yields exactly the sort of puritanical brutality we saw in Taliban-ruled Afghanistan, in the areas ruled by al Qaeda and its affiliates in Syria and in Boko Haram. If you read the Koran (as I have), you will see it is a long list of verbots, coupled with endlessly repetitive denunciations of unbelievers, some of which command violence against them. Take that literally and voilà!, you have Boko Haram.Puritanism springing from Koranic literalism is in fact the Achilles' heel of Islamic 4GW organizations. Violent puritanism alienates the population and also, as government, simply doesn't work. I have previously referenced a superb monograph on this, one that deserves much more attention from the American national security establishment than it has received. The reference is to Terror's Mask: Insurgency Within Islam by Michael Vlahos. Vlahos agues that Islamic puritanism creates an endless cycle. Puritan movements arise, take power from the corrupt (by Koranic norms) elite, become “corrupt” themselves because pure Islam cannot govern, and thus gives rise to new puritan movements. This cycle, coupled with a reinvigorated Sunni-Shiite civil war, explains a great deal of what is happening today in the Islamic world.Because Islam commands violent, literalist puritanism, it is not compatible with other religions, cultures, or secular philosophies. It is, and must be, at war with them. Boko Haram is a warning to any society that tolerates Islam. What it has brought to Nigeria today it will bring to your soil tomorrow. In places such as the suburbs of Paris, tomorrow is not very far away.

PS: In my previous column I discussed some ways in which the Russian armed forces have adopted techniques from 4GW entities. An excellent paper published by the National Defense Academy of Latvia's Center for Security and Strategic Research, Russia's New Generation Warfare in Ukraine: Implications for Latvian Defense Policy by Janis Berzins offers a much fuller treatment of this subject. I recommend it strongly, despite the author's error in attempting to identify technology-driven 5^th, 6^th, and 7^th generations. One would expect people from former Soviet lands to know their Hegel well enough to realize dialectically qualitative changes, which is what “generation” means in this context, are rare.

Ethno-Nationalism Bites Back

One wonderful thing about the modern Right as a group is that we are willing to engage in debate and exchange ideas rather than resort to ad hominem attacks or emotional responses toward those who do not toe the party line as is characteristic of the Left. Ed Kozak's critique of ethno-nationalism is welcome. Deeper analysis of the issue brings the Right closer to the truth of the matter and helps to keep fanaticism at bay. It also allows us an opportunity to clarify our position in regard to the role ethnic identity plays in building a society.I will begin by addressing a couple of Mr. Kozak's points and then lay out traditionalRIGHT's position regarding ethno-nationalism.Revolutionaries vs. Reactionaries, Traditional vs. ProgressiveMy first nit to pick is Kozak's charge that ethno-nationalism is “wholly revolutionary.” The article, “The Flag of the World,” offered a commentary on the different attitudes and approaches taken by supporters of ethno-nationalism, not whether or not the issue itself is reactionary or revolutionary. Ethno-nationalism may very well be revolutionary—in fact, everything that dissents from the current order and modernity is—but that was not the point.Kozak suggests that “ethno-nationalism is neither traditional nor Right; it is certainly not a traditionalist conservative belief.” It is true, ethno-nationalism is not conservative, but Traditional (capital T), it absolutely is. Conservatives derive their identities from their loyalty to abstractions: states, kingdoms, institutions. Traditionalists find their identities in concrete truths: blood, tribe, heritage.Here is a longer quote from the critique:

“Although nationalism can also have a unifying effect, it is still revolutionary, artificial, and destructive. Take for example Germany and Italy, another two 19^th century inventions for which ancient kingdoms, principalities, and dynasties were swept away; hardly a conservative endeavor.”

Again, I agree, ethno-nationalism is not conservative. To be conservative would be to cling to evil, decrepit institutions that have long since passed their expiration dates, which is why American conservatives continually try to “restore the Constitution.” traditionalRIGHT is not conservative, but Traditional. Conservatism died 200 years ago.DefinitionsEthno-nationalism, at its simplest, is something virtually anyone can get behind. The ethno-state, if the state as an institution is to continue to exist at all in the future, is TR's default position of support concerning geopolitics. I like John Derbyshire's explanation:

“If a nation is to hold together, the great majority of its people need to be bonded by ethnic kinship—shared history, a shared outlook. One’s outlook arises from one’s brain, which is a product of evolution—including, we now know, historically recent evolution.Because ethnies overlap on most traits, a particular Turk may become a good German … However, since we can’t tell in advance whether he will or not, a wise nation severely restricts settlement from foreign ethnies and vigorously deports those who prove incompatible.A big ethnic minority with a different outlook spells national discord.”

Simple enough. The ethno-state minimizes conflict because its raison d'être is to act in the benefit of a specific group. The government is rendered less corruptible by special interests and competing groups that game the system for themselves at the expense of others. Ethno-nationalism offers a solid base upon which a civilization may be built and is not an end in itself.There is nothing ideological about this. There is no magical invocation of “rights.” Ethno-nationalism only recognizes that different peoples have different interests and are better served by determining their own destinies.TR's Perspective and the FutureCulture, loyalty, and patriotism, or “God, king, and country”—the primary conservative values—are undeniably important and can certainly be powerful unifying forces. But they are secondary values. The plain truth is that blood and soil create culture. The institutions that we (Traditionalists and conservatives alike) value so greatly came from within a people.Indeed, these are interesting times. Defenders of Tradition have never really had to consider ethnicity's effects on society at large. Surely not as intensely as they do now. Political globalism, multi-national corporations, mass communications, and high-speed travel have brought historically disparate peoples and cultures together like never before. Third-world peoples are settling in first-world lands. And who can blame them? The West is a wonderful realm in which to live.The question for conservatives, though, is this: how can you maintain a first-world country if it is populated by third-world people? We can “assimilate” foreigners, but each passing generation of the new integrated nation will be a cheaper and thinner imitation of the true West.traditionalRIGHT's objective is to preserve Western civilization. The prerequisite for that goal is to preserve Western people. As immigration of the third-world into Western nations continues to increase and the state progressively weakens, it may become necessary to form non-state entities to defend and provide for the European diaspora. Only a coherent Western consciousness will facilitate such an effort. Supporting ethno-nationalism as a general principal for all peoples is a step in that direction.

Victoria: Chapter 10

If the Christian Marines were to be the general staff for our side in what was coming, I needed to figure out just what and who our side was. I wanted to get to know them, and, more importantly, let them get to know me. That was the first step in establishing trust.So one April evening in the year 2017 I drove down to Waterville. When I got there, I could tell Spring was coming to Maine. I could smell all the winter's dog poop melting on the green.The local chapter of the Tea Party was gathering that night to hear one of their top leaders up from Washington. I knew enough about the Tea Party to realize it was on our side. Many of the folks in it later became brothers in arms and leaders in the Recovery. But like all such groups in the last days of the American republic, it had a fatal flaw, the nature of which I was to learn that evening.The fellow from Washington, whose name I long ago forgot, gave the usual pitch the "Inside-the-Beltway" types fed to the local yokels. The gist of it was that the future of the country depended on them (in fact, by that point, it had already been determined); they should respond to what their leaders asked them to do (when it should have been the other way around); and, most important, send money.After he'd made his pitch, there were a few questions, a bit of discussion of this and that. Then a tall fellow in back stood up. He was dressed in about the year 1945: well-cut brown double-breasted suit, wide tie, holding a brown fedora. By Maine standards, he had a good bit to say, and he said it well."I appreciate you taking the time to journey all the way up here," began Mr. William Hocking Kraft. "But frankly, you represent the problem, not the solution.""The problem, put simply, is this. Our leaders always sell us out. Maybe they start out thinking like we do, I don't know. But once they get to Washington, and see how nice life can be once you're a member of the club, the Establishment, their goal becomes joining that club. But our goal is to close it down.""They—you—always end up getting sucked in to the Republican Party," Mr. Kraft continued. "It holds the keys to the club. And it sold us out long ago. Sure, it tells us what we want to hear, but it snickers and winks the whole time it's talking. The only people it delivers for are those on Wall Street and in the country clubs.""The fact of the matter is that you can't create what we believe in, a country that follows the Ten Commandments, from Washington. The people in Washington follow only one commandment: Promote Yourself. You have to create it here, not by what you say, but by how you live."Kraft's words brought to mind something my friend who worked for a Senator had said to me. He said the difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party was the difference between Madonna and Donald Trump.The fellow from Washington slid and slithered as best he could, but it was clear Kraft had said what others were thinking. And he was right. No matter what the group was, it ended up with leaders who wanted to join the club. Those leaders sold their own folks out, because that was the condition of club membership.I was struck by Kraft's definition of what we wanted: a country that followed the Ten Commandments. That was what the Christian Marines wanted, too. And we needed action, not just words. So when the meeting broke up, I introduced myself.His reply to my introduction was a surprise. "I already know you, or at least know about you," he said. "I have some friends in the Corps—I'm something of an amateur military historian—and I heard about your raid on the feminists at Expeditionary Warfare School. You showed the rarest of qualities in the American officer corps: moral courage. I would be honored if you would join me for dinner at my home, if you're free."I was, and Kraft was clearly someone I wanted to know better. We walked out together to his car—an immaculate 1948 Buick Roadmaster. "I'll wait for you here," he said. "Just follow me."His house was a typical 1920s bungalow, nothing special from the outside, but when I walked through the front door I got a shock. It was like going through a time lock.Everything was as it might have been seventy years ago. Everything—the big floor model radio (no television), the Brussels carpets on hardwood floors, the appliances, the 1948 calendar on the kitchen wall (as always in Maine, we came in the back door, through the mud room), even the way his wife and children were dressed. It had been a long time since I had dropped in on someone and found his wife in a nice dress waiting to serve dinner.He introduced his wife as Mrs. Kraft, his young son as Master Billy and his daughters as the Misses Evelyn and Lula Bell.I expressed my hope that my unexpected arrival for dinner was not a problem."Not at all," replied Mrs. Kraft. "I always prepare enough so that if Mr. Kraft brings someone, we have plenty. That is, after all, one of the duties of my sphere."The feeling of having gone through a time warp was growing stronger.We sat down in the dining room, with its 1930s floral wallpaper and oak wainscoting, polished mahogany table and built-in breakfront, and Mr. Kraft said grace—in Latin. Mrs. Kraft, and only Mrs. Kraft, served, from the kitchen. Somehow, it all felt right, even though my generation had been taught it was wrong."This is sure a change from most places I visit," I ventured, being somewhat unsure how much notice I should give to what then counted as eccentricity, at the least."Thank you," said Mr. Kraft. "It has taken some effort on our part, but we have created a home where you can leave the 21st century at the door. Here, at least, things are as they were, and should be.""We're Retroculture people," added Mrs. Kraft."I don't know how much you've heard about the Retroculture movement," Mr. Kraft said."I'm afraid we lead a rather sheltered life in the military," I replied. "The only culture we get is the kind that grows on old bread.""You may remember what I said earlier this evening, at the meeting,” he continued. “You cannot create, or, more precisely, re-create, the world we want simply through words, least of all through the words of politicians. You have to do it by how you live. The Retroculture movement is people—individuals, families, sometimes whole neighborhoods—striving to live again in the old ways, following the old rules.""I'm sure you've been told, ‘You can't go back,'" Mr. Kraft went on. "Like most of what you are told these days, it's a lie. The one thing we know we can do is what we've already done. We can live in the good, wholesome, upright ways our forefathers followed.""So there is more to this than furniture, clothes and manners?" I asked. The manners were obvious: we were holding an adult conversation at a table that included three children."Of course," Mr. Kraft replied. "Things are important tools; our furniture, our clothes, my Buick, all help separate us from the modern world, which is what we want to do. We're like the Amish in that respect. But also like the Amish, the essence of Retroculture is our beliefs, morals and values. We believe what Americans used to believe. We hold the same values, follow the same moral rules our ancestors followed.""What era do Retroculture people want to live in?" I inquired."Any time before 1965," Mr. Kraft responded. "That year marks the beginning of the cultural revolution that destroyed America. Our period is the 1940s, though many of the things you see here are older than that; back then, people didn't throw out their furniture every ten years.""Many Retroculture people have chosen the Victorian era as the time they want to live in, and for good reasons. The Victorians were astoundingly productive people, building, inventing, creating, conquering, all the things we need to do if we are ever to amount to anything again, other than a Third World country. The basis of their success, of course, was their strong, Christian morals.""But other Retroculture folks have chosen the 1950s as their era, or 1910, or even the colonial period," Mr. Kraft continued. "The specific time period does not matter, so long as it is a time when traditional American culture was strong."“Each person, each family decides for itself just how Retro it wants to go. There's no set of rules, except that it must be before 1965 and must include the values if it is to count as Retroculture. Most people follow the simple rule of common sense.""The colonial period would interest me," I said, "though as a Marine, I was told that bleeding was bad for the other guy, not good for me. I'm not sure I'd like depending on 18th century medicine.""Don't worry, you wouldn't have to," Mr. Kraft replied. "We had our children vaccinated against polio, I assure you. We have no desire to bring back the tiny braces and little iron lungs. On the other hand, we don't want modern medical technology to keep us alive when our natural life span is over, so we can waste away in some nursing home. When my time comes, I want the doctor to come to the house with his little black bag and give me some morphine to ease the passing, just as he would have done in the 1940s.""Good luck finding a doctor to make a house call these days," I replied, wondering just how practical Retroculture was."We have such a doctor," Mrs. Kraft said. "He's in the Retroculture movement too. When one of us is sick, he comes to the house in his black Detroit Electric automobile from the 1920s.""You're lucky to have a wife who goes along with all this," I said to Mr. Kraft, thinking how most of my friends’ wives would have reacted to the idea of going back to the past."The good luck is mine more than his," Mrs. Kraft replied. "These days, women are told they were oppressed and mistreated in the past, and that they will be happier if they can live in the business world, the world of men. That is another modern lie.""As a wife of the 1940s, I have my own sphere where I am in charge: this home, my family, and my community, where I do a great deal of volunteer work, as women did in the past. It is a more important sphere than the business world where Mr. Kraft works, because it is the sphere where babies grow into children and then into men and women. I, as the woman of the house, hold the future in my hands.""I agree with that," Mr. Kraft said. "Unless women create good homes and raise the children right, those things go undone. They are not natural to men. We see all around us what kind of children come from homes where the wife is not a mother and homemaker. As Arnold Toynbee warned, our barbarians have come from within.""As far as all the nonsense about women being oppressed by being given charge of the home," Mrs. Kraft added, "I find quite the opposite is true. Creating a good home is a greater challenge than most matters in the business world, and it allows more room for creativity. The home you are enjoying now is my achievement. How many women in business achieve so much? Or are so loved and honored for their achievement as I am by Mr. Kraft and our children?""That you are indeed, Mrs. Kraft," Mr. Kraft replied.They had a remarkable home life, as I could plainly see. It was the sort of home most people of my generation knew about only from books or plays or family memories. But it was exactly the kind of home we all wished we could live in—not just for the beautiful things, but for the warmth and contentment and absolute solidness I could feel radiating from every corner.After an ample and excellent meal, Mr. Kraft and I adjourned to his den while Mrs. Kraft did the dishes. As he busied himself filling and lighting his pipe, I started to think. Maybe this was the answer to the puzzle I was facing of how the Christian Marines could explain what we were fighting for. In a broad sense, we knew the answer: a nation where the Ten Commandments ruled. But I knew our program, our goal, had to be developed beyond that to be understood by other people.The danger facing us was falling into an ideology. Retroculture avoided that danger, because unlike an ideology it was not based on some abstract scheme of ideas. It was simply recovering what we used to have and used to be, which was the ultimate in concreteness. And we could know it would work, because we knew America had worked in the past. Logically, what worked once should work again."Just how many of you Retroculture people are there?" I asked Mr. Kraft."Tens of thousands," he replied, "and growing fast. You don't hear about us much in the general media, because we represent a rejection of everything it stands for. But we have our own magazines, books, clubs, and societies. We come in all varieties – there is even a group of non-Amish who live like the Amish, what they call, “plain.” There is growing talk of founding new towns where everyone would live in a certain time period and there would be nothing out of place for that time.""It kind of makes you wonder what a whole Retroculture country might be like," I mused.”It would be splendid, as America itself once was splendid, before the squalid sixties," Kraft replied. "Remember, we had a country that worked.""That is hard to remember now," I responded."But people do remember," Kraft said. "Take a look at this—and it is from more than twenty years ago."He handed me a copy of a poll taken in 1992 by Lawrence Research for something called the Free Congress Foundation. It was a survey of people's attitudes toward the past, and the findings were remarkable. 49% said life in the past was better than it is today; only 17% said it was worse. 59% said the nation's leaders should be trying to take the country back toward the way it used to be. 61% thought life in the 1950s was better than in the 1990s. 47% said their grandparents' lives were happier than their own – and the margin was 15% higher among blacks, whose grandparents had lived under segregation.When given a menu of times and places in which they could choose to live, a typical suburb in 1950 came in first with 58%; in last place was Los Angeles in 1991. When asked for a second choice, the winner, with 32%, was a small town in 1900; modern LA again came in last.56% of those polled had a favorable impression of the Victorian period. 45% said they saw signs of people and things turning back toward the past—and that it was a good thing."For America, that poll represents nothing less than a cultural revolution," Mr. Kraft said. "From the days of the Massachusetts Bay Colony onward, Americans have been future focused. We have always believed that the future would be better than the present, and that the present was better than the past. We don't believe that any more. We believe—in fact, we know, because unlike the future, the past is knowable—what we once had was better than what we have now. Caught as America is in an endless downward spiral of decline, decay, and degradation, we have no reason to hope for our future—unless that future can be a recovery of our past.""Thanks to a certain professor from Dartmouth College, I've read a bit about our past," I said. "Not just America's past, but the history of our Western culture. My impression is that through most of history, we were past-focused. We saw the past as a model we should try to recapture and emulate. Is what we're seeing here a return to normality?""Yes," Mr. Kraft responded. "Most of our culture's great leaps forward have come from attempts to return to the past. The Renaissance is a good example. The Renaissance was an attempt to recover the classical world of ancient Greece and Rome. Of course, such efforts don't exactly recreate the past; 15th century Florence was not the Roman Republic. But the attempt to recapture the classical past created a new synthesis that was brilliant—and that could never have been created by looking only to the future, which is, after all, a void.""Do you think an attempt to recapture our own past—Retroculture—could give us a renaissance?" I asked."Again, the answer is yes," Kraft replied. “Retroculture is something solid, something real people can put their hands on and understand. Most people know how their grandparents or great grandparents lived. They know they were good people who lived decent, satisfying lives. They can grasp the fact that we can live that way again. Once they realize it is possible, once they realize that the saying, ‘You can't go back,’ is a lie, it is something they want to do. And if they do it, as we have done it in this home, in our lives, they find it works.""One final question, if I may," I said. "If some people were willing to fight for a country where Retroculture could flourish—not one where it was enforced by law, but where people could live Retro if they wanted to, without any hindrances from the government—would you be willing to help?""Of course," Mr. Kraft replied. "At present, Retroculture can't go much beyond home life, because all kinds of government regulations and regulators and lawyers come down on you if you try. As I said, some of us would like to create whole new towns and communities where everyone would live in a certain time. But we know the government would prevent that, because one or another of these ‘victims’ groups would protest.""Retroculture isn't political," he continued. "Retroculture is about escaping politics and government and all that nonsense. It's about simply living a normal life, the kind of life Americans used to live. It seems to me that if we're going to talk about a new country, that's the kind of country we should want."I thought that summed it up pretty well. After drinking a glass of good Port and smoking a cigar to accompany Mr. Kraft's pipe, I bid him good night and headed home through the April slush. Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

The View From Olympus 32: 4GW Lessons for Russia

Russian operations in the Crimea and eastern Ukraine show that the Russian military has learned some tactical and perhaps even operational lessons from Fourth Generation fighters. An article in the April 22 New York Times, "New Prowess for Russians," states that Western experts

 see a military disparaged for its decline since the fall of the Soviet Union skillfully employing 21st century tactics that combine cyberwarfare, an energetic information campaign, and the use of highly trained special operations troops to seize the initiative from the West...Military experts say that the sort of strategy the Kremlin has employed in Ukraine is likely to work best in areas in which there are pockets of Russians to provide local support.

By using small numbers of highly trained men whose uniforms have no national insignia, the Russian military is showing its understanding of the advantages 4GW elements gain from not being state armed forces. As John Boyd argued, ambiguity works as well as deception, and the ambiguity of the "green men" allows Russia a wide variety of options, military and diplomatic. Critically, it allows its forces to avoid the delegitimizing designation of "foreign invaders," a designation the American armed forces suffered from heavily in Iraq and Afghanistan. If an operation fails, Russian prestige is not on the line, because it can deny ownership. If it succeeds, Russia can give the credit to the locals, strengthening the legitimacy of the elements it supports.As the Times noted, the current Russian approach depends on a supportive ethnically Russian population. Here Russia has drawn on another aspect of 4GW, namely the fact that ethnic loyalty increasingly trumps national loyalty. By leveraging loyalty to "Mother Russia" among ethnically Russian citizens of Ukraine, Russia has been able to maintain a light footprint, reducing the diplomatic and economic price of her actions.This, however, is a double-edged sword for Russia. The Russian Federation includes many peoples  who are ethnically non-Russian. Others can use them as the Kremlin has used ethnic Russians.Here we begin to see a lesson from 4GW which Russia has not yet learned: once the disintegration of a state is set in motion, it is very difficult to halt or reverse. Russian actions are destroying an already fragile state in Ukraine. The Kremlin appears to believe it can spur or reign in state disintegration in eastern Ukraine, pushing it far enough to prevent Ukraine from joining the West but halting before the east becomes anarchic. That may be optimistic.While the West assumes events in eastern Ukraine are driven by Moscow, just as Moscow says events in Kiev are driven by the West, there is increasing evidence that, green men or no, local Russian separatist forces in eastern Ukraine are not taking orders from anyone. Local struggles for power and loot are becoming more influential than any outside actors. A "Brinton thesis" cascade of small coups, leading ever toward the greatest extreme, may already be underway. If so, chaos will spread, deepen, and defy all efforts at control, regardless of who is behind them. Moscow needs to remember that it can no more order the tide to retreat than can Washington.For states, playing with 4GW is playing with fire. Some tactics and techniques may be drawn from it and used effectively by states. But states need to remember that those tactics and techniques work best in a weakening state and also contribute to a state's dissolution. The emergence of new stateless regions is in no state's interest. However clever its tactics, if Russia finds itself facing prolonged stateless disorder in eastern Ukraine, it will have failed strategically. A higher level of war trumps a lower. Stavka should know that, and so inform President Putin.

What Difference Does It Make?

“What difference at this point does it make?” When the Sea Hag brayed that objection last year before a Congressional hearing on the 2012 Benghazi attack, I knew immediately the Republicans would latch onto that quote and attempt to squeeze every possible ounce of political theater they could out of it, despite having to take it out of context to do so.But let's go there. Let's pretend Hill-dog was really asking, as Conservatism, Inc. wants to suggest, “What difference...does it make [if four Americans were killed in Benghazi]?” The sad, disappointing reality is that their deaths were in vain. In fact, the events that transpired that night (there were multiple attacks, a botched evacuation, and some suspicious CIA involvement) will likely make no difference whatsoever in American foreign policy or in the 2016 presidential election. Absolutely no one involved will be held accountable or brought to justice.Without a doubt, the deaths of Ambassador Stevens, Sean Smith, Glen Doherty, and Tyrone Woods make a great deal of difference to their friends and family members. Of course it is grossly dishonorable that the military was given an order to stand down and not attempt to intervene or rescue the U.S. personnel involved. It is downright insulting that the federal government peddled the lie that the attack was simply a protest gone bad (over a poorly made YouTube video that no one had ever seen)—nothing to see here, citizen, move along. But this is the United States of America. It is by its nature a dishonorable, deceitful, corrupt, organization that operates solely to benefit and increase the power of the villainous oligarchs at the top.The four deaths in Benghazi, tragic though they are, also need to be put into perspective. Those men are but four more tallies on the scoreboard of the fraudulent Global War on Terror. The United States has sent thousands of forgotten servicemen, most of whom are barely old enough to be called adults, to die on unnamed wastelands in Iraq, Afghanistan, and beyond to accomplish absolutely nothing. No outrage. No demands for justice. No calls to rethink strategy. Just business as usual. And characteristic of the GOP, in their eagerness to pin a cover-up scandal on the Obama administration, Republicans have blinded themselves to the bigger foreign policy failures at play.A bit of investigation reveals, no thanks to the administration's allies in the media, that the Benghazi attack, carried out by Islamic fighters, was likely the result of a weapons deal gone bad, the details of which have yet to be publicly released. As it turns out, the reason Ambassador Stevens' consulate and the CIA annex were assaulted that night was because American agents were funneling arms, including heavy weaponry such as heat-seeking surface-to-air missiles, to rebels in Syria. And who are the primary fighters in the Syrian rebellion? Al Qaeda. Yes, that al Qaeda. The same al Qaeda that killed 3,000 civilians on 9/11 and who is actively shooting and bombing American troops in Afghanistan. The United States government has betrayed not only the four Benghazi victims, but every 9/11 victim and the untold thousands of U.S. troops whose efforts and sacrifices they undermine every single day. This is a scandal goldmine, but the best the Republicans can muster is a bumbling complaint about being lied to about a protest.The whole event is rather similar to the Operation Fast and Furious debacle, in which the ATF was running guns to Mexican drug cartels and one of the weapons turned up when a Border Patrol agent was killed in a gunfight. The aftermath? Zero U.S. officials were held responsible for supplying arms to drug lords. Brian Terry is dead. Eric Holder is still Attorney General. Barack Obama claimed ignorance. Case closed. America's short attention span moved on.The same results will happen with Benghazi. There will probably be a few more hearings, but nothing will happen, especially under this Justice Department. Vengeance looks mighty bad politically, so a future Republican Justice Department will not touch the issue either. Expect the 45^th president to walk away scot-free.The lessons here are simple. There is no honor in the United States government. It is an endlessly corrupt institution with no concern for the men and women they send off to do their fighting, to say nothing of the average citizen. No matter how much mental energy you spend worrying, physical effort you spend campaigning, or hard earned money you pour into the Tea Party dream candidate's coffers, precisely nothing will change. Prepare for many more Benghazis, Fast and Furiouses, NSA wire tappings, Solyndras, IRS thugs, and executive orders. There is simply nothing left here for you.Before you spend another minute trying to take your country back ask yourself honestly, “What difference does it make?”

Victoria: Chapter 9

To understand what followed, you have to picture what the United States was like in the early 21^st century. That’s hard to do, because life in the old U.S. of A. had departed so far from everything normal, everything natural to mankind, that any analogy, any description sounds hyperbolic. But it isn’t.Real life, as countless generations had lived it, had essentially vanished into a “virtual reality” devoid of all virtue.Husband and wife and children, home and household and community, field and farm and village, the age-old lines and limits of our lives, had been shattered into a thousand fragments. Reality was what came through an electronic box, not what you saw out your own front door. Not that you looked out your front door, for fear of what might be looking in, carrying a gun. It might be a stranger, or your own kid, or both.Everything was political. You chose your words politically, your clothes politically, your entertainment politically. If all three were clean and dull, you were on the right. If they were dirty and suggestive, you were on the left. You had to be one or the other, because everything was.You lived a lie, one or another, because everything was political and politics was all lies. We were told we were free. It was a lie, because the tentacles of government had a sucker on every sucker. We had elections, and they were lies because all the candidates were from the same party, the New Class.America's New Class was the French aristocracy of 1789, without the grace. Like that aristocracy, it performed no function beyond living well. Instead of "Let them eat cake," it said "Let them eat free trade." Instead of Marie Antoinette, who had charm and innocence, it gave us Hillary Clinton, who had neither. The French aristocracy held balls, ours held elections. Neither changed anything, but the French gave us good music.The national sport was voyeurism, done electronically. Day and night, the television, Satan's regurgitation into our souls, paraded the sad lives of other people for our entertainment. No need to peep in the neighbor's windows – just turn on the box. Lucky the citizen who got to do the parading, as he or she thus became real.Despite our fears, 1984 never came. We got a Brave New World instead.We stopped making things, and kept getting poorer, but no one put the two together as cause and effect. The GNP continued to rise, because the government kept the statistics.The solution, we were told, was more technology. We knew less and less, but computers would transmit our ignorance faster. Schools taught our children how to peck at the blue dot on the machine to get a piece of corn.Or, the solution was big business. The New Class on Wall Street would drive down in their Mercedes to save us from the New Class in Washington. People would find dignity and security by being reduced to commodities. It was more efficient than slavery. You couldn't sell an elderly slave, but you could fire one.The New Class—cultural Marxists all—told us there weren't any rules, then they set rules. They reached down into society's gutter, plopped whatever they found there on the civic altar and demanded we bow down and worship it. So long as it was sewage—moral, cultural, behavioral—it was fine and good and worthy of adoration. Those who would not bow were ruled out.We were, of course, collectively mad. There's nothing new about that. From Athens under Cleon through the Tulip Bubble to Party Day at Nuremburg, collective madness has been part of the human tale.The way to such madness is always the same. Create a false reality, through fine speeches, dreams of wealth beyond avarice, ideologies of revenge and redemption, video screens, whatever.Stoke the fire hot enough that no one can look away from it. Drive the dance faster and faster, so it entrances, mesmerizes, draws all into it. Think and you'll miss a step and fall. Fall and you'll get trampled. Beat the tom-toms quicker and louder. Dance the Ghost Dance long enough, hard enough, and the bullets will pass through you without touching you.Thud.Reality always wins. The farther a people has danced away from it, the more they've done the danse macabre.Americans had done quite a dance by the time we found ourselves in the 21^st century. The gap between our virtual reality of techno-driven life-as-entertainment cultural freak show and reality itself was the size of the Mariana's Trench. When America's virtual reality collapsed, as it would, the implosion would be stupendous, as it was.My task, as I settled back into the remains of a Maine winter in 2017 as Commandant of the Christian Marine Corps, was not to bring about the collapse. The nature of man would provide that, all by itself.Rather, I had to think through what to do when it came. What did we want to rescue out of it? Could we rescue anything? How could a general staff of civilized men who understood war—really understood it, from history, not just by virtue of having had rank in some military bureaucracy—make a difference?One thing I understood from the outset, again thanks to having some acquaintance with history. The answer did not lie in ideology, right or left, old or new. All ideologies failed and always would fail, because by their nature they demand and create a virtual reality. They all require that some aspect of reality, economic or racial or sexual or whatever, be ignored—more than ignored, deliberately not seen. That was a fatal error, always, because whatever part of reality you don't see is the part that kills you.A meeting in Waterville showed me the way around that problem, and also what we could fight for—not just against.

The View From Olympus 31: Blue Angels vs. Red Devils

The Blue Angels are the Navy/Marine Corps precision flying team. They put on a spectacular air show, as many Americans have witnessed. The flying they do, performing complex maneuvers at high speed in incredibly tight formations, is highly dangerous. Both American and foreign precision flying teams have suffered serious accidents with dead pilots.Men who do dangerous jobs develop a uniquely masculine esprit du corps. Its atmosphere is unabashedly male: rough, humerous, and testosterone-fueled. It laughs at the foibles of women, gays, nerds, and anyone else who does not do a dangerous job. So nature has decreed, and no secular power can overcome it--though it may destroy it, and with the atmosphere, the unit and its abilities.That is the future that fate, in the form of cultural Marxism, aka "political correctness," now has in store for the Blue Angels. The April 24 Washington Post reported that a former commander of the Blue Angels, Capt. Gregory Mc Wherter USN, has been relieved of duty (ending his career) as the Navy investigates "allegations that the elite team of pilots was a hotbed of hazing, sexual harassment, and other forms of discrimination..."There is no need for any investigation: of course it was. That is the culture of all teams of men doing dangerous things. It has to be. Case closed.The problem is not the masculine culture of the Blue Angels, but the fact that cultural Marxism, as ignorant as it is arrogant, is determined male culture shall not exist. If that destroys the Blue Angels or any other organization, the cultural Marxists regard it as a good thing. Everything male is to be destroyed by being made comfortable for women, which is to say turned into a boudoir. Very few cultural Marxists go to air shows in the first place.In the larger scope of things, the coming destruction of the Blue Angels is not of vast importance. But the moral collapse of our military's senior leaders in the face of cultural Marxism, of which this is just one example, is important. We see it any time the military is accused of "discriminating against women," which is to say recognizing that men and women are differnt, as they are. Forcing women into the service academies continues to do those insitutions great harm, because every woman cadet or mid knows she can ruin any male cadet or mid by accusing him of sexual harassment. Putting women into the combat arms will do enormous damage as unit cohesion is destroyed by men's competition for the favors of the women. The politicians, with no resistance from the senior military, repeatedly put young men and young women in intimate situations, say "Tut tut now, no hanky-panky," then crucify the men when nature takes its course. We need King Canute to take them all down to the seashore and demonstrate once again that governments do not have the power to hold back the tide.Since nothing can now save the Blue Angels from the culturally Marxist Volksgericht, here's an idea: let's replace them. Dissolve the Blue Angels and replace them with the Pink Angels. In the Pink Angels, all the pilots and all the mechanics who work on the airplanes will be women. Given most women's problematic grasp of spacial relationships (see who leaves their shopping carts in the middle of the aisles in the grocery store) and the difficulty of fixing delicate electronics by inserting a bobby pin, the results should be highly entertaining. Pink Angel precision flying will thrill audiences everywhere with spectacular sound and light effects. By all means go to see them. From a safe distance.

Wandering Off The White Liberal Plantation

Justice Clarence Thomas, a black conservative serving on the Supreme Court, has recently been castigated by the mainstream media for his role in voting to uphold Michigan’s prohibition of affirmative action in their public universities.

Thomas ironically benefited from affirmative action himself, so this is a major point of contention that liberals have used to declare Thomas’ views as hypocritical. The other bit of irony is that if nothing else, liberals who are opposed to his views have only themselves to blame for promoting the affirmative action policies that placed Thomas in the schools that got him to where he is today.Thomas did what was right, because American culture generally believes in meritocracy—the idea that people must earn their place in life. Though there is plenty of reason to believe that actual meritocracy is a myth, it is at least something to which folks pay a little lip service. For decades conservatives have argued against the idea of affirmative action on the basis that it leads to discrimination against more qualified individuals, in favor of promoting an ideology.Affirmative action as we know it today comes from the 1964 Civil Rights Act, when it was enacted by, ironically, a racist white liberal. Lyndon Johnson knew that by giving minority groups “goodies” such as welfare and civil rights, he could control their vote and maintain power. When asked why some of the racial policies of the Great Society reforms were so important to him, he said bluntly, “I’ll have those niggers voting Democratic for the next 200 years.”Liberal racism is a constant theme in American politics. It’s the idea that blacks should vote for policies written by their compassionate white masters, because “we know what's best for you.” When a minority has an opposing view, they are hunted down with a whip, and dragged back onto the plantation.This liberal chauvinism extends to other “victim” groups as well. If women oppose abortion or feminism, they are derided as idiots. If immigrants oppose mass or illegal immigration, they become nothing more than stooges doing the bidding of the evil, racist, “old, white males.” When liberals don’t get their way after demonstrating their generosity and empathy, they ironically remind minorities to obey their white liberal masters or else risk condemnation.Clarence Thomas has been called all manner of racist, pejorative terms in the past few days for opposing an unjust policy of racial discrimination. For Thomas, having his own views that diverge from the liberal or progressive narrative can be tantamount to social suicide, as he well knows.It begs the question of what kind of country we live in currently. Do we live in a democracy that allows freedom of speech and opinion, or one that is run by bureaucratic elites who only allow freedom of speech if that speech supports their ideals and not yours? The Western world is steadily becoming more authoritarian when its citizens don’t support the policies promoted by liberal social engineers.Is our destiny to become like Sweden, where expressing an opinion that criticizes the elites' policy platforms can lead to public persecution and even prosecution? It seems so. In Sweden immigration critics are regularly tracked down by “Anti-racist” groups and publicly exposed, even harassing their employers in order to ruin their livelihoods and enforce “economic discipline”—metaphorical public floggings. They are branded as evil racists, prosecuted for hate speech, often losing their jobs or worse, all for daring to criticize the dramatic changes occurring in their nation.The kind of racism seen in Thomas' instance, a much more insidious one, is the kind which insists that minority groups ought to know that white liberals know best, that their policies are best for minorities. You are not free to choose what is best for you; the establishment must do it for you. We saw this in the treatment of Latinos like Ted Cruz, who were treated with absolute disrespect for opposing illegal immigration. Because they dare to have an opposing view to the progressive narrative, they are punished in the media by white liberals and the rest of their Republican lackeys that kowtow to the progressive narrative. The message of white liberals to minorities is clear: don’t wander off the plantation, because your master knows best.James Harmon is a college-level instructor, artist, and writer. His blog is located here.

Victoria: Chapter 8

After the battle, I figured I'd done what I could in Boston and got ready to head back to Maine. I still faced this problem of finding work. But before I left, Gunny Matthews wanted to get the Christian Marines together again for a "hot wash" critique and to figure where we went from here.We gathered once more at Tune Tavern. Trooper Kelly led off the critique."The reason we won here is simple," he said. "We prepared carefully, but did not try to exercise too much control once things began to move. The decisive action, the march on Judge Frylass, was something we did not foresee. But we were smart enough to let it happen anyway. By the middle of the week, everyone knew what we were trying to achieve—cutting the scum off from their supporters in the Establishment. So people could take the initiative, yet all their actions worked in harmony.""This is what the Germans called ‘mission type orders,'" I added. "In the German Army, an order didn't tell you what to do, it told you what result was needed. You were free to do whatever you thought necessary to get that result. That's why the Germans were able to win so many battles, usually against superior numbers. Mission orders turn everyone's initiative and imagination loose, which is very powerful—far more powerful than an army of automatons with everyone doing only what they are told.""I was an MP in the Corps," a Boston city cop said. "For most of my time, we were told exactly what to do and how to do it. Then, just before I retired, we got a new CO who understood this German stuff, what the Corps called ‘maneuver warfare.' He told us, ‘I want you to cut speeding on base by at least 50%. How you do it is up to you.’ And we were much more effective, because each of us did it differently."Gunny Matthews jumped in at this point. "There are a lot of folks all over the country who want to fight for what is right," he said. “The last time we met here, we did more than plan one battle. We decided to make a difference in the outcome of the whole war. The understanding of war that we share—mission orders, Third Generation war, maneuver warfare, call it what you will—is what the folks out there who believe as we do need in order to win. The question is, how are we going to provide it to them?"Kelly had an answer. "Captain Rumford had it right when he said we Christian Marines should be the general staff. Remember, German general staff officers weren't commanders, they were advisors. We can't and shouldn't try to muscle in on what other people are already doing to take back control of their own communities. They would resent that, and rightly so. But many of them would be glad to get advice from people who understood war. Because this is war, let's not kid ourselves. And people out there are beginning to realize that."A cop I hadn't heard from before, Lasky, raised what proved to be the key question. "I agree, but who is going to do the work? I'll put some time in, but I have a regular job that doesn't leave me a lot of time. If the Christian Marine Corps is to be a real organization, we need at least one person to work this full time.""Don't complain," I replied. "At least you have a job. I'm finding it mighty tough to get one.""Maybe there's our answer," Kelly said. "Skipper, you've got the time, you know how to think militarily, you're willing to make decisions and act. You ought to do it. You should be the first Commandant of the Christian Marines."Great, I thought. A job with lots of responsibility, facing well-nigh impossible odds, risking arrest for sedition, all for no paycheck. But I also realized this was the critical decision point if I wanted to help take our country back. "Once to every man and nation comes the moment to decide," the old Anglican hymn says. For me, this was it."Well, I do have the time," I replied. "And I was the one who proposed this new Marine Corps, so I also have the responsibility to do what I can to make it real. But I have to tell you, my family fortune ran out around 1870. Does anyone have any ideas as to how I can take this task on and still make enough money to live?"Kelly did have an idea. "There are now twenty-one Christian Marines, besides yourself. If we each put in $50 per month, that's $1050 per month for you. Can you live in Maine for that?""I reckon I could," I said."Can the rest of us pony up that much?" Kelly asked."Let's face it, we each spend that every month on donuts," Meyer answered. "Just call me one generous Jew. I'm good for it."So were the others, though McBreen looked a little pale when he thought of doing without donuts."So that's settled," said Trooper Kelly. "Skipper, now it's up to you. You can call on each of us for help, and we have a responsibility to look for situations where we can make a difference, not just wait for direction from you.""But if the Christian Marine Corps is to mean anything beyond this one battle in Boston," Kelly continued, "from here on out, it's sweat, toil, and tears, and probably blood too in the end. This is the point where most movements die. The exciting part is over, we all face the press of everyday concerns, and building an organization is slow, dull, frustrating work. It's also the work that makes the difference between talking around the bar and changing history.""Well and truly spoken, Trooper Kelly," I replied. "In the old American militia tradition, I move we elect our officers, and I hereby nominate you to be the CO, Massachusetts Christian Marines."The vote was unanimous, and Kelly accepted the post at which he later fell."And in the Marine tradition, I propose a toast, gentlemen," I concluded. "To the Christian Marine Corps, and confusion to our enemies." Appropriately, it was drunk in Sam Adams beer.

The View From Olympus 30: Justice Department Undermines Law Enforcement

It is greatly to the advantage of states to treat Fourth Generation war as a law enforcement problem, to the degree they can do so. Why? Because 4GW is a contest for legitimacy, and lumping 4GW fighters in with other violent criminals delegitimizes them. It also puts the state on an altogether higher plane, whereas a state that must treat 4GW as combatants puts them and the state on the same level.Regrettably, the April 10 New York Times reports that draft rules for the FBI, issued by the Justice Department, will undermine our ability to act against 4GW elements with standard law enforcement techniques. The Times story says

The new rules, which are in draft form, expand the definition of prohibited profiling to include not just race, but religion, national origin, gender, and sexual orientation...Before federal agents could consider religion or other factors in their investigations under the new rules, they would need to justify it based on the urgency and totality of the threat and 'the nature of the harm to be averted,' according to an official who has seen the draft.That would not prevent agents from considering religion or nationality, but officials said the goal was to establish clear rules that made doing so rare.

In the real world, all law enforcement is and must be based on profiling. Cops profile on a wide variety of factors, anything that statistically is an indicator. They profile on race (the black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate, the Hispanic rate about three times), sex (almost all violent criminals are male), age (most are young), how someone is dressed, the make and condition of the car they drive, etc., etc., etc. Why must cops profile? Because there are so few cops as a percentage of the population, they must reduce potential “bad guys” to a number they have some hope of keeping an eye on. In a society where all profiling is banned, a condition toward which we are moving,, the ratio of cops to citizens needs to approach 1:1.The new rules from the Obama Justice Department only apply to federal law enforcement agencies, at least at first. Various “advocates” will no doubt attempt to make them apply to all law enforcement agencies. Cops will respond the only way they can, by ignoring the rules. To do otherwise would be to give up any hope of enforcement.Unfortunately, the FBI is our first line of defense against 4GW on American soil, and it will be crippled. All the forbidden indicators—race, religion, national origin, and gender (probably not sexual orientation)—are the fault lines along which Fourth Generation war is fought. Forbidding profiling on these bases is as if in World War II we had forbidden our soldiers to shoot just because someone was wearing a German or Japanese uniform. Obviously, that would have been insane. So is this.Advocates for pools from which 4GW fighters are drawn know the score and are playing the game accordingly. The Times reports Muslims are not satisfied and want the prohibitions made stronger:

Farhana Khera, the president of Muslim Advocates, said... 'We want an effective ban on all forms of profiling.'

Well, of course they do. All around the world, being Muslim is one of the most important indicators that someone may be a 4GW fighter. So by all means let's pass regulations that say a 75-year-old Baptist grandmother in Des Moines must be considered just as likely a suicide bomber as a young Muslim male immigrant from Somalia.Or Chechnya. When the identity of the Boston Marathon bombers was revealed, my first thought was, “Why are there any Chechens in this country?” Chechen is not just a nationality, it is a strong indicator that someone is trouble. Ask the Russians. They've known all about Chechens for more than a century. We should no more admit Chechens to the United States than we should welcome rabid dogs.It is an indicator of just how far Washington has drifted from the real world that the Justice Department would issue these new draft rules almost on the anniversary of the Boston bombings. While in public the feds mourn the victims, behind the scenes they put out the welcome mat for more 4GW on American soil. Those whom the gods wish to destroy they first make mad.

Victoria: Chapter 7

The Battle of the Housing Project began on the last Friday in February, 2017. It proved to be Blitzkrieg, but into Russia.Friday night usually meant big business for the hookers, pimps, drug dealers, and the rest of the "informal economy" that dominated the inner cities back then. Boston was enjoying a break in the winter weather, which should have drawn a big crowd out. It did, but not the kind they were expecting. The Panzers were in laager by 3 PM, 243 strong: the Church Ladies. Project residents were the infantry; they would make sure the tanks reached their objectives. The artillery was the press. The Marine connection worked, and we had reporters from the Boston Globe plus camera crews from several local TV stations. We also had twenty-five off-duty cops—in uniform and armed—and a couple video cams of our own; I wanted to have our own video tape, edited and ready to hand out ASAP.Darkness comes early in Boston in February, and as it fell the bipedal roaches started crawling out of their cracks to sell their crack and whatever else. They didn't need any of their own stuff for excitement that night. We had twenty-five "swarms" just looking for targets, and as soon as one of the scum made an appearance anywhere near the project, he was surrounded. Singing "Onward Christian Soldiers," the Church Ladies and their allies made sure no business was done. One dealer was dumb enough to reach for his piece; before one of our cops could react, a swift umbrella brought him low.But we faced no stupid enemy. The trash knew how the game usually went. Their friends in high places had already won the first round for them. So they retreated. They backed off, moved on, or went to ground and waited. Monday would see Judge Frylass in his chambers and the Legal Services lawyers before his bench, demanding and undoubtedly getting an injunction.This time, we were ready for that. We picked a Friday to launch our attack because people would be home over the weekend to read the papers and turn on the TV. The next day, we dominated the news.To keep the initiative, Saturday morning the leaders from the project and the ministers from the local churches held a news conference. They announced part two of the plan, an appeal to the white churches. Those congregations were prepared when our black Church Ladies arrived on Sunday and invited them to visit the project and see for themselves why we were fighting. We had the logistics carefully planned, with buses lined up, guarded parking lots available near the project and lists where we asked people to commit themselves to come for a tour on a certain date. Anticipating Judge Frylass's action, we had the tours of the project begin on Monday evening.Frylass did not disappoint us (in war, a predictable opponent is a great asset). With a ringing denunciation of "mob rule," on Monday morning he issued an injunction against any "tactics of intimidation" directed against "the victims of racism and an oppressive economic structure," i.e., the scum.Monday evening, the scum were back. So were we, again with the black Church Ladies in the lead, but now with white Christians, including some priests and ministers, alongside. At Frylass's order, state cops were present to enforce his injunction. That was just what we wanted. Tuesday's news was filled with photos of Church Ladies and their allies, black and white, being handcuffed and hauled off in paddy wagons while the drug dealers grinned.The public was enraged, and the politicians started to get scared. In the state legislature, former Marines got the state cops pulled off the case.Tuesday afternoon, our ministers and Church Ladies, now joined by the Cardinal of Boston, the Mayor, and the Speaker of the Massachusetts House, held another news conference. They announced part three: the raffle to buy the house next to Frylass's and give him a dose of his own medicine.The public went wild. It was a chance to give one of these Lord High Panjandrums a kick in the butt. The demand for lottery tickets was so great they were bid for on the street at ten times their price.At this point, our battle went national. Every network ran it as their lead story on the Wednesday evening news, using the video we had prepared. A Senate Resolution condemning Frylass went through by voice vote. Colleagues on the Federal bench began talking publicly about impeachment.But as is often the case in war, an unpredicted event was decisive. Tuesday and Wednesday evenings had seen repeats of Monday, only bigger. We swarmed the scum, wherever we could find them. Federal Marshals, brought in by Frylass, made their arrests. Now, the televisions were full of businessmen in three-piece suits, white housewives, people from every class and race being hauled off. Wednesday the Cardinal himself was arrested, arm in arm with two Baptist Church Ladies, all singing "We Shall Overcome."Thursday the crowd started gathering early, around 2 PM. It was huge, it was angry, and it was largely middle-class. Somewhere, somehow, the cry was started, "Let's go see the judge." Everyone took it up. The mob started to move toward the Federal Courthouse. It was a couple miles, and as the march continued the crowd grew. Along the way they found a road crew working and took their tar truck. The crowd took up the chant, "Pillows! Pillows!", and from every window along the route pillows came flying down. Enough had feathers in them to do the job.They found Judge Frylass in his chambers, having tea. He made a fine sight, tarred and feathered, riding on a streetcar rail for a short journey down to Boston harbor, where he went for a swim. The harbor police fished him out, somewhat the worse for wear.Friday, it was clear it was over. Every news broadcast and newspaper in the country called it "The Second Boston Tea Party." The President, a man who knew the secret of political leadership was to find a crowd and follow it, announced the Attorney General was personally going to the Supreme Court to ask them to overturn Judge Frylass's injunction. The Court, which had been more a political than a judicial body since Earl Warren, duly complied.That was the triumph of our Blitzkrieg. It took less than a week.We then learned why Blitzkrieg didn't work in Russia. The enemy's position had too much depth.The key to our victory was our starting point, the takeover of the housing project by its tenants. That happened as part of an experimental program sponsored by the Federal Department of Housing and Urban Development, or HUD. Of course, like the rest of the Federal government, HUD was solidly enemy territory. The bureaucrats were leftists to a man (or, back then, woman), and what had happened in Boston horrified them. How dare ordinary people stand up to the government—and win!So, once the furor had died down and the attention of the press had wandered on to newer things, they quietly changed the rules. There would be no more housing projects with tenant management. Federal bureaucrats would stay in charge, they would not evict the scum, so the scum would rule. And they did.The lesson for our side was that we could win battles, but not the war. The war had to be fought on the enemy's ground, the vast, incomprehensible network of government rules, regulations, and bureaucracies. That was our Russia, and it was just too big to conquer.We had to let it fall of its own weight.

A Cleveland Judge Enforces Cultural Marxism

A recent case in the South Euclid Municipal Court should warn conservatives where cultural Marxism is heading. It has long used judicial processes to enforce its rules on university campuses. But its goal is to use the legal system to cram its commands down the throat of every American. In South Euclid (a suburb of Cleveland), a judge did exactly that.The facts of the case are these. In a long-running feud between two neighbors, one man had consistently harassed the family next door to him, including in ways that included assault (spitting on them) and damaging their property. The family included some disabled people. The harasser, Mr. Edmond Aviv, pleaded no contest to a charge of disorderly conduct.Mr. Aviv had broken the law, and in consequence was sentenced to 15 days in jail, seven months on probation, 100 hours of community service and anger management classes, according to the Cleveland Plain Dealer of April 11. So far, so good.But the sentence did not stop there. The judge, Mrs. Gayle Williams-Byers, a black woman, further ordered Mr. Aviv to undergo personal counseling at the “Diversity Center of Cleveland” and to stand by a busy highway for five hours with a sign reading, “I am a bully. I pick on children that are disabled, and I am intolerant of those that are different from myself. My actions do not reflect an appreciation for the diverse South Euclid community that I live in.”Apart from the brief statement of facts (“I am a bully. I pick on children that are disabled,...”), all the rest of Mr. Aviv's sentence was pure cultural Marxism. The cultural Marxists insist on “tolerance,” by which they mean Marcuse's “liberating tolerance:” tolerance for the left and its “victims” groups, intolerance for the right and white males (Mr. Aviv is one). “Diversity” is another culturally Marxist buzz word, which in practical terms means conservatives must live near and accept the behavior of people, again from among the politically correct “victims,” who do not hold or manifest standard middle class values. Nor dare we complain; we are just supposed to keep our mouths shut and put up with it.None of this is to justify the behavior of Mr. Aviv, who broke some laws. But the South Euclid court to the contrary, “tolerance” (a la Marcuse) and “diversity” are not laws. The court was here enforcing an ideology, not the law. That is a direct threat to the liberties of every American who rejects cultural Marxism, as the law still entitles us to do.The sentencing of Mr. Aviv to “counseling” at the Diversity Center of Cleveland is straight out of both Soviet practice (sending dissidents to the mental asylums) and Brave New World. Such “Centers,” or on campuses “Studies Departments,” are places where people are psychologically conditioned to accept, or at least not to defy, cultural Marxism. The origins of such places trace directly to Adorno's book The Authoritarian Personality and the Frankfurt School's integration of Marx with Freud.As if all this were not enough, punishing Mr. Aviv by forcing him to hold in public a sign confessing his “sins” against an ideology reeks of Mao's Cultural Revolution, where “right deviationists” and other dissenters from Maoism were compelled to do the same thing. The object in both cases was to subject the dissenter to public shame and ridicule and to warn others what would happen to them if they defied the state ideology.But while cultural Marxism is the de facto state ideology both in America and in most of Europe, it is not yet the de jure ideology, at least not here. Courts must apply the law, not invent it. Of course, if actions such as that of the South Euclid Municipal Court are allowed to stand, they become precedents, which other judges can then cite to the same end, enforcing ideology.Mr. Aviv served his sentence, at least the part that had him sitting by the side of the road holding his sign, rather than appeal it. But Judge Williams-Byers sentence, at least the ideological portion of it, is so lacking in a legal basis that it should raise the question of judicial misconduct. Members of the Ohio Bar Association and of the Ohio legislature would appear to have standing to raise that question. Let us hope that some of them do.

Victoria: Chapter 6

I gave the Gunny a lift home after the revival meeting. I was interested in how he thought we could get the police to help. I guessed the cops themselves would want to, but they worked for the politicians, who would probably want them to protect the scum from the Church Ladies.His answer proved to be important beyond our fight to save one housing project. "A number of cops around here are former Marines. We've got a network set up among us," he explained to me. "We're getting together tomorrow night. Can you come?""Of course I'll come. You think I'm some staff puke who comes up with a plan, then sends someone else off to execute it? I've done some thinking up in Maine. The real war is the war for our culture. This is a battle in that war. I'm in," I replied. "Do you know a cheap place I can put up for the duration?""Sure, stay with us. My wife and I would be honored to have my old CO as a guest," he said.I was happy to accept.***The meeting with the cops was at the Tune Tavern, in Boston's South End, the Irish ghetto. Nobody in Southie was likely to remember anything he overheard in a discussion among cops.About twenty guys showed up, mostly city cops, with a few state troopers and even one transit cop thrown in. All were former Marines. I hadn't known any of them in the Corps, but they knew who I was and why I was there and they had no problem with that.Gunny Matthews was too smart to throw the problem on the table and hope somebody had a solution. The old Russian technique, "Let's negotiate from my draft," was more likely to result in action. So after outlining the overall scheme, the Gunny made a simple request: would at least one off-duty cop accompany each "swarm" that went after a scumbag? Off-duty cops were expected, by regulation, to be armed and to intervene when citizens were in danger, so no politician could go after them for that. But at the same time, no political sleaze-bag could order them not to be there, since they'd be on their own time. Lots of businesses hired off-duty cops as security guards; the only difference here is that we had no money to pay them."That's not a problem," said officer Kevin McBreen. "What you're offering us is a chance to do the job we signed up to do, but usually can't because city hall and the effing lawyers and judges won't let us. We're all willing to put some time into this.""Will it work?" I asked the question, even though the basic plan had come out of my brain housing group. These guys knew the local situation better than I did, and if the plan didn't fit the situation, it was better to scrap it now than to see it fail later.The cops were quiet. One state trooper finally spoke up, a former commo staff sergeant named Kelly (sometimes I thought half the Marine Corps was named Kelly). I found out later he'd been into Tactical Decision Games big-time, so he knew how to think situations through."As far as it goes, I think it has a reasonable chance," he said. "In war, that is all any plan can promise. We're looking for a breakthrough here, in that we're trying to defeat not only the scum but their friends and protectors, the lawyers, judges, and pols. The rule in war is, small risk, small gain; big gain, big risk. The potential gain here is worth the risk.""My problem with the whole proposal is that it doesn't go far enough," he continued. "Down at 2^nd Marine Division I sat in on a briefing Colonel Boyd gave. He said strategy is the art of connecting yourself to as many other power centers as possible, while separating your enemy from as many power centers as possible. It was the only definition of strategy I ever heard that meant anything.""We need some more friendly connections here. We need connections with the press. How this gets covered in the Globe and on TV affects the outcome. We shouldn't leave that to chance. The same goes with the legislature. We should have friends there all set to go so the debate tilts our way. In other words, we need some strategy, not just good tactics."Trooper Kelly was on to something. When I was stationed at Quantico, I'd gotten to know a staffer on Capitol Hill. He explained to me that when the Senator he worked for wanted to make a major move, he had a meeting that included other Senators' staffers, newspaper columnists, representatives from outside special interest groups, anyone who was in a position to affect the issue. Before the public saw anything, each of these insiders had his assignment: write a column, give a speech, organize a letter-writing campaign, whatever.Then, when the Senator acted, all these other things happened as if they were spontaneous. But they weren't. They were all arranged—“greased" was the term my friend used—beforehand."Great idea," said one city cop. "But we're just little guys. I don't know how we make this happen. I can't get through to a newspaper editor or a politician. Can you?""I can, and so can you," Kelly replied. "We can do it the same way we've come together here: through the Marine connection. A bunch of members of the legislature are former Marines. So's an editor at the Globe. I know him, and I know one former Marine in the State House. He can put us on to others. There's even a regular breakfast where former Marines now in politics get together. Most of these guys think like we do. They'll help."At this point I got one of those brain farts where a whole lot of pieces from a bunch of different puzzles come together to make something new. Boyd called it synthesis."Maybe what we need is a new Marine Corps," I said."What do you mean?" Matthews said."I'm not sure. Let me think out loud here. The Marine Corps we all served in is supposed to fight our country's battles. Yet all the Corps is doing now is fighting ragheads. Those aren't our country's battles. They are just games the politicians and State Department types in Washington like to play to feel important and justify their salaries.""This battle, for this lousy housing project, is a battle for our country. It's a battle in the real war, the one being fought on our own soil between the people who live according to the old rules and the people who want to break all the rules, and usually do. We need a Marine Corps for the real war.""I think we're seeing that new Marine Corps in action right here," I continued. "The battle we're planning is just one of what will be many battles, many campaigns, in the war to save our culture. We need a force that doesn't dissolve when this battle is over, that sees the war right through to the end."The cops were quiet. So was I. I knew what I'd just proposed was scary. I hadn't thought it through; it just came to me. I didn't know where it might lead.The transit cop spoke first. "Would this be like one of these militias we hear about?""No," I replied. "We've all run around in the boonies in cammies enough for that to be old. And we don't want violence. Violence will almost always work against us at the moral level of war. Think of it instead as a general staff for whoever wants to take our country back, wherever we could make a difference. Like we're doing here."Again, there was silence, a long silence this time.Trooper Kelly spoke again. "I think you've hit on the answer to what's been bothering a lot of us for a long time. We work for a government that doesn't work. No matter how many arrests we make, it doesn't make any difference.""The whole system is rotten,” Kelly continued. “The big boys, the politicians, the lawyers, the judges, the media types, they all live well off the decay. They are scavengers, parasites. But for real people, it just keeps getting worse and worse – crime, lousy schools, rising prices that make our pay and pensions worthless, it's all part of the same picture.""I hate to say so, but I think this country is finished. It's beyond fixing. We need something new. What you are proposing, skipper, is a start," he concluded."In 1775, the United States Marine Corps was founded in another tavern, in Philadelphia," I said. "I think it's time to do it again, here in Tune Tavern. Who knows, maybe we're making history once more."The transit cop spoke up again. "A new Marine Corps I can see. Nobody's fighting the battles that need to be fought. But what Marine Corps? Nobody has written a new Declaration of Independence that I've heard of. What kind of Marines are we?""Christian Marines." The voice was Gunny Matthews'. "That's what we are, most of us. That doesn't mean we're fighting to spread a religion. But our faith is where our first loyalty must be, because it is the thing we believe in most deeply.""In 1775, a man could be both a Christian and a United States Marine. Now we have to choose. The reason the government we have doesn't work is that it has thrown our whole Christian culture overboard. I don't care whether someone goes to church or not. But unless people follow the rules laid down in the Ten Commandments, everything falls apart. It seems to me what we're fighting for here, in this housing project, is to make the Ten Commandments the rules again. And that is what this new Marine Corps should fight for, wherever it fights.""Sign me up," said the transit cop, Meyer. "By the way, I'm Jewish. You may remember we had the Ten Commandments before you did. But we're all in this together. It's the whole culture we have to fight for, our Western, Judeo-Christian culture. I'll still go to synagogue, but I'm happy to be a Christian Marine. After all, Christ was a Jew, and so were his disciples."And so it began, the Christian Marine Corps, the general staff for our side in the second civil war. I still have the piece of paper that went around the barroom table that day. It has twenty-two names on it. Seventeen of those men gave their lives in the war that was to come. I'm the only one left, now.But those who died did so knowing they'd made a difference.

The Civil Rights Movement

I recently spent two delightful weeks in Dixie, rendered more so by the fact that in the land of wonderful pork, the Confederate government has outlawed Lent. Traveling with a friend, we stopped in one town in Alabama to look at a monument to the Civil Rights movement. I was struck by the fact that, in the Deep South, the story told on the monument was entirely one-sided. The only perspective represented was that of the blacks in the movement.As an historian, I know that in any conflict situation, each side has its narrative. Accurate history cannot be written based only on the narrative of the winners. The losers also have a story to tell, and it is part of history. History based only on the winner's narrative is mere propaganda.Shortly after I returned to the frozen North, the New York Times (of April 6) caught my attention with a front-page headline that read, “Civil Rights Sins, Curated by One of the Sinners.” The “sins” in question were any opposition to the Civil Rights movement, and the “sinner” was the state of Mississippi. Once again, “history” is presented based solely on one narrative. But that is not all: the Civil Rights movement is in effect deified. To oppose it was and is to “sin.”Here the hand of cultural Marxism reveals itself. Not from Marx but from Nietzsche the Frankfurt School drew the “transvaluation of all values.” That means all the old sins become virtues, and all the old virtues become sins. All types and varieties of sexual relations are okay, but anyone who defends local traditions against a doctrine of rights without responsibilities (as preached in Marcuse's Eros and Civilization) is a “sinner.” Accurate history is not to be written, only history that serves ideological ends, especially “liberation.” Cultural Marxism yields the worst of all Puritanisms, Puritanism without God.How should cultural conservatives evaluate the Civil Rights movement? Unlike the ideologues, we take both narratives into account, those of southern blacks fighting for Civil Rights and other southerners, mostly but not all whites, who fought to maintain the South's traditional race relations.From a legal standpoint, there is little question that racial segregation enforced by law was unconstitutional. However, there is equally little question that racial integration enforced by law is unconstitutional. Our limited governments, federal and state, were never empowered to regulate such matters by law. Freedom of association, which must include freedom not to associate, is basic to American rights. How people associate was left to custom, habit, and tradition, which varied place to place. The authors of our Constitution had no ambition to make life in South Carolina the same as life in Massachusetts.The South explained that the Constitution's promise of equality under the law was met by the doctrine of “separate but equal.” Cultural conservatives may find that acceptable, as reflecting long-standing local traditions. But realists that we are, we also recognize that the “equal” part of “separate but equal” was largely ignored. Facilities intended for blacks under segregation were almost always inferior to those intended for whites. That is not something we can find acceptable, because it clearly does violate the principle of equality under the law. The South should have been faced with a choice: either make the “equal” part of “separate but equal” real, or integrate. But the ideologues gave it no choice: under what was essentially a second Reconstruction, the South was forced to abandon freedom of association. Some rights, like some animals, are more equal than others.The central question cultural conservatism poses to the Civil Rights movement comes straight from Edmund Burke. When asked to congratulate the French people on their new-found rights, courtesy of the Revolution, Burke replied that before we do so, we should see what they do with those rights. Cultural conservatives look at results, not merely intentions.The results thus far of the Civil Rights movement point again to the need to consider both narratives, those of the winners and the losers. Southern opponents of the Civil Rights movement often said, “We know black people better than you do. We have lived beside them and with them all our lives. Without external pressure to behave well, their communities will fall apart.”Some years ago, I was talking with a prominent Washington black at a cocktail party. He said he had just returned from a southern city, now suffering badly from black crime. Needing something late at night, he had gone to a nearby 7-11, where he got talking with the young black woman who ran the store. She said to him, “It's gotten so bad, I wish we had segregation back.” She knew the urban black community under segregation had been a safe and decent place.While the Civil Rights movement undoubtedly helped many blacks to join the middle class, something cultural conservatives welcome—we want an America that is virtually all middle class, not necessarily in income, but in morals, values, and behavior—when we ask Burke's question of inner-city blacks, the answer is discouraging. Replacing liberty with license, too many have used the freedoms the Civil Rights movement gave them to wreck what were, up through the 1950s, safe, culturally middle class communities. Inner-city blacks' lives today are on the whole worse than they were under segregation (de jure segregation down south, de facto segregation up north).The realities are well enough known: an illegitimacy rate of 80%, a rate of violent crime twelve times the white rate (most victims are black), welfare dependency passed on from one generation to another, etc. Many young blacks now lack even the most basic knowledge of how to live: how to study, hold a job, clean a house, cook a meal. They are losing culture itself.The role of cultural Marxism in all this is ironic. Blacks are one of the cultural Marxists' sacred “victims groups,” the highest status one can obtain in that ideology. But beyond the rhetoric, cultural Marxism has done the urban black community harm that would have appalled Simon Legree. When cultural Marxism broke out of its academic ghetto and engulfed American society in the 1960s, white kids in college did whatever felt good, then went on to get their law degrees and MBAs and join the middle class. In the black inner city, they just kept on doing it, to the point where a culture of instant gratification is now general and, as always, catastrophic. It's an old rule of history: when the upper classes catch cold, the lower classes get pneumonia.More, because cultural Marxism preaches that all blacks' troubles are the fault of whites (“white racism”), black racism, black hatred of whites, is now common in black urban communities. (In the rural and town [not city] South, I never encountered it; all the blacks I met there were as friendly as southern whites.) The message disempowers blacks, because if their problems are whites' fault, blacks can do nothing about them. All the black urban community can do is wallow endlessly in its sins, until whites somehow rescue them (“reparations”). This is of course nonsense: earlier generations of blacks created a good community, one that revolved around the black church (you will never meet better Christians than the black church ladies), under more difficult external circumstances.At present, cultural Marxism makes any real history of the Civil Rights movement impossible; it permits only hagiography. After cultural Marxism joins economic Marxism in history's wastebasket and genuine history can be written, the history of the Civil Rights movement will take both narratives into account, those of the winners and the losers. When that time comes, the Civil Rights movement may be seen very differently.

The View From Olympus 29: Shooters and 4GW

The recent shooting at Fort Hood raises a question: do these shooters, whether military or civilian, have anything to do with Fourth Generation war? The answer, I think, is “not yet.”Some shooters are clearly acting as 4GW fighters. The previous mass shooting at Fort Hood was done by a Muslim, explicitly acting as a jihadi. But so far, this situation is rare in the United States. It is more common in Europe, where Islamic populations in countries such as France are increasingly open about the fact that they are waging war on the surrounding Western society.If we consider the large majority of shooting incidents in this country, including that at Fort Hood and the Newtown, Connecticut massacre, they are at this stage crimes, not war. Crime relates to 4GW in that it represents a failure on the part of the state to deliver what it promises, namely safety of persons and property. That failure is a blow against the state's legitimacy, which is the main stake in 4GW. In countries such as Mexico, crime has grown so widespread and vicious that it has put the state's legitimacy in question. The Mexican state has lost its monopoly on violence, not only to the drug gangs but also to growing vigilante organizations formed to fight the gangs. The vigilantes are attempting to fill the vacuum left by the failure of the state.But to understand the situation here and where it may be headed, another question may be useful: what would it take for currently random, individual shooters to become participants in Fourth Generation war? The answer, I think, is connectivity. If shooters here begin to be inspired by other shooters, saying, in effect, “He went out and shot people because he was angry, so I am going to do the same, because if a lot of people like me do it it will change the situations that make us angry,” then you are looking at something more than crime. Such connectivity would create a new type of 4GW player.It is important to remember two facts about 4GW. First, there need not be any overt communication or coordination, much less any top-down structure, among the fighters. One inspiring another to act is enough. This is sometimes called “leaderless resistance.” Second, 4GW players' motives need not be political. 4GW is broader than Clausewitz's “extension of politics by other means.” Intense anger, even if unjustified and mixed with mental illness, can be a shared motive, just as rational as faith in a nutty religion or mentally unbalanced adherence to a cause such as animal rights. Throughout history, many fighters, and many causes for which they fought, have been nuts.Obviously, it is important that the American state not allow shooters to move beyond crime to war. There are two actions it could take that would help prevent it. The first would be to interrupt, as much as possible, connectivity among real shooters. That means forbidding any publicity about shootings or shooters beyond the local level where a shooting has occurred. News media would be banned from covering the incidents. As much as is possible, personal electronic media would also be prevented from covering it, though that is obviously difficult. The answer to cries of “freedom of the press” is that the press is no more free than anyone else to shout “fire!” in a crowded theater. Enabling shooters to connect and expand the frequency and casualty count of shootings to where it becomes war is the equivalent.Second, the state could break the connectivity between potential real shootings and virtual shooters. Lt. Col. David Grossman's work has established a strong and undeniable link between shooters and violent video games. Virtually every shooter, in this country and elsewhere, has been a heavy player of those games. The horrible Breivik massacre in Norway, perhaps the worst of all the mass shootings, was don by someone who played violent video games up to sixteen hours a day.Virtual shootings can inspire real shooters just as powerfully as can other real shooters, perhaps more so because the violence is real-time and graphic. If the federal government wants to prevent more shootings, it needs to outlaw violent video games. It won't, of course, because the game manufacturers give money to Congressmen, while there are no checks for legislators who want to ban the games. Maybe someone should put out a Congressional first-person shooter game where the weapons are checkbooks.Here we come face-to-face with the bedrock of 4GW. The state is losing its legitimacy because it lacks the will to do what is necessary to maintain domestic peace. If shooters are allowed to build connectivity to the point where they move beyond crime to war, American society will suffer. Measures can be taken to prevent that connectivity and break it where it has already formed, between real and virtual shooters. But the state won't act, because it is weak and corrupt. Why should anyone give their primary loyalty to an institution that does not deliver what it promises? That should be the number one question in all of Washington, but it's not even on the list.

Victoria: Chapter 5

About a week later I got a letter. It was from my old company Gunnery Sergeant, a black fellow and a good Marine. He was also a husband and father—rare among black males by the 21^st century—and a Christian. He wrote to ask for my help.Gunny Matthews had gotten out about a year before I did. He had done his twenty years and had a pension, and felt it was time to move on. He knew that the catastrophe that had overwhelmed many urban black communities in America by the 1970s—crime, drugs, noise, and dirt—was not due to "white racism." It was due to bad behavior by blacks, toward other blacks as well as toward everyone else. He wanted to try to do something about it.It was a measure of America's decay that one of the most important issues facing the country—race—simply couldn't be talked about. Not honestly, anyway. Oh, there was lots of talk about “racism” and how evil it was and how whites were to blame for everybody else’s problems. But we all knew it was bull.The fact was that America's blacks had crapped in their own mess kit. They had been given their “civil rights,” and had promptly shown they could not, or would not, bear the responsibilities that went with them.Freedom is not doing whatever you want. Freedom is substituting self discipline in place of discipline imposed by somebody else. But nobody told America's blacks that, so they just went out and did whatever felt good at the moment. The result was a black rate of violent crime twelve times the white rate. Most of the victims of black crime were also black.Of course, not all blacks were into instant gratification and the drug-using, drug-dealing, mugging, car-jacking, fornicating, and whoring that it brought. But tribal loyalty was strong enough that most of those who lived decent lives wouldn't condemn those who didn't. The rest of America saw that in every city with a black government, which promptly descended into utter disorder and corruption. Detroit turned into 6^th century Rome.As early as the 1970s, the average white American spelled black c-r-i-m-e. That wasn't prejudice, it was statistics. Anywhere near a city, if you were the victim of a random crime, the criminal was almost certain to be black. The only exception was if you were in a Hispanic neighborhood; the Hispanics were rapidly going the same instant gratification route the blacks had taken, with similar results.Obviously, what was needed was a major crackdown. If a people cannot govern itself, then it must be governed by others. But the white Establishment hewed to the line that said blacks were “victims,” so their crimes could not be held against them. It was pure Orwellian Newspeak: criminals became victims, and the victims (at least the white victims) were the criminals because they were “racists.” So nothing was done, and blacks were emboldened to believe they could get away with anything.The result, in time, was a full scale race war, which was in turn part of America's second civil war. The blacks’ so-called “leaders,” most of whom derived fat incomes from their impoverished supporters, never seemed to care that when one tenth of the population goads the other nine-tenths into a war, it loses.So Gunny Matthews had taken on quite a job. His letter told me how he'd tried to go about it.The Gunny had grown up in Roxbury, near Boston, so that's where he retired, "to help the people he knew best," as he put it. There's always advantage in fighting where you know the ground. A number of his friends and relatives lived in public housing, so he picked that as his Schwerpunkt, his focus of efforts. In most black communities, that was the worst place you could be. Drug dealers, drug users, prostitutes, the whole ugly smear ran the place, with normal people living in terror.I'd seen in my job hunt the way government stuck its nose in where it wasn't wanted, messing up people's lives in the process. Gunny Matthews saw the other side of the coin, how government failed to do the things it was supposed to do. If there was one duty any government had, it was to protect the lives and property of ordinary, law-abiding people, regardless of their color. In the United States in the 21^st century, it no longer did that.The Gunny saw the problem in terms of counter-guerilla warfare. The scum were the guerrillas, and the key to defeating them was organizing the locals so they could stand up to the scum. He saw an opening, a "soft spot" as we called it in military tactics, in the fact that one public housing development had been given over to the tenants to manage. They formed a tenants' association, and the Gunny helped them draw up rules for tenant behavior, a patrol system that tracked and reported violators, and liaison with the police. As soon as they identified a drug dealer or other scumbag, they got witnesses, brought the cops in and threw the trash out, permanently. Very quickly the place turned around. For the first time in years, the nights were not punctured with gun shots, there were no hypodermic needles in the halls and kids could play safely outside.Then the feds came in, in the form of the Legal Services Corporation. Legal Services used tax money to pay lawyers to defend "the poor" in court. Only they had no interest in the honest poor. They were always on the side of the scum. They quickly went to court and stopped the evictions, on the grounds that the "rights" of the drug dealers and their molls were being violated. Just as quickly, the drug dealing, mugging and shooting started up again, and Gunny Matthews and his tenants’ association were back where they started.He asked me to come down and give them some help. I knew how to fight enemy infantrymen, not lawyers and judges. But I also knew I couldn't ignore the Gunny's plea. If I was going to do something to take our country back, this was a place to start. So one snowy February day I loaded up the truck and headed to Boston. On the way, I did some thinking.This wasn't law, I realized, this was war. The Legal Services lawyers, the liberal judges who gave them the rulings they wanted, their buddies in the ACLU, they were just enemy units of different types. More, they were the enemy's "critical vulnerability." The scum depended on them; no lawyers, no scum (a point we have enshrined in Victorian law, where you must represent yourself in court). The tenants had already shown they could kick out the trash, if we could get the lawyers off their backs. So that had to be our objective.The Gunny had set up a meeting with the tenants' association for the night I arrived. They were a pretty down lot when it started. One mother of three kids, the association's leader, tried not to cry when she explained how they thought they'd made a new start, then had it all taken away from them, thanks to Legal Services. They didn't know what they could do, now. If I could help, they'd be grateful. But it's clear they weren't expecting much from a white boy from Maine."Okay," I said, "here's where we start. You're in a war. You know that. You've got the bullet holes in your walls and doors to prove it. What we have to do is take the war to the enemy.""Amen, brother," was the answer. "Are we gonna start shootin' those lawyers?" one voice asked."That's tempting," I replied. "But you know that while they won't put the drug dealers in jail, the law will come after honest citizens in a heartbeat. We've got to fight, but we've got to fight smart."I laid out a plan. The starting point was one of Colonel John Boyd's maxims. Boyd was the greatest American military theorist of the 20^th century. He said war is fought at three levels: moral, mental, and physical. The moral level is the most powerful, the physical the least (The old American military, in its love for hi-tech, could never understand that, which is why it kept getting beaten by ragheads all around the world.). We would focus our war at the moral level, and use the physical only as it had moral impact.We'd start with the churches. Most of the black folk who were on the receiving end of black crime were Christians. We'd mobilize the Church Ladies—a Panzer division in this kind of fighting. We'd get them and the black ministers to go to white churches all over Boston and invite their congregations to visit the housing project. We'd let them see what those Legal Services lawyers and their friends among the judges and politicians were protecting. We'd take them through the drug markets, past the prostitutes, over the dazed, crazed addicts lying in the hallways. Then we'd ask them one question: Would they tolerate these people living in their neighborhoods? On the way out, we'd hand them a list of the names of their elected representatives with phone numbers.The key judge, the one who always ruled in favor of the scumbags, was a federal magistrate, Judge Holland P. Frylass. We couldn't touch him through the ballot box. But I thought there was another way. He was keen on making the folks in the projects live among the drug dealers and muggers and carjackers, but I suspected he would prefer not to do so himself. So we'd hold a raffle. We'd get black kids selling raffle tickets all over Boston. The proceeds would go to purchase the house next door to Judge Frylass', in that nice section of Cambridge. We'd move in some drug dealers, whores, and gang members and see how he liked a taste of his own medicine.Then a young mother, carrying one baby with two more grabbing at her coattails, spoke up. "That's all fine, I guess," she said. "But I got a drug dealer workin' right outside my door. Somebody come after him, those bullets will shoot right through my walls and my babies and me. What you gonna do about him?""Swarm him," I answered. The physical level of war also had its role to play."What you mean, swarm him?" she asked."Wherever he goes, or stops, we surround him. Twenty, thirty, fifty of us. We don't touch him. We're just there. We're always there. We're on every side of him. How much business do you think he's going to do?""And just what do we do when he starts hittin' out?" asked another woman in the crowd."Someone will always have a cell phone. He makes a move, we get it on camera. Then the cops can come in," I replied.But they knew the ground better than I did. "Hon', we appreciate you comin' all the way down here,” began one matron. "I think you've got some ideas we maybe can use. But this sure ain't no boxin’ match. When these boys hit out, it's with guns. Some of us gonna be dead if we try swarmin' ʻem like you want."Now, I knew how to use a weapon, and I guessed I could shoot better than the average drug dealer. But I also knew I'd be the one in jail, not the drug dealer, if I got in a fire fight. And for a young, white, middle class male, jail in the 21^st century meant homosexual gang rape. It was funny that the same bleeding-heart lefties who opposed the death penalty never made a peep about a punishment that would have appalled Vlad the Impaler. But I wasn't anxious to have the joke be on me.Gunny Matthews came to my rescue. "You folks know I've got a good relationship with the cops. You let me work on that one. I'll get us some protection, protection that can shoot back. My question to you folks is, are you willing to do what the man says? We can talk here all night. But we've got to act, not just keep talking. Or give up."Das wesentliche ist die Tat. Always, in war, that's what it comes down to. The important thing is the deed.The Panzers were ready for battle. One of the Church Ladies got up. She was dressed perfectly for a shopping trip to Filene's in 1955: floral print dress, pillbox hat, white gloves. "I can speak for my church," said Mrs. Cook. "They sent me here as our representative. I don't know whether it will work or not. But the Lord blesses those who try. He may bless us with success, and he will still bless us if we fail. I say we do it." She turned to the young mother with the drug dealer camped outside her door. "Honey, I'm an old lady. If that bad man outside your apartment shoots me, I'm ready to go to Heaven. I'll ʻswarmʼ him, as the man here says, even if I have to do it all by myself.”"You don't have to, Melba." Her neighbor in the project was on her feet, in similar uniform, which events came to show was Urban Combat cammies. "I'll be there too. I've got a heavy purse and a strong umbrella, and I know how to use both of them. We'll ‘swarm’ this no-account piece of nigger trash all the way back to Alabama."With that the congregation were on their feet, Amening and Halleluliaing. I could understand now why, back in the 1950’s, so many Americans were enraged by the South's segregation laws. It was the Mrs. Cooks they'd made sit in the back of the bus. If young blacks had tried to be like Mrs. Cook, integration might have worked.What a pity so many chose Malcolm X and Snoop Dogg as their heroes instead.

Rethinking Christian Economics, Part 4: Socialism

The following piece is republished from In Praise of Folly. It is part of a short series on Christian economics. Socialism is incompatible with Christianity for two reasons: 1) its founders were Satanists/atheists and 2) it destroys the Christian conception of charity.Marx, Bakunin, and Proudhon, all founders of Marxism and anarchism were self-styled Satanists. In his younger years, Marx wrote a series of poems expressing his hatred of God, his desire to destroy because he could not create, and the selling of his soul to Satan. Below are excerpts from his poetic works:On Hating God

“Heaven I would comprehendI would draw the world to me;Living, hating, I intendThat my star shine brilliantly …”[27]

On Destruction

“… Worlds I would destroy forever,Since I can create no world;Since my call they notice never …”[28]“Then I will be able to walk triumphantly,Like a god, through the ruins of their kingdom.Every word of mine is fire and action.My breast is equal to that of the Creator.”[29]“I shall build my throne high overheadCold, tremendous shall its summit be.For its bulwark — superstitious dreadFor its marshal — blackest agony.” [30]

Satanism

“See this sword?the prince of darknessSold it to me.”[31]“With Satan I have struck my deal,He chalks the signs, beats time for meI play the death march fast and free.”[32]

We see in Marx’s Oulanem, A Tragedy in the words of Oulanem his full hatred of God, creation, and humanity:

“… I shall howl gigantic curses on mankind:Ha! Eternity! She is an eternal grief …Ourselves being clockwork, blindly mechanical,Made to be the foul-calendars of Time and Space,Having no purpose save to happen, to be ruined,So that there shall be something to ruin …If there is a something which devours,I’ll leap within it, though I bring the world to ruins-The world which bulks between me and the AbyssI will smash to pieces with my enduring curses.I’ll throw my arms around its harsh reality:Embracing me, the world will dumbly pass away,And then sink down to utter nothingness,Perished, with no existence — that would be really living!”“… the leaden world holds us fast,And we are chained, shattered, empty, frightened,Eternally chained to this marble block of Being …and we —We are the apes of a cold God.”

Further reading should be directed to Wumbrand’s Marx and Satan. Such ungodly hostility seems to be the product of a demon, and not a man.On Proudhon

“On the other hand, Proudhon understood and felt liberty much better than he. Proudhon, when not obsessed with metaphysical doctrine, was a revolutionary by instinct; he adored Satan and proclaimed Anarchy.”[33]“The spirit of analysis, that untiring Satan who continually questions and denies, must sooner or later look for proof of religious dogmas. Now, whether the philosopher determine the idea of God, or declare it indeterminable; whether he approach it with his reason, or retreat from it, — I say that this idea receives a blow; and, as it is impossible for speculation to halt, the idea of God must at last disappear. Then the atheistic movement is the second act of the theologic drama; and this second act follows from the first, as effect from cause. “The heavens declare the glory of God,” says the Psalmist. Let us add, And their testimony dethrones him.”[34]

On Bakunin:

“But here steps in Satan, the eternal rebel, the first freethinker and the emancipator of worlds. He makes man ashamed of his bestial ignorance and obedience; he emancipates him, stamps upon his brow the seal of liberty and humanity, in urging him to disobey and eat of the fruit of knowledge.”[35]“God admitted that Satan was right; he recognized that the devil did not deceive Adam and Eve in promising them knowledge and liberty as a reward for the act of disobedience which he had induced them to commit; for, immediately they had eaten of the forbidden fruit, God himself said (see Bible): 'Behold, man is become as of the Gods, knowing both good and evil; prevent him, therefore, from eating of the fruit of eternal life, lest he become immortal like Ourselves.'”[36]

We see that the Russian anarchist Nikolai Ishutin named the inner circle of his anarchist organization “Hell”[37]. Such blasphemes are not uncommon for the Socialists. Their atheism or Satanism is manifested in their hatred of God and man. Because they cannot create with their own hands, they seek to destroy that which has been made by the hands of others. That any Christian should be so stupid to believe the words of such animals (for I will not call them men), to believe that this monstrous ideology is compatible with the Gospel of Jesus Christ just shows us the depths of human ignorance and depravity.Ivan Illich in his “We the People Interview” summed the problem of socialism thus:

“Then, in 300 and something, finally the Church got recognition. The bishops were made into something like magistrates. The first things those guys do, these new bishops, is creating houses of hospitality, institutionalizing what can be only what was given to us as a vocation by Jesus, as a personal vocation, institutionalizing it, creating xenodocaea, roofs, refuges, for foreigners. Immediately, very interesting, quite a few of the great Christian thinkers of that time, the year 300, 1600 years ago, John Chrysostom is one, shout, if you do that, if you institutionalize charity, if you make charity or hospitality into an act of a non person, a community, Christians will cease to remain famous for what we are now famous for, for having always an extra mattress, a crust of old bread and a candle, for him who might knock at their door. But, for political reasons, the Church became, from the year 400, 500 on, the main device for a thousand years roughly of proving that the State can be Christian by paying the Church to take care institutionally of small fractions of those who had needs, relieving the ordinary Christian household of the most uncomfortable duty of having a door, having a threshold, but being open for him who might knock and whom I might choose. This is what I speak about as institutionalization of charity. Historical root of the idea of services, of the service economy. Now, I cannot imagine such a system being reformable even though it might be your task and the task of courageous people whom I greatly admire for the impossible task they take on to work at its reform, at making the evils the service system carries with it as small as possible. What I would have chosen and as Mitchum and other friends have chosen together as our task is to awaken in us the sense of what this Palestinian, I say always instead of saying Samaritan, example meant. I can choose. I have to choose. I have to make my mind up whom I will take into my arms, to whom I will lose myself, whom I will treat as that vis-a-vis that face into which I look which I lovingly touch with my fingering gaze, from whom I accept being who I am as a gift.”[38]

Welfarism, reaching back to Christendom, reduces the poor man to a social problem. The poor man ceases to be a fellow human being made in the image of God to be saved and fed, but a social problem to be solved, a statistic and a manifestation of a socio-historical class. Such terms are dehumanizing and render man a cog in a machine rather than the Jew or the Samaritan.The failure of collectivism is seen in the words of Robert Dale, the son of Robert Owen of New Harmony:

“All cooperative schemes which provide equal remuneration to the skilled and industrious and the ignorant and idle, must work their own downfall, for by this unjust plan of remuneration they must of necessity eliminate the valuable members –who find their services reaped by the indigent – and retain only the improvident, unskilled and vicious members.”[39]

Allow me to outline for the reader the Christian view of work and remuneration and then compare it with Socialism.We see in Exodus 20:9-10 that people should labor six days and rest on the seventh because God worked for six days and rested on the seventh. For a Christian his work is an imitation of God’s work of Creation. We are co-creators with God. We see in Proverbs 6:6 and Proverbs 26:14 that God hates a sluggard and wants man to work. In Ephesians 4:28, Paul tells us that the new man in Christ does not steal any longer and in Ephesians 6:6 and Colossians 3:22-23 that we work not for ourselves or to please men, but to please God. Work is part of our worship to God. Our work must be of the highest caliber and we must engage in work as a duty toward God. In 1^st Timothy 5:8 we see that a man who does not provide for his family is an apostate worse than a pagan. We see also in Ephesians 4:28 that a man should stop stealing so he can earn his own living in order that he might have something to give to a needy brother. In taking care of the elderly, specifically widows, we see in 1^st Timothy 5:1-16 that if one is found to be a widow having grandchildren, we are to first take care of her; only if she has no living relatives is the Church to step in and care for her.We see that work is holy and pleasing to God and that charity is based on subsidiarity. Subsidiarity is the principle that solutions to problems are to be first sought within the social level that they arise in. Only after an inability to solve the problem is a solution sought at the next level of social organization. For example, if a family has some issues, then a solution should first be sought within the family; if that fails, then friends and community; and if that fails, lastly the Church. However, we are not to take our grievances toward our brothers and sisters to courts of the state, per 1^st Corinthians 6:1-6.Socialism is by nature satanic. Socialism seeks to make a god out of the state. It destroys the family by removing the necessity for children. As Paul says, “first learn to show piety at home and to repay their parents.” The state promises to take care of the children's parents, obviating them of the need to fulfill the familial duty. In usurping the role of familial piety, the state is preventing Christians from developing this Christian virtue. By usurping the provision of one’s parents the state is rendering those who take its services as worse than infidels since children delegate the wellbeing of their parents to the state. The state subsidizes sin as anyone can see with the government’s liberal provision of condoms and subsidies for single mothers and homosexuals. A basic rule of economics is: You get what you subsidize. If the state really wanted to eliminate poverty and single-motherhood then it would stop paying for such behaviors.The virtue of charity is undermined when the government taxes you to such a degree that you have no money to give for the provision of the needy; honest labor, which is the Apostle Paul’s solution to stealing[40], is also penalized since, one is squeezed so hard that in order to make ends meet he is tempted to steal; this in turn removes the disincentive to steal. Stealing is in fact encouraged since the government itself is engaged in legalized theft.If people see the government stealing they are 1) discouraged from working since they will lose the produce of their labor and 2) inclined to view theft as an ever-lesser offense. A Paul declares in 1^st Corinthians 6:10, thieves shall have no inheritance in the kingdom of God. In short, the socialist state seeks to be God in that it demands more than 10% of our income, renders it impossible for one to practice familial piety and charity, and removes the disincentive to steal.In conclusion I have shown that Christian economics is neither capitalist nor communist. Both systems are based on ungodly humanist assumptions. The distributists are a disappointing alternative, due to their crypto-socialism. A true Christian economics is the only truly radical solution to both capitalism and communism and the only one able to truly meet the needs of individuals. Notes^[1] “Usury”, last date modified January 30, 2014,  http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/articles/14615-usury^[2] “Selfishness,”  last date modified January 30, 2014, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/selfishness.html^[3] “Altruism,” last date modified January 30, 2014, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/altruism.html^[4] “Charity,” last date modified January 30, 2014, http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/charity.html^[5] “A Future of Peace and Capitalism,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,  http://mises.org/daily/1559^[6] “Ten Ethical Objections to the Market Economy,” last date modified January 30, 2014,  http://mises.org/daily/1469^[7] Walter Block, Defending the Undefendable, ( Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2012), 129-130.[8] G. J. Graves. “The Placer Country Railroad War,” Last modified January 1, 2003.http://cprr.org/Museum/Ephemera/RIC_Rail_1864.html[9] ” The Colorado Railroad War.” Last modified 2014.http://www.explore-old-west-colorado.com/Colorado-Railroad-War.html^[10] “Taxes Fair or Foul,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,  http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2010/10/taxes-fair-or-foul/#comments^[11] “Justice fairness and taxation part four,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2011/04/justice-fairness-and-taxation-part-four/^[12] “The differential tax,”  last date modified January 30, 2014, http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2011/07/the-differential-tax/^[13] “A short primer for protesters,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2011/10/a-short-primer-for-protestors/^[14] “Do We Agree?,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/~mward/gkc/books/debate.txt^[15] “The Common Good,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,  http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2012/08/the-common-good/^[16]   “A Distributist Education,” last date modified January 30, 2014,http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2012/07/a-Distributist-education/^[17]  “The Guild System,” last date modified January 30, 2014, http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2011/11/the-guild-system/^[18] “Jobs and the minimum wage,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2011/09/jobs-and-the-minimum-wage/^[19] “Errors of Libertarian Economics,”  last date modified January 30, 2014,http://Distributistreview.com/mag/2012/07/errors-of-libertarian-economics/^[20]  “Guilds,” last date modified January 30, 2014,  http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/07066c.htm^[21] ibid^[22] ibid^[23] ibid^[24] ibid^[25] Address at the “Asahi Symposium Science and Man – The computer-managed Society,” Tokyo, Japan (21 March 21 1982); as published in The CoEvolution Quarterly (Winter 1983)^[26] “Willing Slaves of the Welfare State”, last modified Janurary 30, 2014,http://cslewisjrrtolkien.classicalautographs.com/cslewis/bookexcerpts/willingslaveswelfarestate.html^[27] “Young Marx,”  last modified Janurary 30, 2014, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/Marx_Young_Marx.pdf^[28] ibid^[29] Richard Wumbrand, “Marx and Satan,” Living Sacrifice Book Co (December 1986), 13.^[30] “Marx’s Path to Communism”, last modified January 30, 2014, http://mises.org/daily/6179/Marxs-Path-to-Communism^[31] “The Player”^[32] “The Fiddler,” last modified Janurary 30, 2014, http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1837-pre/marx/1837-wil.htm^[33] “Recollections on Marx and Engels,”  last modified Janurary 30, 2014,http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/various/mebio.htm^[34] “The Philosophy of Poverty:VOLUME FIRST.INTRODUCTION.,” last modified Janurary 30, 2014,http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/economics/proudhon/philosophy/intro.htm^[35] “ God and the State,” last modified Janurary 30, 2014, http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/bakunin/works/godstate/ch01.htm^[36] ibid^[37] Paul Avrich, Anarchist Portraits, Princeton University Press (February 1, 1990),  41^[38] “We the People, KPFA ,”  last modified Janurary 30, 2014,  http://www.wtp.org/archive/transcripts/ivan_illich_jerry.html^[39] George Browning Lockwood and Charles Allen Prosser, The New Harmony Movement, Augustus M Kelley Pubs; New issue of 1905 ed edition (June 1905), 185^[40] Ephesians 4:28 

Victoria: Chapter 4

My next battle started around the dinner table on Christmas Day, 2016, and I'm not talking about the fight for the last piece of Aunt Sabra's blueberry pie.It began when cousin John asked me what I thought I was going to do in the way of earning a living. Hartland wasn't exactly a boom town, and hadn't been for a good hundred years. I said I was thinking of farming. That, along with sailing or soldiering, was what we Rumfords usually ended up doing, and like most Marines I'd seen enough of boats to last me a while."What you gonna faam?" John asked, the flat, nasal "a" instead of "r" suggesting he hadn't been outside Maine much."Waal," I said, talking Down East myself, "I thought I might try soybeans.""Don't see them much up heah.""Didn't see wine up heah either ‘til Wyly put in his vineyard. I gather his wine is selling pretty well now," I said."I'll tell you why you don't see soybeans up here or on many other family farms," said Uncle Fred. "It's oil from soybeans that makes money, and the federal government makes it just about impossible to transport soybean oil or any other vegetable oil unless you're a big corporation. Under federal regulations, vegetable oil is treated the same as oil from petroleum when it comes to shipment. You've got to get a hugely expensive Certificate of Financial Responsibility to cover any possible oil spill. You'll never get the capital to get started.""But vegetable oil and petroleum are completely different. That doesn't make any sense," I replied."I didn't say it made sense, I just said that's what Washington demands. It makes no sense at all. Spilled vegetable oil is no big problem. It's biodegradable. But the federal government mandates a spill be cleaned up the same way for both, even though that's unnecessary. You need to scoop up any petroleum product if it spills, especially into water. But if you just let vegetable oil disperse, bacteria will eat it up. Anyway, the government doesn't care that we lose hundreds of millions of dollars each year in vegetable oil that isn't produced or exported. The bottom line is, as a small farmer, you can't do it."Great, I thought. First politics gets me thrown out of the Marine Corps, now it's trying to keep me from farming. "Okay, I'll grow potatoes. We certainly grow enough of those here in Maine," I said."Only land up at the Old Place that'll grow potatoes is the bottom land. Government won't let you do that neither," said cousin John.This was starting to get old. "What do you mean the government won't let me grow down there? That's the best land on the place. The rest is just rock," I replied."It's the EPA, the so-called ‘Environmental Protection Agency," answered Uncle Fred. "They declared all that ground a ‘protected wetland‘ a couple years ago. It's yours, or ours, but it might as well be on the moon for all the good it does us. We can't touch it."Protected wetland? Hell, I didn't plan to grow potatoes in the ponds. "That's our property. We've owned it since Andrew Jackson was President. And most of it's dry. How can they tell us we can't farm it?" I asked, betraying how much those of us in the military got out of touch at times.That got the whole table smiling the thin smile that passes for a good laugh among New Englanders. "Property rights don't mean squat any more," said Uncle Earl, who was the town lawyer. "The government just tells you what to do or what not to do and dares you to fight them. They have thousands of lawyers, all paid by your tax money, and they can tie you up in court for years. You got a few hundred thousand extra dollars you'd like to spend on legal fees?"I didn't, nor did anyone else, I gathered. "So we're helpless, is what you're saying?" I asked."Pretty much, unless you've got a lot of money for lawyers or to buy some politicians and get them in on your side," said Earl. "It doesn't even matter if the law is with you, because you can't afford the fight and they can. If they lose, it means nothing to them; they still get their paychecks from the government. If you lose, you're finished, and even if you win, you're usually finished because the legal fight has left you bankrupt. What it comes down to is that we're not a free country any more.""What King George III was doing to us in 1776 wasn't a hill of beans compared to this," I said. "We didn't take it then. Why are we taking it now?"At that point, the women turned the conversation to how Ma's stuffing was the best they'd ever had. It always was.

***

Early next year, that year being 2017, I stopped in at Hartland's one industry, the tannery. My old high school buddy Jim Ebbitt was the personnel department there, and this matter of earning an income was beginning to press a bit on my mind. But I knew the tannery always had some kind of opening, and after my years in the infantry I didn't mind getting my hands dirty. They didn't call us "earth pigs" for nothing.Jim was glad to see me, but he couldn't give me any good news. "Sorry," he said, "but like every American company, we're having to cut jobs, not add ʻem. The problem is this "free trade" business. What it means is that American workers are up against those in places like Mexico, Haiti, and now all of central and south America, since they expanded NAFTA into AFTA and took in the whole hemisphere. Labor costs now get averaged across national boundaries; it pulls their wages up and pushes wages here down. Of course, we don't actually cut wages, but with inflation rising, we don't need to. We just keep wages steady and cut the number of jobs. Maybe that will keep this plant in business. Then again, maybe it won't. In any event, it means if I had a job to offer you, and I don't, you'd quickly find yourself getting poorer, not richer, if you took it.""But you just put a lot of money into this plant," I replied. "Hell, it used to stink up the whole town. Now you can't smell it. Maybe that EPA does some good after all.”“You think so?" asked Jim. "You're right that we had to clean up our processes here, and we did put some money into the place. But the main thing we did was move most of the work on the fresh hides to Mexico. That cut 23 jobs here, jobs now held by Mexicans. I guess you can't make Mexico stink any worse than it already does.""And the EPA still isn't done with us," he added. "They've got another investigation going now, which will cost us tens of thousands in legal fees even if that's all it does. Seems they think we're still doing something to the river.""River looks clean to me," I replied."It is clean. It's cleaner than it's ever been, at least since industry, and jobs, first came to this valley. But that doesn't count to bureaucrats in Washington. They've told us we might have to build a full water treatment plant, which would cost us millions. If they rule that way, it'll be the end of the company here. It would take us 50 years to pay off that debt. There's not that much money in leather any more, not up against the foreign competition."I thanked Jim for his time and drove back to the Old Place. My mind was no easier. Next day I'd pull my last ace out of my sleeve and go see my cousin, who had a car restoration place down near Pittsfield. I knew he was doing well, restoring old cars and selling them to the Summer People."Sure," Ed said, when I stopped in on him, "business is good and I need a couple folk. I know you'd do good work. But I can't offer you or anyone else around here a job. EEOC won't let me.""EEOC?" I'd heard the initials, but didn't know much more about it."The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission. They come around and tell you how many blacks, Hispanics, women, whatever you have to hire. Of course, all my employees are white, because everybody up here is white. I guess Maine winters are kinda hard on black folk and those from south of the border. Anyway, that doesn't count with them. They've issued an order that the next six people I hire must be blacks. The effect, of course, is that I can't hire anyone, not even you."This was the nuttiest thing I'd heard yet. "You must be kidding," I replied. "How can they make you hire blacks where there aren't any?""I don't know," Ed said. "But I can't fight the EEOC in court. I'm a small business and can't afford it. I just can't expand, is what it comes down to. And you know how badly we need jobs up here."I did, from growing personal experience. "But someone must care that this is completely absurd," I said. "There has got to be a limit somewhere to what Washington can do to us.""If there is, I don't know where," Ed replied, obviously a beaten man."You and I, and most folk up here, are members of the middle class. That means the government doesn't do anything for us, it only does things to us. If you know a way to change that, I'd like to hear it. But these days, unless you're some kind of "minority," you don't have any rights. Frankly, it's just not our country any more."That summed it up pretty well. Somewhere along the line, in the last 30 years or so, somebody had taken our country away from us.We remembered what our country was like. It was a safe, decent, prosperous place where normal, middle class people could live good lives.And it was gone.I was beginning to think that what I wanted to do was help take our country back. How I could do that, and how I could earn a living, were both puzzles. But where there's a will, God often opens a way.

The View From Olympus 28: Interests

A realistic foreign policy is based not on Santa's list of who is naughty or nice, but on interests. What are America's interests in the Crimea or in all of Ukraine for that matter? It has only one: maintaining a good relationship with Russia.It matters not a fig to America who controls the Crimea or Ukraine. These are local issues, of concern only to the locals. We should no more be preparing to take action over what Russia does there than Russia took action over our invasions of Grenada or Panama. Those places were in our sphere; Crimea and the Ukraine are in Russia's.In contrast, it is important to our interests to have a good working relationship with Russia. We need Russian help in other parts of the world, most of which we should not be involved in but nonetheless are. Russia is a major exporter of oil; a sudden tightening of the oil market could wreak havoc on our economy. The most important interest at stake in our relations to Russia, and it is a very important one indeed, is the fact that Russia holds Christendom's vast flank that stretches from the Black Sea to Vladivostok. Islam, our common and deadly enemy, is pressing north along much of that flank. We need to make sure it holds, which means Russia merits our friendship and support, not “sanctions”.Russia, America, and Europe share a common interest in ensuring that events in Ukraine do not generate ripples. While the likelihood of a 1914-style ladder of escalation appears small, all three parties need to work to keep it small. How fortunate America is to have the prudent, conservative (in foreign policy) Mr. Obama in office instead of a howler for war such as the senator from Hell, Mr. McCain, or his faithful Tonto the senator from Heck, Mr. Graham. The situation demands similar prudence on the part of President Putin and Chancellor Merkel.The latter has regrettably been showing signs of forgetting a basic rule of central European diplomacy, namely that when Russia and Germany are allied both do well and when they are in opposition both do badly. The realism that seems to occupy the Russian Foreign Ministry might hit on a way to compel Frau Merkel to take a moderate course: compensation. Compensation is what traditional diplomacy would have offered Germany, as the primary European power. In return for absorbing the Crimea (and Russia should not try to take more, at least at present), Russia should offer Russian-held East Prussia to Germany. The Kaliningrad Oblast is a strategic liability to Russia, and offering it to Germany would put Frau Merkel in an interesting position, especially since many Germans who vote for the CDU would very much like to have Königsberg again. It would also royally sock it to the Poles.A traditional, realistic Great Power approach appears to offer America's interests, and Russia's and Germany's, the best protection in the Ukrainian crisis. However, it still falls short of the orientation all three Powers should share. That is the realization that in the face of the threat of Fourth Generation war to the state system as a whole, all three, and every other state too, should be setting aside the competition among states in favor of unity in defense of the state system. From that perspective, the current situation does echo 1914, where three monarchies that clung to an outdated paradigm, that of dynastic competition, doomed each other. The power of 4GW, vastly underestimated in all foreign ministries, is such that states that refuse to unite against it may similarly doom themselves. It may not look like that at the moment, but at the beginning of a paradigm shift, it never does.

Victoria: Chapter 3

One nice thing about Maine is that you can go home again. We Rumfords had been doing it for a couple hundred years. The men of our family, and sometimes the women too, would head out on their great adventure—crewing on a clipper bound for China, settling Oregon, converting the heathen (Uncle Bert got eaten in the Congo), going to war—but those who survived usually came back home again to Hartland and its surrounding farms.Whether they returned as successes or failures made little difference. As I'd heard a chaplain say, in his day Jesus Christ was accounted a spectacular failure, so failure wasn't something for Christians to worry much about. We had enough in our family to show we didn't. I was just the most recent.I wanted time alone to read, think, and simply live. I moved into what we called "The Old Place," a shingle Cape Cod up on one of Maine's few hills. The view down over the fields and ponds somehow helped the thinking part, especially in the evening as the water reflected the western sky, orange and crimson, fading to black.No one had lived in the old place since my grandparents died, but we kept it because it had always been ours. It had no electricity, and the well worked with a bucket on a windless; by modern standards I guess it wasn't a fit habitation. That suited me fine. I was tired of everything modern. I wanted a world with, as Tolkien put it, less noise and more green.I'd put some money by during my time in the Corps, enough to cover me for some months anyway; the garden and deer in season (or, if need be, out of season) would keep me from starving. The whole country was overrun with deer, more than when white men first came to North America, because there were so many restrictions on guns and hunting. In some places they had become pests; we literally could not defend ourselves from our own food.Once I got settled, I took up Professor Sanft's books, "that golden chain of masterpieces which link together in single tradition the more permanent experiences of the race," as one philosopher put it. Homer and Plato, Aristotle and Aristophanes, Virgil and Dante, and Shakespeare and the greatest literary work of all time, the Bible, which was once banned from American schools, which shows as well as anything what America had become.I had some trouble getting going—Plato isn't light reading—but I found my way in through my life-long study, war, beginning with the Anabasis of Xenophon. What a story! Ten thousand Greeks, cut off and surrounded in the middle of their ancient enemy, the Persian Empire, have to hack and march their way back out again—and they made it home. It was as exciting as anything Rommel or "Panzer" Meyer or any other modern commander wrote.From Xenophon and Herodotus and Thucydides and Caesar and Tacitus and all the rest, military and not (I did finally make it through Plato, too), I learned three things. Maybe they were basic, even simple. I'm not a great philosopher. But they were important enough to shape the rest of my life.The first was that these ancient Greeks and Romans and Hebrews and more modern Florentines and Frenchmen and Englishmen both were us and made us. They had the same thoughts you and I have, more or less, but they had them for the first time, at least the first time history records. Do you want a thoroughly modern send-up of Feminism in all its silliness? Then read Aristophanes‘ Lysistrata—it's only 2500 years old. For a chaser, recall the line of 17^th century English poet and priest John Donne: "Hope not for mind in woman; at their best, they are but mummy possessed." Pick any subject you want, except science, and these folks were there before us, thousands of years before us in some cases, with the same observations, thoughts and comments we offer today. We are their children.That led to my second lesson: nothing is new. The only person since the 18^th century to have a new idea was Nietzsche, and he was mad. Even science was well along the road we still follow by the time Napoleon was trying to conquer Europe.Back in the old USA, newness—novelty—was what everyone wanted. Ironically, that too was old, but early 21^st century Americans were so cut off from their past they didn't know it (or much else, beyond how to operate the TV remote and their cell phone).You see, sometime around the middle of the 18th century, we men of the West struck Faust's bargain with the Devil. We could do anything, have anything, say anything, with one exception: verweile doch, du bist so schön. We could not tarry, we could not rest, we could not get it right and then keep it that way. Always we must have something new: that was the bargain, and ultimately the reason we pulled our house down around us.Satan, like God, has a sense of humor. His joke on us was that most of the stuff we thought was new, wasn't. Especially the errors, blunders, and heresies; they had all been tried, and failed, and understood as mistakes long, long before. But we had lost our past, so we didn't know. We were too busy passing around "information" with our computers to study any history. So it was all new to us, and we had to make the same mistakes over again. The price was high.The third lesson, and the one that shaped the rest of my life, was that these thoughts and lessons and concepts and morals that make up our Western culture—for that is what these books contain—were worth fighting for. As Pat Buchanan said, they were true, they were ours, and they were good. They had given us, when we still paid attention to them, the freest and most prosperous societies man has ever known.They were all bought at a price. Christ died on a cross. The Spartans still lie at Thermopylae. Socrates served Athens as a soldier before he drank its hemlock, also obedient to its laws. Cicero spoke on duty and died at the hands of the Roman government. Saints'dies natales, their birthdays, were the days they died to this world. Every truth we hold and are held by is written in blood, and sweat and tears and cold hours scribbling in lonely garrets with not enough to eat. None of it came cheap – none of it.We Victorians, those of my generation anyway, know that fighting for the truth is not a metaphor. We killed for it and we died for it. By the 21^st century, that was the only way to save it, weapon in hand. That, too, is nothing new, just another lesson we had forgotten and had to learn all over again.