Make America America Again

One of the greatest services that Pat Buchanan performed for America in his discussions about immigration  was to emphasize the place of culture in that conversation.  While talk about the subject generally tends to revolve around questions of legality versus illegality, crime, and its impact on wages and jobs--and these are all important matters, mind you--discussing the impact immigration has on America's culture has found much less of a place at the table. 

The reader may find himself asking, “Why are you talking about culture again?  How come you're always harping on that subject?”  The answer is because culture is important.  Culture is, in fact, more important for the long-term direction of a nation than are its electoral politics, its economic choices, or its foreign policies.  Different types of governments, economic booms and busts may all come and go, but the culture of a nation will set the tone for how the nation responds to and weathers these things.

I've discussed before how inseparable a culture is from the people who bear it.  When large numbers of people live together in community, they develop unique cultures that are then perpetuated for generations upon generations.  Culture is among the most persistent of factors in the human experience.  The culture of a people is usually only changed by either eradicating that people (the least desirable means) or by putting into place active, vigourous, systematic efforts at loosing them from their former culture and embedding them into a new culture (assimilation). 

By all rights, talk about culture should impact the American national discussion on immigration.  It doesn't, but it should.  The reason for this is because we are currently in a situation where, rather than assimilating foreigners to our own culture and mores as formerly happened, we are instead seeing our traditional Anglo-Saxon culture being weakened and undermined by millions of unassimilated foreign entrants, largely from Latin America.  These immigrants have reached a critical mass of numbers such that they are forming large pockets of Latin American (primarily Mexican) culture on our own soil.  This is not at all surprising.  Whenever a nation pursues a policy of accepting massive numbers of immigrants while refusing to require them to assimilate themselves to our folkways and culture, you will see what we're seeing take place today.

Cultures as holistic, all-encompassing entities cannot exist in the same place at the same time.  One will always come to dominate the other for any number of good or bad reasons.  What we're seeing throughout the American Southwest, as well as in inner cities (and not so inner cities) all across the country, is the Mexification of large swathes of American geography.  Because post-1965 America has pointedly refused to require assimilation, we're finding that in areas where the majority becomes Mexican, the culture becomes Mexican as well. 

This is not a good thing.  My firm belief is that all cultures are not equal.  Intrinsically speaking, some cultures are better than others, for objective and quantifiable reasons.  Cultural equalitarianism is simply not an intellectually valid belief.  This being said, I will then apply it by saying that I believe America's Anglo-Saxon derived culture is better than the various Latin American cultures we see entering our land.  This is not to say, obviously, that Latin Americans themselves are bad people. The problem is not the people themselves, but the cultures that they carry with them.

An honest assessment suggests that Latin American cultures contain a disturbing number of pathologies that make them incompatible with tradition American Anglo-Saxon culture.  They tend to encourage a subservient, even obsequious, attitude towards government, with its caudillos and jefes, that makes Latin Americans more naturally socialistic.  Latin American cultures tend to reject the right of self-defence, thus making them more likely to disarm their populations.  They have a much higher tolerance for corruption, both political and private, than do Northern European-derived cultures.  Latin American cultures tend to be low trust cultures. They tend to place less value on education, scholarship, and innovation.  They tend to be more socially stratified and have less tolerance for individuals who seek to better their social and economic statuses.  Because there is little cultural tradition of consensual self-government and orderly transfer of governmental power, much of the history of Latin America (as well as a lot of what we still see today) involves a cycle of revolution followed by dictatorship followed by revolution followed by dictatorship...

What I'm describing above goes more deeply into what “culture” actually is than does the rather superficial sense that most people have, meaning things like “ethnic foods, ethnic clothing, and musical styles” that they can gawk at when visiting an ethnic restaurant.  “Culture” encompasses the way a group of people tend to thinking, feel, and act about...everything.  It defines their responses, how they interpret social and interpersonal stimuli from the world around them.  The superficial view of “food and music” as culture is merely the tip of a deep, deep iceberg (see below).

If we continue to see Latin American cultures displace American culture in increasingly large regions of our own country, we're eventually going to see the United States become Latin American in culture.  And that means that all the cultural attributes that made America what she historically was, and the successes that those attributes brought, will no longer be there to sustain continued American success as a polity. 

What happens when America finishes becoming the sort of low trust society like we see across Latin America?  What about when we become as corrupt as is typically seen south of the border?  Will investors want to park their money here, knowing that an American caudillo might well nationalise their assets to curry favour with an increasingly socialistic population?  What happens to America's research and development culture when the value we place on education reaches Latin American levels?  How many Nobel laureates in the sciences has Latin America had?  The answer: from Mexico to Tierra del Fuego, they've had a total of six, the same number as Belgium alone.  As I've pointed out before, we can't expect our Constitution--uniquely English in derivation as it is--to survive long in a non-Anglo-Saxon cultural setting. 

Simply put, if Mexican society is so bad that it has already run off a full quarter of its own population, why on earth would we want to transplant the same thing here on our side of the border? 

This is why the American people need to get serious about regaining control of our immigration apparatus back from the current gaggle of globalists, internationalists, and chamber of commerce-style plutocrats who currently use it to provide for themselves a virtually limitless supply of cheap labour to be used to both save them money and destroy traditional America. What to do about the immigrants from south of our border? Plainly, we must send home the vast majority who bring no special skills or knowledge to our society while working assiduously to assimilate and fold into our own culture those who do bring to the table skills or talents we are interested in, and who are allowed to remain here. We really do need to make America America again, by studiously preserving our own unique (and successful) culture as a gift to our posterity. 

The Renegade Party’s Underwhelming #FrenchRevolution

Over the Memorial Day weekend, prominent #NeverTrump leader Bill Kristol tweeted that they had an “impressive” candidate with a “real chance” poised to launch a movement conservative approved independent challenge to Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the general election. The NeverTrumpers have taken to calling their efforts the Renegade Party, although they are less a party in the political sense than they are in the sense of being a faction.Kristol has now confirmed that that potential candidate is National Review writer David French. Despite some happy face NeverTrump cheerleading, the response to this news has been, shall we say, underwhelming. French is not without some impressive credentials. He is a Harvard Law School grad (which is a huge plus with the kind of elitists behind NeverTrump), an Iraqi War vet, and the author of several books in addition to his writing gig at National Review. The only problem is, no one outside political obsessive circles has heard of him.I am not a credentialist, especially with regard to third party candidates, so I’m not going to belittle Mr. French’s qualifications for the office of President. If he is thirty five years old and a natural born citizen, then he has all the qualifications he is required by the Constitution to have. In fact, I was in the process of writing a snarky article suggesting that Kristol was aiming too high in looking for a sitting Senator or Governor or other prominent reasonably current politician, and that he should lower his sights and go after a pundit when news of French’s potential candidacy broke. I was even going to suggest that if Kristol was so concerned that there be a neocon approved alternative in November, then perhaps he should consider running himself. The working title of this piece was Welcome to Third Party Land Mr. Kristol. It is now obsolete.While I’m not going to bash Mr. French’s qualifications lest my words come back to bite me if I am ever touting a third party candidate in the future, I will comment on what his selection says about the state of NeverTrump. On a post on another site where I write under my occasional nom de internet of Red Phillips, I predicted that the candidate would either be a pundit, a general, or an ex-politician who has been out of the game for a while. No active politician or person with much to lose was going to sign up for Kristol’s suicide mission and make himself a pariah with much of the Republican Party and the butt of everyone's jokes. My guess was that the candidate was going to be conservative pundit Erick Erickson. I was not far off. What French’s selection indicates is that no “big name” was willing to step up so one of the NeverTrump brainchildren had to take one for the team. French is a step down in notoriety from Erickson even, who is a fairly well known quantity in conservative circles.

Despite Mr. French’s lack of name recognition with the general public, those of us who have been following the NeverTrump effort, which are probably just as likely to be Trump supporters as Trump detractors, are familiar with Mr. French. He is one of a group of writers at National Review, that includes Kevin Williamson, David Harsanyi, Jay Nordlinger, and French himself, among others, who have devoted themselves obsessively to railing against Donald Trump. One of his more memorable efforts was a whiny piece protesting (way too much) the characterization of Donald Trump as an alpha male which I already commented on in my Real Men For Trump article.

Despite protests that it is about conservative purity or Trump’s temperament and demeanor, NeverTrump is really about keeping the Republican Party safe for the favored policies of the globalist, transnational elite--relatively open borders, “free” trade deals and a meddlesome internationalist foreign policy--against the rising tide of populist nationalism that the Trump-inspired rebellion in the Heartland represents. If it was really about conservative purity, then the NeverTrumpers would do the logical thing and get behind and work for the only “more conservative” third party of any national prominence, the Constitution Party and its nominee, Darrell Castle.I have previously divided Trump’s “conservative” critics into two types. Those who recognize that this is what NeverTrump is really about but talk in conservative movement speak to keep the rubes in line. In other words, shills. And those who do not recognize that this is what NeverTrump (and, really, movement conservative/neoconservative ideology and dogma in general) is all about. In other words, useful idiots. There is a certain earnestness to French’s anti-Trump pleas that made me until now think that maybe he just was not that smart and fell in the useful idiot category. Now that I realized he went to Harvard Law School and has written academic books on British warfare among other esoteric topics, I see that my assessment was off. He could not have graduated from Harvard Law and not recognize the keeping “conservatism” and the GOP safe for globalism aspect of the NeverTrump hysteria. Therefore, he is a shill. He is just a particularly convincing one.There is a part of me that almost feels sorry for Mr. French. He is like the no name actor who is picked to play some big role whose selection is then panned by critics and fans alike. He is clearly taking one for the team. My instinct is still to ask why Billy Boy did not step up. He is over thirty five and was born in New York and even went to Harvard. What is holding him back? But French already publicly emasculated himself when he wrote his afore mentioned pathetic beta male protest that “Trump really isn’t an alpha male,” so what dignity does he have left to preserve anyway? May the French Revolution continue to underwhelm.

Restore the Republic!

The Emperor Claudius supposedly annoyed his courtiers by frequently suggesting Rome restore the republic. In The Next Conservatism, the book I presented to Donald Trump, Paul Weyrich and I issued the same call. People may still say the United States is a republic, but in fact it has become an oligarchy controlled by monied interests and the politicians they openly and legally buy. Many office-holders come to Washington poor, but few of them leave that way. Paul and I quoted Governor Jerry Brown of California, not normally one of our favorite people, who said, "Unless you have recently given a politician a check for at least $1000, you don't count." Paul, who knew Capitol Hill as well as anybody, added, "Yes, they sell their votes," for the legalized bribes called "campaign contributions".If the American government is to recover its legitimacy, we need to reform the system. That includes taking the money out of politics. Not only must we ban campaign contributions, we must also block the many other ways Members of Congress and senior administration officials line their pockets, including having family members work for a lobbying firm you must use to reach the Member and going to work once they leave government for the interests they served when in office.How to fund campaigns without permitting bribes to politicans is a conundrum. Paul opposed public financing of campaigns, I support it. But if it is to create a level playing field, the challenger must receive several times as much funding as the incumbent to even the advantages of incumbency. What sitting Congress will ever vote for that?Tough as that will be to acheive, it alone would not be enough to restore the republic. The Next Conservatism suggests additional reforms, including term limits and limits on the length of Congressional sessions. As used to be the case, the real lives of Senators and Congressmen should be back home in their states and districts, not in Washington.One of our favorite reforms would be putting "None of the above" on every public ballot, with a rule that if it wins they have to call a new election with new candidates. Nothing would do more to raise the quality of candidates the parties put forward. Interestingly, Russian voters have this option and have used it, sending all the candidates packing.Conservatives have often been leery of ballot initiatives and referenda, but The Next Conservatism calls for making them legal in all states and at the federal level as well. Swiss voters regularly overrule their government through referenda, and they kept the Swiss federal government small and respectful of the people's liberties.Perhaps the most important reform is ending the abuse of federal government power to shove political correctness, which is really cultural Marxism, down the throats of the American people. America was never supposed to be an ideological state, a country where the government forced a certain set of beliefs on the public. Now, we see it suing states and withholding education funds to demand, in the name of "equality" that men be allowed to use women's bathrooms and locker rooms! Our ancestors would have met such demands with torches and pitchforks.Were I writing a new edition of our book, I would go beyond demanding an end to state ideology (any ideology). Both conservatives and liberal need to recognize that our country is culturally divided. Millions of Americans now accept the counter-culture of the 1960s as the valid, mainstream culture. Millions of other Americans reject that culture and adhere to our old Christian, Western morals and culture.This division has the potential to destroy our country, the United States of America, to fragment it the way we see other countries fragmenting in other parts of the world. No conservative wants to see that happen. Without the state, life is, as Hobbes warned us, nasty, brutish, and short. We do not want America to go the way of Syria or Iraq.Fortunately, our Constitution offers us an easy answer to this problem; federalism. Our Founding Fathers never imagined that life in Massachusetts and life in South Carolina would be the same, much less that the federal government would try to make them the same. They would rightly have considered that tyranny.Perhaps the most important reform to restore the republic is then this: allow some states to reflect the post-1960s culture and others to retain our traditional culture. Stop trying to make life everywhere the same. If we allow cultural variety once again on a state-by-state basis, which we once had, people can move to a place where they feel comfortable, where their values are affirmed instead of persecuted. This would allow us to live together in one country regardless of how much we differ in our beliefs and our behavior.Reforming the corrupt, ideological oligarchy in Washington and restoring the republic are fundamental to the next conservative agenda. They must be, if that agenda is to be more than eyewash. Should it succeed, Americans might once again be able to say the Pledge of Allegiance without the uncomfortable feeling that much of it is no longer true.

The One-Party State Reveals Itself

One of the many good things flowing from Donald Trump's campaign is that it has forced the one-party state to reveal itself, naked and unashamed. We have been a one-party state at least since the end of the Reagan presidency and perhaps since the defeat of Senator Robert A. Taft for the Republican nomination in 1952. More clever than the Soviet Union's one party, America's single party, the Establishment party, has presented itself to the peasants as two parties. But the fight between them is all sham. On essential policy, they are one party.Those policy positions are:

• America must rule the world, forcing the Establishment's agenda, including feminism and "gay rights", down the throats of every people on Earth. This translates into a policy of permanent war for permanent peace. The American middle class is left to pay the bill, in trillions of dollars poured into foreign sands and in the deaths of their children.
• Whatever Wall Street wants, Wall Street gets. Hillary is no less a whore for the one percent than any of Trump's Republican critics. Look where her money has come from. Besides minimal taxes, what Wall Street wants most is free trade, which has wiped out the good jobs, jobs that gave ordinary Americans a middle-class living standard.
• Cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness, is the unofficial but very real state ideology. Anyone who dissents from it must be banished from public life. Should the cultural Marxists get one more vote on the Supreme Court, Americans could face "hate speech" laws which will send any dissidents to the gulag. That has already happened in Canada and much of Europe. Cultural Marxism's long-term goals, established in 1919 by Gramsci in Italy and Lukacs in Hungary, are the destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion. Along the way it seeks to put blacks over whites, women over men, and gays over straights.
• America's borders must remain open to whoever wants to come here, in whatever numbers. Mass immigration from other, hostile cultures serves both Wall Street, which gets cheap labor, and cultural Marxism, which wants to out-vote native-born Americans and ensure its electoral dominance.

Trump has defied all these points of Establishment dogma. Terrified, Republican members of the One Party have rallied against him. Many have made it clear they will not vote for him, some indicating they will vote for Hillary instead. They have no choice but to oppose Trump (or, recently, try to convert him to their Establishment agenda; I suspect he smells the trap, because if he joins the One Party his support will evaporate). If they did not do so, they would lose their own Establishment membership. No prospect terrifies them more. But in so doing, they have shined the spotlight on the one-party state, Lady Godiva riding an elephant.The Republican wing of the Establishment party hopes Trump will go down to a catastrophic defeat, even if that gives the other, Democratic wing the presidency, both Houses of Congress, and the Supreme Court. After all, its all the same party, so who really cares? The worst possible outcome from their perspective is that the peasants' revolt succeeds and Donald Trump is our next president.But the peasants have seen through the game. They have a chance to vote for genuine change, and they are going to do just that. The May 11 Cleveland Plain Dealer reported that a recent poll showed Trump leading the Wicked Witch of the West in Ohio, within the poll's margin of error, but nonetheless ahead. It quoted Quinnipiac Poll assistant director Peter A. Brown as saying, "Six months from election day, the presidential race between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump in the three most crucial states, Florida, Ohio, and Pennsylvania, are too close to call."Interestingly, the Ohio poll showed Trump leading Clinton among white women 42% to 35%. Blacks, men and women, are overwhelmingly for Hillary, who is the black candidate no less than was Obama. Echoing the cultural Marxists, Establishment party Republicans wail that Trump is "anti-women". What that really means is anti-feminism. Cultural Marxism says all women are feminists. But in the real world, most women are not. Most women who work do so because they must, not because they want to. Most would rather be able to devote their lives to their family, their home, and their community.At this point, Americans face a real election, one where they can vote out the One Party. Watch for the Establishment to do everything in its power to take that choice away again.

Real Men For Trump

Many rightish critics of our current political state of affairs assert that modern mass democracy does not breed true statesmen, and some of them point to the success of Donald Trump as a case in point. (I say sincere rightish critics because globalist donor class shills masquerading as movement conservatives who are critical of Trump, such as Paul Ryan, Mitt Romney, Bill Kristol, the boys at National Review, et al, are not sincere.) And these sincere critics are certainly right. This point deserves separate elaboration, but suffice it to say that the suite of traits that make for a good campaigner in our modern democracy, especially at the national level, do not necessarily make for a good leader, and are even potentially antagonistic to each other. The current occupant of the Oval Office, who is a master campaigner but a lousy leader, is an excellent illustration of this.

I would suggest, in addition, that while modern mass democracy does not select for statesmen, neither does it select for men with traditional masculine virtues. Here’s a test. Think of all the national politicians you can. Which ones would you want on your side in a bar fight? I would take on 10 men if I had the late Jim Traficant, may God rest his soul, on my side, but what modern politician would inspire that sort of confidence? Are you charging into a bar fight with Bobby Jindal backing you up? John Kasich? Jeb Bush is a big fella, but would you want him by your side against a couple of bikers? Controlling for age, Chris Chrsitie, Rudy Giuliani and Peter King come to mind, but not many others, and it’s probably no coincidence that the latter two are ethnics. In fact, I think a lot of Christie’s early appeal, before he fell from grace with the bridge scandal, related to the fact that he’s scrappy and not a typical plastic glad-handing pol.

Modern society is becoming increasingly feminized and sexually androgynous. Walk into a mall in Anywhere, USA and look around. Where are the manly men? Studies have even demonstrated that testosterone levels in men are falling.

Enter Donald Trump. The appeal of Donald Trump surely has a lot to do with a visceral, instinctual reaction to this societal feminization. Even the Trump haters at National Review recognize this aspect of Trump’s appeal because they published this textbook example of protesting too much in response. Our friends in the manosphere have pegged Trump as a classic alpha male, and in many senses he is. Trump’s apparent sensitivity to slights perhaps comes into play in evaluating his “alphaness,” but whatever one may say about his alphaness, he is unmistakably a man. Watch him enter a room. The swagger is palpable. He walks in knowing he owns the room.

Trump’s unique list of celebrity endorsers demonstrates this “real man” angle to his appeal. As a way to needle Trump critics, I have been posting on social media every time a particularly masculine celebrity endorses Trump, but beyond me rubbing it in to the supporters of other candidates, it is easy to spot a real meaningful trend here. The list is pretty impressive. Celebrities (description attached for those that might be a bit more obscure) who have endorsed or said positive things about Trump include (in no particular order):

• Kevin Nash (professional wrestler)
• Adrien Broner (boxer)
• Lou Holtz
• Bobby Knight
• Gene Simmons
• Jimmy Buffett
• Bruce Willis
• Clint Eastwood
• Jean-Claude Van Damme
• Nick Mangold (offensive lineman)
• Pete Rose
• Johnny Damon (MLB)
• John Voight
• Rudy Giuliani
• Mark Martin (NASCAR Driver)
• Holly Holm (OK, not a man but she counts for the purposes of this list)
• Herschel Walker
• John Daly
• Chael Sonnen (UFC fighter)
• Kid Rock
• Tito Ortiz (UFC fighter)
• Jimmy McMillian (The Rent Is Too Damn High Party guy)
• Paul Teutul, Sr. (Orange County Choppers)
• John Rocker
• Sheriff Joe Arpaio
• Tim Allen
• Sylvester Stallone
• Tom Brady
• Dana White
• Robert Davi (actor)
• Chuck Yeager
• Mike Tyson
• Larry the Cable Guy
• Hulk Hogan
• Aissa Wayne (daughter of John Wayne, again not a man but important for the point of this list)
• Jesse James (West Coast Choppers)
• Stephen Baldwin
• Gary Busey
• Dennis Rodman (yes, I know about that picture in a dress)
• Lou Ferrigno (body builder, The Hulk)
• Ted Nugent
• Willie Robertson (Duck Dynasty)
• Jesse Ventura
• Charlie Sheen
• Mike Ditka
• Terrell Owens
• Wayne Allen Root (columnist, Libertarian VP nominee in 2008)
• Scott Baio
• Fred Williamson (actor, football player)
• Clay Buchholtz (pitcher)
• Bill Elliot (NASCAR driver)
• Chase Elliot (NASCAR driver)
• Ted DiBiase (professional wrestler)
• Richie Incognito (NFL lineman)
• Jerry Lawler (professional wrestler)
• Shawne Merriman (NFL linebacker)
• Ryan Newman (NASCAR driver)
• Digger Phelps (basketball coach)
• Chris Weidman (UFC)
• Latrell Sprewell (NBA)
• Meisha Tate (UFC Women’s Champion [for the record, Rhonda Rousey endorsed Bernie])
• Kevin Von Erich (professional wrestler)
• Lou Dobbs
• “Roosh” (manosphere writer)
• Dan Bilzerian (professional poker player)
• Alex Jones (radio host)
• Charlie Daniels
• Dean Cain (actor)
• Kurt Russell
• Curt Schilling

Whatever one may think of all the individuals on this list, there are no metrosexuals among them. Trump seems particularly popular with the NASCAR, professional wrestling, and UFC crowds. Hmmm… Compare this list to some of the manlets leading the #NeverTrump campaign – Senator Lindsey Graham, Southern Baptist leader Russell Moore and National Review writer Kevin Williamson come to mind.As a traditionalist conservative, I too value statesmanship, but in political campaigns I believe that my fellow political obsessives and wonks can often get so wrapped up in the details that they miss the big picture. No, for those who value decorum and the sanctity of the process, Trump is not a statesman. And to all the conservative movement gatekeepers and box checkers, like many of those who backed Ted Cruz, he is not a by the books “conservative” as that term is currently (and erroneously) defined. But elections aren’t determined by obsessives and wonks like us. They are determined by actual voters. They are rarely about the fine print. They are about the Gestalt, the meta. And with Trump, this meta is not just policy. It’s also aesthetic, and part of the Trump aesthetic is clearly push back against the increasing feminization and hostility to masculinity that is degrading our culture. This reaction is largely visceral, not rational, but it’s healthy nonetheless and undeniably conservative in a more basic sense of the term. Recognize it and work with it. Don’t fight it. Don’t let the details put you on the wrong side of the big picture.

Are We Ignoring a 4GW Asset?

Two recent articles in the New York Times suggest the West may be ignoring a potential asset in the fight against Islamic Fourth Generation entities such as ISIS.The May 9 Times carried an article titled "Muslim Leaders in the West Wage a Battle of Theology With ISIS, Stoking Its Anger". The piece reports on eleven anti-ISIS imams or Islamic scholars who, working in the West, argue publicly that ISIS's theology is wrong and that Islam does not support its actions. (I've read the Koran, and it could be cited either way.) ISIS has called for the eleven to be killed, which is not surprising. The Times quotes a Canadian Moslem as saying, "This is what hurts ISIS the most."Indeed it does, because Fourth Generation war is above all a contest for legitimacy. The legitimacy of Islamic 4GW entities such as ISIS and al Qaeda rests pirmarily on their theological claims. Only Moslems can credibly bring those claims into question, at least in the eyes of other Islamics. On the moral level of war, 4GW jihad can face no greater danger.Obviously, Western governments should be ramping up these theological attacks on ISIS et. al. They must do so covertly or they will undermine the legitimacy of the critics. But it seems that in Europe they may be missing an opportunity to do something similar.The April 27 Times carried a story, "Europe Struggles to Manage Who Return From ISIS". It reported that

At least 1,300 European jihadists have returned to the Continent, and those are only the ones identified by the police. Three times as many Europeans may have gone to Syria...

The question facing European countries is what to do with the returnees. The two main options seem to be "nothing" or "arrest them":

At the heart of the debate is whether to take pre-emptive legal action against people who have not committed terrorist acts or even been implicated in a plot, but who have simply been to Syria and possibly received training in Islamic State camps...At least 14 European countries have made receiving terrorism training a criminal offense.

What about seeing thses returnees instead as potential recruits against ISIS? Like anti-ISIS Islamic scholars, they would have an ability to hurt ISIS on the moral level of war. Give them (supervised) computers and let them go after ISIS in all the places where other young men like themselves are being recruited.The Times reported that many of the returnees claim to have turned against ISIS. Speaking of one group, the Times wrote that

The men now claim to reject Islamic State ideology and tactics and profess regret for their "stupidities," as one put it under questioning.But investigators are well aware that Islamic State training manuals urge recruits to practice the art of taquiya, or concealment.

Well, what better way to test those who claim to have recanted than by giving them a chance to go after ISIS on the Internet? Those who refuse are presumably still jihadis and should be sent straight to prison or into exile. Those who take up the offer will soon find themselves under sentence of death by ISIS, which should work moderately well to cement their renewed loyalty to their state. It's almost as foolproof as trial by downing for witches.Over and over, Western state security services show themselves incapable of understanding the moral level of war, which John Boyd argued was the most powerful level. We pour billions into the war of assassination by drone strike, which works powerfully for our 4GW enemies on the moral level. Now it seems we are ignoring a Boydian opportunity to fold our enemies back on themselves at the moral level by using Europe's returnees against them. A basic law of war is that a higher level trumps a lower. We focus on winning at the physical level while letting ourselves lose at the moral level, which means that in the end, we lose. And that is exactly what we are doing.

The Next Conservatism: What Is Conservatism?

In this series of columns, we are exploring The Next Conservatism, the last book Paul Weyrich and I wrote together. It offers something this election year needs, namely a conservatism that addresses the issues of today and tomorrow, not yesterday. Ronald Reagan's agenda was great for the 1980s, but that was some time ago (Paul Ryan, take note).The Next Conservatism begins by asking the question, "What is conservatism?" It is an important question because the word "conservatism" has been stolen. It is now applies to many things that historically have been conservatism's opposites, including spreading democracy world-wide (that was known first as Jacobinism, then Wilsonianism, and conservatives have always opposed both), demanding an American world empire (which means the end of liberty at home, as the Founding Fathers warned us), and a reduction of life to nothing but getting and spending. Conservatives used to know the difference between value and price.The Next Conservatism's definition is that of Russell Kirk. Kirk may have been the only real conservative in the old National Review crowd. Stressing that conservatism is not an ideology, Kirk saw the conservative mind as embracing ten broad principles:

1. Human nature is unchanging and moral truths are permanent;
2. Conservatives believe life should be guided by custom, habit, and Tradition, which reflect the accumulated wisdom of many generations;
3. As Dr. Samuel Johnson said, the only true test of the merits of anything is time, and things ancient deserve our respect because they are old;
4. The first conservative political rule is prudence, which includes judging political proposals by their likely long-term effects;
5. Conservatives value variety and therefore reject equality, which seeks to lower everyone to the same level;
6. Quests for utopia lead to disaster, and society will always be imperfect because man is imperfect;
7. Freedom and property depend on each other, and where property is not safe there will soon be no freedom;
8. Conservatives oppose collectivism but want community, knowing man is not made for a solitary existence;
9. Power and the quest for power must be contained or the state will come to rule over all in everything; and
10. Conservatism recognizes the need for change and reform but insists they proceed slowly and carefully, not discarding the lessons previous generations have learned. Order must always be maintained.

To Kirk's list Paul and I added the statement that we are cultural conservatives, which we defined (with Kirk's approval) in these words, in a book Free Congress Foundation published in the 1980s:

Cultural conservatism is the belief that there is a necessary, unbreakable, and causal relationship between traditional Western, Judeo-Christian values, definitions of right and wrong, ways of thinking and ways of living--the parameters of Western culture--and the secular success of Western societies: their prosperity, their liberties, and the opportunities they offer their citizens to lead fulfilling, rewarding lives. If the former are abandoned, the latter will be lost.

As has happened on a broad scale since that definition was offered thirty years ago, and to an even greater degree if we look back to our country's last normal decade, the 1950s. Then, it was esay for a blue-collar man to get a good job, one that paid enough that he could give his family a middle-class standard of living on one income.In this year's election, the popular outrage over the decline of the middle class, the wasting of our children's lives in unnecessary overseas wars and the ravages cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness, has inflicted on our culture has broken into the open. I do not think it will be put back into the bottle anytime soon. If it is to bear fruit in terms of restoring America's greatness, it must turn, not just to conservatism, but to cultural conservatism. Culture is the basis for everything else, and util we again get it right all else will continue its downward spiral. As we shall see, The Next Conservatism talks about how we might find our old culture again.

Five Elements of a Rational Immigration Policy

Immigration--both legal and illegal--is one of the hottest topics in American politics today.  Despite the widespread perception that Donald Trump created the current wave of anti-immigration sentiment in this country, it has actually been around for quite a while before him. Trump merely served to catalyze this sentiment’s departure from the shadows and into the limelight, an opening of the Overton Window, if you will.  However, Americans have become increasingly disenchanted with our broken and anti-American immigration policy for over two decades.  Mark Krikorian was writing about the need to restrict immigration back in 2008.  Before that, the American Right successfully pressured Congress into rejecting--if narrowly--George W. Bush’s effort to push through amnesty.  Even before Bush’s administration, Pat Buchanan was laying the groundwork for a return to an America First immigration policy by focusing his discussion both on jobs and on culture. 

However, with the ever-increasing likelihood that the Trumpening of America will become a reality, it’s time to transition from simply calling for “less immigration” toward a more constructive view of how our immigration policies actually ought to be reformed and crafted.  What would the elements be of a genuinely rational immigration policy look like?

First, any immigration policy must, must, must revolve around the fundamental premise that it operates for the good of this nation and the people of this nation.  It will take America’s needs into account.  The mere desire of people from other countries to come here will not, and should not be, a concern.  If America needs you, you may come in.  If we don’t, then that’s too bad.  The assessment of these needs will be realistic and rational, and will be based on what will benefit us.  This will be the premise that drives everything else.  Ideally, it would be coupled with long-term policies designed to encourage Americans to enter the STEM and other fields which currently constitute most of the “need” for ever-expanding H1-B and other visa programs.  Make spaces for Americans first, and then fill in the holes with talented foreigners.  Likewise, first priority of access to the “low skill” labor market must be given to the millions of Americans who have been displaced by cheap foreign laborers who have essentially destroyed our wage scale.

Second, and related to the above, the restricted access to America’s job market must be coupled with efforts to guarantee the quality of the immigrants for whom the doors are opened.  While we do not really need millions of low-skill, no-education Paco-the-lettuce-pickers, we certainly could use some Robertos with doctoral degrees in organic chemistry.  The system must have rigorous “quality controls” in place.  This isn’t unprecedented.  Even back in the “good old days” of mass immigration through Ellis island and all that, we turned away all kinds of people who didn’t meet the criteria we were looking for or who were thought to be potential detriments to our society--the criminally inclined, those with low IQs, those with diseases, those who were suspected of not being willing to work.  So today, we must take greater steps to screen out known criminals, those with low IQs, those with no special skills, and so forth.  Our policy on immigration should be that those who do come here should enrich, rather than dilute, the quality of our society. 

Third, we should do away with “short term” immigration.  If someone comes here from abroad to live and work, then there should be the intention on their part to actually go all the way and become Americans.  This will increase their ties to and loyalty for this nation.  Only the seriously committed will want to come.  Those who just want to make money and send it home will be less able to do so.  Those who come to work for a few years and then carry our industrial and technological knowledge back home will be excluded.  On the other hand, those who wish to entrust themselves to America and become one of us may do so.

Fourth, assimilation must be mandatory.  Any sane immigration policy must recognize that there is no such thing as “magic soil.”  Mere geographical location does not impart a new outlook on life.  If someone is going to become an American, then they must become an American, not a “technically” American who is really still a foreigner in heart and spirit.  It is common to speak of “ugly Americans” who go overseas and then expect everyone in foreign countries to cater and adapt to them.  We should end the phenomenon of “ugly Mexicans” and “ugly Vietnamese” and “ugly Nigerians” who immigrate here and then form ethnic enclaves, expecting that the signs and the ballots will be printed in their native languages, that Americans will bend over backwards to avoid offending any of their cultural sensitivities, and all the rest.  Diversity destroys a nation, and we must not allow it among the immigrants we allow to come in.  Both those yet to come under such a policy, as well as those already here, must be strongly encouraged to assimilate, learn English, adopt our mores, and so forth.  Failure to do so according to quantifiable measures should result in termination of any visas and green cards.  There must be a conscious deracination of any foreign elements and their absorption into the social body of America.   

Fifth – and this really should go without saying – we must adopt a zero tolerance policy towards illegal immigration.  Build the wall.  Enforce the laws against hiring illegals.  Deport illegals as they come in contact with law enforcement.  Encourage self-deportation.  Strictly oversee welfare programs to ensure that nobody here illegally is receiving a dime.   Doing these will not be nearly as expensive as the long-term costs of not doing them.   One commonly expressed policy idea that should not be coupled with this is that of permanently excluding all who have ever come here illegally.  Such a policy would actually serve to retard the repatriation of illegal immigrants as it would remove from them the hope of being able to return legally some day, and hence make them more determined to evade the enforcement of the laws.  In the spirit of the points above, if there are people here illegally but who genuinely would make serious positive contributions to our society, my belief is that we should allow them to do so--as they obey our laws and come here in the manner that we have prescribed. 

Really, while I am sure that these suggestions would be met with howls of indignation in many circles, I don’t really see them as anything other than a simple restatement of common sense. Of course a well-reasoned immigration policy will look to our needs first, will encourage national unity, will reject the divisiveness of “diversity,” and will act to protect the interests of the “Average Joe” Americans who constitute this nation. Whether all, or even any, of these goals would be met post-Trumpening is anyone’s guess. However, these ought to be put out there into the marketplace of ideas so that they can serve to leaven the discussion on immigration with a little common sense. Tim Dunkin blogs at Neo-Ciceronian Times.

Fourth Generation War Evolves

An article in the April 12 New York Times points to possible evolution in 4GW, evolution that would make the threat it poses to states all the more serious. Titled, "Jihadi Mentor Mingled Crime with Religion: 'Gangster Islam' Drew Recruits in Brussels," the piece tells the story of Khalid Zerkani, a radical Islamic in Brussels who recruited young men to wage jihad both in Syria and in Europe. More gangster than Islamic scholar, Zerkani preferred recruits who had a criminal past:

Belgian security officials and people who know Mr. Zerkani said he had assured Molenbeek's wayward youth that past criminal convictions were not an obstacle to the Islamic cause, but a vital foundation.

The Times quotes an expert on Molenbeek, a heavily Islamic part of Brussels, Hind Fraihi, as saying that Islamic extremism there "has mutated...into a criminal enterprise driven by 'the synergy between banditism and Islam.'"From the state's perspective, one of the challenging aspects of 4GW is that it faces not just multiple opponents, but multiple kinds of opponents, ranging from gang members through people belonging to specific ethnic groups (e.g., Chechens) to religious fanatics. There can be no "one size fits all" answer to the diverse challenges 4GW presents.However, the state also benefits from the fact that its 4GW opponents are so different. The success of one does not necessarily benefit all; in fact it can weaken others. If one is surging, the state can concentrate against it while putting others on the back burner.The threat to the state would grow if 4GW entities of different kinds began working together. This is what the Times story suggests could have happened in Molenbeek. If the criminals were lone operators, no more than petty criminals, then it probably does not change much. However, if they were gang members, then the situation could be more serious.Gangs are classic 4GW entities because the provide a wide variety of services, starting with protection, that puts them in direct competition with the state. They thrive where the state is too weak or corrupt to perform its duties, duties the gangs can perform. When that happens, legitimacy flows away from the state and to the gangs.Should gangs and other types of 4GW entities such as jihadis start cooperating against a recognized common enemy, the state, then 4GW would have evolved in an important way. The state would be less able to focus on one type of challenger because others would immediately take advantage of being neglected. Already thinly-stretched states would be stretched further, sometimes to the breaking point. 4GW would itself in effect become conscious as a Ding an sich.Again, a gang-jihadi alliance may not have happened in Molenbeek. My guess is that probably it did not, at least not yet. But the many Molenbeeks splashed across Europe are each a Petri dish where 4GW is evolving. That evolution will include both false starts and steps forward for 4GW. There is no way to stop the process except to cleanse the dish. PS: In Syria and Iraq, what seemed an important evolutionary step for 4GW may be proving a false start. That step is the move by ISIS to form a caliphate, which is to say to take and hold territory. Light cavalry warfare, the only type of warfare Arabs are good at, is poorly suited to holding ground. Doing so also has made ISIS targetable by the slow-adapting but powerful firepower delivery systems found in state militaries. The inability of pure Islam to govern is alienating the people under ISIS's control. It is far too soon to write ISIS off, especially in Iraq where the state and its armed forces are both mirages. But I would not be surprised if in the long run 4GW entities which attempt to replace the state are less successful than those which prefer to operate within a hollowed-out state, e.g., Hezbollah.

The Election: What Really Matters

Virtually all the reporting about this fall's presidential election focuses on the candidates and the question of who is going to win nomination and election. That is to be expected. But it misses what really matters.The likelihood that either the nominating contests or the election itself will bring change is small. The machinations of the bosses in both political parties to keep the anti-Establishment candidates from being nominated (Trump in the Republican Party and Sanders in the Democratic) become increasingly open. They are likely to succeed in both cases. In the improbable case that one party nominates its anti-Establishment contender, the entire Establishment will come together to demonize him, frightening the public into voting for more of the same. The model will be Lyndon Johnson's campaign against Barry Goldwater in 1964. Presumably we will see television ads showing little girls picking flowers snatched away to be white slaves in the harem of either a plutocrat or a socialist.Should a miracle happen and both Trump and Sanders be nominated, the Establishment would be undone. I would cheer madly, but I would also expect to see the Virgin Mary hovering over the White House.In fact, the contests don't much matter. What really matters has already happened and the Establishment cannot undo it. In both parties, the peasants have revolted.The peasants are you and I, the poor saps who are expected to turn out in every election to put "their" party in power. Only it isn't their party. Both parties' elites hold the voters they depend on in contempt. That is true of non-elite whites in the Democratic Party (why any white person would vote Democrat is difficult to understand, unless they are gay) and of Christians in the Republican Party. Other than at election time you would not see a member of either parties' leadership anywhere near people from either voting block. Once the election is done, they have to spend weeks at a spa to get off the grime.But this election, the peasants have figured out the game. They aren't buying it anymore. Democratic whites have rallied around Sanders, and a huge portion of the Republican base, not just Christians (some of whom have been decoyed to Cruz), are backing Trump. When their guy loses, they are not going to go back to the fields, pick up their hoes and vote for their party's Establishment nominee, who will promise "change" but give more of the same.The most important question in this election is what the peasants do when the election is over and they are again shut out. Many may simply give up on politics and go home. Others may remain politically engaged as the equivalent of Cleveland Browns fans, whose motto is, "There's always next year."But many from both parties may stay angry, stay involved, but realize that neither party offers a way forward. Those people have the potential to create what usually happens when a corrupt and incompetent Establishment endlessly clings to power: a pre-revolutionary situation.Pre-revolutionary situations do not necessarily involve mobs in the streets carrying torches and pitchforks, though they certainly can. Both the Trump and Sanders campaigns to some degree reflect a pre-revolutionary situation. My great if slender hope, following Establishment victories in both parties' nomination contests, an independent Trump-Sanders ticket, would clearly manifest a pre-revolutionary situation. Post-election manifestations could include a variety of politically-oriented mass movements, including one for a constitutional convention.The most likely direction such a pre-revolutionary situation would take, I think, is one for devolution: the movement of power away from Washington to state and local levels. This would not be a "mother-may-I", hat-in-hand request to Washington for devolution, but concrete actions at state and local levels to seize power. On issues ranging from gay "marriage" to the use of GMO seeds, states and localities, through their governments or through direct action, would nullify rulings coming out of Washington. Should the Left obtain a five-vote majority on the Supreme Court, nullification by state governments might become a powerful movement in itself. State National Guards, forced to choose between home and Washington, might decide to take orders from home.A wise Establishment, faced with a pre-revolutionary situation, would accommodate it with Constitutional devolution, which is to say a return to federalism. Life in South Carolina would again be allowed to differ from life in Massachusetts, as it did when our republic still followed its Constitution.But falling Establishments are seldom wise. It may turn out that the question of who sits in the White House come January, 2017 is about as important as who became Roman Emperor in 450 A.D.

The View From Olympus: Futility, or War by Plinking

Russia intervened in Syria, did what it came to do--strengthen the position of the Assad government--and has partially withdrawn. Meanwhile, our war with ISIS continues its endless futility, an inevitable result of war by pinking.War by plinking, using airstrikes that blow up an ammo dump here, an ISIS leader there, and wedding parties everywhere is largely a product of futility of thought. We think we have to do something, but our military leadership has few options to offer. We can invade, but as we have experienced in Iraq and Afghanistan, doing so merely increases the scope and cost of our defeat. We can carry out an aerial campaign of annihilation, but our civilian leadership's ideology forbids it. It might also generate new enemies faster than we can kill them, no matter how many bombs we drop. Approaches that require both imagination and skill cannot make it through our leaden, elephantine military decision process (where the process is the product). So we plink.Much of our plinking seems devoted to war by assassination. There is a reason states have generally avoided that. As I fear we may discover, it is a game two can play. In the end it devolves, as it has, to mere war of attrition. Wars of attrition are usually indecisive, continuing until one party or another, or both, are exhausted. we are likely to tire before ISIS does.It is possible to conveive a different approach, one that still makes use of plinking, since that is all our military can do, but puts it in a different context where it might actually bring positive results.The new context is one I have discussed before, namely trying to disaggregate ISIS as an organization. Like most large entities, ISIS is a coalition. It has elements we cannot work with, i.e. the Islamic puritans, and other elements we can work with (and have in the past) such as the Baathists. If we can pull the coalition apart, we might win a decisive victory.With that objective, our aerial plinking wold become more selective. Instead of just targeting ISIS leaders randomly, we would be as careful about not hitting some as we would be about hitting others. Looked at broadly, we would target the puritans but not the Baath. More detailed intelligence analysis would help us avoid other leaders beyond the Baath whom we might work with, and also target competent puritans but not incompetent ones. When we kill incompetent enemy leaders, we do the enemy a favor.Plinking alone is not likely to disaggregate ISIS. It would need to be combined with other actions, most of them clandestine. Funneling money to non-puritan leaders and factions within ISIS would probably be part of the new approach. So would assurances that they could create a Sunni state. Few things motivate Sunnis to fight more than the prospect of being ruled by Shiites.A strategy of disaggregation requires good intelligence. Whether our intelligence agencies can provide it I do not know. But I am reasonably certain someone can. That someone might be the Russians, or the Assad government, or Iraqi Sunnis we used to work with and still probably want dollars (from us, not through the Shiite Iraqi government).Disaggregating ISIS offers at least a chance of moving beyond futility. We probably will not grasp at that chance because we are focused on marching the march of folly. Barbara Tuchman defined folly as proceeding on course of almost certain failure when other, more promising courses were available. That is what we have been doing since we invaded Afghanistan (a country at or near the top of history's "Do Not Invade" list), and what we will continue to do so long as the Establishment is in power. Pray for a Trump/Sanders ticket.

The Next Conservatism

This column begins another new series, one devoted not to the politics of the current presidential campaign but rather to its policy side. What agenda do conservatives have to offer as an alternative to the Establishment's failed agenda?My long-term colleague, the late Paul M. Weyrich, and I addressed this question in the last book we co-authored before his death in December, 2008. It is titled The Next Conservatism. For those interested in reading it, it is still available from St. Augustine's Press in South Bend, Indiana. In these columns, I will discuss the policy prescriptions it offers--which are very different from what the Republican Establishment defines as "conservatism" today.Philosophically, the conservatism offered in The Next Conservatism is that of Russell Kirk. Kirk may have been the only real conservative in the post-war conservative movement that grew up around Bill Buckley's National Review. Kirk's conservatism was what Paul and I called cultural conservatism: conservatism based not on a combination of nationalism and free market economics, but on "the permanent things", the great truths recognized by traditional Western culture. Kirk disdained unnecessary foreign wars fought to impose our ways on other peoples, and while he was, like all conservatives, in favor of a market economy and strong property rights, he believed markets were less important than culture and politics. Life is to be about more than getting and spending.Kirk recognized that every generation faces the challenge of redeeming the time. To that end, Paul and I sought in our book to address today's issues through the lens of Kirk's cultural conservatism. We consider needed political reforms, such as putting "None of the Above" on every ballot and, where it wins, calling a new election with new candidates. We talk about how to win the war for Western culture, a war conservatives have been losing since the 1960s. We discuss national security in a world where the decline of the state, the rise of new non-state primary loyalties and the spread of Fourth Generation war has made our armed forces and the type of war they prepare for, war between states, obsolete. We call for an end to free trade and the reindustrialization of America; the return of small family farms; and for big government and big business both t0 yield to the local, small-scale, and controllable. Finally, we recommend a new conservative movement that would be about more than politics, one where conservatives would pledge to recover the good things from our past in their daily lives. We call it Retroculture.At the beginning of this column you will find a photograph of me giving a copy of The Next Conservatism to presidential candidate Donald Trump. Trump's views on avoidable foreign wars, free trade, political correctness and a number of other subjects have much in common with The Next Conservatism. If he reads it, our book might be helpful to him in fleshing out his agenda. And no one can say Paul Weyrich was not a conservative.The next conservative agenda, as Paul and I defined it, is available to all candidates of either party. Bernie Sanders would find much to agree with in our discussion of foreign policy. A friend who knows him handed a copy of The Next Conservatism to Senator Ted Cruz. The likely Republican nominee, Paul Ryan, will not be elected president on a platform of more foreign wars, more benefits for Wall Street, and more political correctness. If he wants to win, he will need a new agenda.Thanks to the late Paul Weyrich, we have one to offer. Carpe liberem.

The Election: The Republican Establishment's Theft of the Word "Conservative"

From Washington a panicked Republican Establishment is denouncing Donald Trump as "not a conservative". The Establishment claims custody of the word "conservative" and with it the right to pronounce who is one and who isn't. But in fact, it is the Establishment's definition of "conservatism" that is not conservative.The Republican Establishment's platform has three main elements: Jacobinism, globalism, and cultural Marxism. Not one of the three is conservative, in terms of what the word "conservatism" has traditionally meant. On the contrary, all three, seen historically, are anti-conservative. They represent forces conservatism has struggled against.Jacobinism originated in the French Revolution, one of the two great catastrophes the West has suffered in modern times (the other is World War I, which saw Jacobinism re-emerge as Wilsonianism). The Jacobins were the most radical element in Revolutionary France, the origin of the Terror. They believed in democracy and equality, both to be forced down everyone's throat at home and abroad. France murdered thousands of her own people and brought war to much of Europe in that quest. In the end, even Robespierre, perhaps the best-known Jacobin, admitted that missionaries with bayonets are seldom welcome.Conservatism first reached a large public (it was emerging before the French Revolution, in the work of people like Ernst Brandes in Hannover) when it attacked Jacobinism, especially in Edmund Burke's Reflections on the Revolution in France. So powerful was Burke's critique that it established Jacobinism and conservatism as opposite poles on the left and right ends of the political spectrum. It is impossible to be both Jacobin and conservative.Yet the Washington Republican Establishment is four-square in favor of forcing "democratic capitalism" on every people on Earth, in the name of "human rights" as the Jacobins defined them. This Jacobinism/Wilsonianism is what lies behind the Establishment's anti-conservative demand for a huge and expensive military and equally anti-conservative insistence on American world hegemony. American conservatives in particular have always been suspicious of large standing armies and playing the Great Power game, which our country's Founders warned would cost us our liberties if we got into it. Earlier generations of conservatives, men like Senator Robert A. Taft, would have fought the National Security State tooth and nail. Today's "conservatives" on Capitol Hill want to give it still more money.Globalism is the second leg of the Establishment's stool, and it is equally problematic. Starting with Burke, conservatives have always valued the local, small-scale, and real over the international, vast, and amorphous. In the eyes of Washington Republicans, globalism means giving Wall Street whatever it wants, including free trade that has destroyed our once strong blue-collar middle class. The fact that the corporations and banks the Republican Party leadership serves (in return for lots of money) care nothing about this country does not bother them. Patriotism is atavistic and obsolete in their view; they have far more in common with foreign elites than with the people who live in the Heartland. Those people only exist to provide them tax money to play with and votes. They get nothing in return but contempt.Unlike the Democrats, Washington Republicans don't really believe in cultural Marxism, a.k.a. political correctness and multiculturalism. But they are afraid of it, and when someone like Donald Trump dares defy it they quickly denounce him using its vocabulary, i.e., "racist", "sexist", etc. Moral cowards that they are, the Establishment "conservatives" are willing to go along with this hideous ideology in order to get along.But no one can be a real conservative and not fight cultural Marxism at every turn. Its goals remain what they were when they were established by Lukacs and Gramsci in 1919: destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion. Conservatives' main goals are preserving both. Again, we find polar opposites. Much of Trump's popularity comes from his repeated defiance of cultural Marxism.So on all points we find the Republican Establishment anti-conservative and Mr. Trump saying things that are much closer to traditional conservatism. The problem, it seems, is not Donald Trump. As usual, the problem lies in Washington.

The View From Olympus: The Russian Pull-out

Russia's partial withdrawal of its forces from Syria raises the question of why. The reasons usually given, including putting pressure on the Assad government to make a deal, are probably valid. But there is another possibility that has received little attention. Russia could be preparing for a direct military confrontation with Turkey.An increasingly authoritarian Turkish government faces a deteriorating situation on its southern border. That is a recipe for direct intervention in Syria with ground troops, because an authoritarian government that seems weak abroad will find its legitimacy questioned. Not only does Turkey face a strengthened Assad government, thanks to Russian intervention, the Syrian Kurds have just taken a step toward creating Kurdistan by proclaiming a "federal" Kurdish region. As the March 18 New York Times stated, "For Turkey, which regards Kurdish nationalism as an existential threat, the idea of an autonomous Kurdish territory along its borders is anathema."Turkey had previously intervened against the Syrian Kurds with airpower and artillery fire. But Russia's deployment of the S-400 anti-aircraft missile system took away the air power option--Russia would love a chance to shoot down a Turkish warplane in retaliation for the earlier Turkish downing of a Russian aircraft--and artillery has a limited reach. In addition, the Kurds have retaliated for the artillery fire with suicide bombings in Turkey.The Turks know that effective intervention requires ground forces. The entry of Turkish forces into Syria would be justified by claiming they are there to fight ISIS, but as I noted in an earlier column, Turkey is de facto allied with ISIS. The real targets would be the Kurds, America's allies, and the Assad government, Russia's ally. The U.S. will, as usual, bleat, but the Russian reaction could be another story.If Russia were to intervene militarily against Turkey in response to Turkish intervention in Syria, military realities suggest she would do so not in Syria but along the Russian-Turkish border. For Russia to fight Turkey inside Syria, Russian forces would be at an enormous disadvantage. Turkey would immediately close the Straits, so all supplies and reinforcements would have to come by air via Iranian and Iraqi airspace. That would be sufficient to support only a small force--like the one Russia is now leaving in Syria.Some reports suggest Russia is already preparing a campaign against Turkey. I suspect Russian military intelligence is better than our own in Russia's back yard, and Moscow may already have, and have had for some time, knowledge that the Turks do plan to go in. In that case, Stavka is not likely to be caught napping.Should a Russo-Turkish war break out, the Middle East's Thirty Years' War will have done what all parties should not want it to do, namely spread beyond the immediate theater. So long as outside parties fight each other, directly or indirectly, only in the Middle East, the dangers are not too great. But a Russo-Turkish war would immediately fall into NATO's lap. (Again we see the disadvantages of maintaining obsolete alliances.) Washington, London, and Paris would all reluctantly feel they had no choice but to back Turkey militarily. The maintenance of peace would hang on Berlin. The last time this happened, in 1878, Bismarck kept the peace by calling the Congress of Berlin. But Hausfrau Merkel is no Bismarck.Let us hope this remains in the camp of possibility, no more. If it does, Russia's partial withdrawal from Syria still counts as an important Russian success. Russia, unlike America, has shown it can not only get in, it can also get out. If the Republican convention this summer deadlocks, might someone nominate President Putin? If he won, we might not be trapped in Iraq and Afghanistan for another eight years.

The Election: The Rise of White Political Consciousness

The 2016 presidential election campaign is about far more than who gets elected. It represents a widespread grass roots rebellion against the political Establishment, similar to those that elected Andrew Jackson and supported William Jennings Bryan. One of its more portentous components is the rise of White political consciousness.This phenomenon is not restricted to the Republican Party, where, thanks to his defiance of political correctness, Donald Trump is the Whites' candidate. In the Democratic Party, Whites are supporting Bernie Sanders, while Clinton is dependent on the black and Hispanic vote. Writing of the Democratic Michigan primary, the March 9 New York Times noted that "Mr. Sanders [was] performing well with white voters and Mrs. Clinton [was] the overwhelming favorite of African-Americans" in the primary Sanders won. The day after the Ohio and Florida primaries, the Cleveland Plain Dealer wrote that

In Ohio exit polls, Clinton was far ahead among black voters, but she and Sanders were drawing roughly the same support from white voters.

In Florida,

Clinton drew support from about 7 in 10 Hispanic voters and nearly 8 in 10 black voters. She was backed by a slim majority of white voters...

As has been the case with other racial and ethnic voting blocks, White political consciousness is rising in the face of persecution. The Establishment's ideology of cultural Marxism, commonly called "political correctness" or "multiculturalism", says that all Whites are inherently evil "oppressors" and "racists". This is true regardless of what individuals do. Whites are for cultural Marxism what the bourgeoisie and capitalists are for classical economic Marxism: devils who must be expunged from society.Not only do Whites find themselves everywhere denounced, government now tilts the tables against them in everything from university admissions to employment and promotion. "Affirmative action" is legalized discrimination against Whites (and Asians) in favor of blacks and Third World immigrants. White cops who shoot blacks are now automatically in trouble, while the fact that the back rate of violent crime is twelve times the White rate is never mentioned (to do so would be "racist"). Racist black hatred of Whites is now more widespread than White hatred of blacks, but cultural Marxism says blacks can not be racist. All opprobrium is reserved for Whites, while blacks have PC's sacred "victim" status.In response, Whites are beginning to see themselves as a political block, one with interests that need to be protected by voting for candidates who appeal, overtly or covertly, to Whites. Cultural Marxism labels this the ultimate evil. Whites are supposed only to grovel before blacks and Third World immigrants, apologizing for "discrimination" and offering "reparations". Any White who acts or votes for White interests is "another Hitler".Whites are fed up with it. They are eager to vote for someone who defends and represents them.In a Trump vs. Clinton race for the presidency, Trump's status as the White candidate and Hillary's as the black candidate could be decisive. Substantial numbers of voters from other ethnic groups, including Hispanics, may welcome and use an opportunity to vote against blacks.Trump need not and ought not be explicit about his status as the White candidate. The culturally Marxist Establishment will do that for him, and already is. Establishment PACs are running ads denouncing him for it. He does need to not reject that status, as he did in Ohio by running a television ad featuring blacks. That will not get him the black vote and it will endanger his support among politically conscious Whites.The only surprise about the rise of White political consciousness is that is was so long coming. Whites have been discriminated against for decades. The cultural Marxists relied on psychological conditioning to keep Whites forever on their knees. In this election cycle, the conditioning is losing its power and Whites are standing up for themselves as Whites. That is a political development of large importance.

The Election

This column begins a new series on tR, "The Election". The series will run through November. We welcome contributions from other writers, including people associated with one or another campaign.Why have we launched this column series? Because 2016 is shaping up to be the most important election since 1952. In 1952, the east coast Establishment engineered the nomination of General Dwight D. Eisenhower in place of the man who should have gotten it, Ohio Senator Robert A. Taft.Taft was a real conservative. He opposed America playing the great power game, because he knew that game would endanger liberties here at home and also in time lead to national bankruptcy. By depriving him of the nomination, the Establishment set us on the course of world empire, a trillion-dollar-a-year military (that usually loses) and a vast federal deficit and debt. Taft was right, and his book, A Foreign Policy for Americans, is still worth reading.2016 promises to be as important as 1952 because the course of the campaign thus far, with Donald Trump leading in the fight for the Republican nomination and Bernie Sanders repeatedly embarrassing the Wicked Witch of the North, reveals the real political fault line. That fault line is not Republicans vs. Democrats or conservatives vs. liberals but anti-establishment vs. establishment. In both parties, people are rebelling against failed policies that are repeated over and over regardless of which wing of the Establishment party, Republican or Democrat, is in power. The Establishment represents more stupid wars that kill our kids, more giving Wall Street whatever it wants at the expense of Main Street, and more stinking political correctness, which is really cultural Marxism. The public has had it with all three, and it is supporting presidential candidates who represent rejecting it. (As a socialist, Sanders accepts cultural Marxism, but he may be the best candidate on foreign policy and defense.)Trump and Sanders represent a political earthquake, an earthquake that is also shaking Europe where anti-Establishment parties and movements are also surging. This is democracy, real democracy, and the Establishment is terrified by it. Its definition of democracy is elections where the only choice is between them and them. God forbid the people can actually vote for someone who believes what they do.In the end, I do not expect either Trump or Sanders get nominated, much as I would like to see both head their respective parties (giving us a choice, not an echo). The Republican Establishment will manipulate the convention rules to deny Trump the nomination; I predict they will nominate Paul Ryan, a fresh, telegenic face who is wholly Establishment. The blacks will give Hillary the Democratic nomination, which is appropriate since the Democrats have become the party by, of, and for blacks. White Democrats appear to be voting heavily for Sanders, but in most states the blacks will overwhelm them.My hope is that Trump and Sanders will then join on an independent Trump/Sanders ticket. If Bernie could get over his cultural Marxism, that would not be so unlikely as it first sounds. They appear close on foreign policy, both rejecting more involvement in Fourth Generation wars overseas. Both question what we get for our trillion dollar annual spending on the Pentagon, which is now 0-4 against Fourth Generation opponents. (Hillary, in contrast, was the main architect of our disastrous intervention in Libya.) Trump sometimes sounds as if he shares some of Sanders' belief that the rest of the country should not be sacrificed to Wall Street. Politically, any time you can sandwich the Establishment between left and right, you can win big.A Trump-Sanders ticket might win a plurality of votes. In the Electoral College, one of the two Establishment winners might withdraw and instruct his electors to vote for the other. If that did not happen, the election would be decided by the House of Representatives, which would of course give the presidency to a representative of the Establishment.But when that happened, the curtain would be rent and every voter would see that American democracy is a fraud. All that matters to the Establishment is that it remains the Establishment, the public be damned. With that revelation the legitimacy of the whole American political system would collapse.What comes after that? Read Thomas Hobbes' Victoria.

The View From Olympus: Greece Saves Europe (Again)

Lt. Col. "Willy" Theodoracopulos of the Hellenic Air Force knew the hardest part was over. He had successfully nursed the one flyable Greek F-16 over the Alps. Most of the aircrat's fancy systems were down from lack of maintenance, but the engine and controls still worked. It sounded as if they would continue to do so until he reached the Netherlands. That was all he needed; his was a one-way mission.Greece had put up as long as it could with being used as Europe's chamber pot. Germany's second-worst Chancellor ever, Hausfrau Merkel, had said to all the wretched of the Earth, "Come to Europe! Come and enjoy! Come one and all, the more the merrier," and come they did, by the millions. Europe found itself awash in human sewage, people from radically defective societies and cultures who brought all the defects with them.Orderly northern European societies found their order disappearing. Germans, Danes, and Swedes had to worry about the safety of their persons and property. Women now thought twice about going out after dark. In Malmo, young Islamic immigrants called it "hunting Swedes". It was easy, because Swedes had little sense of personal insecurity. Up until now, they had not needed it.Europe's elites, cultural Marxists all, demanded the gates stay open for millions more. To them, Islamic immigrants were just one more weapon in the fight to destroy Western civilization. The fact that the jihadis would cut the secularists' throats even before they cut the throats of Europe's remaining Christians did not bother them. Their hate for the West, inherited from Lukacs, Gramsci, and the Frankfurt School, was so vast it submerged everything else, even their own survival instinct.But northern Europeans who were not members of the elite saw it otherwise. Strangely, they wanted to survive. They resisted the elite's calls to commit social and cultural suicide. They demanded the doors be closed, and with new political parties that promised to close them rising fast, the politicians had to put on the brakes. They did not like doing it, but they liked even less the prospect of being out of office.The Hapsburg Empire, long the guardian of Europe's Balkan flank against the savage hordes of the Prophet, led the way. Technically Austria was now just a grubby little republic, but most Austrians knew that in the divine economy, an Austrian republic was an impossibility. Austria was the House of Hapsburg and the House of Hapsburg was Austria. Recalling who it really was, Vienna organized the Balkan states to close the door at the Greek-Macedonian border. Rumor has it there may soon be a referendum in Austria to resotre the monarchy, and that all the Danubian states are quitely talking about the need for some sort of federation.That left the immigrants piling up in Greece. Greece quickly realized it was being used as Europe's toilet, without a flushing mechanism. The rest of Europe shook its head and said, "Ja, sorry about that. We'll schedule some meetings to talk about it."So Greece did what it had to do. First, it set up machine guns on the beaches of the Greek islands off the Turkish coast, and when boats full of immigrants came in range, they hosed them. It only required shooting a few hundred people before the boats stopped coming. At least as many had been dying every month anyway in vessels that didn't make it.Second, Greece teamed up with Italy to round up the migrants on both countries' soil. They were put on ships, and the Greek and Italian navies escorted those ships to the coast of Libya where the immigrants were dropped off. Libya, having no state, could do nothing about it. It seemed it wasn't just Islam that could take advantage of stateless disorder.All the world's cultural Marxists screamed in unison, "Mass murder! Inhumanity! Fascism! Violation of international law!" Greece's leaders were indicted before the International Court of Justice at the Hague for "crimes against humanity". Who did these Greeks think they were, not willing their country should be crapped on?The Court promptly opened proceedings against the Greek leadership, in absentia. There was no question about the verdict.But Greeks remembered the last time the Persians had come. They got ready to fight. In the halls of the Greek Defense Ministry a plan was born. The Greek government, all facing spending the rest of their lives in a Dutch prison, gave the plan their blessing.And Lt. Col. Theodoracopulos's F-16 had crossed the Dutch border. The International Court's Chief Justice was once again solemnly condemning the "inhumane, vile, unallowable" actions of Greece in defending itself from invasion when Willy's F-16, carrying a full load of ordnance, did a kamikaze dive into the Court.All over Europe, the public cheered. The politicans ran for cover, literally as well as figuratively. Prominent cultural Marxists were hanged from lampposts. Greece had again saved Europe. If doing so required a Greek Air Force pilot's life, well, all Greeks knew the man who brought the news of Marathon also died. Sometimes, that's what it takes.

Scalia, the Court, and the Last Straw

The death of Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia is far more important politically than most commentators have perceived. It opens the door to an action that could break up the country.At present, the Court has a four-vote block of hard-line cultural Marxists. When Scalia was alive, that block was balanced by four other Justices who were moderately to very conservative. The Chief Justice mediated between the two blocks, sometimes voting with one, sometimes the other, but almost always voting in favor of moderation.With Scalia gone, the Left can prevail but the Right cannot. Even if the Chief Justice votes with the conservatives, they fail on a tie. If he votes with the Left, they win.If Hillary Clinton is the next president, Scalia's seat will undoubtedly be filled by someone who votes with the Left. The Republican Senate will not have the guts to leave the seat open for four years--four years in which, again, the Left can win but the Right cannot. The same outcome is possible with a Republican in the White House: both Earl Warren and Souter were Republican picks.Should the Left get a five-vote block, the Supreme Court will become a "Revolutionary Tribunal" which will stop at nothing to force cultural Marxism down the throat of the rest of the country. It is easy to think of issues where that would be disastrous. Outlawing home schooling comes to mind. But there is one issue where a ruling by the Court could destroy the American state itself. That issue is "reparations".One of the top causes for American cultural Marxists is paying every American black a large sum of tax money as reparations for slavery. The notion is absurd. Those blacks were first enslaved in Africa, by Arabs or other blacks. Those who were sent to the American South were lucky compared to others who were sold to places like Haiti, where one-third of the black population was worked to death annually. Black Americans today benefit greatly from the fact that their ancestors were sent here rather than remaining in west Africa, which is one of the worst hellholes on Earth.Life in west Africa, most of it anyway, is so bad I am willing to make a bet. If someone sailed the replica of the Amistad, a slave ship, to almost any west African port and asked for volunteers to go to America, chained up just like their ancestors, and be sold as slaves once they got there, the line to get on board would be miles long. The draw of leaving Africa and getting to America would be so strong people would agree to anything in order to do it.As I have noted before in my columns, the whole slavery issue is cant. There are very few people on Earth who did not have slaves among their ancestors. In almost all the world throughout almost all of history, if you were captured in war, your alternatives were slavery or death. Most captives presumably preferred slavery.Before the Civil War, the South had black slave owners as well as white. The 1830 census shows about 1,700 black slave owners, who owned between them about 7,500 other blacks. In Louisiana, you could find black plantation owners who had black overseers over their black slaves. When the war broke out, those black plantation owners equipped a company of Confederate infantry as their contribution to the war effort. A non-trivial number of blacks fought for the Confederacy. Are all those blacks' descendants to get reparations for slavery?The whole notion of reparations is so absurd only cultural Marxists could believe in it. But it would not be difficult for someone to craft a case demanding reparations that would wend its way to a hard-Left Supreme Court. How would the rest of the country react to a ruling that said we must double the income tax to pay for, say, $10 trillion in reparations?If would rebel. That would be the final straw where Americans who are not black would say, "This isn't my country anymore." The rebellion would probably start with a Constitutional crisis as Congress refused to vote both the funds and the taxes. If the Court, and, perhaps, a sympathetic White House found a way around Congress, you would see the rise of a serious secession movement. Donald Trump's poll numbers show a good third of Americans might want out, with solid majorities in some states. Who would go first, South Carolina or Idaho?The rest of America will not pay reparations to blacks. Are the Chinese to get reparations for laws that tried to keep them out? Are the Irish to get reparations from Britain for the potato famine? Am I to get reparations for the killing of Hannah Dustin's baby by the Indians on the Massachusetts frontier in the 1690s (I am a Dustin descendant)? Are dogs to be given reparations for being tied up?These arguments would count for nothing to a Supreme Court with a five-vote culturally Marxist block. All that matters to ideologues is their ideology. If their actions caused the country to break up, well, what would that be to them? That's someone else's problem.But that is what is at stake in the fight to fill Justice Scalia's seat on the court. And avoiding hard-Left judicial dictatorship depends on the very weak reed that is the Republican Party.

You Can't Have a Constitution Without a Nation to Go With It

You can tell it’s an election year, because the Republicans are all of a sudden talking about the Constitution again.  Not that I mind, of course, but it seems that they only start paying attention to it when the generally more conservative and constitutionalist Republican primary voters start paying attention to them.  So suddenly, the political realm is filled with talk about what the Constitution says about every issue, from abortion to xylophone maintenance.

The problem that I see with this, however, is that at the same time as they are claiming their love and devotion to our founding document, most of these same politicians are pursuing policies relating to demographics and national sovereignty which are completely at odds with the perpetuation of the diluted remains of constitutional government.  Put simply, the mainstream Republican pursuit of amnesty, open borders, and massive immigration (both legal and illegal) works to destroy the very Constitution they profess to be so concerned about.

We must consider the following as a truism: There is no such thing as magic soil.  What I mean is that a person’s culture and upbringing do not change simply because that person occupies a new geographical location.  An immigrant (regardless of their legality) will not automatically possess a new set of fundamental political, social, cultural, and moral attitudes, simply because they occupy a place on American soil, or even have gone through the extended process of formally attaining American citizenship.  To see them acquire an American outlook to go along with their American residency requires time-consuming, extensive, and (in an ideal world) mandatory acculturation to our society and mores.  In days gone by, our society and government both worked to try to make that happen (with a fairly good success rate).  Unfortunately, our government has completely absconded (and is, in fact, hostile to) its responsibility to assimilate immigrants, and political correctness is increasingly tying the hands of anyone else who would seek to encourage immigrants to become genuine Americans in more than just a formal sense.  Diversity--the death-knell of any advanced civilization--is becoming the norm, rather than just an unfortunate but temporary exception.

That, of course, greatly affects our political climate, which in turn affects the reverence for (and consequent adherence to) our Constitution.  I believe that we can look at American history and see a steady erosion of our founding principles and constitutional government that goes hand in hand with our absorption of more and more immigrants from abroad.

Broadly speaking, there are three general “peak periods” of immigration to the United States.  The first occurred roughly between 1830-1860, and was primarily made up of British and Irish workers and German political refugees, most of them fleeing the crackdowns after the unsuccessful revolutions of 1848.  The second wave occurred between approximately 1880 and 1920, and was made up of large number of workers from southern and eastern Europe, though its early years also had a large Scandinavian component as well.  This is the immigration that most people have in mind when they fetishize Ellis Island and “coming from the old country”.  The third wave began with the liberalization of our laws in the early 1960s, and continues to this day.  This wave is characterized by a much greater proportion of immigrants coming from non-European nations, primarily south and east Asia, sub-Saharan Africa, and especially Mexico and Central America. 

The first two waves of immigration were markedly different from the third.  In those waves, the immigrants were largely from Europe, and came from cultures that were at least distantly related to America’s prevailing Anglo-Saxon culture.  At the same time, there was pronounced encouragement of these immigrants to become Americans.  From official government entry policy down to the social assumptions of the man on the street, our attitude towards immigrants was guardedly welcoming, but on the supposition that they would make the effort to fit into our culture, rather than expecting us to cater to theirs.  There were no ballots printed in 75 different languages in those days.  Immigrants learned English (if they didn’t know it already) or they starved.  They were expected to be patriotic and to operate within our political and social norms.  No “honor killings” or shari’a law would have been tolerated back then.   

Despite this, we still see that these waves of immigration had a profound (and negative) impact on our political culture and constitutional fidelity.  In the decades closely following each wave of immigration, massive changes were made to our government and political realm as the immigrants began to take their places in the pool of available voters.

The first wave brought with it a combination of unprecedented political corruption combined with German radicalism.  It was on the heels of this wave that Tammany Hall really broke wide open as a political machine cultivating and controlling the votes of Irish immigrants in New York.  It was also in this time period that the newly-formed Republican party adopted its radical turn at the behest of the many Germans in America, during whose dominance America essentially was changed from the federal representative Republic she was founded to be to the sort of increasingly majoritarian and unitary democratic state that bodes so poorly for individual liberties and states’ rights.

The second wave saw large numbers of immigrants come in from countries with authoritarian traditions--especially those from various areas in the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires.    Almost none of them came from countries with genuine traditions of individual liberty or some form of constitutional rule of law.  As a result, these immigrants brought in with them the cultural preconception that government should both be obsequiously deferred to and looked to as a paternalistic provider.  It was this wave of immigrants who provided fertile grounds for advancing and then cementing the so-called “progressive” movement that looked to technocratic government for all the answers to our problems, and which eventually culminated in Roosevelt’s New Deal. 

In spite of the damage done by these waves, America still retained some of its original pristine constitutional purity in the 1950s and into the 1960s.  Free speech, freedom of religion, and the rest of the Bill of Rights were still largely in place.  Notwithstanding the rampant abuses of that document, the average citizen was still largely free to live as they pleased.

And then came the third wave of immigration to America. 

This wave has featured, and continues to feature, huge numbers of immigrants who have absolutely no connection to limited government, no understanding of constitutional restrains on government, and no concern for natural rights and individual liberties.  Indeed, in many cases, these immigrants come from places completely outside of any definition of Western civilization, and cannot be expected in any way, shape, or form to understand what American culture and society are really all about.

What’s worse, there is now (official or unofficially) no effort to assimilate these immigrants to American culture and civilization.  In many cases, there is not even the expectation that these immigrants will contribute positively to American society even in a purely economic sense. Witness the many who come to America solely to partake of our “entitlements” largesse.  Because no effort is made to assimilate them, the American polity continues to balkanize, the “melting pot” model giving way rapidly to the “rocky road ice cream” model where in the underlying substrate must make room for increasingly large and undissolved chunks of foreign objects. 

It is coincident with this third wave that we have really seen the rise of undiluted, raw socialism in America.  “Progressive” politicians have realized that it is advantageous to themselves to discourage the Americanization of immigrants, since this makes them less likely to reject the politicians’ offer of “free” goodies in exchange for votes.  Because these immigrants largely have no understanding of or care for things like individual liberties or constitutional government, they are not in the least concerned that the giving of these goodies will require the loss of liberty and the destruction of constitutionalism.  In other words, when you bring in millions of foreigners from socialistic countries with no real tradition of limited, constitutional government, you’ll eventually end up with a socialistic country with no more limited, constitutional government.  When that happens, the government is free to take away every liberty you have, regardless of what that dusty ol’ Constitution has to say about the matter.

And that’s what the Democrats (as well as the establishment Republicans) want – a government that they can use to milk the hard-working people of this country for money and power. 

This is why it is vitally important that the flow of immigrants into this country be halted, and those who are here be required to Americanize and assimilate, or else be asked to return to where they came from.  America is not simply a geographical or political entity.  It is a nation with its own unique culture, traditions, mores, and history.  Like every other nation on Earth, America deserves to be able to defend and preserve her own traditions--one of which was limited constitutional government designed to safeguard liberty and prevent the rise of tyranny.  If immigration presents a threat to that, then that immigration needs to be stopped until such a time as the “indigestible nugget” can be absorbed. 

In other words, if you want to preserve (and maybe even restore) the Constitution, you need to make sure that you have a population that understands and believes in its principles to go along with it.

The View From Olympus: Closing the Toy Store

A friend of mine recently sent me some back issues of a prominent defense magazine, IHS Jane's International Defence Review, which I enjoyed going through. Jane's Fighting Ships was one of my favorite books when I was young, though I find warships have become less interesting as they have grown more hi-tech. If only Germany would complete the Mackensen-class battle cruisers...But as I looked through the magazines, two thoughts came irrepressibly to mind. The first was that virtually none of the systems discussed or advertised have anything to do with real war, which is to say Fourth Generation war. They are useful only against other state armed forces, which is to say for jousts.The second thought was that these weapons, sensors, etc. represent enormous amounts of money. Just as the knights' armor became most elaborate and expensive when the knight was passing out of war, so the equipment of state armed forces has reached its highest prices just as those forces themselves become militarily irrelevant.Here we see two serious threats to the state itself and to a world made up of states. On the one hand, the state's armed forces cannot defend the state against Fourth Generation entities, which leaves states defenseless against their most dangerous threats. On the other hand, maintaining those armed forces has become so expensive that doing so is a major contributor to the bankruptcy of states.The world economy is now a bubble of bubbles, public and private debt piled to the sky as politicians seek to give clients something for nothing, ordinary people try to hold on to shreds of a middle-class existence as real wages fall and central banks create ever more liquidity. We have seennthis pattern before, and it always ends up in the same place: a major, long-lasting debt crisis, a great fall in both public and private resources, and, in the end, hyper-inflation.Soon, very soon I expect, no state will be able to go to the toy store anymore. The hyper-priced military systems we read about in Jane's will be unaffordable. Governments will simultaneously face two facts they can no longer ignore: defense budgets must be cut drastically (along with the rest of the state's budget) and their armed forces cannot win the wars that count.Wise governments, and wise leaders of state armed forces, would not wait until the full crisis is upon them. They would begin now the reforms that must come later. Institutions do better when they can follow a plan rather than having to respond to panic.What would such a reform program contain? First, it would move the state's armed forces away from planning for war with other states and focus on the real 4GW threat. That means, among other things, pushing Second Generation militaries into the Third Generation as a necessary precondition for facing the Fourth. That at root requires a change in institutional culture. Second Generation military culture is inward focused on processes, procedures, orders, etc., it is highly centralized, it prefers obedience to initiative, and it depends on imposed discipline. Third Generation culture is focused outwardly on the situation, the enemy, and getting the result the situation requires. Decision-making is decentralized, initiative is prized over obedience, and it all depends on self-, not imposed, discipline.Few state armed services will be able to make this transition. Their failure, ironically, will open the door to solving the budget problem. Simply defund, entirely, any service that cannot move beyond the Second Generation. As Mark Twain said of the male teat, they are neither useful or ornamental.In their place build new armed services suitable for 4GW. Because the main 4GW threat is on home soil, most of these will be National Guards. Ground forces will be light infantry. Most personnel will be fighting men, who also have skills, drawn from their civilian lives, that are vital in restoring order and functionality to communities disrupted by 4GW (cops are especially useful). Almost all equipment will be off-the-shelf civilian goods modified as needed. Nuclear forces will remain hi-tech, but once built they don't cost much and their bang for the buck is unrivaled.Poor Jane's will be reduced to writing about ultra-light aircraft, modified trawlers, and duel-use bulldozers. But perhaps someone here or there will use a bit of the money saved to build something interesting. Wasn't there supposed to be a fourth Yamato?