The View From Olympus: Watch Korea

By now, the Korean drill is familiar to all. We take some symbolic action against North Korea. The North responds with its Tasmanian Devil act, threatening "lakes of fire", firing missiles into the ocean and maybe, at the limit, shooting some artillery at South Korea. Casualties, if there are any, are few. South Korea in turn tugs at its leash, which we hold firmly. Yawn.This time may be different. We did the usual, announcing some meaningless new sanctions on the North, though this time targeting its rulers by name, which slightly ups the ante. The North is playing its part, shouting hyperbolic threats, including war.But here is where the current case departs from the script. No one is paying any attention to North Korea's tantrum. We've seen it too often. The world's reaction is, "let 'em starve in the dark." From the North Korean perspective, the act no longer works.Except in South Korea. This is the second change from the usual script. The South is fed up with the North's antics. The South Korean president's mother and father were killed years ago by North Korean assassins. She has not forgotten. In every recent incident, the South has suffered more casualties (when there were any) than the North. The general South Korean attitude seems to be, "We're not going to take it any more."What can South Korea do? Invade North Korea.The Pentagon's Korean war scenarios all assume an attack by North Korea on South Korea. I suspect we have devoted little or no thought to the opposite case. We can always just jerk on South Korea's leash and tell it to sit.That may no longer be true. South Korea has a powerful military of its own. If the president says, "Go get 'em!," it would.Here's a possible scenario: Its hysteria universally ignored, the North hits South Korea hard in an action that quickly ends. One possibility would be an artillery raid on Seoul that is over in 15 minutes. The physical damage would not be great, but the South Korean government and military would be utterly humiliated.The South Korean people, enraged, demand serious action in return. They don't want mere retaliation; they want a final solution to the North Korean problem. Remembering her parents, South Korea's president orders her armed forces to invade, with the object of complete conquest and reunification. We tell the South Koreans, "Stop!" They reply with, "Lead, follow, or get out of the way."I do not know how such a war would go. Koreans on both sides are hard fighters. We may underestimate the North because its equipment is old, but the outcome of few wars is determined by age of equipment.In addition, the North has nuclear weapons, sort of. They may or may not work. Their missiles are unreliable. But if they follow the traditional Eastern way of war, they will not do the obvious and try to nuke South Korea. They will aim at Japan.On the physical level, a successful nuclear strike would deny us the ability to intervene with large forces, because we need a secure rear area in Japan. Mentally, it would catch Washington with its pants down (the North will never believe we did not give the South an OK to invade). On the moral level, it would be a masterstroke, because not only do all Koreans, North and South, hate the Japanese more than they hate each other, the Chinese people would also be in the streets cheering. The Chinese government would have a difficult time not supporting the North, however much it does not want a war.If Pyongyang were clever, it would couple its nuclear strike on Japan with an offer to South Korea of immediate reunification, the details to be worked out later, and a declaration of war on Japan by the newly united Korea. That offer might get the South Korean people into the streets, demanding their government agree. The South Korean navy and air force are already designed more for a war with Japan than with North Korea.How might this end? Japan would have to go nuclear immediately. We could end up fighting Korea and maybe China as Japan's ally. As in 1914, the sleepwalkers would have again wandered into a war no one wanted. And Korea? It ends up with South Korea's economic and political system, but with a (constitutional) monarchy restored under--you guessed it--the Kim dynasty!And how exactly did we get caught up in this mess? By keeping troops in South Korea long after the Cold War ended, an event that removed all reason for their presence.

The Election: How Trump Wins

As a long-time subscriber to The New York Times, which is the best American paper for international news, I am accustomed to the left-wing tilt of its editorial pages. But the Times and the coastal elite it represents are so terrified by the possibility of a Trump presidency (read: an anti-establishment presidency) that the front page now drips vitriol like a broken Keurig. There is no pretense of objectivity; it reads as if it is edited in Pyongyang.A case in point is July 31st's top left-hand column. The title is, "Trump Belittles Muslim Mother of Dead Soldier". That title alone is worthy of Hearst at his worst. If you keep reading, you quickly see the headline is a lie. According to the Times story, what Trump actually said, after calling his Islamic critic a "nice guy" and wishing him "the best of luck," was

If you look at his wife, she was standing there, she had nothing to say, she probably--maybe she wasn't allowed to have anything to say, you tell me.

Trump's point, that under Islam women are to keep silent and serve men, is true. Islam makes all women and "unbelievers" not second-class citizens, but tenth-class citizens. A man has every right to beat his wife, and can get rid of her merely by saying "I divorce you" three times. There's no alimony.It's funny watching politically correct women defend Islam when Islam is their worst enemy on Earth. There is no feminism under Islam, and any woman who announces she is a feminist is marked for murder. The cultural Marxists are so warped by their ideology that they embrace their murderers.All the piling-on we see from the Left boils down to one charge: Trump dares to defy the rules set down by political correctness, i.e., cultural Marxism. Political correctness will allow itself to be criticized, mildly, but it permits no defiance.So how does Trump win? By continuing to defy political correctness. His base, which by this point may be a majority of White voters, loves it. Cultural Marxism labels all Whites as evil, not for what they do, but because they are White (the term is "white privilege"). Whites are the equivalent of the bourgeoisie and capitalists under the old economic Marxism: they must be liquidated because of who they are, not what they do. There is no escape. Even if you spend all day groveling in the dirt apologizing for being White--an act required on many campuses--you remain evil.Cultural Marxism's goal is to "privilege" all other races and ethnic groups over Whites, women over men, and gays over straights. That is what Trump is defying when he breaks the rules of Political Correctness. The more he does it, the higher he rises in the polls. Whites, males, and straights are fed up.The greatest danger Trump faces is listening to the "professionals" from the Establishment Republican Party. For decades, the Republican Party has tried to please its enemies and treated its friends with contempt, the poor ones anyway. It wants Trump to do just that. If he does, he will lose his base and be defeated.Despite all the talk about demographics, Trump's base--Whites, males, and straights--remains a large majority (that base includes non- and anti-feminist women). If he keeps it, solidifies it, and motivates it, he will win. Hillary could end up carrying four states: Wisconsin, Minnesota, California, and Hawaii.If that happens, the Times headline announcing Trump's victory will probably be written in blood.

The Year Racism Died

For decades, the Left has had a very powerful rhetorical weapon in its arsenal, one which they wielded to great effect until very recently.  This was--as the reader can probably guess--the accusation of “racism” against their opponents.  It was effective because there was no defense against it.  If a certified bon penseur accused you of racism, that was it.  You were tarred irrevocably.  Your name was mud in academia, politics, or in your chosen vocation.  Its appeal was entirely emotional: racism = bad, so if you’re accused of racism, then you must be a bad, bad person.  Nobody wants to be associated with bad, bad people so an accusation of racism effectively isolated its target--it was Alinskyism in action.  Nobody who counted was going to come to the defense of the bad, bad, evil racist.  And nobody was going to listen when the bad, bad, evil racist tried to rationally explain what they were saying, the facts that they used to arrive at a conclusion, and so forth.  Being accused of “racism” by someone in the appropriate victim group or one of their “leaders” in the movement was the equivalent of the radical Left’s neutron bomb; it leaves the shell, but destroys the substance of its target.

Of course, the thing which any cuckservative Republican politician fears the most--much more so than being accountable to his constituents--is being tagged with the “racism” label and having it hinder his reelection.

Yet, like any weapon which is overused, it loses its effectiveness over time as opponents develop defenses against it.  That’s what we’re seeing now.  That’s why 2016 is the year racism died; the year in which “racist” and other similar epithets ceased to have the rhetorical effect which they once did.

Because its power is rhetorical, the negation of that power also rests in the realm of rhetoric.  And because its effectiveness rests on intimidation, it can be rendered ineffective by a steadfast, strong-minded refusal to be intimidated.

This comes as no surprise.  It’s an open secret that the term “racism” basically has no meaning beyond “you said or did something a social justice warrior didn’t like.”  An increasing number of white people are starting to not care about being tagged with it.  After all, within the past few weeks, we’ve found out or been reminded that you are racist for:

• Disagreeing with Obama
• Disagreeing with any other Democrat
• Saying that “all lives matter”
• Questioning any SJW narrative, even if race plays no role in it
• Being a white guy with dreadlocks
• Referring to chocolate-infused bread snacks as “brownies”
• Pointing out that fake “hate crimes” committed by black or Jewish college students were…committed by black or Jewish college students
• Refusing to rent your property to violent ex-felons
• Opposing gun control
• Supporting gun control if it means young black males won’t get to own guns
• Being born white

It’s rather apparent why nobody with any sense takes charges of  “racism” seriously anymore.

The effectiveness of the “racism” slur was not because of its accuracy, but because of its emotional impact, which made it the perfect tool for SJWs to use as a signaling mechanism to bully their opponents.  Everyone knew that SJW charges of “racism” were bilious nonsense.  But everyone else also knew that being accused of it, even falsely, could be a career-ender.  Nobody knew that others thought the same way as they did, so everyone was isolated and thus silenced.  It’s like the Soviet Union right before it collapsed--everyone in the Soviet Union knew their system was unsustainable, but nobody wanted to say so for fear of running afoul of the secret police.  But then the dam broke and the whole system was swept away.  And then everybody openly said what they had known all along, which was that the system had been failing for years.

The SJW name-calling has become less and less effective as more and more people begin to discover the alt-Right and become "red-pilled".  That’s not surprising.  As I’ve pointed out previously, one of the key factors in red-pilling is the acceptance of truth, facts, and reason, regardless of where they go or to what conclusions they might lead.  So it’s obvious that if the power of “racism” is to be completely broken, then the alt-Right needs to double down on the diffusion of “hate facts” into the West’s social consciousness, rather than drawing back from doing so.  The reason isn’t so much to educate people who don’t understand these “hate facts”, but rather to openly declare them so that these people will know that there are other people out there who think like they do.

The reason why the radical Left uses terms like “racism” to isolate wrong-thinkers is because they know that when people are isolated, when they don’t believe anyone else around them believes as they do, they will often conform to what they perceive to be the dominant belief around them.  This was demonstrated by the Asch conformity experiments back in the 1950s.  In these experiments, a test subject was placed in a room with several other people, who were all part of the experimental team.  The subject was shown a paper with three lines of different lengths printed on them, and then another paper with one line, the length of which matched one of the three lines on the first paper.  The subject was asked to tell which of the three lines the other, single line matched in length.  The trick, however, was that all of the members of the experimental staff would purposefully choose the wrong answer.  The test was to see whether the test subject--who always chose the obviously correct answer--would recant and change his or her answer to conform to what everyone else was saying was the right answer.  It was found that many of the test subjects would do so. They would go along with what they knew to be the wrong answer, just to conform to what they perceived to be the majority belief around them.

The Left has used its rhetorical epithets to great effect to silence opponents, and then to induce in them Asch-like responses of conformity.

But there’s more to the story.  When other people were included in the experiment who answered the same way as the test subject (i.e. “confederates”), the test subjects became much more resistant to conformity.  This was the case even when only one confederate was introduced.  The ability of a majority to bend a minority to its will was greatly reduced when that minority had even a small amount of support from confederates.

This is what has started to occur in 2016.  The dam began to break earlier this year when the alt-Rightish Republican candidate Donald Trump refused to walk back comments he had made about illegal immigrants.  Widely condemned as “racist” by the Cathedral media, he nevertheless stuck to his guns.  The result?  He took the lead in the primaries and never lost it.  Rank-and-file voters rewarded him with victory in the primaries, and gave him the Republican nomination (presuming that the cuckservatives don’t figure out a way to steal it from him through convention shenanigans).

What’s interesting is not so much that Trump rose to prominence by refusing to cave to the SJW-driven political correctness conflict initiated against him, but why he prevailed in that conflict.  Why is it that despite so-called “misstep” after “misstep,” Trump seemed to be immune to every effort by the media and the political establishment to cow him into submission by casting him as “racist” (as well as other allied terms like “sexist” and “homophobic”)?

Simply put: Trump doesn’t scare because Trump doesn’t care.

They could call him whatever they liked--he didn’t care.  He didn’t grovel or cower, he doubled down and threw it right back at them.  The Cathedral [I prefer "Synagogue" -Ed.] punditry this year were simply astounded and dismayed by Trump’s overturning of all the accepted rules of the political game.  Essentially, these rules exist for the purpose of hobbling any candidate who would go too far off the reservation and begin to say things that really challenged the Cathedral’s status quo.  A Republican can be “edgy” by saying we should cut taxes a few percentage points.  Calling for a wall to keep out illegal aliens and taking a stand for a reinvigorated American nationalism are outside the pale.  Yet, all of the media’s usual tactics at keeping politicians docile failed with Trump this year.

Why?  Because there are a lot of people who are simply getting sick and tired of the whole "racism, etc." racket.  So when Trump stood his ground, he served as a rally point for all of these people, and they, in turn, fed into his sense of broad-based support for his words and actions.  The media could call him a “racist” all they liked, it only began to have the opposite effect: he grew more popular, not less.  His refusal to back down drew attention, which in turn caused more and more people to be exposed to his actual ideas, instead of the media’s caricature.

In other words, Trump was basically acting as a nationwide (and indeed worldwide) “Asch confederate,” letting the incipient proto-redpillers out there know that they’re not alone.  This, in turn, has fueled the rise of the alt-Right--with all of its non-conformist, reactionary, and politically incorrect ideas--into the national consciousness to the point that the Cathedral media and other organs have begun to feel the need to deal with it instead of ignoring it.  This is why the Overton Window has been moving in our direction on a number of issues such as illegal immigration, Muslim “refugees”, and the defense of Western civilization in general.  It’s why we saw a successful Brexit last month, and why Austria will most likely elect a nationalist president this fall, provided they can keep their election honest this time around.  The Cathedral may still succeed in using raw political force to stifle these rebellions, but they will do so without having majority support from an increasingly rebellious populace.

And this will be in large part because their old rhetorical weapons are rapidly losing their edge.

The key to breaking the power of the SJWs does not lie in counter-protesting or otherwise mimicking the Left’s activism, which is bound to fail.  Rather, it consists in continuing to red-pill those who are red-pillable at the demotic level, while building and/or strengthening our own alternative support sources--churches, männerbunden, citizen militias, and the like.  These support structures should follow a loose, “distributed system” approach toward organizing and working together; no single head which can be crushed and the movement broken.  We will know that we have achieved success when someone can be fired for being a “racist” for something completely unrelated to their job or their company, and that company is forced by a mass of negative feedback to rehire that person and refrain from further punishing them.  Success will be achieved when the SJWs are no longer able to do what SJWs do.

Anti-Trumpers, Please Watch The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

As a good traditional conservative, I like Westerns. If you watch a lot of Westerns you will eventually discern that many of them have a very similar theme. This theme is that the breed of men it took to tame the Wild West is different from the breed of men it took to civilize the West once it was more or less tamed. This is an important life lesson with real world application. Conservatives should watch more Westerns and less Fox News.

The outstanding example of this theme is the 1962 John Ford classic, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (IMDB 8.1). If you haven’t seen it, especially if you consider yourself any kind of trad con, I strongly recommend that you stop reading this and watch it and then return to this article when you are done. You can stream it on Amazon for $2.99. For those who have never had the pleasure of watching it or have not watched it recently, I will provide a brief and largely spoiler free overview.

Ransom Stoddard, played by Jimmy Stewart, arrives in a small Western town after being robbed and beaten by the feared local outlaw, Liberty Valance. The story is told in retrospect, so we know that Stoddard goes on to become a United States Senator after the territory achieves statehood. Stoddard is a bookish lawyer and a decent man who is all about justice and the rules, but he is constitutionally ill-equipped to deal with the chaos and violence that Valance and his crew visit upon the town. The film makes it very clear that Stoddard, unlike the cowardly local sheriff, is not without courage, but he has the kind of courage of his convictions that gets a decent man killed in the Wild West. He refuses to concede the reality that sometimes in the real world, principles have to give way to the way things actually are.Stoddard, from the already civilized East, is attempting to act according to his “back East” values, despite the fact that he is no longer back East. A local who is quite handy with a gun, Tom Doniphon, played by John Wayne, sees what is going on with his sincere but hapless friend, and attempts to explain to him the way things work in his new environment. Men like Valance, Doniphon explains, aren’t impressed by his principles. They only understand force. This lesson is illustrated by the famous ending of the film, which I will not spoil. Stoddard goes on to thrive post-statehood in the more civilized environment for which his skill set and demeanor are better suited, while Doniphon lives out the rest of his life in lonely isolation, his temperament and skill set no longer needed.

The above theme is common in Westerns because history reveals it is based in truth. It is not a coincidence that some of the most famous Western lawmen were also former outlaws themselves (“Wild Bill” Hickok, “Doc” Holliday, Wyatt Earp, etc.).

I have previously made it clear that I believe there are some sincere conservative opponents of Donald Trump who are genuinely put off by his at times, shall we say, less than decorous and gentlemanly behavior. In an ideal world, traditionalist conservatives in particular, should value decency and decorum. I wholeheartedly agree with this, but our world is not ideal and Russell Kirk is not on the ballot, and I am not sure Russell Kirk would be the right man for the job at this time even if he was.Through much interaction with both sides, I am convinced that one of the primary things that divides conservatives who oppose Trump from conservatives who support him is where they view our current situation as being on this uncivilized vs. civilized spectrum. Do we live in a civilized society that just needs fine-tuning, something that could be accomplished by a man of conviction and principle like Ransom Stoddard, or do we live in an uncivilized society that needs a gunfighter like Tom Doniphon to do what has to be done to tame the land first before we can worry about principles? By the standards of the film, are we pre-statehood or post-statehood?It is not a reach, I believe, to view Ted Cruz and many of his diehard supporters (and Rand Paul and his supporters) as having a mindset a lot like Stoddard’s, concerned about principles and technicalities like the Constitutional process, checking all the conservative boxes, keeping the ideological flame, etc. but not realizing that we now live in an uncivilized and in many ways lawless (some have called the current state of our country anarcho-tyranny) country where such things are as useful as Stoddard’s law books were against Valance. While Trump and many of his supporters have a mindset a lot like Doniphon’s, realizing they need to do what it takes to secure the country against hostiles they recognize do not play by the rules.

So who is right about where the country currently falls on this spectrum? A black sniper deliberately took out white police officers at a Black Lives Matter rally in Dallas, and the Megaphone blames it on guns and Donald Trump. A radical Muslim shoots up a gay nightclub in Orlando and the Megaphone blames it on guns, Donald Trump, and white Christians who encourage homophobia. Protestors carrying Mexican flags and promising to take America back for Mexico riot and attack peaceful Trump supporters outside a Trump rally in California, but Trump’s “incendiary” rhetoric is to blame. Blood runs through the streets of many of our major cities because the police have backed off and let chaos reign in what has been called the Ferguson Effect. Sixty-six people were shot in the city of Chicago over the July 4 weekend. Conservative speakers are forced to cancel appearances or are shouted down on college campuses by self-appointed Social Justice Warriors who then demand safe spaces if a conservative actually manages to speak. Students at a venerable, top tier Southern University, one of my alma maters, demand counseling because someone wrote Trump’s name on the sidewalk in chalk. Christians are forced to bake wedding cakes against their conscience. People with college degrees work at Starbucks, live with their parents, and put off marriage and procreation because they can’t find a decent middle class job in the new 21^st Century economy our elites have foisted on us. Employees at Disney are forced to train their foreign replacements fraudulently brought in on work visas. I could go on.

Anti-Trump conservatives, you need to wake up. Wagging your finger at the enemy about the Constitution is going to be as effective as Stoddard pointing at his law books was in his battle against Valance. You don’t live in 1950s America anymore or even Ronald Reagan’s America. You don’t live in Stoddard’s East. You live in Doniphon’s Wild West. Your enemies don’t care about or play by your rules. Like Valance and his gang, they see you as an impediment they just want out of their way. All your tidy little principles will not mean a thing if the country turns permanently Blue from immigration and there is no middle class left to hold up the whole edifice because our manufacturing base has been decimated by globalist trade deals. The Constitution is already virtually a dead letter, but it will be completely dead if America stays on its current trajectory and becomes a third world country. I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to scream at the computer screen, “Would you please watch The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance!” when engaging Cruz supporters, Rand supporters and other anti-Trumpers.

Now is not the time to box check your conservative list. Now is not the time to hand-wring about decorum. You live in an uncivilized and hostile environment that wants you out of the way, literally and figuratively. You can box check your list or use Emily Post as your standard for judging a candidate after the realm has been secured, but not before. The current times do not call for a Ransom Stoddard. They call for a Tom Doniphon. I’m not making any promises about how successful a Trump presidency will be, but he’s the closest candidate to a Tom Doniphon we have right now. A lot of the issues with his persona and demeanor that his critics complain about are a feature of the kind of candidate we need at this time, not a bug. Anti-Trumpers please note, the enemy didn’t blame the “toxic” rhetoric of Ted Cruz, Marco Rubio, John Kasich, or Rand Paul for the recent reign of chaos. They blamed Donald Trump. They know who their real enemy is. So should you.

The View From Olympus: Pussycats--Martin van Creveld's Important New Book

Martin van Creveld's latest book, Pussycats: Why the Rest Keeps Beating the West and What Can Be Done About It, is so important that it re-defines the military reform agenda. Previously, military reform has focused on the problems that have led to America's repeated military defeats. The issues van Creveld raises in Pussycats suggests we are moving from an American military that can't win to one that won't even fight.The essence of Creveld's argument is that we (both the U.S. and Western Europe) have de-militarized our military. The introduction of women is one of the factors, but not the only one, although if a military is to fight it must have an aggressively male culture. That is unacceptable not only to the women in the military but to a broadly womanized society and culture. It would not surprise our ancestors to hear that a womanized society can't fight.But Creveld looks at influences well beyond womanization. The de-militarizing of our armed forces begins, he argues, with the way we now raise children, especially boys. No longer do they "go out and play", get into fights, get into difficulties they have to find their own ways out of. Rather, they live controlled, "safe" lives where they always have adult supervision and are instructed in how to do everything before they have to do it. Instead of growing up, they are forever infantilized.This problem is very real. Recently, I recommended to a friend, a lieutenant colonel at the Marine Corp's Basic School for new lieutenants, that they reinstitute the "Zen patrol". In the Zen patrol, which TBS used to do, new lieutenants are simply taken out on a patrol, without having received any instruction in patrolling. They have to figure it out for themselves, which means they also learn how to learn.My friend replied, "You cannot do that with this generation. In everything they have ever done, they have had adult instruction and supervision. If you don't first tell them what to do and how to do it, they get angry. They say, "You are setting me up for failure to embarrass me in front of my peers."War, of course, presents many situations where you have to figure out what to do on your own. The enemy doesn't follow your play book. Creveld raises the question, "How will these infantilized soldiers and Marines do against fighters who, as kids, had to figure out everything on their own?"Creveld goes on to discuss the war on men and all things masculine, which is probably the central factor in de-militarizing our militaries. Again, if a military is to fight, its culture must be aggressively male. Not only is that now socially unacceptable, increasingly it is illegal. In response, our soldiers and Marines turn what was a calling into just a job. A friend who recently visited Camp Pendleton said to me, "I did not see anything military the whole time I was there. Every Marine has a car, nice housing, comfortable, Holiday Inn-style facilities. Nothing I saw had anything to do with war." Pendleton has been de-militarized.Not surprisingly, van Creveld, whose book Men, Women and War makes a definitive case against trying to mix young women and young men cheek-by-jowl in military services, then crucify the young men if there is any bunga-bunga (or just lustful looks: the military has resurrected "rape by leer"), returns to the theme here. The pursuit of "equality", hopelessly mis-defined as pretending that men and women are interchangeable, brings the end of masculinity, which gives you a military that won't fight. I will go beyond Martin and put it bluntly: if we don't get the women back out, starting with the combat units, we will have armed services that, like the Prussian Army in 1806 (for different reasons), will collapse at a touch. We might as well save ourselves a trillion dollars a year and replace the whole thing with an 800 number that, when you call it, says "We surrender" in a variety of languages.Pussycats concludes with a needed discussion of PTSD, which now seems universal but was not in previous, far bloodier wars, and with Western societies delegitimizing war itself. Those societies now see any kind of war, even against people who would give us the choice of converting to their religion or getting our throats cut, as morally wrong. There can be, in effect, no more just wars, and all enemy casualties are to be wept over.History's verdict is simple: such societies will be defeated, destroyed, and replaced by cultures that still have a grip on reality. De-militarization must now go to the head of the military reform agenda, because societies that cannot fight cannot win.

The View From Olympus: Stopping the Truck Threat

The murder in Nice, France, of more than 80 people by an Islamic jihadi (first name Mohamed) using a large truck as a weapon faces security forces with a new problem. I think that problem has an answer.Using cars as weapons by running into pedestrians has been seen numerous times in Israel. Rifles and pistols in the hands of police, soldiers, or citizens can stop a car pretty quickly. A truck is a different matter. The truck's massive front end offers the driver some protection against light weapons fire. Jihadis will also quickly start armoring the trucks. A few pieces of Kevlar, especially on the side doors, would provide significant protection against rifle and pistol fire. And no number of bullets will quickly stop a heavy truck coming at high speed.But an RPG will. It will also go through the truck's front and even armored sides to kill the driver quickly. What we need to do is equip every squad car and every two-officer foot patrol with an RPG. They aren't even expensive.I have argued for years that in many types of combat, the basic infantry weapon is no longer the rifle but the RPG. Our opponents all have them, and our own men are at a disadvantage because we do not.Now, just as more and more police must carry automatic rifles, so some will have to carry RPGs. They require little training. They are easy to aim and fire. One shot into the cab of the truck in Nice early in Mohamed's rampage would have saved many lives.Of course, police cannot be everywhere, though I am sure the police presence at the fireworks show in Nice was substantial. But that points to another measure I have previously recommended: a militia that includes every male who will sign up, pledged to attack any active shooter (or other jihadi) with whatever means lie to hand. Against trucks, the obvious means is cars. Just as militia members would pledge themselves to attack on foot, so they would pledge to use their cars as weapons to stop cars or trucks used for terrorist attacks. How? By aiming straight at them and flooring it. Some drivers will die, but many lives will be saved overall.In the end, no technical means will be enough to end the Islamic threat in France and other countries with large Islamic (especially Arab) populations. All Moslems except the Sufis, who threaten no one, will have to be expelled. That includes citizens. Kiss the cross or be handed a one-way plane ticket.Before that happens, France and other Western countries will suffer many more massacres like that in Nice. At some point, enraged Frenchmen, Swedes, Belgians, and others will overthrow the cultural Marxists, take their countries back, and expel the Moors, at least those not hanging from lampposts. Don't be surprised if it happens first in France. It's been a while since French mobs took to the streets crying, "A la lanterne!," but I doubt they've forgotten how.

The Next Conservatism: Winning the War for Western Culture

The next conservatism understands that the basis for any society is its culture. The reason our country was so successful for so long was our traditional, Western, Christian culture. If that disappears, everything it created will disappear along with it: our liberties, our prosperity, and our hope of living rewarding, satisfying lives.As everyone knows, Western culture is under assault, and many of the wise ways of our ancestors have already been lost. The thug assailing our traditional culture is commonly known as "political correctness", which seeks to make all the old virtues sins and all the old sins virtues.But the next conservatism knows something everyone does not know: what PC really is. It is cultural Marxism, Marxism translated from economic into cultural terms. That intellectually difficult job of translation was mostly done by a Marxist think tank established in Germany in 1923 called the Institute for Social Research or, informally, the Frankfurt School. Cultural Marxism's objectives since its initial conception have remained unchanged: the destruction of Western culture and the Christian religion.A column does not offer enough space to lay out the full history of cultural Marxism. Let me instead recommend a video documentary that does so: The History of Political Correctness. If every American watched this video and learned that political correctness is a variant of Marxism, it would be in serious trouble.In fact, the next conservatism knows that if cultural Marxism is to be defeated and our traditional culture restored, our first task is to tell our fellow Americans what political correctness really is and what its hidden objectives are. Sunlight is the best disinfectant.Beyond revealing PC as cultural Marxism, we also have to defy it. Just criticizing it is not enough; we have to break its rules. That starts with having honest discussions of two issues it uses to beat up our traditional culture: race and sex. Cultural Marxism's two favorite words of condemnation are "racism" and "sexism".But calling a fact an "ism" and those who dare speak facts "ists" are nonsense: facts cannot be nullified by calling them names. The overwhelming race problem in America today is not "white racism"--most whites wish blacks well--but bad behavior by far too many urban blacks, especially young black males. The black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate, and most of that is committed by young males, who are avoided not only by whites but by other blacks. Beyond violent crime, the urban black community is also overrun with illegitimacy, drugs, and welfare dependency.This did not used to be true. As recently as the 1950s, the black urban community was a safe, good place. 80% of black children came home from school to a married mother and father; no other fact is as important for a child's future. The problems in black schools were running in the halls and talking in class, not drugs and guns. The breakdown in the black inner city comes from abandonment of its traditional, Christian values, morals, and culture, and is in part caused by the same cultural Marxism that condemns whites as evil "racists".Similarly, cultural Marxism's cry of "sexism" is also phony. Differences between the sexes, physical and mental, are real, and traditional social roles reflect those inherent differences. Most women who work outside the home do so because they have to (free trade having destroyed the middle class jobs their husbands used to obtain), not because they want to. They would rather stay home and take care of their families. Children need full-time mothers, not day care.Unlike the conservatism of the Republican Establishment, conservatism offers a way to reverse the course of the culture war, which conservatives have been losing, and restore a culture that works: our old, Western, Christian culture. The next conservatism calls for Retroculture: rediscovering the old ways of living of our forefathers and returning to them in our own lives. Retroculture is not about politics. It should not and cannot be created by government. It is something individual conservatives do in their own lives and the lives of their families. The next conservatism works for Retroculture to become a movement, like the home schooling movement. Once other Americans see the old ways work while the new ways don't, they will be drawn to Retroculture themselves. The only safe form of power is power of example.

Social Liberalism Has No Long-Term Prospects

The title of this post may come as a bit of a shock to a lot of folks who have been observing events over the past few years.  How can I say that social liberalism – by which I largely mean the homosexualism, the transgenderism, the abortionism, the aggressive feminism, and the rest of the anti-human, anti-civilisation agenda of the culturally marxist Left – has no long-term prospects?  Haven’t they been sweeping all before them?  Haven’t they successfully imposed gay marriage on an unwilling population?  What about the success in forcing transgenderism onto the military, as well as society at large?  Despite the best efforts of the “religious Right,” isn’t abortion more entrenched as “the law of the land” now than it has ever been?

The answer to these questions is, “Yes – but it doesn’t matter.”

First things first, however.  The reason cultural, social liberalism has risen to the fore in recent years is because “conservatism” has been a complete, utter, embarrassing-to-even-be-associated-with-it failure.  It’s pathetic.  There’s no getting around it.  And the reason for this is because “conservatives” are weak-minded, weak-willed, and weak-kneed.  They have no stomach for conflict, and they break the first time someone lobs a PC-conflict epithet at them.  In short, conservatives conserve nothing because they’re wimps.  They spent too many decades playing the inside-the-beltway games, and they’ve become accustomed to enjoying the crumbs the progressives throw to them.  This is why all of these DC “conservatives” can find the “courage” to rally against Trump, but not once in seven years have they ever put up any sort of substantial fight against Obama, Eric Holder, Loretta Lynch, or anyone else on the progressive, SJW Left.  But sure, Ted Cruz and Mike Lee can get kudos from the National Review crowd for refusing to support their own party’s presumptive nominee, because he’s “racist” and wants to stop the Amnesty Express.

So, trusting in conservatives to “make things better” is a fool’s errand.

But back to the issue at hand.  We find ourselves facing a progressive SJW regime which appears to have almost total control of America’s government, as well as its academic, commercial, and social institutions (much the same could be said for other Western nations as well).  How can this not represent long-term prospects for social liberalism?

Here’s how.

What we need to understand is that social liberalism – homosexualism, transgenderism, and all the rest – is an inherently unstable transitional state, to present an analogy drawn from the energetics of chemical reactions.  In reaction dynamics, a transition state is a configuration along the reaction pathway at which the potential energy is the highest.  This state is an ephemeral, intermediate configuration known as an activated complex, and in irreversible reactions, it will always proceed on to the final product(s) of the reaction.

In social dynamics, the sort of radical social libertinism we see today represents just such an unstable, intermediate form.  Let’s face it – the things that represent the socially liberal SJW agenda are unnatural.  They require great amounts of energy to both produce and then to maintain.  The reason the radical Left has had to take such a top-down, forced-evolution approach in imposing its agenda and then in punishing those who deviate from it is because their agenda would never have developed on its own.  It takes tremendous energy to create such deviations from a traditional society.  By applying that energy (i.e. by forcing the reaction), they have generated a social state which reflects their desired worldview, but which is energetically unstable and will quickly proceed to an energetically more favourable product.

Assuming that the current reaction pathway is irreversible (i.e. we’re never just going to “go back” to the way things were before), there are two likely possible results (i.e. reaction products) which will occur once this unstable transition state breaks down.

The first is that we will fall into a totalitarianism of some sort, which will include the almost complete rollback of the social liberalism the Left has been pushing.  As noted above, the “SJW social libertine” transition state is unstable.  It is that way for a specific purpose.  The Left knows that their agenda of homosexualism, feminism, etc. serves to break down and destroy traditional morals and society.  This has been used to great effect previously by the Left.  Three particular examples will suffice.

• The breakdown in morals in the Weimar Republic as a result of the progressive social reforms of the 1920s
• The decriminalisation of homosexuality and other deviancies like abortion and divorce by Lenin in 1917
• The radical progressive social liberalism instituted in the Hungarian educational system by the Communist Gyorgy Lukacs during the brief Hungarian Soviet Republic of 1919.

In each of these cases, radical social “reforms” were instituted that were not dissimilar to what we’re seeing today – homosexuality was promoted, traditional masculine and parental authority were grossly undermined, abortion was encouraged.  However, in each of these cases, the libertine attitudes were quickly and inevitably replaced with the exact opposites.  In Germany, the rise of Nazism soon saw rigid clampdowns on this newfound social “freedom,” with homosexuals finding their way into the death camps along with Jews.  Hungary similarly saw social clampdown as their restored constitutional monarchy drifted into the orbit of fascist Germany and Italy.  In the Soviet Union, Stalin recriminalised homosexuality in 1933, and even adultery became illegal in the Soviet Union.

Social liberalism destabilises societies.  Once the destabilisation is no longer needed – the old traditional society has been done away and the New Order of whatever sort is put into its place – the destabilising elements will be removed by the totalitarians.  They’re not going to have a bunch of queers and cross-dressers tearing up THEIR new creation, after all.

So one end of the current reaction path the SJWs have put us on is a stultifying totalitarian system in which the SJWs will be themselves forcibly suppressed.  Little consolation, of course, to the rest of us who would also be living in constant danger of the gulag.

However, there is a second possible reaction product that can arise from this transition state, though it will also be significantly different from the sort of liberal democratic “end of history” scenario envisioned by the neo-conservatives.

This is the restoration of a traditional society, one that will not be like the old which has been done away with, but which will still seek to return to the old ways as much as possible.  Of necessity such a system will be austere and will not be to the liking of libertarians and other ideological fantasists.  This traditional system may end up being itself corruptible (as all things having to do with man are), yet it will involve a significant return to what was good about the past, even if the political forms are different. Two general examples here will illustrate.

First, you have the establishment of the Principate by Augustus after his victory in the civil wars in 27 BC.  Augustus established a monarchy in everything but name, even while his propaganda arm professed that he had “restored the Republic.”  Yet, the old aristocratic republic was never again to be.  The late Republic had become a moral cesspool.  Corruption, greed, bribery were rampant, as were sexual vice and excesses among the nobility.  These contributed to a breakdown in legitimacy not dissimilar to what we see in the West today.  When Augustus took power, he really did not act as a heavy-handed dictator.  He sought to at least give the appearance of adhering to constitutional forms as much as possible, and he was sparing in his use of the penal powers of the principate.  Augustus did, however, institute quite a bit of moral legislation designed to restore the virtues and morals enshrined in Roman reverence for the old Republic – the Republic of Cato and Marcellus and Aemilius Paulus.  Marriage was encouraged, as was having numerous children.  Women were returned to their traditional roles in Roman society.

The Principate under Augustus certainly was not a restoration of the old Republic, but it was a restoration to a more traditional form than the Republic had devolved into previously.

The second example I would point to is the “second religiousness” predicted by Spengler.  Spengler identified the second religiousness phase as representing both the decline of a civilisation, but also its rejection of the “rationalism” phase (which does not necessarily meet the dictionary definition of “rational”) which has rejected the traditional religion, which has been exactly what we’re seeing today with SJWs and their rejection of traditional Christian morality.

So the socially liberal transitional state does not need to decompose into a totalitarianism – it can finish its reaction pathway as, well, reaction.  This reaction will not be a return to “the good ol’ days.”  In fact, successful reactionary movements (which have existed, by the way) never are.  But they can return to something that is at least compatible with the old ways and morals, and which may end up actually becoming a new phase of a civilisation.  The degeneracy and collapse of late Roman civilisation in the Western Empire led directly to medieval civilisation, whose degeneracy and collapse, in turn, led to modern Western civilisation.  The degeneracy and coming collapse we see on the horizon for the West may simply represent the coming transition to a new civilisational form pursuing a linear trajectory from our own, with its own traditional forms being established off of our own.  It will almost certainly involve great dislocations – economically, socially, militarily – but the cycle will repeat.

Either way, the current state of affairs will not last forever, or even for a significantly long time.  SJWism and other elements of the radical progressive social agenda simply cannot exist for very long.  They’re too unstable and unnatural.  It is part of our job as traditionalists to try to steer that inevitable collapse in the direction we want (reaction, tradition) rather than in the direction intended by the globalists and progressives (leftist totalitarianism).

The View From Olympus: Brexit Strikes a Blow at Fourth Generation War

In voting for Brexit, Britain's departure from the European Union, the British (mostly English) people have struck a blow against the non-state forces that lie behind Fourth Generation war. That is true even if Scotland separates from England; the result will be two states, not a rise in non-state loyalties.Why is this the case? As I have often noted, 4GW is at root a struggle for legitimacy. The EU, with its all-powerful but unaccountable bureaucrats ruling from Brussels, has never had much legitimacy outside the elites. Those elites are also cultural Marxists, which means they are permanently at war with the historic cultures of every European state. You cannot be a member of the EU (or American) elite unless you grovel at the feet of cultural Marxism's unholy trinity of "racism, sexism, and homophobia". That is what lies behind the EU's drive to flood European countries with immigrants from other, often hostile, cultures. This political correctness has undermined what little legitimacy the EU had with European publics.And so the British people rebelled. I predict they will be followed by other European peoples. The real Right in France is calling for a referendum there on "Frexit", and the Dutch right wants a vote on "Nexit". The tide is in flood.Again, for all those who do not want to see 4GW spread, this is good news. Individually, European states still have legitimacy with their own people, most of them anyway. They certainly have a great deal more than the EU does or ever did. Very few young male Europeans are willing to bear arms, fight, and die for the EU. But there are still plenty left who will do so for their own countries.That is important, because Europe, including Britain, has already brought in so many immigrants who will not acculturate that widespread 4GW on European soil is inevitable. We are already seeing its beginnings in the terrorism incidents in France and Belgium. These are small beginnings indeed in terms of what is coming. More than one British officer has told me that he and his fellows know the next real war will be on their own soil.As Europe throws off the suffocating blankets of the EU and cultural Marxism, not only the will to fight but the will to live may return. That means, above everything else, having more children. Real conservative governments in Europe would quickly adopt strongly pro-natalist policies, encouraging large families not only with rhetoric but with large material incentives.The answer to 4GW non-state loyalties is thus not some impossible broad allegiance to a globalist, culturally Marxist superstate, i.e. Brave New World, but loyalty to the real states into which people are born. As weak as most European states now appear to be, I predict they will show surprising revivals of strength when it is a matter of fighting for their state against 4GW entities on their own soil.So thank you, England. You've started something. Before it finishes, the West may again be alive.

Western Nations Have the Wrong Aristocracy

Inequality among men is as natural as breathing or eating.  Understanding this truism will generally save a person about 90% of the frustration that they would otherwise feel towards human societies and political systems. Never in the history of mankind - not even in the most hopelessly utopian of efforts by social levelers - has this natural inequality ever truly been overcome.

The natural outcome of these inequalities (and I am speaking here within national and cultural bodies, not of relations between them) is that elites will always arise.  Within nations, aristocracies will always occur for a variety of reasons.  Even within democratic systems, Robert Michel's Iron Law of Oligarchy will operate, ensuring that a leadership caste rises to the top to effectively dominate the politics and social system within a nation or political subunit.  Looking to classical history, we see that even in places and at times when rampant democratization took place (e.g. Athens from ~525 - 350 BC, late Republican Rome), the initiative for these efforts arose not from the demos themselves, but from popular (and generally aristocratic) leaders who wielded the people as a weapon for gaining political power.  Let us not forget the Cleisthenes, whose reform of the Athenian constitution set that city on course for direct democracy, was of the aristocratic Alcmaeonid family; Julius Caesar and other late Republican leaders of the populares came from aristocratic senatorial families.

No less a democrat than Thomas Jefferson himself said, "There is a natural aristocracy among men.  The grounds of this are virtue and talent."  Though Jefferson was (obviously) a vigourous opponent of formal aristocracy, his statement is nevertheless true, and explains why aristocracies - elites within societies - originate.

Aristocracies generally originate and evolve during periods in which a society is expanding and growing, and thus needs the expansion of its leadership caste.  It is during these periods that "new blood," generally demonstrating a mix of intelligence, talent, and audacity, is given the opportunity to assert itself and join the previous hereditary elite, if such already exists or hasn't been overthrown (in which case, the "new blood" replaces the old).  This nobility is generally made up of those with the courage, cunning, skills, and enterprise to seize opportunities that present themselves and to motivate men to follow them to glory.  This is, in a nutshell, pretty much the story for the establishment of the feudal aristocracies that evolved out of the Germanic conquests of western Europe after Rome fell.  In many cases, petty chieftains or enterprising warriors were able to establish themselves in the new lands and initiate dynasties that lasted, in some cases, for centuries before being absorbed into the growing medieval nation-states.  The Counts of Anjou, for instance, established a county that produced many illustrious members, such as Fulk III (the Black).  Indeed, the great duchies, counties, and baronies largely began as statelets carved out by the ancestors of those whose names we are more familiar with from medieval history.  At least at the times they gained power, aristocrats were true to their titles - they were the best and the brightest in their societies.

However, we need not think of aristocracy solely in the sense of hereditary nobles bearing titles and coats of arms.  Even nations in the West which have more robust republican or democratic traditions and which either decimated or else consciously avoided the older-style hereditary aristocracy (such as France and the United States, respectively), still possess elites who have risen to the top of the political and social systems in place.  In our systems, these elites generally rise through a combination of statesmanship, education and scholarship, and juridical capabilities, though not a few have entered the "democratic" aristocracies through prowess in warfare and their natural leadership abilities.  In these cases, membership tends to be more fluid and less hereditary, though the presence of multigeneration American political clans from the Adamses to the Kennedies and Bushes shows this to not always be the case.

The problem with aristocracies is that they tend to become decadent and degenerate.  To them often applies quite well the plaintive words of Horace,

"Time corrupts all. What has it not made worse?Our grandfathers sired feebler children; theirsWere weaker still – ourselves; and now our curseMust be to breed even more degenerate heirs."

This most closely applies to hereditary aristocracies whose membership is much more closed to new blood, as the European aristocracy became.  Not only do the morals and the capabilities of such lines tend to degenerate, but very often their genetics do as well - witness Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain, a man who could barely chew his own food because of the extreme genetic deformity of his jaw and who was virtually ignored by his own advisors and regents.  So-called "democratic" aristocracies are not immune to this degeneration; however, their degeneracy tends to take on an institutional and systematic form, rather than familial and personal.  What degenerates is not necessarily the individual members, but the "aristocratical system" set into place by the ruling class.

As an aristocratic system degenerates, its members become more and more unworthy of the position to which heredity or connexions have placed them.  This is certainly the case with the present "elite" which we see in the United States and other Western nations.  Traditionally, the democratic elites in the Western nations that adopted some form of republicanism or parliamentary democracy in the 18th and 19th centuries were - despite the "democratic" nature of their systems - genuine elites.  Those who really rose to the top in terms of esteem and respectability were men who genuinely had the best interests of their nations at heart, and who had the statesmanship, education, and intelligence to guide their respective ships of state.  Unfortunately, this aristocratic system degenerated as well, and led to the present crop of "elites" have now completely broken with this tradition.

Starting in the late 1960s, these "elites" (which we would identify today as the "progressives" and other left-liberals who largely dominate the political, media, educational, and other culture-driving institutions) began their Gramscian "long march through the institutions".  Through the intervening decades, they were able to usurp control over these from the traditional elites who guided them previously.

This "elite," however, is fundamentally different from the earlier aristocracy which guided our politics and institutions.  Membership in the current progressive elite is not derived from ability, intelligence, a genuine classical education in the humanities, or the ability to learn and apply the law.  Rather, membership in this group is centered about one thing - adherence to (or at least submission to) the progressive ideology.  The more closely a progressive holds to the doctrinaire ideology of socialism, communism, and cultural marxism, the more successful they will be.  While earlier elites were typically characterized by such things as martial virtue, statesmanship, and classical education, the present progressive "elites" do not embody any of these traits.   Indeed, the typical progressive is diametrically opposite to these.

Progressives are, to put it frankly, stupid and unlettered people.  While they like to think of themselves as "educated" (and may indeed possess multiple degrees from educational institutions, degrees which they could only "earn" because other progressives were in power to grant these to them), the average progressive is grossly ignorant about a wide range of topics that are vitally important to the possession of true leadership abilities.  Progressives, by virtue of their transnational and globalist leanings, cannot by definition be "statesmen," since that term necessarily implies devotion to the guidance of a nation-state.   In many cases, progressives are actively hostile toward the military, cultural, and political success of the nations over which they exercise influence.

As a result, we must recognize that these progressive "elites" are a wholly and completely unnatural phenomenon.  Natural aristocracy is based on the inequalities of abilities, intelligence, daring, and other qualities that exist between different people, and which allow those who possess them to rise to the top, if they will exercise these natural advantages.  Because claims to elite status made by progressives rely solely on unthinking subordination to an artificial ideology, their "aristocracy" is also artificial.  This aristocracy exists because it tries to bend reality to meet the demands of ideology, rather than the other way around.  This explains why, in places dominated by these progressive elites, so many stupid, unworthy, and outright ridiculous people nevertheless rise to the top in the system.  This amply explains how people like Barack Obama, Loretta Lynch, Justin Trudeau, Angela Merkel and others like them end up where they are today.

These people are wholly unworthy of their "elite" status.  At least on a subconscious level, this is widely recognized, and it explains why there is so much growing opposition to them in just the last few years.  Having reached the point where they are so ridiculous that their unnaturalness can no longer be ignored, a backlash appears to be in the offing. Will the impending Trumpening of the United States represent the beginning of the end for the current progressive, transnational, globalist, anti-western "elite"?  The rise of the nationalists all across Europe, as well, suggests that the end may be nearing for the elite status of the progressives.  Now is the time for those on the broad alt-Right to prepare themselves to emerge as the new aristocracy that replaces the old, much as the German chieftains replaced Roman senators all across Gaul, Spain, Italy, and Britain fifteen centuries ago.  We are the new blood, and now may well be our time.

The Election: Fight Fear with Fear

The campaign of fear directed against Donald Trump has already begun. It will be the Democrats' main theme, as it was in Lyndon Johnson's campaign in 1964. Republicans are joining in too, the Establishment's fear of being called "politically incorrect" driving House Speaker Paul Ryan to denounce Trump as a "racist" for suggesting a Latino judge might let his race influence his decisions. Never mind that we are frequently told blacks cannot get fair trials from White judges and White juries. PC, which is really cultural Marxism, decrees you can say whatever you want about Whites (so long as it's bad), but never about its sacred "victim" groups.Fear campaigns can be powerful and effective, as Goldwater found out. How should Trump respond? Not by saying, "Oh, I'm really not that bad," which won't work and may come across to his base as cowardice. Rather, he needs to fight fear with fear.Hillary and the rest of the Establishment offer up plenty Americans should be afraid of. First is another stupid, avoidable war to bring "democracy" to the Middle East, at the cost of trillions of dollars, too many of our kids' lives and, in the end, another failure. Hillary is all for such wars. She pushed Obama into attacking Libya, after Qadaffi had done everything we'd asked him to (other dictators took note). The predictable result--I did predict it, in a paper for the EU just before the war kicked off--was another state destroyed and Fourth Generation war unleashed all over North Africa. That would have tubed any other politician, and should tube Hillary. Trump should attack her as the war monger she is.Immigration, legal and illegal, has left many native-born Americans living in fear. They, and we, are correct to fear more of it. Islamic immigration may be the most dangerous at the moment, but anytime you take immigrants from other cultures who will not acculturate, you import a new base for 4GW on our own soil. That is something we should fear very much. We do not want to become Iraq, or Syria, or France for that matter.The whole Establishment, both its Democrat and Republican wings, agrees we must continue to spend more money than the federal government takes in. At some point, the ballooning debt will mean we suffer a debt crisis, which we should fear. A debt crisis is not just a garden-variety recession. It is a depression, with a rapid fall of standard of living, that goes on for years or decades. Look at Greece. Because Greece is (for now) on the Euro, its government cannot do what governments usually do, which is inflate the currency and pay the debt back in worthless money. But we could, and would. The Fed would create new money in the hundreds of billions or trillions of dollars. In the end, what is left of the American middle class would be wiped out.Hillary also means a deepening of what White Americans fear and loathe, namely cultural Marxism itself. Will we get "hate speech" laws where this column could land me, or you for reading it, in jail? Any defiance of cultural Marxism is, in its lexicon, "hate". Will we get a five-vote far-Left bloc on the Supreme Court that tears up what is left of the Bill of Rights and decides we must pay American blacks trillions of dollars in "reparations"? Much of Trump's support is a rebellion against political correctness; should he not point out Hillary's election will mean we get more of it stuffed down our throats?The list of things the Establishment wants and the rest of us should fear is endless: more free trade until the last of our industry vanishes, more exporting of jobs to contractors in places such as India, more destruction of property rights (often in the name of "the environment", the Establishment's pagan god).So, Donald, fight fear with fear. Remind Americans, over and over, how much they have to fear if Lady MacBeth is our next president. The course the Establishment has set us on, and demands we remain on, faces us with grave dangers. The Establishment will succeed to some degree in making you frightening. You can, with good reason, make it more frightening still.

The Convention Coup Delusion

Since the NeverTrump forces have so far failed to attract a credible movement conservative-approved independent challenger to run against Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the general election, their focus seems to have shifted toward an effort to nominate someone other than Trump at the Republican National Convention in July. This has been the steady drumbeat coming from such NeverTrump sources as RedState and Erick Erickson’s The Resurgent among many others.

This effort is transparently absurd. Some are making the case that all Republican delegates are technically unbound and/or that through sleight of hand with the Convention rules they could be unbound, despite the fact that some states bind them by law. I’m not here to make that argument one way or the other. It’s a technical issue that is best addressed by those who are intimately familiar with the process. My point is that a delegate coup is a childish fantasy that is not going to happen, barring some sort of epic meltdown by Trump, and would be incredibly counter-productive to NeverTrump’s supposed fidelity to conservatism if it did.

First of all, there will certainly be plenty of true believers among the delegates, but the delegate selection process generally skews toward selecting party people who are team players and have paid their dues. You just aren’t going to get a sufficient number of them to agree to pull off an act this audacious. So far, the effort seems more virtual than real. A lot of very similar stories about a potential coup have appeared at various mainstream and conservative outlets, and it is backed by some high profile movement conservatives, but it is not clear that there are actually a lot of ground troops ready to put the plan into action.

In the unlikely event that the NeverTrumpers succeed with their plan, the results would be disastrous. One of the primary justifications offered by the NeverTrump chorus for wanting to do something that is unprecedented in the modern political era is that Trump is potentially headed for a big loss in November and threatens to cost the Republicans several Senate and House seats as well, but this reason is nonsense. Even if, for the sake of the argument, you concede that scenario to be true, the idea that pulling off a Convention coup and nominating Ted Cruz or whoever else in place of Trump would then result in victory in November is ridiculous. Like it or not, Trump won the nomination fair and square. The NeverTrumpers had the whole primary season to present their anti-Trump case, which they vehemently did. GOP primary voters were not persuaded. A coup that blatantly subverts the clearly expressed will of Republican primary voters would rightly outrage Trump supporters and fair minded people alike. Such a move would implode the party and spell disaster for its candidates in November and possibly indefinitely.If electoral success was really their concern, they would have Trump’s back against a relentlessly hostile Establishment, or if they just couldn’t bring themselves to do that, at the least they would lay off him. I don’t concede that Trump is going to lose in November, but if he does it will be partially because both the naturally hostile liberal Establishment and its organs and conservative forces that should have been on his side combined to vilify him. The NeverTrump people are not stupid, so surely they recognize the circular logic of bemoaning what a general election disaster they think Trump will be while simultaneously excoriating him just as vigorously as any liberal.   If there are sincere NeverTrumpers who just can’t bring themselves to back Trump because he doesn’t precisely check all their conservative boxes or they just can’t countenance his temperament and demeanor, then they should do the honorable and logical thing and support the Constitution Party nominee, Darrell Castle. Why aren’t Erickson, the whiners at RedState, et al endorsing Castle, instead of having a tantrum? This is what idealists whose chosen candidate doesn’t win the primary do, they either get behind the nominee of their party or they vote third party. There is an unmistakable sore loser element to the NeverTrump convention coup scenario.Also, these supposed keepers of the true conservative flame appear to believe that the best way to take down Trump is to assume the role of PC righthink enforcers and parrot cultural Marxist talking points like a bunch of teenage Social Justice Warriors on tumblr. Some of the stuff at RedState and The Resurgent is indistinguishable from what you find at Salon or Slate. Racist blah blah misogynist blah blah xenophobe blah blah bigot blah blah. Seriously? What’s next? Are they going to be calling for safe spaces and trigger warnings lest Trump and his yahoo supporters offend their oh so sensitive PC sensibilities? Has anyone asked Erick Erickson what his preferred pronoun is? We wouldn’t want to offend him. It would all be comical if it wasn’t so craven and counter-productive. If these so-called conservatives actually believe that it serves conservatism well to advance the cultural Marxist narrative of their enemy, then they are fools. If they are just piling on in whatever way possible, then they are craven opportunists. Do not expect me to take seriously the professed conservatism of people who write as if they have cribbed their rhetoric from a SPLC fundraising letter.As I have pointed out before, the most conspicuous element of the NeverTrump chorus is not Republican Party Establishmentarians who have by and large come to terms with a Trump nomination even if they don’t like it. Instead, it is Conservative Inc. ideologues and stakeholders who have an interest in maintaining their Conservative Inc. fiefdom. Trump threatens them because his more populist and nationalist message is off script and has revealed the very tenuous hold that by the books movement conservative dogma actually has on regular GOP voters. I don’t for a minute believe that NeverTrump is really about running an independent candidate who can win or orchestrating a Convention revolt that nominates someone other than Trump who will go on to victory in November, because these scenarios are too far-fetched for serious people to believe. This is about deliberately tanking Trump because they would rather punish Trump and his supporters for being off message and maintain control of their domain than they would defeat Hillary. I have no doubt that the more overtly globalist elements of the NeverTrump coalition, such as Bill Kristol and the boys at National Review, would actually much prefer Hillary’s status quo globalism to Trump’s “dangerous” nationalism, despite their pretense of also being NeverHillary. (It is because their loyalty is to globalism rather than conservatism that they won’t endorse the paleocon Constitution Party nominee.)Truly sincere conservatives should not be deceived by this NeverTrump chicanery. Either bite the bullet and support Trump or back the Constitution Party nominee Darrell Castle, but don’t allow yourself to be used as pawns in someone else’s power play.

The View From Olympus: The Lone Shooter Problem

The latest massacre by a lone Islamic shooter, that in Florida of 50 Hispanic gays (somehow I hear the name of a 1940s big band: Xavier Cougat and his Gay Latinos?) again shows the helplessness of the state against the man who acts alone. There is little the state's security services can do to prevent him from acting, because there is no plot to discover. Absent an ability to look inside everyone's head (and God forbid the state should gain that ability), all the state can do is respond. And all "first response" is too late; the peace has already been broken, which means 4GW has again beaten the state.As Donald Trump has suggested, we can stop importing more Fourth Generation war by blocking immigrants from groups prone to it, which include but are not limited to Islamics. (Hispanics are likely to bring with them another form of 4GW, gang warfare). But as was the case in Florida, the gunman will often have been born here (to immigrants, as it happens, but that will not always be true). We need an answer that goes beyond imported 4GW.There is only one: a voluntary militia of men who pledge to physically assault any lone shooter they encounter, whether or not they are armed.Think about it: in Florida, had everyone in the room (all presumably male, at least biologically) immediately gone after the gunman, as soon as he pulled out his gun or at least as soon as he started shooting, how many would have died? Five? Probably. Fifteen? Maybe. But almost certainly not 50. A couple hundred guys, even if they are gay, are going to overwhelm a single shooter. They could probably have beaten him to death with their purses.I have proposed this before. It isn't hard to create. The militia is in effect a sign-up sheet, where men formally pledge themselves to act against lone shooters. If they are armed, good. If not, they act anyway. They throw things at him, they charge him, they knock him down. A few die, but almost certainly a lot fewer than would otherwise. 4GW lone shooters are a form of war, and war has often demanded male citizens sacrifice their lives to defeat the enemy.Women should not be part of this militia. Their role is to encourage the men to fight ("Go get him!"). Beyond that, they should run away. If they don't, men will be distracted from attacking the gunman because they will instinctively act to protect the women. We need all the men focused on one thing: stopping the shooting.Donald Trump might go for this. But the Establishment never will, even though it is the only potentially effective response. Why? Because it wants to suck us all into Brave New World, and in Brave New World citizens are infantilized. We are all to play the role of helpless babies who must be protected (and told what to do) by Nannie Government. Anything that would have citizens act on their own, and men be men, horrifies the Establishment. No, we must cower and wait for the "professionals" to rescue us. In Orlando that took three hours. In an active shooter situation, three minutes is a long time.In military theory terms, what we see here is one combatant, the 4GW entities, using Auftragstaktik--on a very broad basis--while the other is bound for political reasons to Befehlstaktik. Any guess who has the faster Boyd Cycle? I will put it bluntly: unless the state can also use mission type orders--"Citizens, don't let a shooter keep on shooting!"--the state's helplessness before the 4GW lone shooter will grow. And the legitimacy of the helpless state will wither.

SJWism is Cultural Imperialism

Everyone knows that there is a cultural divide in the West.  However, many people have difficulty identifying exactly what it is.  It is widely assumed that the cultural divide is between "us" and "the foreigners."  While it is true that immigration is hard at work creating ever-expanding pockets of non-Western cultural zones across North America and Europe, these are largely exogenous and have a relatively small impact on the consciousness of the average American or European.  The cultural divide that I am talking about is much more indigenous and systematic.  It is the divide between white North Americans and Europeans who hold to their traditional cultural folkways and those who do not, and who are actively trying to supplant those traditional cultures.

Much has been said in recent years about "cultural marxism."  I won't go into the details of the origins of cultural marxism in the German Frankfurt School of social theorists, or how their ideology eventually morphed into the cultural marxism of today (which largely occurred during the drastic social changes of the 1960s and 1970s).  Suffice it to say that cultural marxism, as it is manifested today, essentially consists of a deconstruction of Western civilisation accompanied by doctrinaire multiculturalism and political correctness.  The intention is to undermine and destroy the bases upon which Western, capitalistic, bourgeois society is founded (the "marxist" part), and seeks to do so through the means of capturing the moral and informational "transmissive" elements of society - education, entertainment, religious institutions, news media, etc. (the "cultural" part).  Mixed in with this is a large element of Antonio Gramsci's theory of "cultural hegemony," in which a dominant ruling class in a culturally diverse nation exerts its influence to impose its culture onto the rest of society (more on this below).

Despite the arguments of many on the Left, it is readily apparent that cultural marxism is real, and that it is at work among those on the Left.  This is especially the case with the SJWs (social justice warriors), who serve as progressivism's "shock troops" for enforcing "progressive" values onto the rest of society.

Make no mistake, "progressives" really and truly do embody a very different culture than that held by traditional Western populations.  They are not--emphatically not--more or less like us, with just a few quirks.

What is SJW culture?  Probably the best (and most humourous) explanation of it can be found at Christian Lander's website Stuff White People Like.  Within the 136 entries he made (before he sold out and went corporate, maaaaan), he satirised the predilections of "The Right Kind of White People" (i.e. SJWs and other progs), while contrasting them with "The Wrong Kind of White People," (i.e. the rest of us).  The right kind of white people like Barack Obama, environmentalism, Birkenstocks, and Starbucks.  The wrong kind of white people like tractor pulls, country music, blue jeans, and voted for George W. Bush.  The right kind of white people want Bernie Sanders but will settle for Hillary.  The wrong kind of white people are rooting for Trump. The divide between traditional Americans and SJWs extends to musical tastes, which restaurants they will eat at, which stores they will shop at, and literally everything else.

This culture embodied by progressives has its origins in the cultural revolution of the late 1960s, and (as we all know) represents a marked departure from traditional American culture.

In a perfect world, there wouldn't be a problem with this, since we could all just live and let live.  However, as I've pointed out before, you can't ever really and truly have a multicultural society; not when there are multiple nationalities living under the same roof, and not even when people who are ostensibly members of the same nationality are, either.  Multiple cultures cannot coexist in the same geography at the same time - one will supplant the other, either through eradication, or through some form of assimilation (e.g. conquest followed by deculturation).

This is where Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony comes into play.  Gramsci posited that the ruling class in a nation will pursue culturally hegemonic goals by imposing its own values onto the lower classes and engineering their acceptance as the "natural order" of things.  For most of American and Western history, this was not particular problematic because the elites and the masses generally shared the same set of cultural underpinnings and assumptions anywise.  Hence, this imposition of cultural values on the masses was not onerous, and indeed, could even be beneficial when it improved the morals and manners of the rougher elements of society.

Gramsci himself talked about cultural hegemony as an observation. From his Marxist viewpoint, it was what the bourgeois and aristocratic classes imposed on the masses so as to maintain the so-called traditional and capitalistic order of society.  However, today's cultural Marxists have turned it around. Instead of despising it as something that capitalists and traditionalists do to them, it has become something they want to do to traditionalists and other "reactionaries".

However, cultures can't co-exist for long. This is why the SJWs are working fervently to extirpate the remaining vestiges of traditional societies in the West.  They view themselves (unfortunately, not without reason) as society's elite, and therefore view their mandate as the imposition of their own culture onto the rest of us. "Enlightening" us is their holy duty, and in many ways, theirs might be considered the "Beta man's burden," bringing civilization to the old-fashioned, traditionalist Fuzzy Wuzzies.  Their ambitions are not simply political, they are holistic--all of society, from top to bottom, must be transformed by their culture.

Hence, SJWs are culturally imperialistic.  Remember when Americans were beating Native American children in Indian schools for speaking their native languages?  The SJWs destroying the small business of a Christian who refuses to service a gay "wedding" is the modern day equivalent.

SJW culture was specifically created to subvert and overthrow everything about traditional culture--Christianity, morality, private property, masculinity, nationalism, social order, and all the rest.  Literally every single thing on their program exists to try to topple some aspect of the old order.  The whole point to SJW tactics is to impose their new order, their culture, onto us from the top down.

The View From Olympus: An Expeditionary Army?

As war becomes dominated by the Fourth Generation, state armed services face an increasingly difficult struggle to remain relevant. It is a struggle most of them will lose. The Europeans have largely reduced their state armed services to shadow organizations, to save money. They have no reason to do otherwise. The U.S. armed forces continue to be vast money pits simply because in Washington, everyone gets their cut. When the corrupt Washington Establishment falls, which could come as early as this November, all four services will have difficulty rationalizing their existence.Having seen at least a glimpse of the handwriting on the wall, the U.S. Army is attempting to reshape itself for expeditionary warfare, traditionally the Marines' turf. If either service thinks it can justify itself by planning expeditions against other states, it is living in the past. The relevant question is how they might recast themselves for expeditions against 4GW opponents. How could the Army answer that question?Against 4GW enemies that hold territory such as ISIS, what we need is in effect an Afrika Korps: a relatively small force that can get somewhere quickly, provide stiffening and a maneuver warfare capability for local allies, and then quickly get out again. In no case should it plan to remain for more than three months. The Pentagon should be required to write one hundred times on the blackboard, "No one benefits from a long war."The general approach should be Kesselschlacht. We go in, quickly encircle the opponent, then support our local allies as they besiege the Kessel. 4GW opponents will respond by blending in with the civilian population, attempting to escape the Kessel by claiming to be refugees. The only counter to this is to separate out all military-age males and incarcerate them. When we leave, the local forces we have supported can deal with them. They may not be much good for maneuver warfare, but most do know how to carry out massacres. When that happens, we will of course be shocked. C'est la guerre.The Army until recently had a type of formation that would work well in the Afrika Korps role: the Armored Cavalry Regiment (ACR). If it wants to go that expeditionary route, the Army should recreate ACRs. One problem is that the ACR's tanks, the M-1, would be too heavy and have overly high fuel consumption for operational maneuver. The latest version of the M-1 weighs 77.5 tons, which severely limits the bridges it can cross. Operational maneuver and Kesselschlacht require speed over operational distances, speed that is undermined by constant need to emplace bridges and refuel tank battalions.An ideal solution would be a lighter tank, around 40 tons, which the Russians have and we could buy. But neither the Army nor Congress would be wise enough to do that. So if the ACRs are to fulfill the expeditionary role, they will have to get rid of their tanks.Fortunately, the Army's version of the light armored vehicle, the Stryker, includes a "tank" version, armed with a 105mm main gun (the Marines do not have a heavy gun variant). It is wheeled rather than tracked, which is preferable for operational maneuver, most of which is on roads. Fuel consumption is also much less than for tracked vehicles, and no transporters are needed. The LAV program (I was one of three people who started it, when I was Senate staff) was originally intended to create (Marine) Operational Maneuver Groups on the Soviet pattern for use in third-world conflicts, so using them in that role would be a return to their origin.Competition between the Army and the Marine Corps for the expeditionary role in 4GW conflicts, when we are stupid enough to get into them, would be a good thing. Any time you can make bureaucracies compete, you have a chance for progress.The downside, looking at the Army, is that while an ACR (minus the M-1s) might be well suited to the role, the Army's poisonous internal culture makes almost any progress impossible. Instead of developing a real new capability, the Army will go its usual route of smoke and mirrors, relying on new buzzwords, slogans and PR to portray change while no real change happens. Today's Army does not understand operational art, fights linear battles of attrition rather than seeking encirclements, and promotes officers who avoid responsibility rather than seeking decisive results. It has far more in common with Mussolini's army in North Africa than with the DAK. Until that changes, the Army will fail at future 4GW as it has in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The View From Olympus: Dual Caution Lights

Recent successes in the wars with the Taliban and with ISIS should be viewed cautiously. The first comes with strong downsides and the second may not be all they seem.The success against the Taliban was the assassination by drone strike of the Taliban's supreme leader, Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour. At one level, this certainly hurts the Taliban. Mansour had only recently succeeded in consolidating his position, and now someone else will face that difficult task all over again.But as is so often the case in Fourth Generation war, the upside and the downside are the same. It is as important to us as to the Taliban that the new consolidation effort succeed.The tendency in 4GW is for endless fracturing. First the state fractures, then the original factions fracture, and the fracturing goes on until no one controls more than the area he can see. Obviously, this makes the task of re-creating a state ever more difficult. But from our perspective, we only win when a new state--a real state, not a Potemkin village like the current Iraqi "state"--emerges. From that perspective, if the Taliban fractures (and it has increasingly strong tendencies in that direction) our victory becomes less probable.By killing Mullah Mansour on Pakistani territory without Pakistani approval, we have yet again undermined the fragile legitimacy of that state of Pakistan. We should remember at all times that if the Pakistani state fails, we will suffer a far worse defeat than any possible failure in Afghanistan. We complain that Pakistan has de facto allied with the Taliban, but the government in Kabul which we created has given Pakistan no choice. In a prime example of strategic idiocy, the Afghan government has aligned with India. That is a mortal threat to Pakistan. If we want Pakistan to de-align with the Taliban, we must convince Kabul to de-align with India. The U.S. State Department seems clueless about this basic fact.If all this seems to raise the question, "If every actions we take, even when it succeeds, generates so much blow-back, what can we do?", that is how Fourth Generation war works. Every action generates an equal and opposite reaction. Often, while our action is on the physical level, the reaction is on the mental or moral levels, which are more powerful. So it all blows up in our face. What should we do? Stay out of Fourth Generation wars on other peoples' soil.The second success that should raise caution signs is that of the Iraqi Shiite government in re-taking some towns from ISIS. ISIS's MO is classic Arab light cavalry warfare. Light cavalry has little ability to hold terrain. ISIS may have created local militias in Fallujah that will fight to hold that city, because they live there and they are Sunnis. They know the Baghdad government treats all Sunnis as enemies, giving the locals little choice but to fight (ISIS won't let them flee, and if they do escape, the ring around Fallujah is manned by Shiite militias who often kill Sunnis on the spot.).But ISIS's real response is more light cavalry warfare in the form of increased suicide bombings against Shiite areas in Baghdad. These mass casualty events undermine the shaky legitimacy of the Iraqi government. ISIS is focusing on areas loyal to Muqtada al-Sadr; in response, Sadr's supporters have twice invaded the Green Zone. ISIS's counter-offensive may prove more effective than the Iraqi government's counter-offensive against ISIS, bringing down the Iraqi government before it can get very far in its struggle to take Iraqi territory back from ISIS.Here the action-reaction nature of 4GW may hit back at ISIS. If the current Iraqi government falls and is replaced by a government under Muqtada al-Sadr, that could blow up in ISIS's face. My information is that al-Sadr, has maintained long-standing ties to Iraq's Sunnis. He might be able to offer them a safe place in a reunited Iraqi state. If so, ISIS would lose its Iraqi base, which is always fatal in politics. And 4GW is armed politics.I have said for many years that in the end, I expect Muqtada al-Sadr to walk off with all the marbles in Iraq. Our incompetent foreign policy establishment would be appalled, but it might be the best thing that could happen to us. Remember, we only win if in the end a real state is re-established in place of the one we idiotically destroyed. If al-Sadr can deliver that, he is potentially our most effective ally.

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.