Barren Metal, a Book Review

Having read E. Michael Jones' work Libido Dominandi, where he exposes how global elites have used sexual “liberation” as a tool for political enslavement, a brilliant book, I was looking forward to reading Barren Metal which is a history of usury.  Sadly I was disappointed. This work is inferior to Libido Dominandi. I will first discuss the positive elements I found in the book and conclude with where I thought it failed.

The basic premise of the Barren Metal is that usury is the extraction of surplus value from the laborer and that capitalism is state sponsored usury. Jones here is a bit confusing as he distinguishes between two kinds of capitalism (1) free-enterprise and entrepreneurship  and (2) state sponsored usury. When most people of think of capitalism, at least on the political right, they think of definition one. What he calls state sponsored usury I really don't think is capitalism. Obviously we have state sponsored usury in the ancient world under Greece and Rome and yet nothing like the dynamic markets of modern capitalism was seen.

This over simplification mars the book. Jones has a penchant for reductionist thinking; capitalism is usury, Protestantism is a looting operation of the Catholic Church, etc.

Jones begins his work by challenging the Weberian thesis that capitalism arose not out of Protestantism, but out of Catholic Renaissance Italy. He then spends the better part of 1000 pages blaming Protestantism for capitalism and only at the end of the book does he return to his original position. This kind of confusing and contradictory view is a major weakness of the book.

Prior to the Reformation/Renassiance, the Catholic church in the Benedictine Order valued labor over alchemy/usury in producing wealth. Together with the civil arm of the Holy Roman Empire, the German-Catholic order of anti-usury pro-labor was maintained. From here on out the basic narrative of the book is that the rise of pagan thought in the renaissance in Catholic Italy coupled with the great Schism brought on by Protestantism destroyed the Church's 'policy power' to enforce laws against usury. For Jones the Protestant looting of Church property in England, in order to get the initial startup capital for economic development, was the original sin of capitalism. He argues that the rise of liberalism and its grounding of morals in human sentiments was the perfect justification for the exploitation of the working class by the capitalist elite. This breach made by English capitalism and the Reformation was compounded by Napoleon and his emancipation of the Jews. The German rationalists were the one bright spot in this period. From Kant to Hegel the Germans developed a new economic outlook based on the national economy rather than pure individual interest. This view of economics he sees carried into the Catholic social teaching of the late 19^th and early 20^th centuries. This German-Catholic fusion is his alternative to Jewish capitalism.  The Jews and the English Protestants conspired to spread capitalism, ergo usury, throughout the world. He ends his work by discussing the implications of usury in the great 2008 economic crisis.

Jone's critique of Empiricism is decidedly excellent. His account of the Jews bears repeating. He argues that the Jews, a diasporic people, treated gentiles as aliens and that is why they extracted usury from them. When capitalism internalized this Jewish practice it made each individual an alien to the other, destroying social cohesion. He argues that capitalism and communism are two sides of the same Jewish coin. He argues that Marx rendered the working class as a rootless cosmopolitan force, just like the Jews. The Marxist solution of abolishing property was worse than the problem of usury.

Jones' argument is hampered by his clear ignorance of the Reformation. He argues that the Anabaptists were Lutherans, and even states later in the work that they invaded churches and smashed images. With the noticeable exception of Munster the Anabaptists were pacifists and such a bizarre falsehood seriously damages Jones' credibility on this issue. His monomania with Protestantism is also flawed since Protestant Scandinavia and Germany did not develop the radical individualistic capitalism he condemns, ergo something other than Protestantism was the driving cause, thereby discrediting his narrative.

Jones acts as if the Catholic church would have had an alternative to Capitalism; he is quite favorable of the Jesuit Experiment in Quebec and Paraguay. Yet he never demonstrates that there was a viable Catholic alternative. The Catholic kingdoms of Portugal, Spain, France, and Austria were all as debt and usury ridden as the England he so condemns. The fact is that usury ran apace in Catholic as well as Protestant nations.

His anti-Protestant monomania is further compound by his monomaniacal fixation on Henry VIII's nationalization of the monasteries. This, for Jones, is the original sin of capitalism; the confiscation of a thousand years of accumulated value and his justification for reducing the Reformation to merely a looting scheme. This of course is absurd. I could just as easily say the Reformation was the Roman Catholic chickens coming home to roost. During the 4^th century the Catholics running the Roman Empire destroyed Pagan images and confiscated pagan temples, not unlike what Henry VIII would do 1100 years later. Given that the Catholic church was built on the accumulation of a 1000 years of classical labor it was nothing more than a looting operation. This double standard is further highlighted when he complains that English pirates, such as Sir Francis Drake, were raiding Spanish galleons, without even so much as a mention of the massive looting of Mexico and Peru, probably one of the greatest looting operations in history and far grander than Henry VIII's. We see that in the 4^th and 16^th centuries the Catholic church was built on loot and plunder of an unimaginable scale, but it would be absurd to conclude from that the Catholic Church was merely a looting operation of pagan goods, as Jones implies with the Reformation.

In short Barren Metal is a deeply flawed though expansive work that leaves much to be desired.

The View From Olympus: Syria Again

The pathetic performance of the U.S. State Department with regard to Syria makes America appear an international naif. Secretary Kerry bleats about starving women and children, Russia agrees to another ceasefire, and events go on as before. So disconnected from reality is the American Establishment that it seems to have lost even the most basic understanding of how wars are fought. The front page of the September 26 New York Times offers an example. It began a story on Syria saying,

Make life intolerable and death likely. Open an escape route, or offer a deal to those who leave or surrender. Let people trickle out. Kill whoever stays. Repeat until a deserted cityscape is yours.

That sounds to me like a normal description of how sieges work. But the Times is horrified. We have become the equivalent of the sort of stringy-haired, horse-faced, post-menopausal woman who goes to peace marches.A realistic policy on Syria would begin with the understanding that cease-fires and the like only work when all the participants in a war are exhausted. We seem to be a long way from that point in Syria. Instead we are in the early stages of the Middle East's Thirty Years' War, with Syria playing the role of Bohemia.There is one difference, and it is an important one: whereas the Thirty Years' War began as a war of religion and ended up a war between states, the Middle East's Thirty Years' War began as a war between states and has turned into a war of religion. That in turn is part of the decline of the state and the rise of competing non-state primary loyalties.Were the United States to do as Donald Trump has suggested and regard Russia as an ally instead of a competitor, we might be able to lower the temperature of the Syrian War. More is not possible; the decline of the state in the Middle East and the consequences flowing from it will continue. Local, partial success is the farthest reachable goal.The key to that goal is an agreement among the Powers, exactly the thing Bismarck would have sought. One such agreement would see the U.S. join Russia in realizing that the best chance of re-establishing a Syrian state is to back what remains of that state, in the form of the Syrian government. With all the Powers supporting the government of President Bashar al-Assad, western Syria, where most of the population lives, could probably be united and pacified. In time, the government's control could spread eastwards, although I think reuniting all of Syria is unlikely.Were we to further ask ourselves that all important foreign policy question, "What would Bismarck do?", a larger and potentially more stable solution might be possible, with the Powers acting together. Recognizing that the Sunnis in both Syria and Iraq are unlikely to accept Shiite rule, we would make a deal with the real ISIS to establish an independent Sunnistan carved out of eastern Syria and western Iraq.The real ISIS? What is that? The Baath. The religious crazies do not run ISIS. They provide the front men and the cannon fodder. ISIS is actually controlled and enabled to function by senior Iraqi Baathists, formerly members of Saddam Hussein's government in Iraq. They know how to make things work. The religious fanatics do not.The Baath is secular and rational. You can make deals with it. The deal would be, they get a Baathist Sunnistan and in return they cut the throats of the Islamist fanatics. That is, after all, what Saddam's Iraq did. The Baathists and the jihadis despise each other. Theirs is entirely an alliance of necessity, brought about by George W. Bush's insane and disastrous invasion of Iraq. Give the Baathists what they want and they will be happy once again to become our useful allies. With Hillary running for President as a "foreign policy expert", it is useful to remember that when Saddam offered us an alliance against al Qaeda and the like during the Clinton administration, the White House refused to even consider it. Bright move, "experts". When W. overthrew Saddam, al Qaeda applauded.The reason many Americans, myself included, are supporting Donald Trump for president is that he offers at least a chance of a return to reality as a basis for policy at home and abroad. With Hillary and the rest of the Establishment (of both parties), that chance is zero.

Donald Trump, Peace Candidate

In what may seem an odd role-reversal, in this election the Democrat is the war hawk and the Republican is the peace candidate. Donald Trump has laid out his vision for a non-interventionist foreign policy, while Hillary Clinton believes in "humanitarian intervention", i.e., making war for peace. Trump has rightly called George W. Bush's Iraq war a disaster, while Clinton still defends the intervention in Libya that destroyed the Libyan state.In fact, this represents a return to historic patterns. There is an old saying, forgotten in recent decades, that goes, "Vote for a Republican and you get a depression, vote for a Democrat and you get a war." America's worst president ever, the Democrat Woodrow Wilson, won re-election in 1916 with the slogan, "He kept us out of war," then took us into World War I within a month of his second inauguration. He thereby gave the world the Versailles Diktat, Hitler, Stalin, and World War II.After that war began in September, 1939, Franklin D. Roosevelt, another Democrat, was desperate to get the U.S. involved. Whether he facilitated the Pearl Harbor attack is uncertain, but he welcomed it, along with Hitler's subsequent stupid declaration of war on the United States.Democrat Harry Truman gave us the Korean War; Republican Dwight Eisenhower ended it. The sainted JFK gave us the Vietnam War, Democrat Lyndon Johnson kept it going, and Republican Richard Nixon ended it. Ronal Reagan undertook a few minor military actions in places such as Lebanon and Grenada, but was careful not to threaten Russia as Communism there fell. Republicans did not become the war party until the incompetent Bush dynasty came to power and brought the neo-cons with them under W.It is no surprise that the leading neo-con and war criminal (one charge against the German generals at Nuremberg was "planning aggressive war") Paul Wolfowitz recently endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. The neo-cons are nothing if not flexible where party and ideology are concerned. Whoever will give them an opportunity to pursue their Trotskyite "world revolution" is their friend, and that is not Donald Trump. Trump grasps the reality that American power has its limits. Hillary lives in a dream world where we can dictate to everyone else.So disconnected are the neo-cons from reality that their latest plot is to push the U.S. into war with Russia. Some of them have publicly called for such a war. The same geniuses who though we would be welcomed with flowers in Iraq now think we can defeat Russia in a war in her own backyard, in central and eastern Europe. To put such a war in perspective, in World War II the eastern front took about 300 German divisions and 5o0 Russian. At the most, we could send a force of...two divisions? Putin could just call the police and have them arrested.And have the neo-cons and the Democrats forgotten why both the United States and the Soviet Union were careful not to engage each other's armed forces directly throughout the decades of the Cold War? Nuclear weapons made doing so too dangerous. Whichever country found itself losing conventionally would face a tremendous temptation to escalate to the nuclear level. Russia still has most of the Soviet Union's arsenal. She can reduce the U.S. to a pile of ashes in half an hour, at the expense of suffering the same fate herself. Russia made a choice almost as suicidal in 1914. Can Paul Wolfowitz guarantee she will not do so again?Donald Trump, to his credit, has said he will work to improve our relations with Russia. He knows we have a common interest in defeating Islamic 4GW organizations that threaten both countries. Hopefully, he will go on from there to work for the alliance of all states we need to face the rise of non-state entities that can fight and defeat states.Hillary remains trapped in an outdated paradigm where we must see other states as our enemies. Nothing could be of more benefit to ISIS, al Qaeda, and the rest of the Fourth Generation. She, and the idiot neo-cons she will probably invite back to the White House, are 4GW's best friends. Her vaunted foreign policy expertise is just one more lie.So give the peace sign if you want as you enter the voting booth to cast a ballot for Donald Trump. As was true through most of the 20th century, the Republican is the peace candidate. And only damn fools and neo-cons want war.

The Next Conservatism: Stuff and Nonsense

Some people think conservatism is just about stuff: materialism and consumerism. Whoever dies with the most toys wins.That is not the conservatism of Russell Kirk, nor is it the next conservatism. Conservatives have seldom admired the "lifestyle" of the nouveau riche. It is understandable that the generation which grew up in the Great Depression of the 1930s was focused on accumulation. But the younger generations of today, who grew up in perhaps too much abundance, are not attracted to materialism. Neither are we.In our book, The Next Conservatism, Paul Weyrich and I suggest conservatives adopt an intensive rather than extensive valuation of material things, i.e., that they put quality over quantity. A small number of beautiful things, made by hand by craftsmen and passed generation to generation, have meaning that cheap store-bought stuff (often made overseas) intended to wear out quickly and be thrown away can never have.Does this conflict with the present notion of basing our economy on consumerism? Yes. Conservatives value saving over spending. We believe it wise for families to accumulate wealth over generations (which is why we oppose inheritance taxes). Often, "old money" fortunes built that way yield dividends to society as a whole, in beautiful buildings, patronage of art and music, and philanthropy. One need only think of the libraries Andrew Carnegie built all over America to see what wealth can do.This leads the next conservatism to embrace author and writer for The American Conservative magazine Rod Dreher's "Crunchy Cons Manifesto". Some of its main points are:

• Modern conservatism has become too focused on money, power, and the accumulation of stuff.
• Big business deserves as much skepticism as big government.
• Culture is more important than politics and economics.
• Small, Local, Old, and Particular are almost always better than Big, Global, New, and Abstract.
• Beauty is more important than efficiency. (We would add that efficiency has never been a conservative virtue.)
• The relentlessness of media-driven pop culture deadens our sense to authentic truth, beauty, and wisdom.
• We share Russell Kirk's conviction that "the institution most essential to conserve is the family."

The next conservatism amplifies Dreher's warning about popular culture. It is now so destructive of everything true, everything good, and everything beautiful that it may have become the greatest threat to our civilization. It succeeds commercially by pandering to the worst human instincts in a downward spiral that must accelerate to retain its market. Violence, pervese sex, and human degradation in every form are its staples. It rivals and in some ways surpasses the horrors of the Roman arena.Popular culture also injects messages into its victims, those who allow it into their lives. The most powerful is instant gratification. It could be argued that delayed gratification is the first requirement of civilization, which suggests instant gratification is civilization's worst enemy. We need only look at the black inner city to see what a culture of instant gratification does to communities. The white lower class is now following the same road, as the death rates from heroin and other dangerous drugs show.The next conservatism's answer to all this is simple: return to the old ways. The old ways worked, the new ways that emerged from the 1960s do not work. Teach and practice delayed gratification. Spend less than you earn. Value the old and handmade over the new and mass produced. Want only what you have.Previous generations knew these things and lived by them. The challenge of our time is to recover them, teach them to our children, and re-create the good world we had and have lost.

Should Sweden Join NATO? No.

The Swedish government is currently trying to convince Swedes to abandon their historic neutrality--a policy dating to 1814--and join NATO. Is this a good idea? No.On the surface, the proposal seems to make sense. Sweden's historic enemy is Russia (Denmark too, but that's forgotten). Sweden and Russia fought numerous wars in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sweden almost joined both world wars on the German side because Germany was fighting Russia. Sweden gave covert support to Finland when Russia invaded that country in 1939. Now, with President Putin's Russia resuming its long-standing role as a Great Power, Sweden is nervous. NATO appears to offer security against any future Russian threat.In reality, Russia is unlikely to offer any serious threat to Sweden, and indeed is unable to do so, unless it were to use nuclear weapons. Russia is focused on re-establishing her position in her "near abroad", countries that were once part of the Soviet Union. Sweden was not.The Russian government is made up of realists, and realists know that any Russian aggression against Sweden would be counter-productive. It would mean Russia had gone from behaving like a normal Great Power, seeking the same sort of position in her periphery that the United States maintains in the Caribbean, and had become an aggressive Power. That would push the rest of the world into an alliance against Russia, something Moscow does not want.Nor can the Russian military easily defeat Sweden. The Swedish armed forces are large for a country of Sweden's size, well-equipped and highly competent. Russia's armed forces are small compared to those of the Soviet Union, and only a fraction of the forces Russia still possesses are sufficiently well trained to take on the Swedes. At most, Russia could engage Sweden in the air and at sea, and even there the Swedes would probably win. A land threat is almost impossible given the geography and the fact that most of the Russian army is still made up of conscripts who are not well enough trained to fight Swedes.On the other hand, by joining NATO Sweden would create a danger for itself that it currently does not face. That danger is getting dragged into a war with Russia started by an idiot in the White House.I'm not talking about Donald Trump, but Hillary Clinton. Trump wants to make a deal with Putin, which would benefit both the U.S. and Russia. Hillary, in contrast, is a wild-eyed interventionist who believes every other country in the world must bend to whatever America desires. She is backed against Mr. Trump by the neo-cons, the morons who created the war with Iraq and who now call openly in some cases for war with Russia. Knowing nothing militarily, they think they can send an American armored brigade or division into Ukraine and then dictate to Moscow. Relatively weak though they are, the Russian armed forces are still strong enough to win a contest in eastern Europe. Any U.S. force sent into Ukraine would quickly find itself encircled. Unlike the U.S. Army, the Russian army does understand operational art.Anyone who thinks this impossible does not know the Clintons. They are ignorant adventurers, as Bill Clinton showed in the Balkans and Hillary in Libya. They think they have a right to whatever they want, and they live for getting back at anyone they consider an enemy. President Putin is on that list.More fundamentally, in a world where the threat to states from non-state entities such as ISIS is growing, including both in Russia and in Sweden, alliances by one group of states against another state are obsolete. They perpetuate state vs. state conflict, where the big winners will usually be non-state elements. If the state system itself is to survive the 21st century, we need an alliance of all states against non-state entities that wage armed conflict.If Sweden wants to assure her security in the world we now face, rather than joining NATO against Russia she would seek to bring Russia into an alliance of all states. NATO is an artifact from another era.If the Swedish government feels it must designate another state as Sweden's enemy, there's always Denmark.

The Next Conservatism: Applying Retroculture

The Next Conservatism, the book Paul Weyrich and I published in 2009, argues that the only way conservatives can win the culture war is through Retroculture: deliberately returning to past ways of thinking and of living. In terms of culture and morals, America from the Victorian age up through the 1950s was a far better place than America is today.What does that mean in terms of national policy? One place to begin answering that question is environmental policy. Conservatives are not environmentalists. We do not believe the world would be a paradise if mankind could be wiped out. But we are conservationists.Just as conservatives want to conserve our historic culture, so we also want to conserve our land, our water, and our air. We do not like waste. Nor was over-consumption ever a conservative virtue. We want to pass the physical world around us on to our children and grandchildren in as good or better condition than we received it. That is good stewardship, and good stewardship is a duty to God.But our conservation goes beyond things. We also want to conserve local life. Local is real, and because conservatism is rooted in reality, not ideology, we prefer the local to globalism. We value the variation in local life that occurs naturally; we find abhorrent the efforts of the federal government to make life in Massachusetts and South Carolina the same.Because we are good stewards who value local life, we want many of the things we need and buy to be made or grown locally. We therefore support organic farming and sustainable agriculture. Both focus on preserving and restoring our single most important resource, our farmland. If we use that resource up, we all starve.Unlike environmentalists, our conservation does not stop at the physical level. As cultural conservatives, we are agrarians.Earlier generations of conservatives, especially in the South, understood that agriculture is a culture, a way of life. They realized that way of life was good for children and families, far better in many ways than city life. In our time, very few people get to enjoy farm life. We want to open that option up to many more people. How? By making the family farm viable again.The agribusiness types who preach "get big or get out" will say that is impossible. They are wrong. In many parts of our country, we have people who earn good livings and live good lives from successful family farms. Who are they? The Amish.Our nation, if it wants to eat, needs a new generation of farmers. The next conservatism would create programs to help young people learn farming and acquire farmland. The Amish could help teach them. A country of lots of small farmers, many following sustainable agriculture and organic practices, would enable Americans to keep eating when disasters from genetic engineering wipe out monoculture farms, as they will.As Paul and I wrote in our book, "The next conservatism should look toward a world where, as Tolkien put it, there is less noise and more green." If that sounds like something that would appeal to many Bernie Sanders supporters, I hope it does. They, too, are anti-establishment, and if we find we have some things in common, so much the better for repairing the damage establishment policies have done to our country.For conservatives who want to learn more about how to recover traditional farm life and culture, I recommend Farming magazine, a quarterly. The editor is an Amish friend of mine, David Kline. His beautiful farm in Holmes County, Ohio, shows that traditional family farming can work in today's world. It provides him a good income, and more importantly, a good life.

The Election: The Left's Secret Weapon

When the Frankfurt School created cultural Marxism, a.k.a. "political correctness", it did so by crossing Marx with Freud. From psychology it took the tool it relies on to promote its ideology, psychological conditioning. By repeating something over and over, conditioning works it into the public's minds in a way that bypasses reason. Often even people who intellectually disagree with the Left feel they must parrot its words or feel uncomfortable. They have been conditioned.The political Establishment, both its Democratic and its Republican wings, is now using psychological conditioning in its efforts to defeat Donald Trump. In part, it does so by playing the cultural Marxists' usual game of crying "the horror, the horror" whenever Trump says something politically incorrect. Many people have already been conditioned to see themselves as "another Hitler" if they dare defy the rules cultural Marxism has laid down. Now, the conditioning mechanisms tell them that if they vote for Trump, the next morning they will look in the mirror and see the Fuhrer looking back.For a few weeks after the conventions, Republican media tried to play the psychological conditioning game on Mr. Trump himself, with the goal of getting him to resign the nomination and get out of the race. Though it visibly impacted Trump's morale, he did not drop out.Now, the game has shifted again. Conditioning is aimed at convincing voters Trump is doomed to an overwhelming defeat. The means is endless news stories, poll results, columns by electoral "experts", etc. all repeating the same theme: a vote for Trump is useless because he cannot possibly win. Voters who favor Trump are being conditioned to give up, not donate to his campaign, not volunteer for him, and just stay home on election day.The Trump campaign would be unwise to underestimate the power of the Left's (and the Establishment's) conditioning mechanisms, which include almost all the mainstream media. The best way to counter conditioning is to stoke voters' anger, anger that has been created by the Establishment's failed policies. Anger is a powerful emotion, powerful enough to overcome psychological conditioning.In concrete terms, that means Trump needs an agenda of five issues, all of them able to remind voters why they are angry:

1. End the "free trade" that has allowed mercantilist countries to plunder our industry, destroying middle-class jobs.
2. End illegal immigration, greatly reduce legal immigration, and demand immigrants to adopt our culture.
3. Destroy "Political Correctness" by revealing it for what it is, a variant of Marxism.
4. Promise we will not fight any more avoidable wars.
5. Give the interests of Whites the same level of support from the federal government that blacks, Mestizos, and other Third World immigrants receive.

With regard to the last point, what I would advise Mr. Trump to say is, "I will represent all Americans, including White Americans." He need not add that Hillary is the black candidate; everyone already knows it. Had it not been for massive black support of Hillary in the primaries, Bernie Sanders would be the Democratic nominee.The Establishment will howl if Trump uses these issues to stoke voters' anger, but it will do so because it knows anger can overcome its secret weapon, psychological conditioning. Most American voters, I think, have more respect for a punch in the nose than for a stab in the back.

Resistance is Feudal

It’s apparent to all discerning observers that the present state of affairs in the United States, as well as other Western nations, will not be able to continue for much longer.  As our “leaders” continue to grow more and more out of touch and disconnected from increasingly large majorities within their respective citizenries, the prospect of collapse, or at least some pretty severe dislocations, in Western societies grows increasingly likely.  Honestly, if the American and other Western governments stay on the path they are currently on, I don’t see how they can avoid facing severe fourth generation warfare (4GW) challenges from their own people, much less from the various foreign elements which they are busy importing.  Western governments are busy delegitimizing themselves in the eyes of the core elements which make up the backbones of their nations, and they won’t be able to stand a full-on loss of legitimacy for very long.

The question which naturally arises is, “What will replace these governments once they fall?”

Many observers fear that the current “democratic” governments (which are essentially transitional in nature) will be replaced by heavy handed totalitarian regimes.  This may be a defensible notion for many of the Western European nations which have largely been successful in disarming their own citizens.  For the United States, I find this less likely to be the case, though the last grasping elements of the current politico-financial cabal may attempt to go that route.  However, and in spite all of the various federal police forces and any help from UN “peacekeepers”, it is doubtful that FedGov would have the personnel resources to sustain the sort of attrition it would face for very long.  This is doubly so considering that it is not altogether assured that the remaining non-homosexualized, non-transgenderified, non-mercenaried portion of the US military would go along with FedGov attempts to establish a totalitarian state, especially if it means suppressing their fathers, brothers, and cousins back home in flyover country.  Besides, forcing grown men to parade around in ruby red high heels so as to satisfy the revenge fantasies of fat lesbian desk generals is not the best way to assure their loyalty to you when you find yourself in the lurch.

So it’s not likely that a breakdown of federal legitimacy and power in the US will lead to a successful imposition of the total state by force.

However, we should also understand that those folks out there who think that such a collapse would inevitably lead to a “reset” back to the constitutional republic of Ted Cruz’s fantasies are labouring under a strong delusion.  Collapse and dislocation won’t lead to a restoration of the pure constitutional republic of yore as founded in 1789.  It’s increasingly apparent that it shouldn’t either.

While embodying many good ideas and serving as a worthwhile effort at self-government, the fact is that the Constitution suffers from some severe ideological defects that made its eventual negation practically inevitable.  Though designed as an instrument for dividing power and restraining government, its “Enlightenment” origins meant that it would rest on a foundation which was inimical to these goals.  The philosophical background from which the Constitution arose was one that assumed two essentially unproven and unprovable hypotheses: the inherent goodness of man and the primacy of reason in man’s intuitions.  These fundamental bases always placed pure devotion to the Constitution in a somewhat precarious state vis-á-vis the concurrent claims to the Christian origins and foundation of the United States.  These two currents – the Christian element arising from the Puritan foundation of New England followed by the spreading of evangelical, “enthusiastic” Christianity throughout the eastern seaboard by the Great Awakenings on one hand, and the Enlightenment, essentially rationalistic and deistic ideas underlying many of the assumptions made in the Constitution on the other hand – have always stood apart, even though many Americans have refused to recognize this and have tried to tie the two together intimately.

The problem with the Constitution, from a purely organizational standpoint, is that it lends itself far too easily to democratization.  This democratization is a function of the inherent assumption that the people, from whom all power derives, according to Enlightenment theory, will act both nobly and reasonably.  Yet, as American history has shown time and time again, neither of these have ever truly been substantiated.  Indeed, American constitutional history since 1865 has been a tale of the steady march of democracy, with the attendant ability of the people to vote themselves largesse from the public treasury despite the detrimental financial, moral, and social effects this will always have.

Democracy is an inherently unworkable system of government.  Many historians and political scientists make a fetish out of democracy, and laud the original Athenian democracy as an undiluted good in world history.  This ignores, however, the serious issues which the Athenians’ contemporaries had with the democratic system of that polis and others like it; dissent which cannot merely be chalked up to envy or a lust for tyranny on the part of Athens’ enemies.  Indeed, democracy’s classical critics tended to oppose that system of government specifically because it was dangerous and prone to abuse, instability, and unpredictable swings in behavior caused by the momentary passions of the ochloi, the masses.  Let us not forget that it was the vaunted Athenian democracy which waged wars of aggression against its neighbors (including other democratic states like Syracuse), which murdered and enslaved nearly the entire population of Melos for refusing to pay a relatively small sum in tribute, and who eventually put to death Socrates, the father of classical-era philosophy, in a fit of childish pique from the masses.

Classical writers both Greek and Roman tended to divide the various types of government into three overall types of systems: monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy.  Depending on the particular writer, these types could be further subdivided in variants and mixed-mode systems.  The intervening centuries have brought little substantial innovation to this system of classification, so it is the one I will use going forward.

Back to our question at hand – what is likely to happen should the United States collapse – we can see that democracy will most likely cease to be a going concern.  Indeed, democracy is largely what created the problems that have led us to the point that we’re at.  So the choice will be between one of the two other forms – monarchy or aristocracy.

The important thing to keep in mind is that you can’t have strong forms of both of these existing in a polity at the same time.  It has long been noted that the enemy of monarchy is a strong aristocracy.  After all, the king cannot exercise plenary authority when a bunch of little kings are running around dispensing justice and maintaining private armies within their own domains.  Either aristocrats are strong and the monarchy is weak (perhaps an elective or constitutionally limited form), or the monarch is strong and aristocrats are reduced to being courtiers, to ornaments at the king’s court.  The most typical examples of this would be the gradual reduction of aristocratic independence in European states such as France and Spain which was necessary before absolute monarchies could exist.

It necessarily follows from this that aristocracy is what we can consider to be the “traditional” form of government, while strong, centralised monarchy is the innovation.

Even in ancient Greece, one of the first things that tyrants did when they usurped control over a polis was to drive out or otherwise destroy the prominent aristocratic families in the city.  There is always the example of Periander, the tyrant of Corinth, who sent his servant to Miletus to find out the formula for success from that city’s tyrant, Thrasybulos.  As Thrasybulos and the servant walked through a field of wheat, the tyrant said nothing, but would reach out and snap off the heads of wheat which stood out above the rest of the plants.  The servant soon got the point – to be a successful monarchical ruler, you needed to cut down anybody else who stood out above the masses of the common people.

Now, many neoreactionaries support a return to a monarchy.  I would tend to disagree with them, instead favoring a return to some form of oligarchic republicanism, which I believe provides the best mix of a rule of law system and the division of power among several competing members who balance out each other's ambitions.  What I would have in mind would be a division of power similar to the old pre-reform Roman republic, or perhaps what was seen in the Dutch or Venetian republics – a small group of oligarchs whose interests are bound up with the success of the nation and the common people as a whole (unlike today’s “aristocracy” in the West, whose interests are largely inimical to the people constituting the nations in which they exist).  In such a system, these oligarchs guide the ship of state in such a way that the nation prospers, which necessarily placates the common people, without hazarding the nation to the vicissitudes of democracy.  The state is subject neither to the whims of one unaccountable man, nor to the whims of millions of morons who are just smart enough to figure out which circle to push the pin through so as to vote themselves more welfare and other largesse.

All of this is important because whenever an empire (such as, say, the United States of America) falls apart, it almost always devolves into a patchwork of statelets which originated because of the efforts of local notables to restore order and to regain a measure of the legitimacy formerly enjoyed by the now-defunct empire.  This pretty much means that an aristocratic system will arise.

History records numerous cases of this, only a few of which follow:

• The collapse of major Egyptian dynasties would often lead to the restoration of independence to the various nomes up and down the Nile, which would have to then be reconquered before a new strong dynasty could be established.

• The fall of various Mesopotamian empires would result in a new city becoming the centre of power, while the peripheral areas would fall away and regain independence, again requiring reconquest if a new empire was to be built.

• When Alexander died, not only were large parts of his empire divided among the Diadochi, but many portions regained independence under native rulers or as free city-states with their own aristocratic rulers.

• The fall of the Western Roman Empire saw statelets formed by various Germanic chieftains who occupied formerly Roman land, some of which eventually became the states of early medieval Western Europe.  Notably, many native Roman notables also seized the opportunity to establish their own domains, especially in Brittany and wherever the Bagaudae were strong.

• The fall of major Chinese dynasties would result in the rise of smaller, petty warring states vying for supremacy.  Confucius lived in one such time, during the fall of the decrepit Zhou dynasty and the reassertion of the various Chinese dukedoms.

So how does this apply to our current situation once America (and perhaps the rest of the West) collapses?

The first thing we need to understand is that, within the successor states to the United States, we will not likely see monarchy arise.  Instead, we’ll see the country break up into component regions of various size and stability (some perhaps comprising multiples of the current states), under local aristocratic control.  In Red areas, some pre-collapse legitimacy will remain because these states and localities were more successfully and legitimately governed.  However, in most Blue areas, the trend toward their becoming complete basket cases – already quite evident – will continue and will contribute to their complete collapse and reorganisation, barring any outside interference.

Culture is enduring and America’s culture is and always has been republican. As a result, it is likely that following an initial bout of local strongmanship in the less successful areas which will be put down by the better organised successors, the aristocracies that arise will not take the form of quasi-kings exercising absolute rule over smallish statelets.  Rather, the aristocracies that arise will likely be highly-restrictive republican oligarchies, with the franchise being restricted to white males who meet some sort of stringent property qualification.  Our culture will not allow for absolute rulers to exist for long; hopefully it will also not allow for the foolishness of democracy to replant itself either.

While there will be many who want to restore the old constitutional forms, in the event of a collapse, it will likely be very apparent to most of the survivors that the US Constitution of 1789 cannot be reinstated, at least not without heavy redaction.  For instance, unlimited religious liberty, with its penchant for being used to defend those who abuse its protections so as to destroy us, will be one of the first things on the block.  In its place, we’ll see Christianity –  probably without preference for a specific denomination – become the de facto state religion, with tolerance being extended to minority religions who don’t actively seek to kill us.  The judicial branch – long the font of injustice and arbitrary political gamesmanship at the behest of the SJWs and other left-wing groups – will likely also find itself so thoroughly reformed that it would no longer be recognisable as the Article III institution of the old Constitution.

Obviously, I am not claiming to be a prophet, to see the future before it happens.  What I’ve written here are merely speculations, ones which I readily admit are tinctured with my own personal preferences of what I think ought to be (but which, as a result, I do think would be the most likely).  One thing that I do think is pretty clear is that the current course of the West cannot hold forever, and that when it does fall apart, the product will not be the neoliberal “end of history,” it will not be more democracy and secularism and equalitarianism and all the rest.  Rather, the future will be less democratic and more authoritarian.  And this will perhaps correct many of the errors into which the West allowed itself to be led these recent decades.

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.