Author: VD

The First Amendment isn’t merely dead

It is outdated, irrelevant, and at this point, civilizationally destructive. John Wright explains:

The First Amendment was never anything but a cease-fire and peace treaty of a Christian v Christian civil war, which was extended, out of Christian charity and and English sense of fairplay and goodsportsmanship, to Jews and other religions.

It was never a suicide pact, never an invitation for socialists at home and soviets or Islamists abroad to overturn our system of protecting our God-given liberties.

The challenge is how to protect some semblance of free speech while strictly limiting, if not banning outright, the exercise of all non-Christian religions in Christendom. This is theoretically possible, as history demonstrates. But as events are rapidly demonstrating, in the current circumstances the latter is going to take precedence over the former.

The age of fairplay and goodsportsmanship is over. You don’t have to like it; I certainly don’t. Unfortunately, we have no choice but to accept it. And if you can’t bring yourself to do so now, don’t worry, you will soon enough.

The collaborators are frightened

The European Resistance is rising. I tend to doubt the collaborators will have to be worried about “being knocked to the ground” in the near future.

A German journalist has told of being attacked in the street after writing a column about the rise of xenophobia among right-wing extremists in his country.

Helmut Schümann, a columnist for the Berlin newspaper, Tagesspiegel, wrote on Facebook about the assault, reports The Local.

According to his account, he was attacked from behind by a group of people on Friday. One asked: “Are you Schümann for Tagesspiegel? You left-wing pig.” He was then knocked to the ground.

In a later posting, Schümann wrote that his attackers would not silence him. He would continue to “shout about them and write about them.” He added: “Physically, I’m recovering fast but mentally it is taking longer.”

Schümann had written an article the day before in which he wondered whether he could continue to call Germany his country because of the rise in xenophobia exhibited by organisations such as the anti-Islamic group Pegida and the Eurosceptic party Alternative for Germany.

Attacks on supporters of refugees have become increasingly common in Germany in recent weeks, as has violence against refugees and the places where they live.

Schümann shouldn’t have wondered whether he could continue to call Germany his country because of “the rise of xenophobia”, he should have wondered whether he could continue to call Germany his country because it is being invaded by large numbers of people who are not German.

4th Generation Warfare Handbook

Written by the author of Maneuver Warfare Handbook and an
active-duty USMC officer with experience in Iraq, 4th Generation Warfare Handbook is the doctrine for a new generation of war. Over the last 40
years, the world has gradually entered into a post-Clausewitzian state
where the wars are undeclared, the battlefields can be anywhere, the
uniforms are optional, and the combatants as well as the targets are
often “civilian”. Conventional militaries have repeatedly attempted to
utilize technology to meet the new challenges posed, but even the most
advanced technology has provided little more than meaningless short-term
victories rendered futile in months, if not weeks.


 
The inability of Western governments and militaries to come to
terms with the changing nature of modern warfare has led to failed
interventions, failed occupations, and now even failed states everywhere
from Eastern Europe to Africa, Asia, and the Middle East. And with the
recent mass movement of peoples around the world, 4th Generation Warfare
can be safely expected to appear in Western Europe and the United
States before long.


 
Drawing on their decades of experience of military strategy, military history, and
military action, the authors have distilled 4GW theory into a short,
concise, easily accessible handbook that provides the soldier, the
military analyst, and the civilian observer with a guide to
understanding and responding to the changing realities of this
challenging new form of war.

We’re handling this book launch a little differently than we have in the past. The handbook is now available in preorder for release on 23 November and will only be available from Amazon as a result. Those who preorder should hold onto your digital receipts as those who preorder will be invited to attend a special Brainstorm later this year featuring both Mr. Lind as well as the lieutenant colonel discussing the new handbook. (Registration will be limited to preorders and Annual members.) If you require an epub version, buy it from Amazon, send us the receipt AFTER the book comes out, and we will send you an epub.

This is a handbook intended for soldiers, not a book of new and expanded theory, so don’t be surprised that much of the base doctrine will be familiar to those of you who have read On War, The Four Generations of Modern War, and Victoria. What is new are some of the practical aspects and applications, particularly the focus on developing and utilizing the light infantry required to meet the challenge posed by 4GW. But given the course of recent events, there can be little doubt that 4th Generation Warfare Handbook will prove every bit as influential as Maneuver Warfare Handbook did in the 1980s.

A paperback version will be published in Q1 2016.

Peak SJW

I think David French is perhaps a little optimistic here, but it is interesting to see National Review lining up against SJWs and political correctness in light of its relatively recent purgings of various contributors for their thought crimes. Perhaps the pendulum actually is swinging back:

While it’s always dangerous to predict when any particular cultural trend peaks, I’m pegging October 31, 2015, as peak PC. When universities actually post flow charts to keep your Halloween
party from being offensive, humorlessness is redefined. When students
are so fragile that the very thought of ethnic-themed Halloween costumes
leads to much-mocked YouTube “guides,” then political correctness is
losing its punch:

If you disagree — if you think that political correctness is gaining
momentum — then consider a few facts. First, the top two candidates in
the Republican race for president of the United States attained their
front-runner status by willfully, gleefully defying political
correctness at every turn. Ben Carson shot to the top of the polls when
he did the unthinkable — told the truth about guns, about Islam, about
resistance to mass shooters, and about abortion — without flinching.
It’s old news by now that Donald Trump’s supporters love him for his
anti-PC stands.

Personally, I would like to think that the tide began to turn with the publication of SJWs Always Lie, which was published just two months before the date French pegs. But whether it has or not, it is very clear that a long march through the institutions of the West to clean them of SJW intellectual corruption is required and it is not going to be quick or easy.

And speaking of not being easy, while it’s always nice to see one’s book become a category bestseller, the fact that The Return of the Great Depression, published in 2009, is presently the #1 bestseller in the following category, is not exactly cause for celebration.

  •      #1 in Books > Business & Money > Economics > Unemployment

Mailvox: Keeping out SJWs

An email from a member of the Ilk who not only grasps the key concepts, but is putting them into practice in her HR department:

We [are a sizable] company.  I consider myself part of the “Ilk” and have been following your discussion of SJW’s for several years, including reading SJW’s Always Lie. As a result, we have become more proactive during the interview process for new employees, trying to discover if they harbor or are amenable to SJW ideas.

I thought an example of a recent interview would be of value to others in business as a model for modifying their hiring process.

Like many applicants, today’s had recently left a job.  We have always asked, “Why did you leave your last job?”, listened to the various responses, like: “the company downsized”, “change in management”, etc.  However, other common responses now require further questioning.  Responses such as, “I didn’t get along with my boss”, “I had an issue with a company policy”, or other answers that indicate some level of dissatisfaction with the previous employer require more in depth questioning.

When asked why they left the last company, one applicant said, “I just didn’t like some parts of the environment and am looking for a better place to work.”  Years ago, that innocent-sounding response would not have drawn any attention.  Not any more.

The manager immediately picked up on the “problem with previous employer” tone underlying the answer.  So, further questioning was required.

Manager: “Really.  What was part of the environment you didn’t like?”

Applicant: “Some of the employee interaction just wasn’t for me.  It wasn’t professional enough.”

Manager: “That makes sense.  I wouldn’t like that either.  What was an example of unprofessional behavior?”

Applicant: “It was really just the way one of the manager’s treated some of the people.”

Manager: “Oh.  That can be frustrating.  What did the manager do?”

Applicant: “He treated some of the people in the call center unprofessionally.”

Manager: “Ok, but what do you mean by treating them unprofessionally?”

Applicant: “Well, he acted inappropriately around them.”

Manager: “When you say “inappropriately”, what do you mean?”

Applicant: “Well, we all thought it was harassment.”

Manager: “What kind of harassment, like yelling at people?”

Applicant: “No. Some of it was sexual harassment.”

Manager: “Oh no.  That’s not good at all.  So, you just left and didn’t do anything about that kind of harassment?”

Applicant: “No.  I spoke to lots of the other phone reps and we all agreed it was harassment.”

Manager: “So, after you spoke to the other reps, did you file a complaint?”

Applicant: “We tried.”

Manager: “So, when that didn’t work, did you file a lawsuit or do anything?”

Applicant: “That’s what we ended up having to do.  It was just that bad.”

Everything past this point was just the formalities of ending the interview without making the applicant feel like they were just arbitrarily eliminated from consideration.

The point I’m trying to share is the amount of effort, time and question asking skills it took to finally dig down to the real issue.  Most small and medium businesses are not used to “digging” during their interviews.  I know, having been guilty myself and many other business owners I know admit they do not “dig”.  If the person looks good, i.e. like they can do the job, they get hired.  That mindset used to work, but in today’s PC environment is too dangerous to the business’ survival, so it must be changed.

When a person finally admits to being the instigator of some type of action against the company and involving other employees in their “dissatisfaction”, then that seems to be a good example of an SJW.

I can hear the “moderates” saying something like, “But maybe they were sexually harassed.  It’s not fair to disqualify them when they were the victim of harassment.  They weren’t the problem.”  Conceptually, I agree.  However, the distinction seems to be the involvement of others or engaging in activities to “punish” the perceived offender; these are SJW characteristics.  A conservative person would simply have left the job if the environment was that uncomfortable.

So, hopefully this is of some value to others as they learn to keep SJW’s out, but I also hope you’ll comment on how you see the interview process being better utilized to screen SJW’s.  Also, how do you respond to the “moderate” mindset described above when it comes to hiring people?

I think questions such as “have you ever lodged a complaint against your superior” or “have you ever been party to a lawsuit against your employer” (prohibited by Federal law) should probably be added to the standard interview repertoire. A better approach would involve asking “have you ever been the victim of harassment”, as the average SJW is going to assume you are on her side and be eager to tell you all about how everyone from her kindergarten teacher to her previous boss treated her shabbily.

After which you smile, thank her for her time, and circular file the application. Unless, of course, you’re looking to be hit by complaints of one sort or another within weeks of her first day. SJWs Always Lie.

Derb and the Magic Dirt

In which John Derbyshire discovers the power of proper rhetoric:

In the past couple of decades we’ve seen the rise of one particular explanatory strategy. That strategy recently acquired a name—or possibly it’s had the name for a while and I only just recently noticed. Whatever, I really like the name: Magic Dirt.

The core idea is that one’s physical surroundings—the bricks and mortar of the building you’re in, or the actual dirt you are standing on—emit invisible vapors that can change your personality, behavior, and intelligence.

That’s why, for example, you read so much about “bad schools” or “failing schools.” The thing to be explained is that schools whose students are overwhelmingly non-Asian minorities—blacks and mestizos—get much worse results on academic tests than schools whose students are majority white and East Asian. This has been so for decades, defying even extravagantly expensive efforts to change it, like the Kansas City fiasco of the 1990s.

Parsimonious explanation: innate differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality between the races.

Magical explanation: Bad schools! The bricks and mortar of these schools, the asphalt of their playgrounds, are giving out invisible noxious vapors that enstupidate the kids!

Bob Weissberg tossed and gored the whole “bad schools” flimflam in his 2010 book Bad Students, Not Bad Schools, which I recommend to your attention.

Another aspect of the Magic Dirt theory is the current popularity of economist Raj Chetty‘s researches on social mobility. Analyzing millions of individual tax returns from the 1990s, then the returns of those individuals’ now-adult children fifteen years later, Chetty found there’s more social mobility in some places than in others. Who woulda thunk it? Sample quote:

    For children growing up in places like Salt Lake City … the odds of moving from the bottom fifth of the national income distribution to the top fifth are more than 12 percent … In contrast, in cities like Charlotte, North Carolina … a child’s odds of moving from the bottom fifth to the top fifth are less than 5 percent. [The Impacts of Neighborhoods on Economic Opportunity,Brookings Institute, June 1, 2015]

Parsimonious explanation: Those places have different proportions of the various races, so race differences in average behaviors cause different outcomes.

Official explanation: Magic Dirt! Salt Lake City’s dirt has beneficial qualities that Charlotte’s just doesn’t.

A very cynical person—not me, you understand, but a hypothetical extreme cynic—might surmise that Prof. Chetty’s research is funded by the real-estate industry as part of their plan to reclaim America’s cities for upscale whites by driving out minorities and scattering them to distant towns and suburbs—so they can improve themselves by living on better dirt, you see?

Magic Dirt theory is a key component of immigration romanticism, too. Sure, Mexico and Central America are messed-up places, and presumably their inhabitants played some role in messing them up. If we just move thirty or forty million of those people to the U.S.A., though, our Magic Dirt will transform them into civic-minded Jeffersonian yeomen!

Our hypothetical extreme cynic might again wonder if there isn’t some commercial interest at work behind the scenes there. Central Americans work for very low wages—especially when they’re here illegally and dare not complain.

Magic Dirt: the explanatory power of it is truly wonderful. Perhaps we can use it to elucidate String Theory, or the Mystery of Consciousness.

I wouldn’t be surprised if the Higgs boson is implicated somehow…

Simplicity + truth + contempt = effective rhetoric. As Derb illustrates, the core pro-immigration argument really is that stupidly ahistorical and cargo cultist. It is so obviously wrong that it can be accurately dismissed in just two words: Magic Dirt.

Economics and science fiction

But I repeat myself. Speaking first of the latter, all three QUANTUM MORTIS novels are now available for free for Kindle Unlimited and Amazon Prime subscribers. If you were vaguely curious about them, but not enough to actually go out and buy them, here is your chance to test drive them. I’d particularly recommend checking out QUANTUM MORTIS: A MIND PROGRAMMED, which is the literary update and remix of my all-time favorite SF novel, THE PROGRAMMED MAN.

From an Amazon review: “Space Noir. That’s what this is. It’s a classic spy vs spy tale, but this time the stakes are much higher and there are enough twists and turns to make a Finnish rally driver happy.”

QUANTUM MORTIS: A MAN DISRUPTED and QUANTUM MORTIS: GRAVITY KILLS are also available via KU.

And for those who are more interested in economics than in science fiction (to the extent that one accepts the idea that the former is not a subset of the latter), here are the first week’s readings in my draft econ curriculum. Don’t ask me where you can find the texts, if you can’t figure out how to do that, you needn’t bother with the readings.

1. What is Economics    

  • RGD Introduction
  • MURPHY Part 1 Lesson 1
  • HAZLITT Part 1-1

RGD: The Return of the Great Depression, Vox Day
MURPHY:  Lessons for the Young Economist, Robert Murphy
HAZLITT: Economics in One Lesson, Henry Hazlitt

It’s a little late now, multicultis

After 30 years of stumping for it, the New York Times belatedly develops some concerns about the consequences of mass migration:

They arrived in an unceasing stream, 10,000 a day at the height, as many as a million migrants heading for Europe this year, pushing infants in strollers and elderly parents in wheelchairs, carrying children on their shoulders and life savings in their socks. They came in search of a new life, but in many ways they were the heralds of a new age.

There are more displaced people and refugees now than at any other time in recorded history — 60 million in all — and they are on the march in numbers not seen since World War II. They are coming not just from Syria, but from an array of countries and regions, including Afghanistan, Iraq, Gaza, even Haiti, as well as any of a dozen or so nations in sub-Saharan and North Africa. They are unofficial ambassadors of failed states, unending wars, intractable conflicts.

The most striking thing about the current migration crisis, however, is how much bigger it could still get….

Nor is it only the Middle East and North Africa that European leaders need to consider. The Gallup Poll, based on data compiled from more than 450,000 interviews in 151 nations from 2009 to 2011, found that in Nigeria, which already has double the population of Germany, 40 percent of people would emigrate to the West if they could. And the lesson of 2015 — for them and much of the world — is that they can.
Continue reading the main story

While the flow of migrants to Europe this year already represents the biggest influx from outside the Continent in modern history, many experts warn that the mass movement may continue and even increase — possibly for years to come.

At least we know what the cause of World War III will be. Don’t ever forget who was responsible: the anti-nationalists who have championed open borders and multiculturalism. They are responsible. The bloodshed will be on their hands.

It’s time to start making a list, complete with quotes and links, of those on the Left and Right who have championed immigration and open borders. The future needs to know who were the destroyers of Western Civilization, so they will recognize the same arguments being made next time. If you’ve got a candidate, post it here.

My first candidate: David Brooks.

Globalization, with all its stresses and strains, has created a large
international class of middle-class dreamers: university graduates who
can’t fulfill their aspirations at home and who would enrich whatever
nation is lucky enough to have them…. The Republican Party is insane if its conducts a 21st-century immigration policy based on stereotypes from the 1980s.

It is time for the Men of the West to rise and defend their nations, as they have repeatedly done before. Hungary, Norway, and Germany are waking up. The Men of Poland are rising.