Category: Uncategorized

Adolf Hitler, published author

Stephen Hicks considers the implications of Germany permitting the publication of Mein Kampf for the first time in decades.

German authorities will allow the republication of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf, after decades of censorship. Decent people can argue that the book is too dangerous to be published. But the fact is that Mein Kampf is too dangerous not to be published.

The great fear is that Hitler’s ideas are not dead and that his book could trigger another horribly pathological social movement. Nationalism and socialism still appeal to many, and combinations of the two ideologies attract new adherents every day in Europe and around the world.

Mein Kampf is available in many editions, in many languages and online. So the furor over its republication is about the Germans in particular: Can they handle it?

One of many old jokes has one German ask another, “How many Poles does it take to change a light bulb?” The other German replies, “I don’t know. Let’s invade Poland and find out!”

Always fun to poke at the Germans’ historical reputation. But it has been three generations since the end of World War II. There have been major cultural shifts in German attitudes towards militarism, authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, and other elements in the National Socialist package. There is plenty of evidence that today’s German are well above the average in civility and decency. So the post-Nazi cultural training wheels can come off.

Yet beyond the specifics of the German debate, there is a more important general point about prohibiting even the most repulsive of ideas: Censorship weakens our ability to combat them.

Levi Salomon, speaking for the Jewish Forum for Democracy and Against Anti-Semitism based in Berlin, opposes republication of Mein Kampf: “This book is outside of human logic.”

Salomon’s statement is more outrageous than anything Hitler wrote in the book. National Socialism is not only human logic, it is considerably more logical, and truthful, than Communism, feminism, or secular Zionism. That was part of the tragedy of Germany’s descent into it. Unlike the first two ideologies, it actually functioned effectively.

National Socialism is also cruel, pitiless, and militaristic, but those are undeniably human failings.

Indeed, one of the most striking things about Mein Kampf is that it is not, as one would tend to imagine, a wild-eyed, frothing-at-the-mouth sort of text. Perhaps the most disturbing thing about it is how reasonable Hitler often sounds throughout. And that is possibly the best reason of all that it should be published; it is a vivid reminder that far from being “outside of human logic”, every rational man is capable of choosing between good and evil, and choosing between setting himself to achieving great good and committing great harm.

How social justice ruins stories

A lecture in 12 pictures. Daddy Warpig directs our attention to a prescient Outland cartoon:

On the same subject, Didact’s Reach quotes my example of how properly applying the Social Justice principles he upholds would have completely destroyed GRR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire and wonders if that is part of why the series has declined with each new book.

I suppose this might explain why A Dance of Dragons was such an unbearably long, tedious, boring doorstopper of a book. This exact idea is something that Vox Day has addressed repeatedly in his screeds against the need for feminism and equalitarian impulses in high fantasy and sci-fi. In fact, the single fastest way to counter Martin’s frankly absurd notion that “many of those differences are created by the culture we live in”, is to conduct a simple thought exercise, which Vox walks us through as follows:

Consider the consequences of changing Cersei Lannister from an oppressed woman used as a dynastic piece by her father to a strong and independent warrior woman of the sort that is presently ubiquitous in third generation fantasy, science fiction, and paranormal fiction.

  • Cersei doesn’t marry Robert Baratheon.  She’s strong and independent like her twin, not a royal brood mare!
  • House Lannister’s ambitions are reduced from establishing a royal line to finding a wife for Tyrion.
  • Her children are not bastards.  Robert’s heirs have black hair.
  • Jon Arryn isn’t murdered to keep a nonexistent secret.  Ned Stark isn’t named to replace him.
  • Robert doesn’t have an accident coordinated by the Lannisters, who don’t dominate the court and will not benefit from his fall.
  • Robert’s heirs being legitimate, Stannis and Renly Baratheon remain loyal.
  • The Starks never come south and never revolt against King’s Landing.  Theon Greyjoy goes home to the Ironborn and never returns to Winterfell.  Jon Snow still goes to the Wall, but Arya remains home and learns to become a lady, not an assassin, whether she wants to or not.

So, what was a war of five kings that spans five continents abruptly becomes a minor debate over whether Robert Baratheon’s black-haired son and heir marries Sansa Stark, a princess of Dorne, or Danerys Targaryen.

Rumors of war

Russia is positioning its forces to potentially engage the new NATO troops in Ukraine:

On Monday, President Vladimir Putin gave the order to bring Russia’s Northern Fleet, separate units of the Western Military District and the Airborne Troops to full alert in snap combat readiness exercises. The drills involve a total of 38,000 troops, 3,360 military vehicles, 110 aircraft and helicopters, 41 ships and 15 submarines.

Snap military exercises will be held in the sea, as well as on the ground and in the air until March 21. Their ultimate goal is to improve the military capabilities of the Russian Armed Forces, according to the Defense Ministry.

And then completing the trifecta, in addition to Crimea and Kaliningrad, as many as 30 army air force crews of Russia’s Western Military District are being redeployed from airfields in the Leningrad and Smolensk regions to a military airfield near the Arctic Circle as part of surprise combat readiness drills being held in the Northern Fleet and the Western Military District, according to an Interfax report.

It’s far from a full mobilization, but then, given the relatively small number of NATO troops that have been established in Ukraine and the Baltics, the Russians don’t need much to counter them.

Do what thou feel

That is not only the whole of the modern moral law, it is the whole of history as well. “Do what thou feel, with due regard for the shrieking of the herd around you, for the truth is nothing more than an opinion.”. A philosopher discovers that this is a philosophy instilled at an early age, in public school:

What would you say if you found out that our public schools were teaching children that it is not true that it’s wrong to kill people for fun or cheat on tests? Would you be surprised?

I was. As a philosopher, I already knew that many college-aged students don’t believe in moral facts. While there are no national surveys quantifying this phenomenon, philosophy professors with whom I have spoken suggest that the overwhelming majority of college freshmen in their classrooms view moral claims as mere opinions that are not true or are true only relative to a culture.

What I didn’t know was where this attitude came from. Given the presence of moral relativism in some academic circles, some people might naturally assume that philosophers themselves are to blame. But they aren’t. There are historical examples of philosophers who endorse a kind of moral relativism, dating back at least to Protagoras who declared that “man is the measure of all things,” and several who deny that there are any moral facts whatsoever. But such creatures are rare. Besides, if students are already showing up to college with this view of morality, it’s very unlikely that it’s the result of what professional philosophers are teaching. So where is the view coming from?

A few weeks ago, I learned that students are exposed to this sort of thinking well before crossing the threshold of higher education. A misleading distinction between fact and opinion is embedded in the Common Core.

Fact: Something that is true about a subject and can be tested or proven.

Opinion: What someone thinks, feels, or believes.

No wonder so many millennials are clueless science fetishists who know nothing of what has gone before them. This definition of “Fact” has completely erased the very concept of history, and rendered the past nothing but mere opinion.

Public school is an unvarnished and unmitigated evil. If you are still foolish enough to be subjecting your children to it, think again. They are not only being intellectually lobotomized, they are being morally and temporally crippled as well.

There is no amount of Christian upbringing or Sunday School teaching that is capable of counteracting this philosophical programming. It will all be neatly slotted into the “opinion” category, which they are taught cannot overlap with the “fact” category. Consider the professor’s test of his own son.

Students are taught that claims are either facts or opinions. They are given quizzes in which they must sort claims into one camp or the other but not both. But if a fact is something that is true and an opinion is something that is believed, then many claims will obviously be both. For example, I asked my son about this distinction after his open house. He confidently explained that facts were things that were true whereas opinions are things that are believed. We then had this conversation:

Me: “I believe that George Washington was the first president. Is that a fact or an opinion?”

Him: “It’s a fact.”

Me: “But I believe it, and you said that what someone believes is an opinion.”

Him: “Yeah, but it’s true.”

Me: “So it’s both a fact and an opinion?”

The blank stare on his face said it all.

The idea that children as young as five are going to be some sort of Christian missionary light unto the pagans in public school was always an abysmally stupid one, but the fact that even a philosopher’s son can be reprogrammed in such an insidious way should shake even the most foolish Christian parent’s blithe confidence in public school. And the idea that your local school is “really good” is far from a panacea, it merely means that it is better at instilling this pernicious anti-philosophy into its students’ heads.

In summary, our public schools teach students that all claims are either
facts or opinions and that all value and moral claims fall into the
latter camp. The punchline: there are no moral facts. And if there are
no moral facts, then there are no moral truths.

Expect more of this

Iran contemplates taking away the ability to commit societal suicide from the female half of the population:

Two bills being discussed in Iran will turn women into “baby-making machines” if passed, Amnesty International warned on Wednesday. The bills seek to boost Iran’s population of 77 million. Population growth in the country has been declining since the late 1980s, despite the efforts of former president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to end family-planning programs. The new bills, which would limit women’s access to contraception and encourage companies to prioritize hiring men with children over other groups, would, Amnesty argues, effectively legalize gender discrimination in the workplace and result in more women seeking out dangerous, unsafe and illegal abortions.

“The bills reinforce discriminatory stereotypes of women and mark an unprecedented move by the state to interfere in people’s personal lives,” Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, Amnesty’s deputy director for the Middle East and North Africa, said in a statement Wednesday. “In their zealous quest to project an image of military might and political strength by attempting to increase birth rates, Iran’s authorities are trampling all over the fundamental rights of women—even the marital bed is not out of bounds.”

One thing that is becoming evident is that regardless of culture, women cannot be trusted to use contraception in a socially responsible manner. If it is left up to them, they will kill their societies rather than give up the pleasures of alpha-chasing. This indicates that it will not be left up to them very much longer, as societies that permit women to control their birth rates will prove to be unfit, decline demographically, and eventually expire, while those that control women will prove their fitness, remain stable or continue to grow, and expand to replace the dying societies.

Iran’s leaders understand that the future belongs to those who show up for it. It is a pity that so many political and opinion leaders in the West do not. That being said, historically attempts to legislate demographic growth have not been very successful, dating back to 9 AD and the Lex Papia Poppaea in Imperial Rome.

The real OU scandal

Instapundit points out that the media is focusing on the wrong scandal at Oklahoma:

It has been a bad spell for the University of Oklahoma. First, some members of the Sigma Alpha Epsilon fraternity were videotaped singing a racist song on a bus, and a video went public. Then OU President David Boren kicked the fraternity off campus and summarily expelled two of the fraternity members.

You may think it’s unfair for me to treat these two incidents as comparable, and if you do think that you’re right: The difference is that David Boren broke the law, while the fraternity brothers merely behaved badly.

As a state institution, the University of Oklahoma is constrained by the Constitution. Among other things, that means that it must respect the free speech guarantees contained in the First Amendment, even if that speech is repugnant. Just because the university doesn’t like what students say, thinks it’s hateful, or worries that it will produce an unpleasant atmosphere on campus, doesn’t grant it the authority to punish people for speaking. One would think that Boren — a former U.S. senator who took an oath to uphold the Constitution when he was sworn into office — would know better. Apparently not.

Singing racist songs may be impolite. It may be jackassery. But it is Constitutionally protected free speech. Not allowing blacks into your fraternity may be rude. It may be boorish. But it is Constitutionally protected free association.

Meanwhile, OSU deserves to get its pants sued off and David Boren should be fired by the university immediately. As Glenn rightly points out, OU didn’t expel a black football player who beat up a girl so badly that he literally broke her face. But they expelled two white students for engaging in legal and Constitutionally-protected behavior.

Time to go

Jeffrey Goldberg considers whether it is time for the Jews to leave Europe in The Atlantic:

It is not 1933. But could it be 1929? Could Europe’s economic stagnation combine with its inability to assimilate and enfranchise growing populations of increasingly angry Muslims in such a way as to clear a path for volatile right-wing populism?

A few weeks after the January massacres, I met with a group of aggrieved Jews in a café near the main synagogue in Sarcelles, the suburb that was the center of last summer’s anti-Jewish riots. French troops in combat gear patrolled the street. The synagogue is now also used as a base of operations for the more than 40 soldiers who have been assigned to protect the town’s Jewish institutions.

“We’re very glad for the soldiers,” one of the men, who asked me to identify him only as Chaim, said. “But soldiers in the synagogues means that there is no life here, only danger. This is why I’m leaving.” It is, he said, using an expression common during the Algerian civil war, a choice between le cercueil ou la valise—“the coffin or the suitcase.”

But another man, who asked to be called Marcel, responded that it would be cowardly to flee for Israel at the first appearance of Molotov cocktails. “Running, running, running,” he said. “That’s the Jewish way.” He said his parents had arrived in Sarcelles from Tunisia in 1967, driven out by anti-Jewish rioters who were putatively distressed by Israel’s victory in the Six-Day War. “We ran from Tunisia. We’re not running from here.”

“But no one wants us here,” Chaim said. “They’ll attack us again as soon as the soldiers go.”

I said that I didn’t think Manuel Valls was going to remove the soldiers anytime soon.

Marcel laughed. “I don’t count on the Socialists. I would count on the National Front before I count on the Socialists.”

His conclusion: I am predisposed to believe that there is no great future for the Jews
in Europe, because evidence to support this belief is accumulating so
quickly.

Goldberg’s predisposition is correct. There is no future for the Jews in Post-Christian Europe now that the great experiment in diversity and multiculturalism is ending. The various European nations trust the Jews no more than they trust the Europeans. What is happening in Europe now is going to be happening in the USA circa 2050, and I doubt the results will be any different.

Europe no more needs Jews than Israel needs Eskimos or China needs Bantu tribesmen. And the Jews presently make it difficult for the Europeans to address their Muslim problem, just as they currently make it impossible for the USA to even begin to address its own immigrant invasion. That is why the sooner that the diaspora returns home, to the land they have fairly won in sweat and blood, the better it will be for them as well as for the nations they still presently inhabit. The French are not going to patrol their own streets indefinitely on behalf of those who are not, in the end, even French.

War is coming. And wartime is seldom kind to those who have made it clear that their loyalties do not lie with those who are actively involved in waging it. I am no anti-semite; in fact, I am a pro-Zionist and one of the very few individuals who has ever been formally cleared of the charge of anti-semitism by a Jewish organization. But I am also a student of history and war who abhors unnecessary violence and bloodshed that could easily be avoided by even a modicum of reason and common sense.

The diaspora Jews must understand that they will never rule over the more numerous nations for long. That has always been the fatal flaw in their favored strategy; accumulating wealth and influence does NOT provide security, especially for an unpopular minority, as it makes one a legitimate target in the eyes of the oppressed and dispossessed, even if one is not responsible for the oppression and the dispossession.

There is a very good scene in HBO’s A Game of Thrones when Queen Cersei demonstrates to Littlefinger the salient difference between influence and power. And influence only trumps power so long as power is unwilling to exert itself.

SJW is anti-science and anti-mathematics

SJWs are against more than mere fun. They also oppose science as well as math in the form of probability. Mike Cernovich drops relevant statistics on those who have attempted to attack him over daring to mention scientific hate facts.

In a post about HIV I observed, “Straight men do not contract HIV.” I did not push a narrative. I did not share what I heard on some news channel or learned from a nit-wit teacher.

Rather, I analyzed data from the United States Center for Disease Control. When you look at CDC data, you notice something.

Where are all of the straight white male HIV infections?

Relying on CDC data is considered racist and homophobic, as morons believe a scientific judgment is a moral one. Zealots are simply unable to look at scientific questions with a scientific lens and moral questions with a moral lens.

Cernovich points out that even in the impossible event that every single man with HIV is honestly reporting his sexual activity (impossible because we already know it is not true), “According to a study in the Journal of the American Medical Association, men almost never get HIV from women. A healthy man who has unprotected sex with a non drug-using woman has a one in 5 million chance of getting HIV. If he wears a condom, the odds drop to one in 50 million.”

To put it in perspective:

  • Killed by a Dog:     1 in 103,798
  • Killed by Lightning: 1 in 136,011
  • Contracting HIV: 1 in 5,000,000

The point isn’t that this means straight men should run around freely fornicating, it is that one can NEVER, EVER trust anything an SJW says about ANYTHING. They are all about the narrative, not the truth, not the science, not the statistics, not the probabilities and most certainly not the history.

Man the battlements

Mike Caputo raises the blue flag:

If you imagine the world of entertainment or leisure generally as a map, video games are one of the few geographic regions where boys are still allowed to be boys, and this is simply not tolerable to feminists. They look at that territory and see a dark black stain on the pink-tinted expanse of modern culture. Feminine sensibilities and political correctness dominate the traditional media, Hollywood, academia, and publishing, while video games serve a niche market that, though large in absolute numbers, impacts a far smaller percentage of the population than other media. In other words, they have us surrounded.

But what they—and most men—don’t appear to understand is that the only reason things have gotten this far is that we haven’t been fighting back. Men have spent 50 years meekly retreating, conceding cultural territory, and even defecting to the other side. It has taken a blatant, undisguised assault on some of the least-threatening members of the male population, people who mostly just want to enjoy their hobby in peace.

This is a test, and the answer is not to become an MRA so you can try to fight the feminists on their own well-fortified ground. The answer is to become a man in the traditional sense: self-sufficient, productive, ambitious, knowledgeable about the world you live in, and resistant to female emotional manipulation. Women who understand the benefits they get from living in a masculine environment will do what the majority of women do best: follow and support you, or get out of your way.

Do not give an inch. Do not accommodate them. Do not compromise with them. Do not agree with them with regards to their nebulous, noble-sounding goals. Reject them relentlessly for the orcs of Mordor that they are.

They don’t merely seek the destruction of masculinity, they are literal grinches who consciously seek the total elimination of fun.

The last laugh

A lot of people have laughed at me over the last few years because of the Warmouse, but I have to say, the 18-button brute is an absolute lifesaver when it comes to editing books. One of the new van Creveld books has nearly 500 footnotes and the process of adding them would be considerably more time-consuming if I couldn’t so easily cut, paste, backspace, space, enter, page up, page down, and delete with one hand.

I know that our tests reliably proved one could work 2x faster with the Warmouse interface, but on this particular task, I’m definitely going at a pace about 3X faster than before.