Category: Uncategorized

Mailvox: “a bastion of sanity”

A reader emails:

“A post-literate age.” This term resonated with me the moment you uttered it. I’m now seeing it almost daily.

The requests to ‘dumb down’ the language are approaching comedic, and I currently operate at government levels. I was asked to explain the difference between ‘woman’ and ‘women’ just last week.

In response to one recent request, I (in totally undisciplined irritation) asked if they’d prefer the document produced in brown paper and crayon. I try to be patient, but it’s getting harder.

Once again, your blog is a bastion of sanity.

We are living in the Crazy Years. It falls to us to build fortresses and monasteries of sanity. It is our responsibility to preserve knowledge and truth. It is our honor to stand up for that which is rather than that which someone feels it should be. And it is our responsibility to show up for the future, in order to ensure that the insane do not inherit the Earth.

The clueless and short-sighted elite

Peter Turchin explains that the US elite is working off of inaccurate and misleading social models:

Last year I had an interesting conversation with someone I’ll call the Washington Insider. She asked me why my structural-demographic model predicted rising instability in the USA, probably peaking with a major outbreak of political violence in the 2020s. I started giving the explanation based on the three main forces: popular immiseration, intra-elite competition, and state fragility. But I didn’t get far because she asked me, what immiseration? What are you talking about? We’ve never lived better than today. Global poverty is declining, child mortality is declining, violence is declining. We have access to the level of technology that is miraculous compared to what previous generations had. Just look at the massive data gathered together by Max Rosen, or read Steven Pinker’s books to be impressed with how good things are.

There are three biases that help sustain this rosy view. First, the focus on global issues. But the decrease of poverty in China (which is what drives declining global poverty, because Chinese population is so huge), or the drop in child mortality in Africa, is irrelevant to the working America. People everywhere compare themselves not to some distant places, but to the standard of living they experienced in their parents home. And the majority of American population sees that in many important ways they are worse off than their parents (as we will see below).

Second, the Washington Insider talks to other members of the 1 percent, and to some in the top 10 percent. The top-income segments of the American population have done fabulously in the last decades, thank you very much.

Third, many economic statistics have to be taken with a grain of salt. Government agencies are often under substantial political pressure to put a positive spin on the statistics they publish. Many economists work hard to please the economic elites and other powers-that-be, because that’s how you get ahead in that profession. Fortunately, there are enough “heterodox” economists who provide us with alternative views. This all doesn’t mean that statistics are worse than “damn lies”; on the contrary, one cannot make sense about where we are headed without statistics. The point here is that one needs to understand why different statistics may give us different answers.

This is more than a little reminiscent of the Boomer cluelessness that simply can’t grasp the significance of a rise in tuition from 500/semester to 15,000/semester when wages have not risen. Not a single American cares about the rising Chinese standard of living when his own has declined, and declined significantly in comparison with his parents.

What we’ve witnessed over the last 50 years is the mass transfer of American wealth and property title from the middle classes to the elite of the US elite. These indicates that revolution is coming, sooner or later, in one way or another. Right now, the average citizen is content with Taco Bell and Netflix… but Netflix is becoming less entertaining with every season that passes.

The problem, of course, is one of labor oversupply.

The American economy has been operating under the conditions of labor oversupply since roughly the 1970s. The main causes were immigration, the entry of massive numbers of baby boomers and women into the labor force, the export of jobs overseas.
– Peter Turchin

Tour report: Portland

The Big Bear’s sold-out Fall 2019 tour begins tonight in Portland, so today is the last day you can support it from afar by purchasing the 2019 tour t-shirt. However, you will be able to purchase the signed, limited edition collector’s DVD until the last of the 250 have been sold. The digital special and the digital documentary will be available indefinitely.

UPDATE: Now that the tour has begun, we are no longer selling the tour support t-shirts. Thanks very much to everyone who bought one and helped make the Fall 2019 tour possible! If you were at the show in Portland tonight, feel free to leave your comments about it here. However, please do NOT repeat any of the jokes that were told!

Please, PLEASE don’t call him racist

If you ever doubted my assertion that a conservative is an individual who fears being called racist more than he fears God, the rape of his wife, the murder of his children, the destruction of his nation’s economy or the collapse of his society, this mewling plea for a hard and bright line between conservatism and the defenders of the West should suffice to convince you of its truth:

Liberal commentators will always say conservatives are just a bunch of racists. This is a lie. But conservatives need to do a better job convincing the racists that it’s a lie.

A handful of conservatives, including quietly influential figures in important conservative institutions, were outed last week by leaked emails as participating in a pro-Hitler, nakedly anti-Semitic, and plainly racist email list.

While liberal journalists are prone to inventing racism everywhere, this was no invention. The article in Splinter by Hannah Gais was no smear. It was serious and fair reporting that ought to cause conservatives to ask what we are doing wrong.

John Elliott, formerly of the Institute for Humane Studies and Intercollegiate Studies Institute, was a central figure in the story. IHS and ISI are respected and mainstream conservative institutions. Thousands of conservative and libertarian journalists and activists have passed through them. Hundreds of them received mentorship from Elliott. I’ve been friendly with Elliot for a decade. He’s brought me in (and gotten me paid) to speak to students at both organizations.

My first reaction upon reading the Splinter story was horror that otherwise sane-seeming people in the United States hold Hitlerian views. (For what it’s worth, Elliott apologized for the emails and said he no longer believes those things. I pray that’s sincere.)

“According to one former mentee,” Gais wrote, “Elliott opened up to those he deemed ‘red-pilled’ — a term used by white nationalists and so-called ‘men’s rights activists’ to refer to someone who has been awakened to their cause.”

So my second reaction was: At least Elliott never suspected I was red-pilled.

My third reaction was: Great, now liberals are going to paint everyone who’s gone through IHS, ISI, or the Daily Caller as racists.

But my fourth reaction was the unsettling one: Why the hell did racists seek homes in conservative and liberal institutions, and why the hell were young conservatives easily won over to racist views?

Snide liberals will chuckle and say something like, “Because conservatism is racism.” But the snideness and falseness of that answer shouldn’t deter us from mulling over the question and doing something to make clear that conservatism and racism don’t mix — that if your red pill looks anything like Elliott’s, you’re really not welcome here.

I know Christians are not welcome in conservatism. I know nationalists are not welcome in conservatism. I know that anyone who wants to restore the pre-1965 USA or the pre-EU European nations is not welcome in conservatism. President Trump himself is not welcome in conservatism.

I don’t care.

I am proud to say that I am not, and I have never been, a conservative. Others tried to claim I was, and I always corrected them. I was not rejected by conservatives, I found them entirely unworthy and rejected them.

So, where do you stand? With the lukewarm, boot-licking conservatives whose highest principle is compromise and who have conserved absolutely nothing in the entire history of their political identity or with Jesus Christ, the European nations, and the philosophical legacy of Greece and Rome?

And if you are not given a spirit of fear, then why is your entire identity wrapped up in a fear of being called racist? Why do you insist on claiming that your children are no different than the dogs?

Labour is no longer a worker’s party

So, the good news is that the British Labour Party is no longer a worker’s party and is now embracing libertarian principles. The bad news is those libertarian principles are open borders and full voting rights for non-citizens:

Labour members have voted overwhelmingly to give full voting rights to all UK residents, committing the party to extend the franchise to millions of immigrants.

A motion tabled by the Labour Campaign for Free Movement was passed at the party’s conference in Brighton on Wednesday morning, after MPs were forced to rush back to Westminster to attend the newly reconvened House of Commons.

As well as extending voting rights, the text commits a future Labour government to closing all immigration detention centres, ending “no recourse to public funds” policies and seeking to extend free movement rights to people around the world.

The motion also opposed immigration systems based on a person’s income or “utility to big business”, and any caps or targets on the number of people moving to the UK.

The shadow home secretary, Diane Abbott, welcomed the motion and acknowledged it was now Labour policy. “Be assured, our plans for government include these provisions and a lot more, to make this country a better, more decent and more prosperous place,” she said.

Still not convinced that libertarianism is fundamentally wrong at its core? This is a proposed implementation of genuine libertarian policies. With the ongoing failure of the neo-liberal world order, it is rapidly becoming more and more obvious that both conservatism and libertarianism, as well as neo-liberalism, can be even worse for a nation or for a society than socialism.

The Left is evil, without question, but it is not the epitome of political evil. Those depths are still being plumbed.

Don’t let them leave

After the wall across the southern border is built, a second one needs to be built on the California border:

Just over half of California’s registered voters have considered leaving the state, with soaring housing costs cited as the most common reason for wanting to move, according to a new poll. Young voters were especially likely to cite unaffordable housing as a reason for leaving, according to the latest latest UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies poll conducted for the Los Angeles Times. But a different group, conservatives, also frequently suggested they wanted to leave — and for a very different reason: They feel alienated from the state’s political culture.

They defecated all over their collective bed. Better they be sentenced to enjoy the hellhole they created rather than be permitted to travel elsewhere and recreate it.

This is why no city, state, or country should ever permit any immigrant, or his children, or his children’s children, to vote. People are very bad at understanding causality and they tend to prefer the familiar, so despite the apparent senselessness of this behavior, it is not difficult to understand why emigrants reliably attempt to recreate the very conditions they sought to escape.

Steve Bannon is bad news

I’d gradually reached the conclusion that Steve Bannon was not on the side of the good, the beautiful, and the true despite his presumed role in helping elect the God-Emperor. But now we may have an inkling that he was just as much Establishment as the GOPe figures with whom he regularly brawled:

The butler who managed Jeffrey Epstein’s posh Paris pad claims he waited on a rotation of famous faces including Prince Andrew, Bill and Melinda Gates, as well as Steve Bannon, according to a report.

The butler, who only identified himself as Gabriel, has come forward about the convicted pedophile’s celebrity guests during his 18-year career working at the $8 million pied-à-terre, FranceInfo reported.

“I served crowned heads, diplomats, businessmen and politicians,” he told the outlet.

Among the powerful guests he listed were former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and Prince Andrew, who would crash several nights at the apartment while Epstein was out of town, according to FranceInfo….

The butler also claimed his boss was still hosting famous guests at his Paris apartment last year. He said former White House chief strategist Bannon paid a visit in fall 2018. “I was even his driver in Paris,” Gabriel told his outlet.

In the autumn of 20-freaking-18 Bannon was still hanging out with Epstein? FFS, by 2018 even people who have absolutely nothing to do with money, power, or politics knew that Epstein was a damned pedo.

No wonder Trump didn’t hesitate to kick him out.

All conservatives are cucks

In case I failed to make the point sufficiently clear in Cuckservative, former British Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader John Major has stepped in to clarify matters.

Most Conservatives are not a Brexit Party tribute band, nor have we abandoned our core values to find compromise, seek allies, and strive for unity, rather than division and disarray. We abhor the language of division and hate – and words such as ‘saboteur’, ‘traitor’, ‘enemy’, ‘surrender’, ‘betrayal’ have no place in our party, our politics, nor in our society.

Do you understand the significance of what he is saying there? Because he is inadvertently speaking the plain and simple truth. The core value of the conservative is the act of seeking compromise. The art of the conservative is practicing politics as conversation rather than as a form of war.

That, in a nutshell, is why I have always said that I am not a conservative.

And it is also why conservativism is an intrinsically non-Christian identity, for all its evangelical trappings in the USA.

Do not suppose that I have come to bring peace to the earth. I did not come to bring peace, but a sword. For I have come to turn “a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law—a man’s enemies will be the members of his own household.”
– Matthew 10:34-36

Deplatforming the deplatformers

A newspaper fires a muckraking SJW for raking up old SJW muck:

The Des Moines Register has fired the journalist behind a controversial report on Carson King, the sports fan who raised over $1.7 million for charity with a plea for beer money, after offensive tweets by the reporter surfaced.

Editor Carol Hunter wrote about the paper’s decision in a lengthy post on Thursday night, stating that the reporter, Aaron Calvin, “is no longer with the Register.”

King went viral earlier this month after he displayed a sign on ESPN’s ‘College Game Day’ requesting Venmo donations to re-stock his “Busch Light Supply,” and ultimately racked up nearly $2 million in contributions. Not content to keep the money for himself, King offered to donate the funds to a local children’s hospital, which was soon matched by beer maker Anheuser-Busch. But King’s new-found fame would soon veer toward infamy.

In penning a profile on King for the Register, Calvin dug up racist internet posts that the sports fan had made as a teenager, but many readers reacted with anger, demanding to know why the Register transformed a story about charitable giving into another racism witch hunt.

Launching its own probe into the matter following the public reaction, the Register eventually found that the reporter in question had his own history with inappropriate tweets. Calvin soon deleted the posts and apologized for not holding himself “to the same high standards as the Register holds others,” but that apparently did not prevent the termination of his employment.

Silly Calvin. Didn’t he know that being held unaccountable for past behavior now deemed inappropriate is only available to not-white not-men? It’s always good to see genuine justice served, but it’s all the more satisfying to see it served at the expense of its fake counterpart, social justice.

Dark Thoughts

Immigration is a Ponzi scheme with people.

  • Conservatives are as useless as bowties on a battlefield.
  • They say you shouldn’t kick a man when he’s down. But it’s harder to kick a man in the head when he’s still standing.
  • Homeschool or die.