The anti-Churchian Alt-Right

First Things gets the Alt-Right wrong by concentrating solely on the anti-Christian, media-dancing minority:

Almost everything written about the “alternative right” in mainstream outlets is wrong in one respect. The alt-right is not stupid. It is deep. Its ideas are not ridiculous. They are serious. To appreciate this fact, one needs to inquire beyond its presence on social media, where its obnoxious use of insult, obscenity, and racism has earned it a reputation for moral idiocy. The reputation is deserved, but do not be deceived. Behind its online tantrums and personal attacks are arguments of genuine power and expanding appeal. As political scientist George Hawley conceded in a recent study, “Everything we have seen over the past year suggests that the alt-right will be around for the foreseeable future.”

To what is the movement committed? The alt-right purports to defend the identity and interests of white people, who it believes are the compliant victims of a century-long swindle by liberal morality. Its goals are not conventionally conservative. It does not so much question as mock standard conservative positions on free trade, abortion, and foreign policy, regarding them as principles that currently abet white dispossession. Its own principles are not so abstract, and do not pretend to neutrality. Its creed, in the words of Richard Spencer, is “Race is real. Race matters. Race is the foundation of identity.” The media take such statements as proof of the alt-right’s commitment to white supremacy. But this is misleading. For the alt-right represents something more nefarious, and frankly more interesting, than white identity politics.

The alt-right is anti-Christian. Not by implication or insinuation, but by confession. Its leading thinkers flaunt their rejection of Christianity and their desire to convert believers away from it. Greg Johnson, an influential theorist with a doctorate in philosophy from Catholic University of America, argues that “Christianity is one of the main causes of white decline” and a “necessary condition of white racial suicide.” Johnson edits a website that publishes footnoted essays on topics that range from H. P. Lovecraft to Martin Heidegger, where a common feature is its subject’s criticisms of Christian doctrine. “Like acid, Christianity burns through ties of kinship and blood,” writes Gregory Hood, one of the website’s most talented essayists. It is “the essential religious step in paving the way for decadent modernity and its toxic creeds.”

Alt-right thinkers are overwhelmingly atheists, but their worldview is not rooted in the secular Enlightenment, nor is it irreligious. Far from it. Read deeply in their sources—and make no mistake, the alt-right has an intellectual tradition—and you will discover a movement that takes Christian thought and culture seriously. It is a conflicted tribute paid to their chief adversary. Against Christianity it makes two related charges. Beginning with the claim that Europe effectively created Christianity—not the other way around—it argues that Christian teachings have become socially and morally poisonous to the West. A major work of alt-right history opens with a widely echoed claim: “The introduction of Christianity has to count as the single greatest ideological catastrophe to ever strike Europe.”

This is little more than Churchian virtue-signaling. The author should be embarrassed by making a mistake very similar to the one that he criticizes the mainstream media for making. Nor is his attempt to marginalize the Alt-Right as an intrinsically anti-Christian philosophy even remotely coherent, as one cannot both a) characterize its Spencerian aspects as defining its limits while simultaneously b) claiming that it is 100 years old and traces its intellectual roots back to Oswald Spengler.

What most people don’t realize is that the mainstream media still regularly contacts me for “the Alt-Right perspective” on current events. However, I no longer talk to them because they never, ever, quoted me in the pieces on the Alt-Right they subsequently ran, even when I provided The New York Times, or The Atlantic, or CBS with direct, substantive, and unevasive answers to their questions. The reason they never ran any quotes, of course, is that my words did not fit their preconceived narrative, while the media-dancing performance art of Richard Spencer and Andrew Anglin did, just as Greg Johnson’s anti-Christianity and homosexuality fits the narrative that Matthew Rose and First Things are pushing in order to discredit and demonize the Alt-Right in the eyes of its readership.

But their efforts will fail and they will only discredit themselves, because they are observably not rooted in the easily verifiable truth. The Alt-Right doesn’t just stand for the European races, but for the West. And Christianity is as integral and irreplaceable an element of Western civilization as the European races; it is one of the three pillars of the West. The Alt-Right supports genuine Bible-based traditional Christianity, not the evil globalist Churchianity that presently wears so many nominally Christian organizations like a demon-possessed skinsuit.

To be clear, I’m not blaming Greg, Richard, or Andrew for the fact that both the mainstream media and the Christian media happen to find their particular perspectives to be useful. I am simply pointing out that, once again, the media simply cannot be trusted to report on philosophical matters such as these in an accurate, honest, or intelligent manner.

The Alt-Right is not an anti-Christian philosophy. It is pro-Christian and anti-Churchian. And as Instapundit noted, “with most churches being temples of social justice”, the open enmity between the globalist Judeo Christ-worshiping Churchians and both the Christian and non-Christian factions of the Alt-Right is hardly a surprise.

Trump to Deep State: You’re Fired

The God-Emperor has the federal bureaucracy squarely in his sights:

President Trump will seek to “hire the best and fire the worst” federal government employees under the most ambitious proposal to overhaul the civil service in 40 years, officials said. The measures will be outlined in the budget plan that Trump will send to Congress Monday, said four Office of Management and Budget officials who spoke on condition of anonymity because the budget hasn’t been released.

Trump foreshadowed the proposal in a line in his State of the Union address last week: “Tonight, I call on Congress to empower every Cabinet Secretary with the authority to reward good workers and to remove federal employees who undermine the public trust or fail the American people,” he said.

Trump is using the VA Accountability Act, which gave the Secretary of Veterans Affairs greater authority to fire and discipline workers, as a model. The White House says that law has resulted in the dismissal of 1,470 employees, the suspension of 443, demotions for 83 others last year.

“While to some people those are code words, they’re very clear to us,” said American Federation of Government Employees President J. David Cox, who represents about 700,000 workers for the federal government and District of Columbia. “Basically it wipes out due process rights for employees.”

Another pillar of the proposal would reduce automatic pay increases and instead use that money for a performance bonus pool.

Under the current system, federal employees get a review every one to three years. Employees whose performance is “fully successful” — as 99.7{4cacff1a314e264f6dff53da0a490ceb254b2aee041711c1fa70e29b8d44a193} are — get a within-grade “step” increase in addition to annual cost-of-living increases.

Trump’s plan would stretch out the amount of time it takes to go from step 1 to step 10 from 18 years to 27 years, saving $10 billion over the next decade, officials said. That money would then go to high-performing employees either as merit raises or one-time bonuses.

Federal employee unions fear the pay-per-performance plan would be used to reward loyalists and discriminate against women and minorities.

This isn’t that hard. If performance-based-pay discriminates against women and minorities, then they deserve to be discriminated against because they are unequal and inferior and are literally worth less as employees.

Equality does not exist. Not in the workplace, not in life, not in Heaven, and not in Hell.

EXCERPT: A History of Strategy

This passage about the beginning of the Age of Air Power seemed relevant in light of my earlier musings on the possibility that we are beginning to see the signs of its end. From the excellent A History of Strategy by Martin van Creveld, a true must-read for any student of war.

Throughout history, all too often the end of an armed conflict has served as a prelude to the next one. Never was this more true than at the end of World War I. Though it was sometimes described as “the war to end all wars,” all it did was provide a temporary respite. Scarcely had the guns fallen silent when people started looking into the future on the assumption that the Great Powers had not yet finished fighting each other. This naturally gave rise to the question, how would the next war be waged?

To virtually all of those who tried, the point of departure was the need to minimize casualties. True to its name, the Great War had been fought with greater ferocity, and resulted in more dead and injured, than many of its predecessors put together. Confirming the predictions of some pre-war writers, such as the Jewish-Polish banker Ivan Bloch, this was the direct result of the superiority of the defense as brought about by modern firepower. Hence the most pressing problem was to find ways to bypass, or overcome, that firepower and that defense. Failure to do so might render the next war as unprofitable as the struggle of 1914–1918 had been (to say nothing of the possibility that the dreadful losses and destruction suffered), and might cause it to end in revolution, as had already occurred in Russia, Austria-Hungary, and Germany.

In any event, the first serious theoretical treatise designed to solve the problem was written by an Italian general, Giulio Douhet. An engineer by trade, during the early years of the century Douhet had become fascinated with the military possibilities of the internal combustion engine. A little later he was also found dabbling in futurist ideas concerning the spiritual qualities allegedly springing from those two speedy new vehicles, the motor car and the aircraft, claiming that they had the ability to rejuvenate the world and Italy in particular. As a staff officer in 1915–18, he was in a position to observe no fewer than twelve Italian offensives directed against the Austrians across the river Isonzo. All twelve failed, producing hundreds of thousands of casualties for little or no territorial gain. He imagined there had to be a better way of doing things. One of those, which he had already promoted during the war itself, was the creation of a massive bomber force to be used against the enemy. Douhet’s masterpiece, Il dominio del aereo (Command of the Air) was published in 1921. Though it took time to be translated, a survey of the interwar military literature shows that its leading ideas were widely studied and debated.

To Douhet, then, “the form of any war … depends upon the technical means of war available.” In the past, firearms had revolutionized war. Next it was the turn of small caliber rapid fire guns, barbed wire and, at sea, the submarine. The most recent additions were the air arm and poison gas, both of them still in their infancy but with the potential to “completely upset all forms of war so far known.” In particular, so long as war was fought only on the surface of the earth it was necessary for one side to break through the other’s defenses in order to win. Those defenses, however, tended to become stronger and stronger until, in the conflict that had just ended, they had extended over practically the entire battlefield and barred the troops of both sides from moving forward. Behind the hard crusts presented by the fronts the populations of the various states carried on civilian life almost undisturbed. Mobilizing those populations, the states in question were able to produce the wherewithal of total war and sustain the struggle for years on end.

The advent of the aircraft was bringing this situation to an end. Capable of overflying both fronts and natural obstacles, and possessing a comparatively long range, aircraft would be used to attack civilian centers of population and industry. The air could be traversed in all directions with equal ease, nor was there a way to predict which target would be hit next. That was why no effective defense against such attacks was possible. Each attacking aircraft would have to be countered by twenty defensive ones; or else, if the job were entrusted to guns, hundreds if not thousands of them.

Extrapolating from the raids that had taken place in 1916–1918, Douhet showed that forty aircraft dropping eighty tons of bombs might have “completely destroyed” a city the size of Treviso, leaving alive “very few” of its 17,000 inhabitants. A mere three aircraft could deliver as much firepower as could a modern battleship in a single broadside, whereas a thousand aircraft could deliver ten times as much firepower as could the entire British Navy—counting 30 battleships—in ten. Yet the price-tag of a single battleship was said to be about equal to that of a thousand aircraft. To use modern terminology, the differential in cost/effectiveness between the two arms was little less than phenomenal. As Douhet pointed out, moreover, even these calculations failed to take account of the fact that the career of military aviation had just begun and that aircraft capable of lifting as much as ten tons each might soon be constructed.

Under such circumstances, investments in armies and navies would come to a gradual halt. The resources freed in this way should be diverted to the air arm, regarded as the decisive one in any future conflict. Properly used, it could bring about a quick decision—so quick, indeed, that there might scarcely be sufficient time for the two remaining ones to be mobilized and deployed. Given that the character of the new weapon was inherently offensive, most of the aircraft ought to be not fighters but bombers. Instead of forming part of the army and navy, as was then the case in all major armed forces except those of Britain, they should be assembled in an independent air force.

At the outbreak of the next war that air force should be launched like a shell from a cannon, mounting an all-out attack against the enemy’s air bases with the objective of gaining “command of the air.” Once command of the air had been attained—meaning that the enemy, his bases destroyed, was no longer able to interfere with operations—the attackers should switch from military objectives to civilian ones, knocking them out one by one. Industrial plants as well as population centers ought to be attacked; the attackers’ principal weapon ought to be gas, the aim not merely to kill but to demoralize. Leaping over and ignoring the usual forces that defend a country, a war waged by such means might be over almost before it had begun. In so far as it would minimize the casualties of both the attacker and the defender (whose population, driven to the point of madness, would force the government to surrender) it also represented a more humane modus operandi than an endless struggle of attrition.

Like Mahan, to whom he owed much, Douhet has been accused of overstating his case. When the test came in World War II it was found that his calculations, made in terms of a uniform bomb pattern dropping on an area of 500 by 500 meters, did not allow for the practical difficulties of accurately landing ordnance on target. As a result, far more bombs and aircraft would be needed to obliterate a given objective than he thought. Perhaps because gas was not used, by and large the populations which found themselves at the receiving end of those bombs proved much more resilient than he had expected. This caused one critic to quip that Douhet could not be blamed for the fact that the people whom he used as the basis for his calculations were, after all, Italians, whom everyone knew to be lousy soldiers. Finally, once radar had been introduced the air-weapon turned out to be much better adapted for defensive purposes than its original prophet—he died in 1930—had foreseen. In the air, as on land, World War II developed into a prolonged and extremely deadly struggle of attrition.

Nevertheless, given that it is with the evolution of military thought that we are dealing here, it should be said at once that no other treatise written on the subject of air warfare has ever presented nearly as coherent a picture as did Il dominio del aereo, nor has any other treatise been nearly as influential. In part, this was for institutional reasons. Engaging in close air support (CAS) and interdicting enemy lines of communication were missions which might conceivably be undertaken by an army air force. But gaining command of the air and attacking the other side’s homeland were clearly independent missions which called for an equally independent air force. Be this as it may, the mirage of dealing a rapid and all-powerful blow from the air—so rapid and so powerful that the need for the remaining armed forces would be all but obviated—has continued to fascinate airmen. It did so right through World War II and into the nuclear age when, but for the fact that nuclear weapons were too powerful to use, it might have been realized.

Flashpoint: Syria

Israel shoots down a drone, Iran shoots down an F-16:

An Israeli fighter has been shot down as the country’s air force carried out attacks against Iranian targets in Syria after intercepting a drone. The military said its planes faced massive anti-aircraft fire from Syria that forced two pilots to abandon an F-16 jet that crashed in northern Israel, seriously wounding one and lightly injuring the other.

‘This is a serious Iranian attack on Israeli territory. Iran is dragging the region into an adventure in which it doesn’t know how it will end,’ Israel’s chief military spokesman, Brigadier General Ronen Manelis, said in a statement.

Israeli forces identified an ‘Iranian UAV (unmanned aerial vehicle)’ launched from Syria and intercepted it in Israeli airspace with a combat helicopter, a statement said. They then ‘targeted the Iranian control systems in Syria that sent the UAV into Israeli airspace,’ military spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Jonathan Conricus tweeted. ‘Massive Syrian anti-air fire, one F16 crashed in Israel, pilots safe.’

The Israeli military then carried out what it called a ‘large scale attack’ against Iranian and Syrian targets in Syria.

Given the way in which a Russian plane was shot down earlier this week, it is increasingly apparent that the age of air supremacy, although not over, is approaching its end. Once lasers replace missiles and guns, it’s all but over for aircraft, manned or not.

A Churchian Response, part III

This is the third part of my critique of the Churchian response to the 16 Points of the Alt-Right. The first part, covering Points 1-4, is here. The second part covering Points 4-8 is here.

9. I disagree completely. Politics supersedes culture and identity. Right is right no matter when, where, or who is present. A conservative seeks to do what is correct based upon the principles I laid out above. Those principles are the same without regard to my identity or location in space and time. Elective abortion is always murder. Slavery always denies human worth. We do not conform ourselves to our identity (whether social, ethnic, racial, familial, or economic) or our culture; we are to conform ourselves to Jesus Christ. All action, even apolitical action, is political because, as John Donne said, “no man is an island entire of itself.” In following Christ, we necessarily take up certain political ideas. Those ideas are always at odds with the tyranny and oppression, which is why so many nations have tried so hard to eliminate Christianity. Rome cannot fathom the abolition of infanticide and crucifixion or religious liberty. Nazi Germany has no place for such brotherly love and compassion for human life. Communism cannot tolerate any other god than the state. The American South could not allow the doctrine of the image of God because that sets all human beings as equals. No. The Alt Right is quite incorrect. Our identity only matters in how each of us relate to God individually; after that we are duty bound to conform ourselves to him and attempt to conform our world to his word by making disciples. “But seek first the kingdom of God and his righteousness, and all these things will be added to you.” (Matthew 6:33)

Politics do not supersede culture or identity. This is not only backwards, but utterly absurd and flies in the face of all political history as well as the politics of every political entity on the planet. The churchian also contradicts himself when he asserts that Christians – a religious identity – necessarily take up certain political ideas. That is simply another case of identity dictating politics.

As the extraordinarily successful politician Lee Kuan Yew wisely noted, “In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”

10. Well, once again we have some absolute self-refuting nonsense. According to the Alt Right, the only people who belong here are the North American Indians. Ironically, the Latin Americans the Alt Right seems so desperate to keep out of this country would be amongst the only people left here. So, to where, would you like your plane-ticket? Let me help eliminate some places you might think you can go. You probably cannot go to the British Isles; after the Roman, Saxon, Angle, Jutes, Norman, and Viking invasions as well as the immigration of Indians, Arabs, and various Allied peoples, the druidic people who first lived there have not sufficiently passed on their bloodlines. No one is truly properly British is he or she cannot trace the ancestry back to the time of Boudicca. Let me also rule out anywhere in central Europe; the Germanic tribes invaded Europe in wave after wave before the Huns and Mongols swept across the land, and it get real dicey after the Jewish Diaspora, the collapse of Rome, the Moorish invasions, the Crusades, and a couple of World Wars. I’m not ‘purely’ white. I have evidence that one of my great grandmother’s was a slave and the Landress family was originally Jewish before coming to America. Since Europe is too difficult to determine where I should go, I’ll claim that very minute portion of Jewish ancestry. If you’re ‘Jewish’, like me, you might enjoy the ancient city of Ur of the Chaldeans, after all, Israel was the land God promised Abraham, not the land of his birth. That’ll be nice; I’ve always wanted to live in southern Iraq. We’ll send everybody back where his or her families originated. I hope don’t get too carried away with such a ridiculous idea; it’s going to be awkward with all seven billion of us trying to share North Western Africa.

This concept is racist. It’s not racist in the idea that one race is superior to another; though it does indicate the Alt Right secretly believes that. Instead it is racist in the same way segregation is racist and about it I same the same thing as Chief Justice Earl Warren, “in the field of public education, the doctrine of ‘separate but equal’ has no place. Separate educational facilities are inherently unequal.” As it is true in education, so it is true in life. I reject the Alt Right’s belief in blood and soil.

Why does he hate the Jews? This is a truly reprehensible, anti-semitic position. Since he rejects the belief in blood and soil, he clearly doesn’t believe that the Jewish people have any right to the land of Israel. Alert the SPLC! All churchians are clearly Nazis at heart and there is no place for them in any civilized society.

It’s fascinating to see that he rejects our opposition to “the rule or domination of any native ethnic group by another in the sovereign homelands of the dominated peoples.” One wonders which group he believes should rule over the native populations in the United States, in China, and in India.

11. This is utter nonsense. To which war do they refer? There are several where racial diversity was an issue. In every one of them, the aggressors were racists. Their only defense for holding such a belief is they will champion one of the most despicable forms of bigotry and hatred humans have ever demonstrated. America exists on the idea that diversity is your right. No one has the authority by right of conformity to tell another person he or she is wrong for being different. If we follow the Alt Right to its logical conclusion, the Jews were wrong for being in Germany. That is utterly detestable. I reject in the strongest terms possible the Alt Right belief that diversity and proximity causes war.

Between whom does this moron believe wars are fought? Why does he imagine they take place? And if it is right for the Jews to be in Israel, then clearly it was wrong for them to be in Germany. Israel cannot belong to the Jews if Germany does not belong to the Germans. Again, we see that he is denying the Jewish claim to the land of Israel. What a horrible anti-semite! Why, his attack on the Alt-Right is, ironically, another Holocaust. Which, of course, makes him Hitler.

Also, America does not exist “on the idea that diversity is your right”. One will search the Federalist Papers in vain for anything that even reasonably approximates this idea. It’s also a bit ironic that he asserts no one has the authority to tell another person he is wrong for being different, considering that his whole rabid screed is nothing more than telling many, many people that they are wrong for holding their different beliefs in nations, borders, races, and the right of the Jewish nation to the land of Israel.

12. This is an absolute lie. No one spends more time trying to convince others what to think about themselves than do the Alt Right. If they did not care, they would not make their presence known. I reject their lie.

Oh, we genuinely don’t care what people think about the Alt-Right, because the Alt-Right is inevitable. We don’t care what you think about gravity or oxygen either. Reality is going to win out over time. However, that doesn’t mean that we aren’t going to set the record straight when very stupid, very ignorant people tell blatant lies about us and misrepresent our beliefs.

Part IV of IV tomorrow.

Now WHO was colluding with Russia?

The RUSSIA RUSSIA RUSSIA story keeps getting more and more bizarre. And revealing more and more corruption on the part of the federal bureaucracy:

After months of secret negotiations, a shadowy Russian bilked American spies out of $100,000 last year, promising to deliver stolen National Security Agency cyberweapons in a deal that he insisted would also include compromising material on President Trump, according to American and European intelligence officials.

The cash, delivered in a suitcase to a Berlin hotel room in September, was intended as the first installment of a $1 million payout, according to American officials, the Russian and communications reviewed by The New York Times. The theft of the secret hacking tools had been devastating to the N.S.A., and the agency was struggling to get a full inventory of what was missing.

Several American intelligence officials said they made clear that they did not want the Trump material from the Russian — who was suspected of having murky ties to Russian intelligence and to Eastern European cybercriminals. He claimed the information would link the president and his associates to Russia. But instead of providing the hacking tools, the Russian produced unverified and possibly fabricated information involving Mr. Trump and others, including bank records, emails and purported Russian intelligence data.

How are these “American spies” not being arrested already? We already know that the Trump campaign didn’t collude with Russia the way the Hillary campaign did, but as far as we know, even the Hillary campaign didn’t actually offer to PAY the Russians ONE MILLION DOLLARS!

American intelligence, such as it is, more and more appears to be run by Dr. Evil.

The Times obtained four of the documents that the Russian in Germany tried to pass to American intelligence. All are purported to be Russian intelligence reports, and each focuses on associates of Mr. Trump. Carter Page, the former campaign adviser who has been the focus of F.B.I. investigators, features in one; Robert and Rebekah Mercer, the billionaire Republican donors, in another.

Yet all four appear to be drawn almost entirely from news reports, not secret intelligence. They all also contain stylistic and grammatical usages not typically seen in Russian intelligence reports, said Yuri Shvets, a former K.G.B. officer who spent years as a spy in Washington before defecting to the United States just before the end of the Cold War.

On the plus side, someone finally figured out how to make money by publishing news on the Internet. Alert Goldman Sachs, we’ve got a new business model! I love the smell of an IPO in the morning.

Disproving pay discrimination… again

Uber’s objective, driver-controlled pay system still produces a pay gap:

The mainstream media also continues to cite the pay gap as a problem, disregarding evidence that it’s merely the result of free choice. Recently, an even more convincing rebuttal has arisen from the tech sector.

Uber, which pays its drivers not on an inherently subjective individual basis but via a formula that takes into account time and mileage driven, still has a 7 percent pay gap between male and female drivers. That’s right: a company that allocates salary in a way that is necessarily blind to an employee’s sex has still generated a pay gap, because men and women make different choices.

It turns out that female Uber drivers work shorter hours, are less likely to work during peak times, and drive more slowly. Because the compensation structure is automatic, Stanford researchers were able to pin down the three factors that caused the gap: experience on the platform, willingness to work at peak times and in busy areas, and driving speed preferences.

Somehow, I doubt these facts will even act as a speed bump to feminists rushing to denounce Uber’s sexist pay gap. Still, it would be interesting to see how race and other factors affect average pay.

Freedom of association lives

For the time being, anyhow:

A California trial court has upheld a Christian baker’s right to refuse to create a wedding cake for a lesbian couple, but the decision comes as a similar case is already pending in the nation’s highest court.

Tastries Bakery owner Cathy Miller’s freedom of speech “outweighs” the state of California’s interest in ensuring a freely accessible marketplace, Judge David R. Lampe said in his decision in the Superior Court of California in Kern County, one of the state’s 58 trial courts.

Standing to set a legal precedent is the case of Colorado baker and Masterpiece Cakeshop owner Jack Phillips, deliberated before the U.S. Supreme Court in December 2017. A ruling is expected within months in Phillips’ fight to limit his creativity as a wedding cake baker to marriages between a man and a woman.

No one should ever have to bake a damn cake for anyone. It’s absurd that this is even an issue at all.

Trusting science

Are you placing your faith in scientistry or scientody? Because if you believe in the reliability of the latter, you need to understand that the former, on average, no longer practices it:

More than 70{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments. Those are some of the telling figures that emerged from Nature‘s survey of 1,576 researchers who took a brief online questionnaire on reproducibility in research. The data reveal sometimes-contradictory attitudes towards reproducibility. Although 52{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of those surveyed agree that there is a significant ‘crisis’ of reproducibility, less than 31{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} think that failure to reproduce published results means that the result is probably wrong, and most say that they still trust the published literature.

This is absolutely incredible. Even Hollywood accounting is not this slipshod! In how many other fields does the failure of the numbers to add up correctly not mean that the result is wrong?

What this means is that nearly 7 in 10 so-called scientists are not utilizing the scientific method at all. What now passes for “science” is now little more than a modern spin on the logical fallacy of argumentum ad verecundiam, the appeal to credentialed authority.

A Churchian Response, part II

This is the second part of my critique of the Churchian response to the 16 Points of the Alt-Right. The first part, covering Points 1-4, is here.

5. I reject nationalism on principle. The ontology of a thing is its necessary attribute. The unnecessary attributes are accidental. When I consider the ontology of a human being, his or her ethnicity, nationality, race, skin tone, language, age, and body shape are all accidental attributes. This means I am still the person who God created me to be whether or not I was born of any other racial background, in any other environment, at any other time in history. I will always be me. If “we hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal and endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights” has any meaning, then the ontology of human beings runs contrary to nationalism. This does not mean I do not love the United State of America. No. I believe in what the United States claimed itself to be at the moment it established itself. Being anti-nationalist does not mean I am unpatriotic. Again, I say, “no.” I volunteered to serve this nation and I gave a portion of my time for that purpose. I love the United States and believe this nation is a bastion of freedom. I do not believe we are superior by our existence.

As I pointed out, this gentleman is hopelessly incoherent. He professes to love the United States and believes it is “a bastion of freedom” but rejects nationalism on principle, does not believe it is superior, and believes its attributes are accidental. This is not possible. If you are anti-nationalist, then you are by definition anti-patriotic and anti-American. Worse than that, you are a globalist, a servant of Babel, and an enemy of the God who created the nations.

6. Well, I am dedicated to the proposition to carry the Gospel to all nations and people groups. My objective is 100{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} globalist. I want to spread Christianity to every nation on earth. As it if even matters after that; I also want to spread liberty to every nation and people group. I also want to help build sustainable economies, educational facilities, and hospitals in every nation with access to every people group. I want to universally outlaw elective abortion, elective euthanasia, slavery, human trafficking, prostitution, illicit drugs, rape, incest, genital mutilation, and caste systems. Knowing I will not succeed, I want to end starvation, disease epidemics, and poverty. On these issues, the Alt Right will call me a globalist. I will respond by saying they are acting like foolish isolationists who are out of sync with moral duty. “Then Jesus came to them and said, ‘All authority in heaven and on earth has been given to me. Therefore go and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to obey everything I have commanded you. And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the age.’” (Matthew 28:18-20)

“When the Son of Man comes in his glory, and all the angels with him, then he will sit on his glorious throne. Before him will be gathered all the nations, and he will separate people one from another as a shepherd separates the sheep from the goats. And he will place the sheep on his right, but the goats on the left. Then the King will say to those on his right, ‘Come, you who are blessed by my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world. For I was hungry and you gave me food, I was thirsty and you gave me drink, I was a stranger and you welcomed me, I was naked and you clothed me, I was sick and you visited me, I was in prison and you came to me.’ Then the righteous will answer him, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry and feed you, or thirsty and give you drink? And when did we see you a stranger and welcome you, or naked and clothe you? And when did we see you sick or in prison and visit you?’ And the King will answer them, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did it to one of the least of these my brothers, you did it to me.’ Then he will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me no food, I was thirsty and you gave me no drink, I was a stranger and you did not welcome me, naked and you did not clothe me, sick and in prison and you did not visit me.’ Then they also will answer, saying, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or naked or sick or in prison, and did not minister to you?’ Then he will answer them, saying, ‘Truly, I say to you, as you did not do it to one of the least of these, you did not do it to me.’ And these will go away into eternal punishment, but the righteous into eternal life.” (Matthew 25:31-46)

The Bible says to “go and make disciples of all nations.” It does not say to “eradicate all nations, eliminate all borders, and convert the world into a one-world government, so there will be no escape from the rule of the most ruthless and evil people in the world.” Since this guy likes quoting verses, I have three for him.

Anyone who does not provide for their relatives, and especially for their own household, has denied the faith and is worse than an unbeliever.
– 1 Timothy 5:8

But Jesus replied, “It is not right to take the children’s bread and toss it to the dogs.” “Yes, Lord,” she said, “even the dogs eat the crumbs that fall from their master’s table.”
– Mark 7:26-27

And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation.
– Acts 17:26

In any event, any Churchian who openly endorses globalism, free trade, and open immigration is clearly not in service to Jesus Christ, but rather, to the Prince of This World. This is hardly a secret; the globalist elite openly flaunts their true allegiances. Remember, by their fruits you will know them.

7. This is another example of the Alt Right expressing ignorance. “Anti-equalitarian” is not a word. Instead they mean anti-egalitarian. They are so woefully ignorant about the concepts they do not even know the nomenclature of the discussion. For the record, I am a complementarian with regard to the roles of men and women in relationship and limited some career roles. I believe women should never witness combat because God did not design the female body for such rigor. I believe a woman should not be the pastor of a church. I believe men cannot be mothers and women cannot be fathers. Beyond those limitations, and in spite of the innate differences in how men and women think, we are and should be equals in all socio-economic political roles. I am very much an egalitarian in those realms. All human beings are equal in terms of worth. “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither slave nor free, there is no male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” (Galatians 3:28) “So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.” (Genesis 1:27) If God created us all in His image, we all share the same worth and rights of human beings. I absolutely reject the Alt Right’s statement.

Yeah, so about that “expressing ignorance”. This moron is more than 200 years behind the language. Anti-equalitarian is most certainly a word. From THE AMERICAN HERITAGE® DICTIONARY OF THE ENGLISH LANGUAGE, FIFTH EDITION by the Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries.

EQUALITARIAN
Adjective
Characterized by social equality and equal rights for all people.

Noun
A person who accepts or promotes the view of equalitarianism.

Origin
Coined around 1800 from equality +‎ -arian.

All human beings are not equal in terms of worth, not even by his own cited Bible verses. If there is neither Jew nor Greek in Christ Jesus, then are those human beings equal to those who are not in Christ Jesus? If this cretin was capable of following his own logic, he would soon reach the conclusion that no one is damned, God loves everyone, and there was no need for Jesus Christ to die on the cross.

8. The Alt Right is so scientifically illiterate they have to make up words to attempt to sound like they know what they are saying. The least scientific stance one can have is to “presumptively accept” something. Science is not a practice of democracy but of evidence. If all the scientists agreed that water boils at 75º Celsius, it would not change the boiling temperature form 100º Celsius. 90{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of scientist believing in anthropocentric climate change does not make it so. Science is a process of observation, making hypotheses, testing, observing, and drawing conclusions. Nothing in the scientific process is based on democracy. The Alt Right is baselessly accusing scientists of corruption. I may not agree with the conclusion of every scientist; however, I am not accusing them of corruption when they interpret data differently than I assume I would. I reject the Alt Right’s fabricated language and blanket accusation.

Baselessly accusing scientists of corruption? “More than 70{f34b2ed14022567e3962d98ceb517f14c2acb643b80147bdb11c1357fe49acc6} of researchers have tried and failed to reproduce another scientist’s experiments, and more than half have failed to reproduce their own experiments” according to a survey of 1,500 scientists by Nature. There is nothing baseless about what 90 percent of scientists themselves consider to be a “reproducibility crisis” nor are concerns about the corruption of scientistry limited to the Alt-Right.

And science is considerably more than just “a process of observation, making hypotheses, testing, observing, and drawing conclusions.” That is precisely why neologisms such as scientody: the method of science, scientistry: the profession of science, and scientage: the knowledge base of science are required. The clarity of thought and communication that such neologisms require tend to enhance one’s understanding of science, it is the precise opposite of scientific illiteracy.

Part III of IV will be posted tomorrow.