Spare him the fainting couches

Kurt Schlichter is done with the bow-tied crowd and their principled conservatism:

I think it was mildly amusing that some loud right-wingers spent a minute disrupting a bunch of New York liberals’ conservative murder porn party.

There, I said it. And now, according to some people on the conservative side, I’m not a conservative anymore.

Oh. Well, if conservatism has morphed into a human centipede of onanistic purity-signaling, then you fussy guardians of the word can have it.

Now, there is a coherent and reasonable argument that hitting back liberals with a taste of their own medicine – that is, inflicting upon them a microscopic fraction of what they have spent decades inflicting upon us – is a bad idea. People I respect and who are friends adhere to this view. I’ve listened to their opinions – because they have earned my attention – and they are wrong….

First, the “If it’s wrong for them to do it to us, then it’s wrong if we do it to them” formulation is less a principle than a tired cliché. This minor disruption was a tactic; shouting was a tool. It is moral for the good guys – and we are the good guys – to use tactics and tools against an enemy that are immoral when they do it. It was immoral for the Nazis to bomb London; it was moral for us to bomb Nazis. Of course every tactic and tool is not acceptable, but the guys who stormed Omaha Beach did not “become what they were fighting” because they used the same tools and tactics as the enemy.

Second, this sort of performance art is so harmless that the cost/benefit calculus weighs in favor of tolerating such occasional inconveniences. That’s not to say we should not impose higher costs on them – we disapprove of the firing of people for what they say, but Kathy Griffin’s defenestration was a sacrifice worth making to demonstrate the costs of liberal misbehavior. This is crucial. They must pay a cost for establishing their new rules.

Call it retribution or punishment or just payback, but causing pain to wrongdoers is a conservative principle we seem to have forgotten. The left needs to feel the pain that comes from their choices. If they want a world where people suffer for speaking, well, I prefer they didn’t, but I damn well know that if that’s the new rule, their side is going to get it shoved down their throat.

Welcome to the Alt-Lite. It’s a step in the right direction. What Alt Lite culture warriors like Jack Posobiec, Mike Cernovich, and James O’Keefe are doing matters. And shaking off the self-imposed shackles of “conservative principles” is the first step towards actually engaging the enemy.

Oh, the irony

In case you didn’t believe my observation that Americans simply do not grasp the concept of distinct European nations.

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
White Nationalist fantasies notwithstanding, Europeans no more identify as Europeans than white Americans identify as European-Americans.

ItalianaforTrump‏@LifeLuvr1205
European American here. ????

Sometimes… communication gap… I can’t… what… it… no… WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU MORONS?

Now I recall why I was so relieved to leave Twitter. It’s not just the combination of stupidity and ignorance that I find unnerving, so much as the gloss of gleeful smugness that coats it.

Everything they feared and more

The Left is freaked out by the staunch legal conservatism of Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch:

On Monday, Justice Neil Gorsuch revealed himself to be everything that liberals had most feared: pro-gun, pro–travel ban, anti-gay, anti–church/state separation. He is certainly more conservative than Justice Samuel Alito and possibly to the right of Justice Clarence Thomas. He is an uncompromising reactionary and an unmitigated disaster for the progressive constitutional project. And he will likely serve on the court for at least three more decades.

Although Gorsuch has barely been on the bench for two months, he has already had an opportunity to weigh in on some of the most pressing constitutional issues of our time. In each case, he has chosen the most conservative position. On Monday, Gorsuch indicated that he opposes equal rights for same-sex couples, dissenting from a ruling that requires states to list same-sex parents on birth certificates. (Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito joined his dissent.) That, alone, is startling: In Obergefell v. Hodges, the court held that the Constitution compels states to grant same-sex couples “the constellation” of “rights, benefits, and responsibilities” that “the states have linked to marriage,” including “birth and death certificates.” Obergefell, then, already settled this issue. Gorsuch’s dissent suggests he may not accept Obergefell as settled law and may instead seek to undermine or reverse it.

Gorsuch also joined Thomas in dissenting from the court’s refusal to review a challenge to California’s concealed carry laws. California grants concealed carry permits for “good cause”—namely, a “particularized need, substantiated by documentary evidence, to carry a firearm for self-defense.” Gun advocates challenged this rule, alleging a violation of the Second Amendment. But the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the California regime, and on Monday, the court declined to reconsider its decision. Thomas and Gorsuch dissented vociferously, essentially declaring that the Second Amendment grants individuals a right to carry loaded firearms in public. Not even the archconservative Alito joined their bizarre opinion. It appears Gorsuch is eager to strike down almost any law that limits the right “to keep and bear arms” in any way. If adopted by the court, Gorsuch’s theory would effectively bar state and local governments from passing almost any kind of gun safety legislation.

Conservatives used to say that the only thing that mattered about presidential elections was the Supreme Court. Well, by that standard, the God-Emperor is already the greatest conservative president of the post-WWII era. We’ll have to see how his future appointments shake out, but at 1-0, he’s already doing better than Eisenhower, Nixon, Ford, Reagan, Bush the Elder, or Bush the Younger.

Alt-Retard wants a rematch

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
White Nationalist fantasies notwithstanding, Europeans no more identify as Europeans than white Americans identify as European-Americans.

Brian Ninetails‏ @BrianNinetails
Once a goon always a goon amirite?

Brian Ninetails‏ @BrianNinetails
I’ll make sure we shit on you artistically, you just made the list

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
Bring it on. The last time Alt-Retard tried to bring it, they backed down in 12 hours. The VFM will eat you alive. And facts are facts.

Brian Ninetails‏ @BrianNinetails
Capped

Supreme Dark Lord‏ @voxday
No need. I’ll put this right there on my blog and it will stay there. Including the part where your friends beg me to call them off.

We have had a successful ceasefire with the Alt-White for a while now. Apparently it is off as far as this Brian Ninetails is concerned, whoever he is. Because I am kind, you may consider him a snack. The leashes are off. But leave everyone else out of it, until we see which way they decide to jump or if they have the sense to leave him to his fate.

Have fun.

Mailvox: Free trade and private debt

A college student asks if there is a link between the two:

Over the years in which the US has abolished trade barriers and enacted a multitude of international free trade agreements we have experienced a massive increase in trade deficits, national debt, as well as personal debt. I can see the obvious connection between free trade trade, trade deficit’s and national debt but is there a connection between free trade and the rising PERSONAL debt? If so what is this connection? Furthermore if we had trade barriers in place would Americans not still have rising personal debt as they instead spend the same amount on domestic products rather than international? 

There is certainly a correlation between increasingly free trade and private debt, but I doubt the relationship is a causal one. For one thing, the decline in private debt which began in 2008 was neither caused nor echoed by a similar decline in free trade.

The economic logic also doesn’t support a causal link. Private debt is mostly linked to big-ticket items such as homes and cars. Free trade in goods is mostly neutral on the former and negative on the latter with regards to debt. While the free movement of peoples would tend to increase debt, more people being able to take out more loans, that’s not going to alter the debt per capita rate much, for obvious reasons.

One of the major components of private debt is education-related debt, and that has nothing to do with free trade. So, I would say there is no meaningful link between free trade and private debt.

HITLER IN HELL by Martin van Creveld

Dr. Martin van Creveld is a military historian who is a major contributor to the literature of war. Professor Emeritus at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Dr. van Creveld is one of the world’s leading writers on military history and strategy, with a special interest in the future of war. He is fluent in Hebrew, German, Dutch, and English, and has authored more than twenty books, including the influential Technology and War: 2000 BC to the Present (1988), The Transformation of War (1991), and The Culture of War (2010). He is known for his development of the concept of “nontrinitarian” warfare and is deeply respected by military officers and professional strategists around the world. Castalia House is extremely pleased to be able to announce his first novel, HITLER IN HELL.

To no one’s surprise, including his own, Adolf Hitler finds himself in Hell after his self-inflicted death, only to discover that it is considerably different than he had ever imagined. And possibly the worst torment awaiting the notorious dog-lover in the afterlife is his post-mortem discovery that all dogs go to Heaven.

With nothing better to do to pass the time, Hitler reflects upon his life in light of the post-World War II world. He is boastful, unrepentant, and absolutely determined to tell his side of the story, set the record straight, and get even with his enemies—both his contemporaries and those who abused his legend since his demise. In Hell, Adolf Hitler is finally free to tell the true story of the Nazi Party, World War II, and the final solution that eventually came to be known as the Holocaust.

HITLER IN HELL is Martin van Creveld’s first novel.  394 pages. DRM-free. Available on Amazon and at Castalia House.

From the reviews:

  • I started the book being able to keep some distance from it, to keep in mind that it was a novel, but in the end it sucked me in, in a can’t look away from the car wreck fashion. It captured the utterly banal, indeed pedantic nature of socialist evil in a stunning fashion that left me with the utterly distasteful feeling of having read something actually written by Hitler.
  • This book by Martin van Creveld is a remarkable work. He manages to get inside the head of Adolph Hitler and present a picture of what his life and legacy must look like to the man considered by many to be the most evil in history…. Sometimes reading it you actually forget that it was not written by Hitler.
  • As a historian van Creveld has perhaps no living equal so it is no surprise that he gets the details right. Van Creveld’s perspective is deep, thoughtful and surprisingly even-handed. His Hitler is still a madman, but he’s far more nuanced and subtle in his mania than we’re used to seeing.

Interestingly enough, Amazon.de is not listing the book, presumably due to the flaming swastika on the cover.

Infogalactic in L’Express

A French take on Infogalactic. The original article in French is here.

Presented as “trustworthy” and “unbiased”, these encyclopedias are the privileged terrain of racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism. Because they considered Wikipedia to be unreliable and contaminated by the “social justice warrior”, several extreme right-wing figures have invented their own online encyclopedias. Their names: Metapedia , Infogalactic, or Conservapedia .

These sites now have several hundred thousand contents. A success such as the first of them now exists in no less than sixteen languages. The second, currently only available in English, will also be launched in France by the end of the summer …

Supremacy, anti-semitism and complicism

At first glance, these three encyclopedias resemble Wikipedia . The design, like the participative concept, have indeed been borrowed from him. On the other hand, the difference is quite clear. Founded by extreme right – wing American and Swedish figures, the sites do not hide their political

On the home pages of Metapedia and Conservapedia, there are two columns relaying theses and theories negationist, supremacist, antisemitic, racist, islamophobic, antifeminist, complotist, or homophobic. Infogalactic is more subtle. Its founder, who calls himself Vox Day, is the first to denounce the “extreme right bias” (movement to which it belongs elsewhere). “We are trying to make available to the Net surfers a neutral platform, which allows them to form their own opinion”.

Even if you look at it, the news from the main page is always cleverly chosen. Those celebrating the success of President Donald Trump , for example, are regularly highlighted. As for the thematic pages, some, rather well documented, are next to others containing objective nonsense.


For Infogalactic, the Pizzagate was real

An example is evocative. The site Infogalactic has a page dedicated to “fake news” . Among these misinformation is the ” Pizzagate”, a conspiracy theory according to which the former director of campaign of Hillary Clinton would have organized a pedophile network from a pizzeria.

On the page “fake news”, is quoted the Pizzagate. On the page “fake news”, is quoted the Pizzagate. Problem: the site also contains an entire page on this same event . And there, more question of “fake news”: the Pizzagate has for the authors well existed. Pseudo-evidence, such as the number of missing children in the pizzeria region, is even advanced. Asked about this by L’Express, Vox Day explains that according to him, the media “were lying” about this scandal. He accuses them of having conducted “no search, no reportage” before reversing the facts. Notwithstanding the New York Times and other newspapers that conducted the investigation.

For now, these platforms remain less popular than Wikipedia. While the latter is the fifth most visited site in the world, Infogalactic is only 14,710th, and Conservapedia 18,066th in the United States, according to the Alexa ranking. But their traffic would not stop growing, boosted by “anti-Wikipedia revolt.”

It’s a bit of a hit piece, of course, but it was well worth providing the reporter with a few quotes, as the article generally backs up our criticisms of Wikipedia. International awareness continues to grow. Traffic continues to grow. And we’ll have an exciting new feature to announce soon. And for the record, here is what I actually had to say about Pizzagate.

All I know about Pizzagate is that the mainstream media is obviously lying about it. If you look into the timeline of the media’s coverage, you will see that they started claiming Pizzagate was fake news from the very start, just as soon as the news first broke. They never looked into it, they never reported on any of the evidence gathered by the chans, they just unilaterally declared it to be fake news without any research or reporting.


No one in the mainstream media bothered looking into why a little pizza shop owner was listed as one of the 50 most powerful people in Washington DC. If nothing else, you’d think they would have asked at least one or two questions about that anomaly. And they haven’t addressed the fact that the DC police say no shots were fired by the actor arrested at Comet Ping Pong while the Washington Post reported that at least one shot was fired.


Then note that CNN just fired three respected and award-winning employees for getting caught putting out fake news.


Anyhow, since Pizzagate is an INVESTIGATION, not a conclusion, it’s not even correct to say it is a single “story” at all. There are multiple aspects to Pizzagate, so some of them may be true while others are false. I haven’t spent any time looking into it myself, so I don’t have any opinions in that regard, but I will say that I find the mainstream media’s behavior to be suspicious. 

The permanent opposition

Even when they’re in power. Jerry Pournelle excoriates the Senate Republicans:

The Senate is busily proving that Republicans can’t rule; they’re not even a Party. They’re a collection of losers whose jobs were safer when they were in the opposition and they could blame national misrule on someone else. They could say “We don’t control the House”. When they got that, they could say “We don’t have a majority in the Senate.” When that resulted in nothing much about slowing the train to national disaster, they could say “We don’t have the President.” When they nominated and elected a President, they could say “We don’t have enough of the Senate.” Clearly that is fudge, because the rumor is they can’t even muster a majority vote to obliterate Obamacare, a provable national disaster.

What more do they want? But we have had this problem since Lyndon Johnson and even before. Country club Republicans were satisfied to be the loyal opposition. The Democrats slyly gave them perks for being a permanent minority, and many took the bait. The only thing likely to keep these “we can’t quite do it” scoundrels in office is the – admittedly terrifying prospect – of Nanny Pelosi returning as Speaker; they’re willing to do without most of the perks of a “majority party” – which they are not – for permanent jobs on Capitol Hill. And God help us, it works: I sure don’t want to see Speaker Nancy Pelosi ever night – or even every week – on my nightly news. (I don’t want enhanced Obamacare either, or any of the other deficit enhancing free stuff entitlements the Democrats will bring“ in to assure their majority status if they ever take control. So we are obliged to work to keep this bumbling inept crew in charge.

So here we have it: the Democrats hold fewer national and state offices than ever before, but they continue to rule. And bringing them back will make things far worse; and a bloc of country club Republicans really want to become “loyal opposition with benefits” and be rid of the burden of ruling. And a business oriented unsophisticated but very rich President can’t even get confirmation of his own team with a House and Senate majority.

I hope that when I reach Jerry’s age, I’ll be as observant and perspicacious as he is. Truly a remarkable man.

Media Con #2 in action

You may recall that I mentioned the three cons that reporters run on people they want to submit to playing punching bag for an article. Bre Faucheux turned down Rachel Poser of Harper’s Magazine three times, prompting this threatening variant on Media Con #2.


Your name appears in the piece and it is my responsibility to make sure you and your views are represented accurately.

To help put this in context, consider this little glimpse behind the media curtain.

When I told my editor at Literally, Darling I wanted to write a story about conversations I’d been having with a white nationalist, she told me she thought it would be a good idea, but wanted to be careful that we didn’t “normalize” him. I understood this to mean she wanted to make it clear nobody at Literally, Darling supported or condoned Mr. Patriarch’s views (we don’t).

Neither the reporter, the editor, nor the fact-checker is even remotely interested in ensuring that the target or his views are represented accurately. To the contrary, they are very careful to make sure that neither the target nor his views are portrayed as positive in any way. So, what they do write the story in accordance with the negative narrative, then cherry-pick a kill-quote or two, then attempt to get the target to confirm the accuracy of the kill-quote.

What they are attempting to do is to bolster the narrative with the assistance of the bamboozled target. Bre was wise to turn continue to turn them down, because there is absolutely no benefit to her from bolstering the Harper’s narrative about the women of the Alt-Right.

Threatening violence

This comment was left on this blog yesterday:

Black Oathkeeper June 27, 2017 6:40 PM
First off, I’m an Oathkeeper and a black conservative and if any of y’all said filth like “blacks are inherently violent” to my black face, I’d knock your rotten teeth out.

Ps: All y’all from Vox Day who spammed our website today, just know we have your IP address and have passed it along to the authorities. Many in law enforcement are VERY interested in racist groups like the Alt-Right.

At first, we assumed that it was a troll pretending to be an Oathkeeper, given the absurd posturing of the commenter and the inaccurate information it contained. But then we looked up the IP address of the commenter and learned that it pointed to Hamilton, Montana. A search for Oathkeepers connected to Montana revealed that one of the members of their Board of Directors, Greg McWhirter, is a Montana resident.

Greg McWhirter was born and raised in the inner city of Indianapolis. He served as a Marion County for 11 years until 2015, when he took a law enforcement position in Montana.

Of course, Montana is a big state. But a little more searching revealed a Gregory McWhirter who lives in Hamilton, Montana, and previously lived in Indianapolis.


Gregory Mcwhirter
Lives in Hamilton MT
Used to live in Hamilton MT, Indianapolis IN

It looks as if we may have our culprit. I have contacted two of the Oathkeepers’ Directors today to ask them to investigate the incident, and, if Mr. McWhirter is indeed determined to be the responsible party, learn if they endorse this kind of behavior on the part of their Directors. Depending upon their response, we may also consider lodging a complaint with the Hamilton police concerning what appears to be a violation of Montana’s privacy in communications act.

45-8-213. Privacy in communications. (1) “Except as provided in 69-6-104, a person commits the offense of violating privacy in communications if the person knowingly or purpose”
(a) “with the purpose to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy, or offend, communicates with a person by telephone or electronic mail and uses obscene, lewd, or profane language, suggests a lewd or lascivious act, or threatens to inflict injury or physical harm to the person or property of the person. The use of obscene, lewd, or profane language or the making of a threat or lewd or lascivious suggestions is prima facie evidence of an intent to terrify, intimidate, threaten, harass, annoy, or offend.”

UPDATE: I have heard back from Oathkeepers. They assure me that they will be discussing this matter with the Board of Directors.