Conservatism is dead

And National Review killed it. Josh Gelernter provides the nail in the coffin with “A Conservative Defense of Transgender Rights“:

Kentucky governor Matt Bevin said last week that he hopes the Kentucky legislature won’t consider a transgender-bathroom bill in the upcoming legislative session; according to Bevin, “the last thing we need is more government rules.” He’s absolutely right, and I think it’s worth offering a conservative defense of transgender rights — which ought to be a conservative issue.

On the American political spectrum, conservatism is the mind-your-own-business ideology. I know smoking is unhealthy, but I enjoy smoking, and my health is none of your business. I know motorcycles can be dangerous, but I like the wind in my hair; whether or not I wear a helmet is none of your business. I realize that fireworks can blow up before they’re supposed to, but they’re fun and my fingers are none of your business. Don’t tell me what sort of car to drive, or what kind of light bulb I can buy, or what kind of milk I can drink, or how to raise my kids.

There’s a reason, when push comes to shove, most libertarians vote Republican. The Republican party is — more often than not, and should invariably be — the party of individual liberty. So conservatives have to ask, is it a good idea to empower the government to start lifting up people’s skirts?

The response, from many conservatives, is that it’s not a question of interfering with personal freedom — the freedom to live one’s own life however he’d like — but of preserving personal freedom — that is, the freedom to go to the bathroom among only people of the same biological sex. Allowing mixed-biological-sex bathrooms risks making adults uncomfortable, and risks opening the door to child predators, or so the argument goes. I’m afraid neither of those positions strikes me as well thought-out. Certainly not from a conservative point of view.

Well, if something doesn’t strike JOSH GELERNTER – THE Josh Gelernter of NATIONAL REVIEW – as “well thought-out”, then obviously it is wrong!

After all, what is conservatism if not doing whatever one wants at any time, without the slightest possible concern for the possible consequences to oneself or anyone else?

Conservatism is dead. Conservatism has conserved nothing, not even itself. If you want to live, if you want America to be reborn, if you want Western Civilization to survive, you have no choice but to support the Alt-Right.

The best response was this comment:

YIH says:    
December 26, 2016 at 7:42 am GMT
“A Conservative Defense of Transgender Rights”

https://infogalactic.com/info/Cuckservative

The IQ delta

It has been observed that the exceptionally intelligent think differently than those with conventional minds, even those which most people would consider to be highly intelligent. The difference is qualitative, not merely quantitative, in nature, and is akin to the difference between the genuinely mathematical mind and the non-mathematical mind. It is, to use one acquaintance’s example, the difference between the minds that can ascend the mountain by the winding path or by climbing straight up, and the mind that takes a helicopter ride directly to the peak.

I have been asked on more than a few occasions to explain what the qualitative differences are and to provide some perspective on how the different thought processes work. Now, obviously I am somewhat handicapped in explaining this because I have never not thought the way that I do now, but I do have the advantage of observing considerably more conventional thinkers than any conventional thinker, no matter how intelligent, has been able to observe non-conventional thinkers. However, upon beginning to read Francis Fukuyama’s The End of History and the Last Man, I believe I may finally able to articulate a few of these differences.

There are a few observations I have made over the years that are of limited utility in differentiating between what I think of as “very smart” vs “brilliant”. The terms themselves are meaningless and entirely subjective here, to put it in terms the quantitatively minded can accept, let’s call them VHIQ vs UHIQ for the time being, with the understanding that what applies to the VHIQ also applies to midwits and average minds, whereas what applies to UHIQ does not.

And FFS, if you’re reading this and think something might apply to you, please understand that is not a signal to decide that you are an unconventional thinker or exceptionally intelligent and share that fascinating observation with everyone. That very reaction is a pretty reliable indicator that you’re not. If you can’t fathom that, go ask a very tall person how excited he was this morning about discovering that he was tall.

Keep in mind that these are tendencies, not iron-clad laws. If they don’t make sense to you, don’t worry about it. On average, the responses will fall into six categories:

  1. Huh?
  2. Hmm.
  3. Vox just wants to talk about how smart he is again.
  4. Vox is right/wrong because [x].
  5. OT: Something off-topic because IMPORTANT. Link goes to the Drudge Report, which no one reads.
  6. Hey, I can use this as an excuse to talk about ME!

Regardless:

  • VHIQ inclines towards binary either/or thinking and taking sides. UHIQ inclines towards probabilistic thinking and balancing between contradictory possibilities.
  • VHIQ seeks understanding towards application or justification, UHIQ seeks understanding towards holistic understanding.
  • VHIQ refines the original thought of others, UHIQ synthesizes multiple original thoughts.
  • VHIQ rationalizes logical conclusions, UHIQ accepts logical conclusions. This is ironic because VHIQ considers itself to be highly logical, UHIQ considers itself to be investigative.
  • VHIQ recognizes the truths in the works of the great thinkers of the past and applies them. UHIQ recognizes the flaws in the thinking of the great thinkers of the past and explores them.
  • VHIQ usually spots logical flaws in an argument. UHIQ usually senses them.
  • VHIQ enjoys pedantry. UHIQ hates it. Both are capable of utilizing it at will.
  • VHIQ is uncomfortable with chaos and seeks to impose order on it, even if none exists. UHIQ is comfortable with chaos and seeks to recognize patterns in it.
  • VHIQ is spergey and egocentric. UHIQ is holistic and solipsistic.
  • VHIQ will die on a conceptual hill. UHIQ surrenders at the first reasonable show of force.
  • VHIQ attempts to rationalize its errors. UHIQ sees no point in hesitating to admit them.
  • VHIQ seeks to prove the correctness of its case. UHIQ doesn’t believe in the legitimacy of the jury.
  • VHIQ believes in the unique power of SCIENCE. UHIQ sees science as a conceptual framework of limited utility.
  • VHIQ seeks to rank and order things. UHIQ seeks to recognize and articulate concepts.
  • VHIQ is competitive. UHIQ doesn’t keep score.
  • VHIQ asks “how can this be used?” UHIQ asks “what does this mean?”

This obviously doesn’t explain how a UHIQ thinker thinks per se, but it might provide some perspective concerning the qualitative differences between conventional high IQ thinkers and unconventional high IQ thinkers previously observed by others. For example, when I read something, even something about which I am inherently dubious, I do so in what is essentially an intellectual clean room. I am not merely open to being persuaded, I am, in the moment, fully believing whatever the author is saying.

However, upon encountering an obvious falsehood, non sequitur, bait-and-switch, or erroneous leap of logic, the clean room is muddied. The more mud that accumulates, and the more rapidly it is accumulated, the more certain that I am of the text containing errors. I don’t know exactly what they are yet, because I’m not reading critically, and I don’t retain more than a general sense of where on the page the mud is, but I know where to go and look for it, and perhaps more importantly, I know with almost 100 percent certainty that I will find something there. Every now and then I pick up a false reading, but that doesn’t happen more than 2-3 times per year.

I’ll demonstrate this in action in a longer post about Fukuyama’s book, specifically, the introduction, in a few hours. In the meantime:

The topics of genius and degeneration are only special cases of the more general problem involved in the evaluation of human capacities, namely the quantitative versus qualitative. There are those who insist that all differences are qualitative, and those who with equal conviction maintain that they are exclusively quantitative. The true answer is that they are both. General intelligence, for example, is undoubtedly quantitative in the sense that it consists of varying amounts of the same basic stuff (e.g., mental energy) which can be expressed by continuous numerical measures like intelligence Quotients or Mental-Age scores, and these are as real as any physical measurements are. But it is equally certain that our description of the difference between a genius and an average person by a statement to the effect that he has an IQ greater by this or that amount, does not describe the difference between them as completely or in the same way as when we say that a mile is much longer than an inch. The genius (as regards intellectual ability) not only has an IQ of say 50 points more than the average person, but in virtue of this difference acquires seemingly new aspects (potentialities) or characteristics. These seemingly new aspects or characteristics, in their totality, are what go to make up the “qualitative” difference between them [9, p. 134].

Wechsler is saying quite plainly that those with IQs above 150 are different in kind from those below that level. He is saying that they are a different kind of mind, a different kind of human being.

RIP George Michael

It is being reported that George Michael died peacefully at home today. He was 53.


The star, who launched his career with Wham in the 1980s and later continued his success as a solo performer, is said to have “passed away peacefully at home”.


Thames Valley Police said South Central Ambulance Service attended a property in Goring in Oxfordshire at 13:42 GMT.


Police say there were no suspicious circumstances.

An introduction to Selenoth

In case you’re wondering what all the discussion of the various Selenoth-related books is about, or if some of the superlatives being cast about could be even remotely justified, you can now dip your toe into the epic fantasy waters at neither risk nor cost to yourself, as A MAGIC BROKEN is free on Kindle today.

The ebook is a novella in which is related the brief intersection of two perspective characters from A THRONE OF BONES and A SEA OF SKULLS prior to the events of either book. I think those who are fans of the Arts of Dark and Light series would agree that it is a reasonably fair warning of what the reader can expect from immersion into what is now, according to Amazon’s most recent Kindle Normalized Page Count, a cumulative 3,053 pages of epic high fantasy.

Anyhow, if you haven’t read it yet, I’d encourage you to download it and check it out. Even if fantasy isn’t really your thing, it’s more than a bit of a spy thriller as well.

Merry Christmas!

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was with God in the beginning.  Through him all things were made; without him nothing was made that has been made.  In him was life, and that life was the light of all mankind. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.
– John 1:1-5

This is the true hope and promise of Christmas. The light shines, even in the darkness that engulfs the world today, and the darkness will not overcome it.

Whether you are surrounded with love and family and decorations and presents, or whether you find yourself in a motel surrounded by nothing more festive than a wi-fi connection and few empty cans of beer, you are not alone today. You are part of the great celebration of the miracle, the great golden net of believers that reaches all the way around the world and binds the Church together.

Because at its heart, Christmas is not about togetherness or silver bells or snow. It is about the Word becoming flesh and coming to dwell among us, the spark that lit the fire in the hearts of men that will never be extinguished.

Merry Christmas, everyone.

The Alt-Right is the future

There is no hope in the Left. There is no hope in the conservative Right. There is only one place where there is genuine hope for the future of the West, and that is by placing one’s trust in God first and Nation second:

Sébastien Faustini’s decision to skip the firework display at the beach not only potentially saved his life — it steered his politics toward the far right. The soft-spoken 18-year-old stayed home with his cousin and watched the Bastille Day display on TV, instead of heading to the Nice promenade as they’d planned on July 14.

A truck was driven into the crowd that night, killing 86 people.

Sebastien Faustini at the National Front’s headquarters in Nice, France. Lauren Brigitte Chadwick
“We could have been there,” said Faustini, who is now forced to pass by the scene of attack daily on his way to university. “Every day that hits me.”

Three weeks ago, he joined France’s far-right National Front.

“Certain media organizations stigmatize members of the National Front calling them fascists, insults that have nothing to do with the party’s program,” Faustini told NBC News.

Faustini is far from alone. Many millennials are embracing the National Front — which boasts a founder who had been fined repeatedly for racism and anti-Semitism. They say recent terrorist attacks across Europe and high unemployment levels validate their personal views and the party’s anti-immigration stance.

“THE FAILURE OF THE RIGHT TO DO SOMETHING AND THE FAILURE OF THE LEFT TO CHANGE ANYTHING MAKES MARINE LE PEN THE PERSON WHO REPRESENTS CHANGE”

According to a report released by polling organization Odoxa on Dec. 16, the National Front is the political party with the most support among French people aged 18-34. Roughly one-in-five back it.

Ignore the converged institutions and corrupt organizations. They are all irrelevant. Ignore those who falsely call themselves “Christians” and “Americans” and “Europeans”. They have no truth in them. God created the nations. He’s not going to allow them to be Babelized, no matter how determined the servants of the Prince of This World are to make themselves gods.

All we need is twelve. All we need is the Word.

When you are attacked and scorned and slandered for speaking the truth, by whom are you opposed? When you are hated by the world for speaking the truth, whom do you serve?

A dangerous parting shot

The Washington Post belatedly begins to understand that perhaps those crazy people saying Obama is, at the very least, pro-Muslim, weren’t necessarily so crazy after all:

PRESIDENT OBAMA’S decision to abstain on a U.N. Security Council resolution condemning Israeli settlements reverses decades of practice by both Democratic and Republican presidents. The United States vetoed past resolutions on the grounds that they unreasonably singled out Jewish communities in occupied territories as an obstacle to Middle East peace, and that U.N. action was more likely to impede than advance negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians.

The measure, approved 14 to 0 by the Security Council Friday, is subject to the same criticism: It will encourage Palestinians to pursue more international sanctions against Israel rather than seriously consider the concessions necessary for statehood, and it will give a boost to the international boycott and divestment movement against the Jewish state, which has become a rallying cause for anti-Zionists. At the same time, it will almost certainly not stop Israeli construction in the West Bank, much less in East Jerusalem, where Jewish housing was also deemed by the resolution to be “a flagrant violation under international law.”

By abstaining, the administration did not explicitly support that position, which has not been U.S. policy since the Carter administration. In explaining the vote, U.S. Ambassador Samantha Power pointed out that the council was sanctioning Israel even while failing to take action to stop a potential genocide in South Sudan or the slaughter in Aleppo, Syria. Yet in failing to veto the measure, the Obama administration set itself apart both from previous administrations and from the incoming presidency of Donald Trump, who spoke out strongly against the resolution.

Israeli officials charged that the abstention represented a vindictive parting shot by Mr. Obama at Mr. Netanyahu, with whom he has feuded more bitterly than he did with most U.S. adversaries. The vote could also be seen as an attempt to preempt Mr. Trump, who appears ready to shift U.S. policy to the opposite extreme after naming a militant advocate of the settlements as his ambassador to Israel. Whatever the motivation, Mr. Obama’s gesture is likely to do more harm than good.

It boggles the mind how the American Left fails to understand that importing people from countries where the population is anti-Israel was always going to move the US in an anti-Israel direction.

Family SJWs and the holidays

Remember, SJWs have no respect for decorum or regard for their families or the holidays:

In a discussion with my son and his girlfriend, I said that their city’s homogeneity (it is almost all white) was behind the low crime rate when it was mentioned that there was a stabbing behind a bar the other night. This led to an accusatory, ‘What do you mean by homogeneity?’ by the SJW girlfriend and so I spilled the next fact – that blacks are more likely to commit crimes. The SJW girlfriend of my son quickly went nuclear and said I was a racist and that when controlled for socio-economic factor blacks do not commit crimes at higher rates than whites and that discussion of racist ideas was not tolerated in her house. The evening was ruined. The relationship with son and girlfriend is forever changed.

I have read SJWs Always Lie, and would appreciate your advice on how you suggest to use rhetoric instead of dialectic with known SJWs that are also family? Any suggestion on how I recover from this?

You don’t “recover” from unmasking an SJW. Remember, they always lie, they always double down, and they always project.

At this point, the correct thing to do is to refuse to have further contact with her, or to allow her in his home until she apologizes for calling him a racist. Most people won’t do this, of course, especially when faced with the inevitable female pressure for everyone to humor the most volatile member of the family in the interest of a false peace. I would have laughed at her willful ignorance, told my son that he really needed to rethink the wisdom of potentially allowing an idiot like her to contribute to the family gene pool, and left.

Yes, family is important, but girlfriends aren’t family. And life is far too short to waste any of it on putting up with SJWs. Tolerating SJWs is the intellectual equivalent of putting up with someone who insists on using the living room as a toilet. Why would you even consider doing it?

Nearly everyone makes the fatal mistake of trying to be reasonable with them. That is a category error. SJWs respond only to emotional pain, so the only way to get them to stop doubling down on their misbehavior is to make them feel more pain by failing to behave as members of a civilized society. The more one apologizes and negotiates and pleads, the more intransigent they get. The harsher you treat them, the more likely it is that they will sheepishly return to the fold.

However, in light of how family SJWs are going to be even more easily triggered than usual this year due to the imminent Ascension of the God-Emperor to the Cherry Blossom Throne, I would recommend not only avoiding political conversations, but refusing to permit others to start them in the first place. If a family SJW does insist on bringing up politics, especially if they do so in that passive-aggressive way that assumes agreement with the speaker’s statement, the best thing to do is probably to express your delight about the Ascension of the God-Emperor – in those precise terms – and begin a debate concerning whether Donald Trump will be the greatest U.S. president since a) Ronald Reagan, b) Andrew Jackson, or c) George Washington.

The shock of the cognitive dissonance should be sufficient to put your family SJW in a socially catatonic state, which will be appreciated by everyone else.

In general, I find that smiling, refusing to back down in any way, and treating their antics like an indulged child usually works best.