The country left him

Fred Reed observes that what passes for the United States of America today is not the country he knew:

Mail arrives in my inbox all the time, telling me that by going to Mexico I have sold out, fled, abandoned the United States. I’m a coward and a traitor, just like Lord Haw Haw, and Kim Philby, and probably hate America more than Barack Obama does.

It is is irrational. They think that just because I went to Mexico, I left the US. They don’t understand. I didn’t leave the United States. It left me. It was a bait-and-switch operation. I signed on to one country, and they slipped another in under me….

Now, I used to be fond of the United States. Granted, I wasn’t much
of a patriot. The word nowadays seems to mean one who doesn’t so much
love his country as to dislike other people’s. I figured live and let
live. A lot of other countries struck me as fine places. But America was
my favorite. It just suited me. I liked the people in their wild
variety and the countryside and the music and the brash independence. It
wasn’t perfect. Still, given the sorry baseline for comportment in
human agglomerations, it was about as good as you could get.

I’m still fond of the United States. I just can’t find it.

Change the people, change the nation. That’s the real proposition. The irony, of course, is that the addition of all those people “yearning to breathe free” have turned the USA into a place that is considerably less free than many other countries. The extent to which this has taken place, and the way it was accomplished, is documented in some detail here.

The United States of America is now a triple misnomer. It is not united, the Several States are no longer sovereign states, and genuine Americans are now a minority. It should be no surprise that the country – it cannot be reasonably described as a nation – is no longer recognizable to an oldtimer like Fred.

I seldom get harassed in this way, probably because my story is pretty straightforward. I warned nearly everyone around me for nearly a decade about what was happening to no avail, and was frequently told that if I didn’t like it, I should just leave. So I did.

And nothing I have seen in the 20 years since has made me regret that decision.

Nicolas Kristof admits left-wing intolerance

It’s a rather remarkable admission, considering the average left-liberal’s ability to deny the difference between black and white, between male and female, and between American and non-American:

WE progressives believe in diversity, and we want women, blacks, Latinos, gays and Muslims at the table — er, so long as they aren’t conservatives.

Universities are the bedrock of progressive values, but the one kind of diversity that universities disregard is ideological and religious. We’re fine with people who don’t look like us, as long as they think like us.

O.K., that’s a little harsh. But consider George Yancey, a sociologist who is black and evangelical.

“Outside of academia I faced more problems as a black,” he told me. “But inside academia I face more problems as a Christian, and it is not even close.”

I’ve been thinking about this because on Facebook recently I wondered aloud whether universities stigmatize conservatives and undermine intellectual diversity. The scornful reaction from my fellow liberals proved the point.

“Much of the ‘conservative’ worldview consists of ideas that are known empirically to be false,” said Carmi.

“The truth has a liberal slant,” wrote Michelle.

“Why stop there?” asked Steven. “How about we make faculties more diverse by hiring idiots?”

To me, the conversation illuminated primarily liberal arrogance — the implication that conservatives don’t have anything significant to add to the discussion. My Facebook followers have incredible compassion for war victims in South Sudan, for kids who have been trafficked, even for abused chickens, but no obvious empathy for conservative scholars facing discrimination.

The truth is that they don’t believe in what they claim to believe. They think they want La Raza, Muslims, and American Indians at the table, but they’d be scared out of their gourds if they actually believed that they weren’t going to do the driving.

I am increasingly certain that the white liberal-left simply has no idea whatsoever what is in store for it or what the consequences of its actions are going to be. This should not be a surprise, as they show very short time preferences in every other aspect of their thinking. They simply can’t think outside of their childish “America is white and strong and always will be, so Mommy and Daddy will save us if our stupidity gets us into trouble” mode.

Anyhow, it’s just as well they underestimate and fail to understand us. It will make it that much easier to move them out of the way when the real world finally comes home to roost.

Milo chooses Coulter over Cathy

That’s the nasty thing about cultural war. As with a civil war, sooner or later, whether one will or no, one is eventually forced to choose sides.

It’s dreadful when two people you admire start beating each other up. Sort of like childhood all over again!

But that’s primary season for you. Particularly this year, it has former allies at each others’ throats. It almost makes you miss the days when SJWs weren’t irrelevant! Almost.

The latest salvo in these internecine conflicts comes from Cathy Young, one of a growing number of libertarians and conservatives who are turning their guns on their own side. She’s gone after none other than Ann Coulter, my only rival for the throne as sassy blonde queen of conservative media.

This is a difficult column to write, as I know both women and enjoy them both in different ways. Both have grappled fearlessly with the worst elements of the left over the years. And now I have to take sides!

Still, it’s Cathy who was the aggressor in this instance, attacking Coulter with the disturbingly leftist tactic of guilt-by-association and unsubstantiated name-calling.

Because Coulter has written for VDARE, a website frequented by the alt-right, Cathy alleges that she must therefore endorse the worst of its authors’ opinions. A tired line of reasoning, one used by those who prefer to debate with shame and taboos instead of arguments.

I’m less interested in a lengthy rebuttal of Cathy’s allegations — so silly and overwrought that I won’t even say what they are! — as I am in understanding why she, and so many others in conservative and libertarian circles, have adopted the language and tactics of the left during this campaign season.

First, there are the obvious points. They’re in a panic because of the unstoppable rise of Donald Trump, who represents a serious risk to the influence of the DC think-tank set.

Then there’s the alternative right, who many mistakenly believe are as bad, if not worse, than the identitarians of the left.

Cathy Young probably shares both of these inclinations — she wrote a lengthy rebuttal last month after my colleague I decided to co-author an explainer on the alt-right that didn’t descend into meaningless virtue signalling.

But I think the problem runs deeper with Young. She’s often very sensible. But, ironically, that moderate impulse makes her susceptible to fallacies — in particular, her implicit assumption that the “extreme” of the regressive left’s opponents must be as bad as the extreme of the regressive left itself.

Coulter isn’t the first of Cathy’s targets, you see. There’s also Mike Cernovich, excommunicated in her Real Clear Politics column for “vile tweets,” and later blocked for using the word “cuck.” Then there’s Vox Day, an icon of the anti-SJW resistance, lambasted by Young as a racist and misogynist — a charge his wife no doubt stridently objects to.

None of these people is remotely so dreadful as the worst actors in the third-wave feminist movement or Black Lives Matter.

Anyone who has met Day or Cernovich in person — I have met both — knows that they harbour no animosity toward other races or genders. The same is true of almost everyone I’ve met in the much-lambasted alternative right.

Sure, they may be merrily outrageous in their blogs and on social media, but a few hours of conversation with them reveals none of the wild zealotry you see in the eyes of campus feminist or black activists. Yet, because Day and Cernovich also dabble in identity politics, Cathy treats them the same — if not worse.
The truth is, Cathy has never bothered to really get to know her targets, instead preferring to shame them with regressive-left buzzwords. I’m afraid that she isn’t really opposed to the left’s social ostracization machine: she just wants to choose where it’s aimed.

It’s a shame, because Cathy has frequently been a target of that machine herself. In the early 2010s, she was one of the few writers who dared to question the “rape culture” panic that was underway on American campuses.

Despite being vindicated in the wake of the UVA rape hoax and the collapse of the Columbia “mattress girl” case, she was repeatedly branded a “rape apologist” by her detractors on the left.

At the height of the new wave of sexual assault panic, the Federalist Society even dropped Cathy from their list of campus speakers, with a former president of the society citing pressure from feminist activists as the likely reason.

So it’s disappointing to see someone who has so often been a target of the irrational taboos that govern modern debate be so quick to use the same weapons in a vain attempt to appear balanced.

Because that, I suspect, is Cathy’s real motive — to be seen to be taking a stance that’s equidistant between the identitarians of the regressive left and the identitarians of the alternative right.

It’s a worthy goal, and Cathy is far from malicious. But there’s a problem. For her stance to be valid, you must first accept that both sides are equally powerful, equally dangerous and equally zealous. They’re simply not.

The rise of cultural libertarianism, the alt-right and Generation Trump is turning conservatives on each other like perhaps no other time in recent memory. At least there’s one glimmer of hope: history suggests that after their initial squabbles, American conservatives and libertarians tend to get over themselves and come together eventually.

It’s a uniquely American phenomenon, that, and one that terrifies the progressive left, which is more prone to permanent rifts. Let’s just hope the #NeverTrump types come to their senses soon…

I’m not friends with Cathy Young, nor do I admire her, nor do I find her to be even remotely honest. So, it would be very easy for me to side with Ann Coulter, the most courageous female commentator on the Right, even if I did not agree with her with regards to Trump and the dire danger posed to America by immigration.

People sometimes ask me why I stand by Roosh, or why I stand by Milo. If you read that column, it should be easy enough to understand. We’re standing in this cultural war together, and we know better than to fall for the inevitable divide-and-conquer tactics that are thrown at us by moderates of the Right and extremists of the Left alike.

And as for being “an icon of the anti-SJW resistance”, that’s certainly something I am proud to be. Of course, I’m even more proud of the Evil Legion of Evil, the Ilk, the Dread Ilk, and, of course, the VFM.

UPDATE: Fascinating. Breitbart appears to have deleted the piece. So, I’ve linked to the archive and reproduce the entire piece here.

UPDATE 2: Comments on the article are still up at Disqus.

UPDATE 3: It’s back up again.

A terrible peace

Robert E. Lee is supposed to have said, “It is well that war is so terrible, or we would grow too fond of it.” But when I look around at the wreckage of what now passes for Western culture, when I see the ongoing degradation and decline of Western civilization, I cannot help but think that perhaps peace is more terrible still.

Seventy years of relative peace and prosperity has made our young men hedonists and homosexuals, cravens and cowards who are more inclined to literally emasculate themselves than demonstrate even a modicum of courage. Seventy years of relative tranquility and safety has made our young women into shameless sluts and whores, barren harridans and harpies devoid of self-respect and self-control.

What has peace done for our morals, for our arts, for our sciences? What has peace done for our universities, for our churches, for our moribund civic and social institutions? What has peace done for our nations, invaded by pagans and barbarians and prostrated before them, too helpless to even complain, let alone resist? What has peace done for our minds, our souls, even our bodies, fat, bloated, soft, and weak?

Is it possible that too many generations of peace and pleasure have proven to be little more than an enervating cancer on our culture? Is it possible that peace is more terrible than war?

If these are the fruits of peace, then peace is a dreadful thing. If this is truly the best that peace has to offer, then for the sake of Man and Western civilization, let there be war.

The eliminationist Left

The Washington Examiner discovers SJWs:

Is the American Right so wrong that the elites should use their power to exclude it from debate?

The Obama White House and Facebook both seem to think so, if recent stories are accurate.

Obama’s foreign policy team spun false stories about Iran to rally support for a nuclear deal and circumvent a debate on honest terms, according to a recent New York Times Magazine piece. The reason? Top Obama officials believed that “rational discourse” with its foreign-policy critics was impossible.

Facebook employees, meanwhile, “routinely suppressed news stories of interest to conservative readers from the social network’s influential ‘trending’ news section,” a former Facebooker told Gizmodo, a tech website….

This eliminationist tendency has been visible for years, including in
the works of the Left’s leading lights. If you have read liberal New
York Times blogger Paul Krugman with any regularity, you’re familiar
with the argument: The Right is fundamentally insane or dishonest or
both, and thus its arguments are unworthy of decent treatment or serious
consideration.

This is entirely normal in SJW circles. Anything they deem evil, from racism to sexism to homophobia to dead-naming, does not merit any discussion or defense, it is simply beyond the pale and thereby justifies every form of personal attack.

They don’t even bother to hide it. Back in 2013, for all their public histrionics, not a single person from the SFWA dared to actually argue the case that racism was bad and merited punishment, because a) they consider that to be self-evident, and, b) they are incapable of actually making a coherent case for it.

Which is absolutely fine. They don’t argue with us, so we don’t argue with them. We don’t talk to them at all. We simply define them as utterly and irrevocably evil, take them out without hesitation, and show them no mercy when they suddenly decide that they want to debate, discuss things, and appeal to our principles.

Notice how the SJWs in science fiction demand conclusive proof that they are pedophiles and anti-religious bigots while never requiring any to declare others to be racist, sexist, homophobic, cis-gendered white supremacists. We don’t need any proof either. They associate with, and even celebrate, rapists and pedophiles and other human detritus, and that’s all we need to damn them for it.

Look out, SF fandom

Mike Cernovich is taking scalps:

Senator Ben Sasse of Nebraska will not be running for President after his connection to pedophiles was revealed by Mike Cernovich of Danger & Play Media. (Read: Ben Sasse and #NeverTrump’s Pedophile Problem.)

This entire election season Sasse has building up his personal brand by attacking Trump. Sasse had not taken a principled stand against anyone else on the right, and thus he’s engaging in showmanship marketing in an effort to run for president.

His campaign for president began gaining momentum, with establishment conservatives hailing him as a hero. He was primed to run, and then I scalped him.

Sasse claimed to be a political outsider, so I began digging. Far
from being an everyman, Sasse was an insider’s insider, working at
companies like McKinsey and Company in between stints in Washington,
D.C. Yet what was not common knowledge was Sasse’s role as a tutor of
underage boys.

Sasse tutored and was sworn to protect underage boys working as
Congressional pages. Yet pages were constantly abused, and I suspected,
were abused under his watch. When I raise those concerns to Sasse, he
went radio silent.

Radio silence is a good way to describe the science fiction’s response to the considerable amount of smoke surrounding Samuel Delaney, just to specifically name one oft-celebrated individual. Notice that despite the science fiction community’s retroactive distancing from H.P. Lovecraft, Marion Zimmer Bradley has not yet been stripped of a single award or honor, DAW still publishes her Darkover books, and Tor Books still publishes her “Light” series.

So why are DAW and Tor Books still publishing Marion Zimmer Bradley in the full knowledge of her crimes? Do they endorse child abuse? It certainly puts a very dark spin on the title of Tor Books editor Patrick Nielsen Hayden’s blog, “Making Light”.

Persistent vandalism

SJWs simply never stop lying. They will use any and every opportunity to force history, science, and reality to fit their Narrative without any regard for the truth. It’s interesting to see that SJW Wikipedians have now gone too far even for the admins who historically tended to camp the page about me in order to prevent anyone from posting accurate information that might tend to make me look good.

(Protected “Vox Day”: Persistent vandalism: RFPP request ([Edit=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 08:52, 8 June 2016 (UTC)) [Move=Require autoconfirmed or confirmed access] (expires 08:52, 8 June 2016 (UTC))))

Why did they need to do this? Because an SJW took a page from Jeet Heer of New Republic and other media SJWs and attempted to run with the “white supremacist” theme.

Vox Day is an American publisher, activist, racist, [[science fiction writer]], journalist, misogynist, musician, [video game designer], and white supremacist. 

This is just one of a myriad of reasons we need new and better techno-cultural institutions.

Trial, error, and antifragility

I was looking for the transcript for the Brainstorm event with Christopher Hallpike when I came across the one from last October with Mike Cernovich. I started looking it over, and before I knew it, I found myself 14 pages in. It’s full of good advice from Mike, and it includes me talking about how I’ve applied his advice, both from Gorilla Mindset and from watching his example.

Here is a brief selection from it. I should be able to send it out in epub format to the Brainstorm members next week. The transcript for the Steve Keen event will probably go out around the same time.

QUESTION: I am reading Antifragile by Nassim Nicholas Taleb and find the way of going through life by trial and error interesting. Will you both agree on that?

MIKE: My two-part answer to that would be, and I talked about this at the seminar I had the other day, is that life is not like a dance but a wrestling match. That’s a quote from Mark Twain. As for trial and error, you have to let life push back. A lot of people say how do I find my talents? How do I find what I am good at? How do I find my passion? Reality is going to push back at you, and that is where you are going to figure out whether you are good or not. That is where trial and error comes in. So, yeah, I am a huge believer in trial and error. Vox has talked about failing quickly, which is another thing that I believe in.

Let’s say, for example, you want to be really good at something. This is the way that I think you need to go about things. You need to try a lot of things until you find out something that you have the potential to be world-class at. I think everybody has the potential to be really good at something. It might not be the same thing, but there is something inside of you. Everybody has a gift if you try everything, but if you don’t try enough things then you are not going to find out what you are good at and what you’re not good at. For example, I always liked boxing. I was pretty good at boxing, but I would never have been an elite guy. Maybe if I fought really hard I could have been on ESPN once or twice on an undercard, but I never would have been a world-class boxer. So I said, well I am not going to get my head beaten in much longer for something I will never be elite at. How my business model works is that every time I get negative attention, every time I get conflict, I get stronger, my websites get stronger, and I sell more books.

VOX: I think that for both of us, being antifragile is particularly important because we are so targeted by SJWs who are constantly trying to disqualify, discredit, and disemploye. They can’t fire you from your job. They can’t fire me from my job. It is just not possible. That is exactly what being antifragile is.

MIKE: But more than that, the more they attack, the more your web traffic grows.

VOX: That is true as well, but the important thing, the important concept, is to allow yourself to live life in an antifragile way, because antifragility is about more than politics and personal enemies. You want to be antifragile with regards to the economy, changes in your personal life, and even the people around you. For me, the trial and error concept is vital because one of the biggest flaws that I see in a lot of the intelligent people around me is that they are constantly trying to work out the perfect plan. That just doesn’t work. Like Mike Tyson said, everyone has a plan until they get punched in the face. That is the situation that most of us are in with our businesses, or with our jobs. We all have a plan, and we all try to come up with an idea that will work, but then reality so often throws you a curveball that you can’t plan for.

MIKE: I was just re-emphasizing that point which is you’re not going to know what you’re good at until life decides what you’re good at. We don’t really have unlimited potential for anything. Some things we are going to be better at and some things we are going to be terrible at and some things no matter how hard you try, how hard you practice, you’re never going to be great at. That is why instead of sitting around thinking well in ten years here is what I am going to be, you need to be thinking in ten minutes here is what I am going to do and I am going to do it. You will find out real quick if that is going to work out for you.

I highly recommend both Antifragile and Gorilla Mindset. They are very, very different books, but they will both affect your thinking in positive ways. And speaking of Brainstorm, we’ll probably hold the monthly closed event sometime next week. There is much to discuss.

Good rhetoric in action

To show how really good rhetoric works, notice how it can be summoned and utilized in a variety of ways to instantly shut down any rhetorical sally from the target.

Elizabeth Warren@elizabethforma
@realDonaldTrump: Your policies are dangerous. Your words are reckless. Your record is embarrassing. And your free ride is over.

John Cardillo ‏@johncardillo
Next Fauxcahontas will tell us that #Trump corrupted her people with Whiskey and rifles.

KABOOM! That’s the effect you are looking for. Notice that there is no attempt whatsoever to respond to the dialectical aspects of the sally, nor is one needed.

A tale of two rhetorics

Some of the white nationalists on Twitter have been remarkably sensitive over my observation that #whitegenocide is ineffective rhetoric. To be fair, most of them haven’t read either me or Aristotle and quite clearly don’t understand the difference between dialectic and rhetoric.

But even someone who doesn’t should be able to grasp the fact that the term SJW has proven to be far more rhetorically effective than the “white genocide” meme, and it has done so in far less time.

That is what the empirical difference between effective rhetoric and ineffective rhetoric looks like. Interestingly enough, there are some indications that “cuckservative” may be similarly limited, but it is probably too soon to tell. However, the fact that “cuckservative” is already utilized half as often as “white genocide” despite being around for less than one year tends to indicate that it, too, is a more effective term.

Regardless, it is important to remember that clinging to suboptimal tactics is one of the most effective ways to ensure one fails to accomplish one’s strategic goals.