Time to build up the repertoire

The attack on classical music has begun in earnest:

The University of Oxford is considering scrapping sheet music for being ‘too colonial’ after staff raised concerns about the ‘complicity in white supremacy’ in music curriculums.

Professors are set to reform their music courses to move away from the classic repertoire, which includes the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

University staff have argued that the current curriculum focuses on ‘white European music from the slave period’, according to The Telegraph.  

Documents seen by the publication indicate proposed reforms to target undergraduate courses.

It claimed that teaching musical notation had ‘not shaken off its connection to its colonial past’ and would be ‘a slap in the face’ to some students.

And it added that musical skills should no longer be compulsory because the current repertoire’s focus on ‘white European music’ causes ‘students of colour great distress’. 

What this means is that classical music on public radio from the likes of NPR and the BBC are unlikely to survive, as those institutions are immediately proximate to the elite universities, from which they hire most of their employees.

This is why UATV will be adding a classical music channel later this year. We’re already beginning to build the FLAC library required to support it now.

The relevance of Clauswitz

Military Strategy Magazine devotes an entire issue to the immortal Carl von Clausewitz, the second-greatest military philosopher in human history:

As someone with a reputation for adhering to the teachings of Carl von Clausewitz it would seem odd if I were to do anything but commend the writing contained in this Military Strategy Magazine Special Edition to our readers, so please take that as a given.

My introduction to Clausewitz came via the late Colin Gray and his work Another Bloody Century. To that point I had been deeply skeptical of Clausewitz and his academic fan club, never having set foot in a university, attended any lectures and left school at 16. Thus it speaks in Clausewitz’s immense favor that when I actually engaged with the text and the more commonsense commentaries about it, On War immediately began to answer questions that had so far left me confused and bewildered as to the unedifying, confused and clown infested swamp which is modern military thought – and if you think that harsh, Clausewitz would probably not argue with that description because he wrote to clarify and inform his peers, not confuse them further with reputational writing intended to show how clever he was. Clausewitz may not live in the Corporals club, but he should be more of a welcome visitor than many think.

Clausewitz really lives and dies in Professional Military Education (PME). Romping through On War next to other works is a miserable introduction yet that is how many come to meet Clausewitz’s work, yet why should anyone bother? To quote Colin Gray, “if not Clausewitz, then who?”

Ironically, if PME was as practice and evidence based, as some claim, no one would need to teach or even read Clausewitz because a 189-year-old book should have been surpassed by clearer and better work found in modern curricula but barring this somewhat nugatory observation it is fair to state that both reading and understanding On War will never set you wrong or harm your understanding of War and Warfare.

In well over a decade as Editor of Infinity Journal, now Military Strategy Magazine (MSM), and many, many email exchanges and ‘blog’ posts, I have seen all the critiques of Clausewitz flounder, mostly on the simple fault of not having read the book, or not understood the words on the page.

As I have said many times before, Clausewitz is not beyond criticism. There are things he did not say, and things he did not say clearly or well. He was prone to overstatement and using analogies that were perhaps not the best. He didn’t mention naval forces. He didn’t deal as well as he might with Logistics or Intelligence, but very few have, and no other military theorist is held to same semantic standards or levels of rigor as Clausewitz, mainly due to the efforts of more failure prone theorists such as Fuller and Liddell-Hart, post 1918.

Read Clausewitz. Read On War. Everything and anything Clausewitz ever wrote, and make sure to read it more than once. If you don’t get it or think it’s turgid and boring, try and speak to those who don’t and ask for clarity and insights. No soldier or officer was worse at his job for having engaged with Clausewitz.

One of the things that is most striking about reading these various articles for anyone who has read Lind, van Creveld, and the Chinese duo of Qiao and Wang, is the utter necessity for more post-Clausewitzian thinking on strategy, operations, and tactics. Martin van Creveld was absolutely correct in his explication of the transformation of war, as the Clausewitzian framework has become too limited to serve as a sound philosophical basis to understand 21st century warfare.

That doesn’t render any of his core concepts less valid or important. Clausewitz absolutely remains relevant, and only a fool hell-bent on defeat would disregard his works anymore than one would disregard Sun Tzu’s aphorisms simply because the Chinese framework is outdated too. There is, for example, friction in “unrestricted warfare” just as there was on the Napoleonic battlefield. The point that I am making here, with all due respect and deference to the great Prussian, is that the Clausewitzian trinitarian framework no longer encapsulates war in all its forms, and therefore tends to suppress rather than support a comprehensive understanding of modern warfare.

White America begins to secede

It’s currently being described as “outstate vs metro”, “country vs city” and “rural vs urban”, but that’s all just a euphemistic way of describing the obvious. Jews didn’t want to be ruled by Romans. Africans and Indians didn’t want to be ruled by the British. So, it shouldn’t be a surprise that Americans and other whites of European descent aren’t exactly enthusiastic about being ruled by the POX.

A Republican Minnesota state representative is introducing legislation that would create a pathway for Minnesota counties to secede from the state and join the South Dakota.

Rep. Jeremy Munson (R-Crystal Lake) introduced the bill Thursday and tweeted out an image of his vision, which depicted nearly every county west of the Twin Cities metro as part of a newly imagined South Dakota. 

“Minnesota becomes more politically polarized every year and the metro politicians have shown us that rural Minnesotans are no longer represented by St Paul. It’s time to leave,” read a webpage on Munson’s campaign website.

The idea echoes a similar push among rural Oregon counties to join Idaho.

Republican South Dakota Governor Kristi Noem appeared to be in support of Munson’s idea, by retweeting his plan.

It’s an excellent idea, and every Minnesotan on either side of the divide should embrace it. But this is just a minor precursor of the eventual breakup, which probably will not be entirely peaceful and political in nature. 

That would be an improvement

I have no problem knowing that people are loyal to their own. That is good, natural, and true. To fail to be loyal to your own kind is to reduce yourself below the level of the animals, no matter how you try to rationalize your disloyalty. What I have a problem with is people lying to me and telling me that they possess “dual loyalties” when they obviously don’t. However, what Jonathan Pollard is describing here isn’t actually “dual loyalty”, but rather the loyalty gradient that reflects how humans actually operate:

Asked how he felt about being accused by US Jews of having dual loyalties, Pollard did not take issue with the title. “If you don’t like the accusation of double loyalty, then go the F*** home,” he said bluntly.

“It’s as simple as that. If you live in a country where you are constantly under that charge, then you don’t belong there. You go home. You come home. If you[‘re] outside Israel, then you live in a society in which you are basically considered unreliable. The bottom line on this charge of dual loyalty is, I’m sorry, we’re Jews, and if we’re Jews, we will always have dual loyalty,” he added.

An he suggested that if asked for advice, he would counsel a young US Jew working in the American security apparatus to spy for Israel.

“I’d tell him, not doing anything is unacceptable. So simply going home [to Israel] is not acceptable. Making aliyah is not acceptable,” Pollard said. “You have to make a decision whether your concern for Israel and loyalty to Israel and loyalty to your fellow Jews is more important than your life.

“If you do nothing, and you turn your back, or simply make aliyah, and go on with your life, you’ll be no better than those Jews who before and after the destruction of the Temple said, ‘It’s not my responsibility.’”

Pollard is rightly regarded by Israel as a hero. And as a traitorous US citizen, Pollard should have been executed for his crimes against the American nation. Nations have interests, they do not have friends. As a general rule, it is wise to take people at their word when they tell you that they are disloyal, or that you are their enemy. 

And as history demonstrates, national governments that permit foreigners to rule over their nation and work in their security apparatuses invariably fall.

Women’s sports are parasites

 It’s not just crazy for feminists to insist on equal pay for women’s sports, it’s literally ruinous: 

The NCAA Division I men’s basketball championship budget for the 2018-19 season was $28 million — almost twice as much as the women’s budget.

Information provided by the NCAA to ESPN on Friday shows the men’s tournament brought in a total net income of $864.6 million that season, while the women’s event lost $2.8 million — the largest loss of any NCAA championship.

The men’s tournament budget for the 2018-19 season was $28 million, while the women’s was $14.5 million.

The demand for equality is why literally hundreds of men’s college teams have been eliminated. It also demonstrates why catering to it is going to destroy any organization or institution that does, including the universities and militaries.

The point is not that women can’t produce work of superlative quality that sells very well. Castalia Library’s newest book, written by a woman about a little girl, looks as if it is going to be out of stock faster than we’d anticipated. But if we were to insist that half our books be written by female authors, more than a few of our subscribers would rightly stop subscribing due to our failure to respect their demand.

Investments are buyouts

 Except they don’t actually give the founder any money.

John Matze, the co-founder and former CEO of free speech platform Parler, is suing the company for wrongful termination and the alleged theft of his 40{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} ownership of the company. It must be tempting when a big gun comes in, and promises millions in funding, and access to their massive media promotion machine. But that is almost always the first step in taking over your operation, and muscling you out.

If the Mercers come knocking, the answer should always be “no, thank you.” Nine times out of ten, if someone is seeking to invest in something you’re doing, their interests are in no way aligned with your own. Be content with what you have and where you are. And remember that no one genuinely gets to the big leagues through hard work and genuine success.

The Dao of racism

The eternal spiral of racism and anti-racism consumes everyone in time:

The creator and executive producer of the CBS drama All Rise once promised his show would combat racism in the justice system. Now, he’s been fired for ignoring cries of racism in the workplace.

“Warner Bros. Television has relieved ‘All Rise’ executive producer Greg Spottiswood of his duties, effective immediately,” the studio said in a statement to Deadline.

Spottiswood allegedly ignored complaints about racial insensitivity, with most of those complaints reportedly being filed from the show’s writers room.

Writers had become critical of Spotiswood for what they deemed to be stereotypical dialogue and plots centered on lead character Judge Lola Carmichael, played by Simone Missick, and other minority characters.

“We had to do so much behind the scenes to keep these scripts from being racist and offensive,” writer Shernold Edwards told The New York Times.

It’s probably safest to do all-Asian shows these days. For now. This won’t stop until the woketroopers are shooting everyone with glasses for racism and the survivors beg for the ultras to stop them.

Congress shall make no law

An en banc panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit, on the other hand, can apparently announce any laws it likes. Because democracy?

On Wednesday, an en banc panel of the US Court of Appeals for the 9th Circuit ruled that the second amendment right to keep and bear arms does not citizens include the right to carry a firearm, either openly or concealed, in public .

The court issued the ruling in the case of George Young Jr. V Hawaii, a lawsuit challenging a Hawaii firearm licensing law, which states residents seeking license to openly carry a firearm in public must demonstrate “the urgency or the need” to carry a firearm, must be of good moral character, and must be “engaged in the protection of life and property.” The court said, “There is no right to carry arms openly in public; nor is any such right within the scope of the Second Amendment.”

The majority opinion also states “we can find no general right to carry arms into the public square for self-defense.” The majority further argued that the second amendment applies to the “defense of hearth and home” and “the power of the government to regulate carrying arms in the public square does not infringe in any way on the right of an individual to defend his home or business.”

The majority ruled opinion covers Hawaii’s law regarding open carrying a firearm and the court further states, “We have previously held that individuals do not have a Second Amendment right to carry concealed weapons in public” meaning they believe no right to carry a firearm in any capacity in public exists.

The English kept coming for American guns until the patriots prevented them from doing so. The imperial courts will do the same. 

Very glad I left

Between the George Floyd riots and the ever-more-insane convergence of what were already very left-wing institutions, I can’t honestly say that I miss Minnesota in the slightest:

The Chanhassen Dinner Theater in Minnesota has canceled its production of Cinderella because it found that the cast was “too white” to go on.

Michael Brindisi, the artistic director, who first raised issue with the cast, said the play was fine but could not in good faith go on with a cast that, according to estimates, came in about 98{3549d4179a0cbfd35266a886b325f66920645bb4445f165578a9e086cbc22d08} white. So, they opted to boot the whole project.

“That doesn’t work with what we’re saying we’re going to do,” Brindisi said.

In a follow-up, the company said it will implement “anti-racist” protocols in response to the now-canceled cast and rely on its Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) consultant.

On the other hand, the increasing inability of these institutions to perform their core functions is creating opportunity after opportunity for the sane, and for those devoted to the Good, the Beautiful, and the True.

Speaking of which, I would be remiss if I did not note that the Castalia Library edition of HEIDI by Johanna Spyri is now available for purchase as a one-off, complete with original interior illustrations. A very limited quantity of the Libraria edition is also available.

Impact Day approaches

Now whatever could that panel be from?

The impact of Project Asteroid on the comics industry can not unreasonably be equated to that of the orbital artillery utilized in the QUANTUM MORTIS comics. Arkhaven will also be announcing a new comics crowdfunding campaign for a certain comic that has been much requested.

Note that all of the previous campaigns will be delivered as backed. The reason we have not released anything for the last few months will become completely obvious in retrospect, so harbor no fears on that front. As always, the objective is to exceed the backers’ expectations.