Dark
Tag: decline and fall
A blast from the past
This was the column I wrote the day after 9/11 that launched my recently concluded op/ed career as well as this blog. It has its flaws, but in light of the references to the NSA and even Syria, it is a fairly prescient warning of the events of the subsequent twelve years, as well as of the freedoms we have lost during that time.
Yield no more freedom
September 14, 2001
In response to a number of questions inspired by last week’s column, we were working on a piece related to PC security, specifically the sort offered to one’s e-mail communications by various encryption technologies, when we were interrupted by the horrifying events of Tuesday. The fatal hijackings and subsequent media response has been difficult to dismiss from our mind, so we have tabled the usual technology review for a week in favor of some reflections on these recent events.
One of the many troubling aspects of the hijackings is the brutal demonstration that we, as a people, have received very little of the security we were promised in return for the many violations of personal freedom and civil liberties that have been enacted over the past decade. We would go so far as to raise the question if this had not been a fool’s bargain, wherein we have given up something of precious value in return for … arguably, nothing. It is bad enough that we allow the FBI to filter our e-mails and record our keystrokes, that we permit the National Security Agency to intercept every electronic communication floating through the aether, but it is even worse that we have done so without realizing that which we hoped to gain.
Just as the drug war has not reduced the amount of illegal drugs used in this country, the sacrifice of our civil liberties on the altar of national security has not brought us security. Keep this in mind, as the inevitable drumbeat begins for more sacrifices, as the calls begin for Americans to give up even more of their hard-won freedoms. National security cannot seriously be cited any longer in the attempts to ban personal encryption technology, not when, as WorldNetDaily reported yesterday, far better forms of communications encryption have already been delivered to terrorist-sponsoring states like Syria with the full approval of the previous administration.
It is said that the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, but that vigilance must be applied within as well as without. A thousand suicide bombers could not destroy America, but America is quite capable of destroying itself in the pursuit of any number of false idols, among them wrongheaded and illusory notions of security at any price. Individual privacy, like private property, is one of the foundations of our freedom, and it must not be thrown away out of fear. Anonymous cell phones or encrypted e-mail missives could be used by a terrorist, true, but the same is also true of a razor blade or a flight simulator.
What our leaders must realize is that personal technology is not a foe, but a powerful ally. The enemy we face can be subdued and contained by soldiers, bombs and a strong national will, but it cannot be ultimately defeated through conventional war. But satellite transmissions and the Internet know no borders, nor does the concept of freedom. Our enemies recognize this, which is why they fearfully denounce every sign of American influence as decadence, because they well know that they cannot raise another generation of suicide warriors if that generation is allowed to partake of the dangerous and forbidden fruit of freedom.
Some have protested that America must not strike back, that doing so will only perpetuate the “cycle of violence,” that others will only rise up to replace those we strike down. But this is demonstrably untrue, as no German ever rose up to replace Hitler, nor does a Japanese war party trouble us today. It is appropriate for a nation to fight a war in its own defense, especially when war has been openly declared upon it. But in doing so, we must resolutely resist the call to sacrifice that which makes the United States of America a country worth defending – our inalienable rights and our individual freedom.
The decivilization of America
Fred Reed reminds us of the civilized society we have lost and explains why we lost it:
This is why as cultures break down, or mix with less civilized
cultures, more and more police become necessary. So do locks, bars,
alarms, cameras and, for the remaining virile, carry permits. Hello.Here is one reason why multiculturalism seldom works.
Suppose that one culture has a strong work ethic, fairly strict sexual
morality, low illegitimacy, low crime, respect for study and proper use
of the national language. Suppose that another culture is precisely
opposite, or approximately opposite, as for example the Moslems in
France. If the first group is truly dominant, and imposes its
standards—you will do your homework, kid—the second group may
successfully assimilate.But suppose that the dominant group isn´t really that
dominant and can´t, or won´t, impose its values. How—in a school,
say—do you mix the toilet-mouthed with the well-spoken, girls who
expect to marry before giving birth with fifteen year old single
mothers pushing strollers into class? Or if the courts have decided
that “motherfucker· is an entire language to itself, and that
eradication of the word would constitute imperial culture-abuse? The
effect will always be to lower the civilized group to the uncivilized.
This multi-generational societal devastation is the cost of giving in to the multiculturalist dogma of half-savages like Jemisin and fatherless, clueless hypocrites like Scalzi. McRacist and McRapey don’t understand that what they call racism and bigotry was the basic foundation of advanced civilization. Civilization depends, it has always depended, upon keeping down the half-civilized, keeping out the barbarians, and preventing both the half-savages and full savages from infesting, infecting, and ultimately destroying the civilized aspects of a society.
Instead of gradually welcoming into society those exceptional Africans who followed the lead of blue-bottomed Brits and naked Germans in graduating from cannibalistic savagery and expecting from them the same rights and responsibilities of a civilized citizen, the Civil Rights movement insanely declared all humanity to be the same, thereby eliminating the all-important distinction between civilized human population groups and savage ones. Once that happened, it was only a matter of time before the enwiggification of America took place.
The Civil Rights movement didn’t merely destroy Constitutional rights, but literally gave naked, albino-eating, baby-raping cannibals the same intrinsic legal rights as highly civilized, highly moral Christian Europeans and told the romantic equalitarian fools to expect even better results than before. The Greeks knew better than that. The Romans knew better than that. The Imperial British knew better than that. And America’s Founding Fathers knew better than that.
Was it an accident? Of course not. There have always been those with the will to power, those who wish to rule unopposed by the will of the people. The Ciceronian cycle predicts the rise of aristocracy across the democratic world, and that is precisely what we are seeing in the elevation of the international corporate executive class and their relative immunity to the laws to which the rest of the population are subject.
Seen from this perspective, multiculturalism and the subsequent decline into vibrant semi-barbarism is merely a demographic application of the ancient strategic principle: divide and conquer.
Three landmark moments in pop
Several people have asked me to share my thoughts on the recent performances at the MTV music awards. I have seven of them.
- Neither liked nor cared about Billy Ray Cyrus.
- Neither like nor care about his daughter.
- Michael Jackson’s televised moonwalk marked the beginning of the overt negrification of American pop culture.
- Madonna’s rolling around on stage in a wedding dress marked the beginning of the overt sexualization of American pop culture.
- Whatever it was that Miss Cyrus was doing the other night marks the moment at which those two forces, negrification and sexualization, combined to complete the enwiggification of American pop culture.
- Umberto Eco was correct in Apocalypse Postponed when he pointed out that “pop culture” is an oxymoron. There is nothing cultural or civilized about pop; it is intrinsically anti-culture.
- Demographics is destiny. Don’t expect the plumbing to long outlive the melodies.
“When modes of music change, the fundamental laws of the state always change with them.”
– Plato, Republic
Predictable consequences
It’s absolutely hilarious to see the mainstream media and government employees complaining about private citizens putting what they have learned from the IRS and the mortgage banks into action:
“It must be a mistake,” he said, when the loan officer told him that
someone had placed liens totaling more than $25 million on his house and
on other properties he owned.But as Sheriff Stanek soon learned, the liens, legal claims on property
to secure the payment of a debt, were just the earliest salvos in a war
of paper, waged by a couple who had lost their home to foreclosure in
2009 — a tactic that, with the spread of an anti-government ideology
known as the “sovereign citizen” movement, is being employed more
frequently as a way to retaliate against perceived injustices.Over the next three years, the couple, Thomas and Lisa Eilertson, filed
more than $250 billion in liens, demands for compensatory damages and
other claims against more than a dozen people, including the sheriff,
county attorneys, the Hennepin County registrar of titles and other
court officials.“It affects your credit rating, it affected my wife, it affected my
children,” Sheriff Stanek said of the liens. “We spent countless hours
trying to undo it.”Cases involving sovereign citizens are surfacing increasingly here in
Minnesota and in other states, posing a challenge to law enforcement
officers and court officials, who often become aware of the movement — a
loose network of groups and individuals who do not recognize the
authority of federal, state or municipal government — only when they
become targets. Although the filing of liens for outrageous sums or
other seemingly frivolous claims might appear laughable, dealing with
them can be nightmarish, so much so that the F.B.I. has labeled the
strategy “paper terrorism.” A lien can be filed by anyone under the
Uniform Commercial Code.
These liens, and many of the “frivolous” claims made by various private citizens are not necessarily fraudulent in the legal sense. There can be no question that they are no more fake than the millions of liens and foreclosures filed by mortgage banks that never held title to the properties they seized and no more illegal than the private MERS system that those banks tried to substitute for the historical county land records.
That is precisely why dealing with them can be so nightmarish; because they are as legal and legally enforceable as anything that the courts produce. This is nothing but a natural consequence of the government declaring itself and its agents above the rule of law and then being surprised when the people follow its lead.
This is how a civilization falls, one step into barbaric chaos at a time.
Naked authoritarianism
We appear to be rapidly reaching the end of the grand pretense of liberal democracy:
While the much publicized Sunday morning detention of Glenn Greenwald’s partner David Miranda at Heathrow on his way back to Brazil, in a stunning move that as we subsequently learned had been telegraphed apriori to the US, could potentially be explained away as a desperate attempt at personal intimidation by a scared, and truly evil empire in its last death throes, it is what happened a month earlier at the basement of the Guardian newspaper that leaves one truly speechless at how far the “democratic” fascist regimes have fallen and fondly reminiscing of the times when dictatorial, tyrannical regimes did not pretend to be anything but.
For the fully story, we go to Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger who, in a long editorial focusing on the tribulations of Greenwald, his partner, modern journalism and free speech and press in a time of near-ubiquitous tyranny when the status quo is questioned, happened to let his readers know that a month ago, after the newspaper had published several stories based on Snowden’s material, a British official advised him: “You’ve had your fun. Now we want the stuff back.”
It gets better: after further talks with the British government, Rusbirdger says that two “security experts” from Government Communications Headquarters, the British NSA equivalent, visited the Guardian’s London offices and in the building’s basement, government officials watched as computers which contained material provided by Snowden were physically pulverized. One of the officials jokes: “We can call off the black helicopters.”
Reuters adds that according to a source familiar with the event said Guardian employees destroyed the computers as government security experts looked on.
What is shocking is that as Rusbridger explained to the gentlemen from Whitehall, they had no jurisdiction over the forced destruction of Guardian property as it has offices in New York, that Greenwald himself was in Brazil, and that future reporting on the NSA did not even have to take place in London. That did not stop the UK government’s punitive measures, and obviously neither did pleas, before the computers were destroyed, that the Guardian could not do its journalistic duty if it gave in to the government’s requests.
In response, he wrote, a government official told him that the newspaper had already achieved the aim of sparking a debate on government surveillance. “You’ve had your debate. There’s no need to write any more,” the unnamed official was quoted as saying.
What is most shocking is that the UK government was apparently dumb enough to think that by forcing the Guardian to destroy its own hardware it would actually destroy some of the underlying data. It is this unprecedented idiocy that is most disturbing, because when interacting in a game theoretical fashion with an opponent one assumes rationality. In this case, what one got instead, was brute force and sheer, jawdropping stupidity.
If you still do not understand that government and force can NEVER be trusted to uphold human liberty and basic human rights without being held strictly accountable to the people at all times, with no exceptions, you are part of the problem. And protesting “what if bad people might do bad things if we don’t let the bad people in government do whatever they want whenever they want without telling us” is not a credible counterargument, it is tantamount to voluntarily placing a dunce cap on your own head and drooling.
A view on black crime and white decline
In which I ask Huggums for his opinion about the observation that blacks have higher crime rates in a wide sampling of societies:
What is your currently preferred theory for higher black crime rates? You
know mine is a combination of genetic and cultural factors leading to
lower average time preferences, I’m just interested in knowing what
yours happens to be.Pretty much the same, but I don’t think the
genetic influence is quite as strong as many believe it to be. I think
that depending on the cultural environment and the existence of positive
social pressure, just about any human trait can find a positive mode of
expression.The genetic issue can only really be “solved” with
time. Of course, if white liberals are any indication, even if some
environmental catastrophe or social upheaval pushed the next generations
of black people towards civilization, once that civilization reaches
its apex, it will begin working feverishly to destroy itself. Either
that or just start massacring its own citizens because of whatever
thin-as-wet-tissue-paper reason it happens to come up with.
Huggums raises an important point here, which is the flip side of my controversial observation that the African population, taken in the whole, can only be half-civilized because fully civilizing a people appears to require about 1,000 years of exposure to civilization. This, I have argued, is the primary reason blacks have repeatedly shown themselves unable to maintain advanced societies everywhere from Detroit to Zimbabwe, and why the more savage portion of the population has demonstrated that it cannot even constructively participate in an advanced society.
However, whites and other distinct human populations should not be too impressed with the accomplishments of their ancestors simply because they happened to get an earlier start on the process, because if the process of civilization is hard, maintaining it is observably even more difficult. Indeed, one could even argue that it is impossible and eventual failure is only a matter of time.
It would be very hard to argue with Huggums’s observation that there are a considerable quantity of whites who have been working feverishly, and in some cases purposefully, to destroy white Christian European civilization. Indeed, one could observe that their actions are a logical extension of the white European destruction of traditional Chinese civilization, traditional Japanese civilization, traditional Russian half-civilization, and even traditional Aztec/Inca quarter-civilization.
If I am correct and extended average time preferences is a critical factor in developing and maintaining civilization, then it would appear the white population has taken several significant steps towards savagery, in both intellectual and behavioral terms. The Keynesian concept of economic growth through inflation and debt-spending is literal intellectual savagery, as intrinsically magical and nonsensical as the illiterate Australian aborigines ideas about causation. And it is not hard to determine where “if it feels good, do it” falls on the time preferences spectrum.
And this highlights the intrinsic danger of inviting the barbarians inside the gates and encouraging them to integrate with the civilized citizenry. It is easier to bring down than to build up. It is much easier to infect the civilized youth with the idea of living for today and letting tomorrow take care of itself than it is to convince the savage youth to restrain their impulses and save for tomorrow what could be be consumed today.
Daniel Patrick Moynihan once described the pathologies of black America as a warning of the coming pathologies of white America. He was more prophetic than he knew; the dire effects of the behavioral problems to which he attempted to draw America’s attention turned out to be even worse than he had feared. Black hip-hop culture may have been the most noticeable symptom of the cancer of anti-civilizational savagery, but it was the wigger adoption of it that signified the metastasis.
We are now well past the point of peak American civilization. The only question now is how far into savagery we are going to fall before the process can be reversed. If it can be reversed.
Congress exempt from Obamacare
Just in case it wasn’t sufficiently clear that Obamacare is going to wreck American health care, the executive branch has given the congressional branch an exemption from the law:
The White House has approved a deal that will exempt members of Congress and their staff from some of the provisions of the Affordable Care Act, Politico reported late Thursday. Under the law, popularly referred to as Obamacare, lawmakers and their aides were required to source health insurance “created” by the law or offered through one of its exchanges, and without the subsidies they currently enjoy, the members of Congress would have faced thousands of dollars in additional premium payments each year, the report said. However, the Office of Personnel Management now plans to rule that the government can continue to make a contribution to the health-care premiums of the lawmakers and their staff, it said, citing unnamed congressional sources and a White House official.
Their shamelessness simply knows no bounds. None. Cicero was right; democracy does lead inevitably to aristocracy. The fact that we presently have an aristocracy of connections and influence rather than an aristocracy of blood only means that it will be another generation or three before the latter is made institutional.
What “independence”?
This is what happened back in January 2011, just to set the stage:
In the wake of the recent shooting in Tuscon, Travis put up a post on his blog about how he didn’t particularly feel like shedding any tears over the shooting of a politician, entitled “1 down, 534 to go!” Provocative? Inflammatory? Even tacky? Sure. But it was just speech. Political speech. The kind that’s protected under the 1st Amendment, even when it’s about politicians further up the food chain than congresscritters.
Comic readers tend to trend younger and lefter than the norm, and some of his customers found out about his post and decided to organize a boycott. I have no problem with boycotts; lord knows I’ve called for the boycotts of businesses that did things that annoyed me, such as using murderers for pitchmen. Some people were so butthurt, however, that they went to the authorities, and Travis received a knock on the door: It was the Arlington, MA po-po, there to relieve Mr. Corcoran of his guns, his ammunition, his firearms license, and his 2nd Amendment rights, all for having the temerity to use his 1st Amendment rights in the former Cradle of Liberty, now its grave.
And this is what happened yesterday, on July 4th, “Independence Day”, 2013:
Well, TJIC got his Massachusetts FID* reissued, and has reapplied for an MA LTC**. Now the local po-po*** is surrounding his crib, wanting to inspect the premises. Without a warrant. In the suburbs of Boston. On Independence Day….
I repeatedly refused the cops’ requests for a voluntary walk-through of the house.
I repeatedly refused to answer any questions.
The cops repeatedly told me that if I had nothing to hide, I should just allow a walk-through, and if I was a good guy, I’d have a “conversation” with them.
In the end they illegally seized my FID (just plan CAN NOT do it, but they took it and wouldn’t give it back) and they illegally seized Jennifer’s firearms. My lawyer was appalled but not surprised.
Jennifer and I have been talking about moving out of MA in 3-6 years.
We are officially looking for real estate tomorrow; I will not spend one more day than is necessary in this totalitarian hell hole.
I ask again, what “independence” was it that you were celebrating yesterday?
UPDATE: It’s not only the Second Amendment that is under attack. Even the Third Amendment is being openly violated:
Henderson police arrested a family for refusing to let officers use their homes as lookouts for a domestic violence investigation of their neighbors, the family claims in court…. It continues: “At 10:45 a.m. defendant Officer Christopher Worley (HPD) contacted plaintiff Anthony Mitchell via his telephone. Worley told plaintiff that police needed to occupy his home in order to gain a ‘tactical advantage’ against the occupant of the neighboring house. Anthony Mitchell told the officer that he did not want to become involved and that he did not want police to enter his residence. Although Worley continued to insist that plaintiff should leave his residence, plaintiff clearly explained that he did not intend to leave his home or to allow police to occupy his home. Worley then ended the phone call.
Mitchell claims that defendant officers, including Cawthorn and Worley and Sgt. Michael Waller then “conspired among themselves to force Anthony Mitchell out of his residence and to occupy his home for their own use.” (Waller is identified as a defendant in the body of the complaint, but not in the heading of it.)
The complaint continues: “Defendant Officer David Cawthorn outlined the defendants’ plan in his official report: ‘It was determined to move to 367 Evening Side and attempt to contact Mitchell. If Mitchell answered the door he would be asked to leave. If he refused to leave he would be arrested for Obstructing a Police Officer. If Mitchell refused to answer the door, force entry would be made and Mitchell would be arrested.'”
Interesting, is it not, that white suburban Americans appear to be increasingly less inclined to trust or cooperate with the police.
The downside of corporate profits
As PJ O’Rourke points out in Don’t Vote It Just Encourages the Bastards, a high rate of profits not always a harbinger of economic good news:
[Adam] Smith spotted the exact cause of the 2008 financial meltdown not just before it happened but 232 years before, probably a record for advice to sell short. In Book II, chapter 1 of The Wealth of Nations, Smith wrote, “A dwelling-house, as such, contributes nothing to the revenue of its inhabitant… If it is to be let to a tenant for rent, as the house itself can produce nothing, the tenant must always pay the rent out of some other revenue.” Smith therefore concluded that, although a house can make money for its owner if it’s rented, “the revenue of the whole body of the people can never be in the smallest degree increased by it.” Bingo. Subprime mortgage collapse.
Smith was familiar with rampant speculation, or “overtrading,” as he politely called it. The Mississippi Scheme and the South Sea Bubble had both collapsed in 1720, three years before his birth. In 1772, while Smith was writing The Wealth of Nations, a bank run occurred in Scotland. Only three of Edinburgh’s thirty private banks survived. The reaction of the Scottish overtraders to the ensuing credit freeze sounds familiar. “The banks, they seem to have thought,” Smith said, “were in honor bound to supply the deficiency, and to supply them with all the capital which they wanted to trade with.”
According to Smith, the phenomenon of speculative excess has less to do with free markets than with high profits. “When the profits of trade happen to be greater than ordinary,” he said, “overtrading becomes a general error.” And rate of profit, Smith claimed, “is always highest in the countries that are going fastest to ruin.”
Judging by how America invested in 2007 and voted in 2008 that would be us.
In this vein, it may be pertinent to note that both corporate profits and their stock prices reached record highs in 2013. Both are actually higher than the previous peak in 2007.
Considering the recent political and geopolitical events, with the Supreme Court solidifying the moral breakdown of the country, the Senate doing its best to cement the existing demographic fracturing, and foreign nations as diverse as Ecuador, Russia, and Switzerland all openly demonstrating their contempt for the administration’s imperial overreach, it should not come as a tremendous surprise to see that certain economic indicators are flashing signs of an incipient crisis.