Tag: history

Synonym, Not Subset

One of the benefits of the serialization of The Cambridge Medieval History is the way in which basic principles are illustrated clearly without the confusion of emotional ties and identity allegiances. Here we see the way in which the Arian controversy was made significantly and unnecessarily worse over a period of decades due to the reliable unwillingness of conservatives to do what definitely needed to be done.

The Eastern reaction was therefore mainly conservative. The Arians were the tail of the party; they were not outcasts only because conservative hesitation at the Nicene Creed kept open the back door of the Church for them. For thirty years they had to shelter themselves behind the conservatives. It was not till 357 that they ventured to have a policy of their own; and then they broke up the anti-Nicene coalition at once. The strength of Arianism was that while it claimed to be Christian, it brought together and to their logical results all the elements of heathenism in the current Christian thought.

So the reaction rested not only on conservative timidity, but on the heathen influences around. And heathenism was still a living power in the world, strong in numbers, and still stronger in the imposing memories of history. Christianity was still an upstart on Caesar’s throne, and no man could yet be sure that victory would not sway back to the side of the immortal gods. So the Nicene age was pre-eminently an age of waverers; and every waverer leaned to Arianism as a via media between Christianity and heathenism. The Court also leaned to Arianism. The genuine Arians indeed were not more pliant than the Nicenes; but conservatives are always open to the influence of a Court, and the intriguers of the Court (and under Constantius they were legion) found it their interest to unsettle the Nicene decisions — in the name of conservatism forsooth.

Conservatism isn’t an actual philosophy or ideology, in any time or place. It is simply the cowardly preference for the status quo, for a temporary peace, and above all, for the approval of the authorities. Here is one modern example of conservative openness to the influence of a Court: the false and stupid distinction between legal and illegal immigration. We’ve all heard it many times; some of us may have even said it ourselves: “I’m all for LEGAL immigration, the problem is ILLEGAL immigration”.

No, the problem is people from different nations, religions, languages, and cultures invading the land and gradually replacing the natives, their religion, their language, and their culture. Whether that invasion takes place with the blessing of the Court or not is totally irrelevant with regard to the inevitable consequences. But the conservative is always more concerned about the present opinion of the Court than he is about the future consequences of his lack of action.

So, it’s informative to see that conservatives have always been part of the problem, even dating back to the year 327 AD, because it allows us to conclude that they cannot, and will not, ever be a significant part of the solution. Cuckservative is not a subset of conservative, it is a synonym.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Lead Villain of WWII

It wasn’t Stalin. It wasn’t Roosevelt. It wasn’t even Hitler. It was Winston Churchill, whose actions during and after WWI not only helped lay the foundations for WWII, but who unnecessarily caused millions to lose their lives by his determination to force Germany into a war of attrition.

My intention here is not to defend the actions of the Third Reich or any of its leaders, but only to support a narrow claim: that of all the belligerent leaders, Churchill was the one most intent on prolonging and escalating the conflict into a world war of annihilation. Germany and Italy did not want it – in fact, before the conquest of Western Europe, German leaders including Hitler were skeptical that they’d be able to take on Britain in a fight. We can be skeptical of Hitler’s motives for offering peace again and again, and for holding back against British civilians despite months and months provocations, but the fact is that Germany was offering peace, and by all accounts sincerely wanted it. After the annexation of Poland, Hitler told other party members, “The Reich is now complete.” Would Germany have eventually attack the Soviet Union? Perhaps. But they would not have done so in June 1941 if England had agreed to end a war which had no hope of victory short of expanding it into a much larger conflict, by bringing in the USA, USSR, or both.

Like the Turkish massacre of Armenians, the atrocities that took place in the east – for which the German perpetrators are responsible, make no mistake – could not have happened except in the chaos of a world war in which millions were already being killed. Because its so central to our founding ideology, we speak of World War 2 as if it was the best possible outcome, or certainly the least bad outcome, but any objective look shows that it was the worst possible outcome, and that it could have been avoided if not for the warmongers – chief among them Winston Churchill.

I’ve read Churchill’s own history of WWII. And his own justifications for his actions don’t add up even in his own words. The most damning evidence is his waging of a unilateral, one-way air war against German civilians immediately after the German military forces spared the trapped British soldiery at Dunkirk.

There were no good men in command of the Axis or the Allies. But then, as now, Clown World was the greater evil, as the state of our present world suffices to prove.

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The Final Stages of Feminism

Feminism has always been an obvious self-negating political philosophy. I have repeatedly pointed that out in a few of my supposedly controversial statements that should not be controversial at all, because everything that I have said on the subject is observably and confirmably true in every respect.

  • 2012: Feminism is the only ideology that is more intellectually incoherent than communism and more societally suicidal than the Skoptsy.
  • 2014: Feminism is less coherent than communism and more murderous than National Socialism. That is because it is, quite literally, an ideology concocted by madwomen. Feminism is, quite literally, insane. Any woman who calls herself a feminist is identifying herself as a woman with mental health issues.
  • 2023: Feminism never made any sense. It was another seductive, but destructive Jewish ideology that was more incoherent than communism, more bloodthirsty than nazism, and more histrionic than fascism. Its eventual collapse was always inevitable.

Always the Horizon points out how feminism is already entering its end stages:

Feminism in its modern form exists due to two primary driving influences.

  • The boredom of housewives in the 1950s and 1960s
  • A corporate interest in doubling the workforce thereby halving pay for workers

Both are coming to a head as feminism in its modern form has been nothing but detrimental for the general population. Women’s empowerment became a trade of slaving away in for your family to slaving away for your boss in the corporate office. The contract between genders has effectively been scrapped and women are suffering from severe mental illness while many men have given up on relationships entirely.

Feminist ideology has been evil from the very start, but the fruits of its destruction are now plainly visible to every one. In a world where women can’t work, a lot of women will protest for the right to work. In a world where almost all women must work to survive and can’t afford the time for a family of their own, you can bet that there’s going to be a backlash…

Here stand we now, at the conclusion of the first quarter of the 21st century bearing witness to all of the fantastic achievements of modern feminism. Women can vote. Women are expected to slave away for their boss in an office. Women displace men at universities on behalf of equity over equality. Racial relations are worse than they’ve been in nearly 30 years and angry old hags screech about female objectification while young girls dye their hair purple and objectify themselves on OnlyFans for a quick buck. The gender contract is broken and dating is worse than it’s ever been. Women are more mentally ill now then ever before in history, and men are more disengaged in our society since we started measuring. Truly the feminist golden age… The 2020s express a complete victory of that ideology.

We are already starting to the beginning of the popular cultural revolt. There’s an entire trend on short-form-video where young women express their exhaustion with modern work and dating culture. Go to school. Go into debt. Get a white collar job. Become a Girl Boss [TM]. Then get married, have kids if you want to. Slave away for your employer for 30 years barely-paying-the-bills and retire.

In a world where working full time barely pays for a small apartment, much less a family, selling young women on going into the work force is getting a lot harder. The equity push is also not providing a whole lot of benefits as young women learn that being a man is hard and being expected to do that for 40 or 50 years is pretty miserable. Especially for young women that want to start a family, or build an actual home and community for themselves.

More importantly, women aren’t bored any more. The rise of social media is itself going to be the end of feminism whether women choose to admit it or not. Whether feminists choose to admit it or not. One of the main drivers of women entering the work force was, let’s be honest, suburban boredom. It was one thing when women had to work in the home as much as men had to work out of the home to stay alive. It was one thing when women were able to form communities and entertain themselves with petty local drama while the men were away doing survival things… With the rise of social media, both men and women are finding new outlets for their personal needs. 

As one of the building blocks of Clown World, feminism was always one of its Achilles heels. And as with other rhetorical Clown World concepts such as “freedom” and “democracy”, the lies inherent in the concept are now so obvious to everyone that the historical allure has been replaced by disdain, confusion, and a very reasonable fear of missing out on the good things in life on the part of every woman who is capable of paying attention to the world around her.

DISCUSS ON SG

So That Went Well

It didn’t take long for Ukraine to lose its first F-16. And by “not long”, I mean the very first mission. So much for the so-called game-changer.

Well, the quintessential ‘game-changer’ of all game-changers was unceremoniously shot out of the sky on its maiden mission. As I had stated from the get-go, F-16s were being utilized only in “safe” defensive roles in the far rear of the country to help shoot down Russian drones. Apparently even this task was too great for the poor F-16. But the more shocking detail was revealed when Ukrainian Rada rep Mariana Bezuglaya claimed on her official account that the F-16 was kiboshed by none other than a friendly American-made Patriot missile system. Face palm. Pentagon spokesperson Sabrina Singh confirmed the loss but refused to comment on whether it was indeed a Patriot that brought the plane down.

All in all, it’s a testament to the fact that modern near-peer, high-intensity conflict is not about wunderwaffe and ‘game changer’ toys. There is no such thing as a golden bullet or unicorn weapon that can really move the needle in near-peer conflict. It’s all about the totality of what your nation as a whole can bring to the table, economically, militarily, productively, and in terms of willpower, political influence, morale, etc. Any single weapon system is meaningless in the grand scheme of things and can be destroyed easily by the plethora of available modern counter-systems.

Simplicius is right. As is Martyanov. Victor Davis Hanson’s division of the way of war into Eastern and Western variants needs an updating, because there is a more important and fundamental difference between the way a sea power wages war on an expeditionary basis, a land power wages war on an existential and attritional basis, and an air power wages war on an regime change basis. This is why Clown World is obsessed with gestures, gimmicks, and short-term game-changing moves that look pointless and insane from a land power perspective; not even when their threats prove utterly toothless do they understand that their defeat is as inevitable as was Japan’s in 1941.

UPDATE: Ukraine’s General Staff has confirmed that a Western-supplied F-16 fighter jet has been lost along with its pilot.

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Across the Centuries

A commenter at Castalia Library observes the relevance of Athanius to the pagans who call themselves seculars today.

“But though the builder had many of the qualities which go to make a religious reformer — pure in heart and life, full of sincere piety, manly and with a strong sense of duty — the edifice he reared was quite artificial, lacked the living principle of growth, and could not last. Athanasius gave its history in four words when he said ‘It will soon pass.’ The world had outgrown paganism.”

Athanasius speaks across the centuries to the makers of man-crafted religions. Will any one of them listen?

Of course they won’t. They are fools and ignorati, for all that they consider themselves intelligent and educated. They’re not the equals of the noble pagans of the 4th Century, they’re not even the equals of their Enlightenment-misled predecessors who created the Cambridge Medieval History in the early 20th Century.

Whatever faults the Christianity of the time exhibited, whatever ills had come to it from Imperial patronage and conformity with the world, it still retained within it the original simplicity and profundity of its message. Nothing in its environment could take that from it. It proclaimed a living God, Who had made man and all things and for Whom man was made. That God had manifested Himself in Jesus Christ and the centre of the manifestation was the Passion of our Lord — the Cross. Whatever special meanings attach themselves to the intellectual apprehension of this manifestation, it contains two plain thoughts which can be grasped as easily by the simplest as by the most cultured intelligence, and was therefore universal as no previous religion had ever been.

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The Battle of Kursk, Round 1

As the second Battle of Kursk winds down, it seems appropriate to note the anniversary of the end of the first, much larger one.

The Battle of Kursk, which involved the largest tank battle of the Second World War, was fought on the steppe of Kursk oblast between July 5 and August 23, 1943. It was initiated by the Germans who, in retreat after their spectacular defeat in the Battle of Stalingrad, concentrated 50 divisions, two tank brigades, three tank battalions, and eight artillery assault divisions comprising 2,700 Tiger and Panther tanks, some two thousand aircraft, and 900,000 men in all. The Soviet forces, consisting of General K. K. Rokossovskii’s Army of the Center, General N. F. Vatutin’s Voronezh Army, and the reserve army of the Steppe Front under General I. S. Konev, numbered 1.3 million troops, 3,600 tanks, and 2,800 aircraft.

The German offensive, code named “Citadel,” involved two simultaneous thrusts against the Soviet-held northern and southern salients. Both were successfully repulsed, and by July 12, the Soviet forces had gone over to the offensive. On August 4, the city of Orel was liberated and by the 18th the German army took up defensive positions east of Bryansk. It had lost 30 of its 50 divisions and up to 500,000 men killed, wounded or missing in action. From its victory in the Battle of Kursk, the Soviet Red Army went on to liberate most of Ukraine in the autumn of 1943, marching into Kiev on November 6. Although Western historiography traditionally marks the beginning of the German downfall to the D-Day invasion of Normandy, the crushing defeat of Kursk makes a more likely turning point for the war.

For anyone who knows anything all about military history, or just WWII, the idea that a single, solitary Ukrainian division was going to accomplish anything of note on Russian territory was always absurd on its face. And remember, the Russian population today is 34 percent larger than it was in 1943.

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History Notes

A few notes for History subscribers as we’re rolling a more books into the final stages of the production process.

  1. The new Spanish cowhide leather will make its Castalia debut with the CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF BYZANTIUM volumes 1 & 2. There will be no additional charge. We’re not sold out quite yet, but there won’t be very many extras, so keep that in mind if you’re contemplating a History subscription.
  2. We have improved the quality of our paper. Previously we were using the same paper that Folio Society does, but starting with DRACULA for Library and BYZANTIUM for History, we’re moving up to the highest quality offered by the same manufacturer. Neither Easton nor Folio will be competitive with the quality of the materials Castalia is offering by this winter.
  3. The first high-quality bonded leather has arrived at the bindery. We’re still sorting out how our lower-cost line of Signature Society books will be presented, but if you’ve got a book you’d like to see offered in that line, let us know at SG.
  4. Many Annual History subscribers need to renew their subscriptions. Since we changed payment processors, we cannot automatically renew your subscription. If you’re not sure if your subscription has lapsed or not, please email library AT castaliahouse DOT com. Since the History subscription has grown to the point that it is approaching Library print runs, we seldom have any extra books.
  5. NAPOLEONIC WARS is scheduled to be bound on October 1st.
  6. BYZANTIUM Vols 1 & 2 are expected to be bound in November. As is Dracula.
  7. We MAY offer a few goatskin BYZANTIUMs if we have any extras from the sets we are binding for Cambridge.
  8. SWISS FAMILY ROBINSON may – MAY – be out in time for Christmas.
The front endpapers for NAPOLEONIC WARS

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Immigration and the USA

A few of the smarter observers appear to finally be recognizing that not only is diversity not a strength, but that the immigration which was wrongly believed to have been responsible for the century of American greatness is actually assuring the inevitable fracturing of the US polity and the ongoing demise of the American empire.

From my days in high school, perhaps in history class, I saw an invisible common thread that ran through history. Every empire, nation, and city-state had risen with such hope, believing they would last forever, only to fall to dust and be swept aside into a common grave. In recent years, I have grown steadily more concerned about the prospect of a complete democratic breakdown in America. I have studied how such grand empires, always founded for eternity, crumble, split, and then turn into revolutions spawned by civil unrest. I have immersed myself in the centuries of literature describing the polarization of societies and the rise of political violence. It appears that the common source has always begun with this idea of a federal government that then seeks to impose its will upon the people in a one-size-fits-all approach…

Except they still don’t get it. They still subscribe to the ridiculous Melting Pot myth, and erroneously insist that the problem is a) Democrats and b) illegal immigration.

We face the very same crisis in this mass migration of illegal aliens, and the purpose is the very same as I encountered in 1997 in Australia – yet the opposite. Biden opened the border with an Executive Order on the first day he entered office. The Democrats know that their Marxist Agenda, like Communist China and Russia, is losing. The simple stats reveal their peril. This chart takes the total number of seats in the Senate and House and plots the combination held by each party. The Democrats were the slave party and lost during the Civil War. They flipped their fate by adopting Marxism, which was successful during the Great Depression. They have never been able to exceed the highs achieved by FDR at that time and have been making lower highs and lower lows, which, in market terms, is a bear market.

Biden isn’t the problem. Illegal aliens aren’t the problem. The cancer that will kill the USA dates back to 1965 and the Naturalization Act that ensured the demographic demolition of the USA. (Don’t be pedantic, one could also make credible cases for 1913 and 1865.) Unless a nationalist leader the quality of Xi or Putin comes to power and immediately begins a repatriation program of a scale that rivals the Chinese Great Leap Forward, the USA will likely collapse within ten years.

And there is no such leader on the horizon. We know it isn’t Trump. We know it isn’t Vance. And so it will be collapse, which is why major powers like China and Russia, and lesser powers like Iran and Indonesia, no longer consider the USA to be a major limitation on their freedom of action. The US military still has to be respected, but it is no longer feared, as it is only a matter of time before its capabilities are degraded to the point that it can no longer even threaten foreign interventions.

The collapse of the USA isn’t the end of America. In fact, it may very well be good for Americans, since the US government observably isn’t. The patterns of History always play out in the end.

DISCUSS ON SG

The Narrative Shifts

It’s fascinating to see that while historians have completely disproven the old Black Legend about the Spanish Inquisition and corrected the number of people prosecuted and executed by several orders of magnitude, Clown World is still trying to present what was a very minor and non-noteworthy exercise in successfully maintaining the social order into one of the worst historical iniquities in human history.

Beyond its endless sunshine and sandy beaches, Spain has a dark history that has stained the nation to this day. For hundreds of years, people were burned at the stake, stretched to death, or otherwise tortured for the sole reason that they were not Catholic.

The Spanish Inquisition is considered to be one of the most shameful and grotesque periods in Roman Catholic history. According to some modern estimates, around 150,000 people were prosecuted for various offences during the three-century duration of the reign of terror, of whom between 3,000 and 5,000 were executed after enduring some of the most spine chilling acts of torture imaginable.

Extensive archival material contains accounts of torture victims’ cries and descriptions of funeral pyres, atrocities which continue to horrify historians to this day. The horrors of the Inquisition are among some of the most sadistic acts of terror in history, which extended into every area of Spanish society and almost every corner of its global empire.

This is total historical nonsense. Even if we assume the very worst of it, the Spanish Inquisition was less lethal than children’s bicycles are today. The Inquisition prosecuted 421 people per year for the crime of pretending to be something they were not in order to feign loyalty to the Spanish crown; just last year, the British crown prosecuted 419,000 people in England and Wales alone, many of them for simply expressing their opinion about the migrant invasion of their country.

Modern Britain is more than three orders of magnitude worse than the Spanish Inquisition, and that was prior to the establishment of the Keir Starmer regime. This is an indisputable historical fact.

And as for those 3,000 to 5,000 executions over a period of 356 years, during the 38-year reign of the King of England, Henry VIII, as many as 72,000 people are estimated to have been executed.

DISCUSS ON SG

Susie’s World

CALVIN AND HOBBES has turned out to be a warning about the bureaucratic madness of Clown World.

While the comic seems like a light and cheery look into childhood, there are very dark undertones. Like the main character in “Adventure Time” doesn’t realize he lives in a nuclear wasteland, “Calvin and Hobbes” is set in a world that has no place for a rambunctious boy. There’s an inherent loneliness permeating the comic from the title on, that Calvin only has an imaginary friend who understands what makes him tick. Calvin never comes across a figure that can channel his energies toward finding his way in the world…

Susie Derkins, on the other hand, has the world catered to her sensibilities. She loves school because she loves the accolades she receives from authority figures. Her aspirations, whether they are having kids or being a girl-boss, are catered to and considered mature. Whenever she gets harassed by Calvin, authority figures immediately swoop in to defend her. It’s not her fault the world she was born into gave her more advantages and comfort, and there’s nothing wrong with her taking advantage of it. She’s just in a protective bubble, and has no understanding of what is required to keep her small world turning.

In a way, the comic showed the stark realities of being a young boy trying to find his way. He is surrounded by types like Susie Derkins, who can’t help but be Susie Derkins. The real failure happens in the men who should have been there for him, channeling his energies toward finding a place in the world, and pushing back against the busybodies and scolds who want him to act more like a pliable, conformist little girl.

It’s a good piece, well worth reading for any fan of the comic.

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