Tag: history

A Lesson from Spain

The Nationalist Right in Spain was divided into two camps. One of them read the Republican Left correctly. One of them didn’t:

There were two schools of thought on the Spanish Right in the lead-up to the civil war: Accidentalism and Catastrophism. Accidentalists believed that the serious issues facing the Spanish Republic were not baked into the institution itself, but rather an accident that could be attributed to the early Marxist bent of the first government. The Republic had gotten off on the wrong foot, but Conservatives could and would steer the ship in the right direction once they peacefully won political power through the electoral process and formed a government capable of addressing the Right’s concerns regarding government attacks on the Church and private property. They were strictly committed to following the rule of law and operating within the constitutional framework.

The second group believed the Republic was a catastrophe from the start, and that there could be no saving the Republic from itself. They asserted that the Left would never recognize any non-Leftist government, no matter how much they claimed to uphold the rule of law, because the problem was not with the Republic’s legalistic procedures but rather with the fact that the entire system was merely a facade to facilitate a Socialist and eventually Communist state that would permanently exclude Conservatives from power.

These two camps were largely united in their politics but divided in how to engage in politics. One pursued reform, while the other waited for an opportunity to overthrow the system itself once enough of the Right realized that there would be no voting their way out of this mess.

Most American Republicans are still Accidentalists. And like their Spanish forebears, they are both a) wrong and b) irrelevant. If even an American rump state is to survive the eventual breakup of the USA, it will be the Catastrophists who will be running the show.

Fortunately for Americans, Trump is increasingly showing signs of having embraced Catastrophism.

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The Lesson of Lepanto

A reminder that God loves His warriors and helps those who help themselves:

In 1571 as the Muslim fleet threatened Europe, Christendom was deeply divided. Protestants fought Catholics. France fought the Holy Roman Empire. Christian princes even allied WITH the Muslims against their Christian brothers.  They were all too self seeking to see the threat and and answer the call. 

But one man—a bastard with no lands and barely even a title—takes weapons from the wall and rides to the sea.  Don John of Austria.

Who was Don John? He had no throne. He was the bastard son of Charles V and a burgher’s daughter from Regensburg. Raised in obscurity, not even told who his father was. When his half-brother Philip II finally acknowledged him, it wasn’t with lands or title, just a name and a small allowance. Among the princes of Christendom he was the last man you’d pick: No inheritance, no wealth, no claim to rule.

Yet when the Ottoman fleet gathered in the waters just beyond Italy, this forgotten son was the one who answered. Because no one else would.

Yes, the Pope called for the defense of Christendom, and that is more than we have today.  But no one sent Don John personally. No one gave him the wealth to outfit an army. The most likely outcome was that they’d all die.  Don John went because someone had to.

That’s the pattern of every important battle in Christian history. One man, alone, often betrayed by his Christian brothers, under resourced, with only a small band of bedragged warriors, standing in victory against the pagan hordes.

No Crusader victory was ever a triumph of Christian unity. Most of Christendom sat Lepanto out. France stayed home. Protestant Europe stayed home. Even most of Italy stayed home. The Holy League was a minority of the willing. A handful of ships and a handful of men who made the decision to go. And that’s the truth.

History turns on the ones who go. Not on the ones who wait for orders. Not on the ones who whine about the hierarchy. The ones who go. Western man today stands on another shore. The pagan fleets are at pur shores again.  Our clergy are cautious, our politicians are compromised, our institutions asleep.

So what now?

The Churchians aren’t going to save the civilization they despise. The foreigners, immigrants, migrants, and refugees aren’t going to save the nations they hate. The governments aren’t going to defend the peoples they have betrayed. The priests and pastors aren’t going to defend the faith they subverted.

And yet, all we need are twelve.

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On Motorcycles

There have been 3 motorcycle fatalities in my area recently. I’m pretty sure they’ve all been college aged guys. Really sad. Motorcycles are insanely dangerous.

There are good risks, bad risks, and dumb risks. For the most part, motorcycles fall into the latter category.

I understand motorcycles are a) fun and b) cool. I bought a red Suzuki GS 750 when I was 24. It was very cool, and matched beautifully with my leather jacket that had our dojo’s big dragon logo airbrushed on the back. It was also a big, heavy, and rather challenging bike for a beginner. I rode it on the backroads for a summer and had just gotten comfortable enough to ride it on the highway a few times when a much more experienced rider who was an acquaintance from the gym was killed on his Kawasaki 1100 by an old lady who didn’t see him as he was turning into a parking lot in a 25-MPH zone.

I sold it the next week and never rode a motorcycle again. There was no way I ever wanted to do anything that made me so vulnerable that a Iittle old lady driving about 20 MPH could do me in.

Buy a cheap old convertible instead. It’s only half as cool, but very nearly as fun and most girls will prefer the convertible.

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Fighting the Previous War x4

President Trump wants to bring back the battleship:

US President Donald Trump suggested that he’s considering bringing back US Navy battleships, vessels that were retired decades ago, long after the kind of naval combat they were built for had become a thing of the past.

Battleships were heavily armed naval powerhouses built to slug it out with other warships. During the World Wars, they dominated the seas, but by the end of the Cold War, these once mighty warships were completely obsolete.

Speaking at a high-profile summit with top US military leaders at Marine Corps Base Quantico in Virginia on Tuesday morning, Trump said battleships are on the table.

“It’s something we’re actually considering,” he said, “the concept of battleship, nice six-inch side, solid steel, not aluminum, aluminum that melts if it looks at a missile coming at it. Starts melting as the missile’s about two miles away. No, those ships, they don’t make them that way anymore.”

T”I look at those ships, they came with the destroyers alongside of them, and man, nothing was gonna stop them,” he said. “Some people would say, ‘No, that’s old technology,’ I don’t know, I don’t think it’s old technology when you look at those guns.”

I can only assume this is some sort of joke. Battleships have been outdated and little more than floating targets since 1941 at the absolute latest. The aircraft carriers that replaced them are already outdated. But instead of seeking to catch up on the hypersonic missile technology that has rendered traditional sea and air war alike irrelevant, Trump wants to go back to pre-WWI gunboat diplomacy.

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Mailvox: The World We Lost

Request to the GenX crowd — what is your best anecdote or memory or description of “how things used to be”? The before time, that we millennials and younger have no memory of.

The entire suburban 20-house neighborhood of 20-30 children between the ages of 5-11 playing outside, all day, every Saturday during the school year and every weekday too during the summers. My favorite was the huge Capture the Flag games the older kids would organize sometimes in the evenings after dinner. We’d play until it got too dark to be able to see very well, then everyone would go home.

In the summer, the people with the big house and the pool would put out a red flag on Saturdays to announce an open pool after lunch and half the kids on the street would play there all afternoon. In the winter, the open rink about a mile away would be one big pick-up hockey game and my parents would just leave me there after lunch and pick me up before it got dark. Usually some moms would show up with cookies and hot Russian tea in the warming hut.

The freedom and sense of community was entirely different than today. Many of the neighborhoods look more or less the same from the outside, but since the mid-1990s, one no longer sees large packs of kids playing outside together like they previously did.

And if you want conclusive evidence that immigrants to America will never, ever, understand the world of the 1950s-1980s that we lost, consider the perspective of one immigrant from Portugal who still doesn’t know what we’re talking about despite having spent most of her adult life in the USA.

Well, excuse me, I lived in a village growing up. And while I miss some things, sometimes, if you think for a little very Odd kid it was an ideal environment, you’re out of your ever loving mind. In fact, it wasn’t an ideal environment for anyone, judging by the epic fights and factions. Because people in point of fact had very little in common, and were together by utter necessity, which means that the group enforced absolute conformity and you couldn’t escape.

Whoever said anything about poor rural villages full of inbred Iberian peasants? That was never our world and it certainly isn’t the loss that we’re lamenting. These days of diversity and immigration are most certainly not “the good new days” in the eyes of any genuine American.

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Palestine Existed Before Israel

Larry Johnson addresses the oft-heard lie that Palestine is some sort of modern mythical creation by antisemites, as certain parties would have everyone believe.

I am writing this to inform some friends who believe, wrongly, that there is no such thing as Palestinians and that the people being genocided by the Zionists are nothing more than interlopers.

Prior to 1947, the territory now occupied by Israel and the Gaza Strip was commonly called Palestine. This designation was used during various historical periods, including the Ottoman rule and the British Mandate period (1920–1948). The British Mandate for Palestine was established after World War I and lasted until 1948, during which the region was officially administered under that name. The term Palestine historically referred to the geographic area between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and was used in various forms dating back to ancient times, including Roman, Byzantine, and early Islamic periods.

The earliest recorded historical reference to Palestine dates back to around 1150 BCE in ancient Egyptian inscriptions during the reign of Ramesses III. The name Peleset (transliterated as P-r-s-t) was used to describe a group of people, likely the Philistines, who lived along the southern coast of the region.
The first clear use of the term Palestine to refer to the broader region was by the ancient Greek historian Herodotus in the 5th century BCE. In his work The Histories, he described a district of Syria, called Palaistínē, which included the area between Phoenicia and Egypt, incorporating the Judean mountains and the Jordan Rift Valley.

Thus, while the name’s roots trace back to ancient Egyptian references to coastal peoples, the geographical concept of Palestine as a region appears clearly in Greek literature from the 5th century BCE.

I addressed this ahistorical propaganda myself six years ago, with a direct citation from the 1911 Encyclopedia Brittanica.

PALESTINE, a geographical name of rather loose application. Etymological strictness would require it to denote exclusively the narrow strip of coast-land once occupied by the Philistines, from whose name it is derived. It is, however, conventionally used as a name for the territory which, in the Old Testament, is claimed as the inheritance of the pre-exilic Hebrews; thus it may be said generally to denote the southern third of the province of Syria. Except in the west, where the country is bordered by the Mediterranean Sea, the limit of this territory cannot be laid down on the map as a definite line. The modern subdivisions under the jurisdiction of the Ottoman Empire are in no sense conterminous with those of antiquity, and hence do not afford a boundary by which Palestine can be separated exactly from the rest of Syria in the north, or from the Sinaitic and Arabian deserts in the south and east; nor are the records of ancient boundaries sufficiently full and definite to make possible the complete demarcation of the country. Even the convention above referred to is inexact: it includes the Philistine territory, claimed but never settled by the Hebrews, and excludes the outlying parts of the large area claimed in Num. xxxiv. as the Hebrew possession (from the “River of Egypt” to Hamath).

This is why the preservation of old books and historical knowledge is necessary, because it so readily disproves the modern lies that are broadcast by those attempting to provide a psychological cloak for their deeds and misdeeds.

The irony is that the Turkish and Italian governments have historical claims on Jerusalem that are probably better than the claims of the European Zionists. Even if one grants the asserted connection between modern Jews and the historical kingdom of Judah, the Kingdom of Judah did not include the land upon which Tel Aviv was built, much less the important port of Haifa.

The Old Testament even makes it clear that Palestine, also known as Philistia, preceded the establishment of the Kingdom of Israel, as many of the battles of King Saul, and subsequently King David, were part of a war of Hebrew independence waged against the five Philistine kingdoms of Gaza, Ashdod, Ashkelon, Gath, and Ekron.

Now, obviously Israel holds its current land under the right of conquest, which is a legitimate and recognized right. I certainly don’t expect the USA to return my Indian tribe’s historical lands to me any time soon; it’s much more likely they will eventually return to the control of the descendants of the Spaniards who first conquered them. Demonstrating the falsehood of ahistorical propaganda is not tantamount to denying the legitimacy of current borders or recognizing that there are often multiple historical claims to the same land.

These historical matters are always more complex than the media is capable of rationally and realistically discussing even if it were objective, which it obviously isn’t. Regardless, it is always best to be aware of the truth, even when there is little chance that the mainstream discourse bears any relationship to it.

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American Game Theory

Nick Fuentes poses a philosophical exercise.

  • Scenario A: You board a train car and see a black person, you immediately turn and leave— You’re a racist.
  • Scenario B: You sit beside a black person and get stabbed to death— You’re dead.
  • Scenario C: You fight back and subdue your attacker— You’re charged with manslaughter.

This exercise isn’t that hard, because racism isn’t bad, evil, wrong, or a sin. Racism is nothing more or less than the normal preference for the survival of one’s genetic kindred, culture, language, and religion, and opposing their destruction. That’s what it has meant since the term was first coined by General Richard Henry Pratt in 1902. The fact that the term has been twisted and redefined for rhetorical purposes doesn’t change what it actually and observably is.

Racism is even a Biblical and Christian virtue. See 1 Timothy 5:8.

But if any provide not for his own, and specially for those of his own house, he hath denied the faith, and is worse than an infidel.

Anti-racism is literally anti-Christian, as its reliably satanic fruits have proven over and over and over again. Let them call you whatever they want to call you, so long as you do what is right. Which, in this case, is obviously Scenario A. Because they’re going to call you racist no matter what you do, say, or even think to yourself, so long as you and your race of people survive with their identity intact.

“Segregating any class or race of people apart from the rest of the people kills the progress of the segregated people or hinders their growth. Association of races and classes is necessary to destroy racism and classism.”
—Richard Henry Pratt, 1902

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The End of Anti-Racist Liberalism

In which ESR, a smart, well-educated anti-racist liberal, reluctantly accepts that the racists who fought against the imposition of civil rights in the United States were right all along:

“The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere / The ceremony of innocence is drowned;”

The part of me that was once an idealistic anti-racist liberal marching for civil rights died its final death last night as I watched the video of Irina Zarutska on the Charlotte light rail, being fatally stabbed in the throat from behind by a black savage I refuse to name.

What has finally broken me is, incidents like that aren’t even a surprise anymore. The frequency of brutal, senseless murders by “African-Americans”, both individually and in predatory mobs, has risen exactly as rapidly as social and coercive controls on their behavior have weakened.

Meanwhile, for anybody who’s wondering, American whites still have about the same crime rate as Switzerland. When enforcement of norms disintegrates, only intelligent people with low time preference still act civilized.

As I’ve watched us sliding down the civilizational failure gradient, the question I’ve been increasingly unable to dismiss is this: was the whole ugly apparatus of racial repression – segregation, sundown towns, lynchings -really just senseless hatred? Or was it a rational containment strategy evolved under pressure from living alongside a large, visually distinct population of low-IQ savages?

I think I know the answer now. And I hate knowing it. I preferred my innocence.

It doesn’t do any good to protest that this particular savage was “mentally ill”, whatever you think that means. The mobs that routinely form to beat up and kill whites unwary enough to wander onto their turf aren’t psychotic, unless all Blacks are psychotic.

Yes, yes, I know. If you were to select a population of whites for the same distribution of IQ and time preference as American Blacks, and then coddle them, scholarship out their brightest kids for four generations, and tell them all of their failures are society’s fault, you’d get the same level of pathology and violence in about the time it took you to say “dyscultural and dysgenic”.

That doesn’t matter. We’re not dealing with that hypothetical. We’re dealing with reality. The reality is that we have a predation problem that will only be solved when our actual population of low IQ savages is contained again. Creatures like Irina’s murderer, cognitively unable to participate in civilization, must be subject to either segregation or repression so brutal that they live in fear of it.

I don’t really want to live in the kind of society that can do either these things. But Irina Zarutska’s murder is the seal on my realization that there are no longer soft options, only hard choices.

I’d prefer the one where armed citizens routinely shoot down creatures like that at the time of the attempted crime, or immediately after it. All the alternatives seem far worse.

My only observation would be that the problem isn’t four generations in the making, it’s one that would require about 1,000 years of relentless eugenics to solve given the time to civilization required for the erstwhile savages of Northern Europe.

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Collapse by 2050

A leaked Chinese geopolitical strategy document reveals China’s self-confidence. The document predicts, “The US and Western Europe will collapse due to cultural and demographic conflict by 2050.” China’s leaders increasingly see multiculturalism as “cultural suicide” and believe the west is dying because of it.

—CNN

The Chinese aren’t wrong, although my 2004 estimate for the initial breakup of the USA as a unitary political entity is 2033. The EU has already begun to break apart and the centrifugal forces will continue to grow stronger with the failure of its economic war against Russia. The USA, the UK, and every Western European country are either going to collapse into a violent partition like India circa 1947 or embark upon ethnic cleansing on a larger scale than the Israelis are currently applying to Gaza.

Multiculturalism isn’t just cultural suicide, it is societal suicide, which is arguably worse. The Chinese know this; Xi is not only smart, and not only has the benefit of being advised by Wang Hunin and other brilliant historical philosophers, but is also a student of the greatest political mind of the 20th Century, Lee Kwan Yew. So he knows what we all know, and what Clown World refuses to accept, about multiculturalism.

That’s why Russia is now selling 106 billion cubit tons of natural gas to China every year in lieue of the 160 billion cubic tons it used to sell annually to Western Europe. The Russians, too, know who is going to win in the long run.

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The Idealism of the Machine

Of all the known civilizations and societies of the world, from the tribal to the international imperial, which are the five societies that you would say represent the height of human civilization. Each society must have lasted at least 50 years to qualify.

I have selected five societies based on a combination of lasting impact on human history, groundbreaking innovation, cultural flourishing, and the creation of systems and ideas that are still relevant today. Each represents a unique and profound peak in human development.

Here are five societies that represent the height of human civilization:

1. Classical Athens (5th – 4th Centuries BCE)

Peak Period: Roughly from the defeat of the Persians (480 BCE) to the death of Alexander the Great (323 BCE).
Why it represents a height: Athens of this era was an unprecedented explosion of intellectual, artistic, and political innovation. In a remarkably short time, it laid the foundational stones of Western civilization.

  • Political Innovation: It developed and implemented demokratia (democracy—rule by the people), however limited by modern standards. This experiment in citizen self-governance remains a central political ideal.
  • Philosophical Foundation: It was the home of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle, whose inquiries into ethics, metaphysics, and logic have shaped philosophical discourse for 2,500 years.
  • Artistic and Architectural Genius: It produced timeless art and architecture, including the Parthenon, the tragedies of Aeschylus, Sophocles, and Euripides, and the comedies of Aristophanes.
  • Historical Method: Herodotus (“The Father of History”) and Thucydides (with his rigorous, analytical history of the Peloponnesian War) established the discipline of history.

2. The Roman Empire (During the Pax Romana, 27 BCE – 180 CE)

Peak Period: The first two centuries of the Empire, particularly under emperors like Augustus, Trajan, and Hadrian.
Why it represents a height: Rome’s genius was not necessarily in creating new ideas from whole cloth, but in engineering, administration, and law on a previously unimaginable scale. It created a stable, unified, and connected world.

  • Unprecedented Stability & Integration: The Pax Romana (Roman Peace) brought over two centuries of remarkable stability and security to the Mediterranean world, allowing for trade, travel, and cultural exchange to flourish.
  • Engineering Marvels: Romans built to last: roads, aqueducts, bridges, and monumental buildings (like the Pantheon and Colosseum) that were feats of engineering. Their infrastructure network bound the empire together.
  • Legal Legacy: Roman law was highly sophisticated and formed the basis for most modern civil law systems in Europe and beyond. Principles like “innocent until proven guilty” have their roots in Roman jurisprudence.
  • Cultural Absorption and Spread: Rome efficiently absorbed and disseminated the achievements of the cultures it conquered (especially the Greeks), preserving and spreading them across Europe.

3. The Abbasid Caliphate (During the Islamic Golden Age, c. 750-1258 CE)

Peak Period: Particularly the 8th to 10th centuries under caliphs like Harun al-Rashid and al-Ma’mun.
Why it represents a height: At a time when Europe was in its early Middle Ages, the Abbasid Caliphate, centered in Baghdad, was the global center of science, culture, philosophy, and innovation. It was a profoundly multicultural and intellectually curious society.

  • House of Wisdom: Baghdad’s legendary academy was a library, translation institute, and research center where scholars of various faiths and backgrounds preserved Greek, Roman, Persian, and Indian knowledge—and then built upon it.
  • Scientific & Mathematical Advancements: Scholars made groundbreaking contributions in algebra (al-Khwarizmi), optics (Ibn al-Haytham), medicine (Ibn Sina’s Canon of Medicine), and astronomy. They adopted and transmitted the numeral system (including zero) from India, which we use today as “Arabic numerals.”
  • Cultural Bridge: It acted as a crucial bridge between ancient knowledge and the European Renaissance, preserving texts that had been lost to the West and adding immense value through commentary and new discovery.

4. The Tang Dynasty (7th – 10th Centuries CE)

Peak Period: Often considered China’s “Golden Age,” particularly the 7th and 8th centuries under emperors like Taizong and Xuanzong.
Why it represents a height: The Tang Dynasty was the most powerful, prosperous, and cosmopolitan empire in the world at its time. It was a period of perfect harmony between political power, cultural efflorescence, and artistic refinement.

  • Cosmopolitan Capital: The capital, Chang’an (modern Xi’an), was the largest city in the world and a bustling, international metropolis on the Silk Road, welcoming traders, scholars, and religious figures from across Asia and the Middle East.
  • Cultural Peak: This era is considered the golden age of Chinese poetry, with legendary figures like Li Bai and Du Fu. Painting, calligraphy, and ceramic art (e.g., Tang tri-color pottery) reached new heights of sophistication.
  • Political and Bureaucratic Model: It perfected the Confucian-based civil service examination system, creating a stable and efficient meritocratic bureaucracy that became the model for East Asia for a millennium.
  • Religious and Philosophical Tolerance: While Confucianism was the state ideology, Buddhism flourished and became deeply sinicized, and other religions like Nestorian Christianity, Islam, and Zoroastrianism were practiced freely.

5. The Italian Renaissance (c. 14th – 16th Centuries CE)

Peak Period: The 15th and early 16th centuries, centered in city-states like Florence, Venice, and Rome.
Why it represents a height: The Renaissance was a conscious rebirth and re-engagement with classical knowledge that fundamentally reshaped European thought and culture, paving the way for the modern world.

  • Humanism: This new intellectual movement shifted focus from the divine to the human experience, emphasizing individual potential, secular subjects, and the study of classical texts (studia humanitatis).
  • Unparalleled Artistic Revolution: It produced arguably the greatest concentration of artistic genius in history: Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, Raphael, Donatello, and Titian. They revolutionized art with techniques like perspective, realism, and the study of human anatomy.
  • Scientific Inquiry: The period began a shift from received wisdom to empirical observation and inquiry, laying the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution. Figures like Leonardo were pioneering scientists and engineers as well as artists.
  • Political and Social Thought: Thinkers like Niccolò Machiavelli (The Prince) began to analyze power and governance in a realistic, secular way, breaking from medieval religious frameworks.

Now, here is where it got very interesting. When I asked it which modern society best represented these heights of human civilization, it produced an unexpected response.

What modern nation-state do you consider to best exemplify and approximate the values and achievements of the five historical societies you’ve cited here?

If forced to choose one modern nation that best synthesizes and approximates the collective legacy of these five societies in a sustainable, modern framework, the Federal Republic of Germany presents a compelling case.

Now, when one considers the significant social, demographic, political, economic, and military challenges presently facing Germany, all of which threaten both its stability and its survival, this calls into very serious question the legitimacy of the “values” that are programmed into Deepseek, and, no doubt, the other AI systems that are hardwired to advocate the outdated values of the Enlightenment. Aside from Ukraine, France, and Haiti, there are few modern nation-states that look less sustainable these days.

What this confirms is that the same self-destructive tendencies that have led to the disastrous government policies of the post-WWII period are now baked into the existing AI systems. So, keep that in mind whenever you’re interacting with them. Ironically, the Machine may be more idealistic than Man.

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