Tag: history

Magic Dirt Fail: Byzantine edition

More historical lessons courtesy of the great historian Charles Oman:

The chief modifications which must be marked in the character of the empire between 320 and 620 depend on two processes of gradual change which were going on throughout the three centuries. The first was the gradual de-Romanization (if we may coin the uncouth word) alike of the governing classes and the masses of population.

In the fourth century the Roman impress was still strong in the East; the Latin language was habitually spoken by every educated man, and nearly all the machinery of the administration was worked in Latin phraseology. All law terms are habitually Latin, all titles of officers, all names of taxes and institutions. Writers born and bred in Greece or Asia still wrote in Latin as often as in the Greek which must have been more familiar to them. Ammianus Marcellinus may serve as a fair example: born in Greece, he wrote in the tongue of the ruling race rather than in his own idiom.

Moreover there was still in the lands east of the Adriatic a very large body of Latin-speaking population—comprising all the inhabitants of the inland of the Balkan peninsula, for, except Greece proper, Macedonia, and a scattered line of cities along the Thracian coast, the whole land had learnt to speak the tongue of its conquerors. By the seventh century this Roman element was rapidly vanishing.

Three hundred years for the cultural de-Romanization of the Eastern Roman Empire. We’ve seen significant cultural de-Americanization in 72 fewer years as America 1.0 gave way to America 2.0, and now 3.0, and the linguistic devolution is already well underway.

I also note the similarity between the failure of the Byzantine men to embrace the masculine duties of their citizenship during this period of decline and the failure of Western women to embrace the feminine duties of theirs.

Some of the developments of the new idea were harmful and even dangerous to the State. They took the form of laying such exclusive stress on the relations between the individual soul and heaven, that the duties of man to the State were half forgotten. Chief among these developments was the ascetic monasticism which, starting from Egypt, spread rapidly all over the empire, more especially over its eastern provinces.

When men retire from their duties as citizens, intent on nothing but on saving their own souls, take up a position outside the State, and cease to be of the slightest use to society, the result may be harmless so long as their numbers are small. But at this time the monastic impulse was working on such a large scale that its development was positively dangerous. It was by thousands and ten thousands that the men who ought to have been bearing the burdens of the State, stepped aside into the monastery or the hermit’s cave.

The ascetics of the fifth century had neither of the justifications which made monasticism precious in a later age, they were neither missionaries nor men of learning. The monastery did not devote itself either to sending out preachers and teachers, or to storing up and cherishing the literary treasures of the ancient world.

One could even observe that the office is the modern version of the nunnery, where unmarriageable women who will never have children go to spend their barren lives and busy themselves with make-work until they die.

Why conservatives always lose

John Wright pens a long and thoughtful piece on why conservatives always lose. He contemplates the perspective of a hypothetical Rip van Conservative, a conservative who fell asleep in 1945 and awoke 72 years later, in 2017, only to discover that all many of the victories he thought won had been lost in the meantime:

One main reason why a Last Crusade must be called is that Conservatism, while perfectly sound when facing Commies in a Cold War, Nazis in a World War, or Slavers in a Civil War, has no defense to offer when the fascistic cultural Marxism seeps peacefully into the ivory tower, the theater, the press, the halls of power…. Now, as a conservative, you point out that all these things are simply illogical, paradoxes even a schoolboy could see cannot possibly be true. A thing cannot be itself and be the opposite of itself at the same time. A sentence that contradicts the same idea it affirms is a self-refuting sentence. Reality cannot be unreal.

You are answered that modern progress has proven that truth is untrue, for all things are matters of mere opinion that each man decides for himself. To say truth is truth offends the liberty of each man to invent his own truth.

You are answered that modern progress has proven that logic is merely a social adaptation mechanism formed by evolution, and has no authority to compel men to obey it. To say that logic is logical offends the liberty of each man to enjoy whichever of the personal and invented truths he sees fit.

You are answered that modern progress has proven that morality consists of the single rule that all must toleration any abridgement of morality anyone sees fit, aside, of course, from hate speech and badthink. Avoiding badthink is an absolute moral prohibition applied to all rightwing angloamerican white male heterosexual Christians. To say that morals cannot be defined as immorality is badthink. It offends the liberty of men to be evil, condone evil, promote evil, and worship evil.

You are answered with a fullthroated defense of unreality so complete that even Buddha would be shamed. The Progressive thinks that all life is an illusion, but that the illusion can be peaceful and pleasing, or the opposite, depending on the discipline and disposition of the subjective observer. You make your own reality.

This reality is called “a Narrative.” It is not based on fact, nor meant to be. It is based on emotion, whim, psychological defense mechanism.

Unlike the Buddhist, the Progressive seeks not to escape the illusion. There is nothing outside the illusion, no reality, no nirvana, to which to escape. There is no red pill to take.

The Narrative is an all encompassing world of illusion. It is an empire of lies.

And the first lie in the empire of lies is the lie that the Narrative does not exist. Only truths, as told by conservatives and anyone else looking at reality, are called Narratives.

Now, at the end of these answers, Rip van Conservative realizes that debate is impossible with a creature who cannot and will not speak in a coherent sentence, cannot and will not think a logical thought, and whose sole verbal reply to any criticism, no matter how true and trenchant, is merely to accuse his accuser of the flaws he himself possesses.

The stupid calls his smarter critic stupid. The fool calls his wiser critic foolish. The bigot calls his open-minded critic bigoted. The fascist calls his freedom loving critic a fascist. And on and on ad nauseam.

And so the conservative loses every battle. Why?

When conservativism is not only obvious, but self-evident, why does it falter?

When conservatism is not only a self-evident position, but the sole position seen not to contradict itself, why does it lose the field?

If all positions other than the conservative one are not merely incorrect, but immoral, illogical and insane, how is it that conservatism is soundly swept from the field, and no one polite society dares utter a word in its defense?

Conservatism falters, fails, and finds itself utterly effaced because and only because it fights the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield.

Now, I do not disagree with John here in the slightest, except to observe that there are competing explanations for the reason why conservatives are always fighting the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield. My explanation is the Alt-Right one, which is that immigrants wielding identity politics against an unsuspecting America have misled conservatives into believing false history and defending imaginary philosophical ground rather than defending their national interests. Of course, I expect John, being dubious about identity politics, would tend to disagree. At no little length.

Which is fine. Because regardless of why conservativism fights the wrong battle on the wrong battlefield, this piece serves as an informative illustration explaining why conservativism has so reliably failed to provide a philosophical bulwark against the Left, and why it will continue to do so. The more conservatives understand that more conservatism is not the answer, the more the winning will continue.

Never, ever, accept refugees

Last summer, a number of normally sensible people were shocked when I said that the European governments would be wise to sink the refugee ships that were crossing the Mediterranean. Most of those people now realize that the people of Europe would be much better off if their governments had rejected the ridiculous “it is moral to help poor defenseless refugees” argument and fulfilled their responsibility to defend their national borders.

But my opinion is not based on any heartlessness or cruelty, it is based on knowledge of history. As it happened, I’ve been reading Charles Oman’s The Byzantine Empire, and the following incident caught my attention, presaging as it does the current situation. You will note that last summer was not the first time refugees in peril were permitted to cross a border, and as Oman’s account suggests, it will not be the first time that the people whose governments betrayed them have paid a bitter price for that failure either.

Consider this heart-rending account of a people in dire straits through no fault of their own, but due to the unprovoked attack of a vicious foe. Wouldn’t you be tempted to offer them refuge too?

About the year a.d. 372 the Huns, an enormous Tartar horde from beyond the Don and Volga, burst into the lands north of the Euxine, and began to work their way westward. The first tribe that lay in their way, the nomadic race of the Alans, they almost exterminated. Then they fell upon the Goths. The Ostrogoths made a desperate attempt to defend the line of the Dniester against the oncoming savages—“men with faces that can hardly be called faces—rather shapeless black collops of flesh with little points instead of eyes; little in stature, but lithe and active, skilful in riding, broad shouldered, good at the bow, stiff-necked and proud, hiding under a barely human form the ferocity of the wild beast.” But the enemy whom the Gothic historian describes in these uninviting terms was too strong for the Teutons of the East. The Ostrogoths were crushed and compelled to become vassals of the Huns, save a remnant who fought their way southward to the Wallachian shore, near the marshes of the Delta of the Danube.

Then the Huns fell on the Visigoths. The wave of invasion pressed on; the Bug and the Pruth proved no barrier to the swarms of nomad bowmen, and the Visigoths, under their Duke Fritigern, fell back in dismay with their wives and children, their waggons and flocks and herds, till they found themselves with their backs to the Danube. Surrender to the enemy was more dreadful to the Visigoths than to their eastern brethren; they were more civilized, most of them were Christians, and the prospect of slavery to savages seems to have appeared intolerable to them.

Pressed against the Danube and the Roman border, the Visigoths sent in despair to ask permission to cross from the Emperor. A contemporary writer describes how they stood. “All the multitude that had escaped from the murderous savagery of the Huns—no less than 200,000 fighting men, besides women and old men and children—-were there on the river bank, stretching out their hands with loud lamentations, and earnestly supplicating leave to cross, bewailing their calamity, and promising that they would ever faithfully adhere to the imperial alliance if only the boon was granted them.”

Who among you would be so heartless, so cruel, as to deny hundreds of thousands of desperate women and children refuge from some of the most savage warriors ever to slaughter the innocent in the recorded history of Man? Not the Roman Emperor, although he was not unmindful of the potential for trouble, and took the necessary precautions.

The proposal of the Goths filled Valens with dismay. It was difficult to say which was more dangerous—to refuse a passage to 200,000 desperate men with arms in their hands and a savage foe at their backs, or to admit them within the line of river and fortress that protected the border, with an implied obligation to find land for them. After much doubting he chose the latter alternative: if the Goths would give hostages and surrender their arms, they should be ferried across the Danube and permitted to settle as subject-allies within the empire.

Isn’t that the correct moral choice? Provide them with refuge, but disarm them so they can’t cause too much trouble? Isn’t that what you would do, being both a good, moral person and a wise, cautious individual?

 The Goths accepted the terms, gave up the sons of their chiefs as hostages, and streamed across the river as fast as the Roman Danube-flotilla could transport them. But no sooner had they reached Moesia than troubles broke out. The Roman officials at first tried to disarm the immigrants, but the Goths were unwilling to surrender their weapons, and offered large bribes to be allowed to retain them: in strict disobedience to the Emperor’s orders, the bribes were accepted and the Goths retained their arms. Further disputes soon broke out…. Fritigern, with many of his nobles, was dining with Count Lupicinus at the town of Marcianopolis, when some starving Goths tried to pillage the market by force. A party of Roman soldiers strove to drive them off, and were at once mishandled or slain. On hearing the tumult and learning its cause, Lupicinus recklessly bade his retinue seize and slay Fritigern and the other guests at his banquet. The Goths drew their swords and cut their way out of the palace. Then riding to the nearest camp of his followers, Fritigern told his tale, and bade them take up arms against Rome.

There followed a year of desperate fighting all along the Danube, and the northern slope of the Balkans. The Goths half-starved for many months, and smarting under the extortion and chicanery to which they had been subjected, soon showed that the old barbarian spirit was but thinly covered by the veneer of Christianity and civilization which they had acquired in the last half-century. The struggle resolved itself into a repetition of the great raids of the third century: towns were sacked and the open country harried in the old style, nor was the war rendered less fierce by the fact that many runaway slaves and other outcasts among the provincial population joined the invaders.

So, instead of the Goths being slaughtered and enslaved by the Huns, the Romans were slaughtered, their towns were destroyed, and their lands were laid waste. No one could possibly have seen that coming, right? It was still the moral thing to do, because refugees, right? Just wait, it gets better, and the ending is so flawlessly fitting that it reads more like an Aesopian fable than actual history.

In 378 a.d., the main body of the Goths succeeded in forcing the line of the Balkans; they were not far from Adrianople when the Emperor started to attack them, with a splendid army of 60,000 men. Every one expected to hear of a victory, for the reputation of invincibility still clung to the legions, and after six hundred years of war the disciplined infantry of Rome, robur peditum, whose day had lasted since the Punic wars, were still reckoned superior, when fairly handled, to any amount of wild barbarians….

Valens found the main body of the Goths encamped in a great “laager,” on the plain north of Adrianople. After some abortive negotiations he developed an attack on their front, when suddenly a great body of horsemen charged in on the Roman flank. It was the main strength of the Gothic cavalry, which had been foraging at a distance; receiving news of the fight it had ridden straight for the battle field. Some Roman squadrons which covered the left flank of the Emperor’s army were ridden down and trampled under foot. Then the Goths swept down on the infantry of the left wing, rolled it up, and drove it in upon the centre. So tremendous was their impact that legions and cohorts were pushed together in hopeless confusion. Every attempt to stand firm failed, and in a few minutes left, centre, and reserve, were one undistinguishable mass. Imperial guards, light troops, lancers, auxiliaries, and infantry of the line were wedged together in a press that grew closer every moment.

The Roman cavalry saw that the day was lost, and rode off without another effort. Then the abandoned infantry realized the horror of their position: equally unable to deploy or to fly, they had to stand to be cut down. Men could not raise their arms to strike a blow, so closely were they packed; spears snapped right and left, their bearers being unable to lift them to a vertical position; many soldiers were stifled in the press. Into this quivering mass the Goths rode, plying lance and sword against the helpless enemy. It was not till forty thousand men had fallen that the thinning of the ranks enabled the survivors to break out and follow their cavalry in a headlong flight. They left behind them, dead on the field, the Emperor, the Grand Masters of the Infantry and Cavalry, the Count of the Palace, and thirty-five commanders of different corps.

The battle of Adrianople was the most fearful defeat suffered by a Roman army since Cannæ, a slaughter to which it is aptly compared by the contemporary historian Ammianus Marcellinus. The army of the East was almost annihilated, and was never reorganized again on the old Roman lines.

It would be just if the Obamas and Merkels of the world met similar fates at the hands of the refugees they saved. Only six years after permitting hundreds of thousands of poor desperate refugees to cross the river and reach the safety of Roman lands, the Emperor Valens and fifty thousand of his best soldiers were dead at their hands. Seventeen years later, Alaric the Goth ruled over the north, and “wandered far and wide, from the Danube to the gates of Constantinople, and from Constantinople to Greece, ransoming or sacking every town in his way till the Goths were gorged with plunder.”

38 years after the Goths crossed the Danube, Alaric the Goth sacked Rome itself. One has to observe that it may not take 38 years this time.

And that, my dear bleeding heart moralists, is why you always sink the damn ships.

Islam and immigration: a historian’s view

Back in 2011, during my abortive experiment with doing a podcast, I had the privilege to interview my favorite historian, John Julius Norwich, whose Byzantine trilogy has pride of place on my bookshelves between the final volume of the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica and the Summa Theologica. In preparation for the publication of the three volumes of my collected columns, we discovered that there was room to include the complete version of selected interviews at the end of Volume III, which will cover from 2010-2012.

Thanks to Were-Puppy, who has manfully taken on the task of transcribing them. Here is a section of my interview with Lord Norwich concerning a subject that is more than a little relevant today.

After a long period of relative peace, Islam appears to have entered another expansionary phase.  Is this something the West is better equipped to handle, now that it has become increasingly secular?

I don’t think it’s at all better equipped to handle it. No, I think it may be worse equipped. I find what I see going on around me in this respect very, very worrying indeed.  I had thought, until ten years ago, perhaps until 9/11, that the years of religious wars were virtually now, at long long last, over. The last place they continued, really, was in Ireland where there was still this violent Protestant-Catholic division. And killings were still going on on quite an important scale.  But when that was settled, well, it hasn’t actually been completely settled now, as we know, it still goes on. But we thought it had been settled then. And I thought good, now we really don’t need to worry about religious wars anymore. We are all okay, we know where we stand. That’s fine.

And then suddenly there comes this tremendous axe swing of Muslim fundamentalism, and 9/11, and all that, and suddenly we’re back to the beginning.  I go quite often to the Middle East, and to parts of the Muslim world, particularly to Turkey. Turkey was a completely secular state, as you know, after the First World War.  And it was as much as your career was worth to be seen going into a mosque. But now the prime minister goes to the mosque every Friday. Everyone is wearing head scarves and a lot of young women at the university are earing even more, wearing those awful pale pastel-colored overcoats to the ankle. That has always been a particularly ugly Muslim fashion, I think.

There was so many of these girls I saw, about seven or eight years ago, wandering around in those clothes. But there were also quite a few who weren’t, which meant those who were were doing it because they wanted to, not because someone told them, or forced them to do so. They were doing it voluntarily, because they felt happier that way. That worries me. It leads ultimately to excess. And we now have that ridiculous situation where you see Muslim women now, far more than ever in my lifetime, wearing vast black tents covering everything except the slits for the eyes.

A lot of these women are trying to apply to become school teachers in England. It seems to me there is no way you can teach without showing your face.  You know, you can’t just have a voice emerging from a black tent. You need a person, you need a personality, you need a character you can identify with. I’m very worried by this trend, because it’s getting worse.  In London, every single year, there are more of these black-tented ladies around, you know.

Looking at it from the historical perspective, not the political perspective, but the historical perspective, there are about 500,000 immigrants arriving every year in Great Britain. What is the outcome that this sort of mass migration is likely to have? 


It really depends, I think, on the proportion that decides to integrate. Who decides to say, okay we’re in England now, we’ll lead an ordinary English life, we won’t wear black tents or veils or anything, we’ll put ourselves through school and university. And that’s fine. Those people will obviously get absorbed.  But for every one of those, I don’t know how many there are of the other side, who do not want to be absorbed, who want to go on carrying on with their Muslim ways of life. And this will lead to a greater and greater gulf in the population of the country.

From a historical perspective, does the culture usually tend to change the immigrants, or do the immigrants tend to change the culture?

I think it works both ways. There are a lot of cases where the immigrants have actually changed the culture, when there has been an enormous immigration. It depends on the size of the immigration. If it’s quite a small immigration, then I think on the whole, it doesn’t really affect the culture very much. But with a really huge one, of course, it can really swamp it.  And that’s what I’m hoping is not going to happen in this country. But I’m very much afraid it is.

I can’t help but wonder what Lord Norwich must make of London’s Muslim mayor….

The Melting Pot is no paradise

As evil is wont to do, they even warned you with their symbolism from the start. Does it look as if anything good is going to come out of that witch’s cauldron? The concept of “The Melting Pot” is an overtly anti-American, overtly anti-Christian lie straight from the Pit of Hell.

Every. Single. Time.

I very much doubt any of those who romanticize the lie and brazenly declare that U.S. citizens born in Portugal and Somalia are realer Americans than the posterity of the Founders have ever actually read the play itself. I highly encourage you to do so, particularly if you believe in America the Melting Pot or think you subscribe to Judeo-Christian values. Guess what the play is really about? This exchange begins with the FIFTH line of the dialogue.

FRAU QUIXANO Wos schreist du? Gott in Himmel, dieses Amerika!_

KATHLEEN What’s that ye’re afther jabberin’ about America? If ye don’t like God’s own counthry, sure ye can go back to your own Jerusalem, so ye can.

MENDEL One’s very servants are anti-Semites.

KATHLEEN Bad luck to me, if iver I take sarvice again with haythen Jews. Och, I thought ye was out!

MENDEL And so you dared to be rude to my mother.

KATHLEEN She said I put mate on a butther-plate.

MENDEL Well, you know that’s against her religion.

KATHLEEN But I didn’t do nothing of the soort. I ounly put butther on a mate-plate.

MENDEL That’s just as bad. What the Bible forbids—-

KATHLEEN Sure, the Pope himself couldn’t remimber it all. Why don’t ye have a sinsible religion?

MENDEL You are impertinent. Attend to your work.

KATHLEEN And isn’t it laying the Sabbath cloth I am?

MENDEL Don’t answer me back.
How quintessentially turn-of-the-century American….  Here is how it ends, with the Christian Vera rejecting her Christian father, who has massacred Jews in Russia for the Tsar, in favor of the universalist vision of the Jew, David.

DAVID It is the fires of God round His Crucible. There she lies, the great Melting Pot–listen! Can’t you hear the roaring and the bubbling? There gapes her mouth–the harbour where a thousand mammoth feeders come from the ends of the world to pour in their human freight. Ah, what a stirring and a seething! Celt and Latin, Slav and Teuton, Greek and Syrian,–black and
yellow—-


VERA Jew and Gentile—-


DAVID Yes, East and West, and North and South, the palm and the pine, the pole and the equator, the crescent and the cross–how the great Alchemist melts and fuses them with his purging flame! Here shall they all unite to build the Republic of Man and the Kingdom of God. Ah, Vera, what is the glory of Rome and Jerusalem where all nations and races come to worship and look back, compared with the glory of America, where all races and nations come to labour and look forward!

The Melting Pot is the very anti-Christian globalist vision of New Babel and the One World Order that conservatives claim to violently oppose. It is the United Nations, the European Union, NATO, NAFTA, and the Trans-Pacific Partnership. It is Somalis in Minneapolis, Liberians in Coon Rapids and Mexicans in Des Moines. It is Tikkun Olem and Heal the World and Judeo-Christ.

America is not, and never was intended to be, a place for “all races and nations”. To claim that it is, or was, is a direct attack on the identity, legitimacy, and existence of the American people. The Constitution was not written for Universal Man, it was written to secure the liberties of Englishmen living on the American continent and no one else, not even their “British brethren” back in England.

Open your eyes. Stop believing the lies. Yes, the truth can be hard and bitter at times. What of it? Did Jesus Christ promise us a wide and easy stroll on which everyone would applaud and admire us?

“Now comes the Hour of Action!”

Donald Trump’s Inaugural Address. What a phenomenal speech. A wee bit on the civic nationalist side for me, but vastly more aggressive and combative and anti-globalist than I was expecting.

Chief Justice Roberts, President Carter, President Clinton, President Bush, President Obama, fellow Americans and people of the world, thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

We, the citizens of America, are now joined in a great national effort to rebuild our country and restore its promise for all of our people. Together we will determine the course of America and the world for many, many years to come.

We will face challenges. We will confront hardships. But we will get the job done. Every four years, we gather on these steps to carry out the orderly and peaceful transfer of power.

And we are grateful to President Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama for their gracious aid throughout this transition. They have been magnificent. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

Today’s ceremony, however, has very special meaning. Because today, we are not merely transferring power from one administration to another or from one party to another.

But we are transferring power from Washington D.C. and giving it back to you, the people.

For too long, a small group in our nation’s capital has reaped the rewards of government while the people have borne the cost. Washington flourished, but the people did not share in its wealth. Politicians prospered, but the jobs left. And the factories closed.

The establishment protected itself but not the citizens of our country. Their victories have not been your victories. Their triumphs have not been your triumphs. And while they celebrated in our nation’s capital,  there was little to celebrate for struggling families all across our land. That all changes starting right here and right now. Because this moment is your moment. It belongs to you.

(APPLAUSE)

It belongs to everyone gathered here today and everyone watching all across America. This is your day. This is your celebration. And this, the United States of America, is your country.

What truly matters is not which party controls our government but whether our government is controlled by the people. January 20th, 2017 will be remembered as the day the people became the rulers of this nation again.

The forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.

Everyone is listening to you now. You came by the tens of millions to become part of a historic movement, the likes of which the world has never seen before.

At the center of this movement is a crucial conviction — that a nation exist to serve its citizens. Americans want great schools for their children, safe neighborhoods for their families and good jobs for themselves.

These are just and reasonable demands of righteous people and a righteous public. But for too many of our citizens, a different reality exist. Mothers and children trapped in poverty in our inner cities, rusted out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape of our nation, an education system flushed with cash but which leaves our young and beautiful students deprived of all knowledge. And the crime, and the gangs, and the drugs that have stolen too many lives and robbed our country of so much unrealized potential. This American carnage stops right here and stops right now.

We are one nation, and their pain is our pain. Their dreams are our dreams, and their success will be our success. We share one heart, one home and one glorious destiny.

The oath of office I take today is an oath of allegiance to all Americans. For many decades, we’ve enriched foreign industry at the expense of American industry, subsidized the armies of other countries while allowing for the very sad depletion of our military.

We defended other nation’s borders while refusing to defend our own.

And spent trillions and trillions of dollars overseas while America’s infrastructure has fallen into disrepair and decay.

We’ve made other countries rich while the wealth, strength, and confidence of our country has dissipated over the horizon. One by one, the factories shuttered and left our shores with not even a thought about the millions and millions of American workers that were left behind.

The wealth of our middle class has been ripped from their homes and then redistributed all across the world.

(APPLAUSE)

But that is the past and now we are looking only to the future.

We assembled here today are issuing a new decree to be heard in every city, in every foreign capital and in every hall of power. From this day forward, a new vision will govern our land. From this day forward, it’s going to be only America first — America first.

(APPLAUSE)

Every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on foreign affairs will be made to benefit American workers and American families. We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs.

(APPLAUSE)

Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength. I will fight for you with every breath in my body. And I will never, ever let you down.

(APPLAUSE)

America will start winning again, winning like never before.

(APPLAUSE)

We will bring back our jobs. We will bring back our borders. We will bring back our wealth, and we will bring back our dreams. We will build new roads and highways and bridges and airports and tunnels and railways all across our wonderful nation. We will get our people off of welfare and back to work rebuilding our country with American hands and American labor. We will follow two simple rules — buy American and hire American.

We will seek friendship and goodwill with the nations of the world.

But we do so with the understanding that it is the right of all nations to put their own interests first. We do not seek to impose our way of life on anyone but rather to let it shine as an example. We will shine for everyone to follow.

(APPLAUSE)

We will reinforce old alliances and form new ones. And unite the civilized world against radical Islamic terrorism, which we will eradicate completely from the face of the earth.

(APPLAUSE)

At the bedrock of our politics will be a total allegiance to the United States of America and through our loyalty to our country, we will rediscover our loyalty to each other. When you open your heart to patriotism, there is no room for prejudice.

(APPLAUSE)

The Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God’s people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreement honestly but always pursue solidarity. When America is united, America is totally unstoppable.

(APPLAUSE)

There should be no fear. We are protected, and we will always be protected. We will be protected by the great men and women of our military and law enforcement. And most importantly, we will be protected by God.

(APPLAUSE)

Finally, we must think big and dream even bigger. In America, we understand that a nation is only living as long as it is striving. We will no longer accept politicians who are all talk and no action, constantly complaining but never doing anything about it.

(APPLAUSE)

The time for empty talk is over. Now arrives the hour of action.

(APPLAUSE)

Do not allow anyone to tell you that it cannot be done. No challenge can match the heart and fight and spirit of America. We will not fail. Our country will thrive and prosper again. We stand at the birth of a new millennium, ready to unlock the mysteries of space to free the earth from the miseries of disease and to harness the energies, a new national proud pride will stir ourselves, something and heal our divisions. Is time to remember that all wisdom — are total never forget that whether we are black or brown or white, we all believe the same red blood of patriots.

We all enjoyed the same glorious freedoms, and we all salute the same great American flag.

And whether a child is born in the urban sprawl of Detroit or the windswept plains of Nebraska, They look up at the same night sky, they build a heart with the same dreams and they are infused with the breath of life by the same Almighty Creator.

Ball and large — So to all Americans in every city near and far, amount of the mountain, from ocean to ocean, hear these words — you will never be ignored again.

Your voice, your hopes and your dreams will define our American destiny. Together, And your courage and goodness and love will forever guide us along the way. We will make America strong again. We will make America wealthy again. We will make America proud again. We will make America safe again. And yes, together, thank you. we will make America great again. God bless you. And God bless America. Thank You.

The doomed presidency

(((Richard Cohen))) warns that the Trump presidency is doomed:

Whether he knows it or not, the specter of Lyndon Baines Johnson haunts Donald John Trump. There are some jarring similarities — two big, fleshy men given to vulgarities and gauche behavior, boastful, thin-skinned, politically amoral, vengeful, unforgiving and, most important, considered illegitimate presidents. For Johnson, that took some time to sink in; Trump is already there….

The president-elect will take the oath with a minority of the popular vote — a substantial deficit of almost 3 million votes. He enters the Oval Office with historically dismal poll numbers, lower now than right after he won the election. He has done nothing to woo the majority of Americans who rejected his candidacy and has, instead, adhered to his schoolyard habit of tweeting his every grievance, denigrating his every critic, making cameos with vaccine and global-warming doubters and, as if to show some versatility, rascals such as Don King and Kanye West. It is a “Gong Show” with no gong in sight.

Lyndon Johnson would no doubt warn Trump that he is already on thin ice and he will plunge through it the moment Congress takes the measure of his unpopularity. Johnson was a man of huge political abilities and experience, and his achievements in civil rights entitled him to greatness. Yet, when Vietnam went sour, so did the public, and it seemed, after a while, that his personal characteristics, scathingly caricatured by artists such as David Levine and Jules Feiffer, oozed out of him so that they obscured both him and his accomplishments. He was deemed capable of anything — of lying and perversion of all kinds. This is where Trump stands now.

By the end of the week, Trump will be the president. I wish him the best; I wish him the worst. The dilemma is how to separate loathing for him from love of country. I am leaving it to time to work that out. Meanwhile, Trump will have his moment, that’s for sure, but when things go wrong he will be chased from office — just like Johnson once was. The ancient Greeks knew why: A man’s character is his fate. In that case, Trump’s presidency is doomed.

My two-word rebuttal: Bill Clinton.

Now, LBJ was, in my opinion, the very worst president the USA has ever had, with the arguable exception of Lincoln. Say what you will of Wilson and FDR, (much less trivialities such as Carter, the Bushes, and Obama) but in both cases, the nation-state not only survived their administrations, but came out of them at least temporarily stronger than before, even though various seeds for long term problems had been planted. And LBJ managed to do his mortal damage to the nation in less than two full terms.

By signing the Immigration and Naturalization Act of 1965 and instituting the Great Society, LBJ murdered the American nation-state, which no longer exists any more than the Chickesaw nation in northern Mississippi or the Cherokee nation in Georgia do. The USA is now a multinational, multicultural, multireligious state, with less stability and worse long-term prospects than the Austro-Hungarian empire in 1900.

We should hope and pray the Trump presidency is as significant as LBJ’s doomed one, although, of course, in the opposite direction. MAGA! MAWA! MAAA!

“Muh Constitution,” he cucked, cuckingly

Alex Rawls has absolutely no idea what the U.S. Constitution is or for whom it was written:

The CONSTITUTION does not define a white ethnostate. It is no contradiction of the constitution to welcome many of those from other races that share a commitment to liberty under law and to Christian morality (which most religions other than Islam do in large degree).

Alex is absolutely and utterly wrong. The Constitution doesn’t define a white ethnostate, it clearly establishes a BRITISH ethnostate. It exists solely to defend the rights and liberties of the genetic descendants of the Founders and no one else. It does not welcome anyone and it does not indicate any interest in any other race or nation regardless of their commitment to anything, much less “liberty under law” or “Christian morality”.

The purpose of the Constitution is laid out in the Preamble:


We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Many, if not most, descendants of immigrants are not the Posterity of the then-People of the United States. Neither are people living in Mexico, Germany, Israel, or even Great Britain. The U.S. Constitution was not written for them, nor was it ever intended to secure the Blessings of Liberty for them.

The idea that the Constitution was intended to do anything at all for immigrants, resident aliens, or foreigners is as absurd as the idea that its emanations and penumbras provide them with an unalienable right to an abortion. The fact that courts have declared otherwise is totally irrelevant.

The proposition nation is a lie. There is no such thing, there never was any such thing, and there never will be any such thing.

The myth of the Cold War

Paul Craig Roberts addresses the common misconception that Ronald Reagan sought to break the Soviet Union and win the Cold War rather than end it.

The myth is widespread that President Reagan won the cold war by breaking the Soviet Union financially with an arms race. As one who was involved in Reagan’s effort to end the cold war, I find myself yet again correcting the record.

Reagan never spoke of winning the cold war. He spoke of ending it. Other officials in his government have said the same thing, and Pat Buchanan can verify it.

Reagan wanted to end the Cold War, not win it. He spoke of those “godawful” nuclear weapons. He thought the Soviet economy was in too much difficulty to compete in an arms race. He thought that if he could first cure the stagflation that afflicted the US economy, he could force the Soviets to the negotiating table by going through the motion of launching an arms race. “Star wars” was mainly hype. (Whether or nor the Soviets believed the arms race threat, the American leftwing clearly did and has never got over it.)

Reagan had no intention of dominating the Soviet Union or collapsing it. Unlike Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama, he was not controlled by neoconservatives. Reagan fired and prosecuted the neoconservatives in his administration when they operated behind his back and broke the law.

The Soviet Union did not collapse because of Reagan’s determination to end the Cold War. The Soviet collapse was the work of hardline communists, who believed that Gorbachev was loosening the Communist Party’s hold so quickly that Gorbachev was a threat to the existence of the Soviet Union and placed him under house arrest. It was the hardline communist coup against Gorbachev that led to the rise of Yeltsin. No one expected the collapse of the Soviet Union.

The US military/security complex did not want Reagan to end the Cold War, as the Cold War was the foundation of profit and power for the complex. The CIA told Reagan that if he renewed the arms race, the Soviets would win, because the Soviets controlled investment and could allocate a larger share of the economy to the military than Reagan could.

Reagan did not believe the CIA’s claim that the Soviet Union could prevail in an arms race. He formed a secret committee and gave the committee the power to investigate the CIA’s claim that the US would lose an arms race with the Soviet Union. The committee concluded that the CIA was protecting its prerogatives. I know this because I was a member of the committee.

It’s kind of hard to argue with an eyewitness in the bureaucratic inner circle.

How Putin influenced the US election

The Saker explains how Vladimir Putin really did influence the recent US presidential election:

I will dare to speculate that Russia did play a role in the election of Trump. No, not by hacking emails or by recruiting Ron Paul (!!!) as an agent of Russian propaganda, but by openly and firmly confronting the USA on all fronts and showing that Russia would not bend her knee before the AngloZionist Empire. As I have written many times, Russia has been preparing for war for years now and while Russians were (and still are) afraid of war, they are also ready and willing to fight it if forced to do so. In his latest press conference Putin specifically referred to the will of the Russian people as a key element in Russia’s ability to defeat any aggressor when he said,

We are stronger than any potential aggressor. I have no problem repeating it. I also said why we are stronger. This has to do with the effort to modernise the Russian Armed Forces, as well as the history and geography of our country, and the current state of Russian society

and he is absolutely right. Sure, Hillary was probably stupid enough to try to impose a no-fly zone over Syria, but the 200 or so generals and admirals who expressed their support for Trump probably understood what that kind of folly would entail. Furthermore, it appears that quite a few Americans are sympathetic to Russia and Putin himself. Again, in his latest press conference Putin referred to this and made some very interesting comments:

I do not take support for the Russian President among a large part of Republican voters as support for me personally, but rather see it in this case as an indication that a substantial part of the American people share similar views with us on the world’s organisation, what we ought to be doing, and the common threats and challenges we are facing. It is good that there are people who sympathise with our views on traditional values because this forms a good foundation on which to build relations between two such powerful countries as Russia and the United States, build them on the basis of our peoples’ mutual sympathy. (…) It seems to me that Reagan would be happy to see his party’s people winning everywhere, and would welcome the victory of the newly elected President so adept at catching the public mood, and who took precisely this direction and pressed onwards to the very end, even when no one except us believed he could win.

Putin puts it down to values, common values, between the Russian and the American people.

Personal sidebar: for whatever this is worth, I regularly interact with Americans who support Putin on the grounds that “he stands for American values unlike the SOBs in Washington”.

But how did the Americans become aware of what values Putin and Russia stood for if not for the ceaseless efforts of Putin himself and the alternative media to convey these values to the general public? I think that by OPENLY denouncing the total hypocrisy of the AngloZionist Empire and by OPENLY offering a different civilizational model, Putin and Russia did have an impact on the public opinion in the West. To put it simply: Russia has scored an ideological victory over the AngloZionist imperialists. In other words, the Russian policy of standing firm against the Empire while openly challenging it on its ideological foundation was the correct one and it probably did have an impact upon the outcome of the election in the USA.