Tag: philosophy

We Are Not Conservatives

Andrew Torba has really been on fire lately. And he says it much better than I ever have:

Let us be clear so there is no confusion and no room for misinterpretation: we are not conservatives.

That word has become a mark of surrender, a synonym for the managed decline of a nation we refuse to abandon. Our allegiance is not to a decaying set of liberal principles, to a faltering democracy that serves global interests, to “lower taxes” or to a “rules-based international order” that has bled our people dry. We will not conserve the hollowed-out institutions of a dying empire.

Our allegiance is sworn to something real, something eternal: to our God, our people, and our homeland. It is the soil beneath our feet, the blood in our veins, and the spirit that calls us to greatness.

We have no interest in conserving a political system mired in bipartisan decay, where two heads of the same beast promise change and deliver only ruin. We will not perpetuate a cycle of foreign wars and endless aid to distant nations while our own communities crumble into dust and despair. We refuse to uphold an economic order that leaves our own citizens struggling, indentured to a global market that despises our traditions, our faith, and our very existence.

Our mission is to build something new. Not a fragile imitation of the past, but an order of strength, clarity, and purpose, dedicated first, last, and always to the national interest. We don’t want to turn back the clock. We want to forge a future worthy of our nation’s legacy.

For over a century now the liberal and conservative establishment have captained this ship. They inherited a vessel of unmatched power and prestige, and with a toxic blend of incompetence, arrogance, and malice, they steered it directly into an iceberg of globalism, demographic decline, and cultural erosion. The steel of the ship groans, the ice grinds against the hull, and still, they toast their success in the captain’s lounge, blind to the icy water rising around their ankles.

We are done begging for a seat at their table.

Those who stand for the Good, the Beautiful, and the True are not conservatives. We cannot be conservatives, because conservatives defend nothing, conservatives conserve nothing, and conservatives stand for nothing.

Conservatives are the rear guard of the godless, globalist, satanic Left. The only function that conservatives serve is their gatekeeping function, and attempting to plant themselves at the head of the parade in order to subvert it and redirect it to harmless directions.

As has been observed many times before, a conservative is simply a liberal of 20 years ago and a progressive radical of 40 years ago. Whereas the things the true Right stands for are either material – blood, land, family, and gold – or timeless – God, Jesus Christ, nation, and truth.

We are not conservatives. We have never been conservatives. And we will never be conservatives.

UPDATE: An apt summary of conservatism on SG:

  1. Posture
  2. Compromise
  3. Surrender
  4. Retreat
  5. Whine
  6. Repeat

UPDATE: A cogent observation about how conservatives are not even our allies, as they are all too happy to join forces with the likes of Stalin and the literal grandchildren of the Trotskyites now known as the neocons.

The same conservatives saying things like “I’ll never ally with THOSE people on the Right” will also claim it was a moral imperative for America to ally with literally Joseph Stalin himself in World War II. They’re not above the Friend/Enemy distinction. They just have different enemies than you do.

DISCUSS ON SG

On Facing Age

Even after a man’s fifty or sixty, he can still know happiness, even do useful work.
—Eiji Yoshikawa, Musashi

As a man moving from middle age into old age, that’s certainly good to know. Personally, I’m hoping for eight more years of soccer and at least 23 more years of active writing. AI has been a real godsend with regards to the latter.

And apparently, I’m just hitting the peak of my mental powers now. So I should be able to produce one or two more original thoughts in the next few years.

Scientists in Australia say that overall mental functioning in the brain actually peaks between the ages of 55 and 60. People in this age range may be at their best for complex problem–solving tasks and high–ranking leadership roles in the workforce.

DISCUSS ON SG

Floating on the Sea of Retardery

An SG reader inadvertently discovers the raison d’etre of Stoic philosophy:

I have another 23 or so years left in my career. In reality I do not know if I can make it in my current positions. Being an accounting exec I see everything and it’s sickening. The vast majority of people serve Mammon from the top level employees down to the lowest level. The vast majority lie, cheat and steal with no remorse. They think nothing of doing things that hurt their coworkers to get an extra buck. When they aren’t doing that, they purposely allow people to make damaging mistakes so they can grandstand about it for 5 minutes and feel like they are scoring points.

I honestly don’t know how much longer I can take it. No one argues with me when I point these things out, but no one cares either, they do nothing and hope I shut up eventually, because they largely do the same things.

This is the sea of retardery that is the human condition. Balzac wrote an entire ouvre dedicated to precisely this endless series of bad decisions, shenanigans, and tomfoolery. There is little point in the reader trying to seek work elsewhere, because what is troubling him is not unique to his industry, but is absolutely normal human behavior.

This is why philosophers from the Roman Stoics to the Chinese sages have stressed the importance of not being affected by the behavior of others and refusing to let their antics disturb your equanimity.

I was just speaking with Spacebunny this morning about the distress of men and women working in the Swiss banking industry, who have belatedly realized that submitting to US pressure to give up everything that made banking in Switzerland desirable has unsurprisingly had very negative effects on their employment prospects. In just 15 years, the number of Swiss banks has fallen from 400 to 250, one of its two banking giants collapsed, and the only reason the other one still survives is because it was bailed out by the Swiss government.

All of this was predictable and predicted. Before the financial crisis of 2008, I told a VP at a Swiss bank that all of those things would absolutely and inevitably happen if they were dumb enough to submit to US pressure to change the practices that made them rich and the envy of the world. But I was not even a little bit surprised when the bankers did so, and did so in order to preserve their access to a market where they did nothing but lose tens of billions of dollars, because I would estimate that 95 percent of men and 99 percent of women are simply too retarded to be capable of understanding the inevitable consequences of their own decisions and behavior.

David Foster Wallace understood this. It’s probably one of the reasons he killed himself in his despair.

The so-called real world of men and money and power hums merrily along in a pool of fear and anger and frustration and craving and worship of self.

So, too, did the Chinese of yore.

卸磨刀石殺驢

Unload the grindstone to kill the donkey.

This is the way most people and most organizations operate on a daily basis. They readily sacrifice their goals, their objectives, and their material long-term interests for what they perceive to be in their immediate interest, because they don’t realize that the latter necessitates the former.

And there is absolutely nothing that one can do about this behavioral tendency except accept it, as Confucius observed.

隨風搖曳的綠色蘆葦，比暴風雨中折斷的參天橡樹還要堅強

The green reed which bends in the wind is stronger than the mighty oak which breaks in a storm.

And if you will excuse me quoting myself:

The gift of sight becomes a curse when one can’t intervene.

DISCUSS ON SG

BIH Ian Watkins

There can be little doubt that the recently deceased Lostprophets singer is not resting in peace, but rather, burning in Hell.

Lostprophets singer Ian Watkins has died after being attacked in jail, prison sources have confirmed.

The disgraced rock star from Pontypridd was serving a 29-year sentence at HMP Wakefield for child sex offences. West Yorkshire Police said they were called to the prison on Saturday morning to an assault on a prisoner, who was pronounced dead at the scene. Watkins, 48, was jailed in December 2013 for a string of child sex offences, including the attempted rape of a baby.

He was attacked with a knife by another inmate, PA reported, citing sources.

I quite liked Lostprophets back in the day. They had several really good songs. And while I never consciously decided to stop listening to them after Watkins’s arrest for some incredibly awful child abuse, I simply never really wanted to hear the man’s voice again. Apparently his bandmates felt much the same, as they decided to shut down the band in the aftermath of his arrest and conviction.

The fall of Ian Watkins into utter depravity is a reminder that no matter how much worldly success one has, it will never be satisfying and it will never be enough, so chasing it is an obvious fool’s game from the start.

DISCUSS ON SG

Be the Thing They Fear

The anti-American clowns are attempting to play the victim game. But the victim game only works when people actually care about not being identified as the bad guys:

this whole shabby psyop masquerading as a morality play has been being set up for years. the same people who flooded the country with illegal intruders to shift the census, electoral college, congressional seat counts, and to taint voter rolls (often using tax dollars to do it) always knew that the day might come when people got fed up and sought to reverse this.

they also know how incredibly difficult this would be, the draconian actions it would require, and how bad this could be made to look.

they were already prebunking this issue before the election. “if the bad guys win, they will round you up and put you in boxcars! it will be fascism! genocide! they will not follow the law!”

lost in this and absent from the barrage of talking points is the lawlessness, manipulation, and outright aggression ingrained in flooding communities with these groups and then leaving them protected by law and process but unbound by restrictions or standards. the manner in which they were brought in was wildly illegal, and now the selfsame perps demand law be applied.

the whole point is to be so provocative and violent that only violence can serve to resist or constrain it, then they call you violent.

It’s just names. It’s just words. And word magic doesn’t work if you refuse to believe in it. I’ve been called every name in the book. According to my enemies, I “rise all the way to outright evil” and I absolutely accept and embrace my place in their nightmares. My strongest supporters weren’t even named by me, the Vile Faceless Minions were given their title by one of the many bloggers who refused to name me while criticizing me for fear of my “vile, faceless minions” descending upon his blog to tear apart his insipid arguments.

The amusing thing is that once you embrace their attempted insults, once you wear their nightmares as your armor, they immediately reverse course and start trying to claim that you aren’t really what they called you. Because their words are meaningless, their words are quite literally senseless.

So do what you do and accept whatever ridiculous label they want to apply to you as you go about your business without hesitation or regard for anything they do or say.

First they call you names.

Then they cry that it’s unfair.

Then they shriek that it’s illegal.

Then they plead for mercy.

Then they cease to be a problem.

DISCUSS ON SG

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.

DISCUSS ON SG

Never Take the Ticket

It would appear that Charlie Kirk’s conscience was belatedly catching up to him. But developing a conscience has consequences for any ticket taker.

A Trump insider and longtime friend of Charlie Kirk tells The Grayzone how the assassinated conservative leader’s turning point on Israeli influence provoked a private backlash from Netanyahu’s allies that left him angry and afraid.

Charlie Kirk rejected an offer earlier this year from Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to arrange a massive new infusion of Zionist money into his Turning Point USA (TPUSA) organization, America’s largest conservative youth association, according to a longtime friend of the slain commentator speaking on the condition of anonymity. The source told The Grayzone that the late pro-Trump influencer believed Netanyahu was trying to cow him into silence as he began to publicly question Israel’s overwhelming influence in Washington and demanded more space to criticize it.

In the weeks leading up to his September 10 assassination, Kirk had come to loathe the Israeli leader, regarding him as a “bully,” the source said. Kirk was disgusted by what he witnessed inside the Trump administration, where Netanyahu sought to personally dictate the president’s personnel decisions, and weaponized Israeli assets like billionaire donor Miriam Adelson to keep the White House firmly under its thumb.

According to Kirk’s friend, who also enjoyed access to President Donald Trump and his inner circle, Kirk strongly warned Trump last June against bombing Iran on Israel’s behalf. “Charlie was the only person who did that,” they said, recalling how Trump “barked at him” in response and angrily shut down the conversation. The source believes the incident confirmed in Kirk’s mind that the president of the United States had fallen under the control of a malign foreign power, and was leading his own country into a series of disastrous conflicts.

By the following month, Kirk had become the target of a sustained private campaign of intimidation and free-floating fury by wealthy and powerful allies of Netanyahu – figures he described in an interview as Jewish “leaders” and “stakeholders.”

“He was afraid of them,” the source emphasized.

Kirk was 18 years old when he launched TPUSA in 2012. From its inception, his career was propelled by Zionist donors, who showered his young organization with money through neoconservative outfits like the David Horowitz Freedom Center. He repaid his wealthy backers over the years by unleashing a relentless firehose of anti-Palestinian and Islamophobic diatribes, accepting propaganda trips to Israel, and sternly shutting down nationalist forces challenging his support for Israel during TPUSA event…

Kirk was bombarded with infuriated text messages and phone calls from Netanyahu’s wealthy allies in the US, including many who had funded TPUSA. According to his longtime friend, the Zionist donors treated Kirk with outright contempt, essentially ordering him to fall back into line. 

Once you sell your soul, you can’t really expect the Devil to simply give it back to you upon request. The one expectation of the purchased man is that he will stay bought. That’s why it’s better to simply live in the knowledge that you’ll never have the material success that the Prince of This World offers the untalented and the insufficiently self-confident. Not all “successful” people are ticket takers, but others much more informed on the subject than I am estimate that 90 percent of them are.

DISCUSS ON SG

Quotes to Contemplate

Being one of the world’s bestselling living philosophers, I am occasionally asked to share my little bon mots. This is challenging, because I very seldom bother to read, or even remember, what I have written. Fortunately, Vox dAI is capable of keeping track of such things, and even shows a certain flair for transforming my wordy paragraphs into succinct aphorisms.

  • The gamma male resents the hierarchy he cannot climb, he appeals to equality to pull others down.
  • Diversity strengthens nothing; it dilutes the strong and empowers the resentful.
  • Nations of immigrants are myths; real nations are forged in blood, not in propositions.
  • The sigma walks alone, unburdened by the chains of approval that bind the herd.
  • Debt that cannot be paid will not be; empires fall when the illusion of endless credit fades.
  • Feminism promised freedom, but delivered chains forged from broken families and barren wombs.
  • Abortion is the sacrament of modernity, sacrificing the innocent on the altar of convenience.
  • Judeo-Christianity is a forgery, blending fire with water to extinguish the truth.
  • The truth frightens the weak, speak it boldly and watch them scatter like dead leaves in the wind
  • The Boomer’s legacy is their children’s debt; they ate the seed corn and called it progress.
  • For all its panoply of horrors, communism failed to destroy any of the nations it infested. Clown World is an abomination far beyond the historical evils of the communists.
  • Philosophy is not a team sport. Enjoy the solitude.

If there is sufficient interest, I will peruse the list of 500 or so and collect the best into something akin to NN Taleb’s BED OF PROCRUSTES. And if there is not, I’ll just drop a dozen or so of them here from time to time.

Some value these words
Others see no worth at all
Either way, it’s fine

DISCUSS ON SG

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.

DISCUSS ON SG