Tag: philosophy

Of false dogmas and founding myths

Now, I love and respect John Wright for many reasons. He is, among other things, a science fiction and fantasy grandmaster, and one of the three best writers of his generation. But I am in complete intellectual harmony with no man, and his civic nationalism – which I will note that other men I respect such as Mike Cernovich and Donald Trump share – is one of them. The problem is that their civic nationalism is almost entirely based on myths and falsehoods, as anyone who has done the necessary historical research already knows.

America has a dogma. America is based on the proposition that all men are created equal. Anyone learning and loving that dogma, who comes here, is a candidate for becoming an American, and, upon legal naturalization, will be as much an American as the man whose ancestors arrived on the Mayflower.

America does have a dogma. It is, like many national founding myths, a false dogma. There is no more truth to the idea that America is based on the proposition that all men are created equal than there is to the idea that Rome was founded by Aeneas and the Trojan refugees. John clearly has not read Cuckservative, or some of the relevant writings of various Founding Fathers.

Why should the Palatine Boors be suffered to swarm into our settlements, and by herding together establish their languages and manners to the exclusion of ours? Why should Pennsylvania, founded by the English, become a colony of Aliens, who will shortly be so numerous as to Germanize us instead of our Anglifying them, and will never adopt our language or customs, any more than they can acquire our complexion?
—Ben Franklin, Observations Concerning the Increase of Mankind, 1751

Both George Washington and Thomas Jefferson happen to disprove the romantic notion of the civic nationalists as well. They believed foreigners could assimilate, so long as there were sufficiently small numbers of them, and their blood literally intermingled with the English blood of the actual Americans in time.

The policy or advantage of [immigration] taking place in a body (I mean the settling of them in a body) may be much questioned; for, by so doing, they retain the language, habits, and principles (good or bad) which they bring with them. Whereas by an intermixture with our people, they, or their descendants, get assimilated to our customs, measures, and laws: in a word, soon become one people.
—George Washington, letter to John Adams, November 15, 1794

Although as to other foreigners it is thought better to discourage their settling together in large masses, wherein, as in our German settlements, they preserve for a long time their own languages, habits, and principles of government, and that they should distribute themselves sparsely among the natives for quicker amalgamation, yet English emigrants are without this inconvenience.
—Thomas Jefferson, letter to George Flower, 1817

The Left, in order to destroy this concept, wrote immigration laws and misinterpreted constitutional principles, to make it so that anyone with an anchor baby, or any relative, living here, could be welcomed here. This was done by enemies of American and is alien to our entire way of life.

Now, this part is correct. But recall that the Left achieved its goals by appealing to the very founding myths to which the civic nationalists subscribe.

America is not a nation in the sense that nations in the Old World are. We are exceptional. We are a new concept.

If America is not a nation in the sense that nations in the Old World are, then it is not a nation at all. There is absolutely nothing new about the idea of giving citizenship to small numbers of foreigners or permitting entry to immigrants in the futile hope that they will strengthen the nation without transforming it into something that it is not. And the Swiss confederation preceded the American by more than 500 years.

Why do I need to be explaining to you something we have both known since childhood? How can anyone American or not, who is aware of America, be unaware of how America works or what is the secret of our unparalleled success?

The difference is that I understand that the national founding myth is a myth, of no more truth than George Washington’s famous cherry tree. If America’s civic nationalists were Romans, they would insist that the secret to Rome’s strength was that the blood of Trojans flowed in their veins. Immigration and equality have very little, if anything, to do with America’s success, as the previous success of the British empire should suffice to show. America was successful because it was founded by one of the most successful peoples in the history of Man, and founded on a vast and wealthy continent protected from the powers of the Old World by an ocean. Moreover, Australia has hardly been a failure; its success can certainly be described as being reasonably comparable to the USA’s, especially given its relative geographic disadvantages.

This reminds me of the very popular view among economists that the secret to the USA’s post-WWII economic growth was the massive amount of government spending during the war, forgetting the considerably more important fact that the USA was the only industrialized country whose population and infrastructure was not devastated by the war.

Now, certain loudmouths on the Alt-Right heaps contempt on all these ideas, but never says anything that actually addresses or casts honest doubt on them. Aside from the emotion of scorn, there is no argument there. It is shouting, but no words underneath the noise.

I leave it to the reader to determine the veracity of those words. What aspect of John’s argument for civic nationalism have I failed to address? Point it out, by all means, if you can, and I shall do my humble best to amend any failures in that regard. One reason the Alt-Right’s rise is inevitable is our intellectual ruthlessness and our determination to accept even those truths that are most painful to us. We are not at war with the civic nationalists; they are not the enemies of the West. But if we are to see  the situation as clearly as possible and understand the current challenges as deeply as we can, we cannot permit ourselves to be hampered by their conceptual baggage.

If you want to get up to speed on this subject, I strongly suggest you read Cuckservative, by John Red Eagle and me. We learned a lot in the writing of the book, so it is safe to assume you’ll learn something by reading it.

A failure to understand identity

John Wright attempts to criticize identity politics and the Alt-Right, and in doing so, demonstrates that he does not correctly grasp what identity is, or how identity politics tend to function in modern multiracial societies:

Some say that the success of identity politics trumped up by the Left proves that a man will always side with his inborn tribal group, grievance group, and identity politics group rather than with any political doctrine or party or nation into which education, experience, or personal decision might lead him.

No, literally no one says that. First, identity is not limited to race. Religion, too, is an identity, and one of the most powerful. Second, while men can, and do, surmount their racial, grievance, and religious identities in favor of other identities and ideologies, the salient point is that the vast majority will not. One habitual weakness of John’s arguments I have observed is that he tends to be inclined towards binary thinking, and binary thinkers are particularly prone to the Ricardian Vice, which Joseph Schumpeter described in the History of Economic Analysis:

He then piled one simplifying assumption upon another until, having really settled everything by these assumptions, he was left with only a few aggregative variables between which, given these assumptions, he set up simple one-way relations so that, in the end, the desired results emerged almost as tautologies…. The habit of applying results of this character to the solution of practical problems we shall call the Ricardian Vice.


John continues with an drive-by implied defense of the fictional concept of the so-called “proposition nation”.

Nations are never built on a proposition that all men are created equal and never have been: they are only build on tribes and clans. So runs the theory.

No, that is not the theory, that is the literal historical definition of “nation”. The concept is defined as: “an aggregation of persons of the same ethnic family, often speaking the same language or cognate languages.” 1250-1300; Middle English < Latin nātiōn- (stem of nātiō) birth, tribe, equivalent to nāt (us) (past participle of nāscī to be born).

The “proposition nation” concept is entirely false. Neither concurring with any proposition nor contradicting one will cause one to be part of the American nation, or cause one to be separated from it. It is simply incorrect to claim that the United States is fundamentally built on the principle of equality or any other idea; one need only read the entire Declaration of Independence to know that Jefferson’s flight of rhetoric was nothing more than a rhetorical flourish. “All men are created equal” is not the founding principle of the United States of America nor the basis for any nation.

The irony, of course, is that one might as just as meaningfully cite the statement as grounds for claiming that anyone can become Chinese or Polish.

Those who believe this say that the way to defeat Leftwing Anti-White identity politics is by adopting Pro-White identity politics. They are seduced into making a simple error. It is an error so simple that even a highly intelligent partisan of that movement might not see it. The identity-grievance politics groups on the Left are all about Leftism and nothing about identity.

The only people who ever side with their tribal group and identity politics group are people who have been indoctrinated by the Left. They are Leftists. Identity politics is their stock in trade. It is the only product remaining on their intellectually bankrupt shelves.

First, it is true that for some, their Leftism is their dominant identity. Second, it is apparent that a number of identity groups have concluded that Leftism is in their tribal interest, which may be a source of the causal confusion. Third, it is absolutely and observably absurd to claim that the only people who ever side with their tribal group have been indoctrinated by the Left. Tribalism and identity long precede Leftism, moreover, it is very, very easy to provide examples of those on the Right who practice identity politics. Identity consistently provides a much more accurate predictive model for one’s positions and behavior than one’s nominal place on the political spectrum. But again, it must be understood that there are multiple kinds of identities; ethnicity merely tends to be the strongest and most powerful form.

Tribalism says that the loyalties one has toward genetically similar groups will eventually overwhelm all other loyalties of religion, culture, language community, political philosophy, and self interest, and that therefore one must abandon loyalty to religion and culture and state but adhere instead to one’s tribe. A more naive reading of history is difficult to imagine: as if civil wars never happened, and nothing but race wars did.

It is strange to see John claim that identity politics and tribalism is a naive reading of history when he is simultaneously denying one of the primary engines of history. Again, he relies on simplistic binary thinking in order to reach a false conclusion. People have multiple loyalties, many of which are not related to their genetic inheritance; the homosexual is loyal to the gay community and hostile to the religious communities for reasons of sexual orientation, the Christian Zionist is loyal to the Jewish community for theological reasons, and so forth. But none of this changes the observable fact that Somalis in Minnesota reliably vote for Somalis, Indians in Quebec reliably vote for Indians, and African-Americans reliably vote for blacks.

John also fails to understand the Alt-Right. Because he seeks compromise and is willing to let the Left live, he implies the Alt-Right it is of the Left. This is a confusion of etiquette with objectives.

The lobbyist of the Right, by way of contrast, is not a religious zealot. He is willing to live and let live, and to compromise when need be. The Right thinks the Left are foolish, but not evil. The Left think the Right are an abomination, literally Hitler, and must be exterminated from the Earth as soon as this is practical.

The Alt-Right thinks the Left is both foolish and evil. The Alt-Right thinks the Left is a collection of rabid, feral, incoherent, irrational barbarians who are observably incapable of participating in any civilized society without destroying it. We’re not religious zealots, we are simply educated observers of the entire history of the Left, from the French Revolution to the Killing Fields of Cambodia, who have reached certain logical conclusions on the basis of those observations.

The Alt-Right is most certainly not willing to compromise with the Left. We have witnessed the conservative Right live and let live, and compromise, to the point that Western civilization itself is at risk. And we are not willing to allow conservatives to meekly permit the destruction of Western civilization simply so they can go down to noble defeat in the sacred names of equality and not being racist.

I note in passing that every time, every single time, the roots of the Democrat Party are mentioned, the Alt-Right goes into a tizzy of sneers and scorn, scoffing that one should never say that Democrats are the real racists. Why one should never say it, they never say.  But it does undermine their whole race-is-politics theory, because the race of the Dems did not change their race before and after Johnson’s ‘Great Society’ programs, but only changed their political tactics. The utility of accusing the Party of Lincoln and Nixon of racism only started then, and so the Democrats only because the advocates of anti-racism then.

This is simply absurd. Again, John is stating something observably false, then using his false statement as the basis of reaching an incorrect conclusion. It’s trivially easy to show that what he’s saying is not true. On this blog, and in Cuckservative, I have explained why one should not bother saying that Democrats are the real racists: it is ineffective and toothless dialectic that has no effect on a group of rhetorical speakers. I have also pointed out that it is ineffective rhetoric for the Right because no one but cucks and cons fears being called racist.

And the race of the Democrats has most certainly changed since LBJ instituted the Great Society. That’s why the Atlantic asks if the Democratic Party even has room for what it calls “less-educated white voters” anymore.

So in asking the Right to accept pro-White tribalism into its political platform, the advocate of race-based politics is attempting to fight a religion with a lobbyist group. This is the same mistake the mainstream Right has been making for decades, if not centuries.

No, we’re not asking. We are predicting it will happen as a natural result of the USA becoming a multiracial, multicultural, multinational state. And it will be easy to determine who is correct. If the Alt-Right is correct, whites will continue to gravitate right across the West. The likes of Jack Murphy, who voted for Obama, will vote for Trump in 2020. And the Democratic Party will continue to move Left, as the various non-white immigrants fill its ranks being depleted by the exiting whites.

We’re not making the same mistake the mainstream Right has made; quite the opposite. And it is the fact that we refuse to continue making their mistake of holding to the sacred, nonsensical symbolism that has led to their defeat that makes them uncomfortable.

Now, all that being said, John is correct to say that federalism is one solution to tribalism. But it is a solution that accepts and utilizes the reality of tribalism and identity politics, not one that rejects them. In any event, read the whole thing there, including the comments.

I close with a pair of quotes, and leave it to you to decide whether it is identity politics or proposition politics that are more firmly rooted in truth and historical reality:

“In multiracial societies, you don’t vote in accordance with your economic interests, you vote in accordance with race and religion.”
– Lee Kuan Yew


“America has never been united by blood or birth or soil. We are bound by ideals that move us beyond our backgrounds, lift us above our interests and teach us what it means to be citizens…. Every immigrant, by embracing these ideals, makes our country more, not less, American.”
– George W. Bush

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.

Scott Adams praises the God-Emperor

For flooding the playing field and thereby adulterating the Left’s fuel, which is outrage:

When you encounter a situation that is working great except for one identifiable problem, you can focus on the problem and try to fix it. But if you have a dozen complaints at the same time, none of them looks special. The whole situation just looks confusing, and you don’t know where to start. So you wait and see what happens. Humans need contrast in order to make solid decisions that turn into action. Trump removed all of your contrast by providing multiple outrages of similar energy.

You’re probably seeing the best persuasion you will ever see from a new president. Instead of dribbling out one headline at a time, so the vultures and critics can focus their fire, Trump has flooded the playing field. You don’t know where to aim your outrage. He’s creating so many opportunities for disagreement that it’s mentally exhausting. Literally. He’s wearing down the critics, replacing their specific complaints with entire encyclopedias of complaints. And when Trump has created a hundred reasons to complain, do you know what impression will be left with the public?

He sure got a lot done.

Even if you don’t like it.

In only a few days, Trump has made us question what-the-hell every other president was doing during their first weeks in office. Were they even trying?

So much winning they can’t even.

Don’t resist the truth

One of Rod Dreher’s readers feels the irresistible pull of the Alt-Right:

I’m a white guy. I’m a well-educated intellectual who enjoys small arthouse movies, coffehouses and classic blues. If you didn’t know any better, you’d probably mistake me for a lefty urban hipster.

And yet. I find some of the alt-right stuff exerts a pull even on me. Even though I’m smart and informed enough to see through it. It’s seductive because I am not a person with any power or privilege, and yet I am constantly bombarded with messages telling me that I’m a cancer, I’m a problem, everything is my fault.

I am very lower middle class. I’ve never owned a new car, and do my own home repairs as much as I can to save money. I cut my own grass, wash my own dishes, buy my clothes from Walmart. I have no clue how I will ever be able to retire. But oh, brother, to hear the media tell it, I am just drowning in unearned power and privilege, and America will be a much brighter, more loving, more peaceful nation when I finally just keel over and die.

Trust me: After all that, some of the alt-right stuff feels like a warm, soothing bath. A “safe space,” if you will. I recoil from the uglier stuff, but some of it — the “hey, white guys are actually okay, you know! Be proud of yourself, white man!” stuff is really VERY seductive, and it is only with some intellectual effort that I can resist the pull. And yet I still follow this stuff, not really accepting it, but following it just because it’s one of the only places I can go where people are not always telling me I’m the seed of all evil in the world. If it’s a struggle for someone like me to resist the pull, I imagine it’s probably impossible for someone with less education or cultural exposure….

I’m sorry, but there are two alternatives here. You can push for some kind of universalist vision bringing everybody together, or you can have tribes. There’s not a third option. If you don’t want universalism, then you just have to accept that various forms of open white nationalism are eventually going to become a permanent feature of politics. You don’t have to LIKE it. But you have to accept it and learn to live with it — including the inevitable violence and strife that will flow from it.

This is why the Alt-Right Revolution is inevitable. Despite the propaganda in which the young man has been steeped for his entire life, despite being “smart” and “informed” and “well-educated”, which is to say “brainwashed” and “misinformed” and “maleducated”, truth and tribe attract him.

There are not two alternatives. Universalism is dead, because it only ever had appeal to a) white Anglo imperialists and b) Jewish globalists. Universalism can only hold lasting mass appeal in a homogeneous society where everyone is the same tribe; once the society becomes sufficiently heterogeneous, tribalism and identity politics will inevitably rise to the fore. This is the process we have witnessed in the post-1965 USA.

Indeed, even in the Jewish State of Israel, identity politics are rising to the fore; “identity” is the literal translation of the term “zehut”. But the USA is not a Jewish state, it is a white state, an Anglo-American state, and therefore some form of white American nationalism is as inevitable in the USA as Swedish nationalism and Russian nationalism and Catalonian nationalism and Jewish nationalism are inevitable in Sweden, Russia, Catalonia, and Israel. Identity is the only way a nation can preserve its values; to paraphrase the Zehut founder, a nation that loses its identity will eventually lose the sense of meaning for its existence as well as its legitimacy.

The Alt-Right is not a temptation, it is the answer for those who wish to save America from its loss of meaning, identity, and legitimacy. It is not the nationalism of the Alt-Right, but the civic nationalism of the Alt-Lite that is a mirage and a false ideal. Civic nationalism is no more true nationalism than social justice is true justice. And there is no reason for American men and women to resist the pull of the Alt-Right, because the Alt-Right is the only current political philosophy that is in harmony with science, history, reason, and current events.

Be sure to read the comments there. The speed with which the cucks and SJWs rush in to condemn men expressing even modest sympathies with their white identity is educational.

Musing on meditations

Someone on Gab asked me if I would write a book of philosophy, and suggested something similar to one written by one of my intellectual heroes, Marcus Aurelius. His Meditations have been a significant influence on my thinking since high school, particularly this deeply meaningful piece of advice, with which he began Book Two in the Staniforth translation:

Begin each day by telling yourself: today I shall be meeting with interference, ingratitude, insolence, disloyalty, ill-will, and selfishness—all of them due to the offenders’ ignorance of what is good or evil. But for my part I have long perceived the nature of good and its nobility, the nature of evil and its meanness, and also the nature of the culprit himself, who is my brother (not in the physical sense, but as a fellow-creature similarly endowed with reason and a share of the divine); therefore none of those things can injure me, for nobody can implicate me in what is degrading.

Those who have read Meditations can probably see how the very way I live has been influenced by them; it was somewhat startling to listen to a song recently and realize that I’d written these words with my friend Paul more than 20 years ago. Much to my surprise, it’s become one of my favorites in retrospect.

Over sea, under stone
I will find myself alone
All I’ve seen and all I’ve known
In a dream far from home
I still find myself alone


In this place there’s nobody inside
In this place there’s nobody outside
I find myself alone

It seems we really do shape our future through our imaginations. Of course, what the non-reader of Meditations might fail to understand is that this is not a mournful song about loneliness, but rather a contemplative one about the need to abandon the world and its deafening, disharmonious distractions in order to find oneself, or rather, to honestly face the truth about oneself and one’s place in Creation.

A man must be able to look honestly inside before he can look accurately outside.

I don’t think I am ready yet to take on the task of writing my own Meditations. But I do have the sense that one day, I will be able to do so, though whether it will be before or after I attempt my magnum opus of economics philosophy written in the Aquinan form, I cannot say. In the meantime, perhaps the following ten aphorisms may be of some utility to a reader or two.

  • Tell yourself the unvarnished truth, even if you cannot bring yourself to admit it to anyone else.
  • We are all being deceived, in some matters, by someone, at all times.
  • An unsound foundation will never produce a sound conclusion. When a conclusion strikes you as dubious, look hard at the underlying assumptions supporting it.
  • Evil existed in the past. It will exist in the future. You are not going to eliminate it. You are not even going to eliminate it in yourself.
  • No amount of pleasure will ever satisfy a man. No amount of comfort will ever satisfy a woman.
  • Status is a dangerous and addictive psychological drug. Be deeply wary of it.
  • Leadership requires a surfeit of ego, because the good leader must be able to sacrifice his own for the benefit of his subordinates when need be.
  • Never trust an insecure man. Sooner or later, his fears will cause him to turn on those to whom he is closest.
  • The weak will always attempt to outlaw the strong.
  • Never stay down. Even the dead can haunt their killers.

A failure of dialectic

This account of feminism perverting theology is an excellent example of the way in which dialectic is impotent when faced with a literally unreasonable opponent:

The meaning of head in Ephesians 5 is critical not for egalitarians, nor even for traditionalists.  Even if head meant “source” in Ephesians 5, the passage still tells wives to submit to their husbands, and it is merely one of many which does so.  Egalitarians are lost even if they win this argument, and traditionalists are largely unfazed even if they somehow lost it.  On the other hand, the meaning of the word head is critical for complementarians, because complementarians twist themselves into knots to avoid telling wives to submit to their husbands out of a fear of seeming harsh, demeaning, and male supremacist.  The only way complementarians can sound traditional while avoiding preaching submission is to focus all of their energies on the responsibility of the husband to act in such a way that his wife naturally wants to submit.  This is not the biblical model of marriage, it is the complementarian model of marriage.  The closest to a biblical justification for this invention is the word head in Eph 5.  This is true despite the fact that even the word headship is discomforting to complementarians, who have coined the term servant leader and focus on cartoonish chivalry.

Even so, Grudem has done a great service by vigorously refuting the spurious claim about head.


Why did I do this? So that commentaries, Greek lexicons, and Bible translations in future generations will accurately teach and translate a crucial verse in the word of God. If head equals “authority over” as has been shown now in over sixty examples, then the ballgame is over. And even today, twenty-four years after my first article, there are still zero examples where a person is called “head” of someone else and is not in authority over that person. Zero.

But as Grudem notes, despite the original claim being made without evidence, and having been thoroughly debunked, the Bible is not (and never was) the issue:


That kind of evidence would normally settle the debate forever in ordinary exegesis of ordinary verses.


But this is not an ordinary verse. Because the evangelical feminists cannot lose this verse, they continue to ignore or deny the evidence. I think that is very significant.


It now seems to me that, for some people in this dispute who have thought through the issue and are committed to the egalitarian cause and have the academic knowledge to evaluate the evidence for themselves, what the Bible says on this question is not decisive. And, sadly, InterVarsity Press (USA), in spite of being given evidence of multiple factual errors in Catherine Kroeger’s article on “head” in Dictionary of Paul and His Letters,5 still continues to refuse to make any changes to the article.

Grudem goes on to recount his recollection of the founding of the CBMW.  I won’t summarize it here, but you can read it in the linked piece.  After the CBMW was founded, Grudem had his second major learning experience with egalitarians. Christians for Biblical Equality (CBE) asked for CBMW leadership to meet with them in an effort to find common ground.  At CBE’s urging the CBMW created what they expected would be a joint statement on abuse.  The CBMW leadership did not seem to understand that feminists are very open that their focus on abuse is about eradicating headship, not on actual abuse.  Even worse, the CBE was merely trying to take the CBMW off message, and had no interest in a mutual statement:

As we talked, there seemed to be agreement that one thing we could do together would be for both organizations to agree publicly that abuse within marriage is wrong. So we agreed to work on a joint statement on abuse. After the meeting, Mary Kassian drafted such a statement, and we got some feedback from the CBE people, and we were going to issue it. But, then on October 10, 1994, we received a letter from them saying that their board had considered it, and they would not join with us in the joint statement opposing abuse. I was shocked and disappointed when the letter came. I wondered then if their highest goal in this issue was to be faithful to Scripture above all and stop the horrors of abuse, or was to promote the egalitarian agenda. We ended up publishing the statement ourselves in CBMW NEWS (later renamed The Journal for Biblical Manhood and Womanhood).

Even after this, Grudem seems to have still expected good faith from egalitarians.  In yet another incident, Grudem and the CBMW were assured that the gender neutral version of the NIV had been scrapped:


But just before the meeting began, the IBS issued a statement saying they had “abandoned all plans” for changes in gender-related language in future editions of the NIV. So we thought the controversy was done and the NIV would remain faithful in its translation of gender-related language in the Bible.


Little did we know, however, that the Committee on Bible Translation for the NIV had not “abandoned all plans”! Far from it! Unknown to anyone outside their circles, for the next four years the Committee on Bible Translation, apparently with the quiet cooperation of people at Zondervan and the International Bible Society, continued working to produce a gender-neutral NIV. They had publicly “abandoned all plans,” but privately they were going full-steam ahead. Then suddenly in 2001, they announced unilaterally they were abandoning the agreement not to publish gender related changes in the NIV, and they published the TNIV New Testament in 2001 and the whole Bible in 2005.

In his conclusion Grudem says he originally thought the whole feminist rebellion would blow over once he and others carefully explained the correct meaning of Scripture:

I am surprised that this controversy has gone on so long. In the late 80s and early 90s when we began this, I expected that this would probably be over in ten years. By force of argument, by use of facts, by careful exegesis, by the power of the clear word of God, by the truth, I expected the entire church would be persuaded, the battle for the purity of the church would be won, and egalitarian advocates would be marginalized and have no significant influence. But it has not completely happened yet!

Unspoken in this (and complementarianism at large) is an attitude that Christian feminists are not rebelling against God in a pattern that dates back to the fall, but are the natural reaction to a suddenly harsh generation of Christian men.  This is why Grudem and his colleagues repeatedly fell for the feminist ruses, and why to this day they are most concerned with showing how reasonable they are.

I have a simple and efficient metric that permits me to avoid such problems. Any time anyone relies on “equality” for any aspect of their argument, I assume they are, at best, deluded, and on average, dishonest. I take arguments that appeal to, or rely upon, equality, about as seriously as those that rely upon “unicorns” or “leprechauns” as their justifications.

I have yet to see anyone make an honest and compelling argument that utilized equality. It is an intrinsically evil concept that always leads even otherwise honest men astray.

Mr. Grudem could have saved himself 21 years of pointless argument by applying this extraordinarily reliable metric. But at least he did the rest of us the favor of demonstrating that Churchian equalitarianism is every bit as evil and deceptive as its worldly counterpart, and that it is only a matter of time before Christian feminism drops the adjective as well as the concept of Scriptural authority.

What a pity that even Biblical scholars don’t know how to utilize the wisdom of Proverbs.

A continual dripping on a very rainy day and a contentious woman are alike; Whoever restrains her restrains the wind, and grasps oil with his right hand.
– Proverbs 27:15-16

The Politics of the Possible

Classicist and historian VDH attempts to make sense of the Trumpist ideology, such as it is:

Tradition

Trumpism promotes traditionalism. Trump showcases “Merry Christmas!” because his parents did. He believes in dressing formally and being addressed as Mr. Trump. And he insists that his children be well-behaved and polite.

You might object that Trump is thrice-married, Petronian in his tastes, and ethically sloppy or worse in his own business dealings. No matter: Trump seeks a return to normalcy all the more. His personal excesses apparently spur his impulses for traditional norms.

Perhaps Trump is like many Baby Boomers as they enter their final decades: They look back at their parents and grandparents, and wonder how they put up with their offspring — and see how far this generation has fallen short of their forebears’ ideals, which in turn sparks a desire for a return to normalcy in the wayward. Deists were believers in the abstract who otherwise shunned a living Christianity yet thought that active religion had social value for others. Similarly, Trump is a non-practicing moralist who believes traditional morality can restore structure and guidance to society.

So Trump is foul-mouthed but wants a return of decorum; he has been conniving but thinks his own recklessness is not necessarily a model for the nation.




National Greatness 

Nationalism is another Trump axiom — the deliberate antithesis to the progressive and Socratic idea of being “a citizen of the world.” In Trump’s mind, the U.S. is a paradise thanks to its exceptional values and the hard work of past generations; the mess elsewhere (to the degree Trump worries about it) is due to human failing that is not America’s fault. Trump laments self-inflicted misery abroad but feels that he and his country are not culpable for it, and, other than Good Samarian disaster or famine relief, we cannot do too much about it in the long term.

If Mexico wants good jobs or Europe seeks to re-arm, then they can first make their own necessary adjustments to give them what they need without necessarily involving the U.S., whose first obligation is to make sure that its own citizens are well, secure, and employed. It seems that in Trump’s view, America’s poor and forgotten have claims on this country’s attention that far outweigh those of the illegal immigrant or the globe-trotting internationalist; the lathe worker in Des Moines and the real estate broker in Manhattan, by virtue of being American, deserve more of Washington’s attention than international bureaucrats or foreign royals. The least American is preferable to the greatest foreigner.

To the Left, this is xenophobic, nativist, and Peronist; in the Trump mind, it is a long-overdue pushback against 21st-centurty globalism. Good borders make good neighbors; illegal immigrants who arrive by breaking the law will certainly keep breaking the law to stay. Americans cannot pick and choose which American laws to follow; why would they allow foreigners to do what they themselves cannot and should not do?

I would describe Trump’s approach to governance, which is not an ideology proper, but rather an attitude more akin to conservatism, as the politics of the possible. Do what you can. Don’t worry about what you can’t. And always keep in mind that the best people, the very best, can accomplish more than anyone else thinks.

The God-Emperor Ascendant is the rare combination of ambition and optimism with pragmatism. It is, as we are beginning to see, a potent combination. And I, for one, will not be at all surprised if, eight years from now, he leaves the White House and enters the history books being widely regarded as a better and more popular president than Ronald Reagan.

That may sound absurd, but note that Trump is already showing signs of being much better at team-building, delegating, and holding his subordinates to high expectations than any president of the modern era.

He didn’t read Aristotle

From Gab:

Todd Kincannon · @ToddKincannon
Had dinner with a political operative friend last night. He said “I had no idea that all it took to win was to call Democrats and media worthless pieces of shit all the time. I thought you had to be reasonably nice. Trump has shown me the light. Fuck the Left.” 


This is an exact quote. 


It’s called “the art of rhetoric”. See Chapter 10 of SJWs Always Lie.

Left-wingers will only change their minds if they experience enough emotional pain to provoke the desire to avoid it. They are entirely irrational; the more intelligent they are, the more highly developed their facility for rationalizing away any logical inconsistencies is. And that’s why those on the Left are always calling people on the Right stupid, racist, and so on, because they are attempting to convince us by inflicting emotional pain and triggering aversive reactions. It may sound like insults, but in reality, that is how the Left makes converts.

Of course, their understanding of dialectic speakers is as poor as the average dialecticals understanding of rhetoricals. It really shocks them when their name-calling has no effect. In fact, that is a good way to discern a right-wing rhetorical; the more they are affected by name-calling, the more they are rhetorically minded despite their protestations.

I don’t care

For future reference, this will be my response to all future queries concerning whether I heard about X doing, or saying, anything, and what I think about X doing, or saying, Y, about Z.

I don’t care. I’m not interested.

My friends are my friends. Castalia authors are Castalia authors. I don’t give an airborne rodent’s posterior if they happen to do or say something that offends your ideological, religious, ethnic, national, or racial sensitivities.

I realize this won’t stop the occasional idiot running to me with “did you hear what X did” like a teenage girl who just heard the rumor that the head cheerleader cheated on her boyfriend with the math teacher, but for the record, that will be my response.

I don’t care. I’m not interested.

And if you have a problem with that, then please leave and find some other corner of the Internet in which to reside. It’s a big place. Take your crusade, whatever it might be, elsewhere. You’ve got no shortage of options. And I’m not interested in your opinion of me or anyone else. Talking about me, or about someone else, rather than the subject of the post, is an excellent way to get yourself banned here.

This is not, and has never been, a free speech zone. I’ll cheerfully ban you for annoying me or trying to waste my time. And I have a low tolerance for gammas, particularly gamma midwits.

I’m done trying to talk sense into the senseless, or to explain rationales to the irrational. You’d think I, of all people, would know better.