Tag: philosophy

The mask comes off

Revealing the alien philosophy it concealed. It only took a few hours for the Transamerican School of National Identity to declare that disenfranchisement of actual Americans in favor of Ameriboos was desirable.

accordingtohoyt
This is VD’s bullshit. I can see it taking several generations to being fully civilized because part of it is a genetic selection thing, but in THAT case we’re all about somewhere close, myself included. Several generations to be fully American? Oh, take a powder. You need to be an idiot to believe that.

Amanda
I will take Sarah and all those like her who want to come to this country, who do so legally and who take all appropriate steps to become a citizen any day of the week over someone who looks down on them because they were not born here. Right now, Sarah looks much more “American” than you.

thewriterinblack  
“The immigrant becomes a citizen. The immigrant lays claim to now being American. Only by law, Sarah.”

This statement demonstrates that Sarah is more American than you are. Because she believes in what makes America, America. And you don’t.


Stephen W. Houghton
My paternal ancestors have been here since before the war of independence. I say Americans are those who take the oath and stand with us. Traitors, those what ever their blood who do not…. Go and lick your Donald’s hand, may your chains lay lightly upon you, and may our posterity forget that you were our countryman.

Randy Wilde
Meh. She’s more American than many people born in the U.S. She actually believes in the ideals on which the country was founded.

Paul (Drak Bibliophile) Howard
Nope and by my standards, you’re not a Real American and Sarah is.

Nicki  
You’re a fucking moron, and you don’t DESERVE the citizenship of this great nation.

jccarlton
Here’s the thing, Vox, YOU don’t get a say in who’s an American, not anymore. You’ve given that up for a villa in Italy. I imagine that you enjoy it, that means that you no longer have to deal with America’s problems. All your problem are the problems of Europe and you are welcome to them. As for REAL Americans, I would rather have some of the people I’ve had the pleasure of knowing over the years than somebody who is as childish and cowardly as you, Vox. You ran from America’s problems and then had the unmitigated GALL to say that Sarah isn’t good enough to be an American.

My, these transamericans are certainly entitled, aren’t they? Not only can they tell Americans what Real Americans are and are not, but they are going to kick out everyone who doesn’t think like they do, no matter whose posterity they happen might be! Nations aren’t genetically-related peoples, after all, but mere collections of similarly-minded groupthinkers.

Notice that I never said anything about Sarah being good enough to be an American. I never said anything about being American being something good, or even desirable. What I stated is a simple fact, one no more controversial than Sarah being female. She is Portuguese. She is not American. Becoming a U.S. citizen is paperwork; the mere fact that one has to become a U.S. citizen is sufficient to indicate that one is not an American. As it happens, I even know a few Americans who are not U.S. citizens.

Amongst all the emoting, hissy-fitting, posturing, and outrage, only one commenter, Ironbear, was sufficiently perspicacious to note how “the proposition nation” is not only ahistorical fiction, but in practice, must be intrinsically opposed to the genuine Rights of Englishmen on which the original Anglo-American nation was founded.

Is there a way to maintain and defend a nation of ideas without disenfranchising those who demonstrably don’t share those ideas, even though they be born here?

Saying that “We were able to sustain a nation of ideas as long as America remained a melting pot,” is true, but not useful in that context. The America that was is dead dead, and toxic ideas introduced, propagated, and made colour of law and custom by our supposed fellows murdered it – using the power of the vote, among other weapons.

I find Mrs. Hoyt’s concept of a prospective nation formed of ideas, ideals, and based upon shared experiences and principles to be aesthetically pleasing. I also see it as being extremely vulnerable, and demonstrably difficult to defend – unless one is willing to go all the way to the walls in eradicating ideas that are toxic to it, which our relatively recent ancestors didn’t. (I strongly suspect that they didn’t truly see the danger and the toxicity of Marxism until it was too late, or even really recognize what was killing us even then.)

The extremes required to protect those ideas from those who would destroy them with toxic ones are unpalatable as well, and not the least bit aesthetically or otherwise pleasing to me. I find that to be depressing, and without hope of a resolution that is not borne of fire and blood.

He is correct to be dubious. Their “proposition nation” is not even theoretically possible without the sort of thought police that their self-definitive ideals must reject. Defining a nation as a proposition is as intrinsically absurd and self-negating as feminism or communism or open-borders libertarianism. These transamerican idealists consider themselves to be intelligent and well-educated, and yet they have observably failed to even begin to think through the necessary consequences of the very values they erroneously claim makes one American.

And that, my dear Sarah, is one thing that you really should learn from me: ruthlessly thinking through the logical consequences of your foundational assumptions. As it stands, her core position is fundamentally illogical. On the other hand, at least she does seem to have changed her mind about my finally understanding Europe.

He’s become European through and through. He doesn’t wish the US well (doesn’t take much reading to see him gloating at potential destruction of the US. And all I have to do to attract his attention and unhinge him is say the US will survive, even though I don’t direct it at him.)

Under those circumstances for any American to follow his lead on things like presidential nominations is insane.

I don’t wish VD any harm — in fact, he’s pretty much irrelevant to me, in any way our paths intersect — and his ideas might yet win out in Europe. For America they’re a poison pill and as bad as Obama’s.

(Spreads hands and smiles.) Unhinged? Quite the contrary. Sarah and her commenters have beautifully demonstrated exactly what I intended from the start. Their naive USian ideals are fundamentally and functionally antithetical to the historical American ideals they ape so clumsily.

Depending upon how one reckons it, we stand on the verge of the fourth America. I count them as follows:

America 1.0: Constitutional America 1789-1865
America 2.0: American Empire 1865-1913
America 3.0: Republican US 1913-1941
America 3.1: Early Imperial US 1941-1965
America 3:2: Latter Imperial US 1965~2033 (est)
America 4.0: Post-US~2033

Sarah and her defenders are confusing America 2.0 for America 1.0, and are completely unaware that they living in an America 3.2 that is rapidly laying the groundwork for the Post-US. And while I still value the ideals of America 1.0, with a very few exceptions they simply don’t exist in the USA anymore. As for what Sarah calls my “ideas”, they will win out in both the USA and in Europe for the simple reason that they are not my ideas, they are simply my observations of what is already happening.

It is easy to know that I am much more likely to be correct than they are. Lacking imagination – ironic given how many SF writers are there – they assume the future will be the status quo extended into the future. And it will not be. Whatever it will be, it will most certainly not be that, not after the largest invasion in human history.

On the existence of gods

Dominic and I have decided two things. First, we are going to publish the three-round debate with an introduction by him and a conclusion by me as an ebook and audiobook. Second, AFTER the book is published, we are going to continue the debate. Two or three rounds more should be sufficient. Then we will combine the two debates into a single print edition.

Anyhow, I’m interested in the three judges getting in touch here for two reasons. First, to see if they are interested in reprising their role as judges – and I’m talking about the SECOND Christian judge, not the first one. And second, I’d like to know if the Agnostic judge still has his notes and would like them to be included in the book.

It was very interesting to re-read the debate again, since I had forgotten most of it, after reading Umberto Eco’s exchange of letters with Cardinal Martini. And frankly, I thought our debate was not only more interesting, but more intellectually demanding.

Sadly, the impact of my point about the scientific perspective being intrinsically temporally limited by the speed of light being shattered was reduced, though not at all undermined, by the discovery of the CERN researchers that a loose fiber optic cable was to blame for the neutrinos showing up faster than expected.

Neoreaction and the failure of democracy

A very good, very intelligent article called “What is Neoreaction” by Clark, formerly of Popehat.com, at his new group blog Status 451:

Why democracy doesn’t work

In what ways does democracy fail?

First, as noted above, many people vote as an expressive act. The typical Obama voter knew nothing of his policies, but wanted to be “part” of “something”. There are all sorts of cultural and emotional connotations associated with Team Pepsi, and people want to affiliate themselves with those signals. Team Coke is no better: many Republican voters are in favor of a culture of God, Flag, and Apple Pie, and cast a vote for the GOP as an expressive act, without knowing or caring the actual positions of the candidates they vote for.

Second, we are rationally ignorant: even if every voter chose to vote based on policy, not emotions, our individual contribution to the outcome of an election is insanely close to zero, and — at some level — we all know this. Thus, almost none of us bothers to educate ourselves about the candidates and their positions. This is, individually, a smart choice.

Third, democracy has the principal-agent problem: we voters send politicians to Washington DC for — well, for whatever purposes we have. We hope that, once there, they will do our bidding…and we expect to motivate them to do that bidding by using the threat of our future votes and future campaign donations. But a lot is hidden in that “voters hope to motivate them”. Because voters don’t have time or inclination to monitor politicians, and because they tend to vote for expressive purposes rather than policy purposes (think of all the anti-war Democrats who support Obama and his various undeclared overseas wars), politicians need only do just enough to appear to serve the voters, while actually pursuing their own policies.


Fourth, we humans are hyperbolic discounters. Given the
promise of one marshmallow now over two in five minutes, we choose the
one now. Is it any surprise that we, en masse, repeatedly vote for the
politicians who promise us bread and circuses today, and a bill that
won’t come due for … a while?
Fifth, democracy has the public choice problem. There are many
issues which affect each of us very little — ten cents per person in
extra taxes for program X, or three dollars per person more in the price
of a commodity because of trade barrier Y, or a slight bit of extra
hassle in doing thing Z. These hassles, collectively, destroy a lot of
value in our lives, but individually, harm us very little. However,
these small barnacles did not randomly accrete on the body politic —
each is placed there by the dedicated lobbying of some group that
benefits quite a lot from the tax, regulation, or trade barrier.
Ethanol in our gasoline harms all of us a little, but helps a small
influential group quite a lot. The outrageous salaries of some tenured
public school teachers harms all of us a little, but helps a small
influential group quite a lot. As long as one small group benefits from a
regulation, they will be motivated to secure an outsized influence on
politicians. And they will succeed.

However, I would note it should be kept in mind that what the author means by “democracy” here is “representative democracy” and not genuine direct democracy of the sort practiced in Greece, US state referendums, and European national referendums of the sort in which Great Britain is presently engaged. But regardless, a very good article.

My opinion, as I have previously expressed, is that the problems of “mob rule” of which the Founders so famously warned have proven to be considerably fewer and less problematic than the problems of establishing a political elite that uses the illusion of democratic approval as a protective shield. Now that technology makes it viable for larger polities, direct democracy is a moral imperative in any society with a government that is justified by the will of the people.

How can I help?

That is the question we should be asking ourselves regularly, advises Mike Cernovich:

Luck rules our lives, although we can increase our odds of winning – of getting lucky – by taking more spins of the wheel. Thus you must stay busy.

Your life is the sum total of your activities and the people in your life. Be useful to other people. Find ways to meet market demands. Be good to your friends. When is the last time you emailed a friend to say, “How can I help you?”

People are doing poorly at being useful as they believe simply being around a person adds value to their lives. Yet many people are vampires.

Too many people are out for themselves, trying to extract as much value from others as they can.

That’s one way to live, but it doesn’t work for me.

I find ways to be useful to other people, and it works for me.

Instead of wondering why people don’t reach out to you or old friends fall away, why not stop working angles on people, being a manipulator, and simply saying, “Is there anything I can do for you?”

Too many of us practice a warped secular churchianity, where we congratulate ourselves for donating a modicum of money here and there to savages we don’t know in lieu of helping our friends and allies.

But you’re not a better person for helping the stranger and ignoring your neighbor. You’re a worse person, you’re a performance artist. As Jesus himself said, even the tax collectors love those who love them and even the pagans greet their own people.

Now what does it say about you if your own behavior doesn’t even rise to their level?

Just as only the strong can turn the other cheek, only those who help their own first can help others.

This is not a criticism; the readers of Vox Popoli are well-known across the Internet for their strength of support. You not only support me, but you support my allies and you support each other. But it is a reminder, to me, if no one else, that instead of waiting for others to ask if they need our help, we should proactively go to our friends and ask if there is anything we can do.

In that vein, I know there are a number of people here who would very much like to attend the Dev Game course, but cannot afford to do so. Perhaps you lost your job. Perhaps your kids need braces. Perhaps you’re a young man who probably shouldn’t be reading here in the first place, but wants to get into game development.

So, in the interest of following Mike’s lead, I’d like to offer seven free course passes to readers who would have signed up for Dev Game if they’d had the ability to do so. Write me an email today with DG in the subject and a one-paragraph description of what you’d like to do in the game industry; I will select the seven I believe will most benefit from the course and send them registration links.

And be sure you can actually attend on Saturdays before emailing me.

UPDATE: A donor, who wishes to remain anonymous, has made 10 additional seats available for those who cannot afford it. So, if you would like to utilize one of those seats, let me know.

I do not want. I WILL.

Mike Cernovich hits another one out of the freaking park.

How to go from “I want” to “I will.”

The first step from going from a day dreamer to a doer is recognizing the self-sabotaging language patterns we use as part of our self-talk.

As with all mindset training, vigilance is crucial. Stop yourself every time you say, “I want.”

When you say to yourself or others, “I want,” pause and reflect in the moment.

Do you want what you say you want?

Perhaps you don’t. I’ve caught myself saying, “I want…,” and upon reflection, realizing I didn’t want that person or thing in my life.

If you desire in your heart what your mind tells you what you want, begin creating a vision of what you want.

Create a clear vision for what you want.

I said on Twitter that the most significant event of 2016 for me was meeting Mike and Milo in Paris. It was pure serendipity; I didn’t really know who Mike was or why he was co-hosting GGinParis with us, but Mike, Shauna, Spacebunny, and I got together for dinner before the event and we really hit it off in a way one seldom does at my age.

I’m middle-aged. I’m reasonably successful, all things considered, and I’m fairly set in my ways. But Mike inspired me and caused me to need to adjust my thinking in a way that hasn’t happened in decades. Somehow, he made me realize that I’m too prone to thinking about things, and planning things, and contemplating things, and not actually DOING things.

I used to only feed on the Dark Side of the Force. I needed negativity to motivate me; I needed to feel the need to vanquish someone, or something, to really get myself in gear. I don’t think it is a coincidence that my best athletic performances have always come against archrivals or in playoff games. But since having the opportunity to sit down and spend some time with Mike a second time, in Spain, I’ve learned how to act without waiting for that motivation, without having a plan in place, and without overthinking the matter.

And I’ve learned that energy and momentum are contagious. Mike has it. I’m more introverted than he is, but I have more energy than most people my age and I’m learning to let it show so that others can be inspired and feed off it the way I am inspired by Mike’s energy.

Mike is right. Mindset is absolutely key; one of the primary factors in most of my successes has been my unshakable confidence in something, whether it is my speed, my strength, my ability to take a shot, or my intelligence. And two of the primary factors in most of my failures has been either laziness – which is a failure of the will – or a lack of willingness to expect excellence from myself or others – which is a failure of confidence.

In the end, it’s not about intelligence or natural gifts, it’s about mindset. Castalia House WILL become the dominant force in science fiction and fantasy. The Castalia Blog WILL become the leading blog in science fiction, fantasy, and wargaming. And Vox Popoli WILL pass 100 million annual pageviews. I know these things will happen because I can already see them happening.

We’re not there yet, but we’re a damn sight closer to them than we were 12 months ago.

When Man forgets his Creator

He forgets how to create. Once you read this, you will know why John C. Wright’s review of Star Wars: The Force Awakens was the only one I was actually interested in reading. One should not read this being wary of spoilers, but rather of having one’s ability to mindlessly enjoy the cultural detritus of Western decline irretrievably hampered. As always, Mr. Wright cuts to the chase by stating an obvious fact that has nevertheless escaped most of the movie’s critics and fans alike:

How can this movie both at once be a really enjoyable return to a beloved childhood favorite, and be a bland and dull, and in places offensively stupid and politically correct, piece of trash?

Because it is a remake, not a sequel.

Oh, I know that technically it is a sequel, allegedly taking place decades after the close of TEDDY BEARS OF THE JEDI, but the story follows the same plotline, except that the roles of Han, Luke and Leia are all played by Junkyard Girl, since she is the cynical rogue, the innocent novice, and the girl with the McGuffin needing rescue all at once. Except she escapes on her own. The rollerball robot is not as cute and sassy as R2D2, because he is not given as much to do, and the Exhenchman and the Ace Pilot don’t actually do all that much.

There is a way cool scene when the X-wings come screaming across the lake to the rescue. The hollow star-eating weapon-planet with forests and snowy mountains and atmosphere above its hull was a convincingly impressive weapon, but, again, there was no moment where the impressiveness was played up, no moment when someone whispered, that’s no moon…

So it is a fairly good remake as remakes go, and it does what it sets out to do, and recapture some, or almost some, of the energy, cleverness, craft, excitement and innocence of the original.

So why is this not the review I wanted to write, with me dancing jigs on the steeple, painted with woad with bells on my toes, yodeling for joy? Because the jerkwads of Hollywood had to take a favorite movie and crap it up with political correctness. Because this film is critic-proof. No matter how bad it is, everyone and his brother will go see it.

And the political correctness is subtle. It has to be subtle, because if the poison tasted of poison, the victim would spit it out: so it is sugar coated to go down easy. Do you think controlling the myths and dreams of a generation has no effect on the generation? Story tellers are the secret legislators of mankind.

The scene where Luke tosses his lightsaber away rather than using it in righteous wrath to smite the evil Emperor may have only been a scene in a kid’s space opera flick: but the majority of the American public regards exactly that same maneuver, preemptive self-disarmament,  as the only moral and right thing to do in the face of the appalling evils of our present war, a war they dare not admit exist, lest they feel a split second of anger, and like a lightswitch being flipped, turn entirely evil themselves. That is what they think will happen if we fight back. If you smite a Sith, you become a Sith.

Why can’t the modern Leftist tell a decent story? Even when he is copying a good and healthy-minded original scene by scene in a paint-by-numbers fashion, it turns out sick-minded.

The answer is ultimately where all ultimate answers reside, in the deep places of the soul.

When we forget God, we forget how to tell tales. I submit that when a man forgets his Creator, he forgets how to create.

It is rather remarkable, when you think about it. Abrams is no different than Brooks is no different than Scalzi. They are not only “creators” who cannot create, they are parasites who, regardless of their technical skills, cannot even successfully execute a paint-by-the-numbers imitation. Like a colorblind painter, their moral blindness renders them fundamentally incapable of utilizing a full moral palette.

This is, I think, the best realistic outcome for Star Wars fans, and one that is pretty close to what I assumed would be the case. Abrams is a technically competent remaker, and he was never likely to resist the conventional SJWisms. Better a competent and mildly poisonous remake than an incompetent or virulently poisonous one, but all the same, it is a remake, not a genuinely new story.

For that, you’ll have to turn to the Expanded Universe, or, later next year, to an entirely different science fiction universe entitled Faraway Wars: Embers of Empire.

Merry Christmas….

Freedom trumps “free speech”

Eugene Volokh somehow manages to completely miss the salient point. This is why lawyers tend to be intrinsically flawed defenders of freedom; their training predisposes them to miss the forest for the trees:

Monday, a three-judge U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit panel handed down a third opinion in Wollschlaeger v. Governor, the Florida “Docs vs. Glocks” case. Florida law limits doctors’ conversations with patients about guns. The first opinion in the case held that the law wasn’t really a speech restriction, because it just regulated the practice of medicine (a deeply unsound view, I think). The second opinion, issued after a petition for rehearing, changed course and held that the law was a speech restriction, but that — as a restriction on professional-client speech — it had to be judged under “intermediate scrutiny,” which it passed.

First of all, since the State regulates doctors and protects them from competition, they can do anything they want with regards to how they go about their business. Second, as the article shows, what is actually being prohibited is doctors being used as a line of attack against gun rights.

It bans doctors “from unnecessarily harassing a patient about firearm ownership during an examination.” This means, according to the panel majority, that a doctor “should not disparage firearm-owning patients, and should not persist in attempting to speak to the patient about firearm ownership when the subject is not relevant [based on the particularized circumstances of the patient’s case, such as the patient’s being suicidal] to medical care or safety.”

And whenever there is a conflict between gun rights and speech rights, gun rights much always come first, because gun rights defend speech rights far more effectively than speech rights defend gun rights.

But that is a philosophical point, not a legal one, which is why even a libertarian lawyer is likely going to miss it. Here is the crux of his error:

Now I think that the supposed imbalance of power between doctor and patient, like the supposed imbalance of power among students, is quite overstated.

That’s completely absurd. This attempt to turn the medical community into a white-coated Stasi should be shot down in any and every way necessary. 

We’re not radicals or extremists

We’re “policy entrepreneurs”. That’s a useful little phrase, that is.

This dynamic is inherently more challenging for those of us on the Right, who have good reason to believe that politicians’ incentives to placate various factional constituencies are so often at odds with the long-term effort to rein in the federal footprint. While political parties can exist as factions rather than ideological entities, conservatism cannot succeed as a factional constituency to a political party.

Several years ago, Ross Douthat identified the Obama-era GOP’s worst tendency as “[n]ot an ideological extremism, exactly, but rather a vision of government that you might call ‘small government for thee, but not for me,’ in which conservatism is just constituent services for the most reliable Republican groups and voters.” This is the worst of Republicanism, and it is incompatible with conservatives’ long-term project.

The GOP could exist as a political party by handing out patronage to its constituent groups—a prescription drug benefit for seniors, corporate agriculture pork masquerading as a farm bill, Export-Import Bank loans to Boeing. Conservatism, however, has no chance of advancing an agenda in this type of factionalized party.

A conservative reform effort, therefore, requires the Republican Party to forego factional politics and the patronage role of elected officials in favor of winning the argument on a conservative articulation of public policy. We must have the confidence that our reform ideas will best serve the nation and, realistically, if the government we have today has been built over 100 years by progressives with a vastly different conception of good policy, it will require attacking the status quo in a manner that makes niche constituencies nervous.

Never mind the pitchforks and torches. They’re just policy implementation enhancers.

Anyhow, this is precisely what I was saying about a year ago. You must cherish your extremists, not turn your backs on them, much less shoot at them. They provide the impetus for advancement; even if they go too far, at least they are going in the right direction.

Dialogue with a moderate

This discussion between Nate and a #GamerGate moderate should help illustrate the essential problem with the moderate perspective and demonstrate how they are never truly on the side they nominally claim to be supporting. It should also make it clear that for all his posturing and preening, the moderate is guaranteed, on the basis of his own unprincipled philosophy, to be a loser.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If you respond to disagreement with any of these: Shill, Concern Troll, Divide and Conquer, you want a hugbox just like SJWs do.

Nate @bloggerblaster
horse shit. moderates shooting at their own side because they are scared to shoot at the actual enemy. Concern Trolls suck

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Fuck this tribalistic “us vs. them” crap. If you can’t handle dissent, you’re no better than “the enemy”.

Nate @bloggerblaster
We didn’t make them the enemy. They made us the enemy. Talk to them.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
So? If you refuse to allow dissent and dismiss criticism with labels, you’re no better than “the enemy”.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m not dismissing your criticism of me. I’m still talking to you, aren’t I? Meanwhile, you dismiss all criticism from me.

Nate @bloggerblaster
more poser bullshit. Look son…we’re being punched. and now you’re bitching at us because we’re punching back.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m not gonna engage in the same tactics SJWs do when it’s their tactics that make me dislike them in the first place.

NOTE:  The tactics are what make him dislike SJWs. He apparently has no problem with their ideals or objectives.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If I “punch back” in the exact same manner, then there is no functional difference between me and “the enemy”.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If you handle dissent this way, then I have no desire to help you “punch back”. And nor will the vast majority of people.

Nate @bloggerblaster
But using dialect to people who only respond to rhetoric is not only ineffective its actually counter productive.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I don’t compromise my principles for what is supposedly “effective”, especially when I remain unconvinced that your rhetoric will do anything other than alienate those who might be sympathetic but aren’t as extreme.

Vox Day ‏@voxday
That’s because you’re ignorant. Aristotle explained your position was hopelessly wrong 2,400 years ago.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
I’m criticizing the idea of using the exact same tactics SJWs do when SJW tactics are what make me dislike them.

Vox Day @voxday
Then you have no principles. It is the objectives that are relevant, not the tactics.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
It’s the tactics that I find distasteful about SJWs in the first place. If I use those tactics, I’m’ no different.

Nate @bloggerblaster
You’d rather lose than win wrong. Then go away loser. We want to win.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Never compromise. Not even in the face of Armageddon.

Vox Day @voxday
Compromise what? You have no principles. You dislike certain TACTICS. That’s just style over substance. That’s etiquette!

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
My principles forbids the use of certain tactics.

Nate @bloggerblaster
so you admit it. You’d rather lose than win wrong.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
Winning by becoming just like SJWs is no victory at all.

Vox Day @voxday
You’re being a complete idiot. TACTICS do not make you like the other side. They have different objectives.

Nate @bloggerblaster
I would tell you that history is full of losers with your view. but it was written by those that killed them. so no.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
And history is also full of people who fought against monsters and eventually became them in the end.

NOTE: I actually double face-palmed here…

Vox Day @voxday
No, it’s not. That’s a stupid aphorism that isn’t even remotely close to being true.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
And I’m supposed to just accept that so I can beat whichever enemy is in vogue right now? No thanks.

Vox Day @voxday
That’s fine. Then lose. That’s what moderates always do.

Mr. Scary Cell @gameragodzilla
If the extremist tactics on either side win, I lose either way

Nate @bloggerblaster
sounds like you’re used to losing already. So honorable!

 Vox Day @voxday
That’s what we’ve been telling you.

The disorder of the counterfeit virtues

Edward Feser explains how substituting social justice ideals for the cardinal virtues necessarily disorders both SJW minds and society:

Let’s consider the fate of the cardinal virtues in a modern democratic society.  The words “wisdom,” “courage,” “moderation,” and “justice” are certainly not absent in such societies.  To some extent the content of the traditional virtues is even respected — democratic citizens will approve of the courage they read about in military history or see portrayed in movies like Saving Private Ryan, will commend moderation where overindulgence might affect bodily health, and so forth.

But much more prominent than the cardinal virtues — and to a large extent coloring the conception democratic man has of the content of the cardinal virtues — are certain other character traits, such as open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness.  The list will be familiar, since the language of these “virtues” permeates contemporary pop culture and politics, and it can be said to constitute a kind of counterpoint to the traditional cardinal virtues.  And in each case the counter-virtue entails a turn of just the sort one might expect given Plato’s analysis of democracy — from the objective to the subjective, from a focus on the way things actually are to a focus on the way one believes or desires them to be.

Hence wisdom, as a Plato or Aquinas conceives of it, is outward-oriented, involving a grasp of objective truth in the speculative and practical spheres.  Open-mindedness, by contrast, is oriented inwardly, toward the subjective, concerned not with objective reality itself so much as with a willingness to consider alternative views about objective reality.

Courage has to do with the will to do what one ought to do in the face of danger or difficulty.  The courageous man will do his duty even though he is afraid or feels uncomfortable or put upon, and we praise him precisely for ignoring these subjective feelings.  Empathy, by contrast, involves precisely a focus on such feelings — indeed, even to the point of sympathizing with the one who has failed to be courageous.  Courage says: “Yes, it was difficult; but you should have done it anyway.”  Empathy says: “I understand why you didn’t do it; it was so difficult!”

Similarly, moderation tells us that we sometimes need to refrain from indulging our appetites, in some cases even when we have an extremely powerful desire to indulge them.  Tolerance, by contrast, refuses to condemn such indulgence.  Toleration works in tandem with empathy, as moderation works together with courage.  Just as courage is reason’s ally in keeping the appetites at bay — it reminds us that it is weak and shameful to indulge when reason says we shouldn’t — so too is empathy the ally of the appetitive part of the soul in its war with reason, giving it permission to indulge and to ignore what unkind, unfeeling reason is saying.  Courage and moderation command: “You’re a human being!  Don’t act like animal!”  Empathy and toleration respond: “We understand, go ahead, you’re just an animal anyway!” 

Finally, whereas justice requires us to conform our desires to the order of things, fairness commands the order of things to conform itself to our desires.  Justice says: “John is richer than you are and Paul has more authority.  But that is as it should be, since John worked harder and Paul is wiser.”  Fairness says: “John is richer than you are and Paul has more authority.  That’s not fair!”  Justice treats equals equally and unequals unequally.  Fairness treats everyone equally; or rather, it treats everyone the way the one shouting “Unfairness!” thinks they should be treated.

Now, all of that makes the counter-virtues in question sound pretty bad — or it should make them sound bad, anyway — but I hasten to add that none of this entails that there is nothing of value in open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness.  Far from it.  The objective truth at which wisdom aims is not all built into us and it is not all obvious; it needs to be acquired through hard work.  Open-mindedness facilitates that.  Realistically inculcating the virtues, including courage, requires an understanding of actual human circumstances, including human weaknesses.  That requires empathy.  The road to virtue is, given human weakness, inevitably paved with repeated failures to live up to it.  Tolerance of these failures (albeit not approval of them) is, accordingly, no less necessary to the realistic inculcation of virtue than empathy is.  And some inequalities really are rightly decried as unfair insofar as they arise from injustice.  (John might be richer than you because he is more hard-working.  But it might instead be because he is a thief or a fraudster or someone who knows how to game the system.)

So, there can be real value in open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness, and a wise man will acknowledge this.  But it is crucial to see that their value is instrumental.  They are of secondary value, of significance precisely insofar as they facilitate the acquisition of wisdom, courage, moderation, and justice.  A soul which strives primarily to acquire those traditional cardinal virtues, even while acknowledging the value within limits of open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness in the process of acquiring them, is rightly ordered.  But a soul which primarily values open-mindedness, empathy, tolerance, and fairness, and either rejects the traditional cardinal virtues or relegates them to second place, is disordered.

Dr. Feser is more measured than I am. I believe we can confidently declare Equality, Diversity, and Tolerance to be evil, because we can judge them by their fruits. And their fruits are nightmarish and societally destructive.