May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by eugyppius
I might offer a more nuanced, and (hopefully) informed comment on your work later. For now, it seems that the big message is something that I am embarrassed to admit did not dawn on me for months, maybe a year, after the corona-lunacy began. This whole pageant, this whole COVID Dumpster Fire™ as I like to term it, is about *so* much more than asinine knee-jerk containment policies, vaccine half-assery, and improperly administered NPIs. It is about a heretofore unseen level of control. It is about the playing of a "long game" with respect to obtaining and deploying that control. Unfortunately, many of us on Team Reality have been (again, in my parlance) playing checkers while the other side was playing chess. Politics and who is on which side is all part of that irrelevant debate, it seems.
The essence of left politics is and always has been the desire to control. The world can't simply be permitted to BE - it must be changed, managed, optimized, enlightened ... always of course under the direction of the intellectuals of the left, who know what's best for everyone and to whom it never occurs that there might be important details that escape their notice.
The opposite position, that it is frequently better to allow things to take their natural course and permit humans to find their own way for the entirely obvious reason that no one person, theory, or model can encompass all relevant information and dynamics affecting a system, requires a humility that is entirely beyond them.
That describes the great depression and FDR perfectly. He was always doing something, and in doing so, he managed to create the one constant that markets hate: uncertainty. If you didn't know what the rules would be tomorrow, it would be foolish to act on what the rules are today. Don't hire someone new... you may be required to give him something you can't afford when the next arbitrary rule change took place.
When things are in a state of flux, people hunker down and wait for better conditions, and that was exactly what the economy did not need in order to get any better. A recession or a depression is a crisis in confidence ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself") more than anything else, but how can you be confident when you know the guy in charge is monkeying with the rules constantly?
That’s a major factor for the post lockdown malaise we are likely to endure for years. I know I won’t start a business in any of the big lockdown states any time soon.
Actually - they are preventing epic suffering by doing what they are doing.
If they do not then 8B will be left in the dark... starving... look at what is happening in Sri Lanka... and they are not yet starving...
We are into massive overshoot and the collapse of civilization was approaching... the people who run the show are doing something about it... before it's too late
Well the other solution wasn't;t pretty but we will have it in the end. (they get weak and dies of disease and we shoot the boats) Politics is fractal. If you cannot manage the neighbourhood you cannot manage the state. We destabilise ourselves and keep encouraging them. We cannot take the 3billion who want to come so why even take a billion.
While "laissez-faire" turns out to be disastrous for policies (SOME regulation and oversight is always needed!) the left takes the opposite tack and wants EVERYTHING and everyone regulated -- by their perfect selves, of course. Everyone always thinks he'll be the on regulating, not the one being regulated.
Too many decades mucking in toxic policy to let comments about regulation go without a reality check. Oversight functions and regulatory laws are more effective at blocking competition, reducing liability and providing PR cover for dangerous and criminal activity. The beneficiaries complain about the burden as part of a marketing strategy to create an illusion of adversaries in Washington when in fact they're profiteering co-conspirators against the public interests.
Most current example would be EUA w liability wavers for COVID jabs but this is far from unique. Despite all the fanfare about protecting the public most widely used chemicals have NEVER had even the most basic human health and safety testing. Scorecard is the global authority for chemical safety.. UC Davis hosted the database until 2020 when it was pulled w landing page note project ended.
Basic Testing to Identify Chemical Hazards
If an industrial chemical is allowed by law to be released into the environment, most people assume that it must have been tested and evaluated for its potential risks. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Keeping chemical hazards under control requires information about what kinds of hazards each chemical poses. If the basic tests to check on a chemical's toxicity haven't been conducted, or if the results aren't publicly available, current laws tend to treat that chemical as if it were perfectly safe.
Laissez-Faire is obviously not perfect, that’s not what any serious proponent of it would suggest. But letting an entity with a monopoly on violence make all the rules will eventually end in something like what we have, now.
We've been indoctrinated with the assumption that laissez faire leads to anarchy. Our betters want us to believe that we can't survive without government, and we have allowed it to intrude on and regulate every aspect of our lives.
Most people don't. Calvin Coolidge was in office, and he was a laissez-faire type. He let it run its course, and soon it gave way to the roaring 20s, with the depression forgotten. He could have turned it into a multiyear juggernaut as would Hoover and FDR a decade and change later, but he didn't.
Unfortunately, "the next big thing" often makes people blind to the downside, and as we all know, a bubble formed in the stock market. People had irrational exuberance over the stock market, believing somehow that things can go up without coming down, extending credit to anyone and everyone no matter how risky, with the belief that the stocks themselves would always be valuable enough collateral to cover any losses... exactly the same as residential real estate in the years leading up to 2008.
Despite having Coolidge's example of how to deal with a downturn in the economy (let the market correct itself), Hoover chose interventionism, and while the occurrence of the depression itself was not his fault, the preservation of it until what ultimately became the end of his administration was. When FDR came in, he did the same kinds of things at first, and it just went from there, trying one thing after another, with the sole exception being what Coolidge did... nothing.
Despite his role in preserving the depression for years, FDR was popular because he was always seen as doing something, and the people share the same bias toward action that FDR did. It would have been politically dfficult to do nothing and ride it out, since people have the bias toward "at least he's doing something."
Woodrow Wilson was still president in 1920, but incapacitated by a stroke, so that it was his wife who was running things. As a result of the 1920 election, Warren Harding became president in 1921, and Calvin Coolidge vice president. Coolidge only became president when Harding died a couple of years later.
Tens of thousands of my ancestors died because of laissez-faire policies, and millions came to America because of them only to die here, so no, I don' think I will. Medicine often used to be lethal, and food unsanitary, before regulation. I'm all for reasonable regulation. The problem with regulation, as with everything in life, is PEOPLE. Without regulations, people take advantage of others one way. Too much regulation, and different people take advantage of others another way.
Lots of poisonous food still on the grocery store shelves, too. Pesticide and glyphosate residues, as well as hydrogenated oils and hyper-processed food, are not exactly health products.
Your mistake Gail is that you think a monopoly cartel should provide the valuable, useful service of regulatory quality-control. The market provides certification and validation services in many different industries; wherever the government isn't imprinting its obese backside and crowding out competitors with crude controls and lots of resources. For example, people rely on the FDA and/or USDA to inspect and certify drugs and foods. But how many people are harmed each year by adulterated or defective foods or medicines? Do I even have to ask?
You say the problem is "people"; but actually the problem is monopoly. The real debate is monopoly government (a Hobbesian concept) vs. governance. The latter allows a free society, in a decentralized manner, to regulate itself through private mediators, insurance companies, whatever arises in the imagination of producers and is validated by consumer demand.
We will never have a perfect society - because we are people. But competition sharpens the offerings of a society and gives producers and consumers options to do things a better way, without monopoly barriers.
The problem is the regulators are bought and paid for by the industries they supposedly regulate. The entire system has become corrupted. Industry execs become regulators, and vice versa. It’s all a giant mess. At this point I’d be willing to get rid of most all regulation and allow the chips to fall as they may.
You cannot have a perfect world. The government controlling anything leads to what you see today. I'd take a benevolent dictator every time. I'll go with one human rather than hundreds and hundreds who end up going after power and money to get what they want. The right person has both power and money, maybe that person doesn't need to kill others to keep it.
The ideal form of government, the ancients said, was a benevolent ruler. The problem is, of course, that they are very rare. Even if you get one, and even if he stays benevolent, he eventually dies. Every form of government devolves into a bad version of itself as the safeguards put in to stop that from happening are subverted. In theory a government can STOP devolving and improve again. But most of the time, history shows, it gets taken over by something or someone else. Sometimes quickly, sometimes very slowly.
To a certain point some regulations are helpful in preventing harm. But those in the regulation business always continue expansion of regulations indefinitely because they enjoy their jobs. Trump's notion of removing rules to create a new one made sense and gave useful work for regulators in the fact of full bookshelves of rules. The growth of the Federal Register over time reflects the daily arrival of more rules many which go well beyond reducing harm. The regulators regulate.
My brother, rest assured that among the proponents of the free market and laissez-faire political economy, I am in the (nearly psychotic) tail of that distribution!
Those basic rules are a form of regulation....the Human Condition, being as it is will always wind up with entities gaming the system to their benefit so there has to be that invisible hand of governance to do the best it can to provide an equal playing field for entry and exit as well as incentive to innovation......what has transpired over decades is a movment away from those basic rules and the real consequences of violating them to a regulatory nightmare that has no teeth, created largely by both out of touch liberals and/or lobbyists .....
History shows that the natural course of things is the lowest common denominator - namely an authoritarian hierarchy. This is the default state for civilization. Monarchy, dictatorship, aristocracy, oligarchy, plutacracy - take your pick. It all comes back to rule by force. Governments based on universal rights are sadly, a historical aberation. This doesn't mean that citizens would have no rights, only that rights are not universal nor garunteed by governments. Think pre-1800 societies, or perhaps in some cases pre-1500 societies.
There's no left and right. That's the problem. Anyone who believes the 'opposition' figures are any better are in delusion.
Orban's name particularly upsets me here. He seems he is doing something differently but he is not. He is not for the people.
Him and his followers were all blinded by covid hysteria and vaccination propaganda. All shunned the unvaccinated and they were absolutely vile about it. He made mandatory vaccination available by employers in very early times. He made students suffer by mandating quarantine only for unvaccinated kids even if a vaccinated tested positive in a class. (and many other hidden trickery)
About his family propaganda: from 1st of January any private reproduction assisting clinic ceased to exist.
About his fake immigration policies: while on the surface he opposes immigration he made available emergency visas to bring cheap labour to Hungary for example from Vietnam or Ukraine (way before the war) also no problem being an immigrant if you pay his cronies around 300k euro to get a golden visa (used by international criminals and russian spies very frequently)
His anti-LGBTQ propaganda is just to cover bigger scandals: robbed money through enormous and ridiculous projects.
I am done with left/right political theater. If someone isn't comfortable with the label "libertarian" then they are an authoritarian. When given the power, they will impose their worldview on everyone else.
Yeah. EVEN LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL has it's "own" set of rules now. Baseball is ever different with a dozen more rules than actual baseball. Soon they'll be calling it something else too.
The average neighborhood HOA has pages of rules, regulations, fees, etc. Ours DNA tests all the dogs and keeps it on file so the non-poop-picker-uppers can be discovered and motivated with a fine.
The struggle over the narrative is a fight over the world we live in. The WEF oligarchs, the people running the pandemic response, are using fear and force as they try to replace the 'old normal' with their 'new normal'. Kind of like the security theater and ridiculous intrusions into privacy and suspension of rights that Americans accepted for the "war on terror," now they are making their move on the entire western world with the "war on covid".
To better learn what to expect next, look at their preparations and pandemic war game exercises. The Gates book provided insights, thank you Eugy for suffering through it.
Public health covidians are not crazy, they are just reading off the original script. Gates gave the people in power a plan. It was never about reality, critical thinking, or making adjustments as data arose. They were given a plan, and they are sticking with it.
Perhaps Klaus' book "The Great Narrative" provides further insight into what to expect next from the cabal. Has anyone read it?
And what it has shown up is a failure of so-called multi-party democracy. There has been a complete failure of the official political opposition. This of course is baked in to coalition politics where the parties rely on each other to keep their noses in the trough, but it has been evident elsewhere where the only ‘opposition’ from opposition parties is lockdown, etc should have been imposed earlier, harder and longer. Nor is there a Left/Right divide. Governments on both sides have behaved just as badly, with a few notable, honourable exception at State level in the USA.
A political subspecies has emerged and dominates the ruling class. They are evil.
Okay, so first, agreed! But to a more nuanced point, the political system in the U.S. precludes, that is, absolutely removes from contention, the concept of a viable third party. This is classic Duverger's Law. In a first-past-the-post voting scheme, there can *only* be two (2) viable parties, regardless of issue, or whatever. As I already said, this is a nuance, but those who wonder why some viable third party candidate can never win would do well to study the theories. (Apologies for being pedantic!)
Yes, we are playing a different game. Those on Team Reality continue to express logic in response to the tsunami of incoherent lunacy coming from Team Global, who meanwhile, pay not a whit of attention to any facts presented to them because they are simply not interested. They are driven by narrative, by emotion, to win at all cost. After faithfully reading, listening and commenting on a range of platforms, blogs and channels for 2-3 years now, I have concluded like others before me that Team Global are intent on destroying western civilization and it is gonna take more than a few additional facts to stop them.
Infiltration will not work to re-take the institutions for precisely the reason you describe: the left knows that game and will not allow it, being only too willing to deploy ideological tests. The demand that one submit to the jab is only the latest and most intimate of these.
Nor can the the institutions be re-taken at the ballot box. As the left demonstrated in 2020, they're only too happy to steal elections in broad daylight and then lie infamously about it in the aftermath.
The only way they can be defeated is by allowing them to rule an empire of ashes. Let them keep their legacy media outlets, their universities, their stolen legislatures. As they pack them full of bought men, mid-wit yes men, and diversity hires, the competence of those institutions plummets. Having been barred from those institutions, competent men will have to go somewhere. The most obvious thing for such men to do is to build new institutions, which perform the functions of the suborned institutions more effectively. Having done so, prestige, loyalty, and power will naturally flow from the hollow shells of the old to the shiny skins of the new.
It won't be quick, it won't be easy, but it's the only way.
Part of me, that part of me educated via the propaganda of social studies in public schools, hopes you are wrong. The part of me that has watched unrepentant assholes ascend to positions of power all over the spectrum--particularly in legacy media, universities, and the legislature--knows you are absolutely correct. Wrestling with pigs in their mud only results in getting dirty and frustrated, while losing.
As someone who has literally wrestled pigs, it can be a good time if you know exactly what you're getting into, and have no illusions about the outcome. This may or may not apply to the metaphor as well- Ben Shapiro comes to mind.
I think the axiom is "Never teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." Maybe your version is a conflation with "lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas." They are both truths, but not sure either one quite describes our shared dilemma. The pigs are the choir, now, and aren't interested in wrestling us.
The institutions can't be retaken by ballots, but they cannot be retaken without them. We have another opportunity in November. Few are prepared for what could happen if that fails. No one will like that alternative, so it's important we make it work. It won't happen with a complacent population.
Of course we will have mail-in ballots in the USSA. The Fall C0VID Variant (TM) is due to arrive then, and we'll be locked down. The Science (TM) says the Only Solution to C0VID are masks, lockdowns and endless vaxxines. And the proles believe it.
The problem in the U.S. is, the leadership of the Republican Party is incredibly weak/complacent. In 2020, they knew these drop boxes and mail in ballots were unconstitutional and illegal, yet did nothing to challenge them. I have heard that whistle blowers went to the Republican Party before the election and were ignored.
Out of Watergate, "follow the money" became part of the lexicon. My comment: EVERY politician and bureaucrat gets a paycheck from the same place. Executive Branch, Congressional Branch, Judicial Branch. Checks all come from the US Treasury.
That is where the rewards come from. The threats come from the deep state. They are using both to shut everyone up...so if you don't respond to the $$$ you will certainly respond to the threat of killing your family member or yourself, or even just release false information that you are a pedophile or closet whatever, or you like porn (it will be installed on your computer)...Does no one get that we are totally controlled now by the CIA/NSA/DeepState?
None were heard because of standing. No evidence was allowed to be presented. The only one who called it out was Clarence Thomas...because our judges are also very aware of what could happen to them if they go against the deep state.
BTW, the Dems want only power. They have weaponized everything, but as long as they are allowed to continue their Racketeering for $$, they have no problem in going along. They have been promised by our Deep state...and fully aware of who is running the government. And they have been playing ball.
The DNC holds the power. If you are a Republican the weaponized law enforcement, media and courts has changed the game completely. Just look at the Durham findings. Look at the Biden laptop.
Yes we have pretend DNC controlled opposition claiming to be Republicans and Conservatives, as well as those that have a gun to their head. That is why I do not believe it is inevitable corp money controls it all. The Hillary emails that were released showing that structure in operation did not get any real traction in the world only prove my point. The outrage was not for the content of the emails but that fact that the emails were stollen.
No, That is what Eugyppius just pointed out above...most people think it is one party, but it is actually that the right keeps hoping to become the elite and go back to the institutions and life they had before...which is insane and not possible. But this is their ardent hope, and why they diss the depolorables along with the left.
I dont think people realize what will happen if elections fail and faith in them continues to decline. We already see 20 state in the US have officially called for a Convention of States which is a big deal. You see the imperative for it from the Populist argument being made. You see it in the US migration patterns as well.
It has begun to feel like someone using using AI in this conversation and is staying many steps ahead. The rapid shift in messaging is amazing.
20 states isn't enough. Needs 34. Ain't gonna happen in an evenly divided country. But the real problem isn't the Constitution or any other law, it's we the people. No law influences those who are above the law. School shooters ignore criminal law, rainbow jihadists ignore biology, and congress speaks publicly of writing laws they're exempt from to diminish our liberties. Solutions will only come from convincing supporters of fascism they're wrong, and punishing those who can't be convinced. Some people are just inherently, irredeemably bad. Can't be helped, only eliminated.
I hear the parallel institutions argument a lot, but i can't see how even a medium size institution seeking to gain power wouldn't be subject to lawfare, deplatforming, removal of payment processing, and a potential visit from anarcho-tyrannical mobs.
Yes, it's more complicated practical problem than that. The idea of "start our own universities!" falls at the first "who wants to send their own personal kid to a non-accredited institution?" hurdle. A degree from a non-accredited institution opens no doors.
and it misses what is key to conservatism: the idea that old structures are worth preserving. If our response to the scorched earth of contemporary leftism is "oh yeah? WE NOW HAVE FLAME THROWERS TOO BABY", well, good luck and god help us all. New institutions will inherently lack what is most precious about old institutions.
The analysis of the complicity of conservatism is excellent here; what to do about it, still unclear. For me a key moment was when a recent "conversion therapy" bill passed in Canada with no discussion and no vote: not a single conservative in the entire legislative apparatus dared to say "actually sterilizing gay lesbian and autistic kids is possibly not entirely bueno". Not ONE. And they'd gotten a tremendous amount of contact from the public about it and they even could have trotted out scores of radical feminists as cover from attacks from the left. Nope. No interest, no spine, nothing.
>not a single conservative in the entire legislative apparatus dared to say "actually sterilizing gay lesbian and autistic kids is possibly not entirely bueno".
Cue joke about conservatives agreeing with liberals for all the wrong reasons.
We've seen repeatedly that attempts to build alt-institutions on their own end up not being viable for precisely the reason that their reliance on other elements of the system amounts to fatal exploitable weaknesses. It follows that what's needed isn't a piecemeal response, but rather a comprehensive solution that provides a full, integrated societal stack: financial transactions, education & training, food supply, manufacturing, energy, defense, dispute resolution, etc.
We need people skilled in every profession collecting around a programmatic Schelling point with the aim of providing for all basic human needs; doing so better than the current system; and doing so without the involvement of the globalist technoratic elements that seek our enslavement.
I don't think the "build an alternative platform/society" strategy is viable.
You're dealing with oligarchs who are just wearing the left as a skin suit.
In their religion, "competition is a sin".
They will cut down your tree while it is still a sapling.
Parler was a good microcosm of that principle at play. They don't play by any rules (that's the in-joke behind the title of the book "Rules" For Radicals). Amazon not only defiled it's contractual obligations, it illegally stole their data and then leaked user data. There is nothing honorable about the way they operate. They have rules, but they are Satanic in principle (one does not need to believe in Satan to know the principles).
No, good men will not be able to create a parallel society while they keep to themselves. You do not understand the nature of colonialism. That's what this is - global, generational, social, societal, COMPLETE occupation. There's not even a word to describe what this megalomania is determined to achieve. Not even "technocracy" covers it. Maybe the word "Hell" will do for now.
Technocracy has been in the works since the 30's...so to me, it explains the hell we are currently be nudged into. All encompassing digital slavery...forever.
Just because they were successful in a situation where everyone assumed the RNC was being vigilant to keep the DNC and Mark Elias et al honest, doesn't mean that engagement can't overcome such strategies. A coherent populist strategy hasn't even been articulated, let alone implemented. By all means start up new institutions, but don't give up on the constitution, this fight hasn't even started.
>>> "It won't be quick, it won't be easy, but it's the only way"
It's pretty unlikely that this is how it will pan out, though; my own view is that we're approaching a stage where there is no prospect of systemic change without widespread violence and (hopefully highly-targeted) blood-letting.
Thoreau's "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" is being increasingly borne out: there is rising tension, even among those 5% or so who have the cognitive wherewithal to position themselves to be largely immune to GloboCap (I usually use a different term, but whatev).
The actual 'Mass Man' - the median schlub, with his 6x-income-mortgage, car loan, credit-card debt and labour-market precarity - sees the data and the worsening global geopolitical framework, and knows that nobody in authority feels the slightest empathy.
It will not take 1970s redux - years of 10% inflation - for there to be ACTUAL armed insurrection (as opposed to Jan6 LARPing being misrepresented by the media). In the 1970s there were no food shortages - but we've all been warned that those are coming.
The old saying "a society is only ever 3 meals away from revolution" (Lenin) or "9 meals from anarchy" (A.H. Lewis) or "4 meals from anarchy" (MI5) has never been more salient at any time in my recollection (going back to the 1970s) than it is right now.
We might get to find out whose guess was closest. We can safely bet MI5's guess will be wrong: like the CIA, they have never been right about anything, ever - even if they're predicting something thing has already happened (and/or that they organised).
If the 'apples to apples' CPI calculation is used - the one that obtained before 1987, when Greenspan and his chums decided to gyp retirees of COLA adjustments - current inflation through the West is in the solid double-digits.
Even people who get their information from the organised _gavage_ of the TV news, are starting to grok that the media is complicit in lying to them: the Mass Man knows that he is 'going backwards' in real terms, even if his 65" TV was only $500.
See Tim Morgan's blog, www.surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com. 'The economy' isn't about money, it's about surplus energy which from ~1870 to 2010 came from cheap, easily-extracted oil.
Yes, many people in developed countries are now probably less well-off than in 1975 (purchasing power, including cost of housing). The dramatic rise in inequality has given the UK more homeless people and food banks than I ever remember from my youth.
As for 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', surveys done in the 1970s - Denmark I think - suggested that most people wanted more leisure, not more money. We didn't get that; see David Graeber's book 'Bullshit Jobs'.
BUT that is the same basis as why technocracy/one world government/digital slavery was invented in the 1930's...energy drives everything...they knew it, and proposed Technocracy as a way to convert every human life into an energy consumer/producer.
We have gone from actual slavery (since mankind can remember) to technological slavery (comeing soon to a theatre near you. So Maybe the 1870's to 2010 was a total abberation in the history of the human race.
Me, I prefer to believe that someone, sometime (sooner dear lord rather than later) will come up with a good alternative energy source....in the meantime, nuclear will do.
Save the oil for cars, and Natural gas for processing plants and heat.
Legacy media is far from gone but its current state is instructive. It is no longer in the position of setting the media cycle. The Internet hive mind is running the show now. Rather than telling everyone what to think, legacy media are in the defensive position of playing catch-up with the hive mind and shrieking, "No! You mustn't think that!" In other words, legacy media are now in the reactive position of trying to deboonk information gathered and disseminated by networked humanity ... internet media and legacy media have switched places from where they were until about a year ago (only legacy media has a much harder job, as they don't have the truth on their side....)
This model having proven effective, it now remains to apply it elsewhere.
Centralization has never been a good survival strategy. Which is why both sides want everything centralized. YOu are correct, starvation is a cure. Never again patronize one social media (and be warned they have interlocking directorates if not outright ownership)...If we do, eventually they will be forced to take down the electricity/web, and then what? I foresee "The Road"...But that will help eliminate all us useless eaters. It is very depressing.
The trucker protest in Canada gave us a glimpse of the power of the people. The indignation and disgust heaped on them, and the emergency law enacted to stop them showed how scary this was for both sides of the political spectrum. This is the only possible hope, populism - and that is why both populism and freedom are now ultra-right-wing horrible dirty words that you cannot even utter in mixed company without fear of retribution.
Exactly. Think about it. It was *just* some truckers who thought the government had overstepped. The response to them asking these questions was coordinated, extreme, pseudo-legal, "we must protect the government" action. I mean, is not the "right to protest" mentioned in some documents, someplace?
Right on. Of course you are correct that the form of governance in Canada includes democratic rights. The right to petition the government, to speak one's mind, to assemble to do so, and to travel to do so are all liberties tht are beyond even the Notwhitstnding Clause of the Constitution. This is because the clause itself is meant as an instrument of democracy; its passage and its re-enactment are open to the democratic process and thus the liberties are beyond the reach of the Clause. Something like this applies to the Emergencies Measures Act, also. But if the government, in practice, gets away with sweeping it all aside, then, the form of governance is deeply flawed and the Opposition has been entirely defenestrated. And so it is left to the People. In this way, the fascist thugs in power get their mob at the door with overthrow on their minds. For now, the governmental structure is bluffing and counting on the People to show greater restraint than the PEOPLE would if a foreign enemy had invaded with armed forces.
There's a German guy I'm listening to at the moment, Ralph Masilamani, who is doing a lot of work in this direction.
He had a recent video analysing Yanis Varafakis' left wing populist movement and how it compares to right wing populism. Both sides are talking about the power of unaccountable oligarchs.
Populism transcends left-right binaries, for example, temperamentally right wing people wanted Amazon broken up because it destroys small indigenous businesses, those on the left because its not fair to the workers.
The fundamental issue is that there is a perceived lack of legitimacy and accountability in the ruling class and their institutions.
There's also a strange tension between the "democracy is a sham, protests don't work" and the needs of the regime to constantly manage public opinion. If they really were indifferent to public opinion the wouldn't expend so much time and resources doing so.
Speaking as a Canadian, yes, it was truly a joy to finally behold some pushback from the people against our wicked government. But I have to say, I've also been inspired by the mass protests of last year all across Europe, and hope to see many more. May Christ frustrate the plans of the tyrants!
Yes, the fact that the truckers so obviously spooked the powers that be was really heartening: they did not seem to think "oh ha ha we discussed this last week in our secret underground lair, Jeff Epstein said not to worry about those deluded underclass fools". I'm never sure how much of a tin foil hatted conspiracist to be and I'm always glad for clear reasons to pull in my elaborate tinfoil antlers a bit.
Malone's Jefferson quotes in https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/action-will-delineate-and-define suggest revolution may be necessary from time to time. The truckers were in effect a kind of revolution without the guns. Starting with some 20% approval as the strike evolved approval climbed into the > 60%. Polling has been nearly impossible to find anymore. We understand why.
I have heard the term Physical vs the Virtual is rapidly replacing the left and right. Those that touch things seem to have a different politics view than those that do not know where food comes from.
Ironically, given the striking similarities between the cognitive styles and left and right and the cognitive styles of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, these terms may be more apt than we'd expected.
TBH I think the real divide is between those who take the universe as a given and think we should manage our expectations accordingly, and those who take our expectations as a given and think we should manage the universe accordingly.
They conserve their place in the establishment--their place at the table, at least for some scraps. An old saw, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
Conservatism is in some sense defined by a lack of interest in politics. The _most_ politically interested conservatives end up joining conservative politics, but then end up with relatively little in terms of overall agenda - exactly because their intuition is that using the power of politics to change society is a risky and bad idea! So conservatives tend to just accept whatever status quo they inherited from the left and achieve relatively little.
I think to move forward here will require several things:
1. Separating the concept of libertarianism from conservatism and promoting the former. If you look at what political ideology REALLY makes leftists mad, it's not actually conservatism - they hardly talk about that. It's not even "the right", which often ends up meaning little more than "anyone who doesn't immediately adopt The Current Thing", nor "capital" which is just people who didn't get the memo that it's not the 1930s anymore. No, if you want to see people on the institutional left really spit poison you need to ask them about libertarianism.
This is hard to notice because hardly anyone ever asks them about this, but I do distinctly remember even the anti-lockdown Sunetra Gupta being VERY keen to tell everyone that even though she was anti-lockdown she _definitely_ wasn't a libertarian. And if you look at the attacks mounted by pro-lockdown academics on those they disagreed with, their kneejerk reaction was _not_ to attack critics as conservative but rather as _libertarian_.
Libertarianism has the advantage that it's actually a concrete belief system, not a mere attempt to 'conserve' whatever happens to currently exist. Libertarianism also has no particular loyalty to existing institutions, being very careful about which ones it considered necessary vs optional.
Of course promoting libertarianism is difficult because the people who are keenest libertarians are typically busy buying Twitter or trying to build the next one. They are almost by definition people who want to stay away from politics.
2. Framing academia as a problem to be solved. Eugyppius probably isn't going to like this sort of analysis - it's an understandable blind spot given that he is himself a (former?) academic - but to put it bluntly, academia is a massive stronghold of radical left wing crazyness and always has been. Not only does it employ massive numbers of people who get to pose as scientists and researchers whilst doing no such thing, but it's a committee-driven Soviet style economy tailor made to breed people who have absolutely broken intuitions about tradeoffs, resource allocation and other bread-and-butter topics.
Lockdown, CRT, communism itself (Marx desperately wanted to be an academic), these are just some of the poisonous fruits academia has gifted us with.
Do we actually need it? Conservatives would say yes and be shocked at the very idea there could be another answer. My inclination is increasingly: no. I've just read SO ... DAMN ... MANY ... garbage, mendacious, toxic and utterly disingenuous research papers over the years that frankly as far as I'm concerned every university could be disbanded tomorrow and the world would immediately improve. Virtually none of the research done there has any positive real world impact, and that small amount could be done by industry. Especially if combined with a rethought patent system. As for teaching, well, they seem to have completely lost interest in that during corona times. Who really cares? Companies should train their own workers.
3. A snappily written and well thought out rebuttal to woke-ism (a.k.a. modern day leftism). The closest I've come to seeing such things are the works of Thomas Sowell but he is obscure, by now very elderly and his writing is dense. A lot of politics is simply mimicry and repetition of ideas found elsewhere which is why academia is the HQ of leftism - it lets people sit around all day evolving and mutating ideas into whatever form eventually finds memetic fitness and escapes into the wider world. Conservatives rely heavily on think tanks but the average thinktanker is much more at home writing wonky 'respectable' economic analysis, than taking on the underlying causes of left wing delusion directly. And of course that sector is nowhere near as well funded.
Libertarianism is basically just classical liberalism, which already failed to stop the rise of leftism. Even if we somehow converted society at large to libertarian beliefs, what makes you think it'd be any more successful at stopping leftism this time around?
"Classical liberalism" is the term most often used in Europe yes. It's not quite the same thing though.
Still, I'd say it actually did a pretty good job of holding off leftism so far. The west remained communism-free for the entire 20th century. What's going wrong now is that people took it for granted and forgot how to argue for it, also, they didn't take measures against the enemies of liberalism and allowed them to grow and build power bases.
But it's much easier to argue for classical liberal morality than for leftism. People need to do it, and need to remember what the arguments actually are. The USA is ahead in that space. The thinking and philosophy behind libertarianism are on a firmer theoretical foundation than the European equivalents, in my view.
<i>Still, I'd say it actually did a pretty good job of holding off leftism so far. The west remained communism-free for the entire 20th century.</i>
Half of Europe was communist for most of the later 20th century, and a significant portion of elites in the rest of the Western world were either communist sympathisers or outright communists.
<i>But it's much easier to argue for classical liberal morality than for leftism.</i>
Actually, no, it's completely the opposite. Once you accept the liberal premise that people should be free to do what they want, it's arbitrary to apply this to government pressure but not to social pressure. Not only that, but by hollowing out the institutions and communities which previously stood intermediate between the individual and the state -- the family, church, local communities, etc. -- liberalism creates a society of atomised individuals, who find it much harder to band together against state overreach, and rely on the state to a much greater degree than they previously did.
i can't work out Daniel Schmachtenberger and his consilience project... a parallel structures endeavour? searching out the tech/ modern capabilities to grow new societal structures organically without perverse financial incentives? he was on think tanks, (formerly idw which seems to have eaten itself and i found to be intellectual white males pontificating) but war on sensemaking 1 i found very interesting on evolving information ecosystem, before covid. He was homeschooled, activist, seems genius to me, alert to patent law shambles and blue church stuff of Jordan hall; paperclip generator of modern capitalism and existential & catastrophic risks; wouldn't get embroiled re vaccs, has rubbed shoulders with/ seen at work sociopathic class/ back slappers and their deals 1st hand; BUT seems to regard 1 world goverNANCE as essential...I saw maybe Jordan hall speaking on a meeting with high up bankers asking how to save themselves when " this all went down" ... pre cvd, and was offered vast sums to advise. these were maths/ tech guys with academic credentials and insight in " elite" ie moneyed circles
They wouldn't defund every institution - libertarians aren't anarchists. They tend to believe in a strong, well funded justice system that can efficiently arbitrate disputes for example, especially contract disputes. They tend to believe in a well funded army and police, because they believe one of the core roles of the state is to monopolize violence. And so on.
Universities also wouldn't be completely defunded even in a purist libertarian government, they just wouldn't get government grants or student loan subsidies anymore. They'd have to rely on donations from alumni, grants from foundations, patent revenues, student fees from students who could afford them and so on. Some universities would survive, albeit probably a lot smaller.
However, if the culture were to become libertarian and not just the government, then it's likely that alumni donations and foundation grants would dwindle too, because libertarians don't believe this sort of charity/"dumb money" works well. Market mechanisms are seen as a core requirement for actually achieving whatever goals you set out to solve, regardless of whether they're altruisitic or not.
Same thing with the refugees that got into Belgium, almost all young and healthy men and very few real refugees, women, children, elderly.
As to government, I don't know much about politics but I think most all politicians do one thing well and that is fill their pockets. In all of the US government, less than a handful do something for the people. The 3 I remember right off are 3 republicans. The house milkers are almost all democrats. They are all wealthy, earning more in a year than most people in their whole lives, and keep being paid pensions even after one round of government.
Let's not forget the eagerness of all those young European women to let those military age males into Europe. What was that one sign that made the rounds? "Sex with refugees is jasmine-scented and beautiful"?
The running joke was that if the refugees consisted of nubile Eastern European women, European ladies would be far less enthusiastic. Recent events however seem to have put the lie to that so far (although it' certainly seems true that it got more European men on board).
I did notice a few stories about European countries balking at taking Ukrainian "refugees" when the war started, though they didn't seem to last very long. It was amusing to see that the government officials quoted in them were always women.
It's much like how, for the last few decades in the US, the only immigrants it was hard to get into the country for even a visit were mail-order brides, especially those from Eastern Europe and Asia. The excuse was always that they were trying to protect them from being exploited, of course, but oddly enough that never applied to brown fruit-pickers working for below minimum wage.
There are not many of those around. Now we're supposed to deny that there are any biological differences between the sexes, and to the extent that there are, we are supposed to vilify everything male and lionize everything feminine. "Toxic masculinity" is a thing, but I have yet to hear about "toxic femininity" or anything like that.
Plus lifetime, gold plated health insurance. Lst checked under Obama - MoC family plan with vision, dental, drug-alcohol rehab, mental health and zero deductible was $50/year. Who knows with inflation it may have doubled to 100 bucks yearly.. thank goodness Congress were able to vote themselves pay raises to absorb the impact.
The same in Greece with the refugees ,especially the last three years the majority is "unaccompanied minors" as they call them, actual most of them over 18 and all of them males.
In America, conservatives are merely the other side of the same coin with leftist. Pro war, pro deficit spending, pro mass illegal immigration and pro Covid control. Not much difference here. Just proving the left is hypocritical seems good enough most days. Actually taking a stand and doing something does not seem to be required. We have a small number of Libertarians like Rand Paul that will say the right things but carry no real power. I fear we are lost either through ideology or having been bought and paid for. Take your pick. Our military industrial, pharmaceutical and entertainment lobby own most government officials including the judiciary. The left has an objective by any means necessary and the right just delays at best. Incredibly hard times are coming and fast. No one does to it's people what our government is doing to us if they didn't want to actually kill off millions. My position is pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
They are robbing the U.S. Treasury while an incredible number of Americans are entirely unaware and dare I say uninterested in knowing what is going on. An astounding number of people simply live their lives locally and never find out a thing about the games being played in government. How can they be anything other than low information voters, if they vote at all.
The coming issue of interest on the US debt will likely cause considerable pain as we discover modern theory of forever printing money doesn't work. Whether a woke military can prevent a hostile takeover is unknown.
This is a really wonderful, clear, beautifully-expressed piece and I'm glad to have read it. It should be slipped under everyone's door in the dead of night; tucked secretly in lunchboxes and left surreptitiously on park benches, kept from flying away by any handy stone or twig.
You don't know how glad I am to have found your writings. Almost everyone I may have ever thought intelligent or thoughtful in the Before Times has proven entirely otherwise and it's painful to be in the rapidly-tarnishing state of my golden years.
PS: Please tell me the source of the frogs illustration on your Twitter page. Making me nuts not to know.
Yes. I agree. When I read this article, my heart leaped! At last someone had put into words that I could understand my observations and concerns and provided an explanation as to why so called conservative politicians keep letting us down. Happening right here in NZ where the government is rapidly losing support but the opposition party still support climate change measures etc.
It's a perfect example of the descriptive "elegant." Really made my day, because so many morons self-dubbed "political commentators" haven't come within a gazillion lightyears of such clarity.
Of course to be happy about having our horrors explicated so beautifully tells you exactly how awful things are right now...
Like you my main memory from the Merkel’s Great Replacement will be the following: A video of Syrian “refugees” stepping out of a train at the Vienna main train station. While Austrians are welcoming them with flowers and open arms as a warm welcome, two Syrian teenagers give a hateful look at the camera and both make the “throat slicing” gesture with their right hand. And the apologizing comments from the journalist were even more scary: “You have to understand these kids have seen too much destruction and suffered from much deprivation.”
I need to read this a few more times to see whether I fully agree with it or not, but you make many excellent points. One initial comment on this:
"Whereas MKH constructs the conservative primarily as an individual, the left appears in his pages as an ideology – one which holds that society is a human construct; that traditional social structures are repressive; that denies man’s biological nature; and that is ultimately hostile to western civilisation, which it seeks to replace in the future with socialist utopia. “One can either entirely reject this system of patent insanity, or not at all” (p. 69). The conservative’s belief that he can adopt some leftist principles for pragmatic purposes, or in a spirit of compromise, are therefore mistaken. The system he opposes demands absolute submission; anything less makes him an enemy regardless.
I used to work for a pro-life organization and witnessed many times the willingness of the pro-abortion people (many of them very far left, and sometimes members of actual socialist parties) to come together to do different things they might not all agree with, subsuming their own views for the chance to accomplish something like those goals. They would all carry identical signs and stand in a line at a counter protest, for instance (sometimes after all being bussed there) while the people protesting came separately, with their own handmade signs saying whatever each most wanted to say, and stood in little groups. The leftists always looked large, organized, and "on message," even if they showed up knowing little about the protest (I'd talk to them myself and sometimes found some who knew almost NOTHING about the protest.
For instance, at one event I went to protesting a state healthcare bill that included abortion provisions, several of the young women counter-protesting with signs thanking a legislator for voting for it were from another state, in town helping out the homeless, and had come with a group of actual homeless people brought there by organizers. I asked them if they thought they should be there when they didn't live in the state or know the issue, and one of them told me, "Well, I just think doing something is better than doing nothing, so I'll say thank you!"
Conservatives do not want to do things like this. They want to pick their battles, say only what they believe and endorse, and otherwise go about their business. As a result, they lose.
May 16, 2022·edited May 16, 2022Liked by eugyppius
In DC, everyone wants to be invited to the cocktail parties and be part of the uniparty. Can't do that as a wide open conservative. With the exception of a few brave souls, it's a corruption cesspool on the left and RINO right.
Wow! This is a treatise that describes and explains exactly what we are seeing in my country - Australia. At least c19 has revealed the frightening progression of the power of the elites and their bureaucratic henchmen in attacking basic liberties. And all the while the “conservatives” just acquiesce, like the proverbial frogs in the boiling water, in the Lobg March. And yet, there is the glimmer of hope coming from the downtrodden working families. Not from the well heeled and comfortable and “well educated” middle class, of course, but from this Aussies that still enjoy clear sighted common sense. I saw this clearly in a non publicised protest rally re vaccination of over 100,000 families (with kids and dogs) at our capital city, Canberra, last year . They were very angry, as they were threatened with losing their jobs if they continued to refuse to be vaccinated. I was so immensely proud of them. They gave me hope for the future. But I thought how odd it was - these are the very people the Left are meant to represent!
Vicki, have you noticed that the Liberals merely enact the policies of Labor/Greens for them? The left have never cared about people - this is one of their great myths that they build around themselves. The truth is the opposite. For them it is always about destroying anything meaningful, and reducing everyone to nothingness in sameness. This is the key to their hellish Utopian pogrom. They are at war with the human soul. The 'conservatives' at heart are little different. They exist within the same humanist, nihilist philosophical system, and for them also the 'state' is the locus of all meaning - so they think they are like gods. We are seeing the rapid escalation of the end-game of philosophical humanism within our culture.
Thank you for this. I lived in Switzerland as a teen and have some memory of German, but not enough to understand this book. You and the book’s author are absolutely correct and I wished more conservatives realized this.
You made a comment a few months ago that really stays with me; the past few years have changed you and you will never be the same. I feel the same way, but also feel isolated. I live in heavily blue, progressive Los Angeles and seem to be one of the few who has been so traumatized by the past two years and sees something very wrong and evil in the world. I can’t imagine going back to the way I was in 2019, even though I wish I could.
The “uniparty” party of Godless commies… fascist/communist/WEF to the core… I am so sick of politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth on BOTH sides… we are either being stabbed in the chest by the satanic Democrats or stabbed in the back by the Benedict Arnold Republicans here in the USA…
Well, I’ll just give them all of my shots, boosters, and masks…💉💉💉💉💉. How many are we up to now? Four or five? Too bad that wouldn’t “appease,” them… When I was working as a nurse years ago, I was told I gave a good shot 🔥💥💥💥😇😇😇
I might offer a more nuanced, and (hopefully) informed comment on your work later. For now, it seems that the big message is something that I am embarrassed to admit did not dawn on me for months, maybe a year, after the corona-lunacy began. This whole pageant, this whole COVID Dumpster Fire™ as I like to term it, is about *so* much more than asinine knee-jerk containment policies, vaccine half-assery, and improperly administered NPIs. It is about a heretofore unseen level of control. It is about the playing of a "long game" with respect to obtaining and deploying that control. Unfortunately, many of us on Team Reality have been (again, in my parlance) playing checkers while the other side was playing chess. Politics and who is on which side is all part of that irrelevant debate, it seems.
The essence of left politics is and always has been the desire to control. The world can't simply be permitted to BE - it must be changed, managed, optimized, enlightened ... always of course under the direction of the intellectuals of the left, who know what's best for everyone and to whom it never occurs that there might be important details that escape their notice.
The opposite position, that it is frequently better to allow things to take their natural course and permit humans to find their own way for the entirely obvious reason that no one person, theory, or model can encompass all relevant information and dynamics affecting a system, requires a humility that is entirely beyond them.
This is the reason for the proverb: "The road to hell is paved with good intentions".
"I'm from the government and I'm here to help."
"Do something!" is often the cry, when often doing nothing might be the better course of action.
That describes the great depression and FDR perfectly. He was always doing something, and in doing so, he managed to create the one constant that markets hate: uncertainty. If you didn't know what the rules would be tomorrow, it would be foolish to act on what the rules are today. Don't hire someone new... you may be required to give him something you can't afford when the next arbitrary rule change took place.
When things are in a state of flux, people hunker down and wait for better conditions, and that was exactly what the economy did not need in order to get any better. A recession or a depression is a crisis in confidence ("the only thing we have to fear is fear itself") more than anything else, but how can you be confident when you know the guy in charge is monkeying with the rules constantly?
That’s a major factor for the post lockdown malaise we are likely to endure for years. I know I won’t start a business in any of the big lockdown states any time soon.
Yes, when the rule keep changing, it’s impossible to make plans. Markets like consistency and stability.
The hubris, arrogance and complete absence of humility is breathtaking to behold.
Actually - they are preventing epic suffering by doing what they are doing.
If they do not then 8B will be left in the dark... starving... look at what is happening in Sri Lanka... and they are not yet starving...
We are into massive overshoot and the collapse of civilization was approaching... the people who run the show are doing something about it... before it's too late
Well the other solution wasn't;t pretty but we will have it in the end. (they get weak and dies of disease and we shoot the boats) Politics is fractal. If you cannot manage the neighbourhood you cannot manage the state. We destabilise ourselves and keep encouraging them. We cannot take the 3billion who want to come so why even take a billion.
Amen
While "laissez-faire" turns out to be disastrous for policies (SOME regulation and oversight is always needed!) the left takes the opposite tack and wants EVERYTHING and everyone regulated -- by their perfect selves, of course. Everyone always thinks he'll be the on regulating, not the one being regulated.
Too many decades mucking in toxic policy to let comments about regulation go without a reality check. Oversight functions and regulatory laws are more effective at blocking competition, reducing liability and providing PR cover for dangerous and criminal activity. The beneficiaries complain about the burden as part of a marketing strategy to create an illusion of adversaries in Washington when in fact they're profiteering co-conspirators against the public interests.
Most current example would be EUA w liability wavers for COVID jabs but this is far from unique. Despite all the fanfare about protecting the public most widely used chemicals have NEVER had even the most basic human health and safety testing. Scorecard is the global authority for chemical safety.. UC Davis hosted the database until 2020 when it was pulled w landing page note project ended.
Basic Testing to Identify Chemical Hazards
If an industrial chemical is allowed by law to be released into the environment, most people assume that it must have been tested and evaluated for its potential risks. Unfortunately, this is simply not true. Keeping chemical hazards under control requires information about what kinds of hazards each chemical poses. If the basic tests to check on a chemical's toxicity haven't been conducted, or if the results aren't publicly available, current laws tend to treat that chemical as if it were perfectly safe.
https://web.archive.org/web/20120917041002/http://scorecard.goodguide.com/chemical-profiles/chems-profile-descriptions.tcl#basic_testing
Laissez-Faire is obviously not perfect, that’s not what any serious proponent of it would suggest. But letting an entity with a monopoly on violence make all the rules will eventually end in something like what we have, now.
We've been indoctrinated with the assumption that laissez faire leads to anarchy. Our betters want us to believe that we can't survive without government, and we have allowed it to intrude on and regulate every aspect of our lives.
Read Three Felonies a Day.
Remember the depression of 1920?
Most people don't. Calvin Coolidge was in office, and he was a laissez-faire type. He let it run its course, and soon it gave way to the roaring 20s, with the depression forgotten. He could have turned it into a multiyear juggernaut as would Hoover and FDR a decade and change later, but he didn't.
Unfortunately, "the next big thing" often makes people blind to the downside, and as we all know, a bubble formed in the stock market. People had irrational exuberance over the stock market, believing somehow that things can go up without coming down, extending credit to anyone and everyone no matter how risky, with the belief that the stocks themselves would always be valuable enough collateral to cover any losses... exactly the same as residential real estate in the years leading up to 2008.
Despite having Coolidge's example of how to deal with a downturn in the economy (let the market correct itself), Hoover chose interventionism, and while the occurrence of the depression itself was not his fault, the preservation of it until what ultimately became the end of his administration was. When FDR came in, he did the same kinds of things at first, and it just went from there, trying one thing after another, with the sole exception being what Coolidge did... nothing.
Despite his role in preserving the depression for years, FDR was popular because he was always seen as doing something, and the people share the same bias toward action that FDR did. It would have been politically dfficult to do nothing and ride it out, since people have the bias toward "at least he's doing something."
Woodrow Wilson was still president in 1920, but incapacitated by a stroke, so that it was his wife who was running things. As a result of the 1920 election, Warren Harding became president in 1921, and Calvin Coolidge vice president. Coolidge only became president when Harding died a couple of years later.
Dude. That is another fascinating discussion. No doubt your show trial will be more entertaining than mine.
Tens of thousands of my ancestors died because of laissez-faire policies, and millions came to America because of them only to die here, so no, I don' think I will. Medicine often used to be lethal, and food unsanitary, before regulation. I'm all for reasonable regulation. The problem with regulation, as with everything in life, is PEOPLE. Without regulations, people take advantage of others one way. Too much regulation, and different people take advantage of others another way.
"Medicine often used to be lethal, and food unsanitary, before regulation."
Medicine is still lethal now (medical errors are 3rd leading cause of death in the US:
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/02/22/medical-errors-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-america.html
Lots of poisonous food still on the grocery store shelves, too. Pesticide and glyphosate residues, as well as hydrogenated oils and hyper-processed food, are not exactly health products.
They just slowly kill you, after first making you a nice pharma customer.
Your mistake Gail is that you think a monopoly cartel should provide the valuable, useful service of regulatory quality-control. The market provides certification and validation services in many different industries; wherever the government isn't imprinting its obese backside and crowding out competitors with crude controls and lots of resources. For example, people rely on the FDA and/or USDA to inspect and certify drugs and foods. But how many people are harmed each year by adulterated or defective foods or medicines? Do I even have to ask?
You say the problem is "people"; but actually the problem is monopoly. The real debate is monopoly government (a Hobbesian concept) vs. governance. The latter allows a free society, in a decentralized manner, to regulate itself through private mediators, insurance companies, whatever arises in the imagination of producers and is validated by consumer demand.
We will never have a perfect society - because we are people. But competition sharpens the offerings of a society and gives producers and consumers options to do things a better way, without monopoly barriers.
The problem is the regulators are bought and paid for by the industries they supposedly regulate. The entire system has become corrupted. Industry execs become regulators, and vice versa. It’s all a giant mess. At this point I’d be willing to get rid of most all regulation and allow the chips to fall as they may.
1000%
You cannot have a perfect world. The government controlling anything leads to what you see today. I'd take a benevolent dictator every time. I'll go with one human rather than hundreds and hundreds who end up going after power and money to get what they want. The right person has both power and money, maybe that person doesn't need to kill others to keep it.
The ideal form of government, the ancients said, was a benevolent ruler. The problem is, of course, that they are very rare. Even if you get one, and even if he stays benevolent, he eventually dies. Every form of government devolves into a bad version of itself as the safeguards put in to stop that from happening are subverted. In theory a government can STOP devolving and improve again. But most of the time, history shows, it gets taken over by something or someone else. Sometimes quickly, sometimes very slowly.
To a certain point some regulations are helpful in preventing harm. But those in the regulation business always continue expansion of regulations indefinitely because they enjoy their jobs. Trump's notion of removing rules to create a new one made sense and gave useful work for regulators in the fact of full bookshelves of rules. The growth of the Federal Register over time reflects the daily arrival of more rules many which go well beyond reducing harm. The regulators regulate.
Are you really comparing laws requiring food inspections to Stalin? Because I do not think one necessarily leads to the other.
I highly recommend Rudolph Rummel's work on "democide".
http://hawaii.edu/powerkills/
...beat me to saying exactly that!
My brother, rest assured that among the proponents of the free market and laissez-faire political economy, I am in the (nearly psychotic) tail of that distribution!
Those basic rules are a form of regulation....the Human Condition, being as it is will always wind up with entities gaming the system to their benefit so there has to be that invisible hand of governance to do the best it can to provide an equal playing field for entry and exit as well as incentive to innovation......what has transpired over decades is a movment away from those basic rules and the real consequences of violating them to a regulatory nightmare that has no teeth, created largely by both out of touch liberals and/or lobbyists .....
Well said.
I’ve been working with special needs children a lot lately and a major factor for arousing their interest in something is novelty.
While I don’t exactly intend to compare leftism to an intellectual disability I suspect a similar drive exists in their constant push for change.
Life is never exactly as one wishes it to be so there is eternal fuel for the fire of agitation by those who deny or cannot comprehend natural order.
These types must be contained in their ability to affect our world. There is no other way.
>While I don’t exactly intend to compare leftism to an intellectual disability
No, no, please, compare away.
What Leftists fail to consider is the natural course of things will always prevail in the end.
Please please let that happen sooner than it looks
History shows that the natural course of things is the lowest common denominator - namely an authoritarian hierarchy. This is the default state for civilization. Monarchy, dictatorship, aristocracy, oligarchy, plutacracy - take your pick. It all comes back to rule by force. Governments based on universal rights are sadly, a historical aberation. This doesn't mean that citizens would have no rights, only that rights are not universal nor garunteed by governments. Think pre-1800 societies, or perhaps in some cases pre-1500 societies.
There's no left and right. That's the problem. Anyone who believes the 'opposition' figures are any better are in delusion.
Orban's name particularly upsets me here. He seems he is doing something differently but he is not. He is not for the people.
Him and his followers were all blinded by covid hysteria and vaccination propaganda. All shunned the unvaccinated and they were absolutely vile about it. He made mandatory vaccination available by employers in very early times. He made students suffer by mandating quarantine only for unvaccinated kids even if a vaccinated tested positive in a class. (and many other hidden trickery)
About his family propaganda: from 1st of January any private reproduction assisting clinic ceased to exist.
About his fake immigration policies: while on the surface he opposes immigration he made available emergency visas to bring cheap labour to Hungary for example from Vietnam or Ukraine (way before the war) also no problem being an immigrant if you pay his cronies around 300k euro to get a golden visa (used by international criminals and russian spies very frequently)
His anti-LGBTQ propaganda is just to cover bigger scandals: robbed money through enormous and ridiculous projects.
And we could continue on infinitely.
I am done with left/right political theater. If someone isn't comfortable with the label "libertarian" then they are an authoritarian. When given the power, they will impose their worldview on everyone else.
Well said!
well said
Yeah. EVEN LITTLE LEAGUE BASEBALL has it's "own" set of rules now. Baseball is ever different with a dozen more rules than actual baseball. Soon they'll be calling it something else too.
The average neighborhood HOA has pages of rules, regulations, fees, etc. Ours DNA tests all the dogs and keeps it on file so the non-poop-picker-uppers can be discovered and motivated with a fine.
The struggle over the narrative is a fight over the world we live in. The WEF oligarchs, the people running the pandemic response, are using fear and force as they try to replace the 'old normal' with their 'new normal'. Kind of like the security theater and ridiculous intrusions into privacy and suspension of rights that Americans accepted for the "war on terror," now they are making their move on the entire western world with the "war on covid".
To better learn what to expect next, look at their preparations and pandemic war game exercises. The Gates book provided insights, thank you Eugy for suffering through it.
Public health covidians are not crazy, they are just reading off the original script. Gates gave the people in power a plan. It was never about reality, critical thinking, or making adjustments as data arose. They were given a plan, and they are sticking with it.
Perhaps Klaus' book "The Great Narrative" provides further insight into what to expect next from the cabal. Has anyone read it?
Klaus is a manufactured villain to deflect from what is really going down here. He even has his Klingon outfit provided by Hollywood https://newsvoice.se/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/Klaus-Schwab-Blofelt.jpg
And what it has shown up is a failure of so-called multi-party democracy. There has been a complete failure of the official political opposition. This of course is baked in to coalition politics where the parties rely on each other to keep their noses in the trough, but it has been evident elsewhere where the only ‘opposition’ from opposition parties is lockdown, etc should have been imposed earlier, harder and longer. Nor is there a Left/Right divide. Governments on both sides have behaved just as badly, with a few notable, honourable exception at State level in the USA.
A political subspecies has emerged and dominates the ruling class. They are evil.
Okay, so first, agreed! But to a more nuanced point, the political system in the U.S. precludes, that is, absolutely removes from contention, the concept of a viable third party. This is classic Duverger's Law. In a first-past-the-post voting scheme, there can *only* be two (2) viable parties, regardless of issue, or whatever. As I already said, this is a nuance, but those who wonder why some viable third party candidate can never win would do well to study the theories. (Apologies for being pedantic!)
Yes, we are playing a different game. Those on Team Reality continue to express logic in response to the tsunami of incoherent lunacy coming from Team Global, who meanwhile, pay not a whit of attention to any facts presented to them because they are simply not interested. They are driven by narrative, by emotion, to win at all cost. After faithfully reading, listening and commenting on a range of platforms, blogs and channels for 2-3 years now, I have concluded like others before me that Team Global are intent on destroying western civilization and it is gonna take more than a few additional facts to stop them.
They already control everything -- notice how there is no opposition to this? All the parties... all the social media platforms... all the MSM
What more control is there to be had?
well stated. completely true. We are trusting honest people and there are so many criminals out there.
And not a single political party opposes this?
Infiltration will not work to re-take the institutions for precisely the reason you describe: the left knows that game and will not allow it, being only too willing to deploy ideological tests. The demand that one submit to the jab is only the latest and most intimate of these.
Nor can the the institutions be re-taken at the ballot box. As the left demonstrated in 2020, they're only too happy to steal elections in broad daylight and then lie infamously about it in the aftermath.
The only way they can be defeated is by allowing them to rule an empire of ashes. Let them keep their legacy media outlets, their universities, their stolen legislatures. As they pack them full of bought men, mid-wit yes men, and diversity hires, the competence of those institutions plummets. Having been barred from those institutions, competent men will have to go somewhere. The most obvious thing for such men to do is to build new institutions, which perform the functions of the suborned institutions more effectively. Having done so, prestige, loyalty, and power will naturally flow from the hollow shells of the old to the shiny skins of the new.
It won't be quick, it won't be easy, but it's the only way.
Part of me, that part of me educated via the propaganda of social studies in public schools, hopes you are wrong. The part of me that has watched unrepentant assholes ascend to positions of power all over the spectrum--particularly in legacy media, universities, and the legislature--knows you are absolutely correct. Wrestling with pigs in their mud only results in getting dirty and frustrated, while losing.
And the pig enjoys it...
As someone who has literally wrestled pigs, it can be a good time if you know exactly what you're getting into, and have no illusions about the outcome. This may or may not apply to the metaphor as well- Ben Shapiro comes to mind.
and the pig enjoys it
I think the axiom is "Never teach a pig to sing; it wastes your time and it annoys the pig." Maybe your version is a conflation with "lay down with dogs, wake up with fleas." They are both truths, but not sure either one quite describes our shared dilemma. The pigs are the choir, now, and aren't interested in wrestling us.
I've never heard that one. It's funny too.
I've heard the one about don't wrestle with a pig before though.
and the dogs one too.
The institutions can't be retaken by ballots, but they cannot be retaken without them. We have another opportunity in November. Few are prepared for what could happen if that fails. No one will like that alternative, so it's important we make it work. It won't happen with a complacent population.
The drumbeat of needing to have mail-in ballots has begun.
It doesn't matter how one votes if the unscrupulous count the votes.
Of course we will have mail-in ballots in the USSA. The Fall C0VID Variant (TM) is due to arrive then, and we'll be locked down. The Science (TM) says the Only Solution to C0VID are masks, lockdowns and endless vaxxines. And the proles believe it.
yep. makes me crazy.
Speaking of crazy, is your alias a reference to The Rolling Stones or something else?
A book. Shibumi. By Trevanian.
New respect for your alias.
I'll look it up. Forgive my rock n roll point of view but that's just me. 😌
And Presidentish Bite-Me actually said that out loud, that who counts the votes, wins. We saw that shit show in 2020
who COUNTS the votes! COUNTS!
Don't forget he shouted randomly and threateningly at us on that one, yet again.
nauseatingly
The problem in the U.S. is, the leadership of the Republican Party is incredibly weak/complacent. In 2020, they knew these drop boxes and mail in ballots were unconstitutional and illegal, yet did nothing to challenge them. I have heard that whistle blowers went to the Republican Party before the election and were ignored.
Out of Watergate, "follow the money" became part of the lexicon. My comment: EVERY politician and bureaucrat gets a paycheck from the same place. Executive Branch, Congressional Branch, Judicial Branch. Checks all come from the US Treasury.
That is where the rewards come from. The threats come from the deep state. They are using both to shut everyone up...so if you don't respond to the $$$ you will certainly respond to the threat of killing your family member or yourself, or even just release false information that you are a pedophile or closet whatever, or you like porn (it will be installed on your computer)...Does no one get that we are totally controlled now by the CIA/NSA/DeepState?
I heard there were numerous lawsuits from the republicans at many states at the same time.
None were heard because of standing. No evidence was allowed to be presented. The only one who called it out was Clarence Thomas...because our judges are also very aware of what could happen to them if they go against the deep state.
BTW, the Dems want only power. They have weaponized everything, but as long as they are allowed to continue their Racketeering for $$, they have no problem in going along. They have been promised by our Deep state...and fully aware of who is running the government. And they have been playing ball.
The DNC holds the power. If you are a Republican the weaponized law enforcement, media and courts has changed the game completely. Just look at the Durham findings. Look at the Biden laptop.
Yes we have pretend DNC controlled opposition claiming to be Republicans and Conservatives, as well as those that have a gun to their head. That is why I do not believe it is inevitable corp money controls it all. The Hillary emails that were released showing that structure in operation did not get any real traction in the world only prove my point. The outrage was not for the content of the emails but that fact that the emails were stollen.
No, That is what Eugyppius just pointed out above...most people think it is one party, but it is actually that the right keeps hoping to become the elite and go back to the institutions and life they had before...which is insane and not possible. But this is their ardent hope, and why they diss the depolorables along with the left.
I have increasingly come to think this as well.
I dont think people realize what will happen if elections fail and faith in them continues to decline. We already see 20 state in the US have officially called for a Convention of States which is a big deal. You see the imperative for it from the Populist argument being made. You see it in the US migration patterns as well.
It has begun to feel like someone using using AI in this conversation and is staying many steps ahead. The rapid shift in messaging is amazing.
20 states isn't enough. Needs 34. Ain't gonna happen in an evenly divided country. But the real problem isn't the Constitution or any other law, it's we the people. No law influences those who are above the law. School shooters ignore criminal law, rainbow jihadists ignore biology, and congress speaks publicly of writing laws they're exempt from to diminish our liberties. Solutions will only come from convincing supporters of fascism they're wrong, and punishing those who can't be convinced. Some people are just inherently, irredeemably bad. Can't be helped, only eliminated.
I hear the parallel institutions argument a lot, but i can't see how even a medium size institution seeking to gain power wouldn't be subject to lawfare, deplatforming, removal of payment processing, and a potential visit from anarcho-tyrannical mobs.
Yes, it's more complicated practical problem than that. The idea of "start our own universities!" falls at the first "who wants to send their own personal kid to a non-accredited institution?" hurdle. A degree from a non-accredited institution opens no doors.
and it misses what is key to conservatism: the idea that old structures are worth preserving. If our response to the scorched earth of contemporary leftism is "oh yeah? WE NOW HAVE FLAME THROWERS TOO BABY", well, good luck and god help us all. New institutions will inherently lack what is most precious about old institutions.
The analysis of the complicity of conservatism is excellent here; what to do about it, still unclear. For me a key moment was when a recent "conversion therapy" bill passed in Canada with no discussion and no vote: not a single conservative in the entire legislative apparatus dared to say "actually sterilizing gay lesbian and autistic kids is possibly not entirely bueno". Not ONE. And they'd gotten a tremendous amount of contact from the public about it and they even could have trotted out scores of radical feminists as cover from attacks from the left. Nope. No interest, no spine, nothing.
>not a single conservative in the entire legislative apparatus dared to say "actually sterilizing gay lesbian and autistic kids is possibly not entirely bueno".
Cue joke about conservatives agreeing with liberals for all the wrong reasons.
Same happening in NZ and it breaks my heart.
Which tells me they are all afraid of losing their power and position. Because of Threats by the unseen fine Italian hand running everything now.
We've seen repeatedly that attempts to build alt-institutions on their own end up not being viable for precisely the reason that their reliance on other elements of the system amounts to fatal exploitable weaknesses. It follows that what's needed isn't a piecemeal response, but rather a comprehensive solution that provides a full, integrated societal stack: financial transactions, education & training, food supply, manufacturing, energy, defense, dispute resolution, etc.
We need people skilled in every profession collecting around a programmatic Schelling point with the aim of providing for all basic human needs; doing so better than the current system; and doing so without the involvement of the globalist technoratic elements that seek our enslavement.
Thank you for giving hope. What is a Schelling point?
It's a focus of interest or common understanding that serves to coordinate activity between actors that therefore don't require centralized direction.
Many thanks. Learned something new.
also sparkle ponies.
Yes, that'll do nicely.
Choice doesn't destroy power. It reclaims it. Power is like energy in the universe- neither created nor destroyed. It just flows.
Three of us? #Ahem
Which is why to move to a programmable Digital currency. The problem with Bitcon, et al, is it dependent on the net and electricity.
Please watch this...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSz73-iz6s
'that was good. Thanks.
I don't think the "build an alternative platform/society" strategy is viable.
You're dealing with oligarchs who are just wearing the left as a skin suit.
In their religion, "competition is a sin".
They will cut down your tree while it is still a sapling.
Parler was a good microcosm of that principle at play. They don't play by any rules (that's the in-joke behind the title of the book "Rules" For Radicals). Amazon not only defiled it's contractual obligations, it illegally stole their data and then leaked user data. There is nothing honorable about the way they operate. They have rules, but they are Satanic in principle (one does not need to believe in Satan to know the principles).
No, good men will not be able to create a parallel society while they keep to themselves. You do not understand the nature of colonialism. That's what this is - global, generational, social, societal, COMPLETE occupation. There's not even a word to describe what this megalomania is determined to achieve. Not even "technocracy" covers it. Maybe the word "Hell" will do for now.
Technocracy has been in the works since the 30's...so to me, it explains the hell we are currently be nudged into. All encompassing digital slavery...forever.
Just because they were successful in a situation where everyone assumed the RNC was being vigilant to keep the DNC and Mark Elias et al honest, doesn't mean that engagement can't overcome such strategies. A coherent populist strategy hasn't even been articulated, let alone implemented. By all means start up new institutions, but don't give up on the constitution, this fight hasn't even started.
>>> "It won't be quick, it won't be easy, but it's the only way"
It's pretty unlikely that this is how it will pan out, though; my own view is that we're approaching a stage where there is no prospect of systemic change without widespread violence and (hopefully highly-targeted) blood-letting.
Thoreau's "the mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation" is being increasingly borne out: there is rising tension, even among those 5% or so who have the cognitive wherewithal to position themselves to be largely immune to GloboCap (I usually use a different term, but whatev).
The actual 'Mass Man' - the median schlub, with his 6x-income-mortgage, car loan, credit-card debt and labour-market precarity - sees the data and the worsening global geopolitical framework, and knows that nobody in authority feels the slightest empathy.
It will not take 1970s redux - years of 10% inflation - for there to be ACTUAL armed insurrection (as opposed to Jan6 LARPing being misrepresented by the media). In the 1970s there were no food shortages - but we've all been warned that those are coming.
The old saying "a society is only ever 3 meals away from revolution" (Lenin) or "9 meals from anarchy" (A.H. Lewis) or "4 meals from anarchy" (MI5) has never been more salient at any time in my recollection (going back to the 1970s) than it is right now.
We might get to find out whose guess was closest. We can safely bet MI5's guess will be wrong: like the CIA, they have never been right about anything, ever - even if they're predicting something thing has already happened (and/or that they organised).
If the 'apples to apples' CPI calculation is used - the one that obtained before 1987, when Greenspan and his chums decided to gyp retirees of COLA adjustments - current inflation through the West is in the solid double-digits.
Even people who get their information from the organised _gavage_ of the TV news, are starting to grok that the media is complicit in lying to them: the Mass Man knows that he is 'going backwards' in real terms, even if his 65" TV was only $500.
See Tim Morgan's blog, www.surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com. 'The economy' isn't about money, it's about surplus energy which from ~1870 to 2010 came from cheap, easily-extracted oil.
Yes, many people in developed countries are now probably less well-off than in 1975 (purchasing power, including cost of housing). The dramatic rise in inequality has given the UK more homeless people and food banks than I ever remember from my youth.
As for 'life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness', surveys done in the 1970s - Denmark I think - suggested that most people wanted more leisure, not more money. We didn't get that; see David Graeber's book 'Bullshit Jobs'.
BUT that is the same basis as why technocracy/one world government/digital slavery was invented in the 1930's...energy drives everything...they knew it, and proposed Technocracy as a way to convert every human life into an energy consumer/producer.
We have gone from actual slavery (since mankind can remember) to technological slavery (comeing soon to a theatre near you. So Maybe the 1870's to 2010 was a total abberation in the history of the human race.
Me, I prefer to believe that someone, sometime (sooner dear lord rather than later) will come up with a good alternative energy source....in the meantime, nuclear will do.
Save the oil for cars, and Natural gas for processing plants and heat.
We people will also be reduced to ashes.
A proposal...
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=XTSz73-iz6s
Legacy media is far from gone but its current state is instructive. It is no longer in the position of setting the media cycle. The Internet hive mind is running the show now. Rather than telling everyone what to think, legacy media are in the defensive position of playing catch-up with the hive mind and shrieking, "No! You mustn't think that!" In other words, legacy media are now in the reactive position of trying to deboonk information gathered and disseminated by networked humanity ... internet media and legacy media have switched places from where they were until about a year ago (only legacy media has a much harder job, as they don't have the truth on their side....)
This model having proven effective, it now remains to apply it elsewhere.
Very perceptive observation. Thank you.
Centralization has never been a good survival strategy. Which is why both sides want everything centralized. YOu are correct, starvation is a cure. Never again patronize one social media (and be warned they have interlocking directorates if not outright ownership)...If we do, eventually they will be forced to take down the electricity/web, and then what? I foresee "The Road"...But that will help eliminate all us useless eaters. It is very depressing.
The trucker protest in Canada gave us a glimpse of the power of the people. The indignation and disgust heaped on them, and the emergency law enacted to stop them showed how scary this was for both sides of the political spectrum. This is the only possible hope, populism - and that is why both populism and freedom are now ultra-right-wing horrible dirty words that you cannot even utter in mixed company without fear of retribution.
agree absolutely.
you only have to look at the strange forces brought to bear on the protesters – asset seizures, etc – to see what an enormous threat they were
Exactly. Think about it. It was *just* some truckers who thought the government had overstepped. The response to them asking these questions was coordinated, extreme, pseudo-legal, "we must protect the government" action. I mean, is not the "right to protest" mentioned in some documents, someplace?
Right on. Of course you are correct that the form of governance in Canada includes democratic rights. The right to petition the government, to speak one's mind, to assemble to do so, and to travel to do so are all liberties tht are beyond even the Notwhitstnding Clause of the Constitution. This is because the clause itself is meant as an instrument of democracy; its passage and its re-enactment are open to the democratic process and thus the liberties are beyond the reach of the Clause. Something like this applies to the Emergencies Measures Act, also. But if the government, in practice, gets away with sweeping it all aside, then, the form of governance is deeply flawed and the Opposition has been entirely defenestrated. And so it is left to the People. In this way, the fascist thugs in power get their mob at the door with overthrow on their minds. For now, the governmental structure is bluffing and counting on the People to show greater restraint than the PEOPLE would if a foreign enemy had invaded with armed forces.
There's a German guy I'm listening to at the moment, Ralph Masilamani, who is doing a lot of work in this direction.
He had a recent video analysing Yanis Varafakis' left wing populist movement and how it compares to right wing populism. Both sides are talking about the power of unaccountable oligarchs.
Populism transcends left-right binaries, for example, temperamentally right wing people wanted Amazon broken up because it destroys small indigenous businesses, those on the left because its not fair to the workers.
The fundamental issue is that there is a perceived lack of legitimacy and accountability in the ruling class and their institutions.
There's also a strange tension between the "democracy is a sham, protests don't work" and the needs of the regime to constantly manage public opinion. If they really were indifferent to public opinion the wouldn't expend so much time and resources doing so.
Speaking as a Canadian, yes, it was truly a joy to finally behold some pushback from the people against our wicked government. But I have to say, I've also been inspired by the mass protests of last year all across Europe, and hope to see many more. May Christ frustrate the plans of the tyrants!
Yes, the fact that the truckers so obviously spooked the powers that be was really heartening: they did not seem to think "oh ha ha we discussed this last week in our secret underground lair, Jeff Epstein said not to worry about those deluded underclass fools". I'm never sure how much of a tin foil hatted conspiracist to be and I'm always glad for clear reasons to pull in my elaborate tinfoil antlers a bit.
Malone's Jefferson quotes in https://rwmalonemd.substack.com/p/action-will-delineate-and-define suggest revolution may be necessary from time to time. The truckers were in effect a kind of revolution without the guns. Starting with some 20% approval as the strike evolved approval climbed into the > 60%. Polling has been nearly impossible to find anymore. We understand why.
I have heard the term Physical vs the Virtual is rapidly replacing the left and right. Those that touch things seem to have a different politics view than those that do not know where food comes from.
Ironically, given the striking similarities between the cognitive styles and left and right and the cognitive styles of the left and right hemispheres of the brain, these terms may be more apt than we'd expected.
I have also heard that, it’s producers vs consumers.
I have always felt the main difference between left and right boils down to belief in (or lack of) human nature.
I would say Moral vs Non-moral...
But the left is exceptionally moral ...........just ask them.
TBH I think the real divide is between those who take the universe as a given and think we should manage our expectations accordingly, and those who take our expectations as a given and think we should manage the universe accordingly.
Makes you wonder just what so-called conservative politicians are conserving..
They conserve their place in the establishment--their place at the table, at least for some scraps. An old saw, if you're not at the table, you're on the menu.
I'm going to use that expression from now on! thanks!
As will I.
Liz Warren is trying to take credit for that quote but let's not let her because it's not her
Conservatives at the table, preservatives in the pantry.
Bingo.
Conservatism is in some sense defined by a lack of interest in politics. The _most_ politically interested conservatives end up joining conservative politics, but then end up with relatively little in terms of overall agenda - exactly because their intuition is that using the power of politics to change society is a risky and bad idea! So conservatives tend to just accept whatever status quo they inherited from the left and achieve relatively little.
I think to move forward here will require several things:
1. Separating the concept of libertarianism from conservatism and promoting the former. If you look at what political ideology REALLY makes leftists mad, it's not actually conservatism - they hardly talk about that. It's not even "the right", which often ends up meaning little more than "anyone who doesn't immediately adopt The Current Thing", nor "capital" which is just people who didn't get the memo that it's not the 1930s anymore. No, if you want to see people on the institutional left really spit poison you need to ask them about libertarianism.
This is hard to notice because hardly anyone ever asks them about this, but I do distinctly remember even the anti-lockdown Sunetra Gupta being VERY keen to tell everyone that even though she was anti-lockdown she _definitely_ wasn't a libertarian. And if you look at the attacks mounted by pro-lockdown academics on those they disagreed with, their kneejerk reaction was _not_ to attack critics as conservative but rather as _libertarian_.
Libertarianism has the advantage that it's actually a concrete belief system, not a mere attempt to 'conserve' whatever happens to currently exist. Libertarianism also has no particular loyalty to existing institutions, being very careful about which ones it considered necessary vs optional.
Of course promoting libertarianism is difficult because the people who are keenest libertarians are typically busy buying Twitter or trying to build the next one. They are almost by definition people who want to stay away from politics.
2. Framing academia as a problem to be solved. Eugyppius probably isn't going to like this sort of analysis - it's an understandable blind spot given that he is himself a (former?) academic - but to put it bluntly, academia is a massive stronghold of radical left wing crazyness and always has been. Not only does it employ massive numbers of people who get to pose as scientists and researchers whilst doing no such thing, but it's a committee-driven Soviet style economy tailor made to breed people who have absolutely broken intuitions about tradeoffs, resource allocation and other bread-and-butter topics.
Lockdown, CRT, communism itself (Marx desperately wanted to be an academic), these are just some of the poisonous fruits academia has gifted us with.
Do we actually need it? Conservatives would say yes and be shocked at the very idea there could be another answer. My inclination is increasingly: no. I've just read SO ... DAMN ... MANY ... garbage, mendacious, toxic and utterly disingenuous research papers over the years that frankly as far as I'm concerned every university could be disbanded tomorrow and the world would immediately improve. Virtually none of the research done there has any positive real world impact, and that small amount could be done by industry. Especially if combined with a rethought patent system. As for teaching, well, they seem to have completely lost interest in that during corona times. Who really cares? Companies should train their own workers.
3. A snappily written and well thought out rebuttal to woke-ism (a.k.a. modern day leftism). The closest I've come to seeing such things are the works of Thomas Sowell but he is obscure, by now very elderly and his writing is dense. A lot of politics is simply mimicry and repetition of ideas found elsewhere which is why academia is the HQ of leftism - it lets people sit around all day evolving and mutating ideas into whatever form eventually finds memetic fitness and escapes into the wider world. Conservatives rely heavily on think tanks but the average thinktanker is much more at home writing wonky 'respectable' economic analysis, than taking on the underlying causes of left wing delusion directly. And of course that sector is nowhere near as well funded.
Libertarianism is basically just classical liberalism, which already failed to stop the rise of leftism. Even if we somehow converted society at large to libertarian beliefs, what makes you think it'd be any more successful at stopping leftism this time around?
"Classical liberalism" is the term most often used in Europe yes. It's not quite the same thing though.
Still, I'd say it actually did a pretty good job of holding off leftism so far. The west remained communism-free for the entire 20th century. What's going wrong now is that people took it for granted and forgot how to argue for it, also, they didn't take measures against the enemies of liberalism and allowed them to grow and build power bases.
But it's much easier to argue for classical liberal morality than for leftism. People need to do it, and need to remember what the arguments actually are. The USA is ahead in that space. The thinking and philosophy behind libertarianism are on a firmer theoretical foundation than the European equivalents, in my view.
<i>Still, I'd say it actually did a pretty good job of holding off leftism so far. The west remained communism-free for the entire 20th century.</i>
Half of Europe was communist for most of the later 20th century, and a significant portion of elites in the rest of the Western world were either communist sympathisers or outright communists.
<i>But it's much easier to argue for classical liberal morality than for leftism.</i>
Actually, no, it's completely the opposite. Once you accept the liberal premise that people should be free to do what they want, it's arbitrary to apply this to government pressure but not to social pressure. Not only that, but by hollowing out the institutions and communities which previously stood intermediate between the individual and the state -- the family, church, local communities, etc. -- liberalism creates a society of atomised individuals, who find it much harder to band together against state overreach, and rely on the state to a much greater degree than they previously did.
i can't work out Daniel Schmachtenberger and his consilience project... a parallel structures endeavour? searching out the tech/ modern capabilities to grow new societal structures organically without perverse financial incentives? he was on think tanks, (formerly idw which seems to have eaten itself and i found to be intellectual white males pontificating) but war on sensemaking 1 i found very interesting on evolving information ecosystem, before covid. He was homeschooled, activist, seems genius to me, alert to patent law shambles and blue church stuff of Jordan hall; paperclip generator of modern capitalism and existential & catastrophic risks; wouldn't get embroiled re vaccs, has rubbed shoulders with/ seen at work sociopathic class/ back slappers and their deals 1st hand; BUT seems to regard 1 world goverNANCE as essential...I saw maybe Jordan hall speaking on a meeting with high up bankers asking how to save themselves when " this all went down" ... pre cvd, and was offered vast sums to advise. these were maths/ tech guys with academic credentials and insight in " elite" ie moneyed circles
They wouldn't defund every institution - libertarians aren't anarchists. They tend to believe in a strong, well funded justice system that can efficiently arbitrate disputes for example, especially contract disputes. They tend to believe in a well funded army and police, because they believe one of the core roles of the state is to monopolize violence. And so on.
Universities also wouldn't be completely defunded even in a purist libertarian government, they just wouldn't get government grants or student loan subsidies anymore. They'd have to rely on donations from alumni, grants from foundations, patent revenues, student fees from students who could afford them and so on. Some universities would survive, albeit probably a lot smaller.
However, if the culture were to become libertarian and not just the government, then it's likely that alumni donations and foundation grants would dwindle too, because libertarians don't believe this sort of charity/"dumb money" works well. Market mechanisms are seen as a core requirement for actually achieving whatever goals you set out to solve, regardless of whether they're altruisitic or not.
The only thing that ends up being conserved are the past gains of progressives.
Put another way, today's conservatives were yesterday's progressives. And this is by no means a new phenomenon:
https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/904468.Robert_Lewis_Dabney
The Ratchet Effect.
Their boot straps and flow of money into the game of "prosperity" by moneyrape.
Same thing with the refugees that got into Belgium, almost all young and healthy men and very few real refugees, women, children, elderly.
As to government, I don't know much about politics but I think most all politicians do one thing well and that is fill their pockets. In all of the US government, less than a handful do something for the people. The 3 I remember right off are 3 republicans. The house milkers are almost all democrats. They are all wealthy, earning more in a year than most people in their whole lives, and keep being paid pensions even after one round of government.
The invasion of the U.S. southern border is another prime example of this "refugee" template.
we're going to have to fight gangs, Mexico and China to get it back and we'll be financing them.
Masses of young men, relatively fewer women, children, families.
Let's not forget the eagerness of all those young European women to let those military age males into Europe. What was that one sign that made the rounds? "Sex with refugees is jasmine-scented and beautiful"?
The running joke was that if the refugees consisted of nubile Eastern European women, European ladies would be far less enthusiastic. Recent events however seem to have put the lie to that so far (although it' certainly seems true that it got more European men on board).
I did notice a few stories about European countries balking at taking Ukrainian "refugees" when the war started, though they didn't seem to last very long. It was amusing to see that the government officials quoted in them were always women.
It's much like how, for the last few decades in the US, the only immigrants it was hard to get into the country for even a visit were mail-order brides, especially those from Eastern Europe and Asia. The excuse was always that they were trying to protect them from being exploited, of course, but oddly enough that never applied to brown fruit-pickers working for below minimum wage.
seriously? people said that? how stupid.
Which is why no sane society lets them within a mile of politics.
There are not many of those around. Now we're supposed to deny that there are any biological differences between the sexes, and to the extent that there are, we are supposed to vilify everything male and lionize everything feminine. "Toxic masculinity" is a thing, but I have yet to hear about "toxic femininity" or anything like that.
"He went to Washington to do good. He did very well, indeed." ...Unknown.
Joseph Robinette Biden?
Plus lifetime, gold plated health insurance. Lst checked under Obama - MoC family plan with vision, dental, drug-alcohol rehab, mental health and zero deductible was $50/year. Who knows with inflation it may have doubled to 100 bucks yearly.. thank goodness Congress were able to vote themselves pay raises to absorb the impact.
The same in Greece with the refugees ,especially the last three years the majority is "unaccompanied minors" as they call them, actual most of them over 18 and all of them males.
In America, conservatives are merely the other side of the same coin with leftist. Pro war, pro deficit spending, pro mass illegal immigration and pro Covid control. Not much difference here. Just proving the left is hypocritical seems good enough most days. Actually taking a stand and doing something does not seem to be required. We have a small number of Libertarians like Rand Paul that will say the right things but carry no real power. I fear we are lost either through ideology or having been bought and paid for. Take your pick. Our military industrial, pharmaceutical and entertainment lobby own most government officials including the judiciary. The left has an objective by any means necessary and the right just delays at best. Incredibly hard times are coming and fast. No one does to it's people what our government is doing to us if they didn't want to actually kill off millions. My position is pray, plan, prepare and RESIST.
They are robbing the U.S. Treasury while an incredible number of Americans are entirely unaware and dare I say uninterested in knowing what is going on. An astounding number of people simply live their lives locally and never find out a thing about the games being played in government. How can they be anything other than low information voters, if they vote at all.
Better to be a low information voter than a controlled information one.
The coming issue of interest on the US debt will likely cause considerable pain as we discover modern theory of forever printing money doesn't work. Whether a woke military can prevent a hostile takeover is unknown.
This is a really wonderful, clear, beautifully-expressed piece and I'm glad to have read it. It should be slipped under everyone's door in the dead of night; tucked secretly in lunchboxes and left surreptitiously on park benches, kept from flying away by any handy stone or twig.
You don't know how glad I am to have found your writings. Almost everyone I may have ever thought intelligent or thoughtful in the Before Times has proven entirely otherwise and it's painful to be in the rapidly-tarnishing state of my golden years.
PS: Please tell me the source of the frogs illustration on your Twitter page. Making me nuts not to know.
Yes. I agree. When I read this article, my heart leaped! At last someone had put into words that I could understand my observations and concerns and provided an explanation as to why so called conservative politicians keep letting us down. Happening right here in NZ where the government is rapidly losing support but the opposition party still support climate change measures etc.
It's a perfect example of the descriptive "elegant." Really made my day, because so many morons self-dubbed "political commentators" haven't come within a gazillion lightyears of such clarity.
Of course to be happy about having our horrors explicated so beautifully tells you exactly how awful things are right now...
No one has the guts.
Lot of good that's done any of us.
what lovely imagery, if only those notes could be tucked
and read
I ain't got no printer so can't moonlight as The Eugyppius Fairy...
and, you need to avoid being accused of causing climate change
Oh heck I thrive on acquiring moron enemies...
Like you my main memory from the Merkel’s Great Replacement will be the following: A video of Syrian “refugees” stepping out of a train at the Vienna main train station. While Austrians are welcoming them with flowers and open arms as a warm welcome, two Syrian teenagers give a hateful look at the camera and both make the “throat slicing” gesture with their right hand. And the apologizing comments from the journalist were even more scary: “You have to understand these kids have seen too much destruction and suffered from much deprivation.”
😳
I need to read this a few more times to see whether I fully agree with it or not, but you make many excellent points. One initial comment on this:
"Whereas MKH constructs the conservative primarily as an individual, the left appears in his pages as an ideology – one which holds that society is a human construct; that traditional social structures are repressive; that denies man’s biological nature; and that is ultimately hostile to western civilisation, which it seeks to replace in the future with socialist utopia. “One can either entirely reject this system of patent insanity, or not at all” (p. 69). The conservative’s belief that he can adopt some leftist principles for pragmatic purposes, or in a spirit of compromise, are therefore mistaken. The system he opposes demands absolute submission; anything less makes him an enemy regardless.
I used to work for a pro-life organization and witnessed many times the willingness of the pro-abortion people (many of them very far left, and sometimes members of actual socialist parties) to come together to do different things they might not all agree with, subsuming their own views for the chance to accomplish something like those goals. They would all carry identical signs and stand in a line at a counter protest, for instance (sometimes after all being bussed there) while the people protesting came separately, with their own handmade signs saying whatever each most wanted to say, and stood in little groups. The leftists always looked large, organized, and "on message," even if they showed up knowing little about the protest (I'd talk to them myself and sometimes found some who knew almost NOTHING about the protest.
For instance, at one event I went to protesting a state healthcare bill that included abortion provisions, several of the young women counter-protesting with signs thanking a legislator for voting for it were from another state, in town helping out the homeless, and had come with a group of actual homeless people brought there by organizers. I asked them if they thought they should be there when they didn't live in the state or know the issue, and one of them told me, "Well, I just think doing something is better than doing nothing, so I'll say thank you!"
Conservatives do not want to do things like this. They want to pick their battles, say only what they believe and endorse, and otherwise go about their business. As a result, they lose.
Very insightful, and disturbing.
As the old saw goes, if you're not disturbed, you're not paying attention!
This is just superb. This is perhaps the best exposition of the contemporary political dynamic I've come across.
In DC, everyone wants to be invited to the cocktail parties and be part of the uniparty. Can't do that as a wide open conservative. With the exception of a few brave souls, it's a corruption cesspool on the left and RINO right.
Wow! This is a treatise that describes and explains exactly what we are seeing in my country - Australia. At least c19 has revealed the frightening progression of the power of the elites and their bureaucratic henchmen in attacking basic liberties. And all the while the “conservatives” just acquiesce, like the proverbial frogs in the boiling water, in the Lobg March. And yet, there is the glimmer of hope coming from the downtrodden working families. Not from the well heeled and comfortable and “well educated” middle class, of course, but from this Aussies that still enjoy clear sighted common sense. I saw this clearly in a non publicised protest rally re vaccination of over 100,000 families (with kids and dogs) at our capital city, Canberra, last year . They were very angry, as they were threatened with losing their jobs if they continued to refuse to be vaccinated. I was so immensely proud of them. They gave me hope for the future. But I thought how odd it was - these are the very people the Left are meant to represent!
Vicki, have you noticed that the Liberals merely enact the policies of Labor/Greens for them? The left have never cared about people - this is one of their great myths that they build around themselves. The truth is the opposite. For them it is always about destroying anything meaningful, and reducing everyone to nothingness in sameness. This is the key to their hellish Utopian pogrom. They are at war with the human soul. The 'conservatives' at heart are little different. They exist within the same humanist, nihilist philosophical system, and for them also the 'state' is the locus of all meaning - so they think they are like gods. We are seeing the rapid escalation of the end-game of philosophical humanism within our culture.
Thank you for this. I lived in Switzerland as a teen and have some memory of German, but not enough to understand this book. You and the book’s author are absolutely correct and I wished more conservatives realized this.
You made a comment a few months ago that really stays with me; the past few years have changed you and you will never be the same. I feel the same way, but also feel isolated. I live in heavily blue, progressive Los Angeles and seem to be one of the few who has been so traumatized by the past two years and sees something very wrong and evil in the world. I can’t imagine going back to the way I was in 2019, even though I wish I could.
The “uniparty” party of Godless commies… fascist/communist/WEF to the core… I am so sick of politicians talking out of both sides of their mouth on BOTH sides… we are either being stabbed in the chest by the satanic Democrats or stabbed in the back by the Benedict Arnold Republicans here in the USA…
They all need to LEAVE US ALONE!!!! 🔥🔥
Well, I’ll just give them all of my shots, boosters, and masks…💉💉💉💉💉. How many are we up to now? Four or five? Too bad that wouldn’t “appease,” them… When I was working as a nurse years ago, I was told I gave a good shot 🔥💥💥💥😇😇😇