Political Parsimony

Do not multiply enemies beyond necessity.

William of Ockham: Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

William of Alhambra: Inimici non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem.

Enemies are worse than friends are good. The enmity of the enemy is more to be feared than the friendship of the friend is to be desired. But show me a man with no enemies, and I'll show you a man with no character. We of the Coalition of the Sane and the Reasonable are distinguished by our enemies, in two senses of 'distinguish':  we are set apart from them and we are set above them.  A man is judged by the nature of his enemies — and by the nature of his friends.

“If I am a Transphobe, then you are a Misogynist!”

Thus I paraphrase Riley Gaines' brilliant response to the Congressional idiot who accused the swimmer of being 'transphobic.'

The denial of the most obvious distinctions by the 'woke' Left is part of the evidence for my claim made directly below that we are a nation losing its collective mind.

Addendum

What do I mean by 'collective mind?' I don't mean that there is one mind that is the mind of the nation. I mean that the climate of opinion has shifted such that a sizable majority of the populace lacks common sense and basic understanding of hitherto well-known facts.  You lack common sense, for example, if you think that tolerating criminal behavior will not lead to more criminal behavior.  You lack basic understanding of hitherto well-known facts if you think that the sex of a new-born can be assigned in the way that its name can be assigned. 

Is the Enlightenment the Problem?

Continue reading “Is the Enlightenment the Problem?”

Robert Kaplan on Henry Kissinger

Robert Kaplan:

Kissinger’s beliefs, which emerge through his writing, are certainly not for the faint-hearted. They are emotionally unsatisfying, yet analytically timeless. They include:

  • Disorder is worse than injustice, since injustice merely means the world is imperfect, while disorder tempts anarchy and the Hobbesian nightmare of war and conflict, of all against all.
  • It follows, then, that order is more important than freedom, since without order there is no freedom for anybody.
  • The fundamental issue in international and domestic affairs is not the control of wickedness, but the limitation of self-righteousness. For it is self-righteousness that often leads to war and the most extreme forms of repression, both at home and abroad.
  • The aim of policy is to reconcile what is just with what is possible. Journalists and freedom fighters have it easy in life since they can concern themselves only with what is just. Policymakers, burdened with bureaucratic responsibility in order to advance a nation’s self-interest, have no such luxury.
  • Pessimism can often be morally superior to misplaced optimism. Pessimism, therefore, is not necessarily to be disparaged.

It is true that much of the above is derivative of the great philosophers, especially Hobbes. But it is to Kissinger’s credit that he consciously activated it in the daily conduct of foreign policy.

[.  . .]

Kissinger was a “genuine statesman”, to use the German philosopher-historian Oswald Spengler’s definition: that is, he was not a reactionary who thought that history could be reversed, nor was he a militant-idealist, who thought that history marched in a certain direction. Kissinger’s conclusion was more grounded: he believed less in victory than in reconciliations.

How Long Can We Last?

Historian Hanson wrote in January of 2022: 

In modern times, as in ancient Rome, several nations have suffered a “systems collapse.” The term describes the sudden inability of once prosperous populations to continue with what had ensured the good life as they knew it. 

Abruptly, the population cannot buy, or even find, once plentiful necessities. They feel their streets are unsafe. Laws go unenforced or are enforced inequitably. Everyday things stop working. The government turns from reliable to capricious if not hostile. 

It is now October, 2023, and things are far worse.  We are closer than ever to systemic collapse. We do have it over the Bishop of Hippo in one respect, however: we can watch the decline and fall of a great republic on television! So far it is almost entertaining, and exceedingly stimulating for those of us of an intellectual bent, and it may remain such for a while as long as we can live our lives without being carjacked, mugged, shot to death, raped, and so long as our pharmacies and supermarkets remain open, the grid remains functional, and so on. Not to mention being thrown in prison by the agents of the police state with the tacit support of the useful idiots that make up about half of the population.

But it is only a matter of time before we are all, government functionaries and useful idiots included, swept up in the death spiral if we don't do something pronto.  Is societal collapse inevitable? I say No; my friend Brian thinks me naive. He may be right. (Argue your case, son.)

What say you?  How much time do we have before the sun finally sets on the Land of Evening? How much time do we have before der Untergang des Abendlandes?

We are drowning in excellent analysis when we need action. Trouble is, ameliorative action is out of the question in a nation as divided as we have allowed ourselves to become.

The End of Liberty is Nigh: The Digital Pound and Cancel Culture

And to add insult to injury, irony to outrage, the end of liberty is being ushered in by the mother country.  Here:

The digital pound would be a new type of money issued by the Bank of England for everyone to use for day-to-day spending. You would be able to use it in-store or online to make payments. 

This type of money is known as a central bank digital currency (CBDC). You may also hear it being called ‘digital sterling’ or even ‘Britcoin’. We call the UK version of CBDC the digital pound.

The digital pound would be denominated in sterling and its value would be stable, just like banknotes. £10 in digital pounds would always have the same value as a £10 banknote.

If we introduced it, it would not replace cash. We know being able to use cash is important for many people. That’s why we will continue to issue it for as long as people want to keep using it.

And you can take that italicized paragraph to the bank! (Italics added.)

In a parallel assault on liberty, the Brits are going cancel-crazy. Dreher:

It’s a country that gave the world George Orwell, but now, it’s a ‘Brand’ new world for free speech in once-great Britain, which these days specializes in doling out the unwelcome gift of Orwellianism.

Dame Caroline Dinenage, the chair of a British Parliamentary committee, has been writing to social media platforms Facebook, TikTok and Rumble, asking them if they plan to follow YouTube’s lead and demonetize the accused sex pest Russell Brand. On committee letterhead, Dame Caroline wrote to express the committee’s concern that Brand will not be able to make money on the platform and thereby “undermine the welfare of victims of inappropriate and potentially illegal behavior.”

Potentially illegal. This Conservative MP is using her powerful position to attempt to crush Brand’s ability to make a living, even though he denies the allegations, and they have not been subject to any sort of trial. This member of the British government is attempting to demonetize Russell Brand himself, based solely on allegations.

If this outrageous intimidation is allowed to stand, no one is safe in Britain. All it takes is for the right people to level fashionable accusations against you—ones having to do with racism, sexism, LGBT-phobia, ‘toxic masculinity,’ and whatnot—and you could see your livelihood evaporate overnight. You could even see your own government persecute you, as the committee headed by Dame Caroline, Baroness Lancaster of Kimbolton, is doing to Brand.

The Anglosphere is lost, and America is no exception. The push-back is too little, too late. But it ain't over 'til it's over.

We fight on in the gathering gloom. No defeatism! On the other hand, don't be a fool who sacrifices his life on the altar of activism. We have but one night to spend in this bad inn.  But a night is not nothing. I'll leave it to you to figure out the right mix of commitment to the fight and Gelassenheit. And it is up to you to balance praeparatio vitae and praeparatio mortis.

"So let us not talk falsely now, the hour is getting late."

"War, children, it's just a shot away."

Why Won’t Leftists Enforce Existing Laws?

A reason, perhaps the main reason, may be gleaned from the following graphic:

The above stats are clearly in the ball park according to every study I have read. Heather Mac Donald has done outstanding work on this topic. I refer you to her.

One reason why leftists won't enforce existing laws is because (1) doing so would have a "disproportional impact on blacks," and (2) such disproportionality violates the value of 'equity' to which leftists subscribe.

Leftists (mis)use 'equity' to mean equality of outcome or result. 'Equity' is at or near the top of the Left's axiological hierarchy:  a high or the highest value to be striven for in our social and political arrangements. 

Someone who accepts both (1) and (2) will be loathe to enforce existing laws against homicide and other crimes. 

Now (1) is undoubtedly true. The reason is simple: blacks as a group commit more crimes than the other groups mentioned.  And so it follows that their incarceration rates are higher.  This is so even after we subtract off unjust convictions due to racial bias among jurors, and the malfeasance of corrupt judges, overzealous careerist prosecutors, and bad cops. 

(2), however, is undoubtedly false.  The reason is that 'equity' is a disvalue, not a value. The word as used by leftists is a neologism that conflates the distinction between equality in legitimate and attainable senses (equality of opportunity, equality before the law, treating like cases in a like manner, and such related ideas as due process which are the glory of the Anglo-American legal system) and, on the other hand, equality of outcome, which is unattainable except by police-state means, and even then not sustainable for long: life's  natural hierarchies will inevitably reassert themselves.

It might go like this: the USA under the yoke of 'woke' continues to weaken itself until it collapses under the  effect of its own decadence in synergy with  external attack and invasion by its geopolitical enemies. It is a good bet that this is in our near future, within ten years.  It is not inevitable, but there is no reason to be sanguine about the prospects of push-back. The oligarchic deep state will do everything and anything to crush Donald J. Trump and will of course if necessary attempt an 'Ecuadorean solution.' 

If the USA collapses, then the natural hierarchy of aptitude, ability, resoluteness, etc, will have reasserted itself.  We will then both collectively and individually face the Islamist-Sino-Russki trilemma: either embrace and affirm the new order, or accept political-cum-religious dhimmitude, or 'be put to the sword,' if not literally then by cancellation of livelihood and incarceration.

There will never be, and their cannot be, equality of outcome or result over the long haul because of the different aptitudes and abilities and interests of different peoples and groups of people.  

Matt Taibbi

Campaign 2024, Officially Chaos. Excerpts:

The cognoscenti never figured out or accepted that the support for protest candidates like Trump or Bernie Sanders even is rooted in wide generalized rage directed their way. To this day they don’t accept it. They keep thinking they can wish it away, describe it away (see Bump’s description of Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. as “not at this point serious competition”), indict it away. If you drop 76 charges on a candidate and he goes up in polls, you might want to consider that you might be part of the problem. But they can’t take even that heavy a hint.

[. . .]

Democrats meanwhile are repeating the process of cooling turnout by blasting their own protest candidate, and instead of an alert-if-off-putting Hillary Clinton on the ticket, the standard-bearer is a half-sentient, influence-peddling version of Donovan’s Brain, with no one behind him but Kamala Harris — who just got asked by a trying-to-be-friendly reporter at ABC if “race and gender” were a cause of her own historically low approval rating. Absent a big switch, our future is either Donald Trump, who by next year will be in more restraints than Hannibal Lecter on the tarmac, or this DNC dog’s breakfast. Other countries are surely already laughing. It’s getting harder to resist joining them.

How the Dems Will Win in 2024

Victor Davis Hanson explains.

Here's an alternative scenario from Paul Kengor.

"If RFK [Jr.] goes third party, it would be doomsday for Democrats. It could bring Donald Trump back to the White House. And if that happens, Democrats [will] have only themselves to blame for their idiotic, authoritarian policies on everything from vaccine mandates to drag queen story hours to transgender athletes bullying girls."

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The Accelerationist Option

I wrote recently that the only way out is through, but Malcolm Pollack's most recent offering is much better; it is indeed brilliant.  It divides into three parts. There is first a litany of what ails us. The second part explains why the ills listed are upon us. The general answer is that

. . . an aggressive, secular pseudo-religion, which denies all transcendent order and natural categories, has seized control of the minds of scores of millions of Americans, and of the levers of political power and information dissemination. This ersatz religion holds as its highest principle the flattening of every natural distinction, and all social hierarchies, except of course the hierarchy that places itself in the position of commanding power over every institution, and over all of civil society.

This general answer is then fleshed out with a list of the specific truths that the secular pseudo-religion brands as heresy.

The third part of the essay raises the question of what we can do about the miasmic mess we are in. Pollack rejects as hopeless three ways out that quite naturally suggest themselves: voting, a return to federalism, and armed revolt.

And then comes the startling suggestion: 

Perhaps, then, it is best in the long run not to slow this process by incremental and ineffective political resistance. It may be that such an approach, by making the decay more gradual, will also make it somehow more bearable, day by day, and might turn it from an acute and intolerable affliction to a slow and chronic decline — a creeping Brazilification, a great national frog-boiling. Perhaps we would be wiser simply to let the cleansing fire of fever run its course, and burn itself out. It will be painful, and surely debilitating for a while, but then it will be over. And then, at last, we can awaken, blink our eyes, and get back on our feet.

Another term for the Big Guy might be all it takes. Four more years!!

In sum, the only way out is through, and the best way through is pedal-to-the-metal, balls-to-the-wall, lets-go-Brandon! Let Biden finish the job, as he intends to do, and thereby finish us off. After an ignominious death, resurrection, a new Phoenix from the old ashes. 

Might I suggest an historical parallel? Germany gone mad had to be destroyed before it could be rebuilt into sanity. It is perhaps a good thing that Hitler, drunk on his initial success, and consumed with hubris, overextended himself, thereby bringing to an end National Socialist totalitarianism. And so it may also be a good thing to allow the totalitarian-globalist-'woke'- race-delusional-culturally Marxist  scum now in control of our once-great Republic to bring her to her knees where she will repent, suffer, and die to be reborn.