The Big Lie Is Not a 20th Century Technique

Shilling--the practice of advocating a position without openly acknowledging one's status as an agent of the position's beneficiary--is not new. It's old, damn old, and it is long past time to dig into the past to see where the big ideas of the past come from.

When I went to graduate school, I focused on the origins of John Locke's philosophy. What I'm putting into this post is the TL/DR version, necessarily abbreviated for length and summarized accordingly. There's enough here for a proper book; I read several (and a bunch of letters) in making this M.A. thesis happen.

The summary is this: Locke was a poor kid who had just enough scratch to buy a proper education, got it, got status anxiety as the price for it, and decided that life as a non-clerical academic in an academia dominated by clerics was a sureshot for dealing with his life. It wasn't; got tossed when he ran afoul of the orthodoxy due to his own efforts ands got tossed out after a youth and early adulthood in the Ivory Tower of academia.

Using what few connections outside academia he made, he got into contact with the first Earl Shaftsbury and moved into his house. Over the next two or so years, everything he'd spend the rest of his life publishing and promoting got stuck into his brain by his patron. Aside from some clerical work in officialdom and tutoring the Second & Third Earls, that's what he did- he wrote down, revised, etc. the political, social, economic, and cultural philosophies that directly and immediately benefited his patron and allies thereof. The man even published using allied printers.

Why does this matter? Because the 1st Shaftsbury was the head of the liberals of the day, the Whig Party, and at one time had control of the state- a power used as one expects, to benefit themselves at the expense of enemies and rivals. Shaftsbury also had business interests that directly benefited from the very economic and political positions that Locke advocated, and the Earl (and his son and grandson) rewarded their pet intellectual for his efforts properly.

This is not to say Locke is wrong per se, but it does mean that Locke is suspect and therefore every claim he made after coming under Shaftsbury's patronage must be audited, interrogated, and either confirmed or denied. All of you that are skeptical of Modernity, you've got good reason for your doubts now.

As I said above, there's enough here for a book to properly investigate this; I'd adapt and expand my M.A. thesis into such if I could focus on it full-time.

Utopia Is Impossible. Stop Trying.

Christians, and those that know their Bible, will remember the Tower of Babel. They will remember that this a utopian scheme, meant to bind all the nations together with a common tongue under a common rule as that elite sought to unseat God by breaching Heaven to do so. Well before that could happen, God smote the Tower. He scattered the nations and confused their language.

That's a parable, folks, and far too few took the lesson. Utopia is impossible, and it is impossible because Natural Law will never allow for it.

That makes Utopia a lie, a big lie, and it is no surprise that Utopia is often found hand-in-hand with Empire. Why? Because to achieve and sustain a utopia, especially over time, you need an imperial regime to enforce it. Imperial regimes require the yoking of disparate nations under the same authority, and all of the emergent behaviors that always occur when diverse nations are put into close proximity are part-and-parcel with utopian schemes. If Empire is the hardcore junky strung out on smack, Utopia is the sloppy lush that talks nice but can't keep herself together.

Every utopia fails. They fail because the consequences of their contradictions finally hollow them out and cause them to collapse, which is exactly how empires falls, and often by the same ultimate event: insiders turn traitors and throw open the gates to hostile outsiders.

And yes, I do mean every utopia. The excuse is irrelevant; the results are the same: oppression, poverty, misery, and death- lots and lots of easily preventable, avoidable, and often deliberately-inflicted death. Its psychology is that of a willful child, insisting that it has to work despite how many times it previously failed. The politics that demand that Big Daddy handle it all, and make the meanies go away, stems from every last damned utopian scheme and scam ever attempted- and the solution is also the same: Let. It. Fall.

There is no substitution for the Father. Not in the family. Not in the household. Not in the community. Not in the culture. Not in the nation. Not in the state. Not in the individual human heart and soul. Utopia is fundamentally the psychology of a deluded woman, thinking that everything will be all right with just enough magical thinking to go with magical economics, and then going "How did this happen?!" when Natural Law--God's rod of smiting--comes up to say "NOPE!" and once more restore the lawful order of Mankind's existence.

Stop trying. It won't happen. It won't because it can't happen. It can't because Natural Law does not allow it. Stop falling for this scam. Stop being Utopia's cuck and sucker, using you for Empire's gain. Empire must fall, and so must Utopia.

No Place for Rabbits

"The perfect is the enemy of the good."

Never has this been more obvious to me than in looking at my own side in the culture war. Both that those of my allies are not (and, I am certain, some cannot be) perfect examples of what needs to be to win, and that some are willing to do what they can here and now to make victory happen. They can't have their cake and eat it too; this is a world for wolves, not rabbits.

Empire, like any addict, is inherently rabbit-like in its psychology. When it cannot satisfy its insatiable hunger, it turns violent in an attempt to do so in the hope that the sudden spasm will terrorize the others into compliance. Why? Because it cannot avoid believing that any disruption of supply is the result of either incompetence or hostile action resulting in supply being withheld. Unable to see that there are other explanations, it presumes ill intent and acts to quash that threat by any means at its disposal.

The result, when it works, is the start of a downward spiral to ruin. It is the psychology that we see arise time and again in declines and collapses. (Which means that rabbit-thinking is addict-thinking, because the processes are the same and so are the results if left unchecked.) However, there is another aspect to this that can be and should be considered: when provided with an out, once conditions become intolerable the rabbit flees for easier conditions- and so will addicts. Empire will do likewise.

The good here is to attack the things that produce the easy conditions that Empire desires to feed its gluttonous lusts. A free people does entirely for themselves; what aid exists is entirely private, comes with eu-civic conditions, and exists solely for the purpose of rehabilitating rescues while repurposing the broken- and then, it is only for one's nation. Never for aliens or foreigners.

The perfect is to create a parallel structure and then break away from the rabbit warren to live apart until the warren collapses, and then break out to finish off the survivors. This is necessary, but not sufficient. Focusing on this alone isn't enough; attacking the sources of the rabbit-friendly conditions is required, and that means undoing all of the things done in a mistaken pursuit of compassion for parties that have proven to be incompatible with Civilization.

Star Trek will never happen because of evolutionary psychology, so stop trying to flout Natural Law. This is a world for wolves. Civilization is built by wolves for wolves, and not for rabbits. Empire is a rabbit- and rabbits are for eating.

Predators Piss On Pacifists

Pacifism.

I understand the appeal of pacifism. Refusing to do violence, as a matter of principle, to resolve your conflicts isn't that out of line. While violence--raw, naked force--is the universal solvent, that doesn't mean that it's the best tool for the job. That said, the reason that pacifism gets the bad reputation is that it takes the general good idea of restraint and irrationally pushes that restraint to the point of being maladaptive to the threat at hand.

In short, pacifism is for prey and it signals to predators great and small that here stands a meal for the taking- and that is exactly what becomes of any unit who so embraces pacifism that it ceases to know when to stop refraining from using force and start using it good and hard to best possible effect.

Empire is a predator. It sees pacifists as fools, fuckwits, and food- as prey. A thing to consume and crap out, not something at all worthy of respect or consideration. If someone or some group refuses to defend itself and its own, so much the better; feast on their flesh, rest easy on their bones, and move on to the next prey.

That's not how this world works. It has not been, is not now, nor shall it ever be how this world works. As the old saying goes, If you want peace, prepare for war.

The same goes for cultural warfare as for physical warfare. Predators will use whatever means work to sucker prey into lower their guard; predators, by their nature, are not interested in fair fights for anything and if they can sucker you into pacifism they'll do it- and then they'll eat you. Dead is dead- how you die is not relevant.