Good Fences Make Good Neighbors: A Defense of Nationalism

The other night, I made the mistake, while cycling through the stations on my car’s radio, of listening to a few moments of an interview on the local public radio station. I don’t even remember the name of the interviewee, and really only remember about him that he was your typical left-wing whiner, in this case complaining that he had not been given a chance to write an op-ed for the New York Times. What really had his knickers in a knot was that Marine Le Pen, leader of France’s National Front party, had been given op-ed space by the Times in the wake of the Charlie Hebdo attack in Paris.According to our misremembered would-be author, this was simply a horrible, horrible thing for the Times to have done. The interviewer, admitting that he did not know who Marine Le Pen was, asked why. It was because, as we were told by Nameless Whiner, Marine Le Pen is a “fascist.” He then proceeded to expound upon this point, demonstrating in the process that he had no idea what “fascism” really is; explaining that, among other things, Marine Le Pen is against multiculturalism and open immigration into France from the Muslim world.In other words, Marine Le Pen is a “fascist” because she believes that France should be for French people.What a radical concept.Yet, this sort of sentiment is common among those on the Left. According to the tenets of political correctness, a nation can only be happy and prosperous when it contains the largest possible number of culturally, linguistically, and socially disparate elements. The fact that history shows the exact opposite every single time is irrelevant. Yet, this is why the American Left continues to purvey the falsehood that open borders are good for us, that we need millions of unassimilated foreigners “doing jobs that Americans won’t do” (for $2.50 an hour with no benefits, that is), that it’s a wonderful thing for us to have neighborhoods and entire cities that are basically portions of Mexico scooped up and dropped onto American soil. It’s why the European Left, even in the face of deadly attacks from Islamic extremists in the heart of Europe, can’t find it within themselves to do more than wring their hands about the possibility that such attacks might generate evil, mean, racist hatred against those poor little lambs, the Muslims.Multiculturalism is idiocy. Plain and simple. It is the province of shallow minds that have no understanding of human nature or how the world really works. Its enforcement upon populations will do nothing more than agitate the saner elements of those populations and eventually bring about societal breakdown that will most likely be accompanied by bloodshed to a greater or lesser degree. Multiculturalism is the creed of those who want to tear down, rather than build up, the good and right and admirable works of a civilization.What this world needs is more genuine nationalism. What is nationalism? In a nutshell, it is the belief that nations (more on what this word means below) should be separate from each other. Nations should have their own borders, should be able to pursue their own policies, free from the interference of others. In other words, France should be for the French, Germany for the Germans, Romania for the Romanians, and the United States of America for Americans.Obviously, like pretty much anything else out there, nationalism can be abused, can be used as an excuse for excesses. Yes, nationalism can become a justification for chauvinism. It can be used to pursue revanchist policies. It can even become a rationalization for expansionary warfare.But it’s not like other, more “good and pure” concepts have never been abused, right? Surely nobody has ever thought to use “democracy” to justify making war on other nations. How about “social justice” or “worker’s rights” or “economic interest”? Yet, nobody on the politically correct Left seems to be in a rush to condemn democracy or labor unions or economic growth as engines of warfare. No, the opposition to nationalism on the grounds of its excesses is simply an artifice of the Left that is designed to advance their globalist agenda, an agenda which nationalism would destroy were it to regain a footing in the hearts and minds of people all over the world.So, what is a “nation”? I believe that the best and most rational definition of what a nation is happens to be the one provided by Holy Scripture. In the New Testament, the term that is most often translated as both “Gentiles” and “nation” is the Greek term ethnos. This word derives from a root verb etho, which has the sense of “acting by customary usage, to do that which one is wont to do by habit.” Ethnos, then, describes a group of people who are bound together by “customary usage,” what we would call “culture” in its sociological sense. A “nation” is made up of people who share a common culture, which necessarily implies that they share a common language, a common history, a common set of values, similar social and spiritual ideas, and so forth. The Old Testament Hebrew term goyiim also has this same general meaning.Nationalism is the natural order of things. The Apostle Paul preached to the Athenians,

“And hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation; that they should seek the Lord, if haply they might feel after him, and find him, though he be not far from every one of us.” (Acts 17:26-27)

What this means is that, contrary to what many partisans of Churchianity in the Western world believe, God does not want all the peoples of the world to be united into a one-world government and all having the same culture. Instead, God separated the various nations of men so that they would overspread the face of the whole earth, fulfilling His command to “be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth” (Genesis 9:1). Indeed, the point to the division of languages in the story of the Tower of Babel in Genesis 11 was to enforce this command; the rebels against God feared lest they should be “scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth” (Genesis 11:4), and desired to instead build a polity bound together by one language and speech, an early effort at what we would now term “one-world government.” God divided them by languages (a process which still continues to this day as languages continue to evolve and divide).In Paul’s exposition in Acts, we see that God acts in history to appoint to the various nations at various times to dwell within the bounds of their habitation. God defines where and when a nation will live as a distinct cultural and social entity. He did this so that man would not trust in his own ability to unite and “solve his own problems,” but would instead seek after God. Both one-worldism and multiculturalism are defiance of God’s establishment of these boundaries, as is offensive war-making designed to take away another nation’s land.Now, nations do change throughout history. It is simply impossible to maintain that one nation will always and at all times throughout history maintain a pure genetic lineage. Indeed, genetics are largely unnecessary to the scriptural and natural concept of a “nation.” Don’t believe me? Then show me where the English nation was 2000 years ago. You can’t. The English are an amalgam of Briton, Angle, Saxon, and Jute, with a little Dane thrown in for cultural measure, and then some Norman overlaid on top. Same with the French, who are the joining of Frank and Gaul. Or what of the Italians, who are Lombards and Ostrogoths mixed with the old Italic stock? Yet, each of these is now a distinct nation with a distinct language, culture, and traditions. They exist because God worked in history to make them what they are, for His inestimable purposes. Nations make change, but nations as the concept of distinct cultural entities that have a right to their own lands haven’t gone away.A “nation,” as history abundantly testifies, does not always coincide with political boundaries. Nations may find themselves sharing a political entity with other nations, sometimes peacefully and profitably, but more often parasitically--a nation may be the parasite, or it may be the host, the oppressor or the oppressed. The nationalism of the 19th century strove to set about a natural order for nations, bring together people of the same nation into union with each other, while freeing those of one nation held in political bondage to another. Nationalism was essentially the assertion of the principle that nations should define borders, rather than borders defining nations.Despite the widespread erroneous perception that “nationalism causes war,” it’s actually the opposite. Genuine nationalism in which nations of people don’t impose themselves on others and essentially “mind their own business,” actually works to create more peace and amity between them. Indeed, the cause of much strife in our world has been through forces that work AGAINST real nationalism – when one nation seeks to impose its values or political control over another, when nations are forced against their will to coexist within the same political unit, in which case they will nearly always seek to gain the advantage over each other.Multinationalism almost always eventually fails every time it is tried. The Austrian Empire was already falling apart along ethnic lines even before World War I sealed its fate. Once the dictators of Yugoslavia went away, Serbs and Croats and Bosnians fell apart into squabbling ethnic conflict, seeking to gather the largest pieces for themselves. Tutsis and Hutus killed each other in the artificially defined state of Rwanda. Much of the warfare and strife in the post-Cold War world has been at the instigation of the United Nations and other internationalist, globalist elements seeking to advance that agenda. The list goes on.Genuine nationalism does not have to be the enemy of international cooperation. Peace and amity can and will exist when nations are free to interact without coercion. Nations can trade with each other, enter into alliances and pacts, and all the rest freely and peaceably. The failure of the recent Scottish vote for disunion from the United Kingdom suggests that the majority of the Scottish nation is not altogether unhappy in their political union with the English nation. That’s fine, that’s their choice.Nor does it have to be the enemy of rational emigration and immigration. A nation should be free to set the limits and conditions under which foreigners can live within the borders occupied by their own people. If the foreigners are willing to abide by those stipulations and are willing to assimilate themselves to the nation among whom they are living, then all is well and good.This point is quite salient when we question the presence of large numbers of Muslim immigrants in Europe, and increasingly in the USA as well. The fact is that the Muslims, by and large, do not do this. Even though they may (sometimes) learn the languages of their host nations so that they can interact with the welfare offices and other edifices of government, one cannot say that Muslim populations from the Middle East, the Indian subcontinent, and North Africa make any significant effort to assimilate themselves to the cultures, mores, values, and societies of their host nations. Instead, they actively segregate themselves into banlieus and ghettos of their own design. After the Charlie Hebdo attacks, I saw many stories (designed to create sympathy, but which only generated nausea) about young Muslims living in France who complained about not being accepted by French society. But they have no one to blame but themselves. They (or their parents, many of these were second, or even third-generation residents) came to France but never made any effort to conform to French culture. They came, got on public assistance, and then lived their entire lives in self-segregated communities in which they purposefully protected themselves from anything that was not North African in culture and Islamic in religion.When you come to Europe and then march against democracy while proclaiming that you want to assassinate anyone who “insults Islam,” you are by no means assimilated. You are, instead, an indigestible lump creating an ulcer in the bowels of your host society. France, Germany, Italy, and the rest should have the right to send you home. It’s a positive sign that more and more people in these nations are beginning to wake up to this fact.Genuine nationalism says this: if Muslims want to do their thing, if they want to live in barbaric, 7th century degradation, then let them. Let them do so in their own countries across the Muslim world. But don’t do it in our countries. The only thing difficult to understand is why that is such a hard concept for many to accept.As Traditionalists, we must continue to assert the benefits of genuine nationalism as a force for good in this world. As the saying goes, good fences make for good neighbors, and we would see a lot more peace and quiet in the world if people would take that principle to heart. The strife and problems arise when we defy the natural order of nationalism--when nations covet the lands of other nations, when nations seek to enter en masse into another nation’s society and refuse to assimilate, when wrongheaded internationalists seek to impose one society’s values onto other nations against their will. It’s perfectly fine to think your ways are better than someone else’s. Perhaps you’re even right in that belief. But peace only comes when you mind your own business and leave other nations to their own ways.

The View from Olympus: His Majesty's Birthday

Every year, I telephone my sovereign lord and reporting senior, Kaiser Wilhelm II, on his birthday to offer my best wishes. He likes to surprise me--some fool of a historian recently wrote that he had no sense of humor--and this year he did. The night before, he paid me a visit.Like my old friend Mr. Scrooge, I first thought a bit of undigested cheese might be giving me a strange dream. Then I wondered if the figure in my bedchamber were the ghost of Imperial birthdays past, present, or to come. It turned out to be a bit of all three, but His Majesty was no ghost. Neither was the person he had with him.I stretched to attention and quickly recognized my other visitor's Austro-Hungarian uniform, decorated with the Golden Fleece. Before I could say "Happy Birthday" to His Majesty, he introduced his companion: Kaiser Karl. He was clearly a Hapsburg, but not the last Kaiser of Austria-Hungary, at least from the photographs I had seen (my landlady in Vienna in the '70s had known him well)."May I present my friend Kaiser Karl of the Holy Roman Empire?" said my Kaiser. "Get dressed. We're going to visit his domain."Curiouser and curiouser, I thought, as I threw on knee breeches, green Jäger jacket and a Feldmütze. My usual cuirassier's uniform takes an hour to get into, and a valet.Out front, a zeppelin awaited, stretching the length of my block. We boarded the control car, the commander (Mathy, no less) set the engine telegraph to "Future," and with the "Up ship!" we were off. I asked Kaiser Karl, "So I take it the Holy Roman Empire has made a comeback?""It has," he replied, smiling."And the House of Hapsburg again rules Austria?""The House of Hapsburg has always ruled Austria," he responded. "In the divine Economy, an Austrian republic is an impossibility."Our tour of the restored Holy Roman Empire took us first over northern Italy, where the double eagle black-and-yellow flag flew proudly from Milan to Venice. "The northern Italians were so glad to come home, "Kaiser Karl said. "They have as much in common with southern Italians as a horse has with an aardvark. Northern Italy knew it was part of Mittleuropa.""And the south?" I enquired."Again the Kingdom of the the Two Sicilies," answered Kaiser Karl. "Naples is once more one of the most beautiful cities in Europe."We flew quickly over Vienna (a return for tea at Schönbrunn was planned for the afternoon) and landed in Berlin. The Imperial Tram was waiting to give us a quick tour of the city. The first surprise was that, in addition to the Prussian eagle, the double eagle was also on all the important buildings. "My house now rules Germany in fief from the Holy Roman Emperor," Kaiser Wilhelm said smiling."And what had Bismarck to say to that?" I asked."Oh, you know Bismarck," answered Kaiser Wilhelm. "He grumbled, but a goodly present of fois gras settled him down.""So there is fois gras in Heaven?" I asked hopefully."Don't you read Chesterton? Heaven is eating fois gras to the sound of trumpets."Our quick tour of Berlin brought other, perhaps more important surprises. There were children everywhere, most of them blond, blue-eyed German children. People were again well-dressed, with coats, hats, and gloves. Most men were smoking a pipe or cigar. Strikingly, not a mosque or a Islamic head scarf was to be seen, and no shop sign was in a language other than German."What happened to all the Islamics?" I asked."Most converted, and the others went back to their part of the world," Kaiser Karl answered. "The official religion of the Holy Roman Empire is Christianity. Otherwise it could not be holy. We tolerate some other religions, but not all. Violent religions are outlawed. As was already clear by your time, Islam is violent, because it consider forced conversion or adherence legitimate. Our choices were either outlaw Islam or suffer an endless war on our own soil.""So all of Europe has done this?" I questioned."Some countries, including Sweden and Britain, allow Sufis, who are the only non-violent Islamic sect," answered Kaiser Wilhelm."But even the Swedes eventually had to face reality. And all the nations of Europe now require immigrants, regardless of where they come from to acculturate. There are no more foreign enclaves on Europe's soil.""And all the nations of Europe are real nations once again," added Kaiser Karl. "We have reversed the globalist process of homogenization. The British wear bowler hats and take afternoon tea. The French have dinner mid-day and allow two hours to enjoy it. A movement called Retroculture has spread across Europe. Those who join pledge to restore the old ways of their land, their people, in their own lives. Retroculture's motto is, 'What worked before can work again.' And it does."One big question had been bubbling up inside me through our tour. Finally I let it out. "In my time, Europe was finished, a dying theme park governed by a bad copy of the Soviet Union called the EU. Between the tyranny of the globalist market and the nihilism of the culturally Marxist European elite, it had no future. How did it turn itself around?"The two Emperors looked at each other and smiled. "That is a surprise we won't spoil for you, replied Kaiser Wilhelm. "Let's just say that for the secularists, it was a real jaw-dropper.""Can't you give me a hint?" I begged."Remember what Pope John Paul II said toward the end of his life, answered Kaiser Karl. "'Things will continue bad for a little while longer, then they will get better.'"And with that, our zeppelin deposited us at Schönbrunn for a good, English cup of tea (and pastries from Demels).

The View From Olympus: A Black Awakening?

A friend of mine is a Cleveland cop. He's white, and the area he serves is black. Judging from what you hear on the news, you might expect he now faces a hostile population.But exactly the opposite is the case. The blacks in his patrol area have responded to recent attacks on the police for shootings of young black males not with "rage", but with an outpouring of support for the cops. My friend told me that he and his colleagues get smiles, waves, people stopping to thank them for being there, even offers of bottles of water and invitations to come in the house on cold nights for some coffee. He said he has never seen any of this before. Some blacks have even said to him, "We know the problems isn't you, it's us."A couple dozen blacks from Ferguson, Missouri, came to Cleveland to demonstrate, march, and try to stir up the kind of violence that has burned down much of their own town. They were not well received here. When they marched through the housing projects, Cleveland blacks came out to curse them and told them to go home. The fact that some of the "peaceful" demonstrators were using bullhorns to call for killing cops may have had something to do with their reception.Seen rationally, none of this should be a surprise. Most victims of black crime are black. The honest blacks who live in the inner city need police protection more than most whites do. It's logical they should support the cops. Demonstrators from Ferguson represent violence that loots and burns black communities, not the white ones. Many of the destroyed businesses are minority owned; in Ferguson they even torched a black church. The people who live in black neighborhoods need those shops and stores. Who wants to burn down his own place?But when we look at these responses from blacks in the context of present-day politics, they are remarkable. Ordinary people have seen through the endless culturally Marxist propaganda that always portrays blacks as helpless victims and whites, especially white cops, as oppressors. What politicians and the press recognize as blacks' leaders live off this game, some quite richly. Ordinary blacks are supposed to reflect their leaders' carefully cultivated "rage." Over and over they are told that cops, especially white cops, are their enemies.In Cleveland at least, reality in beginning to defeat ideology. People are seeing through the con game. Blacks are just as capable of perceiving their interests as anyone else. The highest of all interests is safety. In Cleveland's inner city as elsewhere, safety comes from the police. They can protect honest people, black and white, more effectively when they are welcomed and supported by the community. So here at least, the black community is welcoming and supporting them.This is an awakening of potentially vast importance. It could lead to a new black politics wherein blacks themselves clean up their own communities, in cooperation with the police and whoever else is willing to help. Instead of playing the "civil rights" game where blacks' message is always the same -- "We're victims who demand you to solve our problems" -- blacks would instead turn to the message of Booker T. Washington, who called for American blacks to show that they can perform at the same level as whites and take care of themselves.The outpouring of support for our cops from Cleveland's blacks show that the base for change is there. But if it is to happen, it requires a new and very different black leadership. The new leadership must be about reality, not ideology. Its goal must be a safe and prosperous blacks community, not personal power and enrichment of the leaders. It will be difficult for such new leadership to emerge, because the white culturally Marxist Establishment will try to stop it. It is quite happy with the present situation, where blacks are a club to be used to beat whites with endless charges of "racism." But if new, realistic leadership can emerge, we might see a black awakening that would bring vast benefits to American blacks and whites alike. 

Chick-Fil-A Appreciation Day as a Successful Political 4GW Operation

By now, the reader is aware of the concerted efforts being made (and unfortunately quite successfully) by the cultural Marxists and “social justice warriors” to force their particular ideology off onto the rest of the country. This effort certainly alarms a good many people in our nation, I tend to think many more than will let on publicly, due to the mau-mauing that is received by any who cross the subverters of our culture and nation. Yet, most people feel powerless to do anything about it. It seems that the cultural Marxists – the radical feminists, the race-baiters, the Gaystapo, and the rest – have complete freedom to harass and destroy whomever they choose in the pursuit of their goals.However, there are some who are beginning to explore the use of fourth generation warfare (4GW) tactics against the cultural Marxists who almost completely dominate our political system and much of the culture. A brief overview of 4GW by William Lind, one of the primary thinkers who introduced the concept, is found here. As well, Lind’s pseudonymous novel, Victoria, provides some practical examples of how 4GW might be carried out, both before and after the shooting starts. Essentially, 4GW argues that as modern states begin to lose legitimacy (for a variety of reasons), non-state actors will begin to reassert themselves politically and militarily. 4GW further raises a set of propositions about the warfare that will be fulfilled that enable the non-state actors to be successful against larger, more powerful, and better equipped enemies.There is certainly a political application of 4GW that can be made here, casting liberty lovers and traditionalists in the role of the non-state actors (i.e. the outsiders), and the cultural-political hegemony of the cultural Marxists as the state whose legitimacy can (and in this case, ought) to be questioned.There have been sporadic moves in this direction, mostly arising demotically and probably not even realizing they were engaging in political 4GW. One of the most successful examples of this was the so-called “Chick-Fil-A appreciation day” which occurred a couple of years ago. If you will recall, Chick-Fil-A’s President, Dan Cathy, had made a statement of support for marriage, over and against the travesty known as gay "marriage.” Because of this, the usual crowd of gay mafia ruffians rose up in arms, attacking him, attacking his faith, attacking his business, and generally trying to punish him severely for his deviation from cultural Marxist norms. However, the move completely backfired on the cultural Marxists and Chick-Fil-A ended up receiving a tremendous amount of support, both moral and financial, from customers who mobbed every Chick-Fil-A restaurant in the country and provided the chain with stratospheric sales. Chick-Fil-A has continued to receive residual kudos and sales from this as a result of their stand.What made “Chick-Fil-A appreciation day” such a resounding success? I believe we can see in it some successfully applied principles of 4GW.First, those who were pushing for the appreciation day managed to obtain and then keep the moral high ground, both for their own efforts, and for the image of Chick-Fil-A as a company.While the homosexualists attempted to demonize Chick-Fil-A and Dan Cathy as “haters,” “homophobes,” and all the rest of the tired old panoply of name-calling, those supporting Chick-Fil-A succeeded in gaining control of the narrative and were able to cast the homosexualists and their allies as the bad guys. The gays were the ones who were attempting to stifle free speech, who were attacking someone for merely voicing his deeply-held personal moral conviction. The homosexualists were robbed of the moral high ground and came off looking like the buffoons and bullies that they really were, while Chick-Fil-A and its defenders were cast as the paladins of individual liberty.Second, and the reason why this narrative capture took place, is that the efforts to defend Chick-Fil-A were decentralized, instead of being directed by one or a few big-name political organizations. The effort to organize the appreciation day moved quickly--social media was used to great effect in this--and simply ran an end run around the homosexualist effort to organize boycotts and protests via their own well-financed yet sclerotic and centralized “gay rights” organizations. They got beat to the punch in the same way a swarm of hornets would be able to get the jump on and outlast a wolf.Further, because the appreciation day efforts were so decentralized, there was no single “head” that the homosexualists could strike back against. Granted, a few conservative organizations tried to jump on the bandwagon, but they were Johnny-come-latelies who had almost no effect and received almost no attention. Yet, there was no one that the gays could Alinskyize by “picking a target, freezing it, personalizing it, and polarizing it.” The gays had no target that they could hold up as “the big bad anti-gay hatemonger” behind the organization of opposition to them. They simply could not pin down and personalize a million people on Twitter, Facebook, and email, no matter how hard they tried.Third, Chick-Fil-A's supporters were able to successfully apply pressure to and exploit a fracture point. One key to successful 4GW is to find ways to keep groups from supporting each other (divide and conquer) or to keep them from supporting the central government. In this case, the fracture point was between the gays and their allies on the one hand, and the large but nebulous body of apolitical, moderate, and low-information people on the other.Because the supporters of Chick-Fil-A obtained the moral high ground and were able to cast it as a freedom of speech issue, many of these “mushy middle” types who might otherwise have supported the gays because “I don't think people should hate other people” (or some variant) suddenly took the position that people shouldn't be hounded and punished for simply speaking freely. Numerous times in the lead-up to the appreciation day, I would see people on various forums make comments along the line of “Well, I support gay rights, but I don't think they should be attacking Chick-Fil-A's freedom of speech, so I'm going to Chick-Fil-A.” Nominal supporters of the gays were successfully turned into firmer supporters of Chick-Fil-A.Fourth, and lastly, the Chick-Fil-A appreciation day was successfully 4GW because it managed to appeal to the larger body of “civilians” in a way that didn't harm or inconvenience them. A cardinal rule in 4GW is that you try not to harm civilians and other innocents, thus turning them and their families, friends, and tribes against you. Instead, you gain their support by aiding them and seeking to convince them that you're on their side.To illustrate this case here, allow me to first illustrate the opposite principle – which is that boycotts so often fail in their intended purposes. As a case in point, look at the boycott of Disney that the Southern Baptist convention attempted to carry out in response to Disney's “gay day” promotion of the homosexualist agenda. On paper, this boycott should have been a powerful deterrent. The Southern Baptists are one of the largest denominations in America; they are also one of the most conservative, and Southern Baptists tend to have many more children per family than the typical childless Episcopalian lesbian couple.Yet, the boycott was a complete and utter flop. Why? Well, while most Southern Baptists probably agreed with the boycott in principle, each family was also thinking, “Yeah, but my kids really want to go to Disney World. It'll be okay if we go, since everyone else is boycotting.” And everyone was thinking the same thing, so the boycott failed.Let's face it – Americans are a soft and pampered people. They don't like to give things up. To get them to act on something that is seemingly unimportant in the grand scheme of things (compared to, I guess, a government rounding people up and putting them in concentration camps), you have to make it benefit them. That's what Chick-Fil-A appreciation day did when it BUYcotted, rather than boycotted. People got to go and enjoy the camaraderie of being with like-minded believers. There was a sense of community. People got to treat themselves to tasty chicken sandwiches and waffle fries. People wanted to get caught up in the excitement. In short, it gained support because it was able to positively appeal to the “civilian” population of non-activists who personally gained both tangibly and intangibly from it. Compared to that, hanging out in front of a Chick-Fil-A with the other five sodomites and screeching obscenities at people just didn't have the same appeal, which is why the homosexualist counter-boycotts failed miserably.There are many lessons to be learned from analyzing what took place on August 1, 2012. While the homosexualist agenda has advanced largely because of judicial imposition, large numbers of normal Americans took the opportunity to strike back against the gay lobby, and the gays took a huge black eye that day. That, of course, was merely one battle in a long string of them. But, if we systematically began to apply 4GW principles to dealing with the homosexualist lobby when they attempt to browbeat folks and enforce their cultural delusions on the rest of us, we might see more, and more consistent, victories over them, as well as the other cultural Marxists.

Rand Paul Gets Cuba Right

Above photo: Evil commies reigning terror on all who stand in their way.President Obama’s decision to move toward normalized relations with Cuba has caused an array of responses, most of them pretty predictable. As a conservative non-interventionist, I support Obama’s decision. I support normal relations with Cuba and have since I moved to the position of non-interventionism many years ago. Our embargo of Cuba, ostensibly to promote “regime change” and democratization in Cuba, has been an utter failure in this regard and has deprived Americans of good cigars and a nice vacation destination to boot. Our Cuba policy has long been a relic of our Cold War past, and it makes no sense to continue it.While I believe our standard Cold War history could use some revisionism, I won’t go there in this essay. If you accept the Cold War narrative at face value, it makes sense that the US did not want a hostile pawn of the Soviet Union 90 miles from our mainland. In lieu of an invasion, an embargo aimed at toppling our enemy’s puppet regime arguably made sense in that context. But it certainly ceased to make sense once the Soviet Union dissolved and Cuba became just another country whose form of government we don’t like. We don’t like Saudi Arabia’s form of government, but we aren’t embargoing them. Our Cuba policy remained in place clearly because of inertia and a lack of political will to upset the powerful Cuban voting block and the knee-jerk hawk crowd.Predictably, as I stated above, the hawkish interventionist chorus has responded with outrage, particularly our two Republican Senators of Cuban descent, Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz. (As an aside, this should put to rest any lingering doubts conservative and libertarian non-interventionists might have had that Cruz is somehow different on foreign policy because he is supposedly anti-establishment and a Tea Party favorite.) The move was decried by the fear-ridden hawkish bed-wetters for all the clichéd reasons. It gives the Castros “international legitimacy.” It “undermines America’s credibility.” It leaves a “rogue,” “totalitarian” regime in place. Blah, blah, blah…Louisiana Governor Jindal whined that the “President has no strategy for leading on an international stage." Perhaps Governor Jindal can show me in the job description of the U.S. President that we call the U.S. Constitution where it says it is the responsibility of our Chief Executive to “lead” on the “world stage.” Such unabashedly globalist rhetoric is fit only for the one world crowd that thinks a New World Order is fine and dandy. Any self-respecting authentic conservative would be ashamed to have such a blatant call for globalism escape from his lips. The only stage on which an American President should concern himself with leading, within Constitutional bounds, is the 50 states that make up the United States of America.The non-interventionist position on Cuba is simple. Is Cuba the 51^st state? No. Then what form of government they have is outside our realm. While we would, of course, prefer that Cuba adopt a freer form of government, and we are free to work toward that end in a normal diplomatic manner, it is not our place to use hostile means, and an embargo is hostile, to attempt to actively bring this about.On the other end of the array of responses, the soft non-interventionist Sen. Rand Paul is to be commended for coming out in favor of lifting the embargo. While Rand Paul is not where his father is or where I would like him to be on foreign policy, this issue does demonstrate that Rand Paul is at least quantifiably different from the reflexive hawks in his party, despite his history of disappointing many of us non-interventionists. This statement was posted on Rand’s Facebook page:

Senator Marco Rubio believes the embargo against Cuba has been ineffective, yet he wants to continue perpetuating failed policies. After 50 years of conflict, why not try a new approach? The United States trades and engages with other communist nations, such as China and Vietnam. Why not Cuba? I am a proponent of peace through commerce, and I believe engaging Cuba can lead to positive change.

I concur. File this under giving-credit-where-credit-is-due, and allow it to serve as evidence that I’m not implacably hostile to the younger Paul, as I am sometimes accused. I just want him to be more like his dad.

The View From Olympus: The S Weapon

Just as Germany had its V weapons, the V-1 and V-2, so Washington now has its S weapon. If another country does something we don't like, Washington hits it with economic sanctions.As Iran's economy shows, sanctions can do a country quite a bit of damage. The burden falls mainly on the middle class; just as in Washington, the elites know how to protect themselves. From Washington's perspective, sanctions are an ideal weapon, in that they seem to cost us little or nothing.In fact, they may end up costing us a great deal. All around the world, a state's legitimacy now depends in no small part on ensuring a growing economy. A state that cannot do that may fail. Because Washington has no understanding of Fourth Generation war, it thinks the result will be merely a new government, one that will bend to Washington's (and Globalism's) will. In reality, in a 4GW world, the consequence may be another failed state and the effective conquest of another region by non-state elements.More, whenever a state thinks it has discovered a new weapon to which there is no reply, its opponents surprise it by coming up with one or several. Other countries are growing tired of Washington dictating to them and threatening sanctions if they do not obey. At least two are not little countries Washington can easily step on. I refer to China and, especially, Russia.Following its now-usual pattern when Russia recovered the Crimea and moved to protect ethnic Russians in eastern Ukraine from a hostile government in Kiev, the U.S. put economic sanctions on Russia. Reluctantly, the EU went along, partly because its elites share the Globalist ideology and partly because it is afraid to act independently of Washington. Russia hit back with sanctions of its own, which did no harm to the U.S. but did brake an already slow-moving EU economy.Washington continues to threaten Russia with further sanctions. But if I read the tea leaves correctly, Russia is preparing some counter-moves that could inflict serious pain on both the EU and the U.S.Russia currently owes foreign institutions about $800 billion in debt. The fall in the price of oil, engineered by the Saudis to put the frackers out of business, has undermined Russia's earnings of foreign exchange. Russia has a large foreign currency reserve, but not large enough to cover the $800 billion. Washington is smirking, saying to Moscow, "OK, let's see you get out of this one."Moscow has what I see as an obvious answer. Normally, it would roll the debt over. Sanctions now prevent that, because any EU financial institution that lends to Russia will be prosecuted by Washington. So why does not Moscow merely announce that it is suspending payment to institutions in any country that is participating in sanctions? It would still pay whatever is due to institutions in countries not taking part in the sanctions, so that while it would be in technical default, it would not be in what I would call policy default. It could pay; it was merely, in some cases, choosing not to as a matter of policy, a policy of replying to the S weapon.As an old saying goes, if you owe your banker $100,000, you have a problem. If you owe him $100 million, he has a problem. The EU's share of that $800 billion is large enough that Moscow would immediately hand Europe a new and massive banking crisis.Washington won't much care, because it regards Europe with the contempt satellites usually receive. But both Russia and China recently bought large amounts of gold to add to their already considerable reserves.This points to a possibility that would hurt Washington: a joint Russian-Chinese move to put some international trade back on a gold basis. That would bypass sanctions because it could bypass banks. Iran has already done this to some extent, but Iran is not big enough to make much difference. Russia and China are.The lesson here is one war has long taught: every move has countermoves. There ain't no such thing as a free MRE. One-way war, war where only one side gets hurt (unless it is over quickly), turns into two-way war. That was the real lesson of 9/11, although Washington has refused to learn it. The S weapon, used often enough and casually enough, will elicit replies that will hurt us. Russia and China, especially if they act together, can give Washington and the EU both a good birching.

The Way of Men, Gods and Runes

Strength, Courage, Mastery and Honor are the four “tactical virtues” that I used to define primal masculinity in The Way of Men. In a band-level society or “gang,” these are the virtues that men would look for and value in other men, because men who are strong, courageous, competent and loyal make better cooperative hunters, fighters and protectors. I talk more about defining masculinity in this video, but for an in-depth explanation of my “gang” theory of masculinity and the tactical virtues, read The Way of Men.Like many of my readers, I’m drawn to Germanic Paganism and Runes. It occurred to me that each of the tactical virtues could probably be assigned a corresponding rune.For those who aren’t familiar, the runes come from a series of alphabets that were scratched into rocks, wood and metals by various Germanic peoples. But each rune is also associated with an abstract concept or “mystery” and also sometimes a natural form — like ice, hail or a yew tree. As such, they become a simple shorthand for a bigger, more complex idea.This was my first formulation:Strength     -     ᚢ (uruz)Courage     -     ᛏ (tiwaz or Týr)Mastery     -     ᚱ (raido)Honor        -     ᛟ (othala)Uruz is associated with aurochs, the now-extinct ancestor of modern domestic cattle. According to the Anglo-Saxon Rune Poem,“The aurochs is proud and has great horns;it is a very savage beast and fights with its horns;a great ranger of the moors, it is a creature of mettle.”Aurochs were very large, with bulls reaching a shoulder height of almost 6 feet, and weighing almost a ton. Uruz works as a symbol of raw strength. I like it for any kind of strongman or powerlifting or other “beast of burden” training, and I have it scratched into my lifting belt. “Strong like bull.”Raido means “ride” or “journey” and it is associated with becoming and, according to Edred Thorsson’s Runelore, “rightly ordered action.” In Collin Cleary’s essay, “Philosophical Notes on the Runes” in Summoning The Gods, he identifies Uruz as the “Will to Form” and links it directly with Raido, “Dynamic Order.” I’ve been personally associating Raido with technical ability and the ability to apply concepts in motion for a while.This arrangement makes sense, but it occurred to me that the tactical virtues align perfectly to the gods themselves. The gods can be seen as aspects not only of elemental man and nature, but also as aspects of manliness as an idea.Strength    -    Thor ᚦCourage    -    Tyr ᛏMastery    -    Odin ᚨHonor is Othalaᛟ – not a god, but a runic concept that in this application encloses and represents the sum of the others.The Mannaz rune symbolizes man, so, in a formula:Man, or (Mannaz) ᛗ = ᚦ + ᛏ + ᚨ + ᛟThere is also an optional addition to the concepts that describe masculinity which corresponds directly to the qualities of the god Freyr.Below are my brief rationales for linking the virtues to gods and runes. As we really don’t know exactly how our ancestors might have used the runes or conceptualized them — and even then, which ancestors? in what place? in what period? — I can only speculate and make my own associations based on what information is available. The purpose here is to take something old and breathe new life into it, and make it useful to men who are alive today. 

Thor – Strength

Thor, god of thunder and lighting, is known for his strength and muscularity. He wields a heavy hammer, Mjölnir, and when he wears his belt, megingjörð, his already great strength is doubled.In Gylfaginning,  Thor is said to be, “the strongest of all gods and men.” When tricked by illusion into thinking he was fighting a sleeping giant, he split valleys into mountains with his hammer, and through further deception was tricked into drinking so much of the sea that it ebbed, and lifting part of the serpent that circles the world into the sky.The rune ᚦ is called Thurs or Thurisaz. ᚦurs means “giant” in Old Norse, and it is the work of Thor to use his strength to battle giants and split their skulls.It’s often occurred to me that “might” could be a better word than “strength” for the tactical virtue, because it seems to covers a wider range of physical capability and power — though the words are often used interchangeably. Might includes speed, athleticism and dexterity — all aspects of strength. 

Týr – Courage

Týr is best known for the courageous sacrifice of his hand to the wolf Fenrir, the monstrous offspring of Loki and a giantess. To trick the wolf into allowing itself to be bound, Týr  agreed to place his hand in the wolf’s mouth as a guarantee of good faith from the gods. When Fenrir could not break free and realized he had been tricked, the wolf bit off Týr’s hand. He is often referred to as the “one-handed” god, as in the Icelandic Rune Poem.“Tyr is a one-handed god,and leavings of the wolfand prince of temples.”The Romans identified the Germanic worship of Týr with their own worship of Mars, the Roman god of war. Týr has long been associated with courage, martial valor, victory and doing what must be done to maintain a right order of things.A man who will take no risks or make no sacrifices for the group when risks are necessary can’t be counted on, and his aversion to risk could actually make the group more vulnerable as a whole. He won’t hunt the aurochs or fight the enemy. 

Odin – Mastery

Odin hung himself for nine days and nights, until the forms of the runes revealed themselves to him. He ripped out his own eye for the opportunity to drink from Mímir’s well and gain knowledge of the past, present and future. Odin has many names and aspects, but in his essay, “What is Odinism?,” in TYR: Myth, Culture, Tradition.Volume 4, Collin Cleary argues that “Odin’s key feature is his ceaseless quest for knowledge.”“Closely connected with this is his striving for power. But these are so tightly linked that they are almost corollaries of each other. Greater knowledge — increased insight into the nature of the universe and its secrets — brings with it an increase in the ability to manipulate and to control all manner of things. So that, as the saying goes, knowledge is power.”Odin wants to know, understand and master the world. Mastery is the tactical virtue that critics of the tactical virtues always seem to skip over.Engineers and programmers and researchers and philosophers always seem to want masculinity to be about being an engineer or a programmer or a researcher or a philosopher. If they don’t see themselves as being strong or courageous, they tend to discount the importance of those virtues and re-stack the deck so that their own virtues are the most important ones.Understanding, judgement, wisdom, knowledge and technical proficiency are essential virtues in any survival group — because otherwise you have a bunch of strong, clumsy guys who don’t know anything taking risks for the sake of taking risks. Mastery is technology, and technology is a kind of magic to those who don’t understand it. Martial arts require mastery. Tool and weapon making and operation require mastery. Strategy and tactics require mastery.Knowledge is power, but without the courage or the ability to use that power — apply it — knowledge is just information. Knowledge is only useful when it is used, though having no immediate use for knowledge does not make that knowledge useless.Mastery alone can’t define masculinity, and while Odin is the Allfather, he’s not the only god, because human life is also a physical endeavor. We are our bodies, and our bodies must survive to make the seeking of knowledge possible. To think otherwise is a conceit of the spoiled. Violence is Golden, and that conceit depends on the outsourcing of strength and courage and the protection of the perimeter to “someone else.” 

Othala – Honor

Honor, as I defined it in The Way of Men, is about loyalty to a group. You behave a certain way, make sacrifices and do things you wouldn’t normally do because you care what the other men in your group think of you. If you act like you don’t care what anyone thinks of you, you are more attached to a group than part of it. You’re a wild card. Your honor is your reputation among your peers and your commitment to them. Honor is about the “us” — those who are “within the perimeter.”In Runelore, Edred Thorsson refers to Othala as “the sacred enclosure” and writes that, “in it is embodied the central concept of Midhgardhr and of the whole idea of ‘in-sidedness’ and ‘out-sidedness’ so prominent in Germanic (and Indo-European) thought.”Because masculinity is both a physical reality and a way of being, a man who does not care about masculinity or being regarded as masculine cannot be masculine. Now, many men will bluster and tell you they don’t care what anyone thinks of them, but they will draw lines in the sand quickly if you start asking them to dress or behave like women in public. They still chafe at being called weak or cowardly. They still care about being seen as masculine by others, but in many cases those “others” may be absent or abstract. Men who barely have any friends at all still care about “others” seeing them emasculated.In a globalized world with billions of humans, choosing who you are loyal to and which men you agree to be judged by is especially important, because you can’t please everyone. There are feminist men who have inverted masculine virtues to the extent that if you show that you value strength, courage, mastery and honor, they will (hypocritically) call you a coward for clinging to “old ideas” about masculinity.Your honor is your reputation as a man among men, but because there are so many men with so many ideas about masculinity, to stay sane you have to decide which group or kind of men. Define your boundaries and close the circle, or leave yourself open to judgment by a thousand codes and billions of eyes.The sowilo or sig rune ϟ has also been associated with honor and victory, as well as the sun. Depending on how the rune is formed, two facing sig runes can be joined to create an othala rune. 

Freyr (Ingwaz)

It is likely that the majority of the warriors who fought and died in wars probably did not have children. A lot of them probably died virgins. Many young men have joined dangerous expeditions, war bands, pirate ships, armies and so forth with the hope of one day being able to afford a wife or children or even a regular whore. A man can demonstrate all of the tactical virtues and be regarded as an exceptional man among men, but remain a bachelor or without children. Two Odin-like adventurers, soldiers, researchers and writers — Lawrence of Arabia and Richard Francis Burton — both died without children, and they would be regarded as having been good at being men by almost anyone. I’m sure you’ve encountered fathers who appear to be extremely weak, passive, cowardly or effeminate. Masculinity can exist without fatherhood, and frequently does, and extremely effeminate men can become fathers, so fatherhood cannot define the phenomenon of masculinity as a way of being.Still, fatherhood follows naturally from manhood, and without children, no band, gang or tribe can survive more than a generation unless it continually recruits from outside. Most men who survived long enough eventually fathered children by a wife, mistress, slave or concubine. Fatherhood is an aspect of masculinity and a role that most men eventually take on in some form. It’s not essential to masculinity, but it’s still important and relevant.The god Freyr is associated with fertility, the harvest, wealth, peace and prosperity. And just as fatherhood is separate from but linked to masculinity, Freyr is separate from but linked to the other gods, who are known as the Aesir. Freyr is one of the Vanir, a distinct tribe of gods who fought with the Aesir until a truce was called and Freyr, his sister Freya, and their father Njörðr – a god of seafaring and wealth – went to live with the Aesir. Odin is, of course, “The Allfather,” and could be associated with fatherhood as well, but Odin as a concept is more concerned with big ideas than with home life and the everyday reality of fatherhood. Originally posted at Jack Donovan's personal site.

Origins of the First World War, part IV

The source of this blackout is the Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations. While the original intent of the blackout was to cover up the true history of the Second World War, a concomitant result was that the First World War was covered up as well.

The Committee on Studies of the Council on Foreign Relations is concerned that the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I should not be repeated and believes that the American public deserves a clear and competent statement of our basic aims and activities during the Second World War. What is contemplated is not a nationalistic treatment, but rather a history, with the issues and problems presented by an American historian for an American public.”¹

What the Rockefellers call “journalistic debunking” most call truth telling, and whoever thinks that the history written under the CFR-Rockefeller cabal is not nationalistic and hagiographic needs to have their head examined. The fact that the list of "respectable historians" to be utilized in this revisionist cabal excludes both Charles Beard (the most respected US historian of the first half of the twentieth century and American Historical Association member) and Charles Tansill, shows these men for what they are: charlatans. Why would two of the most qualified historians in the US not be consulted on so august an endeavor? Only if the intent was to deceive and obfuscate. Such an end was seen by Charles Beard who wrote in the Saturday Evening Post:

“The Rockefeller Foundation and the Council on Foreign Relations…intend to prevent, if they can, a repetition of what they call in the vernacular “the debunking journalistic campaign following World War I.” Translated into precise English, this means that the Foundation and the Council do not want journalists or any other persons to examine too closely and criticize too freely the official propaganda and official statements relative to “our basic aims and activities” during World War II. In short, they hope that, among other things, the policies and measures of Franklin D. Roosevelt will escape in the coming years the critical analysis, evaluation and exposition that befell the policies and measures of Woodrow Wilson and the Entente Allies after World War I.”²

Sadly Beard was right: not only has Roosevelt escaped the net of truth, but Wilson’s lies were placed back in as well.I have endeavored to cite and reference men of the highest echelons of power and reputation: economists, men of letters, statesmen, generals, etc. to show that many thoughtful men have given careful thought to the origins of the First World War and that if anybody should bear the sole weight of war guilt it should be France, with Russia as a close second. Yet the hacks and quacks who teach history jealously guard the true secrets of the war and through a complex system of filtering and disinformation spread, known as peer review, this cabal of silence is maintained at the expense of both posterity and, more importantly, the truth.  Check out Todd Lewis’ blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/ 

1^ The Rockefeller Foundation Annual Report 1946, 188-89.

2^ Charles Beard, former president of the American Historical Association Who's to Write the History of the War?, Saturday Evening Post, p. 172. October 4, 1947.)

Understanding the Hierarchy of Groups within the Cultural Marxist Schema

If there is one thing that defines the thought of the cultural Marxist “Social Justice Warrior” (SJW) crowd, it is the division of people in our country into groups based on race, gender, religion (provided the religion in question is not a traditional Western faith) and sexual proclivities. The radical Left just loves doing this, for a number of reasons. Dividing people into groups allows for easier identification of who is a cultural “enemy” and who is an “ally.” It facilitates the ability of the SJWs to play group against group in their struggle to obtain political power. It also permits them to punish groups which exist outside or fall out of the cultural Marxists' favor. As a result, “diversity” can be encouraged and monoculturalism and traditional gender norms – things necessary to the perpetuation of our culture as a successful enterprise, but which the SJWs hate - can be dismissed.Yet, the careful observer should note that not all groups within this division of camps are equal – and I don't just mean that straight, white Christian males are the objects of the cultural Marxist two-minute hate. Even within the constellation of SJW “preferred groups,” there is a very definite hierarchy that seems to shake out. I believe this is important, for reasons I will explore below. But first, I'd like to delve into this SJW pecking order in greater detail. To do so, let's look at the major “groups” that the cultural Marxists divide our nation into: straight white males, non-feminist white females, Asians, blacks, Hispanics, homosexuals (by which I am collectively referring to gay males and transsexuals), feminist females, and non-black Muslims.The hierarchy of preference, I believe, travels upward in the order just given. What the relative positions between two groups in the hierarchy means is that the more favored group will be able to assert itself, from a political correctness standpoint, over and against a less favored group and will be able to shield itself from criticism by lower-ranking groups whenever there is a conflict between the goals and desires of the two. For purposes of the analysis to follow, I will define the term “political correctness conflict” (or PCC) as any situation in which the dynamics of the conflict involve adjudication, either legal, corporate, or social, by an authority that can reasonably be expected to resolve the dispute on the basis of 'social justice' values derived from group membership, rather than the individual merit of the respective arguments or cases. The authority in such cases may be a liberal judge, a college professor or administrator, a member of a company's HR team, journalists responsible for reporting the news, or some other PC enforcer.Straight White MalesThis group, comprising the vast majority of the male half of the professional, middle, and working classes, is the “workhorse” of American society. It is also the most overtaxed and underappreciated. This is because straight white males embody everything that the SJWs hate about American society – respect for law and order, traditional ideas about masculinity and femininity, support for the military, bourgeois views about the value of work and the right of the individual to keep the produce of their own labor, and so forth. Rather than explore in depth what most readers will already know, I'll just simply observe that there is no situation in which a straight white male will ever win in a political correctness conflict with any other group (all are ranked higher), and leave it at that.Non-Feminist White FemalesThough not as despised by SJWs as straight white males, this group nevertheless ranks extremely low in the hierarchy because they are often the wives or girlfriends of straight white males, and often embody the same general set of values and cultural predispositions as their men.Nevertheless, we can observe that non-feminist white females occupy a slightly higher niche than do straight white males because wherever there is a conflict in a PCC setting, the female will almost always win. This can be seen, for instance, in the overwhelming number of times in which often unfit non-feminist white female mothers will nevertheless win custody of children and will win disputes over alimony and child support in divorce situations – family and divorce courts are notorious for being overrun by cultural Marxists on the bench. Likewise, in domestic dispute situations (even those not involving violence) that see intervention from the state, the straight white male will almost always be the one who has to find another place to stay for the night, even if he was not the aggressor.AsiansAsians are the first genuine minorities on this list, and they find a very low place in the social justice hierarchy. Certainly, in a PCC, Asians will prevail against nearly all whites of either gender. As a “colonized class” in postmodern social justice theory, Asians have suffered at the hands of Europhallocentricity, and therefore deserve recompense from those below them on the ladder.But, Asians also have a disconcerting tendency to succeed in capitalistic systems, and also annoy those further up the ladder by out-competing other minority groups. As a result, Asians are viewed comparatively poorly by SJWs, and have even found themselves being legally harmed by reverse affirmative action programs in many universities where they are “overrepresented.” Further, even in direct conflicts between Asians and other minorities, such as when Korean storekeepers had to protect their shops with armed force during the Rodney King riots of 1992, the non-Asian minorities will basically get away with doing what they want to Asians, no consequences accruing to their actions.BlacksMany readers, perhaps, are surprised to see blacks ranking so low in this list. After all, we see all kinds of preferential laws, affirmative action, and other benefits that accrue to black Americans with a seeming view towards preferring them above others. But keep in mind that most reading this are likely to be either straight white males or non-feminist white females, and therefore rank below blacks and will lose PCCs against them, and have probably experienced this firsthand.Yet, when you observe conflicts between blacks and other groups in the hierarchy, blacks almost never win. For over two decades, black Americans have been complaining about gentrification, in which high-income urban white people, stereotypically gays or feminists, buy up low-cost property in economically depressed black neighborhoods and improve the properties. In the process, the property values (and therefore also the taxes and cost of living) go up, which ends up pricing low-income blacks out of their own neighborhoods. Black leaders have complained about this for years – yet, the complaints have never really gotten any traction at all within SJW circles. This is because blacks rank below both gays and feminist females in the hierarchy.Likewise, take the recent moves towards the amnesty of millions of Hispanic illegal aliens. For the black American community which already suffers from rampant unemployment and wage depression, amnesty will be a crushing blow. Yet, the Left doesn't seem to really care. That's because it, in fact, doesn't. Hispanics rank higher than blacks, so Hispanics get what they want, even at the expense of blacks. This has also been seen over the past couple of decades in which Hispanics have slowly but surely been driving black Americans out of their traditional neighborhoods in many cities, especially Los Angeles and other Southwestern municipalities, complaints about which have also fallen on deaf ears.Why is this? Probably a lot has to do with the fact that blacks are considered by the Left to be “in the pocket.” Blacks “belong” to the Left – they vote overwhelmingly for Democrats, they turn out in large numbers to support whatever cause du jour the Left trumps up. As a result, they seem to be taken for granted. After all, the thinking goes, where else are they going to turn?HispanicsAs seen above, Hispanics rank higher on the social justice ladder. In a sense, they have to. As a relatively new group to the hierarchical dynamic, the SJWs are still trying to secure them in their corner, since they could prove a fertile source of new votes and street manpower in years to come. Hence, despite their unfortunate tendencies to follow traditional Western religion and exhibiting macho cultural traits, the SJWs have to give in to Hispanics to get what they want from them in return.Yet, this only goes so far. When Hispanics are in a PCC conflict with those above them, they will lose. For example, remember the “10 Hour New York City Catcall Video” from a while back? Newly-minted feminist icon Shoshana Roberts was videoed walking around New York City, and received around 100 “catcalls” (stretching the term for many of them), all of them from black and Hispanic males. There were a few sporadic efforts to argue that her video was racist for singling out blacks and Hispanics to look bad on tape. However, these were systematically squashed by the SJWs, for whom the only acceptable narrative was the feminist one of “the problem of street harassment.” Hence, feminist female beats Hispanic in this game of paper-rock-scissors.Homosexuals and Feminist FemalesWith these two groups, we reach the mainstay of the SJW movement, the intellectual cadre (if you can abide the devaluation of that term) of cultural Marxism. These two groups receive most of the attention from the world of professional activism and the culturally Marxist specialty news organs like Mother Jones, the almost-defunct New Republic, Huffington Post, Slate, Salon, and the rest of the SJW media apparatus.Nevertheless, there is some gradation of rank between these two which puts homosexuals firmly, though surprisingly, a rung below feminist females. Though these two groups generally tend to support each others' policies and cultural goals, there are occasions where PCCs will arise between them. Typically, these revolve around two points of conflict: the radical feminist assertion that gays are “anti-female” and masculinist, and the feminist complaint that transsexuals (by which is meant the male-to-female kind) are usurping the right to call themselves women, a right that they don't really deserve. In both such cases, the organs of SJW thought will generally side with the feminist females over the homosexuals and transsexuals. However, the fact that the gradation in rank between these two is less stark than with other groups in the hierarchy is shown in that homosexuals will not generally suffer any major repercussions as a result of the accusations. Feminist females win the debates, but don't necessarily get to punish homosexual males for their perceived transgressions.Non-Black MuslimsNow we come to the apex of the social justice hierarchy – non-black Muslims. I specify “non-black” because for whatever reason, black Muslims don't generally get to benefit from the “Muslim” portion of their identity, and get ranked according to the “black” portion instead. This may be because the phenomenon of Muslim blacks is old enough that this subgroup is subsumed with the rest of the black community into the “they need us more than we need them” category. Or it may be that black Muslims, in the sense of Black Muslims (the cult) are threatening enough to urban white social justice warriors that the perceived hierarchy benefits to being Muslim are outweighed by the need for white liberals to keep them in their place, so to speak.Nevertheless, non-black Muslims, who are typically from the Middle East (unless they are from Somalia, in which case they will be blacks will a special exemption), find themselves currently at the top of the heap. They have the advantages of combining traits of being non-white (and hence, minorities in the SJW morality scheme), of adhering to a non-Western religion, and of being traditionally oppressed by colonialism and American imperialism. As such, they are the perfect storm of social justice themes. Muslims routinely win PCCs with even female feminists and gays.Don't think so? Then why is it that feminists will cast pro-lifers, who oppose the brutal dismemberment of babies, as evil and wicked haters who just want to enslave women, yet these same feminists are curiously silent when it comes to women being forced to wear trash bags and girls being forced to receive painful clitoridectomies, all to satisfy Muslim male superstitions. Likewise, SJWs will fall all over themselves fawning on Muslims, even though gays can be stoned to death in Muslim countries, simply for being gay. Actual, literal slavery of millions of blacks by Muslims in Africa is still going on to this day, yet the SJW camp studiously avoids talking about it. Obviously, Muslims are winning these political correctness conflicts.What about Other Groups?Naturally, there are many other groups that have not been included in this analysis, because they are relatively small, or because not much is typically heard about them. Native Americans, the disabled, Jews, and so forth. Of course, all will rank higher than straight white males in any PCC situation. My gut feeling is that Native Americans would rank somewhere about where blacks do, again because they've been around for a while and thus are in the bag for the SJWs. Those with disabilities typically will rank very low, often because the disabilities are work or military-service related, and thus smell of the bourgeois taint (observe how much sound and fury about the problems with the VA have arisen from conservative circles, and yet how little is actually being done to remedy it). As for Jews, they also tend to rank lower even than blacks, especially given the unpopularity of Israel among cultural Marxists; this is mitigated somewhat by the fact that many Jews still tend to be liberal, and use their influence to advance left-wing causes. However, we should note that the dynamic is still in effect – witness the current purge of a large number of liberal Jews from the New Republic, which was recently purchased by gay Silicon Valley guru Chris Hughes, who wants to move the magazine in a more techno-homosexualist direction.Strategies for Exploiting this Hierarchy for Our Own EndsIt's all well and good to know about all of this, but what is the point? What does it really mean for us? I think there a couple of ways those of us on the traditional Right can use these to our advantage.First, the existence of this hierarchy necessarily implies that there is potential for fractures and fault lines between the various constituencies of the social justice coalition. When there are PCCs between them, one group will be the winner and one will be the loser. A wise political actor will observe these fractures and seek to exploit the ill will generated in the losing group. An even more forward-thinking actor might seek to engineer situations in which conflicts will arise between “members in good standing” in the social justice coalition, and use these to force open fractures that might otherwise not have existed. Nothing works better for our side than to see the other side divided and using its force against itself.Second, and related to the first, is that we should work to systematically fish away chunks of the lower half of the social justice ladder – the straight white males, the non-feminist white females, the Asians, and the blacks, by using the strategy above to play them against those groups higher up the food chain. Remind them of the disadvantages they suffer, bring back to their minds how they are taken for granted and mistreated by the others.To an extent, this is already working. Recent polls suggest that nearly three-quarters of the white working class (one of the largest groups out there even despite all the immigration and deindustrialization we have seen) have turned away from the Democrat Party. The traditional Right needs to tap this and firm up our support among this important bloc of voters who are, really, the backbone of this country anyway. Asians can be reminded of how they are being disadvantaged in terms of scholarships and educational opportunities so as to make room for non-Asian minorities. Blacks need to be widely and deeply engaged about the tremendous damage that amnesty and illegal immigration are doing to their communities and lives.Ultimately, it's not enough to simply know what the weaknesses of our enemies are. We also have to be willing to actively seek out to exploit those weaknesses and cause as much damage to the cultural Marxist program as we possibly can.

Origins of the First World War, part III

As to the nature of this second nefarious alliance we will turn to next, but suffice it so say Britain recklessly provoked an unnecessary conflict with a nation that was acting in a perfectly rational way i.e., expanding its global markets and seeking to produce a navy able to protect its merchant marine.The French motivation for war was simple revanchism or revenge over their defeat in 1870 and restoration of Alsace-Lorraine. John Maynard Keynes explains it thus:

So far as possible, therefore, it was the policy of France to set the clock back and to undo what, since 1870, the progress of Germany had accomplished. By loss of territory and other measures her population was to be curtailed; but chiefly the economic system, upon which she depended for her new strength, the vast fabric of iron, coal, and transport must be destroyed. If France could seize, even in part, what Germany was compelled to drop, the inequality of strength between the two rivals for European hegemony might be remedied for many generations.¹

The effectively unknown work of George Frost Kennan, The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia and the Coming of the First World War, is the most thorough work on the Franco-Russian alliance in the English speaking world. His account of a vengeful France and expansionist Russia colluding to plot a World War is a very dark read.The essentials are this: (1) in 1890 the Kaiser did not want war with any of his neighbors, (2) certain Generals and Politicians in France wanted war to regain Alsace-Lorraine, (3) Russia wanted to settle old scores with Austria and Turkey, but needed Germany out of the picture first and (4) both sides sought the complete dismemberment of the German nation.As to the alleged bellicosity of the Kaiser, Mr. Kennan has this to say:

Such expressions of peaceful intent were all right in their way, and they were probably quite sincere on the part of the Kaiser, who, while he liked to boast about Germany’s military strength, did not actually wish to see it employed in a highly destructive war between great powers. But (as Caprivi should have known, for Schweinitz had repeatedly emphasized the point in his dispatches) these expressions failed completely to satisfy Giers' need for something more specific, in writing – something that would have committed not only Caprivi’s successors but, by implication, those of the Tsar and Giers as well, to the continuation of the recent relationship.”²

While one can charge the Kaiser of a grave diplomatic error and ignoring the wisdom of Bismark to court Russia to isolate France, he was not guilty of deliberately fomenting hostile feelings with Russia nor of wider European conflict at large.The two chief architects of this general European conflagration were the Frenchman Boisdeffre and the Russian Obruchev. In the July 1891 meetings between these two men on the possibility of an offensive alliance between France and Russia, a very revealing comment was made by both men.

And what, he (Obruchev) then asked would be the equivalent aims of the French?Boisdeffre’s answer was instantaneous: the recovery of Alsace-Lorraine.Obruchev was suspicious. “Would you not also,” he asked, “wish to extend your bourders to the Rhine and to break up Germany?” (One sense here the effects of Giers' warnings against Russia’s associating herself with any such far-reaching aims.)Boisdeffre, in response to this sally, was evasive. One would first have to know what success one had on the field of battle. “Let us begin by beating them; after that it will be easy.”³

We see clearly the intentions of France and Russia to form a coalition that, they hoped, would lead to the dismemberment of Germany. Such thoughts of dismemberment were also shared by Tsar Alexander III who said, after being confronted by Giers over the new alliance with France:

We must correct the mistakes of the past and destroy Germany at the first possible moment.” With Germany broken up, he agreed, Austria would not dare to move.Giers, gathering his courage in the face of this unexpected statement, put the question: “But what would we gain by helping the French destroy Germany?”"Why, what indeed?” replied the Tsar. “What we would gain would be that Germany, as such, would disappear. It would break up into a number of small, weak states, the way it used to be.”⁴

The aggressive intentions of this treaty were seen by the Russian diplomat Lamsdorf who wrote:

This commitment they are demanding of us would give the French a carte blanche for adventures and for the provocation of conflicts in which it would be hard to distinguish who had really started the affair; and then we are obliged to support them with an army of 800,000!” ⁵

From these secret communiques it is clear that French and Russian governments sought, without any legitimate recourse or prior precedent, the total annihilation of a fellow great power. While one can sympathize with France’s desire to reclaim Alsace-Lorraine, the fact that lunatics like Boisdeffre and later Poincaré would plan a World War of annihilation as a means to regain this land is insanity of the first degree.We see that only a lunatic could perceive Germany’s actions as aggressive and threatening, given the great press of foes at gathering around her, France and Russia were plotting a war of annihilation and eventually dragooned Britain into their skullduggery and yet all of this, and more has been kept hidden from the public.  Check out Todd Lewis’ blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/ 

1^ John Maynard Keynes, The economic consequences of the peace (Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920), 36.

2^ George F. Kennan , The Fateful Alliance: France, Russia, and the Coming of the First World War, (Pantheon Books, 1984), 44.

3^ Ibid pg 95

4^ Ibid pg 153-54

5^ Ibid 153

Ashkenazi Jews Are Not White – Response to Haaretz Article

Editor's note: This article is a blog post republished from The Times of Israel. This is an important piece, straight from the horse's mouth, that illustrates Jewish identity as something separate from that of the European. By Hila Hershkoviz, December 5, 2014In response to Haaretz article “Jews, white privilege and the fight against racism in America” (by Benjy Cannon 4/12/14) I would like to say loud and clear: Ashkenazi Jews are not white.Every time I read about a Jew somewhere identifying as a white person, I cringe. As an Israeli Jew, who like most other Israeli Jews, is completely foreign to the concept of Jews being “white” I would like to address this article to my Jewish brothers and sisters in America.Ashkenazi Jews who identify as “white”, please understand the following:1. History and identity – As late as 1987 the US legally defined Jews as non-white. To the best of my knowledge, 50 years ago Jews had the same skin color as they do today. I deduce that white is not skin color, it is first and foremost an issue history and identity. The “white people world” is represented by its European (often colonial) history, it’s culture, heroes, it’s Kings, ethos, faith etc. – and Ashkenazi Jews are not part of that world. Their heroes are the Maccabees and not the Vikings or Joan of Arc, their Kings are David King of Israel and Hezekiah King of Judah (both archeologically confirmed historical figures) and not Kings Edward and George.Secondly, Jews are not a “religion”. While in the Western world identities fall under the categories of religion or race, Middle Eastern people have tribal identities that are based neither the former nor the latter. Jews, similar to Pashtuns (who also often have pale skin and yet would not identify as white people) and other Middle Eastern Tribes, are neither religion nor race but a tribe. Jewish identity since the days of the Kingdoms of Judah and Israel had always been a tribal/national peoplehood. While tribal practices and customs (which is often incorrectly referred to as “Judaism”) and a strong biological link between many of the members are certainly present, Israelite identity was never based on either of these. Israelite identity has always been a tribal membership that goes by lineage (being born into the Tribes of Israel) or tribal acceptance (which is incorrectly translated as “conversion”). The identity Ashkenazi Jews have today is identical to that of King David whose great grandmother was a Moabite convert, but was nonetheless a Jew by virtue of being born into the Tribes of Israel by lineage.You are Jews not because of your “religion” (are you even religious?), but because you were born into a tribe/people called the Nation of Israel. You are not “white people” with a “Jewish religion”, you are Jews – members of a people who origniated in Judea, whether you adhere to the laws of the tribe or not.Thirdly, Ashkenazi Jews have been the victims of Europeans and Western imperialism for centuries precisely because they were not perceived as part of the “white people world”, beginning with the Roman colonialism of their nation state and ending with 6 million of them being killed precisely because they were non-whites.2. Culture – Whether it’s the Hebrew calendar, the tefillin they put on at their Bar Mitzvah identical to the ancient second Temple tefillin found in Qumran and across Israel or celebrating the Judean revolt for independence in our historic homeland on Hanukkah – Ashkenazi Jews have kept the entire indigenous culture, customs, traditions, books, and to a high extant language and of their ancestors – Judeans and other Israelites.3. Biology – Although biology is not the main part of the issue, Ashkenazi Jews are not genetically white either. An extensive number of genetic studies show they originated in the Middle East, that despite European admixture they are genetic brothers of other Jews, Palestinians, Druze and Lebanese Arabs and share a highly significant amount of ancestry with Sephardi Jews to whom they are genetically almost identical.Lastly, Ashkenazi Jews, whether the world likes it or not (and apparently it does not), are direct descendants of the Tribes of Israel, as we know from history, culture, science and a little something I like to call reality. Those who wish to deny it for political or theological reasons, should try forming an alliance with holocaust deniers because the two are no different.Jews are not white. People who try to argue otherwise are not only abrogating history and denying our people’s authentic identity, they are in fact (even if unintentionally) also practicing a form of Western imperialism, as nobody has the right to superimpose an artificial Western identity on a people with an ancient Middle Eastern-tribal identity. Nobody has the right to try and make Jews, or any other Middle Eastern people, feel they “need” to fit into the “neat” Western categories of religion and race. Nobody has the right to force Jews into identifying as white people when they are clearly not. As for Jews who identify as white without being forced to do so – please decolonize your identities and understand that the identity your claim to express is a falsification of who you really are. Hey, she said it. -Ed.

4GW Comes to Ferguson

Last week, Fourth Generation war paid a visit to Ferguson, Missouri. I am not speaking of the rioting, looting, and burning; elements in the black urban community have for decades used any incident as an excuse to riot. There is an element of 4GW in other blacks lining up with the looters and arsonists against law enforcement, even though it is their own neighborhoods, stores, and even churches that go up in flames. But what happened in Ferguson was much more powerful than that, in terms ofthe future toward which it points.This time, when the state failed to perform its duty of protecting persons and property, armed volunteers did so in its place.A story in the Sunday, November 30 New York Times, "On Rooftops of Ferguson, Volunteers--With Guns," has major significance for the arrival of 4GW in this country. The Times reported that

Under the auspices of a national group called the Oath Keepers, Mr. (Sam) Andrews accelerated plans to recruit and organize private security details for businesses in Ferguson, which are receiving the services free. The volunteers, who are sometimes described as a citizen militia--but do not describe themselves that way--have taken up armed positions on rooftops here on recent nights...On its website, Oath Keepers released a recruiting message to "all skilled veterans and patriots" and asked them to "grab your gear and start rolling toward Ferguson..."That some business owners accepted aid from a group regarded by some as an anti-government militia is a testament to the rawness of emotions here...

To use one of John Boyd's favorite phrases, that is very interesting. To the best of my knowledge, it is the first 21st century case in the U.S. of a militia stepping in to keep order when the state fails. It is what we see happening regularly in other parts of the world where the state has disintegrated, but I did not expect it quite so soon on our own soil.If we wish to halt the rise of militias here, we need to focus, not on the militias, but on the reason they arise: the failure of the state. As Hobbes reminds us, the state came to be for only one reason: to maintain order, i.e., safety of persons and property. When the state is no longer able  or willing to do that, other entities must take its place. The first requirement of any society is order, because without order life is nasty, brutish, and short.Just ask small business owners in Ferguson what happens without order. The Times quoted one of them, Mr. Davis Vo, owner of a Chinese restaurant, saying "When they're here (The Oath Keepers), there's definitely a weight lifted off of our shoulders. I'd be lying if I said otherwise."There is no question that last Monday, the state failed in Ferguson. The Times quoted the mayor of a local community that was damaged Monday night as saying, "The governor said himself, I think on TV, that the businesses will be protected by the National Guard during this situation. Unfortunately, that did not happen until Tuesday. But we were expecting it to happen on Monday."The more interesting question is why the state failed. The proximate cause is probably the Governor's reluctance to make a decision. But behind that, at the moral level of war, lies something more powerful, something that points to more failure by the state to maintain order.The Establishment's official narrative concerning so-called "black rage" is that it is an understandable response to racism, injustice, and oppression. In other words, morally, the looters and arsonists are in the right. If that is the case, how can the state, which is run by the Establishment, not be hesitant and reluctant in its response? At the moral level, the state has emasculated itself.That narrative is bunk from beginning to end. Cops' suspicion of blacks, especially young black males, is a direct function of their crime rate. The  black rate of violent crime, most committed by young black males, is twelve times the white rate. In Ferguson, the white cope was fighting for his life against a young black male who had assaulted him, trying to grab his gun. Had he succeeded, that white cop would now be dead and no one would have heard of Ferguson, Missouri. The murder of a white cop by an armed black is strictly local news.Blacks call for justice, but justice is based on facts. If blacks want to be treated by police the same as whites, they need to bring their crime rate down to that of whites. Until they do, treating them differently is a necessity.If the state is not to see more 4GW from non-blacks as they move to defend themselves from black violence, it needs to respond differently than it did in Ferguson. Once the grand jury had reported, the facts of the case were clear: the cop was in the right and the black who assaulted him had gotten what he asked for. That is justice. No manifestation of "black rage" should have been tolerated. Had I been Governor of Missouri, I would have ordered the National Guard to round up some Civil War cannon from town greens and museums, load them with grape and point them down Ferguson's main street. A whiff of grape is the traditional answer to rioters, and I suspect it still works. Looters and arsonists would have been shot on sight.Until the state is once again willing to do its job, the rest of us, like Mr. Vo, will welcome the Oath Keepers. And 4GW will have found a new home.

What the Resignation of Chuck Hagel Says About the Foreign Policy Debate in America

By now readers are likely aware that Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel is stepping down. He is officially resigning, but the word on the street is that President Obama asked him to leave. The administration’s spin is that he simply wasn’t up to the task, and that he never recovered from his bruising nomination battle. I am always reluctant to accept the self-serving spin that advances the narrative the administration wants forwarded. All these “anonymous sources close to the situation” appear to be falling over each other to get the president’s story out there.That said, it is a plausible story. Just because someone was in the military and won elective office, does not mean he will be a good administrator. Hagel’s nomination always struck me as more symbolic than anything. He was a Republican and perceived to be a non-hawk. He simultaneously sent a message of reaching across the aisle and a turn toward drawback that the president welcomed.Hagel’s defenders suggest that the move was less about competent management, and more about differences Hagel had with the president on strategy. Ironically, it is being suggested that Hagel actually favored a more robust policy than the president and his inner foreign policy circle on Syria and ISIS. This is backed up by the fact that some of Hagel’s current defenders are his former critics, such as uber-hawk Sen. John McCain. I suppose we will have to wait for the inevitable book to totally get Hagel’s side of the story.This whole sorry episode demonstrates the sad state of what passes for a foreign policy debate in this country. It also illustrates the unfortunate tendency of some non-interventionists, presumably in the pursuit of relevance, to invest hope where little hope is warranted. The incredibly hostile reaction to Hagel’s nomination and confirmation from neoconservatives and other hawks on the “right” caused a counter-reaction in some segments of the non-interventionist coalition that was unwise. Hagel’s non-interventionist defenders were right to view the reaction against the Hagel nomination as hysterical and were right to defend Hagel on those terms, but some appeared to project their own hopes and desires onto him beyond what his history suggested was appropriate. This was complicated by the fact that Hagel was heavily opposed by many supporters of Israel for alleged insufficient deference to that country, and I believe some non-interventionists became invested in winning this one just so the Israel partisans couldn't claim a scalp.To be clear, Hagel’s reputation for foreign policy restraint was not entirely unwarranted. Hagel voted in support of the original authorization to use force in Iraq. This was very unfortunate, but a lot of people who should have known better got swept up in the war hysteria of the moment, and voted as Hagel did.* But Hagel appeared to later recognize that our aggressive foreign policy was counter-productive, and became a harsh critic of “the surge.” His resistance to the surge and his general reluctance to embrace the standard interventionist apologia for the Iraq War rightly marked him as something other than a typical Republican hawk, but it did not mark him as a fellow non-interventionist. At best, Hagel is a realist, a designation some non-interventionists seem too eager to embrace and conflate with our own cause. This is a tendency I decried at the time of Hagel’s nomination, and still do.I’m not convinced that Hagel ever even warranted the realist label. I see him as simply a less bellicose internationalist, a Lawrence Eagleburger/James Baker type. He wants America to play a leading role around the globe, but unlike the neocons and other hawks, he does not always lead with military action and is more open to diplomacy and multilateral decision making. He sees knee-jerk militarism as bad for business and budgets and potentially harmful to America’s international reputation. This makes him an old school establishment Republican, not a realist. The guy was at one time the chairman of the Atlantic Group, for crying out loud, a point I made incessantly when he was being trumpeted by some non-interventionists as a bold change of pace.Realism is a tough concept to pin down. There is a real school of thought in international affairs called Realism, which is said to be informed by Hobbes and Machiavelli, which rejects supra-state actors and does seem to sync to some degree with non-interventionism, although many non-interventionists, especially libertarians, would be appalled at the suggestion that their belief system is informed by either of these thinkers. However, a thorough discussion of this subject would quickly exceed the scope of this article. (I hesitate to say this, but the Wikipedia article on the subject is pretty good, and I think it will calm the fears of some libertarians if they read it.)Unfortunately for the sake of clarity, this is not how I usually see the term realist or realism used today. Today it seems too often be a virtual synonym for moderate or centrist or, my favorite, “thoughtful.” It does not necessarily reject supra-state or international organizations. In fact, it is often portrayed as more likely to defer to international organizations such as the UN or international consensus. But unlike internationalist liberals, whether of the leftist or neo-”conservative” variety, it favors actions that are “realistic” and based on self-interest rather than ideological goals like spreading democracy or toppling dictators. It generally does not reject the US playing an outsized role on the world’s stage, although it would advise a more tempered view than believing the US to be an “indispensable nation” as neocon ideologues do. As you can see, a former chairman of the Atlantic Group who reportedly wants a stronger US response to Syria and ISIS is not a realist of either the technical or common use variety.So this brings us back to my initial contention that the Hagel affair illustrates well the toxic situation for non-interventionists that is the current foreign policy consensus masquerading as debate in America: neocons and other uber-hawks represent one end of the spectrum, and Hagel, as perceived in the fertile imaginations of his enemies, represents the outermost edge of acceptable dissent. This is why I believe it is harmful for non-interventionists to hitch their wagon to people like Hagel without being very careful to make the necessary distinctions. Doing so allows Hagel-style dissent to represent the opposition in the minds of the masses. We need not reject political pragmatism, but we must relentlessly make the necessary rhetorical distinctions. The fact that non-interventionists are virtually unrepresented in the foreign policy halls of power, is what makes our voices crying in the wilderness to challenge the current consensus so crucially important. We aren’t within, despite the wishful thinking of some, therefore we must shout from without.What to do about our woeful underrepresentation is of crucial importance, and will be the subject of a future essay. In the meantime, keep shouting. *As an aside, we should never forget the brave Republicans who resisted their party and their base, and cast a no vote. One, Ron Paul, has since risen to great prominence. Perhaps our cause should look at that remaining talent pool. I will write more about this in an upcoming column.

The Silence of the Goats

On Wednesday, November 25, the Cleveland Plain Dealer came perilously close to telling the truth about recent killings of young black males by police officers (as distinguished from killings by other young black males, which happen all the time). The PD began a front-page story with this paragraph:

A makeshift memorial for Tamir Rice, the 12-year-old boy shot to death by police, appeared Monday in Cudell Commons--50 yards from two permanent markers honoring officers killed by suspects in the neighborhood.

Both in Cleveland and in Ferguson, Missouri, police officers shot young black males because they thought, with good reason, that their lives were in danger.Unlike reporters and politicians, police have to live in the real world. In the real world, the black rate of violent crime is twelve times the white rate. Almost all that crime is committed by young black males. If a young black male points a gun at a cop, the cop must assume he is in a kill-or-be-killed situation, because usually he is.That was the case in Ferguson, where a 6'4", almost 300-pound young black males assaulted a police officer, trying to grab his gun. Had he succeeded in doing so, the dead white cop would already be forgotten.In Cleveland, a 12-year-old black male pointed a realistic looking BB gun at a white cop. Twelve-year-old black males using guns is not uncommon. Standing within 50 yards of memorials to dead cops, whose killers were almost certainly young black males, the white cop did what he had to do. The fault lies entirely with the young black male and those within the black community who tolerate 12-year-old males having real guns.These facts are not difficult to discover. But you will not find them in any news reports on Ferguson or Cleveland. The Plain Dealer did not have the courage to state them. To the best of my knowledge, not a single newspaper or news broadcast has done so. The most important fact of all, that all whites, cops, and civilians, have to deal with a black crime rate twelve times the white rate, is America's number one state secret.The reason, of course, is that cultural Marxism defines all blacks as victims. Even when they are at fault. Officially, they can never be at fault. If a young black male assaults a white cop, trying to grab his gun to use it to kill that cop, and the cop instead kills his asasailant, the cop is guilty and the young black male is innocent. That is cultural Marxism's verdict, and not a single Establishment goat has the guts to challenge it.Actually, one did. Shortly before he left office, New York City's mayor Bloomberg, when asked why New York cops stopped and searched young male blacks and Hispanics more often than whites, replied, "Because they commit most of the crimes." The New York Times reported his reply in the briefest, most tight-lipped manner possible, hoping no one would notice. Mayor Bloomberg had told a Forbidden Truth.It is ironic that the demonstrators protesting the shootings in Ferguson and Cleveland carry signs reading, "No Justice, No Peace." Justice requires truth. The truth in both cities is that the dead young black males forced the cops to kill them.The justice that is missing is justice for the cops--although the grand jury in Missouri, to its great credit, had the courage to render a just verdict--and for all the rest of us who are not young black males. That includes older blacks, who, like the rest of us, try to avoid young black males because of their violence. Most victims of black crime are also black. Justice for us means ending the threat we all face from young black males. That may require hanging in a public park on Saturday all young black males caught carrying guns in the previous week. If that's what it takes, so be it. The state's job is to preserve order, to ensure safety of persons and property for everyone, white, black, or green. If it refuses to do that job, it is no longer legitimate. Go read Hobbes.Meanwhile, while we wait for the state led by goats to do its duty, the rest of us are getting fed up with the whole black act.

Origins of the First World War, part II

As we can see from the production figures any claim that Germany was trying to challenge the Royal Navy is ludicrous. The question then arises: how did the arms race begin? As was hinted at above it was the result of a criminal triumvirate of Lord Balfour, Milliner, and First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Reginald McKenna.The root cause of England’s warrantless provocation of Germany is found in the private writings of the US diplomat Henry White and his conversation with Lord Balfour in 1907:

“Balfour (somewhat lightly): “We are probably fools to not find a reason for not declaring war on Germany before she builds too many ships and takes away our trade.”White: “You are a very high-minded man in private life. How can you possibly contemplate anything so politically immoral as provoking a war against a harmless nation which has as good a right to a navy as you have? If you wish to compete with German trade, work harder.”Balfour: “That would mean lowering our standard of living. Perhaps it would be simpler for us to have a war.”White: “I am shocked that you of all men should enunciate such principles.”Balfour (again lightly): “Is it a question of right or wrong? Maybe it is just a question of keeping our supremacy."

This view that England wanted to eliminate a trade rival was accepted by the renowned economist John Maynard Keynes:

“The politics of power are inevitable, and there is nothing very new to learn about this war or the end it was fought for; England had destroyed, as in each preceding century, a trade rival; a mighty chapter had been closed in the secular struggle between the glories of Germany and France.”

It should not be forgotten that after the end of the First World War, a massive trans-Atlantic revisionism took place in the US, UK, and France thoroughly debunking many of these myths, only for those same myths to re-entrench themselves in the post-World War II era. (*)The hysteria directed against Germany began in 1909 with the Great Naval Scare. When First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Reginald McKenna made ludicrous claims that Germany was intending to build eight dreadnoughts rather than the four stated in the April 1908 German Naval Law³, he spread hysteria throughout the British Isles. He claimed that Germany could build dreadnoughts faster than the British and would outstrip them in naval production at current rates. The heights of hysteria can be seen in the twin predictions made by McKenna and Lord Balfour in April 1912; the former claimed Germany had 17 dreadnoughts and the latter 21-25. The ridiculousness of these estimates can be seen by the fact that at the onset of the First World War in 1914 Germany had only 13 dreadnoughts⁴.The ‘evidence’ for these fantastic figures came from H.H. Mulliner. Mr. Mulliner was the managing director of Coventry Ordnance Works. Desiring more orders from the government he fabricated a series of hysterical predictions that Germany would rapidly outpace Britain in dreadnought production. Due to the slump in naval production, a result of the détentes with France and Russia, a new foe had to be manufactured to ensure government orders. The information of Germany’s feverish buildup came from one of H.H. Mulliner’s employees, a certain Mr. Carpmael. Mr. Carpmael claimed to have visited the Krupp Works and saw five to six large machines of varying degrees of competition and assumed that Germany was building or capable of building six dreadnoughts a year.⁵ While Mr. Carpmael’s intentions are unknown they were grist for Mr. Mulliner’s mill.Yet as these fabulous predications were being made the truth was well known by the First Lord of the Admiralty and the King. John ‘Jack’ Fisher wrote:

“I might say “The unswerving intention of 4 years has now culminated in two complete Fleets in Home Waters, each of which is incomparably superior to the whole German Fleet mobilized for war. Don’t take my word! Count them, see them for yourselves! You will see them next June. This can’t alter for years, even were we supinely passive in our building; but it won’t alter because we will have 8 dreadnoughts a year. So sleep quiet in your beds!””⁶

To King Edward he wrote:

“In March of this year, 1907, it is an absolute fact that Germany had not laid down a single “Dreadnought,” nor had she commenced building a single Battleship or Big Cruiser for eighteen months.”⁷

And

There is one more piece of information I have to give: Admiral Tirpitz, the German Minister of Marine has just stated, in a secret official document, that the English Navy is now four times stronger than the German Navy. Yes that is so, and we are going to keep the British Navy at that strength, with ten “Dreadnoughts” commenced last May. But we don’t want to parade all this to the world at large.”⁸

Bold is mine, but as we can see the British with cold and malicious intent lied about an irenic neighbor in order to build up the Royal Navy for war with Germany to remove a trade rival. Admiral von Tirpitz claims that the British led by “Jack” Fisher compared the projected size of the Germany Navy of 1920 with the then contemporary British Navy of 1908, this bait and switch being impossible for the British people to have known about.⁹The question then arises: why did Germany seek a blue water navy? In order to combat the growing strength of the Franco-Russian navies as the two nations were joined as allies. We see from JFC Fuller:

The crux of the naval question was that it had been the policy of successive British governments to concentrate popular attention on British and German expansion alone; they did not take into account the fact that Germany had other naval considerations than war against England. Her naval situation in a war against France and Russia was overlooked; yet it was the situation which was, and had been, the governing factor in her naval policy since 1900, when Admirals Tirpitz said: “We should be in a position to blockade the Russian fleet in the Baltic ports, and to prevent at the same time the entrance to that sea of the French fleet.”¹⁰

 Check out Todd Lewis' blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/

1^ Alvin Nevins, Thirty Years of American Diplomacy (Harper & Brothers, 1^st edition 1930), 257-58.

2^ John Maynard Keynes, The economic consequences of the peace (Harcourt, Brace & Howe, 1920), 33.

3^ Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War (B. W. Huebsch, 1915), 135.

4^ Bertrand Russell, Prophesy and Dissent, (Academic Division of Unwin Hayman Ltd., 1988), 263.

5^ “Background to the Dreadnought Panic – enter Mr. Mulliner.”, accessed October 2, 2014 http://www.whyworldwar1.com/1906-9-mulliner-panic#_edn3

6^ Baron John Arbuthnot Fisher, Memories (Hodder and Stroughton),189-190.

7^ Ibid pg 14

8^ Ibid pg 16

9^ Admiral von Tirpitz, My Memoirs (Dodd, Mead and Company, 1919), 269.

10JFC Fuller, Military History of the Western World, Vol. 3: From the American Civil War to the End of World War II (Da Capo Press, 1956), 176-7

The View From Olympus: Vive le Roi!

I am not a gamer, and I will not use a computer, so video games usually do not come to my attention. But an article in the November 21 New York Times about a game called "Assassin's Creed Unity," a collection of nouns in search of a verb, did catch my eye. The reason it did so is that the game apparently offers a more balanced and realistic narrative of the French Revolution than that provided by the usual Whig interpretation of historyAccording to the Times, "Critics on the left say the game undercuts a cherished narrative of the French Revolution--the miserable masses rising up against an indulged nobility." Worse, it portrays King Louis XVI and Queen Marie Antoinette sympathetically and Robespierre as a monster.Hurrah! Some real history seems to have intruded on the left's myth of the "heroic" French Revolution. Almost everything in the official myth is wrong.The Revolution was not made by starving peasants but by prosperous members of the French bourgeoisie. What brought it about was not a tyrannical king but France's over-extension in the Great Power game, over-extension capped by France's intervention against England in the American Revolution. (Americans would do well to remember that they owe their independence to King Lois XVI.) France attained her objective of getting revenge on Britain for her defeat in the Seven Years' War, but at the cost of financial ruin. When paying the interest on the national debt required more than half the revenues of the state, the French government decided it had to levy new taxes. But France's "tyrant" could not do that. As in Britain, new taxes had to be approved by parliament, which in France was called the Estates General. So the Estates General were called into session, for the first time since the early 17th century. A chance for prudent, conservative reform, which France did need, was lost when the Third Estate, the equivalent of Britain's House of Commons, violated France's ancient constitution and seized power for itself.Both King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette were decent, well-intentioned people. The queen never told starving peasants to eat cake. On the contrary, she was known for her generosity. Had a starving peasant approached her and asked for help, she would probably have given him all her jewels. It was precisely the king's good intentions that made him an easy mark for the radicals in the Third Estate. Had he been a tyrant, he would have strangled the Revolution in its cradle.In contrast, Robespierre, along with most of the rest of the Jacobins, was a monster. They became terrorists, in a Terror directed against the rest of France. They were the first-born ideological fanatics, a type that, in the 20th century, would butcher millions of people, mostly their own.The history of the French Revolution remains important because that revolution is still underway. Ideologues of many stripes continue what the Jacobins launched, an endless war against normal, workable social institutions waged on behalf of unattainable abstracts such as democracy and, the worst of the lot, equality. If there is one thing people obviously are not, it is equal. We vary endlessly in our abilities and disabilities, and seldom can one person substitute successfully for another. But the answer of the ongoing revolution to facts is always the same: send that man to the gulag, or the concentration camp, or the guillotine!If what little remains of the West is to regain its footing, the revolution must end. Ideologues must make room for realists, and social institutions must once again grow naturally over time. If that is to happen, a historically accurate understanding of the French Revolution, one of the two catastrophes of Western culture in the modern period (the other was World War I), must displace the "starving peasants fighting for freedom" myth. That isn't what happened. If a video game can cut through the baloney and introduce people to some real history, that's a good thing.

The View From Olympus: Uncle Sam Orders the Usual

In America's ill-conceived war with ISIS, Uncle Sam has ordered the usual, i.e. airstrikes. They are having the usual effects, which is to say they are working to ISIS's net benefit.In an article titled "Airstrikes Blunt ISIS, But Draw Civilian Ire," the November 14 New York Times reported that random airstrikes not coupled to any ground campaign are succeeding at the physical level of war but failing at the mental and moral levels. The Times wrote that

American airstrikes on the Syrian city of Raqqa, the vaunted capital of the Islamic State's self-proclaimed caliphate, have scattered its fighters and disrupted the harsh system they had imposed, residents and visitors there say. But they see no gratitude toward the United States.Rather, they suggested in interviews, many people are angry at the Americans. Food and fuel prices in Raqqa have soared, power blackouts have prevailed, and order is now threatened by a vacuum of any authority.

The last point is the most significant in any 4GW situation. People's first requirement is order, because without order you don't have anything else. If  you do, anyone stronger than you can come and take it from you. And they will.Syrian Sunnis foolishly thought they could destroy the ordered state maintained by the Assad government without falling into disorder. They were wrong. Now, they are desperate for order. ISIS brings order, so despite its many unattractive features, they welcome it. Harsh order is preferable to an absence of order.The American bombing campaign, unsupported as it is by any credible force on the ground, only brings more disorder. That ramps up the locals' support for ISIS, as of course does the Goliath Effect. In Syria, we could couple our air campaign with the Assad government. I suspect that if you could hold a referendum in Syria on the question, "Do you want to restore the situation in Syria to what it was before the rebellion against the Assad government begain?", it would win overwhelmingly, including in Sunni regions. But Washington's ideological blinders have ruled that single realistic option out. In fact, it appears the Obama Administration is edging closer to expanding its air campaign to target Assad. Nothing could more safely ensure continuing disorder in Syria and the loss of any chance of restoring a Syrian state.The same issue of the New York Times reported that, in a hearing before the House Armed Services Committee, one that showed the complete muddle that is the Administration's and the Pentagon's thinking about our new war, General Martin E. Dempsey, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, said he might recommend sending U.S. combat troops back to Iraq. He was simply acknowledging the inevitable result of our current policy, a policy established by President Obama's idiotic promise to defeat and destroy" ISIS. More, if, or more likely when we do send in American combat troops, they will lose. As we have shown over and over again, our military does not know how to win Fourth Generation wars. In effect, the threat we utter against 4GW entities everywhere is, "If you piss us off enough, we will go to war against you and lose." That's some threat.All of this points to the single most important fact about the Washington defense and foreign policy establishments: they cannot learn. All they are capable of doing is the same thing over and over again. That same thing always ends the same way, in an American defeat. No country can sustain so disastrous a course indefinitely.

Origins of the First World War, part I

The dominant myth of the First World War is the myth of German war guilt. The allies, in a self-serving spirit in the 231,^st article of the Versailles Treaty, stated that:

The Allied and Associated Governments affirm and Germany accepts the responsibility of Germany and her allies for causing all the loss and damage to which the Allied and Associated Governments and their nationals have been subjected as a consequence of the war imposed upon them by the aggression of Germany and her allies.¹

Since that time countless court historians and self-seeking shills have repeated this pabulum. There are many aspects of this narrative that are in need of revision, but I will restrict myself to two points: (1) the naval arms race with Britain and (2) French Revanchism. In both cases I will show that it was not the Germans that escalated the conflict, but the French and British which rendered the war inevitable.A rather conventional account of the naval arms race between Britain and Germany can be seen in the Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare:

It is hard to see much purpose in the policies pursued by Germany over the next two decades. In 1894 the Kaiser read the work of the American prophet of naval power, Alfred Thayer Mahan, and immediately concluded that Germany’s rise to the status of a world power could only occur through creation of a grand fleet. The Kaiser’s enthusiasm was undoubtedly fueled by his love-hate relationship with his British cousins. Not until 1897 did he find an admiral, Alfred von Tirpitz, who possessed both the ambition and political acumen to carry out his dreams...He (Tirpitz) argued both that construction of a great fleet would force Britain to respect the Reich’s worldwide interests and that, because Britain and the Franco-Russian alliance held mutually hostile interests, Germany could create such a fleet without fear of British interference...Tirpitz’s greatest mistake lay in his failure to recognize that geography had given Britain an almost unassailable naval position: the British Isles lay astride Germany’s path to the Atlantic, and it would be an easy matter for the Royal Navy to block Germany in the English Channel and across the exits from the North Sea, whilst Britain’s position also shielded its own trade routes. But nothing deterred the Germans form their course...The continuing German naval build-up prompted Britain to form an entente with France in 1904 that resolved outstanding disagreements between the two countries. The Germans replied by causing a major diplomatic crisis over Morocco, intended to break up the growing Anglo-French friendship; instead, they only drove the two powers more closely together. … None of this caused the Germans to desist from an armaments program that endangered the Reich’s long-range strategic interests, but the increasing tense European situation did lead in 1912 to a change in emphasis.²

This nauseating self-congratulatory propaganda is par for the course when it comes to the history of the First World War. In reality, rather than an evil and or incompetent German cabal seeking to find a cause for war against Britain, it was an ugly British triumvirate of business, politics, and the navy. The whole naval arms race was a premeditated deception on the part of this triumvirate to do three things: (1) ensure British economic dominance, (2) increase naval funding, and (3) enrich well-connected businesses.Firstly, we must understand that after the Naval Defense Act of 1889, whereby the Royal Navy was pledged to have as many as or more battleships than the next two powers, and that the British were committed to a conflict with any rising naval power, no matter how irenic their intentions.Secondly, the sheer idiocy of claiming that German expenditures drove the arms race can be debunked by this graph:

Year	Great Britain	France	Russia	Germany
1909	£11, 076, 551	£4, 517, 766	£1, 758, 487	£10, 177, 062
1910	14, 755, 289	4, 977, 682	1, 424, 013	11, 392, 856
1911	15, 148, 171	5, 876, 659	3,215, 396	11, 701, 859
1912	16, 132, 558	7, 114, 876	6, 897, 580	11, 491, 187
1913	16, 883, 875	8, 093, 064	12, 082, 516	11, 010, 883
1914	18, 676, 08	11, 772, 862	11, 098, 613	10, 316, 264

³*JFC Fuller offers a fine commentary on these figures:

When the cost of Austrian and Italian new construction for 1914, respectively £4,051,976 and £3,237,000, is added, to the last on the above German figures, it will be seen that when war broke out the Triple Entente was spending on construction two and half times the amount spent by the Triple Alliance, and when France and Russia approximately two and a half times as much as Germany. How anyone could say that German naval expansion threatened England is difficult to understand; yet from 1909 on it was said again and again.⁴

The commentary provided by Francis Neilson, British Liberal MP provides more insight:

Now, no fair-minded Britisher can look at these figures and say that they prove in the slightest degree that Germany intended to smash Britain. The wildest notions of German naval expansion have been sedulously sown in this country for years.⁵

To be continued...  Check out Todd Lewis' blog at http://praiseoffolly.wordpress.com/

1^ Treaty of Versailles http://net.lib.byu.edu/~rdh7/wwi/versa/versa7.html

2^ Geoffrey Parker, Cambridge Illustrated History of Warfare (Cambridge University Press, 1995), 257-8.

3^ * this is a reproduction of a graph found in JFC Fuller, Military History of the Western World, Vol. 3: From the American Civil War to the End of World War II (Da Capo Press, 1956), 177.

4^ Ibid

5^ Francis Neilson, How Diplomats Make War (B. W. Huebsch, 1915), 146.

The View From Olympus: Does a Republican Congress Mean Another War?

With most other conservatives, I regard the Repulican victories and the new Republican Senate as generally good things. But there is one glaring exception. Most Republicans, and some Democrats, refuse to understand that another war--which will probably become another lost war--is the last thing this country needs.President Obama has already committed himself to going to Congress for approval of his new war with ISIS. That war is doomed to become another lost war, because the president has set an unattainanle objective, defeating and destroying ISIS. Congress's answer should be, "No." That is the answer most Americans want Congress to give. But the combination of Republican war hawks and Democrats who feel they must support a Democratic president probably mean Congress will approve the request. At least this defeat will be a small one.The big war that congressional Republicans must play a central role in either causing or preventing is a war with Iran. The Administration is working hard to make a deal with Iran, and it appears that effort has at least a 50% chance of success. But if a deal is struck, it must be approved by Congress, because only Congress can remove the sanctions on Iran. Obviously, if Congress refuses, the deal falls apart. If that happens, we are on the road toward war with Iran.Three forces are propelling congressional Republicans toward disaster on the question of a deal or a war with Iran. The first is pure partisanship: if Obama wants something, many Republicans think they must oppose it. Nothing else counts, not even the prospect of pouring billions of dollars and thousands of lives down another Mideast sinkhole, plus the consequences of a likely defeat. Second come the Republican war hawks, led by Senators John McCain and Lindsey Graham, who never met a war they did not like. Third will be the Israeli lobby, or more precisely the Likud lobby, which continues to follow a strategy devised largely by American neo-cons that calls for America to destroy every Middle Eastern state that Israel does not like. Likud is incapable of grasping a fact now in its own back yard, namely that any Middle Eastern state, including Iran, is less of a threat to Israel than the Fourth Generation entities that will probably replace it if it is destroyed. The Israeli lobby also has vast influence on Democrats, some of whom will crumble and vote to continue sanctions on Iran.Elements in the Pentagon, desperate to show they can still win a war, think they can defeat Iran. Their calculus is that a war with Iran will be largely or entirely a naval and air war, which we can in fact win. As usual, however, the Pentagon errs in thinking symetrically. Iran's obvious response to American air and sea attacks is to counterattack on the ground, both in Iraq and in Afghanistan, with the aim of seizing the U.S. Army personnel deployed in those places and using them as hostages. In Iraq, the Iranians will almost certainly have the help of Iraqi Shiite militias and possibly of the Iraqi government and army as well. Iran and the Taliban hate each other, but that does not exclude a short-term alliance of convenience while Iranian ground forces round up the remaining U.S. troops in Afghanistan. Their only way out would probably be through Russia, a country Washington's idiotic foreign policy has thoroughly alienated. Putin might well blow the bridge.As remote as the danger of war with Russia appears, the Republicans in Congress are leading a charge in the wrong direction here as well. Russia is now preparing to act militarily to end the incessant shelling of eastern Ukrainian cities by the Ukrainian army and associated militias. When it does so, McCain and Graham will undoubtedly be on their feet, calling for a "tough" American response. The fact that Ukraine can do nothing for us while Russia could do a great deal means nothing in their (and the neo-libs) vision of the world as a B-grade western where America must always play the marshal. If our troops end up trapped in Afghanistan, the Republican hawks should be at the head of the list of those held responsible.Fortunately, there are Republican voices in Congress for a sane foreign policy, one aimed at keeping us out of war. Senator Rand Paul is the most prominent. I suspect he, and some others, know that rejecting a deal with Iran means war with Iran. So do some Democrats. Will they be enough? Right now, I don't think they have the votes.

Victoria Is Now For Sale!

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