There will be no "blue wave" - Vox Day comments on a rare sane and sober Democrat considers his party's prospects for the future:

A rare sane and sober Democrat considers his party's prospects for the future:

Gianforte’s decisive victory over Democrat Rob Quist on Thursday has provoked a fresh round of soul-searching from the same people who made too damn much of the Montana election in the first place. We have been told that Democrats must field stronger candidates and commit more resources, that Bernie Sanders does not possess some magic elixir that attracts disgruntled white people and that Donald Trump remains popular in places where people really like him. If that’s not quite enough Captain Obvious, Washington Post columnist Greg Hohmann devoted an impressive amount of research and reporting to the Montana aftermath before arriving at the diagnosis that there is “a growing tribalism that contributes to the polarization of our political system.” You don’t say!

Let me be clear that I’m indicting myself here as well: I edit political coverage at Salon, and I followed the Montana news closely. I knew perfectly well how it was likely to turn out, but one can always be wrong about that (as we discovered last November), and I shared some dim sense that it might be cathartic to experience an insignificant proxy victory in a state I have never even visited. But when I ask myself why I felt that way, even a little, the answers are not edifying.

For many people in, let’s say, the left-center quadrant of the American political spectrum — especially those who are not all that eager to confront the fractured and tormented state of the current Democratic Party — Montana and Georgia and 2018 seem(ed) to represent the opening chapters of a comeback narrative, the beginning of a happy ending. If what happened in 2016 was a nonsensical aberration, then maybe there’s a fix right around the corner, and normal, institutional politics can provide it.

First you chip away at Republican triumphalism, and the House majority, with a couple of special-election victories. Then it’s about organizing, recruiting the right candidates for the right seats, registering voters and ringing doorbells, right? Democrats picked up 31 seats in the George W. Bush midterms of 2006 — and will need 24 or so this time — so, hey, it could happen. For that matter, Republicans gained an astounding 63 seats in the Tea Party election of 2010, and many observers have speculated that Trump-revulsion might create that kind of cohesion on the left. So we sweep away Paul Ryan and his sneering goons, give Nancy Pelosi back her speaker’s gavel after eight long years, introduce the articles of impeachment and begin to set America back on the upward-trending path of political normalcy and niceness.

I suspect it’s pointless to list all the things that are wrong with that scenario, because either you agree with me that it’s a delusional fantasy built on seven different varieties of magical thinking or you don’t, and in the latter case I am not likely to convince you.

My position is that Donald Trump is a symptom of the fundamental brokenness of American politics, not the cause. Electing a Democratic House majority (which is 95 percent unlikely to happen) and impeaching Trump (which is 100 percent not going to happen) might feel good in the moment, but wouldn’t actually fix what is broken. Considered as a whole, the “blue wave” fantasy of November 2018 is a more elaborate and somewhat more realistic version of the “Hamilton elector” fantasy of December 2016: Something will happen soon to make this all go away.

The situation is actually worse for Democratic Party than most Democrats realize. The Asian-Hispanic alliance is already beginning to revolt against the Jewish-White-Black dominance of the Democrats, or as they will soon enough be known, the Not-American Party. And the Republican Party cannot easily return to its establishment cuckery, because the Alt-Right's articulation of the dyscivilizational activities of the Not-Americans is continually pushing the Overton Window towards ethno-nationalism.

This is why I have repeatedly pointed out that the Alt-Right is inevitable. All of the trends, regional, national, and international, continue to point in that direction.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/there-will-be-no-blue-wave.html

Will the Crazy Global Debt Bubble Ever End? - by Charles Hugh Smith

There are multiple sources of friction in the Perpetual Motion Money Machine.

We've been playing two games to mask insolvency: one is to pay the costs of rampant debt today by borrowing even more from future earnings, and the second is to create wealth out of thin air via asset bubbles.

The two games are connected: asset bubbles require leverage and credit. Prices for homes, stocks, bonds, bat guano futures, etc. can only be pushed to the stratosphere if buyers have access to credit and can borrow to buy more of the bubbling assets.

If credit dries up, asset bubbles pop: no expansion of debt, no asset bubble.

The problem with these games is the debt-asset bubbles don't actually expand the collateral (real-world productive value) supporting all the debt. Collateral can be a physical asset like a house, but it can also be the ability to earn money to service debt.

Credit card debt, student loan debt, corporate debt, sovereign debt--all these loans are backed not by physical assets but by the ability to service the debt: earnings or tax revenues.

If a company earns $1 million annually, what's its stock worth? Whether the market values the company at $1 million or $1 billion, the company's earnings remain the same.

If a government collects $1 trillion in tax revenues, whether it borrows $1 trillion or $100 trillion, the tax revenues remain the same.

If the collateral supporting the debt doesn't expand with the debt, the borrower's ability to service debt becomes increasingly fragile. Consider a household that earns $100,000 annually. If it has $100,000 in debt to service, that is a 1-to-1 ratio of earnings and debt. What happens to the risk of default if the household borrows $1 million? If earnings remain the same, the risk of default rises, as the household has to devote an enormous percentage of its income to debt service. Any reduction in income will trigger default of the $1 million in debt.

If a household earns $100,000 annually, how much can it borrow? The answer depends on the terms of the debt: the rate of interest and the percentage of principal that must be repaid monthly.

If the interest rate is 0% and the monthly payment is fixed at $1, the household can borrow billions of dollars. This is how the game is played: there is no upper limit on debt if the interest rate is effectively zero, or adjusted for inflation, less than zero.

Would you lend the household your savings, knowing you'll never get any interest and the principal will never be repaid? Of course not. Nobody in a functioning market for capital would throw their hard-earned savings away on a debtor who can't pay any interest or principal.

The only institutions that can play this game are central banks, which create money out of thin air at zero cost. As for risk--the way to manage defaults is to print more money.

But once again--printing money doesn't create collateral or income needed to service debt. As I have explained, printing money is akin to adding a zero to currency. Every $1 bill is now a $10 bill. Are you ten times wealthier once the central bank adds a zero to every bill? No, because the $5 loaf of bread is re-set to $50.

The other problem with this game is interest keeps ticking higher while earnings remain flat. Even at very low rates of interest, interest payments keep rising. This is not an issue if income rises along with interest payments, but if income is flat, paying higher interest costs eventually pushes the borrower into default.

The household that borrowed $1 billion at 0% paid no interest. But let's say the lender now demands 1/10th of 1% interest--nearly zero interest. The household now owes $1 million in annual interest. Oops! Even near-zero interest can generate crushing interest payments once the debt reaches the stratosphere.

The whole game is a bet that future income will rise faster than debt service.Unfortunately, we've already lost that bet: household income has been stagnant or declining for years (or for the bottom 90%, for decades), and tax revenues have a nasty habit of falling sharply in recessions and stagnating along with private-sector earnings.

Which leads to the second game: blowing asset bubbles. If the household's earnings are flat or declining, one magical fix is to inflate the household home's value from $100,000 to $300,000 in a few years.

Now the household has $200,000 in new wealth it can tap. Wow, was that easy or what? That's the easiest $200,000 we ever made!

Of course the house didn't actually gain any additional functional or utility value; it still has the same number of rooms, etc. It still only provides shelter for the same number of residents. The $200,000 in "wealth" that can now be borrowed or accessed via selling the house does not reflect an increase in the collateral's utility value--it's all financial magic leveraged off an unchanging utility value and household income.

These games look like a Perpetual Motion Money Machine. There is no cost, it seems, to expanding debt and assets bubbles; if future income doesn't rise enough to service the growing mountain of debt, we either print more money, lower the interest rate or create "wealth" with even grander asset bubbles.

But there is eventually a problem. At some point, even 0.1% interest becomes unaffordable, and adding zeroes to the currency devalues the currency faster than incomes rise. Asset bubbles run out of greater fools to buy at elevated prices.

Borrowers default, asset prices crash and everyone holding the currency is impoverished.

There are multiple sources of friction in the Perpetual Motion Money Machine.State-cartel inflation eats  away at stagnating incomes, rising interest payments eat away at stagnant incomes and tax revenues, and printing money eats away at the purchasing power of the currency. Eventually these sources of friction cause the Perpetual Motion Money Machine to grind to a halt and then shatter.

Put another way, the debt-asset bubble supernova consumes all the available fuel and implodes. I've employed the supernova analogy for many years, as it captures the expansion of debt and asset valuations and the resulting collapse once all the fuel in the system (i.e. earnings and real collateral) has been consumed.

When Escape from a Previously Successful Model Is Impossible (November 29, 2012)

State-protected cartels jack up prices with abandon, slashing disposable incomes. Get rid of competition and enforce a monopoly, and this is what you get:

Real earnings for the bottom 90% have gone nowhere but down for decades:borrowing from the future doesn't work if future earnings are lower.

While incomes stagnated, housing has ballooned into Real Estate Bubble #2.

Central banks have printed currency with abandon. Everybody loves free money--especially bankers and financiers.

Federal debt has tripled--no problem, let's triple it again, and then triple that.There is no upper limit on how much the Empire can borrow, right? "We are the ultimate power in the Universe now," etc.

All the games end badly. Tomorrow we'll examine the paths to impoverishment we can choose from.


If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com.

Check out both of my new books, Inequality and the Collapse of Privilege ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print) and Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle, $8.95 print, $5.95 audiobook) For more, please visit the OTM essentials website.

https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.rs/2017/05/will-crazy-global-debt-bubble-ever-end.html

For Every Action, There Is an Equal and Opposite Reaction - By Jeff Thomas

Newton’s third law of motion has proven the test of time since he first stated it in 1686. If we were to apply the same concept to political history, we might say,

A nation that rises to a great height will fall to an equally great depth.

At first glance, that seems to be merely clever wordsmithing. However, historically, it does seem to play out exactly that way. Most countries tend to ebb and flow as to their prosperity, but those that rise to great heights, particularly those that rise to become empires, tend to crash with a weight equal to their strength at the height of their power.

If we consider that point when we observe the present dominant empire, the US, we would expect that, at the point that the empire is teetering on the edge of collapse, we would see signs of rot within the government, the economy, and even within many of the people. The closer we get to the tipping point, the more this would be borne out by lunacy in the media, the courts, even the hallowed halls of education.

So, let’s have a peek into present events – events that may not be the most crucial in the state of the union but are indicators that the system is self-destructing.

Time to buy old US gold coins

The following are three briefs on articles that recently appeared in the same publication on the same day (they have not been edited by me):

“Mike Adams Reports the Boston Herald to the FBI for Recommending That Those who Oppose Vaccines Should Be Executed by Hanging”:

Mike Adams, the owner of the Natural News website, is filing a complaint with the Boston FBI against the Boston Herald for publishing a violence-inciting editorial attributed to the Boston Herald. The editorial claims that vaccines don’t cause autism and that it ought to be a “hanging offense” for anyone who opposes this conventional theory.

“Black Student Group at UC Santa Cruz Threatens Takeover”:

The African/ Black Student Alliance (A/BSA) physically occupied a building on the UC Santa Cruz campus and was granted all of its demands, which includes mandatory ‘diversity training’ for all incoming students. Now they are threatening more civil disruption if their new demands are not met.

“Tim Allen’s TV Sitcom Cancelled After He Said Being a Conservative in Hollywood Was Like Living in Nazi Germany”:

Tim Allen starred as a positive conservative character in the ABC sitcom, Last Man Standing, which was canceled despite high ratings. The cancellation comes two months after he made a comment on a talk show comparing living as a conservative in Hollywood to Nazi Germany.

No need to go into the entire articles. You get the point. The fact that these articles appeared on the same day in the same publication exemplifies the fact that these are not isolated incidents. They are a part of an overall social/legal/cultural trend that we see not only in the US, where these incidents occurred but in much of what was once known as “the free world.”

These incidents represent the antithesis of freedom. They are the acts of individuals and small groups taking the position that they should be afforded the authority to determine the behavior of all others. They represent power without accountability and have the support of the rulers, media, and courts.

But, how is it that they have become so pervasive? How are they even acceptable points of view? The answer lies in one word: education.

This danger was predicted by a young Thomas Jefferson, when he stated, “A democracy is nothing more than mob rule, where fifty-one percent of the people may take away the rights of the other forty-nine.”

Mister Jefferson was, to my mind, the greatest visionary of his time. He was eminently educated. He entered the prestigious College of William & Mary in 1760 and, upon graduation, rounded out his education under the great George Wythe in Williamsburg, Virginia. In Mister Jefferson’s day, education was the keyto higher understanding.

He studied architecture, which led to his creation of several iconic buildings, whose designs are still studied today. He studied ancient history and improved upon the Athenian Republic when creating an outline for what would become the United States. He studied economics and successfully knocked down the ideas of a central bank and income taxes, as proposed by Alexander Hamilton, his nemesis in George Washington’s cabinet. These accomplishments were inspired by his education.

A half-century ago, I was sent to school in Boston, which had long been regarded as the centre of higher education in the Western Hemisphere. In my final years there, I spent endless hours discussing higher concepts with others in and around the lawns of Harvard University, expanding my outlook. At that time, the emphasis in higher learning was on the expansion of the powers of reason—the ability of each individual to make use of existing knowledge in order to expand upon it. This was seen as essential, as those who were learning there were being prepared to lead the next generation in politics, economics, manufacturing, invention, and most every other endeavor.

And, yet, what was considered the very best in America has become, in many ways, the worst. Today, the nation’s universities, from Berkeley in California to Columbia in New York, have become the exact opposite of what they were created to be. Instead of cultivating the powers of reason in order to expand upon previous achievements, universities in America have become bastions of oppression, decrying and even punishing any thought that’s not strictly politically correct. And nowhere is this more true than at Harvard. It’s become a centre for collectivist thinking and a factory for the oppressors of the next generation.

To be sure, the students themselves did not create this atmosphere. But huge grants to both professors and schools have assured that the mindset of the instructors and the goals of the schools themselves have become the indoctrination of a future generation of leaders to a collectivist way of thinking.

The result of years of such indoctrination is that the US is today a culture in which the collectivist agenda is being pushed by those who are the most educated and respected. Not surprising then, that the media, the courts, and the public themselves now see collectivism as high-minded and fail to grasp what the American Founding Fathers knew: that a successful and progressive society is built upon freedom, not Orwellian domination.

Unfortunately, it’s ever-true that we’re the product of what we learn. More importantly, a country that’s successful in indoctrinating its youth to believe in oppression will bear fruit and become an oppressive nation.

The US rose to an unprecedented height in its developing years. In its decline, that hasn’t merely been diminished—it’s been reversed. Although some Americans do still grasp the Jeffersonian concept of freedom, the overall thrust of the nation is the opposite. The US still exists, but America has departed.

https://www.lewrockwell.com/2017/05/no_author/every-action-equal-opposite-reaction/

The enemy is made the more dangerous because it is found within, rather than without, the Church. - Machen (1930)

“The enemy is made the more dangerous because it is found within, rather than without, the Church. Definite opponents of the Christian religion could have been more easily met; but now as in ancient times Satan has preferred to labor for the most part in the dark. The change has come very quietly and very gradually. There have been few open breaks; there have been comparatively few open denials; good men, in their ignorance, have often become emissaries of unbelief. The Gospel has not been openly contradicted, but it has been quietly pushed aside. It has quietly faded away, as one picture fades away before another on the screen; and another gospel has assumed its place. Many men are quite unconscious of the change; they are made very angry by being told the truth. Others are not so completely blind; they know in their heart of hearts that all is not well. But they will do nothing unpleasant to preserve the purity of the Church; they preach the true Gospel themselves, they say, but let others in the same church preach what they will. God will ultimately honor the truth, they tell us; God will ultimately destroy error; but meanwhile let us above all have peace. Thus is Gamaliel cited as though he were a Christian saint; thus does a worldly urbanity masquerade under the name of love; thus has a polite optimism been substituted for the dread solemnity and exclusiveness of the Gospel of Christ.”

J. Gresham Machen, “The Present Situation in the [Mainline] Presbyterian Church,” Christianity Today 1.1 (1930),

https://heidelblog.net/2017/05/1930-or-2017/

Liberals Are Shocked To Find We’re Starting To Hate Them Right Back - Kurt Schlichter

I know it’s theoretically wrong for a Republican candidate to smack around an annoying liberal journalist, but that still doesn’t mean that I care. Our ability to care is a finite resource, and, in the vast scheme of things, millions of us have chosen to devote exactly none of it toward caring enough to engage in fussy self-flagellation because of what happened to Slappy La Brokenshades.

Sorry, not sorry.

And that’s not a good thing, not by any measure, but it is a real thing. Liberals have chosen to coarsen our culture. Their validation and encouragement of raw hate, their flouting of laws (Hi leakers! Hi Hillary!) and their utter refusal to accept democratic outcomes they disapprove of have consequences. What is itself so surprising is how liberals and their media rentboyz are so surprised to find that we normals are beginning to feel about them the way they feel about us – and that we’re starting to act on it. If you hate us, guess what?

We’re going to start hating you right back.

Cue the boring moralizing and sanctimonious whimpering of the femmy, bow-tied, submissive branch of conservatism whose obsolete members were shocked to find themselves left behind by the masses to whom these geeks’ sinecures were not the most important objective of the movement. This is where they sniff, “We’re better than that,” and one has to ask ,“Who’s we?” Because, by nature, people are not better than that. They are not designed to sit back and take it while they are abused, condescended to, and told by a classless ruling class that there are now two sets of rules and – guess what? –the old rules are only going to be enforced against them.

We don’t like the new rules – I’d sure prefer a society where no one was getting attacked, having walked through the ruins of a country that took that path – but we normals didn’t choose the new rules. The left did. It gave us Ferguson, Middlebury College, Berkeley, and “Punch a Nazi” – which, conveniently for the left, translates as “punch normals.” And many of us have had personal experiences with this New Hate – jobs lost, hassles, and worse. Some scumbags at an anti-Trump rally attacked my friend and horribly injured his dog. His freaking dog.

So when we start to adopt their rules, they’re shocked? Have they ever met human beings before? It’s not a surprise. It’s inevitable.

Team Fredocon, when they aren’t, “Oh well, I never!-ing” about Trump and his uncouth supporters, moan about the threat of “Whataboutism,” the tendency for people to explain their sub-optimal behavior by asking, “What about so-and-so? He did the same thing and you didn’t care.” But while “whataboutism” may be a logical fallacy, it’s still a devastatingly compelling argument.

Humans – especially normal Americans – won’t tolerate a double standard. But double standards apply all the time to liberals – they do it and it’s fine, but we do it and it’s Armageddon. The same jerks screaming for O‘Reilly’s scalp worship Bill Clinton and his drunken, perv-enabling pseudo-wife.

Or take the Trump-Russia black hole of idiocy – please. Remember how Obama whispered to the Russkies, “I'll have more flexibility after election” and that was cool? But – according to an anonymous source reading a bar tab over the phone to some credulous WaPo hack – one of Trump’s relatives ordered a vodka once and it’s TREASON TREASON TREASON!!!!!!

It certainly applies to, “What about when they hit conservatives with a lock in a sock and the liberal media didn’t care?” Yeah, what about that? Where was the sackcloth and ashes act from Schumer, Pelosi, and Felonia von Pantsuit when our side was being bloodied and beaten? There wasn’t one, because the left supports us getting bloodied and beaten. It likes the zesty zing of violence. It makes them feel big and tough and edgy, except that it starts being a heck of a lot less fun when we right-wingers start adopting the same rules and punching back.

The left is shocked that the right has now stopped caring about the old rules, since for so long the left relied on the right to subordinate its human instincts and conform to those rules even when the left ignored them. We refused to stoop to their level, and for a long time, we were “better than that.” But you can only have one side being “better than that” for so long before people get sick of being the butt of the hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy is poison not because it makes people stop knowing right from wrong, but because it makes its victims stop caring about right and wrong. Ben Jacobs got smacked around, and millions of us just don’t give a damn.

We all know it was wrong for Greg Gianforte to beat up Ben Jacobs. But we also know the general attitude of the media is that when we conservatives get beat-up by leftists it’s perfectly excusable – even laudable – and thanks to the fact that Twitter is forever, we now know that Ben Jacobs himself specifically thinks it’s A-OK to slug conservative kids. So can someone tell me why anyone should be shocked that we conservatives refuse to devote one iota of caring to poor Ben’s wedgie?

This isn’t a good thing. This is nothing to be proud of. We should not be happy that our society is heading toward the lowest common denominator, which itself is in freefall. But the alternative is worse. Should we allow ourselves to continue to be figuratively and literally beaten up while smiling at our own purity, secure in the knowledge that even though our dignity and freedom are stripped from us, we have not fought back? Not happening. Letting these bastards play by their own rules, and thereby crush us, seems a pretty high price to pay just to gain the approval of the smug and sanctimonious David Frums and John Kasichs of the world.

We conservatives have been warning for a long time that liberals are not going to like it when everyone plays by the new rules, and – surprise! – they don’t. But guess what? Most of us don’t like the new rules either. Yet it’s ridiculous to expect human beings to remain in perpetual denial about the situation they face, and to forever live under a double standard that results in their faces getting pressed into the dirt.

The hypocrisy has become intolerable, and we have stopped tolerating it. This is just the beginning of the reaction, and - make no mistake – this entire situation is a bad thing. Our society is making choices that can lead only to ruin (and my new novel describing the consequences just dropped).

Lincoln mentioned “the better angels of our nature” – also at a time when Democrats were rejecting the rule of law in order to promote their subjugation of those they considered lesser beings – and the important thing to note is that “angels” is plural. You need two angels, not one angel and one demon. But that’s what we have, and if it doesn’t change we’ll have two demons, and everyone should care about that.

https://townhall.com/columnists/kurtschlichter/2017/05/29/liberals-are-shocked-to-find-were-starting-to-hate-them-right-back-n2332712

Comment posted by CL relating to 'Judeo-Christian' phraseology in the previous post.

John 8:44 New International Version (NIV)

"44 You belong to your father, the devil, and you want to carry out your father’s desires. He was a murderer from the beginning, not holding to the truth, for there is no truth in him. When he lies, he speaks his native language, for he is a liar and the father of lies."
Who were the targets of this quote from Jesus?
Furthermore, when Jesus said repeatedly that "You killed the prophets......" who was he addressing?
As a former premillennialist (for 20+ years) I understand the problem well - I also included Israel in my 'last days' scenario.
Here is what I have learned - Jesus was addressing an apostasy and the 'future last days' put an end to it physically in the 70 AD destruction of the temple.
Long story which you can follow up at my website and more specifically at the blog archive - CAP Lessons. (See categories above)

Alt-Right antecedents - Vox Day

As we're preparing for the release of The Collected Columns, Vol. 2, it's interesting to see that an observer, who commented on the conceptual development of the Alt-Right, was correct to note that the ideas were often there prior to the label being applied. Consider this 2006 column, entitled The Vanishing Conservative, which, prior to both the coining of the term and the publication of Cuckservative 10 years later, anticipates the decline of the conservative movement.

I am not a conservative. While I respect genuine conservatives and appreciate the value of conserving cultural traditions, the Christian faith and the foundations of Western civilization, conservatives have always struck me as the political equivalent of catenaccio.

Invented by the Austrian coach of the Swiss national team, the defense-oriented system was embraced by the Italians and used in Italy for over three decades, hence the name. But over time, attack-minded strategies were developed in response, most notably Holland’s famous Total Football System, which broke down the bolted door. No manager actually implements catenaccio today and references to it are mostly ironic and situational, made, for example, when a team is protecting a lead or is overmatched and playing for a tie.

The problem with both catenaccio and conservatism is that any positive movement is largely the result of luck, not purpose. They are defensive strategies, and as any military historian will tell you; defense never beats offense, it only staves off defeat for a time. In the end, even the most intrepid defenders will weary and the gates will finally fall to the barbarians.

Although it sounds ludicrous in a time when conservatives nominally rule the airwaves, the legislative, judicial and executive branches; 2006 may well be one day viewed as a low point for the American conservative. For politics is not mathematics and it knows no transitive law. It is true that many institutions and individuals are Republican, and certainly the Republican Party is supposed to be America’s conservative party, but this does not equal conservative dominance of the political scene.

For neither the institutions nor the individuals can be relied upon to work toward conservative goals. Most of the conservative actions taken in the last 20 years can be best described as holding actions, not actions intended to lower the rising tide of central government influence or combat societal devolution.

The malaise is movement-wide. Indeed, it is debatable as to which group is in worse shape, the “conservative” politicians or the “conservative” commentariat. While the leftward drift of the administration and the Congress have not escaped notice despite the best efforts of its cheerleaders to play it down; the abandonment of principle in favor of pragmatism has caused many in the so-called conservative media to do the likewise.

Just this week, one could listen to Michael Medved playing the left’s favorite game of denouncing another commentator—me, actually—as a Nazi while watching nominal conservatives falling all over each other in the competition to be the most outraged by Ann Coulter’s precision-guided comments about the ever-grieving “Witches of East Brunswick.”

(Given that there are thousands of people who lost loved ones in the September 11 attacks who Coulter did not criticize, it is more than a little disingenuous to pretend that her criticism is somehow inappropriate or misplaced. And just what is the statute of limitations on celebrity-victim status anyhow?)

Indeed, what with Michelle Malkin pushing FDR’s internment program, Ben Shapiro, Sean Hannity and numerous others pushing Woodrow Wilson’s foreign policy, Larry Kudlow pushing Richard Nixon’s monetary policies and the editors of National Review harboring a Harry Truman-style crush on the United Nations, one has to wonder if a liberal media is redundant these days.

The word “liberal” once meant something very different than it does today. It rather looks as if the concept of a “conservative” is in the process of undergoing similar etymological evolution. Regardless, it appears the bolted door has been unlocked and is hanging open on loose hinges.

Of course, my understanding then was not what it is now. In the original column, I referred to the nonexistent "Judeo-Christian ethic" rather than "Christian faith" and to "civilizations" rather than "Western civilization".

Ironically, conservatives left behind by the Alt-Right now often defend Judeo-Christian churchianity in the place of genuine Christian values.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2017/05/alt-right-antecedents.html

British Taxpayers Financed Manchester Terror Attack: Police » Alex Jones' Infowars - Chris Menahan

[Salman] Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company

Taxpayer-funded student loans and other forms of government welfare were used to finance Salman Abedi’s suicide bombing attack in Manchester, according to police.

From The Telegraph:

[Salman] Abedi was given at least £7,000 from the taxpayer-funded Student Loans Company after beginning a business administration degree at Salford University in October 2015.

It is thought he received a further £7,000 in the 2016 academic year even though by then he had already dropped out of the course. Salford University declined to say if it had informed the Student Loans Company that Abedi’s funding should have been stopped.

Separately, the Department for Work and Pensions refused to say if Abedi had received any benefits, including housing benefit and income support worth up to £250 a week, during 2015 and 2016. It would only say he was not claiming benefits in the weeks before the attack.

Abedi, 22, never held down a job, according to neighbours and friends, but was able to travel regularly between the UK and Libya.

Abedi also had sufficient funds to buy materials for his sophisticated bomb while living in a rented house in south Manchester.

Six weeks before the bombing Abedi rented a second property in a block of flats in Blackley eight miles from his home, paying £700 in cash.

He had enough money to rent a third property in the centre of Manchester from where he set off with a backpack containing the bomb.

Abedi also withdrew £250 in cash three days before the attack and transferred £2,500 to his younger brother Hashim in Libya, who is accused of knowing about the attack in advance.

This same scam is being run again and again:

David Videcette, a former Metropolitan police detective who worked on the 7/7 London bombing investigation, said of the student loans’ system: “It is an easy way for a terrorist to move forward and finance their activities at the expense of the taxpayer.

“All you have got to do is get yourself into university and then off you go. Often they have go no intention of turning up.”

Professor Anthony Glees, director of Buckingham University’s Centre for Security and Intelligence Studies, said: “The British system makes funds readily available to jihadist students without checks on them. There needs to be an inquiry into this.”

Abedi father and brother were both arrested on suspicion of being involved in the attack.

Abedi’s brother reportedly spoke to him “minutes” before the attack.

22 people, including many children, were killed in Monday’s attack and dozens more were injured.

Not mentioned in this report is that Abedi’s parents were accepted into the UK as so-called “refugees” from Libya, which no doubt entailed their family collecting tens of thousands more pounds in welfare.

https://www.infowars.com/british-taxpayers-financed-manchester-terror-attack-police/

The 21 Theses Of Alt Christianity - R. Damian Michael

In recent years, the Alt-Right—along with the Alt-West, Alt-Lite, and the Hard Right—has come to the forefront of the political scene. This has been due in large part because right-leaning individuals have come to realize just how ineffective standard “conservatives” are at battling the Left. And given the left-leaning socio-cultural changes that have swept the West under the guardianship of standard conservatives, it is quite understandable that many young traditionalists have gravitated to a political alternative like the Alt-Right.

But just as with modern conservativism, the same sorts of problems exist for modern Christianity. Indeed, under the “watchful” eye of standard conservative Christians, Christianity in the West has become more liberal, more feminized, more Churchian, and entirely less Christian! As such, is it any wonder that many Christian men are leaving Christian churches and are searching for an alternative to the weak-kneed Churchianity that they see around them. Of course not. But is there any Christian alternative to be had? Indeed there is, and it is called Alt-Christianity.

What is Alt-Christianity? In one sense, Alt-Christianity is a new way of looking at Christianity; it is a new Christian mindset, if you will. And as we know from fitness and game, changing one’s mindset is often the key change that needs to be made for exponential personal development and growth. At the same time, Alt-Christianity also aims to be a means by which orthodox Christianity could be revived amongst men in the West. And since traditional Christianity is a pillar of Western Civilization, the importance of this goal can be overstated.

Now, in terms of its general tenets, Alt-Christianity can be summarized by the following 21 points (and note that these points were largely inspired by Vox Day’s 16 Points concerning the Alt-Right):

1. Both theologically and morally, Alt-Christianity is traditionalist and right-leaning. It is also more focused on shared morality and mere-Christianity than on denominational differences. However, Progressive-Christianity, Liberal-Christianity, and Feminist-Christianity are not Alt-Christianity.

2. Alt-Christianity is an alternative to the mainstream Christian conservative movement in the West which has, whether wittingly or not, been largely infected with strains of progressivism, materialism, feminism, SJWism, over-ecumenism, and Churchianism. Alt-Christianity has seen the socio-cultural results of these infections on the Christian faith and thus pro-actively and overtly fights against them, rather than ignoring, accommodating, or even indulging them, which many modern Christian movements do. And the fight against these problems is done first within the church, and then against them outside of the church.

3. Alt-Christianity is not defensive in nature and, just like Christ, it rejects the elevation of niceness, tolerance, and likeability over Christian truth. It holds an “initiative-maintaining” mindset and believes in victory through persistence, sacrifice, materialistic minimalism, and remaining in harmony with objective reality, historical truths, and psychological/biological facts about human nature.

4. Alt-Christianity firmly believes in the use of reason; however, since Alt-Christianity knows that men are not usually moved by dry arguments, it is also willing to use truth-focused polemics, biting rhetoric, humorous memes, and imaginative narratives to make it points.

5. Concerning faith and morals, Alt-Christianity is skeptical of any attempts to redefine the clear sayings, implications, and example of Christ and the rest of the New Testament, or Christian tradition, in order to accommodate modern sensibilities.

6. Alt-Christianity recognizes that all men are made in the image of God and that all men will be judged, but beyond this, Alt-Christianity rejects the idea of earthly equality for all practical purposes given the observable lack of anything like natural equality existing or possibly existing amongst men. For the same reason, Alt-Christianity denies human perfectibility and earthly utopianism.

7. Alt-Christianity believes traditional Western Civilization is the best civilization that Man has ever created. It also holds that traditional Christianity is a key pillar of that civilization. As such, Alt-Christianity supports the roots of traditionalist Christianity: namely, the traditional family, patriarchy, “red-pill” knowledge, Christian education, and apologetics in the full and broadest sense.

8. Given the above, Alt-Christianity wishes to see traditional Western Civilization maintained, and is thus open to whatever political system shows itself best suited to the maintenance of that civilization. At the same time, Alt-Christianity realizes that civilizations and nations are maintained by people, and that not all people are created equal. As such, Alt-Christianity supports the implementation of whatever specific political and cultural practices are best suited to allow a particular people to maintain traditional Western Civilization. Simultaneously, Alt-Christianity supports restricting whatever specific political and cultural practices undermine a particular people’s ability to maintain traditional Western Civilization.

9. Alt-Christianity is nationalistic. It supports the right of all distinct ethno-ideological/religious groups to exist as distinct groups, and to defend their existence. Alt-Christianity is also anti-globalist in the political sense, but believes in unity amongst nations through a shared Christian faith. Ultimately, Alt-Christianity remembers the lesson of the Tower of Babel and realizes that ethno-states are a lesser threat to Christianity than a global political entity is.

10. Alt-Christianity see no conflict between science and Christianity, but it is not naïve enough to ignore the fact that there is a difference between certain scientific claims and the interpretation of scientists—many of them actively anti-Christian—concerning those claims. Thus, Alt-Christianity takes an attitude of tentative acceptance, coupled with skepticism, concerning the findings of modern science, especially those of a historical rather than an experimental nature.

11. Alt-Christianity believes that identity—both in the ethnic and the religious sense—is the catalyst for culture, which is itself more important than politics. As such, the Alt-Christian is both verbally and non-verbally overt in his Christian identity.

12. Alt-Christianity is opposed to the unrequested rule, domination, or excessive influence (by any means) of any ethnic and/or religious group or Christian denomination over another; as such, Alt-Christianity supports the right of de facto or de jure self-determination / segregation for ethnic and/or religious reasons.

13. Alt-Christianity is more interested in the approval of God than of men; it knows that the Prince of this World is its enemy and that, as Jesus warned, the world will hate it. Thus, the Alt-Christian is not interested in being “respectable” in the eyes of non-Christians, nor does the Alt-Christian care about the negative labels that non-Christians will inevitability place on him.

14. Alt-Christianity is opposed to the separation of church and state in an absolute sense, for Alt-Christianity understands that the absolute separation of church and state always leads to the state, and/or the enemies of the church, using the resources and laws of the state to undermine the church.

15. Alt-Christianity is more interested in the Faith than in earthly charity, although it strongly encourages the latter because it is mandated by, and supports, the former. However, the Alt-Christian knows that charity begins first at home, and only then extends outward. Furthermore, virtue-signaling charity is a vice, and so whoever allows his own family, his nation, and the Faith itself to be undermined for the sake of virtue-signaling charity is worse than an unbeliever.

16. Alt-Christianity is pro-“capitalism” in terms of policy, but pro-socialist in terms of personal charity; it holds that a man who freely does not work, but can, shall not eat, but a man who wishes to work but cannot, shall not be hungry.

17. Alt-Christianity believes that we must secure the existence of Christians in general, but that we must also specifically secure the existence of Christians in countries of European heritage and ancestry, for as Belloc said: “Europe is the Faith, and the Faith is Europe”.

18. Alt-Christianity believes that Christianity is true, but it also sees truth and value in other religions. As such, while holding Christianity as the best and most complete faith, and boldly proclaiming it as such, Alt-Christianity does not, in principle, ignore or reject the insights of non-Christian religious or cultural traditions.

19. Alt-Christianity believes in evangelism. However, the Alt-Christian remembers to wipe the dust off his feet from those who, in full knowledge and Godly-freedom, reject Christianity. Thus, Alt-Christianity rejects the non-evangelism of liberal-Christianity as well as any imperialist attempts at the imposition of Christianity by force or coercion.

20. Alt-Christianity values personal strength, intellectual boldness, masculinity, and the Christ who overturned tables. Indeed, Alt-Christianity realizes that Christ was not followed because He allowed Himself to die, but rather because He was the ultimate alpha male who conquered Man’s greatest enemy: namely, death.

21. Finally, just as the man Jesus Christ and his male Apostles led the first Christians, so too is Alt-Christianity meant to be led by men. After all, the failures of the West ultimately fall on the heads of its men, and so it is men that must lead the West back to its traditional roots.

Now, will embracing these 21 tenets of Alt-Christianity reverse the slide of orthodox Christianity in the West? Frankly, I do not know. But I do know that making the mindset change to Alt-Christianity is surely better than continuing the ineffective tactics of the past few generations.

Read More:  Why You Should Avoid The Cucked Interpretations Of Modern Christianity

http://www.returnofkings.com/122301/the-21-theses-of-alt-christianity