Premillennialism: the executioner of Christian civilization - by Dr. Joel McDurmon

Recently we discussed a sermon that gave prominent lip-service to “God’s law” in society while assiduously avoiding any specifics. (There’s a real silver lining to this, btw, which we’ll discuss in a later article.) The sermon we reviewed was part 2 in a 2-part series, and part 1 is actually more remarkable in a number of ways, especially in regard to how premillennial eschatology can destroy whatever else good your theology has to offer society.

In the first part of his series, “Who is God’s Candidate,” John MacArthur, Jr. not only gives just as much token talk to God’s law as in the part we previously reviewed, he actually spends a good bit of time preaching from the historical sanctions sections in Deuteronomy 28 and 29. He goes so far as to argue that these type of sanctions do not only apply to ancient Israel, but to all nations in all times and places. In short, he actually argues that God still judges nations today, in history, according to His law.

This is a fairly radical contradistinction to most premillennialists, although, again, without any specific discussion of the details God’s law requires for society and social institutions, such talk is empty. What good does it do to know about judgment in history according to God’s law if we don’t have specific knowledge of how to apply that law? Nevertheless, such an appeal to Deuteronomy 28 and 29 is something Reconstructionists have been teaching for decades, and our premillennial opponents have been denying and using as a point of criticism against us. So this seems huge.

But then the great blade in the premillennial guillotine finally drops.

Remember the America that was, some of you? This is not a Christian nation; there’s no such thing. It never has been a Christian nation. Even the founding fathers were not true Christians. But they did understand that Christianity was a fix necessity, because it established divine law; and when people knew that this was law from God, it controlled their behavior. Biblical ethics, biblical patterns of morality were honored, respected, and expected. Marriage, family, virtue, work, relationships, success were all connected to noble ideals that are found in Scripture. That’s long gone, long gone, unlikely to ever appear in the lifetime of anybody sitting here, because evil men just get worse and worse.

Even if we could set aside the problems we formerly discussed, as well as a few other foibles found here—even if MacArthur’s overall appeal for God’s law in society were robust, detailed, correct, and sincere—in the end, his eschatology slices down and leaves the whole theology headless and in a pool of blood.

Social theory giveth, and eschatology taketh away.

We have discussed this problem so many, many, many, many, many, many times. It very often comes in the form of this misapplication of 2 Timothy 3. Gary DeMar has busted the “worse and worse” myth more times than can be counted. For example, he recently wrote,

[T]his type of thinking prevails more than one would think. Jan Markell is a believer in an end-time scenario that demands the return of Jesus in our generation to rescue us from inevitable doom. Until that happens, do not look for and do not expect to be successful at any type of long-term societal transformation. In fact, to participate in this type of work Markell tells her audience is “delusional” and will keep “people out of heaven.” We are most fortunate that there were enough people centuries ago who were not hoodwinked by an eschatological claim like hers. What would Christians who follow Markell’s end-time worldview be saying and doing today if they were faced with calls to abolish the slave trade and build long-lasting productive cultures? Markell uses 2 Timothy 3:13 to support her end-time claims:

There is no Biblical support for this belief, for the Bible teaches just the opposite. In the end of days, bad things will wax worse and worse until the world calls out for a savior.

Second Timothy 3:13 actually says, “But evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving, and being deceived” (KJV). For twenty centuries, billions of people have called out to Jesus to be their savior and have gone on to do marvelous things in God’s name. It says nothing about “until the world calls out for a savior.” Earlier in the same chapter, Paul told Timothy that these evil people “will not make further progress; for their folly will be obvious to all, as also that of those two [Jannes and Jambres] came to be” (v. 8). While the ungodly self-destruct, Timothy was to “continue in the things” he had “learned and become convinced of” (v. 14). Providentially, the history of the church is the history of men and women following Paul’s instructions and not the speculations of people like Markell.

I would love to think JMac is making some changes for the better, but as I discussed previously, this is not the case. Even if it were true in regard to God’s law, it would not matter because this eschatology robs any good social theory of its power. Any appeal for greater influence of Christianity in society is dead in the face of a belief that it can’t and won’t happen, and premillennialism’s fingerprints are on the murder weapon.

You are correct if you think you hear some echoes of Reconstruction in sermons like these, but you need to take the next step. Start reading specific applications, start making specific applications yourself, and dump the unbiblical, pessimistic eschatology. The longer you remain in it, the worse and worse your worldview will get.

Premillennialism: the executioner of Christian civilization

America Has Had Many Revolutions - All of them bad. Article by Gary North.

The Revolutions Were

Gary North - October 01, 2016

Remnant Review

"There are those who still think they are holding the pass against a revolution that may be coming up the road. But they are gazing in the wrong direction. The revolution is behind them. It went by in the Night of Depression, singing songs to freedom." -- Garet Garrett, The Revolution Was (1938)

There have been a number of revolutions in American history. It began with the American Revolution, which was armed resistance against lawful government. Then came the revolution that was disguised as an act of Republicanism: the Constitutional Convention of 1787. That was a coup d'état. The next major revolution was the Civil War. The south rebelled against lawful authority, and lawful authority wiped out antebellum culture. Then came the Spanish-American war, which launched the American Empire. It was ratified by the ascendancy of Teddy Roosevelt to the White House. Next, there was the presidency of Woodrow Wilson, which took us into World War I. Next, there was the New Deal. Next, there was World War II. Finally, there was Lyndon Johnson's Great Society.
I think it is legitimate to regard all of these famous events as revolutions. Only the American Revolution was a true revolution. The others were revolutions in the way that Garrett described them: revolutions within the form.

There are those who have never ceased to say very earnestly, "Something is going to happen to the American form of government if we don't watch out." These were the innocent disarmers. Their trust was in words. They had forgotten their Aristotle. More than 2,000 years ago he wrote of what can happen within the form, when "one thing takes the place of another, so that the ancient laws will remain, while the power will be in the hands of those who have brought about revolution in the state."

Revolutions do not occur overnight. They build up over a long period of time, and they take place very rapidly. This phenomenon applies to many areas of life. The old story that Hemingway wrote about the man who described his bankruptcy went as follows: it went slowly, and then very fast.
With this in mind, I'm going to comment on an article written by an old friend of mine, Angelo Codevilla. I worked with him when I was in Washington in the mid-1970s. He wrote an article for Remnant Review in 1979: "The Danger Is Defeat, Not Destruction," which was sent out as written by Professor X. I pulled the copyright. It was reprinted around the country. I estimate that at least 500,000 of them were sent out.
I regarded him at the time as the smartest theorist in the conservative movement. I have not changed my opinion over the last 40 years.
He has written a remarkable article, "After the Republic."

AFTER THE REPUBLIC

He believes that this election will mark the transition away from the American Republic to something different.
With respect to foreign-policy, I think this happened in 1898. If I were to blame one person for this -- and I do -- it would be Theodore Roosevelt. We can date it: February 25, 1898. On that day, the Secretary of the Navy took a one-day vacation. Roosevelt, as Assistant Secretary, on his own authority telegraphed Admiral Dewey in Hong Kong to sink the Spanish fleet if war broke out. The Secretary did not countermand Roosevelt's order the next day. Dewey sank the fleet on May 1 -- the international day of revolution. America therefore got the Philippines. It took a bloody war from 1900 to 1902 for America to suppress the rebels: 25,000 Filipino rebels killed, plus an estimated 200,000 civilians who died.
Empires take time to develop, and at some point, they drain the financial resources of the nation that launched the empire. There are no exceptions to this process. Empire always produces bankruptcy.
We are not yet at that stage. The Great Default has not taken place yet. But it is going to. And it is likely that Medicare will be the main culprit rather than the empire itself.
The article makes the case that we are at the transition point. It focuses on politics. I always want to look at economics. I want to know how many resources the political order can commandeer from the general public. This is the great restricting force on the development of empire.
He makes a very strong case that over the last 50 years, there's been a fundamental transition in the American political system. He talks about several factors. One of them was the Immigration Act of 1965, which was signed into law in 1968. He thinks that the most important one was the Civil Rights Act of 1964. He makes a point that I have never read before, and the moment I read it, I realized that he understands the central point of that piece of legislation: the elevation of the commerce clause of the Constitution is the supreme cause in the Constitution.

What goes by the name "constitutional law" has been eclipsing the U.S. Constitution for a long time. But when the 1964 Civil Rights Act substituted a wholly open-ended mandate to oppose "discrimination" for any and all fundamental rights, it became the little law that ate the Constitution. Now, because the Act pretended that the commerce clause trumps the freedom of persons to associate or not with whomever they wish, and is being taken to mean that it trumps the free exercise of religion as well, bakers and photographers are forced to take part in homosexual weddings. A commission in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts reported that even a church may be forced to operate its bathrooms according to gender self-identification because it "could be seen as a place of public accommodation if it holds a secular event, such as a spaghetti supper, that is open to the general public." California came very close to mandating that Catholic schools admit homosexual and transgender students or close down. The Justice Department is studying how to prosecute on-line transactions such as vacation home rental site Airbnb, Inc., that fall afoul of its evolving anti-discrimination standards.

Then he points to something else which I had never considered: the destructive power of the vote on the annual budget, which in fact never gets voted on; it is always deferred. We get a continuing resolution, not a final vote on the budget. But that is not the key fact. This is the key fact:

No one running for the GOP nomination discussed the greatest violation of popular government's norms--never mind the Constitution--to have occurred in two hundred years, namely, the practice, agreed upon by mainstream Republicans and Democrats, of rolling all of the government's expenditures into a single bill. This eliminates elected officials' responsibility for any of the government's actions, and reduces them either to approving all that the government does without reservation, or the allegedly revolutionary, disloyal act of "shutting down the government."Rather than talk about how to restrain or shrink government, Republican candidates talked about how to do more with government. The Wall Street Journal called that "having a positive agenda." Hence, Republicans by and large joined the Democrats in relegating the U.S. Constitution to history's dustbin.

I rarely find an article in which I read two fundamental points that I had never considered before. So, I take the article very seriously.
The article goes back to Garrett's original point, the revolution within the form. It does not cite Garrett's article, but it makes the same point:

Because Republicans largely agree with Democrats that they need not take seriously the founders' Constitution, today's American regime is now what Max Weber had called the Tsarist regime on the eve of the Revolution: "fake constitutionalism." Because such fakery is self-discrediting and removes anyone's obligation to restrain his passions, it is a harbinger of revolution and of imperial power.

The phrase "fake constitutionalism" is simply another way of stating revolution within the form.
MANNERS OF THE NETWORK
Then he makes another point: the centrality of manners.

All ruling classes are what Shakespeare called the "makers of manners." Plato, in The Republic, and Aristotle, in his Politics, teach that polities reflect the persons who rise to prominence within them, whose habits the people imitate, and who set the tone of life in them. Thus a polity can change as thoroughly as a chorus changes from comedy to tragedy depending on the lyrics and music. Obviously, the standards and tone of life that came from Abraham Lincoln's Oval Office is quite opposite from what came from the same place when Bill Clinton used it. Germany under Kaiser Wilhelm was arguably the world's most polite society. Under Hitler, it became the most murderous.In today's America, a network of executive, judicial, bureaucratic, and social kinship channels bypasses the sovereignty of citizens. Our imperial regime, already in force, works on a simple principle: the president and the cronies who populate these channels may do whatever they like so long as the bureaucracy obeys and one third plus one of the Senate protects him from impeachment. If you are on the right side of that network, you can make up the rules as you go along, ignore or violate any number of laws, obfuscate or commit perjury about what you are doing (in the unlikely case they put you under oath), and be certain of your peers' support. These cronies' shared social and intellectual identity stems from the uniform education they have received in the universities. Because disdain for ordinary Americans is this ruling class's chief feature, its members can be equally certain that all will join in celebrating each, and in demonizing their respective opponents.

He uses the correct noun: network. It is the American version of Britain's old boy network. This network has been dominant since at least 1933. It is an extension of Britain's old boy network, which developed in 1919, when Milner's Royal Institute of Economic Affairs created its American subsidiary, the Council on Foreign Relations.
He mention's Kennedy's reform, failing to remind readers that it was newly elected Senator Teddy Kennedy: the Immigration Act of 1965.

Moreover, since the Kennedy reform of 1965, and with greater speed since 2009, the ruling class's immigration policy has changed the regime by introducing some 60 million people--roughly a fifth of our population--from countries and traditions different from, if not hostile, to ours. Whereas earlier immigrants earned their way to prosperity, a disproportionate percentage of post-1965 arrivals have been encouraged to become dependents of the state. Equally important, the ruling class chose to reverse America's historic practice of assimilating immigrants, emphasizing instead what divides them from other Americans. Whereas Lincoln spoke of binding immigrants by "the electric cord" of the founders' principles, our ruling class treats these principles as hypocrisy. All this without votes or law; just power.

I do not deny that this took place. But let us be reasonable: it has seriously affected only one state, California. New Mexico was Hispanic from the beginning. We stole it from Mexico in 1848. Arizona is still Republican. Texas is still Republican. This may not be true in 20 years, but for the moment it is. In any case, the Mexicans who came here after 1965, along with other Latinos, came here mainly to get jobs, not to get into the welfare system.
The great corrupter of Latinos has been the American public school system, not local welfare programs as such. The American public schools are the most insidious of all the welfare programs, for they are specifically designed to shape the thinking of the voters of the future. Blame the public schools more than immigration.

Fifty years ago, prayer in the schools was near universal, but no one was punished for not praying. Nowadays, countless people are arrested or fired for praying on school property. West Point's commanding general reprimanded the football coach for his team's thanksgiving prayer. Fifty years ago, bringing sexually explicit stuff into schools was treated as a crime, as was "procuring abortion." Nowadays, schools contract with Planned Parenthood to teach sex, and will not tell parents when they take girls to PP facilities for abortions. Back then, many schools worked with the National Rifle Association to teach gun handling and marksmanship. Now students are arrested and expelled merely for pointing their finger and saying "bang." In those benighted times, boys who ventured into the girls' bathroom were expelled as perverts. Now, girls are suspended for objecting to boys coming into the girls' room under pretense of transgenderism.

All true, but the central problems were the coercion, the secularism, and the tax-funding of the schools from 1837 onward. What has happened since 1965 is simply a mopping up operation. It was implicit in Horace Mann's agenda in 1837. On this point, read the chapter on Mann in Rushdoony's Messianic Character of American Education (1963).

Ever since the middle of the 20th century our ruling class, pursuing hazy concepts of world order without declarations of war, has sacrificed American lives: first in Korea, then in Vietnam, and now throughout the Muslim world. By denigrating Americans who call for peace, or for wars unto victory over America's enemies; by excusing or glorifying those who take our enemies' side or who disrespect the American flag; our rulers have drawn down the American regime's credit and eroded the people's patriotism.

The public went along with all of these wars. Opponents were written off as anti-American. The wars do not stop for a reason: voters sanction them every time.

As the ruling class destroyed its own authority, it wrecked the republic's as well. This is no longer the "land where our fathers died," nor even the country that won World War II. It would be surprising if any society, its identity altered and its most fundamental institutions diminished, had continued to function as before. Ours sure does not, and it is difficult to imagine how it can do so ever again. We can be sure only that the revolution underway among us, like all others, will run its unpredictable course.

But if it is really unpredictable, then all is not lost.

DEMOCRATS

He fears the Democrats.

The consequences of empowering today's Democratic Party are crystal clear. The Democratic Party--regardless of its standard bearer--would use its victory to drive the transformations that it has already wrought on America to quantitative and qualitative levels that not even its members can imagine. We can be sure of that because what it has done and is doing is rooted in a logic that has animated the ruling class for a century, and because that logic has shaped the minds and hearts of millions of this class's members, supporters, and wannabes.

But, as he says, these are extensions of what happened a century ago in the Progressive era.

That logic's essence, expressed variously by Herbert Croly and Woodrow Wilson, FDR's brains trust, intellectuals of both the old and the new Left, choked back and blurted out by progressive politicians, is this: America's constitutional republic had given the American people too much latitude to be who they are, that is: religiously and socially reactionary, ignorant, even pathological, barriers to Progress. Thankfully, an enlightened minority exists with the expertise and the duty to disperse the religious obscurantism, the hypocritical talk of piety, freedom, and equality, which excuses Americans' racism, sexism, greed, and rape of the environment. As we progressives take up our proper responsibilities, Americans will no longer live politically according to their prejudices; they will be ruled administratively according to scientific knowledge.Progressivism's programs have changed over time. But its disdain for how other Americans live and think has remained fundamental. More than any commitment to principles, programs, or way of life, this is its paramount feature. The media reacted to Hillary Clinton's remark that "half of Trump's supporters could be put into a 'basket of deplorables'" as if these sentiments were novel and peculiar to her. In fact, these are unremarkable restatements of our ruling class's perennial creed.

The Republicans did it first: Teddy Roosevelt and Taft (1901-1913). Woodrow Wilson was simply the Democrats' Progressive. It was Roosevelt's election of 1904 that ended the Old Democracy: the defeat of the never-discussed Alton Parker, the last of the followers of Grover Cleveland.
The revolution was.

Under our ruling class, "truth" has morphed from the reflection of objective reality to whatever has "normative pull"--i.e., to what furthers the ruling class's agenda, whatever that might be at any given time. That is the meaning of the term "political correctness," as opposed to factual correctness.

But truth still has effects. Those who ignore it will suffer the consequences.
LIMITS ON POLITICS
He sees no limit on politics.

How far will our rulers go? Because their network is mutually supporting, they will go as far as they want. Already, there is pressure from ruling class constituencies, as well as academic arguments, for morphing the concept of "hate crime" into the criminalization of "hate speech"--which means whatever these loving folks hate. Of course this is contrary to the First Amendment, and a wholesale negation of freedom. But it is no more so than the negation of freedom of association that is already eclipsing religious freedom in the name anti-discrimination. It is difficult to imagine a Democratic president, Congress, and Supreme Court standing in the way.

I see economic limits on politics. I return always to this chart: the ratio between federal revenues collected and GDP. It does not change: under 20%.

The federal government borrows its way beyond this fiscal limit. But borrowing eventually hits a brick wall: the inability to repay. Rates climb. Then expenses overwhelm income.

The Declaration of Independence says that all men "are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights" among which are "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness." These rights--codified in the Constitution's Bill of Rights--are not civil rights that governments may define.

I believe this, but James Madison did not. There is no trace of natural law theory in the Constitution. There is none in the Federalist Papers. Jefferson invoked natural rights, but the Declaration never had any legal standing.
The revolution was.

The free exercise of religion, freedom of speech and assembly, keeping and bearing arms, freedom from warrantless searches, protection against double jeopardy and self-incrimination, trial by jury of one's peers, etc., are natural rights that pertain to human beings as such. Securing them for Americans is what the United States is all about.

By tradition, this is true. But natural law/rights theory was undermined by David Hume and Immanuel Kant before Jefferson became President. The corrosive power of modern philosophy, accelerated by Darwin's theory of evolution through natural selection, has taken two centuries to manifest itself, but it was there from the beginning.
The revolution was.

But today's U.S. Civil Rights Commission advocates truncating the foremost of these rights because, as it stated in a recent report, "Religious exemptions to the protections of civil rights based upon classifications such as race, color, national origin, sex, disability status, sexual orientation, and gender identity, when they are permissible, significantly infringe upon those civil rights." The report explains why the rights enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights should not be permissible: "The phrases 'religious liberty' and 'religious freedom' will stand for nothing except hypocrisy so long as they remain code words for discrimination, intolerance, racism, sexism, homophobia, Islamophobia, Christian supremacy, or any form of intolerance."

Yet the fact remains, the majority of Americans do not agree with the Civil Rights Commission. They go along because they see no alternative.
When the Great Default comes, as it will, there will be a great rethinking of the authority of the federal government. When Washington's checks bounce, all bets are off.

Never before has such a large percentage of Americans expressed alienation from their leaders, resentment, even fear. Some two-thirds of Americans believe that elected and appointed officials--plus the courts, the justice system, business leaders, educators--are leading the country in the wrong direction: that they are corrupt, do more harm than good, make us poorer, get us into wars and lose them. Because this majority sees no one in the political mainstream who shares their concerns, because it lacks confidence that the system can be fixed, it is eager to empower whoever might flush the system and its denizens with something like an ungentle enema.

This is good news. We really are at a turning point.
The problem is the age-old problem in politics: you can't beat something with nothing.

Yet the persons who express such revolutionary sentiments are not a majority ready to support a coherent imperial program to reverse the course of America's past half-century. Temperamentally conservative, these constituencies had been most attached to the Constitution and been counted as the bedrock of stability. They are not yet wholly convinced that there is little left to conserve. What they want, beyond an end to the ruling class's outrages, has never been clear. This is not surprising, given that the candidates who appeal to their concerns do so with mere sound bites. Hence they chose as the presidential candidate of the nominal opposition party the man who combined the most provocative anti-establishment sounds with reassurance that it won't take much to bring back good old America: Donald Trump. But bringing back good old America would take an awful lot. What could he do to satisfy them?

The following has never happened before in American history: two consecutive terms of a Democrat, followed by two consecutive terms of a Republican, followed by two consecutive terms of a Democrat. The electorate is divided. The electorate cannot make up its mind what the right direction is. Because of the gridlocked electorate, the federal bureaucracy gets its way. The Great Default has not yet de-funded the federal bureaucracy. But it will.

What would it take to make America great again--or indeed to make any of the changes that Trump's voters demand? Replacing the current ruling class would be only the beginning.

This is easier said than done. The current ruling class was not born yesterday. It goes back to 1921, and it came into undisputed power in 1933.
The revolution was.

We have stepped over the threshold of a revolution. It is difficult to imagine how we might step back, and futile to speculate where it will end. Our ruling class's malfeasance, combined with insult, brought it about. Donald Trump did not cause it and is by no means its ultimate manifestation. Regardless of who wins in 2016, this revolution's sentiments will grow in volume and intensity, and are sure to empower politicians likely to make Americans nostalgic for Donald Trump's moderation.

CONCLUSIONS
We have indeed stepped over the threshold of revolution. But there have been multiple revolutions in American history, and the country is still flourishing. It is the third most populous nation on earth, and in terms of per capita income, it is the largest rich nation in history. This is unlikely to change over the next generation.
There will be an enormous redistribution of wealth when the federal government finally runs out of cheap loans to support the existing welfare-warfare state. That is when the rubber will meet the road. That will be the day of reckoning. That will be when we find out which way this nation is headed. Until then, the present ruling class will continue to get its way.
But all this is peripheral. Codevilla in one sentence mentioned the most important threat to the American republic: the administrative state.

Over the past half-century, presidents have ruled not by enforcing laws but increasingly through agencies that write their own rules, interpret them, and punish unaccountably--the administrative state.

This is not a uniquely American problem. It is the central issue facing the Western legal tradition. Harold Berman wrote about this in an incomparable essay, his Introduction to Law and Revolution (1983). This will not be solved by the mere replacement of the ruling elite in the United States. It is endemic to the West. It is the surrender of law to bureaucracy. Compared to this, the election of 2016 is a side show. "See the man with the orange hair!" "See the amazing coughing woman with the rolling eyes!" 

The Revolutions Were

http://www.garynorth.com/public/15733.cfm

They used to hire mainly engineers to work at car companies. - by Eric Peters

They used to hire mainly engineers to work at car companies. Where they used to mainly design and build cars.

Now they have vice presidents of diversity.

At least, GM does.

A guy named Eric Peterson (no relation to this writer) just resigned the gig, where he worked with the National Association of Minority Automobile Dealers, whose president lauded Peterson as a “champion” and a “trailblazer” for “diversity.”

Translation: He used race guilt to pressure GM into making special accommodations for dealerships owned by non-whites.

And, of course, women.

Skin color (and genitalia) rather than the “content of their character” being the decisive factor.

Peterson says that “…people are the most important resource we have” and that “(we) should nurture and develop them to their maximum potential.”

Certain people.

The problem – one of them – with “diversity” is that it doesn’t mean everyone regardless of color or sex doing their thing, no one hassling anyone because of their color or sex. A merit-based system. That skin color and sex become non-issues.

It really means: Focusing on – obsessing about – race and genitalia; assigning preferred status to certain races and those with one set of genitals (but never the other).

Other races (and the male sex) need not apply.

But they’d better genuflect.

Maybe they ought to put a sign outside to let ’em know We Don’t Serve Whitey Here.

Womyn Only.

The originals were at least honest.

Bull Connor did not pretend to a “diverse” mindset. He preferred whites and preferred to avoid blacks. Like him or not, he was a straight shooter. The Diversity Mongers, in contrast, peddle the same thing (in reverse) without owning up to their race (and genitalia) obsessions. But what else is it when everything is based on race and sex?

On certain races – and just one of the two sexes?

It’s the Hapsburg Empire all over again. A polyglot society held together – barely – by fictional notions of colorblindness as a skein over very real race-and-genitalia based official/legal preferences – enforced by very real bayonets.

And we know what happened to the Hapsburg Empire… right?

Most white males – I know lots of them – don’t harbor any animosity toward blacks (or women, whether white or black) because they’re black or female and certainly aren’t interested in harming them on account of those things. They are open to doing business with – or being friends with – pretty much anyone.

Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr. speaks during a press conference for the Rainbow Push Coalition Global Automotive Summit.

But they chafe at the racial-sexual double standard that says it’s ok to actively discriminate against (and disparage) them simply because they are white (and male) while on the other hand, they must accept with a smile race-and-genitalia-based based preferential treatment of women and “minorities” (not infrequently less competent) or expect to be called “racists” (and “sexists”) for objecting.

Guys like Peterson have made a living off this.

He ought to be ashamed.

And, so should we – all of us, white and black, male and female – for tolerating it. For not standing up against it.

I include myself.

But I have an excuse, at least.

Years ago (back in the ’90s) when I first began to write about cars for a living, I attended my first “press only” events for car journalists. It was my first exposure to corporate racism (and sexism) except it was directed at me on account of my whiteness and maleness. I – and others – endured many an unctuous sermon given by guys like Peterson (every car company has one; has several… they have to… else they risk accusations of… drum roll… “racism”). And, in addition to that, the tub-thumping of race-hustling car journalists such as representatives of a publication titled, I kid you not, African Americans on Wheels.

Because black people – on account of their race – have a different (a diverse) view of what’s under the hood and how a car drives. 

Which of course they do not. They surely have their own opinions, preferences and needs. We all do. But they’re not a function of race or what’s between our legs. They are an expression of our individuality, that’s all. I am not partial to classic muscle cars because I’m a white guy. I just happen to like big V8s and four barrel carbs. I know a black dude who likes these things, too. (If I told this guy he should like “black” cars – whatever that is – he’d probably want to punch me in the face or at least call me an asshole – and I’d deserve it.)

Jews in Jeeps, anyone?

No, the real reason for African Americans on Wheels was to shake down the major car companies using race guilt as the cudgel. This publication had no circulation (they gave it away, as a free insert) but lots of very expensive glossy ads. GM (and other major car companies) bought ad space in a race-hustling publication with no circulation solely and only shut up the publication’s proprietor  – who would screech “racism” if they did not ante up.

They anted up.

Peterson’s career as vice president of diversity amounted to the same thing. The difference being GM’s proactiveness. Rather than just pay off a race hustler, why not hire one instead? Make a “commitment to diversity” official policy?  

Which is exactly what has been done. “Diversity” – Hapsburgian racial categorization and preferential treatment – has become so pervasive and routine that we hardly notice it, much less object.

Well, we ought to object.

If the goal is a society in which race and sex no longer matter as criteria for business decisions, personal relationships and so on, we’re never going to get there by obsessing over race and sex as the criteria for business decisions and personal relationships.

Of course, saying that kind of thing openly is “racist,” right?

So be it.

Come and get me.        

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The cartoon is a reasonable summary of the current state of the West - by Vox Day

Safe as houses

The cartoon above is a reasonable summary of the current state of the West. After finishing The Clash of Civilizations, it is eminently clear to me that most people, from proposition-nation white conservatives to rainbow-haired, diversity-drunk, quad-gendered, genetically-vibrant multiculturalists, are as completely and absolutely clueless about what the future holds with regards to the ongoing remaking of the world order as the average rotisserie chicken. That's not surprising. To me, the remarkable thing is how early, and how clearly, Huntington saw the civilizational trends developing. This just goes to show how useful a sound conceptual model is, and how pointless it is to stubbornly insist on retaining models that events or logic have proven to be observably false.

Which leads me to address a concern that was expressed by several people concerning the way in which certain specific individuals happen to disagree with me, such as John C. Wright, whose recent post entitled Hooey and Phooey takes serious exception to what could be described in general terms as my Alt-West thesis. From the comments:

John C. Wright
"As for Vox, I admire his fight against the enemies of civilization, he's actually doing something about it. He can be wrong about an issue and right about the need to fight for something. An unintegrated horde of millions of people with a hostile ideology from one of the most violent places on earth should be opposed on the basis of common sense (no race-science needed)."

I agree.

This is a holy war, not a race war. The religion of secular leftism (and it is a religion in all but name) has made an alliance with the horrid and enduring heresy of the False Prophet, Mohammedanism, against the religion of the West, Christianity: those two are teamed up, and the Left are trying to use demographics to destroy us. He is right that it is an invasion: he is right that men who hate us cannot assimilate and certainly must be expelled from the nation.

Vox is dead wrong on the ultimate reasons and the ultimate cure for it. The ultimate reasons are spiritual, not genetic. The ultimate cure is revival of Christianity, a re-dedication to the founding principles of this nation, not the creation of a White Lives Matter movement coupled with an abolition of those principles.


Tom Simon
Vox is dead wrong on the ultimate reasons and the ultimate cure for it.

Sir, I am very glad that you acknowledge this. I have sometimes been fearful lest your business dealings with Mr. Beale (conducted to mutual profit) might incline you to overlook his faults in politics and dialectic.


Camilla Cameo
At the same time, I for one hope that this disagreement does not cause any rift between! (Though I suggested debate earlier, it was with the acknowledgement that the possibility of ill feeling would be a good reason not to.)

Let me be perfectly clear. I don't expect anyone to agree with me on anything, let alone everything. I suspect - let me correct that, I KNOW - that every single Castalia House author disagrees with me with at least some aspect of my Alt-West thesis even if they tend to generally support its objectives. Not even the co-author of Cuckservative wholly agrees with me; he is not a Christian, for one thing. I think William S. Lind would probably come the closest of them all and he does not even use computers.

So, I have to assume that my idea of direct techno-democracy is right out with him.

Now, I do happen to think the estimable Mr. Wright is so vastly and utterly and risibly wrong on this particular subject that one day he will find it it hard to imagine that he ever genuinely believed what he now believes quite sincerely.

But so what? I have been every bit as wrong about other concepts myself in the past, such as free trade, just to give one example.

There is neither a rift nor any reason for one. I don't edit and publish Mr. Wright's books because I care what he thinks about the Alt-Right or Western civilization, but because he is one of the three best SF/F writers writing today. His novels are entertaining, important, and uplifting. I wouldn't hesitate to publish China Mieville either even though Mr. Mieville's ideas concerning political economy are considerably more frothing-at-the-mouth mad than Mr. Wright's could ever be even if Mr. Wright were bitten by a rabid, syphilitic mongoose.

Nor do I admire Mr. Wright because I agree with him about one particular concept or another, but because he is a great writer and a good man. He is, without question, better than me on both counts. Although I think he is wrong with regards to American posterity, Aristotelian rhetoric, human intelligence, genetic science, and the art of war, just to name a few things concerning which we disagree, I enjoy reading his thoughts on those and other topics, and I do not mind his criticism in the least, as it is considerably more honest and substantive than most I receive. I consider it to be both an honor and a privilege to work with him.

The truth is immutable. But none of us have the capacity to see it clearly and fully. Perhaps time will help clarify who is correct and who is not, or perhaps not. In the meantime, all we can do is observe and reflect as honestly as we can.

Besides, if current events are any guide, I expect Mr. Wright and nearly everyone else to begin to come around to my way of thinking soon enough once the ongoing clash of civilizations strikes close enough to home to make an impression on them. Back in 2002, people were a lot more dubious about my opinion concerning a coming financial crisis than they are about anything I say these days. Frankly, I see "dead wrong" as a big step up from "seriously, what color is the sky in your world?"

Vox Popoli: Safe as houses

In a Neighborhood of Gangs: The Warrant for Trump - By Michael L. Grable

When you live in a neighborhood of gangs, you must accommodate the gang that does you the least harm. And you do, you know. You’ve always lived in a neighborhood of gangs. You always will. The only question is which gang you accommodate.

If you live on the right side of Los Angeles, Chicago, or New York, you’ve dodged the unlawful gangsters. But no matter where you live, you can’t dodge the lawful gangsters we call government.

All gangs have this in common: they’re alliances of bullies whose tactics deprive others of what the gangsters want. There’s no form of intimidation or expropriation to which gangsters won’t descend to get what they want. And what they want is dominion. Their tactics depend on the scope of dominion they seek and the paradigm under which they seek it. Some are petty and brutal. Some are grand and devious. 

None is more grand and devious than government. And when government goes awry, none is more damaging and more deadly.

The lust for power’s part of the human condition. The desire for dominion’s universal. And the historical record’s a litany of potentates and their ploys. Whether priests, princes, or presidents, the end game’s always the same. Only the players and the paradigms change.

In post-modern democracies, these are the players: a political class, a privileged class, an unprivileged class, and an underclass. And here’s the paradigm: the political class buys the votes of the underclass; the privileged class buys the patronage of the political class; and the unprivileged class gets ground beneath the politically-correct juggernaut.

In what’s left of the American Republic, the only meaningful political class is the Federal one. It has usurped the states’ constitutional powers. It has reduced political representation to a binary choice between candidates chosen by two private political parties conspiring to exclude all competition. It’s composed of careerist professional politicians interested solely in maintaining their power. It’s unprincipled and omnipotent. Its pretext is a social justice long since segued into a politics of victimization that divides to conquer. Its appetite is to make us all servants of itself.

There are only two political gangs in America. One’s the Democratic Party, and the other’s the Republican Party. The only difference between them is the side of political town on which you live. There is no opposition political party. In reality, the nation is governed by a professional political duopoly which merely caucuses in two private parties with different names. If one party didn't have the other, it would have to invent it merely to maintain the illusion of a political opposition and a two-party state. Their aims are the same: reducing the citizenry to neofeudal servitude on the Federal estate.

Until -- just possibly until -- Donald Trump, that is.

Trump can’t do a fraction of what he’s promising to do. Presidential candidates are essentially but the leaders of the two private political gangs that monopolize the nation’s governance. Constitutionally, the Federal legislature is the republic’s only real governing power. And, if Trump’s elected, he won’t have a Federal Legislature eager to help him achieve his promises.

But the real point is this. Trump -- a political interloper -- has already effected a stunning populist coup against the entire Republican Party establishment. That establishment detests Trump as much as the Democratic one does. Yet, lo and behold, Trump’s the Republican Party’s presidential nominee. And, veiled truth be told, Trump’s polling ahead of Clinton. That’s an astonishing exception to a century of exclusive political domination. 

What that should tell Middle America is that Trump has energized -- across party lines -- a coalition of the politically disenfranchised American electorate. That’s mostly white, middle-class, working men and women whom academia hasn't yet terminally brainwashed. There are still enough of them to make a difference. But there won't be after eight years of a Clinton presidency because, by its end, we'll have another 30 million Latin American, African, and Middle-Eastern interlopers voting here.

What Trump can do -- if he has the leadership balls -- during an eight-year presidency is force the Republican Party to realize its real constituency is a newly energized political opposition of the disenfranchised unprivileged class. That, and also deny a Clinton presidency the opportunity to forever overwhelm the traditional American electorate with 30 million refugees from the world's failed states.

Can Trump do it? Will he do it? Is it already too late? Nobody knows. But Clinton sure as hell won't do it, Trump's all the unprivileged class has left, and the margin by which his popular vote may exceed his smaller electoral vote is the margin by which the Republican Party may potentially be convinced to banish its Paul Ryans and become -- for the first time in the last century -- a real party in actual political opposition.

That's why Middle America should hold its nose as much as necessary, get off its derriere, and go vote for Trump. Remember, ladies, your fathers and husbands are men, and half your offspring are too. Remember, African Americans, your dysfunctional schools and crime-ridden ghettos are the consequence of a centralized political duopoly that has made many of you mere dependents of the state. Remember, Hispanics, tens of millions of your brethren illegally here merely depress the wages of those of you legally here. Remember, corporate America, when the Chinese stop buying America’s metastasizing debt, you’re going offshore more than you ever bargained for.  

Otherwise, we'll all ultimately find ourselves kicking the severed head of our own Marquis de Launay around our own version of the Place de Grève. And drinking the blood of our fellow citizens.

The only reasonable response of good men and women everywhere is it's never too late.

Until, of course, it is.

And then Napoleon succeeds Doctor Guillotine.

As Santayana said, "when experience is not retained, as among savages, infancy is perpetual. Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2016/10/in_a_neighborhood_of_gangs_the_warrant_for_trump.html#ixzz4LwYr5fXI
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Every major civilization has had its basis in a core religion. - Are we 'Empty-handed at the OK Corral?'

Empty-handed at the OK Corral

Not bringing a religion to a clash of civilizations is like not bringing a gun to a gunfight. Every major civilization has had its basis in a core religion.

Consider these three quotes from Sam Huntington's The Clash of Civilizations:

1.    The underlying problem for the West is not Islamic fundamentalism. It is Islam, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the superiority of their culture and are obsessed with the inferiority of their power. The problem for Islam is not the CIA or the U.S. Department of Defense. It is the West, a different civilization whose people are convinced of the universality of their culture and believe that their superior, if declining, power imposes on them the obligation to extend that culture throughout the world. These are the basic ingredients that fuel conflict between Islam and the West.

2.    Blood, language, religion, way of life, were what the Greeks had in common and what distinguished them from the Persians and other non-Greeks. Of all the objective elements which define civilizations, however, the most important usually is religion, as the Athenians emphasized. To a very large degree, the major civilizations in human history have been closely identified with the world’s great religions; and people who share ethnicity and language but differ in religion may slaughter each other, as happened in Lebanon, the former Yugoslavia, and the Subcontinent.

3.    Religion is a central defining characteristic of civilizations, and, as Christopher Dawson said, “the great religions are the foundations on which the great civilizations rest.” Of Weber’s five “world religions,” four—Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, and Confucianism—are associated with major civilizations. The fifth, Buddhism, is not.

Now, one can blithely try to wave away Huntington's civilizational perspective and his thesis, but considering how The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order was published in 1996 and has proven to be not merely far more insightful and predictive than Fukuyama's End of History thesis or any other conceptual model, one would have to be grossly ignorant to do so.

So, if we accept the idea that Western civilization and Islamic civilization are in conflict, what must we logically conclude from the three quotes provided?

1.    The decline of the West is the direct result of the decline of Christianity in the West, both religious and institutional.

2.    The growing power of Islam in the West cannot be halted by secularism, white nationalism, or any sub-civilization-level force.

3.    The preservation of the West requires a revival of Christianity.

4.    The preservation of the West requires the abandonment of some, though not all, secular values, beginning with the freedom of religion, that conflict with the restoration of Christianity

There is considerably more that can be concluded from this particular perspective, but I expect most people, even of an Alt-West persuasion, will struggle to accept just those four inescapable conclusions.

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/10/empty-handed-at-ok-corral.html

The rise of Alt-Tech is going to become more apparent.....................by Vox Day

The Disconvergence

Three things happened in September.

1.    Twitter blocked links to Vox Popoli.

2.    I stopped tweeting on Twitter and moved to #Gab.

3.    Monthly site traffic grew from 2.83 million pageviews to 2.97 million pageviews. 

Conclusion: Twitter is officially irrelevant with regards to site traffic. Traffic over the October-December period will either confirm or contradict that conclusion.

Regardless, next week, the rise of Alt-Tech is going to become more apparent. Project Big Fork is already partnering with Brave and Gab. Plans for other alternatives are already in the works. The cultural high ground of social media cannot be conceded to the SJWs who run it.

Although the balance of resources looks imposing, this is a series of battles that are eminently winnable due to the Impossibility of Social Justice Convergence. Remember, the more an institution converges towards the highest abstract standard of social and distributive justice, the less it is able to perform its primary function.

As long as Alt-Tech focuses on its primary functions rather than upon becoming a reverse image of the SJW-converged social media institutions, its victory in the long term is inevitable. This is the beginning of our Gramscian long march.

But we will need your help, in a wide variety of ways. On Monday at 7 PM Eastern, I'll be holding an open Brainstorm for all the Dread Ilk and everyone else interested in supporting what I am calling the Alt-Tech Disconvergence. Invites will be going out to the OGs, Brainstormers, and VFM first, as there is only room for 1,000 seats.

Labels: technology

https://voxday.blogspot.com/2016/10/the-disconvergence.html