Does Krauthammer Know He's a Leftist?

http://charlierose.com/watch/60306163

A smart guy, but his political positions resemble those of Democrats from the 60s through the 80s, depending on the particular issue. Can there be any serious doubt that the next generation of "conservative" columnists and opinionators will more closely resemble more recent generations of Democrats? I'd like to hear his response to these Moldbuggian tropes:

The great power center of 2008 is the Cathedral. The Cathedral has two parts: the accredited universities and the established press. The universities formulate public policy. The press guides public opinion. In other words, the universities make decisions, for which the press manufactures consent. It's as simple as a punch in the mouth.

The Cathedral operates as the brain of a broader power structure, the Polygon or Apparat - the permanent civil service. The Apparat is the civil service proper (all nonmilitary officials whose positions are immune to partisan politics, also known as "democracy"), plus all those formally outside government whose goal is to influence or implement public policy - ie, NGOs.
(There's a reason NGOs have to remind themselves that they're "non-governmental.")

....

For a hardened denialist such as myself, who has completely lost his faith in all these institutions, attempting to understand the world through the reports and analysis produced by the Cathedral is like trying to watch a circus through the camera on a cell phone duct-taped to the elephant's trunk. It can be done, but it helps to have plenty of external perspective.

And for anyone starting from a position of absolute faith in the Cathedral, there is simply no other source of information against which to test it. You are certainly not going to discredit the Times or Stanford by reading the Times or going to Stanford, any more than you will learn about the historical Jesus by attending a Latin Mass.

Whaling on the Left

Guidebook to the vast corpus of Moldbuggian assaults:

http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

 

I recommend reading one of the 3 introductory series he wrote: How Dawkins got pwned and A Gentle Introduction to Unqualified Reservations are superb--An Open Letter to Open-Minded Progressives is also good if you're desperate to dose yourself with another 50,000 words.

 

Moldbug will never be popular because he crushes cherished delusions Left, Right and Center--then Left again for good measure. But, when he turns his powers to interpreting U.S. history (for the last 100 years synonymous with world history) he sports like a killer whale at play, one that found passage from ocean to lake, now the only predator that matters among freshwater creatures that have never seen his like before. His activities may amount to a succession of executions, but there is an art on display and a power and a wonderful whale-sense for selecting victims that sustains the interest perhaps indefinitely.

Leviathan Their Puppet

http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/our-american-pravda/
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2007/09/is-journalism-official.html

Like the authors of these two articles, I too believed, and for a long time, that I was savvy enough to "interpret" the press--that I could discount the known prejudices of press institutions and writers. But, in the course of a few years in my early thirties, the truth came to me. It is a thing impossible to accomplish. And the most insidious category of lies of which the press stands guilty--a category fully functional only in an atmosphere in which no effective opposition exists--are the lies of omission.

I ought to note that I have not read all the material on the anthrax, POW, and nuclear espionage stories in the first article. The other matters mentioned there are well-known.

Of the second article, may I submit that I do not frequently happen upon a writer possessed of an almost egregiously superlative talent--but, when he turns his talents to the provisioning of my entertainment and edification by means of firing a forest of dead lies and clearing the land for new growth, and prophecies rebirth in allusive, many-tentacled, metaphor strewn prose, I count myself blessed. Consider his comparison of official journalism to its predecessor, an implicit admission that no simple solution to the problem of accurate information exists. Yet, as a de facto branch of the civil service, the pseudo-apolitical caretakers of the people, see how we find ourselves closely mewed up in a statist circle of thought. State education and the state-adjunct press determine (with condolences to Emerson) the horizon beyond which almost no one can think. From within that horizon an occasional chink of light only may sparkle from the great beyond, to be interpreted by most inmates as a random reflection of the real world within the horizon, since either they do not realize an horizon exists or they believe what lies beyond it is mere madness; but in fact the potentially saving light emanates either from the internet or an old book.


Examples of journalistic fraud and negligence:

No press outlet thought through the meaning of the real estate bubble before it burst, though some saw the bubble (eg The Economist).

"Paleo" nutrition was excluded from the press, though convincing scientific literature extends back 100 years, and the world grows obese.

The press carefully excludes the real effects of immigration policy in the white world, though America is threatened with socialism economically and a recapitulation of Brazil's social experience--while Europe faces submission to the Caliphate.

Reporting on trade policy ignores the collapse of strategic industries in the US and Europe, in process of being systematically overrun by state-financed corporations of the Far East.

Crime reporting ignores the black on white race war in America: blacks commit 83% of violent inter-racial crimes between blacks and whites, and 20,000 black-on-white rapes occur per year compared to less than 10 white-on-black rapes per year.

Reporting of racial inequalities ignores the IQ differences, the cultural differences, the different criminal propensities, different levels of accomplishment--or ascribes black/mestizo deficits in each area to racism, thereby inciting racial animosity among both the superior and the inferior.

War reporting tilts against the US at every opportunity, while giving the enemy the benefit of the doubt. Also, war reporters rarely explain that a "humanitarian" counter-insurgency is just another way of saying "guaranteed failure with profoundly anti-humanitarian consequences."

The list of mindlessly idealistic official wisdom and state-sanctioned-and-sanctioning bullshit never ends--is there a field of thought or action in which the official press is actually right?



The unexampled power of the press in pseudo-demotic society is similar to that which Hobbes ascribed to state officials who "resembleth the Nerves, and Tendons that move the severall limbs of a body natural," one of whose responsibilities it is "to teach the people their duty to the Sovereign Power." Hobbes also remarks on the ultimate spiritual guides directing the goals of his Leviathan, men such as Jesus and Paul, and those with authority to expound upon these men. Our ultimate guides today, though, our cultural Marxists, deem themselves holier than these, present themselves as supra-Christians and Platonic philosopher-kings, presume themselves, in short, more idealistic than their forerunners and more consciously divorced from (transcending?) reality. Oh, and godless as well, since their ascetic stance and posture would be incomplete if they were to nestle themselves under the warm, comforting promise of divine succor.

A Simple Solution and a Less Simple

http://www.morganwarstler.com/post/44789487956/guaranteed-income-auction-the-unemployed

If our governing class were competent and had some sense of noblesse oblige, we might see a program like this instituted. Of course, they are incompetent and ignoble. Result: problem people (those with negative economic value under our current system) become more problematic--and their problems become contagious, instead of being contained and ameliorated.

 

The second discussion is less simple, much-much much-much longer, more entertaining and intelligent--and more realistic in assessing the likely elite response to the "dire problem":

 http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2013/03/sam-altman-is-not-blithering-idiot.html

Perhaps he overestimates the difficulty of solving the problem under the current dispensation. Paperwork may easily be created for anyone who can even marginally read--what do you think our regulators do other than create mostly superfluous paperwork requirements? The problem is the failure of our Marxist overlords to make clear the distinction between the lifestyles of workers and those of welfare cases. They prefer to integrate these opposing types into "diverse" communities with virtually identical effective incomes. The bottom quarter or so of our society has insufficient incentive to work. And this temptation to idleness is inflicted upon precisely those limited human types who are least capable of independently discovering the value of work, its saving characteristic of offering a point, a goal to the life beyond crude hedonism and recreational criminality. The Marxists, being atheists, ought to understand this issue all the more clearly for their lack of supernatural faith--which is one of the other two main sources of purpose in human life, along with family. But, at best, their idealistic preconceptions foreclose any such insight. At worst, they're playing a most cynical political game. Make-work is thus the most realistic of the solutions on offer to save the increasing numbers of economically useless Americans from degeneration. The guaranteed income idea above is one well-considered form of this make-work option. It would likely produce lower birth rates among the make-workers as well, a happy Darwinian benefit.

"The Latitude is Complete"

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EnLo2XJY2qU

 

If justices were appointed by merit, judge Posner would be on the Supreme Court. This is an excellent summary of how Constitutional law actually works and why it ought really to be called "Supreme Court law" instead.

 

I quote below the crucial lines:

"Almost the entire body of constitutional law was created by the Supreme Court justices by free interpretation or no interpretation of the Constitution, just using the Constitution as a jumping off point...The text doesn't impose a limit; precedent doesn't impose a limit. There's obviously something circular. Supreme Court justices make up some principle.[which becomes a precedent] If judges follow that [precedent], they're just following the law, they're not making anything up. But, they're applying something which was itself made up by judges. And the Supreme Court's not bound by its precedents. It can always overrule them or distinguish them to death or distort what they say. So they have a complete free game, except for public opinion."

 

How the Constitution is overridden, based just on examples given in the interview (many others could be provided):

invert meaning (searching with a warrant)

ignore ($20 amount in dispute or creation of air force or right to bear arms)

change meaning of terms (cruel and unusual punishment, right to counsel, self-incrimination clause)

 

Most of these are crucial provisions of the Constitution. They are emptied of their meaning at the will of the Court. This is why the Court is the unassailable pinnacle of our permanent government. And almost everyone in the government is permanent--the Presidency is the only remaining position with any power that is non-permanent. Congress is de facto permanent, the Court de jure permanent. The professoriate is permanent. They tell the government and the media what to think. The media is permanent. Government and the media together manufacture consent among hoi polloi. And big business plays nice with the government because, when the government is permanent and powerful, this is simply good business.

 

All this amounts to a vast web of interrelations that was produced, per Moldbug, by adaptive evolution--not, for the most part, conscious planning. (Admittedly, there are periods when adaptation occurs more quickly, like the American Colonial Revolt against the King, the shredding of the Articles of Confederation in favor of the Constitution, the War of Northern Aggression, the FDR leftist coup, the LBJ-Nixonian conspiracy to explode welfare spending, open the borders to elect a new people, and regulate everything still standing). Of course, conscious planning on such a large scale has historically produced mostly bad results--the Soviet Union being the largest example (though the French Revolution remains the archetype of this fallacy and Burke's book the archetypal critique). Nevertheless, it's worth asking: for whom is this system of ours adaptive? Cui bono? The intellectuals determine the permissible range of thought, the mind space within which the functional rulers operate and to which they confine their subjects. The bureaucrats and plutocrats play the practitioners to the professors' theoreticians. And the (state-sponsored) media and state-run schools convey the parameters of existence to hoi polloi. Our Dear Leader Obama would inform us that all well-intentioned people, not just Americans, benefit from this system. Our Dear Leader might then compare our system to the ideal republic of Plato, led by the philosopher-king, a disinterested genius who would ensure the (perhaps Procrusteanized?) equality of his subjects and peace (submission?) among them all. How could anyone doubt the beneficence of Our Dear Leader, or question the feasibility or desirability of his particular Utopian vision?

  

But, still, really, Our Dear Leader aside, cui bono? It's generally a useful principle to assume that whoever end up with the most power in a given social configuration are the ones with the most bono. And this would be, to varying degrees, the elements of the Polygon (or the Cathedral), as summarized by Moldbug:

The Polygon might be defined as the "extended civil service." It consists not [only] of those who hold actual formal GS rank, but those whose position demands a sense of civic responsibility - real or fake. The major vertices of the Polygon, by my count, are the press, the universities, the judiciary, the Fed and the banks, the "Hill" (congressional staff), the civil service proper, the NGOs and transnationals, the military, the Beltway bandits (defense and other contractors), and corporate holders of official monopolies (such as "intellectual property").

To which I would only add Congressmen, since they're virtually guaranteed reelection and may therefore be deemed part of the permanent government and not mere democratic contingencies. Note that the Presidency is excluded for being a dependency of the electorate, a relic of democracy, an amateur and a temp, and too minutely constrained by public opinion and overexposure in the media to have significant power.

 

I rather like this clip too,  in which Posner explains that Leftism is a non-theistic religious movement, which is to say, it is driven by irrational and moralistic passions:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jYa5y8IkUMk This is why Moldbug denominated our ruling class "the Cathedral." It is the secular church of Leftism, which happens now to rule us. The problem is that all moral thought is irrational, a function of the passions and tastes (including the taste for religion), not of logic. Therefore argumentation does not work in this realm. Propaganda works. Appeals to emotion work. And, as always, the display of power is an excellent form of emotive propaganda. The Left has the power. Moreover, only those whose moral tastes appear sufficiently Leftist are permitted to form the next generation of the power elite, the priests of the Cathedral. Since the Reformation, at the latest, the Left always has outrun the right in mastery of propaganda--hardly surprising given that the essence of propaganda is mendacity and the very foundation of leftism (human equality) is a lie. When you're naturally predisposed to idealism (what I call lies), when your thought process is inherently delusional, when you instinctively retreat from the "is" and desperately embrace the "ought," when you are your first and most fanatical convert---with such a psychological character you are a natural, even an involuntary, propagandist. Socialism: the party of involuntary propaganda. Of the right, though, it may be said that "its nature is subdued to what it works in, like the dyer's hand." And what it works in is reality, not the seductive fantasia of ideal forms. But, the communication of reality is generally perceived as quite crude and rebarbative propaganda--keen apprehension is required to notice that it's not propaganda at all, since it's the awful truth (without the saving grace of Cary Grant & co).

 

How can the right attain power in such a system as ours? It cannot. Only the ideas most attractive to intellectuals (which are mainly a matter of social status games) win the competition for preeminence, and thence that for political application, in our system. Not the most truthful ideas, not the most useful in any utilitarian sense, but those ideas most attractive to this audience prevail. These ideas define the Overton window. The intellectuals then repackage their favored notions in a form that will appeal to hoi polloi (the manufacture of consent). Big business and permanent government then determine how to action the ideas. Where, you may wonder, is the "Right" in this process? Watching. Sometimes complaining. Then submitting. Finally, forgetting that the given idea--first theoretical, then novel, now simply reality--was Leftist in the first place. Its reality inclines the Right even to defend it against any new changes. The "Right" exists for two reasons: to legitimize the claim that we live in a two party democracy, and to provide political entertainment and distraction from reality.

 

The only avenue for the Right to attain power is a military coup. The only chance of this happening involves some decidedly unattractive preconditions, like Brezhnevite stagnation for at least a generation or some form of extreme crisis, like nuclear war. The former option, though it looks increasingly likely, may yet be evaded by major technological advances. But, does the Right nevertheless have some use today? Well, it might slow the Leftist advance. Another possibility: sustain a level of dissident intellectual discourse that is high enough to tempt the ruling Leftists occasionally to purloin a useful idea (eg, Carter's administration did considerable deregulation based on intelligent Rightist analysis). Such discourse might benefit those nations that attempt to buck the American example (like Singapore or potentially China or Russia). Highly successful Rightist regimes overseas may provide a counterexample to our Leftist morass just as we formed a counterexample to the Soviet morass and catalyzed its transition to "an improved infancy." A third use might be to prepare for a Leftist collapse, perhaps already an inevitable fate for the West--to have ready to hand an intelligent, considered, current plan to form a Rightist regime on the mouldering ruins of yet another Leftist failure.

America and Its Fate

http://www.forbes.com/sites/realspin/2013/02/13/singapores-lee-kuan-yew-talks-americas-strangths-and-weaknesses/

The most successful world leader of the last 50 years informs the Obamite degenerates that their two great dream-delusions, "multiculturalism" and socialism, will destroy America. He is precisely correct. But, I wonder if he understands the underlying power dynamic which has produced this hegemony of "Progressive" ideology in America. I judge that it is undergirded by a prevailing moral philosophy of cultural Marxism actioned by the Polygon or, as the great Mencius Moldbug has renominated it, the "Cathedral." This is Moldbug's concise demarcation of the Cathedral:

The Polygon might be defined as the "extended civil service." It consists not of those who hold actual formal GS rank, but those whose position demands a sense of civic responsibility - real or fake. The major vertices of the Polygon, by my count, are the press, the universities, the judiciary, the Fed and the banks, the "Hill" (congressional staff), the civil service proper, the NGOs and transnationals, the military, the Beltway bandits (defense and other contractors), and corporate holders of official monopolies (such as "intellectual property").

These are the people who "manufacture consent" in America, and they are the people who write the rules by which all elements of society are to abide, and the people who dispose of the sums annually redistributed by the government. And they believe or pretend to believe in political correctness, which is a kind of pacifist-Marxist version of Christianity minus God.

The Left Unleashed--Moldbug Seeks Redress

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/opinion/lets-give-up-on-the-constitution.html

The mad genius of the alt-right thinkers (Mencius Moldbug of Unqualified Reservations) nominates the American ruling class "The Cathedral." It comprises, by order of rank, the professoriate of the elite universities, the civil service (including our life-tenured Congress and Supreme Court), the media, the entertainment industry, and public school teachers. The op-ed linked above, by a law professor at an elite law school, is convoluted almost to the point of contradiction and stands as an absolute paean to the current Cathedral--truly one of the dumbest articles, substantively, I've seen at the NY Times. Also, not coincidentally, one of purest ideologically, that is, one of the most brilliant in terms of form and structure--which is impressive, since editorial writers, especially on the left, are primarily engaged in a status game in which the purest theologically, I mean, ideologically wins the prize. This game can be rather creative given that there are no rules proscribing flights of fantasy or violations of the reality principle. The overarching stupidity here, of course, is that he advocates freedom from the constitution in the same article in which he (accurately) boasts that we have frequently, and by implication ever more frequently, violated its provisions throughout our history. I also like the strategic omission of any mention of the provision made for amending the Constitution, a provision many times put to use. It might be interesting, though, to attempt an aesthetic appreciation of this piece, exemplary decadent art object that it is. 

 

As a counterstrike to this Leftist insanity, here's a good intro to Moldbuggian thought: http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/01/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html  And here are my selections from the highly interesting Moldbug on the nature of the Cathedral and his mission to proselytize the shepherds (the boldface is mine):

 

 

 One way to elect a new people is to import them, of course. For example, to put it bluntly, the Democratic Party has captured California, once a Republican stronghold, by importing arbitrary numbers of Mexicans. Indeed the Third World is stocked with literally billions of potential Democrats, just waiting to come to America so that Washington can buy their votes. Inner Party functionaries cackle gleefully over this achievement. (BTW, isn't that photo of Frank Rich amazing? Doesn't it just radiate pure power and contempt? Henry VIII would probably have asked the painter to make him look less like Xerxes, King of Kings.)

But this act of brutal Machiavellian thug politics, larded as usual with the most gushing of sentimental platitudes, is picayune next to the ordinary practice of democratic governments: to elect a new people by re-educating the children of the old. In the long run, power in a democracy belongs to its information organs: the press, the schools, and most of all the universities, who mint the thoughts that the others plant. For simplicity, we have dubbed this complex the Cathedral.
The Cathedral is a feedback loop. It has no center, no master planners. Everyone, even the Sulzbergers, is replaceable. In a democracy, mass opinion creates power. Power diverts funds to the manufacturers of opinion, who manufacture more, etc. Not a terribly complicated cycle.

This feedback loop generates a playing field on which the most competitive ideas are not those which best correspond to reality, but those which produce the strongest feedback. The Cathedral is constantly electing a new people who (a) support the Cathedral more and more, and (b) support a political system which makes the Cathedral stronger and stronger.
For example, libertarian policies are not competitive in the Cathedral, because libertarianism minimizes employment for public-policy experts. Thus we would expect libertarians to come in two flavors: the intellectually marginalized, and the intellectually compromised...

 

What we need is a sort of counter-Cathedral: an institution which is actually more trustworthy than the university system. The universities are the brain of USG, and the best way to kill anything is to shoot it in the head.

To be right when the Cathedral is wrong is to demonstrate that we live under a system of government which is bound together by the same glue that held up Communism: lies. You do not need a triple-digit IQ to know that a regime held up by lies is doomed. You also do not need a triple-digit IQ to help bring down a doomed regime. Everyone will volunteer for that job. It's as much fun as anything in the world.

 

Solely for the purpose of discussion, let's call this counter-Cathedral Resartus - from Carlyle's great novel, Sartor Resartus (The Tailor Reclothed).

The thesis of Resartus is that the marketplace of ideas, free and blossoming as it may seem, is or at least may be infected with lies. These lies all have one thing in common: they are related to the policies of modern democratic governments. Misinformation justifies misgovernment; misgovernment subsidizes misinformation. This is our feedback loop.

On the other hand, it's clear that modern democratic governments are doing many things right. Perhaps in all circumstances they are doing the best they can. Perhaps there is no misinformation at all. The hypothesis that such feedback loops can form is not a demonstration that they exist.

Therefore, the mission of Resartus is to establish, using that crowdsourced wiki-power we are all familiar with, the truth on every dubious subject. Perhaps the truth will turn out to be the official story, in which case we can be happy.

The two sites today which are most like Resartus are Climate Audit and Gene Expression. Both of these are, in my humble opinion, scientific milestones. CA's subject is climatology; GNXP's subject is human biodiversity.

Rethinking Conservatism

The problem with conservatism in America is that it always loses. It was losing before the land was even settled. The Puritans were the leftists of their time, too leftist to remain in the most leftist nation in the world, and America has adopted the spirit of the Puritans to guide its political and social development. As Orwell made clear, the end game of leftism is the abolition of memory, the imprisonment of the mind, the coercive imposition of equal conditions of body and mind for all people--in other words, the most absolute tyranny ever conceived--but never thus far fully implemented.The Soviet Union was merely a primitive and premature attempt in this direction. Our elites envision a purer achievement. They are more clever and, technologically, much better equipped to pursue their end. Chinese elites posit a similar goal in the long run, though their wonderful new infatuation with Leninist capitalism has temporarily diverted their attention. The world lies at the feet of this double hegemony.

The following website offers a summary of the ideas of Mencius Moldbug, who has an unconventional notion of how conservatives (renamed reactionaries to escape the taint of centuries of retreat) may finally start winning in America (and by extension throughout the American imperium) and revive American fortunes and save us from the usual fate of empires. Moldbug is samizdat for the 21st century. Singapore (surprisingly little emulated) is probably the closest realized approach to this conception of government:

http://laurentia.jfbs.net/index.php?showtopic=69

 

My two main issues with these ideas:

1. Classical international law may not be possible for much longer given the continuing spread of WMDs to smaller and smaller entities. This technological fait accompli, provided that it proceeds apace into disseminated bio- and nanoweapons capabilities, would create conditions for either anarchy or a single global state. This is because deterrence does not work for these types of weapons. This would be sufficient to undo the Moldbug plan.

2. The other issue is the risk that some states will be commandeered by psychopaths who, moved more by passion than profit, visit grievous harms upon their people or decide to predate upon neighboring states. However, reactionary arrangements do not create this risk. They suffer the lesser flaw of not necessarily eradicating it. The risk of non-reactionary arrangments going psycho is sufficiently clear from history: any form of government yet tried faces this risk to one degree or another. The reactionary neocameralist form ought to incur a lower risk than most, perhaps lower than any, assuming it is attempted in a civilized nation. Even with global implementation of neocameralist regimes, the requirement of an international balance of power would remain in effect (at least until the problems associated with my first issue transcend known contingencies).

If you're interested in readings from the source, the collected works of Moldbug, as generously and most needfully reorganized by an acolyte:

http://moldbuggery.blogspot.com/

 

I'm working my way through--verbose stuff, but with compensations in cleverness and humor.

White Americans have No Recognized Nationality

Another instance of one of my favorite laws in action. http://isteve.blogspot.com/2011/04/disparate-impact-discrimination-against.html Where does this stuff come from?   Moldbug's theory: 1. Academia tells the civil service and the media what to think 2. The bureaucrats (that is, the professional political class) and the journalists use these ideas to formulate an ideology to "guide" the politicians. 3. The politicians pass laws in accordance with "their" ideology, that is, the ideology they are spoon fed by the media and the civil servants (making occasional exceptions for special interests and polling purposes). 4. The bureaucrats transform these laws into regulations that can be acted on.   Now, who constitute the elite of academia and the civil service and the media?