Some Holdouts Speak

http://www.crisismagazine.com/2013/stupidity-a-malady-of-the-cultural-elite

 

This is a Catholic take on the course of Western decadence. I have noticed that intelligence and erudition are not often lacking in the Catholic intellecto-sphere. Even the comments maintain a standard.

 

I might riposte with the sense that a true tracing of our moral decline rounds right back to Christianity itself, especially the Puritan branch which eventually produced that fleur du mal, New England's Christian Socialism. It is this Christian Socialism that infected our elite more than 100 years ago, claiming the title of "Progressivism," and which morphed and melded, under increasing Jewish-cosmopolitan influence, into a mode of Europeanized thought better termed cultural Marxism. What we now have, then, is a hyper-egalitarian form of Christianity minus God. And this set of values not only determines the political and social trends of America, but is exported aggressively to the world. Our first target, Western Europe, is notable for being even more thoroughly dominated by cultural Marxism than we are--not surprising if one considers that we played Dr. Frankenstein to their corpse-monster after the War. They are our creatures; our elite made them what they are, without any interference from elements like the masses--nor even from powerful residual institutions (like the Catholic Church), such as slow down leftist reforms in America. Our elites availed themselves of the tabula rasa they'd created--one reason FDR determined upon unconditional surrender at war's end.

 

In considering of this article, I reflected further upon the value system in which our elite places its faith and for which it exercises its power. One of the handful of pivots is the spiritual and material benefits of diversity upon which they presume.

 

Supporters of diversity presuppose uniformity of human talents across groups, at the genetic level at least, and consider that all signs of non-uniformity of talent indicate different cultural and other environmental conditions. They do not believe in meaningful genetic diversity across groups. They therefore deem cases in which a group is underrepresented to be proof that there is prejudice against that group in the particular field. They seek, then, to achieve cultural/racial/sexual diversity in each field, at whatever cost to other factors, such as competence. The problem arises from the initial presupposition of equal human talents across groups: this is quite clearly not the case. There is in the world both genetic and cultural diversity across groups, to different degrees and variously intermixed. In other words, to achieve "diversity" these diversocrats ignore real genetic diversity and seek to include diverse cultures in every field at equal levels of representation, which has the effect of reducing real cultural diversity. The attempt to equalize the interests and achievements of every culture guts the particularity of each culture, its essential character. So they seek to ignore one form of natural diversity (the genetic) and reduce the other (the cultural). It's a nice Orwellian game for the religiously earnest devotees of diversity to deny one major form of human diversity and suppress the other.

 

"Diversity," as used by these people, our elite, actually means uniformity. They want uniformity, at least in the masses. They believe this will render the world more politically stable and also make people easier for them to mold because more interchangeable. They fear that the scientifically confirmed genetic differences between human groups, races especially, will exacerbate the usual tensions caused by cultural contrasts. Of course, they have a point here. But, one may well question both the means and the ends of their workings. Is uniformity really a superior human future to one featuring conflict and competition? Have they failed to notice that China, like all healthy nations, seeks primacy, and not merely of the primus inter pares sort? And this egalitarian fantasy combines with the infatuation with pity-motivated and -justified government social supports to create a society which inflicts equality by leveling down. After all, the standard may always be lowered, but the more it is raised the more exclusionary it necessarily becomes. The decline of standards throughout society follows ineluctably. Anyone who disagrees with this interpretation of the meaning and priority of diversity is rigorously excluded from the elite. Intellectual diversity is proscribed.  

 

This is the wrong way. The incapables ought to be discouraged from breeding, and if an entire group manifests disproportionate incapacity, then that group ought to move to a nation dominated by its type--or submit to its fate, as determined by talent and effort, among superior people.

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.

How to End-Run the Ripoff Machine

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887323301104578255992379228564.html?mod=googlenews_wsj

 

In time, this may produce the tragic consequence of fewer communists--I mean professors--lounging away on tenure and spouting PC garbage. A few of their fellow fifth column buddies in the sprawling higher-ed bureaucracy might also find the end of the road. It may even come to pass in a generation or two that the only remaining campuses in America will be those focused on science and engineering, which require physical labs, or the truly elite schools, which can afford the outrageous expense.

Rhetoric or Realism?

Herewith a chart of black-white IQ differences by standard deviation and year. The over 18 line is more reliable, ranging from .95 to 1.2. The avg difference looks to be about 1.1 (ie, 83 IQ for blacks). Note the green line is lower--blacks fall further behind as they get older. Also, the data reveals not a single case of black adults scoring higher than 88 IQ.

The lack of improvement despite extreme left-wing efforts ought to be discouraging--but that's the saving grace of idealism: reality may be set at nought so that the rainbow dream may shine on. Africans need some Chinese medicine (cough, eugenics, cough cough).

Die Uber-Chinese

http://www.edge.org/response-detail/23838

 

Leftism is the flight from reality.

Reality may take many forms.

 

China has undertaken to provide us with our mandatory reality dose in this century.

Imagine if Nazi Germany had been run by Heydrich (relatively sane and smart) instead of Hitler (who squandered his potential) and its natural ethnic territory had been the size of America. This approximates the threat China will pose within a generation.

 

Leftism only knows one direction and ever intensified leftism either collapses in on itself--or those powers still in possession of their will to power crush its hollowed-out carcass and institute a new dispensation.

Murder as It is Caused

http://www.nationalreview.com/articles/337929/war-against-black-men-lee-habeeb

If the "real cause" of murders is fatherlessness, why do blacks commit 8-10 times as many murders per capita as whites? After all, the black rate of fatherless boys is only twice the white rate. I think one of the largest causes is indeed fatherlessness, if one includes all the factors associated with that condition, including the high rate of criminality and unemployment among absconded fathers. However, it's notable that IQ is low and violence is high wherever one finds (free) blacks. Of course, blacks in mostly gunless Europe do less damage, but their violent propensities are well attested. Under Jim Crow, the problem was much reduced by economically-induced sustenance of black family integrity and by a degree of intimidation that was mainly salutary to all concerned.

Reminds me of a recent Steve Sailer note (check out the map, it covers the whole country):

 

Next door neighbors: Oak Park and Austin

The Austin neighborhood on the far west side of Chicago and Oak Park, IL are contiguous neighbors. The border is the yellow stripe in the middle of Austin Boulevard.

According to this NYT map (http://projects.nytimes.com/census/2010/explorer) of homicides in Chicago neighborhoods over the last 12 years:

Austin: More than 450 homicides have happened in this neighborhood in Chicago’s West Side, one of the city’s deadliest places

In contrast, over the last dozen years in Oak Park, which has about half as many people as Austin, there have been six murders.

It must be the lack of gun control laws in Chicago.

America's Economic Inflection Point?

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/31/america-in-2012-as-told-in-charts/

The most informative are the graphs for:

declining real median incomes

healthcare costs driving deficits

social security benefits growing faster than incomes

 

Note that last one: social security benefits have tracked inflation since 2000, but median incomes have declined 9%. Is it possible that the year 2000 was the American equivalent of the year 1970 in Soviet history--the time when stagnation and decline set in? We still have a trickle of productivity growth, but it all goes to the rich, the welfare class (including the largest welfare class, old people), and the health care sector. The remainder of the economy languishes. And the politicos and propagandists continue to spout their politically correct lies (also reminiscent of the old Muscovite empire's Orwellian inversions and concealments).

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.