Asymmetries

     Some things, it seems, must be said so bluntly that no one can mistake or “reinterpret” them. However, when the subjects fall within a certain realm, most persons, including many who are outspoken on other matters will dance around the subject hoping to avert a tide of defamation. The deficit of courage this suggests is detrimental to the entire country.

     Herewith, in the hope of cracking open the relevant subjects and evoking honest discussion of what might be done about them, follow blows with a few blunt chisels. If you dislike what you read from this point forward and feel yourself moved to invective, feel free to leave and not return. I will not tolerate insults, slanders, and baseless accusations in place of reasoned argument.

     You have been warned.

***

1. Race.

     The recognized races differ in ways that are contextually significant. Statistically speaking, they are distributed differently as regards several physical, intellectual, and emotional characteristics. Some of those differences have caused immense social and political problems, as anyone aware of the burning of American cities last year will be aware. This has been confirmed so many ways that to dismiss it as a kind of bias or bigotry is a form of purposeful insanity.

     While the members of all three races possess the same individual rights – i.e., those enumerated in the Declaration of Independence and protected by various provisions of the Constitution and Bill of Rights – that does not somehow obviate the need to be cautious in matters that touch upon race. This has become supremely important now that one race is demanding – and in some cases, openly being granted – special, preferential treatment under the law.

     Perhaps the best compact approach to the problems racial asymmetries cause, as matters currently stand, was penned by John Derbyshire. Of course, he was roundly vilified for it, but that’s what you get from ideologues determined, for one reason or another, to deny the evidence – including the evidence of our senses.

***

2. Creed.

     The uncritical worship of “freedom of religion” (see what I did there?) has been exploited by some of the foulest beings on Earth to do damage to the rest of us and to the United States. The core of the thing is the refusal to ask the question “What constitutes a religion?” Today, virtually any creed that calls itself a religion and demands to be respected as such is accommodated, regardless of its content and intentions.

     I’ve previously made a comparison between Hitler’s National Socialism (a.k.a. Nazism) and Islam:

     Christianity and Judaism aren’t the only games in town, are they? There’s another player that’s been much in the news, that’s had an enormous impact on world history and, if the reports from Europe are reliable, is bidding to return to hegemony there. Let’s have a look at some of the principal tenets of that creed:

  • It orders its adherents to spread the creed by force, and to compel all non-believers to submit to it as second-class citizens.
  • It demands that any heresy, apostasy, or blasphemy against it be punished by death.
  • It demands total political power over the entire world, and explicitly denies the legitimacy of any political structure based on any principles other than its own.
  • It prescribes a minutely elaborate code of behavior for all men, not just for its adherents, which is to be enforced by political means.
  • It sanctifies any deed, however violent or deceitful, done to spread its hegemony over the world, and promises great glory to those who die doing such service.
  • It particularly excoriates the Jews as its enemies, and prescribes their elimination from the face of the Earth.

     Quickly, now: Name the creed your Curmudgeon has in mind. One guess only.

     Wrong! Your Curmudgeon was describing Nazism, the creed developed by Adolf Hitler. But it was a natural mistake.

     [This originally appeared at the old Palace of Reason.]

     As you can see from the above, the similarities between Islam and Nazism outweigh the differences. Most important of all, both demand absolute faith from the adherent. Yet one is accorded the status and protections of a religion; the other is not. Why? What are the substantive differences that militate toward that legal distinction? Given that Hitler was made into a figure to be worshipped, that the Nazi regime made common cause with Islam during the Thirties, and that the Nazis did their level best to eliminate all other religions from the lands they conquered, can any such distinction be rationally defended?

***

3. Firearms.

     After a shooting spree, they always want to take the guns away from the people who didn’t do it. — William S. Burroughs.

     Play any of a number of video games – I have Diablo III in mind at the moment – and the difference between melee weapons and ranged weapons will be pressed upon you. Simply put: a melee weapon requires that you get much closer to your target than a ranged weapon. Thus, certain dangers afflict the user of melee weapons that don’t afflict the user of ranged weapons.

     Firearms are ranged weapons: weapons that have an effect at a distance greater than the length of the arm-plus-sword-or-cudgel. That’s one of the reasons they’re called “equalizers.” But in a land where only criminals and agents of the State are permitted to have them, one may be sure of two things:

  • Rampant criminal predation;
  • Rampant governmental predation.

     For very few of us will go into “melee range” with a gun-toting thug, whether or not he sports a government credential. Those who have done so in the past have a rather spotty record of survival.

***

4. Laws.

     While there have been functioning anarchisms in previous eras, the anarchic model is inherently unstable. Over time – usually a fairly brief time – it gives way to a State. Franz Oppenheimer described the pattern and the reasons for it in his book The State, a remarkably clear-eyed look at the genesis of Mankind’s worst self-imposed curse. (I wrote three novels on the subject, as well.)

     Where there is a State, there will be laws. Even in the very best imaginable State – Robert Nozick’s classical-liberal “night watchman” State – some of those laws will have nothing to do with the protection of individual rights. Some of them will literally invade or infringe on those rights. And so, there will be some who will rail against them and want to see them repealed.

     It’s hard to argue against such efforts. I wouldn’t have argued against Cobden and Bright’s campaign against England’s “corn laws.” Nor would I argue against the efforts to repeal contemporary laws against the use of so-called “recreational drugs,” even though I hold those who use them in contempt. But I would counsel those who seek massive changes in the law to ponder what Saint Thomas Aquinas said about stability in the law: that it has a value apart from that of the laws themselves. Gradual change is almost always preferable to radical, “thrown-switch” change; it gives people time to plan and adapt.

***

5. Tyrants.

     The labels can be confusing: communism, socialism, national socialism, fascism, Ba’athism, Maoism, and so forth. Each of them indicates a form of window dressing applied to totalitarianism. That, of course, is the assertion that “the State is all” – that the individual possesses no rights, as understood in Enlightenment terms, that the State need respect.

     Perhaps some aspiring tyrants sincerely believe the claptrap they spout about “the greater good” or “the national destiny,” or whatever their preferred window dressing proclaims. That doesn’t matter. What matters is that the will to power is unbounded and absolute: i.e., over all matters whatsoever, and eternally proof against defiance.

     Monarchy? Autocracy? Oligarchy? Aristocracy? Take your pick. All of them assert that Some Chosen One or Few will rule The Rest, and The Rest shall have neither any rights nor any means with which to protest, much less rebel. (Ponder the segment above on firearms in this connection.)

     Measure the Usurper Regime against that standard.

***

     I have a full schedule for the remainder of the day and for the coming week, so don’t expect to see much from me here for a while. I’m sure Linda, the Colonel, and our other Co-Conspirators will keep you amused. Be well.

7 comments

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    • Anonymous on April 11, 2021 at 12:58 AM

    4. Laws.
    While there have been functioning anarchisms in previous eras, the anarchic model is inherently unstable. Over time — usually a fairly brief time — it gives way to a State.

    When we count up-and-comers conquering and replacing a ruling elite to become the new ruling elite, we see the State model is also unstable.

    A State is a protection racket whose nature as such is hidden by a State religion promulgated by an established church. I don’t see a State being stable as a desirable, good thing.

    Maybe anarchisms to date have been unstable because previous technological generations did not give the individual a sufficient military advantage over the State.  I expect this to change, as due to diminishing returns technological growth empowers the individual more than the State. For example, recent developments in 3D metal printing have skipped past ghost guns and all the way to ghost ICBMs.

    1. Yes, indeed: The State is unstable. But its instability is of a different order, and tends to reveal itself only in a subtle way. Its foundation, as you have stated, is largely a matter of a faith inculcated among those it rules, leading to an empirically adequate “consent of the governed.” Should that faith diminish sufficiently, the State is in trouble — but the masters of the State, being specialists of a unique sort, have developed ways to “change without really changing,” and thus to retain their power and status except in extreme cases. It gives the State a “more durable” instability than anarchism.

      Your speculation about technological advancement potentially giving individuals “a sufficient military advantage” over the State is intriguing. I’ll have to ponder it for a while. However, I suspect that the problem isn’t individual technological capability but rather that matter of faith: the conviction, however well or poorly founded, that the State is “necessary.” I suspect Vernor Vinge would have some penetrating thoughts about this. I’ll have to see if I can get his attention.

    • robert on April 11, 2021 at 4:54 AM

    Unfortunately the state and the anarcho-state and all other forms of government are ran by men . Men whom “the heart is desperately wicked”. The only way we will ever have good government is when King Jesus is the Head of the state . But hang in there . That scenario is very close . 

    • SteveF on April 11, 2021 at 10:11 AM

    I will not tolerate insults, slanders, and baseless accusations in place of reasoned argument.

    What about all-caps and a gratuitous Wake up, America? Those always work well in place of facts and logic. Oh, and exclamation points. Can’t forget those.

    1. Well, the all-caps is a loser. “Wake up, America!” — ? I suppose it would depend on the time zone. (:-)

    • Skeptic on April 12, 2021 at 10:05 AM

    I meant to comment on Sarah’s diatribe on the other thread, but for some reason, my browser and your comment bar wasn’t working well.  I tried to read Sarah’s blog a few times, but plowing through 1500 words of blather about her various mental afflictions and infirmities in order to get to the 200 valuable words just wasn’t a good use of my time.

    That said, I’m with you on the topic of race.  I found a couple of things amusing about her response to you.  First – in the process of dismissing IQ as an indicator of abstract intelligence, she broadsided you with an assertion of her own IQ being ‘several deviations’ above yours.

    Second – she ascribes all forms of black dysfunction (as do nearly all ‘tamed’ conservatives) as the result of CULTURE and “the Great Society” (use “welfare,” “Democrat lies,” “social programs,” “Marxism,” “fatherless homes,” or whatever else you’d like to use there).  This argument, such as it is, can be defeated with a series of very simple questions that all begin with “Why.”

    WHY, when the programs of the Great Society have been available to citizens of all races, and if we are all the same in intelligence and potential, have blacks in particular been so “disproportionately affected?”

    WHY are blacks at a 75% illegitimacy rate?  If your answer is “Welfare,” please see the above question.

    WHY is it that not a single African country, having gained its independence from European rule (or in the case of South Africa, Apartheid), has achieved anything approaching First World status – and in fact, all have degraded on any meaningful societal measurement?

    WHY is the black murder rate roughly 8x the non-black (not just white, but every other ethnicity, too) murder rate in the USA?  Again, if your answer is anything to do with “Welfare,” etc., see the first question.

    WHY has the black culture become such a lowest-common-denominator culture?

    There are others, but you get the idea.  One must twist oneself into pretzels attempting to answer these questions.  The Left has settled on “systemic racism” as an explanation.

    What Sarah, bless her heart, is afraid to recognize is that “CULTURE” (as she typed it) is downstream from characteristics like intelligence, impulse control, and future-time orientation, not the reverse.

    The reason why Sarah, and so many other ‘house conservatives,’ are so loath to admit these truths is simple.  There is an obvious next question.  “Then, what?”  Cross-referencing national average IQ and economic status, it appears that the average societal IQ needed to produce something approximating a First World living standard is about 100.  Given that every credible study shows that blacks’ average IQ in the USA is somewhere in the neighborhood of 85, it’s clear that only a small minority of blacks are capable of supporting that First World society – which is substantiated by real world observation of majority-black areas, which have Third World living conditions.

    Ultimately, Francis, this line of reasoning leads in one of two directions.

    First, we submit and make our society a Third World, lowest common denominator society.  We’re heading there now; many of our supposed “best cities” are there already.

    Second, there’s your “two doors” scenario.  That’s not pleasant to consider or admit.  Hence, the Sarahs of the world shy away.  If you blame it on the “Great Society,” then there’s always the (vain) hope that those programs could be reversed, and all that societal damage could also be reversed.  Realists know that this would never happen, of course (and I’m sure that even Sarah knows that those programs will never be reversed), but at least you don’t have to consider the ships and the doors.

    1. The questions you pose are terrible ones for the bien-pensants to face, for exactly the reasons you’ve stated. But most people prefer hopeful illusions to painful realities. It’s understandable from one standpoint, as accepting the realities means accepting the consequences, and the consequences could be more terrible than both the World Wars together.
      The great problem, for those of us who’ve (however reluctantly) shed the hopeful illusions, is how to remain true to our convictions in a society whose majority deems us aspiring genocidal tyrants. I wish I could say have an inkling, but in all honesty I don’t. At times it’s made me fearful for my own well-being and that of my family. But I won’t back down; I wouldn’t be able to live with myself were I to do so.

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