Category Archives: Culture war

How 1936 Consolidated the Progressives’ Triumph in 1913

Article by Gary North.

Excerpts:

Until the myth of Keynes and the myth of Franklin Roosevelt, which are closely entwined, are refuted in a series of comprehensive, scholarly materials, and then translated into materials accessible to the general public, and rhetorically effective among bright high school students who are in homeschool programs, we will remain on the receiving end of the Establishment’s overwhelming control of the media and academia. The World Wide Web offers a way to get around both of these Establishment operations, but in these two fundamental areas of American history — the New Deal and Keynes’s original introduction to Keynesianism — we have not yet begun to fight.

The intellectual battles over the New Deal and Keynes were part of a continuing war. Conservatives and libertarians lost both in 1936, but not because of their lack of theory. Mises had provided the basis of the answer in 1912 with The Theory of Money and Credit. Hayek also had the foundation: Monetary Theory and the Trade Cycle (1933). But neither of them sat down in 1936 to write definitive answers to Keynes. Neither of them ever did. Mises wrote a major book in 1957: Theory and History. By then, Keynes was triumphant in Western academia. Hayek’s final book was in 1988: The Fatal Conceit.

You have to fight when the battle comes to you. It is not good enough to be well armed. You have to stand your ground and fight.

Loss of Faith: The Coming Break-Up of the Nation-State

Article by Gary North from 23rd September 2011.

Excerpts:

In 1953, his [Robert Nisbet’s] book, The Quest for Community, was published by Oxford University Press. It received some attention, mostly favorable, but it was hardly a bestseller. He asked these questions: “Why was it that the modern world had turned to totalitarianism in the middle of the 20th century? What had taken place in the societies that gave birth to totalitarianism?” He concluded that it had to do with the breakdown of social order. Those institutions to which men had given allegiance throughout history, such as the family, the church, the guild, the fraternal order, and similar voluntary institutions, had faded in importance in the twentieth century. This left only the isolated individual and the modern nation-state. Men gained a sense of belonging through their participation in mass-movement politics. Totalitarian leaders began to attract individuals who were isolated, even though they were living in large cities. These leaders were able to offer a sense of brotherhood to millions of people who felt alone in the midst of cities. The modern totalitarian state functioned as a substitute for the family, church, and voluntary associations that for millennia had given people a sense of purpose and participation. So, totalitarianism was born out of radical individualism, institutionally speaking, even though as a philosophy, totalitarianism is completely opposed to individualism.

Man is cut off from any source of positive or negative sanctions in response to a transcendent system of morals. So, with the triumph of Darwinism and secularism, faith in transcendental morality has disappeared among the intellectuals. This in turn has undermined their faith in progress. There is no way to define progress unless there is a universal scale of values, meaning good, bad, and worst: the guides for mankind. The god of any society is the source of its laws and the enforcer of these laws. In the Darwinian universe, this means collective mankind. The trouble is, mankind cannot be trusted, precisely because mankind is afflicted with moral perversity.

Then he raises a crucial issue. This is the issue of what he calls religious renewal. “Whatever their future, the signs are present — visible in the currents of fundamentalism, Pentecostalism, even millennialism found in certain sectors of Judaism and Christianity. Even the spread of the occult and the cult of the West could well be one of the signs of a religious renascence, for, as it is well known, the birth of Christianity or rather its genesis as a world religion in Rome during and after the preaching of Paul was surrounded by a myriad of bizarre face and devotions.” There are also other signs. “By every serious reckoning the spell of politics and the political, strong since at least the seventeenth century, is fading. It is not simply a matter of growing disillusionment with government bureaucracy; fundamentally, it is declining faith in politics as a way of mind and life” (p. 356). With politics fading as a religion, there could be a revival of supernatural religion. That, too, was basic to the replacement of Roman empire by Christendom, although Nisbet never said this explicitly.

No one cares if the boots exist…

1984 is MUCH more relevant than the more simplified versions we see in movies.

Article by Catte Black

What struck me last time I read 1984 was how much I had missed in it. It’s much much more than the images of brutal repression we tend to remember.

I was struck by how familiar the Party’s mind control methodology now seems – with the emphasis on invented, irrational narrative and willing suspension of critical faculties.

[Quote from the novel:]

We control matter because we control the mind. Reality is inside the skull. You will learn by degrees, Winston. There is nothing that we could not do. Invisibility, levitation—anything. I could float off this floor like a soap bubble if I wished to. I do not wish to, because the Party does not wish it. You must get rid of those nineteenth-century ideas about the laws of nature. We make the laws of nature.“

Journalism vs the people

Article by Jenny Holland.

From the moment Brits voted for Brexit and Americans put Donald Trump into the White House eight years ago, there has been a lot of talk about just how divided and polarised Western publics are.

Yet while the public is divided, it appears to be a different story for mainstream journalists. In multiple different countries across the West, they tend to hew to the same themes and offer identical analyses. They tend to be globalist in orientation and ‘progressive’ in outlook. This means that even if they are from different national cultures with different political systems and histories, they are often singing from the same hymn sheet – a hymn sheet that is at odds with millions of their compatriots.

[. . .]

Irish journalist and commentator David Quinn sees the selective reporting of Casey’s statement as an example of a broader problem among Irish media. ‘You can’t go off script, even if your fiancée has been brutally murdered’, he tells me. ‘I think some of it is old-fashioned snobbery’, he continues: ‘Journalistic consensus is rigidly enforced on pain of being socially ostracised, with many in the Irish media thinking, “This makes me look good, it makes me look respectable”, like drinking a particular kind of wine.’ And the result? ‘It’s basically propaganda we’re getting.’

Quinn explains the Western media’s shared worldview in terms of writer David Goodhart’s distinction between those who come from ‘Somewhere’ – rooted in a specific place or community, usually socially conservative and less educated – and those who could come from ‘Anywhere’ – urban, ‘progressive’ and university-educated. ‘Journalists are Anywhere people’, Quinn says. ‘They despise people who are attached to their place, culture, traditions and customs.’

Ian O’Doherty, writer for the Irish Independent, concurs. ‘It’s class contempt’, he tells me. ‘It’s very rare that you’ll see any overt editorial interference’, but the pressure to conform is huge. Irish journalists, he says, ‘are all middle class… They all know each other, they all go to the same dinner parties, they all have the same opinions.’

And these ‘same opinions’ cross borders. Those who work for Ireland’s national broadcaster, RTÉ, O’Doherty says, ‘would have much more in common with someone from the New York Times or the BBC than with someone from Crumlin’.

Similarly, Paddy O’Gorman, a retired RTÉ reporter and now a successful independent podcaster, points out that when it comes to what gets covered in Irish media, the ideological slant only goes one way.

The UK gov’t wants to legalise “assisted dying”. Here’s what happens next.

Article by Kit Knightly

[Gotta get those pension and welfare liabilities down somehow. PwG]

The Parliament of the United Kingdom is moving forward with a vote on a new bill that will legalise assisted dying for those diagnosed with terminal illness.

The bill, proposed by Labour MP Kim Leadbeater, has yet to be published in full. According to the BBC:

The details have not been finalised but the bill is likely to be similar to a proposal in the House of Lords, which would allow terminally ill adults with six months or fewer to live to get medical help to end their own lives.

This is the culmination of a years-long political, media and entertainment industry wide campaign to normalise euthanasia in the UK’s public mind.

In that time we have been told that assisted dying is good for people, good for the NHS and good for the environment.

The bill is expected to be formally introduced on 16 October, with the first debate to take place later this year, meaning the vote will likely be held in early 2025.

I would be stunned if it doesn’t pass.

Here is my prediction for what happens next…

– For the first year or so it will just be an option, you won’t hear much about it except in articles with headlines like “Assisted dying saved my parent/partner/child from years of pain”.

– After a year or two a report will come out claiming success via some tortured invented statistical measure like “assisted dying boosts patient well being scores in surveyed NHS hospitals”.

– Another will follow claiming waiting lists have improved due to decreased overcrowding in palliative care wards. They might even claim it’s decreased the NHS’s carbon footprint.

– Opinion pieces will appear with titles like “Assisted dying success story shuts down conspiracy theorists”.

– The minimum age to be considered for assisted dying will gradually be lowered. And the list of diseases and conditions for which assisted dying is a “recommended treatment alternative” will expand.

– Eventually non-lethal diseases will be included, then psychological illnesses too. Then physical and mental disabilities.

– Then will come an “emergency” – a fake one, obviously – and the NHS will come out of it shining thanks to resources “freed up” by euthanasia programs.

– Next will come the editorials. “Assisted dying is good for patients and saved the NHS during [fake pandemic], it’s time to make it mandatory”.

– A backbench MP will introduce a bill forcing anyone diagnosed with a fatal illness to be put on an assisted dying list.

– The bill will fail, and most of the press will oppose it, but the government will issue “common sense” compromise regulations where assisted dying is the default, but patients can opt out of if they want.

– It will never actually BE mandatory. But it WILL be harder and harder to get out of. If you choose to opt-in and later try to change your mind, you will be said to be mentally incompetent.

– Patients who don’t want to sign DNRs or opt for end of life care will be branded “selfish” and “irresponsible”. Studies will claim they are a strain on the NHS’s resources.

– Down the line, opting out will incur penalties to your pension payments and mean you are charged for healthcare, making it impossible for many older people to afford to stay alive.

– Then they’ll start panels where patients who are “mentally incompetent” have assisted dying recommended by “mercy tribunals”.

…and the whole time the establishment will claim there is freedom of choice, and no slippery slope at all.

Woodstock for the Adventurous and Responsible 

Jordan Peterson interviews Bret Weinstein and Heather Heying.

Stuff about “narratives” starts at about 40 minutes in.

Content:

(0:35) Intro (3:36) Bret and Heather at Peterson Academy (6:19) The social media approach to learning: iterative feedback (12:01) Combating the evolution of corruption (17:37) The benefits of recorded lectures, future goals for in-person conventions (20:27) Cost of entry, managing bad actors, and the hierarchy of curation (26:04) Why Hillsdale College has a 1% dropout rate in the first year (30:36) The difference between censorship and refereeing, leveraging evolution to continuously self-improve (32:58) Elon Musk: adapting solutions faster than those who seek to game the system (34:45) The orthodoxy of the past and predicting the future (36:21) Rescue the Republic – “We’re hoping this will be an event the way Woodstock was a music festival” (40:02) The propositional must be surrounded by the imagistic, the opportunity for discovery (42:14) Propositional intelligence — and what actually makes you wise (45:57) The edge traversed by comedians, the advent of the laugh track (53:03) The radical distortion of music, “music used to be a living entity” (57:35) Putting forth the pillars of our civilization, the exhausted middle (1:00:14) A secular thinker on the spiritual battle we are all engaged in (1:04:11) The necessity of narrative, translating for the secular (1:09:49) The title toward the demonic, using AI to map the pattern of the Logos (1:11:16) Prayer, revelation, and the spirit of the question (1:14:25) Brick-in-the-wall science, hypothesis generation (1:17:59) The relation between openness and divergent associations, hierarchies of mutational repair (1:20:49) A new convergence on a shared perspective, the need of God to answer prayers (1:22:50) Richard Dawkins, winning with your own audience rather than making substantive progress (1:27:41) What the ancients knew about the delusion of being, metaphorical models in science (1:34:40) Dawkins’ one error in “The Selfish Gene”