Category Archives: Economics

The constitutional condition of England

A traditionalist laments

In his recent article, “Shakespeare and the Redundancy of Conservatism“, Alan Bickley laments the downfall of a country that once could rightly be proud of itself.

Excerpts:

I spent the 1980s and 1990s predicting and lamenting the death of our Ancient Constitution. This was not the provisional work of more or less stupid intellectuals. The English Constitution was part of the organic unity of our nation. It was one with our language and our history and our general beliefs about ourselves. It needed no justifications, no hierarchy of laws, no entrenchment, no supervisory panel of judges. We had trial by jury not because some piece of paper required it, but because we had agreed, since before the Norman Conquest, that a man should suffer punishment only after the lawful judgement of his peers. We had a privilege against double jeopardy because we agreed it was fair that a man should be troubled only once by the authorities with an accusation of some specific wrongdoing. We had freedom of speech because it was our birthright. We knew who we were. We looked down on foreigners, and we took it for granted that they should look up to us.

The last two sentences may be indicative of what went wrong: Pride cometh before the fall. (In fact, Proverbs 16:18 (KJV) says: “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”) That is not to say that England didn’t have something others could rightly look up to. But it did invite the wrong kind of pride.

I have given up on lamentations during the present century. I have given up on them because my predictions turned out to be broadly correct. The English Constitution is something nowadays to be discussed in various past tenses. In 1997, I looked forward with particular horror at what was now certain to come. I was like a man in fine clothes who found himself compelled to cross a sea of pig filth. I fussed and tutted over every speck on the national shoes. A quarter of a century later, we are spattered up to our waists, and it hardly seems much if we trip and land on our faces. The forms of our Constitution have been changed in random though generally malevolent ways. Even those forms that remain have been drained of their ancient substance and filled with something new and wholly malevolent.

Bickley is a traditionalist, but despairs of the current Monarchy:

The Conservative Party has not only failed us. It has betrayed us. It has conserved nothing. It has joined in the work of destruction. We now face the prospect of another Labour Government. This will almost certainly complete the draining of substance and the changing of forms. But I no longer greatly care. The Monarchy is much in the news at present. A few months ago, the Queen died. We have a coronation approaching. More importantly in the past few weeks, the younger son of the King’s first wife has published an extended ghost-written whine of self-pity. The response of the fake conservatives who are allowed into the media is to complain that he is bringing the monarchy into disrepute, and even endangering its existence. So far as they believe what they are saying, they deserve the comment that Tom Paine made on Edmund Burke – that he “pities the plumage, but forgets the dying bird.” What has the Monarchy done in living memory to uphold the Ancient Constitution? The answer is less than nothing. The late Queen was a woman of notable uselessness. Of all the documents put before her to sign, she seems to have queried only personal cheques. The new King is stupid or evil, or possibly both. What I have read of his coronation plans involves a repeat of the woke pantomime that opened the London Olympics. His son appears to be no better.

Bickley is particularly scathing about the Church of England:

I could continue. I could say the Church has been colonised by probable atheists, there for salaries that, if not generous in themselves, are higher than their personal market worth, or for easy access to under-age boys. The Bench is a committee of authoritarian leftists. The chartered institutions are the same. The whole administration is a mass of incompetence and petty corruption. The Ministers no longer try to hide that they are taking bribes. Corruption beams from their horrid faces. The classics are rewritten to be goodthinkful, and hardly anyone complains. We have indeed dropped into the filth, and those dragging us through it make a point of kicking anyone who declines to wallow in it with the approved show of enthusiasm.

But I will not continue. I have said enough. We have fallen, and, looking at those countries with a less fortunate history than our own, there are lower depths yet awaiting us. Should I care? Should I not give up altogether on writing and focus what time I have left on securing the least uncomfortable life possible for me and mine? Though always desirable, national improvement is possible only when there is a nation still fit to be improved. I am no longer as sure as I was about England. Before the spring of 2020, I could tell myself that the people had always voted for improvement when given the chance. The English had voted overwhelmingly to leave the European Union. They had pinched their noses and voted in a team of corrupt mediocrities when these turned out to be the only group in politics who seemed willing to go through with the Referendum result. Surely, though oppressed, the nation was still sound?

I am no longer so sure. I live in a middle class area. Every Thursday during the Lockdown, I was troubled by the sound, from every front door in my street, of people banging their pots and pans in required solidarity against a virus that plainly showed itself from the start to be no worse than a mild seasonal flu. I then saw the hundred-yard queues of people waiting patiently to be injected with an untested vaccine they had already been warned was at least dangerous. More recently, doubts regarding the wisdom of our war with Russia have been routinely treated in private conversation as equal in their morality to defences of pederasty. Everyone in England but the rich is cold. Everyone but the rich may soon be hungry. There are no demonstrations in Trafalgar Square. When the Ministers tell us we are all in the same boat, there is no replying shout that they are in first class and we in steerage. If every nation gets the government it deserves – government, that is, in the wider sense – the English have no right to complain; and they do not complain. Richard Lynn once assured me that IQ in England had been falling by one point every decade since 1901. 1901 was many decades ago. Whether IQ means as much as people tell me I will leave aside. There seems little doubt that the English who once defended their ways and liberty with fists and more deadly weapons, who began the scientific and industrial revolutions, and who planted their flag in every corner of the world, are as extinct a people as the Athenians of the age of Pericles were when Hadrian visited the city.

So, what is to be done?

There is, however, no doubt that the days of lamenting the death of the Ancient Constitution are past. It has gone beyond recall. Any restoration now must be much more of a new beginning. There is a case for reconnecting the most vital threads from our past to a future settlement. But I do not believe these threads involve a privileged role for the family of Alfred the Great, or any of the outward forms of the Ancient Constitution. We have been notorious, since the eighteenth century, for our indifference to questions of political legitimacy and national identity that consumed other peoples. Now that the mostly unspoken consensus has passed that allowed us the luxury of smiling at the antics of foreigners, we must begin to think about first principles. This will often be painful. It may lead us in directions that we once thought undesirable. Even so, we are left with no alternative if we are not to continue our slide towards, and perhaps below, the level of other nations. And, if I cannot be bothered to explain myself more clearly than I have, a period of Labour government may not be quite so regrettable as I regarded the advent of Tony Blair in 1997.

The Farce of Europe

Made obvious by the war in Ukraine

Writes the “Z-Man“:

Wars often define countries. The two industrial wars of the 20th century changed America from a republic to a global empire. Wars can also destroy countries. This is what happened with Europe. Those two wars plus the Cold War drained the vitality from Europe, reducing it to an economic zone, a dependency of the Global American Empire. That is obvious now.

The hope for Europe is that this reality is made so clear by Washington’s war on Russia that the farce can no longer be maintained. Perhaps some elements of the European political class grow tired of the humiliations they must endure and seek to regain their nations from the clutches of Washington. Perhaps the cost of war loosens the grip of Washington on the empire. Otherwise, that grip will squeeze what little life remains in Europe and the lights go out forever.

Net Zero Will Lead to the End of Modern Civilisation, Says Top Scientist

Article in The Daily Sceptic.

Excerpt:

In Manheimer’s view, the partnership among self-interested businesses, grandstanding politicians and alarmist campaigners, “truly is an unholy alliance”. The climate industrial complex does not promote discussion on how to overcome this challenge in a way that will be best for everyone. “We should not be surprised or impressed that those who stand to make a profit are among the loudest calling for politicians to act,” he added.

Perhaps one of the best voices to cast doubt on an approaching climate crisis, suggests the author, is Professor Emeritus Richard Lindzen of MIT, one of the world’s leading authorities on geological fluid motions:

What historians will definitely wonder about in future centuries is how deeply flawed logic, obscured by shrewd and unrelenting propaganda, actually enabled a coalition of powerful special interests to convince nearly everyone in the world that CO2 from human industry was a dangerous planet-destroying toxin. It will be remembered as the greatest mass delusion in the history of the world – that CO2, the life of plants, was considered for a time to be a deadly poison.

The World is Not Ending

Jordan Peterson discusses with Bjorn Lomborg how to make the world a better place

Fitting perhaps for this time of year (Christmas) is this discussion between psychologist Jordan Peterson and statistician Bjorn Lomborg.

Here‘s the beginning of a 5-minute summary, mainly by JP, of the whole previous discussion.

Here are some snippets of ideas from this conversation:

Making climate change the only problem to focus on, and making it look apocalyptic, drives us to make poor decisions in this regard.

Enticing young people to stick themselves to roads and chucking food at beautiful pictures [signs of infantilization and narcissism] makes them believe they are messianic saviours of the world and provides them with feelings of unearned moral virtue.

They are made to believe that they are heroes defending the benevolent virginal earth from rapacious patriarchal human culture.

While there is some truth in that view, psychologically it’s only half the story. On the feminine side, there is also a negative aspect: the rapacious, overprotective mother. And on the masculine side there is a positive aspect: the provider and explorer.

Lomborg stresses that there are many solutions for many problems available, technology has provided us with them.

Peterson stresses the importance of free speech to the finding and implementation of solutions to problems. He quotes Alfred North Whitehead: “The reason humans think is so that our ideas can die instead of us.”

One of the ideas being implemented, reports Lomborg, is self-learning programs in cheap tablets given to children in the developing world, e.g. Malawi.

Another is giving nutritional supplements to pregnant women, to prevent the babies from being stunted and enabling them to develop their full potential.

It’s only in the last century or so that we have learnt to love nature. Before we mostly feared it, for it was likely to kill us. A richer humanity will feel better protected from the dangerous aspects of nature and will be much more willing to protect the environment.

The Great Climate Con

Video here.

Dr Jordan B Peterson and Alex Epstein discuss the undeniable need for fossil fuels, the toxic underlying nihilism of the “climate concerned” left, the need for balance between conservation and human progress, and the unexplored worth of wild potential.

Alex Epstein is a philosopher and energy expert who argues that “human flourishing” should be the guiding principle of energy and environmental progress. He is the author of the new bestselling book Fossil Future: Why Global Human Flourishing Requires More Oil, Coal, and Natural Gas—Not Less. He is also the creator of EnergyTalkingPoints.com—a source of powerful, well-referenced talking points on energy, environmental, and climate issues.

Why Petroleum Oil is not a “Fossil Fuel”

Another case where we can ask: What else are they lying to us about?

In this 8 minute video, Fletcher Prouty explains the invention and use of the term “fossil fuels”.

Of course, this doesn’t mean that burning oil doesn’t create CO2. It does however mean that the theory that we are “putting back” CO2 into the atmosphere at record pace that was “taken out” of it when the plants and animals died eons ago is simply wrong.

Excerpt from the video description:


There are a couple of so-called “fact-checking” efforts to debunk the Rockefeller-related hypotheses made by Fletcher Prouty, Thomas Gold, Jerome Corsi, a few different Russian and German scientists, and me – among other journalists and commentators. These debunking efforts revolve around the earlier use of the term “fossil fuels” – in a translation from a German language book written by Caspar Neumann in the mid-18th century. Therefore, they argue that the general term “fossil fuels” could not have been coined by John Rockefeller or anyone at Standard Oil, since the book was published before Rockefeller was born.

I’ve seen the book (https://play.google.com/books/reader?…) and how “Fossil Fuel” was actually used in this mid-18th century instance. It was more of a situation of the words “Fossil” and “Fuel” appearing together rather than a term or phrase being consciously created. The use of the two words together only appeared once, in the index of a book, not in the body of the book, and it referred to a fuel being used to smelt iron. The fuel referenced would have been peat, pit coal, or lignite coal (a type of coal made from peat). It did not refer to crude oil (petroleum oil), which was not used as an engine fuel at that time.

The term “Fossil Fuel,” in the context of referring to a fuel that powers a mechanical engine, was not coined by Caspar Neumann in the mid-18th century, it was coined sometime in the late 19th or early 20th century. It may not have been specifically uttered by John Rockefeller in a “Citizen Kane ROSE BUD” style incident, it may have been first used by one of his associates or just some unidentified chronicler at the time.

In the instance of this video, and in all discussions of the use of the term “fossil fuels” referring to petroleum oil, it is incorrect to call petroleum oil a “fossil fuel” for the reasons stated in the Prouty video and the other materials that I reference above. Prouty’s explanation, for example, refers to the hyperbolic use of the term fossil fuel to exaggerate petroleum oil’s limited availability. The oil industry was always the originator of the rumors that the world is running out of oil, and they did so in order to manipulate supply and demand, and oil prices.

In any event, petroleum oil fuels are not naturally created, they are refined from crude oil and contain many different chemicals. To my knowledge, none of these chemicals exist because of the demise of dinosaurs. Petroleum oil (crude oil) in its raw state is of “abiotic” origin.

Open Letter: An Overdue Apology to the World’s Children

Lucy Davies' words are right on target

Article on “off-guardian.org”.

Excerpts:

Sorry we told you it was dangerous to sing.

Sorry we made you stand in hoops in the school playground so you couldn’t go near anyone.

Sorry we padlocked your swings together.

Sorry we taught you that human bodies aren’t capable of fighting off a virus without the use of weird AI stuff & what we now know to be incredibly dangerous chemicals that don’t even work.

Sorry we danger-taped the toys in the supermarket.

Sorry we inverted the responsibility of health in old age onto you in the most misguided way possible.

Sorry we encased you in plexiglass cages whilst being fitted for new shoes.

Sorry we shoved sticks covered in carcinogenic chemicals up your noses.

Sorry we isolated you from your friends.

Sorry we made you scared of going near other people.

Sorry we told you that ‘no symptoms’ was a symptom of an illness with no symptoms.

Sorry we hid our faces behind a sea of blue plastic & novelty cloth, leaving you with nothing but expressionless eyes to communicate with & learn from.

Sorry we hid your smiles & restricted your natural way of breathing.

Sorry we made you scared of your own body.

Sorry we told you it’s ok to be different & then copied everyone else for an easy life.

Sorry we told you to question everything & then did what we were told without question.

Sorry we told you to stand up & say no to bullies, then not only didn’t stand up ourselves, but bullied the people who did.

Sorry we told you to say no to experimental drugs then pinned you down whilst we injected you with them.

Sorry we justified our strange actions with the ‘children are resilient’ mantra, whilst ironically simultaneously blaming them on our own childhood trauma.

Sorry we convinced ourselves it was all ok…and then carried on as if nothing happened.

[…]

We’re living in a psychological, spiritual & physical war most people don’t even realise they’re in.
We’ve been head fucked to within an inch of our lives with these psychological operations, & we did weird shit.

That’s all the reasoning I can give.

I’d like to expand a little more though on one of the most powerful methods of grooming us to become willing & submissive adult recipients of government orders, however barbaric they may be.

The school system.

[…]

I believe that modern day schooling is a holding pen for young minds.

A safe place for those minds of infinite potential to be controlled, moulded & funneled with the intention of significantly reducing the risk of them later becoming a threat to the status quo; i.e. the modern day slave system.

[…]

It comes from the corrupt government & the shadowy beings who control them.

These ‘powers that be’ absolutely, categorically & without any shadow of a doubt, do not, under any circumstances want your incredible, powerful, creative, intelligent, intuitive minds, with their unpredictable natures, to be allowed to roam free.

[…]

They just manipulate everyone into believing it’s a good idea. Or actually a really bad idea but something we have no control over.

But it’s not their future. It’s not ours either. It’s yours. And you do have control over it.

My comment:

Since the fall of the Third Reich in 1945, many Germans and other people around the world have asked: “How could this have happened?” 

In 2020/21, we could watch “this” unfolding in front of our eyes. “Now we know” – if we want to. 

The deep reason for “this” happening again is the school system, which was taken away from the churches in the 19th century. Thus the state became “the church”. Thus the state became the place from which most of us seek salvation. Meaning, spiritually speaking: We’re all back in Egypt now, or Babylon.