Tag: freedom

Seeing Things as They Really Are

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The stoic Epictetus is supposed to have said, “Freedom is the only worthy goal in life. It is won by disregarding things that lie beyond our control.”  When I read up on what Epictetus thought was within our control it’s pretty small.  All that’s under our control is our thoughts and opinions.  Even our actions are constrained by the external world.  So, this freedom he speaks of is internal.

It doesn’t seem to be much.  But I guess if you live in a world where there is one Nero and a hundred million Romans without any real freedom you have to take what’s available.  And who knows, some of the good emperors were stoics.  At least Marcus Aurelius has been presented to us through his writings as one.  Maybe he was.

Then what about our world?  We brag that we are a free people.  And compared to the Roman Empire I guess we are freer.  But when I think of the direction, we are headed it’s not that much better and in fact because of the efficiency of our technology maybe eventually we will be more thoroughly enslaved than my ancient forebears on the Italian peninsula.  In that case maybe I should consider the wisdom of Epictetus and his world view.

This all came up because I saw a quote that said something like, “Hopelessness is freedom.”  I took it to mean that hoping for things that won’t happen is wasting your life.  That the better way is to take the situation as you find it and work around it to accomplish what is possible.

This makes sense to me.  I waited decades for things to go the way I wanted them to go and it only ever got worse.  That’s because I thought that other people believed what I did.  I thought that George W. Bush was a “conservative.”  Well, maybe he was, by his definition.  But reality wasn’t the same for him and me.

Now, Donald Trump seems more like what I hoped for.  But Donald Trump isn’t the Emperor of America.  He’s not even the boss.  He’s just someone trying hard to fix things.  I wouldn’t exactly equate him to Marcus Aurelius.  I don’t think anyone who spent any time with Stormy Daniels could be considered a stoic.  I don’t think he’d even qualify as an epicurean.  He’s a well-meaning man trying to fix things by plugging holes in a collapsing dam.  Will he succeed, even temporarily?  It’s really hard to say.

Stretching the Roman Empire analogy way beyond recognition, the Goths are already over the Rhine and the legions are undermanned and poorly trained.  So, things look pretty bad.

Maybe it is time to start looking within to see what can be done to make the best of a bad situation.  The stoic viewpoint was an important part of the Christian philosophy that allowed something to survive the wreck of the Western Roman Empire.  The Christians couldn’t become legionnaires and defeat the barbarians.  But they could become monks and form a nucleus of knowledge and civilization to help the common people survive the chaos of the dark ages.

Maybe we will see something similar.  Any help that is going to come in the future might have to come from ourselves.  I’m not sure I’d express it as, “Hopelessness is freedom.”  Maybe a better way to say it is. “The truth shall set you free.”  Facing reality is the best way to make progress.  See things for how they really are and you are less likely to be disappointed in how things turn out.  Do I feel freer now?  Maybe.

This is a Free Country You Know!

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I was looking for something to watch on tv tonight and I noticed that I had recorded “A Man for All Seasons” recently.  But when I started it, I saw that I had missed the beginning and it started in the middle of Henry VIII’s visit to Thomas’s home.  I was disappointed but then realized that even watching part of this movie was more enticing than watching any one of a hundred movies that I had ready in their entirety.  Now why I haven’t already added this movie to my collection is a mystery for which I should be rebuked.  It is indeed an inspirational film.

But what struck me while I was watching it was a line that two of the characters used in the story.  At two separate points someone says, “This isn’t Spain you know, it’s England!”  And this is meant to mean that England is a free country and not full of religious zealots that would burn you at the stake for superstitious nonsense.  But of course, one of them is Cromwell who arranges perjury to have Thomas More beheaded for refusing to sign an oath confirming Henry’s legitimacy as head of the Church in England.  Even more amusing, the Cardinal who assisted Cromwell in this witch hunt was literally burned at the stake a few years later.

And now the reason I’m writing this essay.  That little phrase that the characters recited reminded me of what we used to repeat, “It’s a free country, I can say what I please.”  It was a trite saying.  But it was true.  You could say or believe whatever you wanted to.

But is that still a true statement?  No, it is not.  There are many things you may not say.  The COVID episode proved that.  The government proved that.  They ordered the social media platforms to censor anything they didn’t like about COVID.  And they did it.  And they hid the fact that they did it.  So, most people never knew there were other sides to the story.  They did it so successfully that most people still don’t know just how many lies the government told about COVID.  And they did the same sort of thing about Hunter’s Laptop and a host of other stories that were embarrassing to the Biden administration.

And it’s gone well beyond political issues.  They censor stories about pediatric transgender drug therapies and surgeries, illegal immigration criminality, price increases on food and housing, unemployment figures; basically, anything that makes the Biden administration look bad.  And of course, the biggest coverup was the fact that Joe Biden was suffering from dementia.

So, is this really still a free country?  I would have to say that since the “Patriot Act” was signed into law we have ceased to be free.  The government knows everything we say and the government now censures anything we say that they don’t like.

Well, that’s where we are.  It’s a discouraging thought.  But watching More’s story helped.  Here was a man surrounded by jackals and yet he lived his life in service to the good.  He exemplified intelligence, honesty and humanity.  His enemies ultimately destroyed him and yet history has recognized his excellence while branding his persecutors as pernicious, dishonest and cowardly.

I hardly see myself as martyr material.  I enjoy annoying Camera Girl too much to want to end up on the chopping block either figuratively or literally.  But I do think we should all be willing to pay some price to oppose the forces that have gained a stranglehold on America.  We’re all guilty of laziness in some sense or other and it behooves us to step up and try to make a difference in our families and local communities.  This isn’t Spain you know!

What Do We Keep and What Let Go? – Part 2 – Freedom

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I’ve heard lots of people say that freedom was the Enlightenment Era’s original sin.  By demanding freedom, we opened ourselves up to all the ills of our society.  But I don’t believe this.  All the stuff about equality running us into a ditch because it was the source of feminism and the other isms may be true.  But I contend that any society that allows me the freedoms that are enumerated in the Bill of Rights has given me the basis of a happy life.

My idea about what has to be changed is nothing more complicated than to demand the complete restoration of these freedoms.  We must resist any demands to give up any part of our rights for the sake of some misbegotten crusade to make everyone “more equal.”  People are as equal as they’ll ever be.  Which is, not at all.  Every individual is just that, an individual.  And as long as we provide them with the same freedoms, they’ve got nothing to say about anybody else’s pursuit of happiness.

The beginnings of the restoration of these rights have finally made some headway.  The Supreme Court recently outlawed affirmative action in college admissions.  Well, that’s a good start.  But outlawing it completely in the federal government is what is needed.  It’s the feds that have used quotas to force all kinds of businesses and organizations to hire or admit people on the basis of race or sex or sexual deviancy.  This is the basis for most of the misery that has gripped this country.  Free association is one of the fundamental behaviors of a free people.  Choosing who you want to work with or play with is the way you try to make your life yours.  We’ve all seen what happens when an affirmative action hire turns out to be a disaster.  It builds up animosity and frustration throughout the organization.  And it forces the people around the mismatched employee to work twice as hard to make up for the employee that cannot be cajoled or forced out.

And think of how many fraternal organizations were ruined when they were forced to admit women.  Half of the reason for the organization was to get away from wives to spend a few happy hours with the guys in a mens-only environment.  The same goes for the Boy Scouts.  Admitting girls and then gays was a betrayal of the basis of the organization’s reason for existing.  And for what?  There is already Girl Scouts.  There could be a scout’s organization that let anyone in and that didn’t mention God or chivalry or normalcy.  But the real point was destroying something that didn’t include them.

And since that’s the point why should we feel bad if we manage to stop this shakedown racket.  But you’ll be told that discrimination will be happening.  Well, of course it will be.  Everywhere you look in life there’s discrimination.  How many kids that end up in Harvard and Yale are there because their fathers and grandfathers went there?  And how many of those kids are smarter than the thousands that are rejected?  And how about the kids who are let in just for the color of their skins.  They’re not as smart as the rejects either.  So, discrimination is okay if it’s done for the elites or for their pet projects.  What’s that old saying?  You know who’s in charge by who gets to break the rules.  Well, let’s stop with the games.  They want to have their kids go to Harvard.  Then let’s stop pretending that the people in charge play by the rules they make for us.  And let’s just let people live their lives the way they want.  If the Bushes and the Romneys want to belong to their secret societies and wouldn’t let me in if their lives depended on it, why should I care?  And if my poker game looks like the older version of the kids I grew up with and doesn’t have enough diversity, equity and inclusion why should anyone care?

Let’s face it.  With a country as multi-ethnic, multi-racial and multi-religious as America has become the only way, we can avoid going for each-other’s throats is if we give each other some room to breathe.  The happiest and ultimately the most efficient way to let people organize their lives is to let people organize their own lives the way they want.

And that is what most needs to change in this country if we want it to survive.  Drop the affirmative action and drop the policing of employment and membership in organizations and just leave people alone to live their lives the way they want.  That is after all the real reason most people came to this country.  The nineteenth century immigrants from eastern and southern Europe were under no illusions that they’d be hobnobbing with the Astors and the Rockefellers.  They knew they’d be lucky if they got to clean out the chimneys and drain pipes of the Astors and Rockefellers.  What they did hope for was the opportunity to pursue their dreams through hard work and enjoy the community of fellow immigrants who huddled together in the various ghettoes of places like New York City.  And each ethnicity, even each village had its own neighborhood.  Maybe a few city blocks and a church and some store fronts.  And all these neighborhoods were cheek to jowl with each other and many of them didn’t get along very well.  But as long as they had their own clubs and festivals and customs it worked.  All they had to do was obey the law and mind their own business.

And that’s still pretty good advice.

Where Will Freedom Take Root Next?

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Contrary to the beliefs of some people freedom is not the default condition of humanity.  In fact, depending on what model of human social grouping you believe in you might be inclined to believe that freedom is an unstable condition that appears very infrequently and disappears almost immediately.

After all, the great majority of people throughout recorded history have lived under regimes that barely understood what the concept of freedom even meant.  The agrarian societies of antiquity, Egypt, Mesopotamia and China were monarchies that incorporated a temple priesthood to reinforce the godhood of the emperor or king or pharaoh or whatever they called their head monkey.  And they had an army to put muscle behind it in case religion wasn’t enough to keep the peasants in line.

Only a few times a millennium an Athens or an America breaks out.  Interestingly, it seems to me that it only happens when a middle class appears.  Whether that is Athenian merchants or Roman small farmers and traders or English yeomen moving to North America it seems to be town people in the middle of nowhere discovering that they can band together to protect their own interests without the God-King.

But what inevitably happens is the aristocrats discover a way to re-establish the empire.  They rebuild the temple by calling it the bureaucracy.  And pretty soon Athens is run by the Four Hundred and Rome by the mega landowners and America by the Fortune Five Hundred and their animatronic Biden.  Even the end of empire doesn’t spell freedom.  When Rome fell you might think that would allow for freedom to reappear but if you look at the history of the dark ages any local freedom was at the whim of chieftains, nobles and bishops who mostly took their cut of what peasants produced and provided “protection,” such as it was, from even more rapacious forces such as the Northmen and Saracens.

So, freedom is fragile.  And it’s relative.  Fifty years back we had almost unlimited freedom.  Freedom of speech, mostly fair elections, the right to bear arms, freedom of association and freedom of religion.  And in addition, we had amazing prosperity and modern conveniences (telecommunication, rapid transit, air flight) that Caesar Augustus or any of the other ancient rulers would have assumed were only within the purview of gods.  If today we lost most of our freedom but were guaranteed the standard of living we had, most Americans would complain a little and then go back to sleep.  So, freedom from want is a freedom that most people don’t enumerate.

Another one is the freedom to raise a family that will be there after you’re gone.  That’s one of the freedoms we see disappearing in the United States.  And to my mind that may be the deal breaker for a lot of people.  After all, what’s the use of living comfortably if it’s at the expense of having a family?  That’s the swap that a lot of Millennials have made.  They’ll get an Obama phone, an EBT card, a universal basic income, free porn and Section 8 housing and mindlessly squander what’s left of their lives and disappear from the Earth.

But for the people who want to leave descendants, what is the deal that is available?  If the Left has its way, the only way to be part of the elect is to drink the Kool-Aid and join the club.  You won’t be one of the Elite but you can work for them.  What was the priestly caste three thousand years ago is what we call the managerial class today.  You can be a bureaucrat at the IRS or the Social Security Administration.  You’ll donate to the Democrats, buy a tote-bag from PBS and put a rainbow bumper sticker on your electric car.  If you’re a little more talented you’ll be a middle manager at a Fortune Fifty company and send your child (hopefully a daughter) to Bryn Mawr or Smith College where she’ll be groomed to be a transgender studies professor.

If you’re hoping for your children to be normal people who will have children of their own then it becomes a lot less certain.  And that’s the subject of this post.  Where will you be able to go to try to give your descendants at least a part of the freedoms and prosperity that you were given by your parents in America?

And in terms of them getting everything we were given the answer is there isn’t such a place.  That world is gone for good.  What you will be looking for is the best deal that’s available.  So, in terms of prosperity, maybe that is still America.  There is still a good deal of money sloshing around this place.  The Elites need their lawns cut and their companies to be managed.  There is money to be made if you’re not too picky about what you have to say and do.  And if you’re in the right trade you might even be able to raise your kids the way you want, for the most part.  So that’s something.  You’ll have to keep a low profile on social media and be careful not to offend anyone really important.  But a lot of what passes for the good life is still to be had in abundance if you know how to work around the system.

But are there other places just as good or better?  I think there will be.  Because I think there will be other places that may not be as prosperous as the United States but they may be more culturally attractive than America.  Eastern Europe seems like an interesting place.  They haven’t allowed the woke West to proselytize their children into joining the LGBTQ cult so far.  Hungary has even shown their willingness to reject unlimited migration and even legislate to encourage their young people to raise families.  A place like that should probably be looked at as an alternative if America sinks into global feudalism.  Even some of the third world may turn out to be freer than America in the future.  I hesitate to talk about Russia and China because those societies are hard to penetrate as an outsider.  But it’s far from impossible to imagine that sometime in the future one or both of those places might provide opportunities for ex-pat Americans.

So, I don’t expect to see another United States appear in my lifetime or even in the lifetime of my great-great grandchildren.  But what I think makes sense is to instill in my descendants the understanding of what to look for in a home.  Look for stability, a little bit of prosperity and some kind of value system that embraces the idea of a middle class.  With those things you can hope to thrive.  Who knows you could get lucky and end up in the next “Land of the Free.”

Neil Oliver Talks About Despots and Freedom

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Since I first saw one of Neil Oliver’s videos on The Conservative Treehouse I’ve come to envy his amazing eloquence and his Scottish brogue.  But more than his language skills I enjoy his forthright defense of freedom.  I really don’t know his history or his specific political stripe but he has been passionate about standing against the anti-freedom forces array against him and us.

In this video he talks about how what’s happening in Ukraine is no longer the antithesis of how the West behaves.  After all if Joe Biden doesn’t like your politics he’ll send men with guns to throw you into prison and if you resist you’ll end up just as dead as a Ukrainian freedom fighter.

What’s a Twentieth Century American to Do? – Part 2 – Are There Alternatives to the U.S.?

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In the first part of this series of posts I identified two separate questions associated with whether The United States was still the freest place in the world to live.  The first question was to answer whether the U.S. still the freest country to live in.  The second question is contingent on the first answer being yes.  If it is the freest place then the second question is how do you live in this new America in a way that maximizes your actual freedom here.  Because without a plan it is unlikely that it will feel very free.

This post is meant to answer that first question.  I looked around at some of the other places in the world and asked whether they were more or less free than the U.S.  And I think I’ll have to say that there are other places that would feel freer than here.  I’ll try to explain how I came up with this answer.

One of the first thing I decided was that if the standard of living of the country in question was close to first world conditions, then I would not fault the “freedom” quotient on that account.  For instance, I would rate most countries in Europe as an acceptable economy to compare to the U.S.  whereas some place like Haiti or North Korea would be unacceptable.  Looked at this way, places like Argentina and Chile and even Costa Rica might be acceptable places to live because the infrastructure exists to enjoy a decent life.

The next question is whether a country enjoys freedom of speech.  And it is understood that this is relative to what currently exists in the United States.  Though we technically have complete freedom of speech in the United States that is far from a true statement when you take into account the effects of woke practices on employment and the “hate speech” laws that although technically unconstitutional are unchallenged in multiple jurisdictions throughout Blue America.  Looked at from that point of view there are plenty of places that have the same or more freedom of speech as the United States.  Certainly, there are many places in Europe where the woke thought police are even more rabid than in this country but places like the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, for instance, are not among them.  And these countries are not in the clutches of the LGBTQ mafia.  And they are all opposed to illegal immigration.  And finally, the Czech Republic even has gun rights that come close to what we have in the United States.

So, my cursory survey of other countries that might provide a freer environment than the U.S. seems to say that there may in fact be choices.  And it is understood that none of these places are as prosperous as the United States or possess all the advantages that this country possesses.  But what they do have is a less leftist outlook and a lack of woke public policy.  And since this is just a cursory examination, my next step is to look at these Eastern European countries to see whether the reality matches the appearance.

And if anyone out there has information on these three places and other candidate countries, please leave information in the comments.

What’s a Twentieth Century American to Do? – Part 1

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A few days ago, I was having a political discussion with someone on our side of the cultural divide.  I said something like, “If none of the red state leaders does anything to resist the unconstitutional changes being made then we might as well leave and go somewhere else.”  His answer was that maybe we might leave out of protest or anger but we wouldn’t be going someplace where we would have more freedom than we have, even in this diminished America.  And that got me thinking, “Is that true?”

Our complaint with what is going on is that we are being cheated out of the freedoms that were the defining qualities of this country.  If we cannot have those freedoms here, where can we have them?  If the answer is nowhere else then leaving would just be a matter of protest.  So, this needs to be determined in order to know what is the reasonable course of action.

Knowing the fellow that I was talking to; I think he was specifically talking about the 2nd amendment.  But I thought about all the things that are considered freedom in America.  And that is a complicated calculation because some of the most cherished freedoms, freedom of religion, freedom of speech, the right to bear arms; are exactly the things that are under assault by the Left.  But there are other advantages in this country that we might want to consider freedom.  I remember during the Second World War the US government sponsored Norman Rockwell to produce public service ads that highlighted some of the American virtues that we all benefitted from, such as, the freedom from want, and the freedom from fear.  As diminished as some of those things have become it is definitely important to look at what trade offs would exist if an American were thinking of leaving here.  After all, as unequal as some of the enforcement of laws has been in the last few years it bears remembering just how non-existent justice tends to be in most of the world outside of the first world.  Imagine demanding your rights from the police in Mexico or the Philippines.

So that is the first part of what this post, or these posts are about.  But contingent on the answer to whether there is a freer place to go, there is a second question.  If there is no better place to go then the next important topic is how can we maximize our freedom while living in this post-freedom America.  And surely, I’ve talked about this a million times already but I want to look at it from a different perspective.  It’s a new idea I’ve had.  I have started calling it the “American Archipelago.”  The concept is that we can look at all of our separate lives spread across the length and breadth of this continent as islands of freedom in a sea of darkness that is Woke America.  We can walk in freedom on our own tiny preserve and we can visit each other in real life or in digital space and step from island to island and travel over this sea of darkness without being drowned in it.  All we have to do is perfect our seamanship to avoid being drowned.  I like the metaphor and plan to use it in a story I’m thinking about.

But for now, I’ll think a little bit about the answer to the question.  Is post-freedom America still the freest place on Earth?

Freedom or The Hive – Anarchy or Society – Are there Any Ways to Get the Best of Both Worlds?

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Are our only two choices to be either a drone in the global hive that our tech masters are quickly creating or a Hobbesian natural man whose life will be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short?”  The Founding Fathers tried to thread that needle by building a state that guaranteed certain “inalienable rights.”  As we have lived to see, these guarantees have been abrogated by the elitist class that runs our government and all the corporations that control the livelihoods and material resources that we depend on for existence.

But what we shouldn’t forget is that those things existed for a very long time in this country.  There is nothing theoretical about living free in a law-based society.  What has changed is the thinking of the elites who control so many levers of power.  They have over time decided that they are the rightful rulers of this country and by extension all of Western civilization and that they have a better understanding of what we should be allowed to be.

They’re not interested in inalienable rights.  After all they don’t believe in God so they can’t believe that there are rights given to us by God.  Without God we are all just animals that happen to exist here on this spinning rock somewhere in the meaningless depths of a universe that increasingly seems to make no sense.  So, if they find that they have control of us then in their minds they are gods and we have little to say about it.

Thomas Jefferson said, “The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.”  And I think he was right.  Human social arrangements cannot be made static.  They change over time as the customs and character of the people change too.  We are not the British colonists.  This is not the world that they lived in.  But we are human beings.  We have very similar minds and bodies to theirs.  Our world is very different but people living together, men and women still want and need the same things.  We want to enjoy life and we want to keep what we work for and we want our families to enjoy these same things after us.

So, what it comes down to is this.  We’ve let the people in charge take back the things that were agreed to be ours.  We’ve been cheated.  But if we want to get them back, we’re going to have to do more than complain.  So, the choices available to us are:

  • Fold
  • Flee
  • Fight

Those are the choices.  Fold means give in.  Join the hive and become a drone.  It’s not much of a life but at least you don’t have to do much thinking.  They’ll find a small cell for you to inhabit until the winter comes and they push you out of the nest into the snow.

Flee means leave.  Find a better place either in a red state that has maintained some independence from the hive.  Florida looks promising.  Maybe Idaho.  Or maybe find a foreign land that will take you in and hasn’t been absorbed by the hive.  Are there good places in the world?  Yes.  Will they take us.  Maybe not.  But it’s worth exploring.

Fight means taking the country back.  How that can be done is anyone’s guess.  The oligarchs have control of power that is virtually infinite.  The resources of the federal government.  The reserve currency of the whole world with an almost limitless ability to print money.  The largest and most potent military that has ever been.  Even thermonuclear weapons if the reason for using them ever appeared.   They have almost complete compliance from every corporation and entity with any power, from the media outlets to the universities to the manufacturers and commercial giants.  And finally, the information resources of the Silicon Valley billionaires.  They know so much about us that they think they can predict our every action.

The idea of fighting all that seems like a bad joke.  But by the same token we have at least eighty million living human beings on our side.  If a constituency that large can be organized it will have resources and capabilities that could accomplish a lot.  Even in the complete absence of violence or even protest a force that large could change things very significantly.  But what we currently lack is organization, leadership and a plan.  And of those three things what is most lacking is leadership.  Someone strong and smart has to step forward and take control of organizing.  Who knows, the decision might be that what we need to do is flee.  Maybe we can organize a program to allow us to emigrate together to some place that we could call our own.  Perhaps several of the red states could become our reservation.  But we’ll need to get organized to accomplish any of this.

And getting back to the original thesis of this post, it is possible to live in a free society.  But it’s not possible to keep it if you’re not willing to defend it.

Where Will the Next Renaissance Occur?

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Human history has a cyclical structure to it.  Civilizations are born, grow, weaken and die.  Each one is unique but they have similarities that cause their histories to resemble older ones.  We are at the end of the European Renaissance Civilization and it’s been a humdinger.  From its origins in the rise of a merchant class in 14th century Florence, Italy it has spawned the growth of human learning and the taming of the forces of nature to such an extant that the world we live in today would be completely unrecognizable to those scholars and even the forward-thinking politicians of the early days.

But without a doubt, the impulse that animated the birth and growth of that mighty endeavor is completely spent.  The United States and the European Union are the main political centers that represent the descendants of the Renaissance civilization.  These two entities are moribund.  Senescence defines everything they do.  Vigor and youthful enthusiasm are completely lacking.  And the whole of their failing energy is directed toward protecting the status quo positions of the wealthy elites.  And even in that sadly myopic endeavor they are losing ground rapidly to a more confident culture, the Chinese.

But very often the birth of the next civilization appears among the ashes of the previous one.  And that brings me to the point of this essay.  Where will the next Florence be found?  Some might say that Silicon Valley is our Florence.  Here the brightest minds are assembled building the trillion-dollar industry that increasingly runs every aspect of modern life.  It sells us our clothes and tools and entertainment and provides our leaders with the information they need to control us.

But I think an organization like Silicon Valley that seeks to subordinate human happiness to an algorithm and openly espouses a worldview that disparages faith and family is hardly a new Florence.  Jeff Bezos or Mark Zuckerberg is hardly the next Lorenzo de’ Medici.  You could say that at least Elon Musk might have a chance at claiming to be a new Edison perhaps.  And Peter Thiel does talk about the lack of innovation but that’s not the same as playing patron to Michelangelo or Galileo.

No, I think the next big explosion of heroic human creation will happen elsewhere.  Where?  No one can tell.  Maybe it’ll be in Texas or Hungary or Russia.  Maybe it’ll be in Japan.  Or maybe it’ll be in some third world backwater.  Somewhere people will figure out how to switch things up and get to keep the fruits of their labor without having to pay the Pope and the Emperor.  Somewhere (probably a small place) will break away from the global hive and think and live for themselves.  Will it take a thousand years as it did with post-Rome?  For my grandchildren’s sake, I hope not.  Could it happen today?  I tend to doubt it.  We haven’t successfully revolted against the king in 250 years and we’ve grown weak and fearful.

My guess is it’ll happen elsewhere.  But that’s no excuse for not trying to make it happen here.  As weak and fearful as we are, that doesn’t mean our opponents are brave or strong.  They’re just positioned on the high ground and they’ve done a good job of gaslighting our kids.  If we do a better job of organizing, we may be able to get them off our backs for good.  But that’s a big if.

Civic Nationalism vs. White Identitarianism

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Identity politics has enveloped our modern political world.  The Dissident Right says that the winning strategy for Normal White Men is to play the same game and build a separate identity and negotiate relationships with the other identity groups.  The alternative to this is the civic nationalist idea of a civic identity that embraces everyone who identifies with the traditional American culture and constitutional governance.

The question is which one reflects reality.  And what that hinges on is whether there are more people who believe in Old America or more people who don’t.  If the answer is more people believe then we can try to put Humpty Dumpty back together again.  But if Old America doesn’t have enough support to win back the country, then identity politics is the only way to go.

I have to confess I don’t know the answer to this.  And part of the problem is that the Democrats and their political machine stopped worrying about obeying the law.  So, it becomes difficult to know if we are the majority or the minority.  If they can steal an election then it may be too late to fix the system at all.

But for now, my world view is that what Old America stood for is a good thing that is worth upholding.  The civic national concept is a framework that provides a way for human beings to live together in harmony.  The live and let live aspect of free association and freedom of speech is an attractive and valuable concept.  If it is shown that these things are irremediably lost then America without them becomes far less attractive a proposition.  At that point I believe it would be necessary to reevaluate all the options.

America’s defining virtue was always freedom.  And freedom is an absolute.  Sure, there were plenty of cheats that occurred against the Bill of Rights.  At different times and in different places crimes against freedom of speech or the right to bear arms or the other fundamental rights were perpetrated.  But for the most part our rights were respected.  We were treated as free men.

If we aren’t free men then our citizenship becomes a lot less valuable than we thought it was.  If it turns out that freedom has been removed from the bargain then what we have left must be measured against all the locations on the globe to decide which one provides the highest quality of life.  In some places economic opportunity might be higher.  In others crime levels might be lower.  In others traditional lifestyles may be more attractive than living in a woke cesspool of dysfunction and delusion.  Maybe some of the red states may provide a successor state to Old America.  That would be a very attractive option if it becomes impossible to save the republic.  That option would include all the virtues of the old system without having to constantly battle the Left for the right to live a normal life in your own country.

So, for now I’ll cling to the hope that we will be able to resuscitate Old America and cleanse it of the lunacy that the Left is inflicting upon us.  I don’t assume that the blue states can be saved.  Places like California and New York are hopeless.  The best thing that can happen there is for systemic collapse to provide an object lesson on what happens when you legislate insanity.

But if my fellow Americans embrace anti-white identity politics then I will be shown wrong and I will have to admit my error and swim across to the Dissident Right.