In her article she asserts that these poor children who are being told that the natural doubts every girl has over her appearance are being equated with some fictitious transgender inner sense. She informs them that there is no relief from dysphoria through drugs and surgery because age will degrade the appearance of even the most beautiful of us. The only hope of immortality is in producing the next generation. And only people who haven’t mutilated their sex organs are going to be involved in that miracle.
Tag: The American Mind
Race Realism Means Finding a Way for the Races to Talk Honestly
I was reading the Z Man’s Monday morning posts and it was about how conservatism went wrong. And as usual it was very informative and thought provoking. One of the points had to do with Harry Jaffa and that ended up with a discussion of Jaffa’s current descendants at the Claremont Institute. Z Man pointed to two posts on Claremont’s American Mind website (1, 2).
In the first post called “No New Normal” Z Man is satisfied with the argument until it involves race.
“Here is a post on the same site as the Gottfried post, in which the editors reject the new normal of American politics. Everything is good until this. “In reality, race is not the ultimate fact of human identity or the central problem of American life. Different ethnic populations have different general tendencies, but not different natural rights. Everyone is capable of learning to live well in this country, but only if we confidently endorse both our geographical and cultural boundaries.””
Z Man continues on about the second post, “Demographics are Not Destiny”
“The linked post in that quote is worth reading, as it rips the mask from the “new conservatism” and exposes it as the old conservatism. The great fork in the road, the shadow that hangs over human history, is biology. The story of man is not one tale with many chapters, but many stories of many people, all of whom have their own unique understanding of themselves and how they should live. The genuine man of the Right understands this and accepts it. Equality, in short, is inhuman.”
These thoughts encapsulate the difference between the Dissident Right and the Civic Nationalists. The dissidents dogmatically stress that the differences between people, make living together under the American Constitution impossible. This seems to me to be a horribly pessimistic assertion. And since the Z Man states often that he doesn’t believe that there will be any partition of the United States along racial lines this pessimism about the various human races and ethnicities living together seems like a hopeless situation for his side.
By the way I am aware of why it would seem that race relations in the United States are so abysmal. The Democrats have spent the last sixty years, more or less, weaponizing the African American population as a club to defeat their political opponents and almost as much time doing the same thing with Hispanics and Asians. It really is no wonder that all of American society seems poised to melt down into a cauldron of race hatred at any time.
But I think there is a path out of this rat trap. The Democrats were never satisfied with dividing the country into white and non-white. They exploited male versus female antagonism and then they really went crazy with all of the various sexual deviancy populations. The LGBT thing was their greatest extravaganza.
But all of this follow-on intersectional advocacy doesn’t sit very well with the people that they think they’ve captured during their race dividing stage. Most Hispanics don’t want to be called Latinx. And most of them don’t much want their kids groomed for inclusion in the trans-gender club at school. Likewise, Asian parents don’t want their kids denied academic advancement because they don’t rank high enough in the intersectional bingo game.
And these ethnic groups are starting to realize that giving their votes to the Democrats doesn’t create a better country for their kids to live in. Recent polls show that this is already happening. Less than 30% of Hispanics think Biden is doing a good job. That is lower than his number among white voters. So, it shows that forming a coalition on the Right with non-white Americans is possible. What seems to be the stumbling block to accomplishing this is the abysmal ineptitude of the Republican Party.
Think about it. Donald Trump was branded as a racist in 2016 when he was running for president on the platform of building a wall on the Mexican border. And yet he had a higher percentage of Hispanic voters in 2020. That seems to tell me that it’s more the messenger than the message. Trump spoke crudely but honestly about what he believed and people respected him for it. All of this leads me to believe that leaders who aren’t afraid to speak to people of different races and who can convince them that their lives would be better under “equality” rather than under “equity” could forge a coalition based on mutual benefit.
Someone like Ron DeSantis is doing that in Florida which has a huge Hispanic population. Trump could do it again if he can just get an unrigged election in 2024. So, I throw my hat in with the civic nationalists. But I think the dissidents should be willing to talk with us. They have lots of important insights into the failures that the Republicans have been guilty of over the years. They could point out the mistakes we must not make again. And they represent a sizable chunk of the population. They need to be part of the dialog.
As I’ve said before, the Right needs to expand the conversation. When the neocons were the gate keepers, they got to dictate what was the window of acceptable opinion and that got us to the point where objecting to illegal immigration was an unacceptable position. It’s important that a robust debate goes on and some of the people on the outskirts of the party are right about things that the establishment has been dead wrong about. The people on the fringes aren’t right about everything but a dialog with them would be good for both sides.
UPDATE 24MAY2022
A commenter named Tucker had this to say:
“I would strongly recommend that the author of this article visit this link and absorb the rock solid analysis that “Civic Nationalism” is a gigantic fraud.
https://www.eurocanadians.ca/2020/08/civic-nationalism-is-fraud.html
I also encourage any readers of this author’s article to read the analysis cited above.”
So I went to the link and read the 5,500 word post that listed five reasons why civic nationalism is a fraud:
I. This brings us to the first and most obvious fraud of civic nationalism. Being that, by its very definition, civic nationalism isn’t even nationalism.
II. The second fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s just globalism by another name.
III. The third fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s extremely vague and practically impossible to enforce.
IV. The fourth fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s born from cowardice and cannot save whites from replacement and extinction.
V. The final fraud of civic nationalism is that it’s never worked and it never will work.
Looking through these various charges of fraud I see a list of the grievances of white citizens of the Anglosphere against their governments for allowing large scale immigration from the third world. And I am fully sympathetic with these issues. I am also aware of the reverse discrimination that these governments have been guilty of over the last decades in a wrong headed attempt to undermine the dominant culture in these places. But in my mind none of those problems are tied to civic nationalism. They are tied to some sort of white guilt that the elite class feels. Donald Trump had no problem pointing to illegal immigration as a danger to our country. And he was clear that reverse discrimination was going on in our government. It seems to me that what is needed to eliminate these problems are leaders who are not ashamed of the history of the people who built the country.
As far as the demographic situation, stopping uncontrolled immigration will lessen the impact of demographic change but even if every “illegal immigrant” was sent home the non-white component of the population would still be a very significant part of the United States. But I am more interested in making sure that the country maintains the culture that made America a special place.
The European heritage that the English and the other European settlers brought has a distinctive style. It fostered thrift, hard work and family life. That is what needs to be maintained. Celebrating Thanksgiving, Christmas and the Fourth of July are an important part of the civic life of our country. The Christian heritage is an important part. These things have resonance with many of the immigrants who came here in the last fifty years. Latin Americans are Catholics. They enjoy Christmas the same as Europeans. Many of the Asians who live here are Christians too. Certainly there are differences in these peoples’ lives but they can be good Americans.
I think the more important problem is finding leaders who aren’t afraid to call out anti-white discrimination. We need politicians and judges who will strike down things like affirmative action and restore our rights to freedom of free association. The endless attempts to enforce equality of outcome in the face of the reality of human differences must end. Seeing racism in every disparate outcome is nonsense. Some people are smarter. Some people are harder working. Punishing those people to make less intelligent or lazier people feel good is unjust. What must be maintained is equality under the law. Equal opportunity is sufficient to allow just outcomes.
And private association also needs to be unrestrained by government oversight. People need free association to flourish culturally. Men’s clubs have the right to exist. So do ethnic societies. So do people who like baseball. You wouldn’t force a baseball club to give equal time to a member who wanted the yearly outing to be basketball game. If the Daughters of the American Revolution are forced to accept members from Papua-New Guinea because otherwise feeling might be hurt that negates the very meaning of the organization.
I don’t see a civic nationalist point of view preventing anyone from eliminating a lot of the problems that have made life in the United States unfair to white people. What it takes is being unafraid to call out unconstitutional laws and also putting a brake on immigration to prevent destroying the original culture and way of life.
Michael Anton Has a Post on Re-Drawing Some of the States
Over at the American Mind, Michael Anton has a long essay about the desirability of re-drawing the borders between some of the states and also allowing the states more independence to live their own way. On paper it sounds great. But how does it happen with the Left in charge of the federal government?
The only way I see this happening in reality is for one or more of the strong Red States to nullify the most unconstitutional federal laws and then make it stick. I’m looking at you Ron DeSantis.
American Mind Has an Interesting Article – The Separation
This is a pretty long article with a good amount of prefacing discussion about where we are as a country.
But by the end he gets to the nub of what he thinks we need to do, loosen the Union:
“The Separation is not a departure as much as return to the Constitution of the founders. The Articles of Confederation foundered on the three key functions required of the federal power: an effective army, a unified foreign policy, and a treasury that can incur liabilities for national functions. The federal government would retain its authority and taxing power for these functions.
Activities outside these spheres and the refereeing of interstate issues would be seated with the states. Broader latitude is provided to the states to effect and fund policies for their citizens. Blue states would no longer “subsidize” Red states. Greater funding for everything from climate change to social programs will be possible. The dust would be blown off the 9th and 10th Amendments.”
When he gets down to the amendments to the constitution it becomes a little less clear cut to me whether this is the simplest way:
“The Separation can be effected with a limited number of amendments to the Constitution: 1) a new amendment circumscribing the federal mandate to conform with the core functions above, 2) adjustment of the 16th Amendment to tie the taxing power to these functions, 3) elimination of the 17th Amendment so the state legislatures again elect Senators, 4) a new amendment formally providing the Supreme Court the power of judicial review but focusing that power on matters related to federal and interstate issues (i.e., the final word on the right to bear arms, free speech and abortion would be in state courts), and 5) a new amendment providing federal term limits.”
But this kind of idea is I think the direction we need to go. What we have is a marriage that isn’t working. Giving each side some space is the best option. Whether it will happen is the question we have to answer.
Peachy Keenan at the American Mind Has an Article on Family
She cleverly entitled it “Kin in the Game.” It’s refreshing to read a woman who is pro-family. We need about fifty million more like her.
Matthew Peterson Over at the American Mind Has a Pretty Good Article About Leadership
It’s a little bit long for my taste but he hammers home the point that practical decision making about going forward in the present dilemma requires someone who can weigh the risks and steer a middle course between fear and recklessness. Bottom line something has to be done and it will take leadership and common sense to move forward.
My Take on Yarvin’s Essay “The Deep State vs The Deep Right”
Last night I clicked on the American Mind website and saw that Curtis Yarvin (aka Mencius Moldbug) had a new post up. The title was “The Deep State vs The Deep Right.” I find Yarvin’s ideas interesting but at the same time in some ways obscure. In this new essay he states that the only way to overthrow a regime you live under is to undermine its authority with a more attractive idea. He puts this in terms of aesthetics. His case in point is the Czar. According to Yarvin the Russians overthrew their government by first convincing everyone including the Czar that they needed to adopt the British outlook on life. And since socialism was the religion of the British elites at that time what better way to emulate them than by taking their ideal and turning it up to eleven via Marx’s writings. Yarvin’s point is that art (in this case the 19th century Russian novelists) had prepared the Russians for the replacement of the monarchy long before the Bolsheviks came on the scene.
Yarvin’s idea is that what is needed to overthrow the current neo-liberal order is an aesthetic to replace the aesthetic our current elites espouse. This is the confusing part. When he talks of aesthetics and art he’s talking about books and music and movies. You are probably asking yourself how does this get Nancy Pelosi off of the Speaker’s podium? And that’s a fair question. As much as I’d love to write the ultimate science fiction novel that shifts the balance of power from the Left to us, I don’t see how that happens. Yarvin points to Bronze Age Mindset as a sort of first attempt at moving the aesthetic in our direction. And maybe it is. Apparently, it was very popular with younger men and showed there is a market for dissident ideas out in the real world.
Okay, so why should I care about any of this? Well, because I kinda know what he’s saying. The people who want to tell us what to do, say and think aren’t going to believe us when we say their ideas are wrong. They think that what we believe and who we are is stupid. They are convinced that what they believe and who they are is smart. We are going to have to make our case in the court of public opinion. We are going to have to show them that our ideas are better and stronger than theirs.
From the point of reason, it shouldn’t be too hard to convince people that things like screwing up the hormones of an eight-year-old boy and then castrating him is not sane. But remember, we don’t have the microphone so we don’t get to tell the story on tv. We’ll have to work on back channels like blogs and self-published books and podcasts.
But of course, that isn’t enough. What I’m hearing from Yarvin is we’ll need to convince and recruit the intelligentsia in order to get the microphone we want and need. That’s a pretty tall order but I think Yarvin’s got something there. We have to get people who speak their language, academics and artists to make the case that our world view is sane and theirs is crazy. Specifically, we’ll need some medical doctors and psychiatrists and ethicists to expose the nightmare logic at work. We’ll need documentary and dramatic filmmakers to sway public opinion. But first we’ll need judges and lawyers and cops and even politicians to have the courage to confront these lunatics who defend these practices and hold them accountable.
So, there’s the pipe dream we need to dream. We have to turn the world upside down, or right side up if you look at it from our point of view. And the first step is to identify the weakest points of the current system and attack them. And to attack them we have to show the world what we would put in its place. I would say that the beginning of such an enterprise requires a lawfare approach. We’ll need a Circuit Court with jurisdiction over a blue state that has adopted the most flagrantly perverse law and have a lawyer challenge that behavior at the Circuit Court level and have it struck down. That would trigger a storm that would catch the attention of national press and allow public opinion to hear our side of the story from the judges and the plaintiffs. After the dust settles it will make a good book, an interesting documentary and maybe even a decent movie although we probably wouldn’t be able to get any A-listers involved. But it’ll be a good start.
This idea highlights why it is such an important thing to have President Trump appointing judges to the Circuit and supreme Court in the numbers he is doing. He is close to flipping the Ninth Circuit and that court rules over California and the rest of the Left Coast. That is a place where a lot of wonderful damage can be done. I think I see what Yarvin is talking about.
Now what do you think? If you agree or sort of agree or even strenuously disagree, I’d like to hear from you. This site is to allow me to have my say but also to here what everybody else thinks. Leave a comment in the section below and get to have your two cents.
Mencius Moldbug Has a New Essay on American Mind
Here Mencius is continuing on his theme that the only way to overthrow the current order is to change the aesthetic we live by. And the only way to change the aesthetic is to live the one you believe in and prove that it is stronger. Always thought provoking. See what you think.
A Thoughtful Article Over at the American Mind – Our Calamitous Century by Forfare Davis
This was a fun and interesting read. It also quotes a movie that I might want to watch. Our society has prioritized cost above all else and now we may find out what happens when all your stuff comes from people who don’t like you in a place that is quarantined under the plague.
Claremont’s American Mind Magazine Has a Well Written Article on Tribalism
I enjoyed the section where she looked at the cognitive dissonance and panic when an academic tried to point out the equivalence between the transgender and trans-racial delusions. Only difference; one is dogma, the other is heresy.