liberalism

Music-of-Heaven-Final

Dreams, consciousness and sanity

It’s interesting that before he became the first human to die live on the Web, Tim Leary changed his tune (and the title of one of his books) from Exo-Psychology to Info-Psychology.

Leary acknowledged that his one-time obsession with space exploration and the future of humanity off-planet was at least partly the result of his time in jail in the 1960s and 70s and the natural tendency of the mind to want to free itself by flying high above the prison grounds. For an old dude, he seems to have rapidly grasped the possibilities of the Web and some of the changes to our lives that digital world would bring. He apparently continued to consume plenty of drugs up until the end. The funny thing, to me, is that there’s no indication that in all his years of psychonauting he ever deeply explored the free, easily available and abundant resource that’s provided to us every night: The Dreamscape. (more…)

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Brag about leaving the country? Shut up, cause you aren’t going anywhere

Is it finally time to ditch America?

I ask in light of a series of disturbing signs that threaten the national peace. Black activists openly flaunting the law and disrupting traffic; a federal judge ruling that homosexuality and heterosexuality don’t exist; the working class getting squeezed more than ever; a diktat passing in New York City that will fine employers up to $250,000 if they refuse to acknowledge transsexual individuals by their preferred pronouns, including they, ze, or ir; and just plain anti-white animus passing off as legitimate journalism.

There’s no other way to say it: American ain’t what she used to be.

The economic powerhouse that once beat the Nazis to a pulp is now a sniveling brat that can’t win a war. Our level of material comfort inches upward, but our real standard of living – that is living full, meaningful lives as individuals in families and citizens in a country – is falling precipitously. A 2012 report from National Journal revealed how distrusting Americans have become of traditional institutions. Churches, schools, government, and the media have all lost their luster thanks to scandal and corruption festering in the ranks. As one working class interviewee put it, “You can’t trust anybody or any­thing any­more.”

Amen, brother. The knives are out for the regular guy trying to keep a job and raise a family. The elite class want is this way, and keep pressuring the whole country to adopt their cosmopolitan view of human equality.

With America’s social fabric becoming increasingly frayed, is that a good enough reason to pack your bags and hit the road?

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Environmentalism against Liberalism

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The 2015 United Nations Climate Change Conference or COP21 was held during the last two weeks at Paris. The event that comprise most of the countries of the world is supposed to generate a compromise on reducing pollution emissions to fight climate change. A noble ideal but as recent news show, regulatory states agencies do things worst for ecology. The event as usually is celebrated by the most statist left and questioned by hypocrite big government conservatives. But maybe there is room for hope. Surprisingly, the iconic liberal environmentalist Bill McKibben made a statement that almost sounded libertarian: “Climate Protest Movement, Not COP21, Key to Preventing Uninhabitable World”.

Bill McKibben is right about climate change because the solution is not to be done by governments but by people and communities who are going to be most effective. The problem is that the answer that McKibben and most liberal environmentalist propose is more state power. The climate justice movement has a catchy slogan that says: “System Change, Not Climate Change”. The idea is useful but there isn’t a real system change if the liberal environmentalist proposals are implemented. Karl Hess once said:

I don’t think you can clean up the environment the liberal way, either, through regulation. The only way, it seems to me to clean it up is to get back to the concept of individual responsibility, so that people are responsible for their actions; so that when you damage the environment, the people affected by it hold you responsible.

Now the fact of the matter is that modern green movement was born as reaction of both Conservativism and Marxism. The original Green Party had the motto: neither left nor right but forward. Initially they were sympathetic to anarchist ideas. In fact the legendary Murray Bookchin was a member of the local green chapter in Vermont. The fact that they weren’t Marxists at least originally made some problems with the left that accuse the green movement of bourgeois reformism. While funny enough, people like Reagan speechwriter John McClaughry was sympathetic to the Green Party with the time he condemned their defense of green socialism.

Today the answer of McKibben could not be understand by a suddenly libertarian instinct but by over-regulated spirit. The activists denounce the limits of the agreements because they were pushing for more. The protest is always welcome but it seem that it could useful some new ideas to solve the problem of climate change. I think free market environmentalism is the answer. Although I don’t think that what I have in mind is the same as Ronald Bailey, I think that cosmopolitan libertarians on issues like ecology are worse than even some liberals. After all the Koch brothers used eminent domain to defend XL Pipeline, an argument that made angry left-libertarians. Conservative libertarians had been sympathetic to some free market ecology although I think some still wait that a relatively sane Republican candidate would bring that to the table. While I had sympathy for both groups, I think that left-libertarians some time dismiss the possibility of electoral politics in process of ecology while the paleolibertarians are too hopeful in it. I think a character that could solve the discussion is Karl Hess is respected both by paleolibertarians and left-libertarians. His proposal for a libertarian environmentalism was both conservative and revolutionary. While the slogan “System Change not Climate Change” shows a distaste for liberal reformism, I don’t think eco-socialism has the answer. With renewal energies getting cheaper, the moment for a free market perspective on environmental issues is now but the problem is that there is public leader for that cause.

Karl Hess was a man of left but he never conflicted his radicalism with honest sympathy to conservativism. The Ron Paul campaign could had bring left-wing environmental concerns with free market solutions but it didn’t. Some talk about we are living the end of liberalism maybe that is true. But if environmentalism is still alive the question is whether their opposition to some agreements would then go in libertarian direction would be too hopeful. The answer is in the frontlines where people and their communities fight for the preservation of their habitat, a lot of times against governments, corporations and sometimes even environmentalist organizations.

Overwhelmed and overwhelming

Striving to cease being “Addicted to Distraction”

0600 – Wake up, start coffee maker.

0605 – Check Twitter for new “notifications.” Check email for new posts from Dampier, Land, Social Matter, The Mitrailleuse. Etc. Check Drudge to see if the world ended overnight.

0620 – Begin reading local newspaper. Front section is a mish mash of local crime, state legislature blather, Christians beheaded by ISIS, chickens loose on a California freeway after falling off a truck, train crashes in West Virginia, snow storms Back East. Etc.

0645 – Begin making breakfast and lunch for me and my son. For the first time so far today, deal with something real.

Periodically throughout day – repeat check-check-check. Get angry at Mitch McConnell for giving in on “clean DHS funding bill.” Obama wins again. The country is going to shit. The goddam Democrats are blocking everything good and holy, except for bringing millions more illegal aliens who will eventually vote for them and for more welfare. Pope Francis is quoted as saying he’s just skippy with homos having anal sex…or at least that’s what the Lamestream Media want you to believe about him. Greece elects hard-lefties who promise to screw the EU, and it’s hard not to get excited/concerned about that, either because they’re hard-left a-holes or because it would be so delicious to see the EU collapse like the craptacular, multiculti house of cards it truly is. Tweet the blog posts from the people you like that were posted in the last six hours. Throw in a couple of original tweets about how the Oscars are a disgusting sewer hole of Political Correctness. Check Drudge again to see if the world ended while you weren’t noticing. Don’t resist clicking on the story about a man having a freaking baby. Don’t resist clicking on the link at the bottom to “8 Hottest Hotties in their Hottest bikinis.”

Etc.

Read Dr. Bruce Charlton’s new book Addicted to Distraction. It’s free, and it’ll take you an hour. May you never look at Mass Media the same. We are indeed addicted to distraction, you and I and most of the people who immerse themselves in the Mass Media. Which is just plain most people in the West, and soon the world.

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Dr. Charlton makes the point often missed: the media aren’t “biased” to the Left, the Medium is the Message, and the message is that everything is someone’s opinion, everything is “relative.” Even when media presents something good, heroic, charitable, it’s immediately subject to analysis and criticism, to dissection of motive, to questioning on whether the White Cismale who saved a kid from drowning was just another Macho stereotype.

We thought we would use the Web for our purposes, us conservatives, men of the Right, Traditionalists, Neoreactionaries. The Left controlled the Old Mass Media, the NYTWAPO and NBABCBS, but we would seize our chance for every man and woman jack to blog and comment and share our perspective, to go around the Gatekeepers, to form our own networks and “get our message out.”

We were wrong. We were assimilated. We continued to click on the Mass Media, to respond, respond, respond to all of the relativism and the bullshit, to “strike back” at Obama and Reid and Pelosi and Jezebel and Buzzfeed,  Slate and Salon, to the married fags and the trannies and the Slut Walkers, the beheaders and terrorists, the escaped tigers and maniacs, the Kardashians and Housewives; to the Daily Spew.

Dr. Charlton is a blogger himself, of course, and he’s quite frank in his assessment that not only is he mired in the Mass Media, too, but his efforts to escape the addiction are subject to constant temptation and periodic backsliding. But it’s a fight well worth making, not in an effort to save the society, but to save your soul. You might with profit read his piece The Psychological Basis of Self-Remembering as an aid.

It is possible, if barely, to continue to use the web and to post articles on real things without remaining in the Mass Media matrix. I’m going to try.  My strength is the examination of Old Stuff, anyway. Like Dr. Charlton, I know I’ll backslide, just like with the Commandments I’m taught in the Church. These human frailties are the base upon which the Mass Media was built.

The Church, at least, has the Sacrament of Reconciliation.

Hopefully, as the media continue to lead society toward the drain we can, like AA members, help each other retain a measure of sanity.

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Britannus Americanus: A Letter from a Jacobite

FROM THE PEN OF AN AMERICAN.
TIME, DATE, LOCATION UNDISCLOSED.*

O Britannus Americanus! That great Spectre by which the entire World knows most keenly the Mind and Wit of the Puritan,—a Form of Mankind whose presence upon the Earth we should, as I will shortly endeavour to shew, not much have suffered without,—New England, the Symbol living and breathing of the Usurpation by which the Anglo-Saxon has found himself, in your mad Twenty-First Century, abolish’d by his own hand, in its grand Accusations against the fornication and impurity of other nations reveals itself,—if you, my Dear Reader, would countenance such a comparison,—to be Babylon’s Whore reconstituted, and the said Whore has perhaps too late begun to choke upon her Luxury and Splendour that we might save ourselves, that she might not choke us too with the Wine of her mad Fornication, our greatest Efforts to spew it from our mouths notwithstanding.

What a grand Irony it is for me to make such a Proclamation, recalling that New England’s own Theologians spoke in so similar a manner. Finely unlike the Puritans, you will however note, my Dear Reader, that I do not claim the Authority of the Good Lord, nor His Glory, nor even His particular Favour. In the present Treatment I aim merely to shew, with brief specimens from the relevant History as necessary, that the Anglo-Saxon Race, perhaps once granted indeed the Favour of the Lord, has most surely lost it,—or as it would be said in the old Chinese Tradition, that he is now without the Mandate of Heaven.

The said Usurpation by which England would appear to have lost the Divine Mandate is that by which she declared her rightful King to have lost it himself. Hear me, Britannia, where you have still ears to hear: You have wrongly killed your King, Charles the First, a Good King and a Good Christian! You were furthermore given the blessing of Cromwell’s demise, only to allow the overthrow of James the Second and Seventh by William of Orange! You dare still to give this latter Usurpation the happy Appellation of “the Glorious Revolution”! It ought not to give the Reader any great shock that I am therefore a Jacobite; that I am of the sure belief that England’s last chance for Redemption was,—and perhaps remains if God’s Mercy should allow it,—the restoration of her rightful Line of Kingly Succession.

I am not without fear,—as I assume the Reader to be so intelligent to suppose,—that the Jacobite position cannot be but a Symbol and a kind of Moral Statement. For Old England’s Ruination is New England’s Ruination, and New England’s Ruination is that of the whole World.

O Britannus Americanus, you great whore among Nations! You have cast away the yoke of Old England only more easily to despoil the riches of a New World! It is only a natural consequence, then, that America should find her Manners and Customs to an ever-augmenting degree untethered to anything which might best be called Anglo-Saxon. For it is you, New England, you who are to blame for the Fall of the Old American South, the Exploitation of the Old American West, and the Overthrow of the World’s Old Order; it is you who brought the frenzied burning of supposed witches to a new Continent and who, after ages have passed, taken Sodomy as a Sacrament with the very same Ferocity with which you once punished it!; and it is you, indeed, who have left us,—we the sad Remainder who speak your time-tested Tongue,—sarded and sodomised, so coarsely fuck’d, by a Novus Ordo Sæclorum over which even you no longer reign! By your thousand prides and your myriad vanities, the Possibility is not at all faint that we all may perish! I can only pray that the divers Nations with which you share North America will unchain themselves from you, just as you so duplicitously unchained them from Old England.

*The auspices by whose guidance I was given the letter above would be so foreign—and perhaps even distasteful—to the sensibilities of the present day that they would be almost impossible to articulate without a serious risk of miscomprehension. Let it suffice to note the striking resemblance of quills to wands.

Alexis Tsipras, charismatic leader of the leftist (and exit-friendly) SYRIZA coalition in Greece.

Exits, the left, and liberalism

Earlier this week, my colleague Mark Lutter attempted to make an impassioned case for the left to embrace the political practice of “exit,” while not making much of an effort to define it in a way that a leftist could make much sense of it.  I say this not because the practice itself is incomprehensible to the left, but because leftist ideas of mass “exit” are already in existence in so many places.  The Scottish National Party leans heavily to the left, as do the Bloc et Parti Québécois*.  The current efforts for Catalan independence are being spearheaded by a leftist party, the Republican Left of Catalonia, with backing from the pragmatic Convergence and Union. SYRIZA, the leftist coalition in Greece led by Alexis Tsipras (above), is pushing hard for a general election after success in European elections last month, so as to set up a possible exit from the European Union after being under severe austerity in recent years. The list goes on.

Of course, with the exception of SYRIZA (which we’ll get to in a moment), one could argue that most of these secessionist efforts are ethnically oriented, and perhaps not what is meant by “exit” in Lutter’s mind. So, let us look at the more basic terminology, the act of free dissociation. Lutter rightly points out that exit was previously associated with the classical left. The Paris Commune of 1871 could be framed as one of the better leftist representations of that from the time period: A dissociation from the nascent Third French Republic in order to protect the interests and livelihoods of the city’s workers from the political machinations of the majority-rural French population.

However, Lutter is not interested in the left of modern times, even though it still exists — albeit as a marginalized fringe group — in American politics.  Liberalism and progressivism, strains of political thought that are often haphazardly associated with the left, are Lutter’s true concern. Yet, both those philosophies are completely incompatible with the concept of “exit.” Why? The answer falls on the basis of what purpose “exit” serves. Lutter’s use of the term “survival” nails the principle: “Exit,” in his mind, serves as an act of self-preservation from change, or from the pressure to change. It serves as a means to survive upheaval of one’s way of life because of these changes.

The important thing to understand about liberal thinking, be it economic liberalism or social progressivism, is that its purpose is to instigate change itself, or at least embrace it. In the liberal’s mind, to allow any and all persons** to opt out of these changes defeats the purpose of making changes to begin with. Their primary act of self-preservation, and often their means of advancing change, is accommodation and compromise. In essence, “exit” by Lutter’s terms is a defense against liberalism, even if one were to create liberal communities as he and Scott Alexander suggested.

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