Jim Goad discovers a defeated people

In Nashville.

I knew there would be poverty in Nashville—this is Tennessee, after all—but what astonished me was the utter lack of country rusticity. I wasn’t expecting Beverly Hills, but for some reason I thought the poor people would look more like Li’l Abner than Lil Jon. In short, I expected to see more hillbillies and fewer gangbangers and wiggers. But east Nashville is a place where “Music City” has a distinctly different meaning.

Sure, there were scraggly shirtless cigarette-smoking white homeless men clustered in packs under tree shade. There were sunburned bikers wearing German helmets. There were 400-pound grit-gobbling pasty women waddling out of diners with their 300-pound sausage-gnawing ofay mates. But after a while it became evident that anyone who might fit the cultural stereotype of a “redneck” skewed older than average.

Most of the younger proles on Nashville’s east side—and numerically they seemed about evenly split between blacks and whites—fit more of an “inner-city” stereotype. America’s underclass has by definition always been poor, but they used to be somewhat culturally different from one another. But now the hillbillies are dying out, and in the proletarian interracial culture wars, black urban culture has won. All the poor whites—or at least the “youths” and a surfeit of middle-aged (or perhaps prematurely aged) white welfare mothers—now seem to act black. And dress black. And talk black.

I don't think there is any other population group that hate their underclass kin more than Anglo-American elites. They moved the factories offshore, then they imported replacement workers for the non-tradeable sectors. They bussed in more violent blacks into their school districts, exiling much of the white working class from the city centers. They fed them godless entertainment, and they taught them that any notion of organic community was hateful and bigoted. Then they gave them welfare, which is proving as toxic and dysgenic to lower class whites as it has been to lower class blacks.

The Cathedral

A comprehensive treatment, from Foseti, and more from The Reactivity Place.

The Reactivity Place outlines the three scientific premises of the Cathedral in its present-day iteration. These premises must be accepted without question for membership in good standing: Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW), Human Neurological Uniformity (HNU), and Keynes-Fisher Macroeconomics (KFM).

So there's your handy rule-of-thumb for the day. If you're hearing about AGW, HNU or KFM, then it's the Cathedral talking.

It strikes me you could probably add the HIV/AIDS hypothesis to this list, along with the use of gas chambers in the Holocaust. They too are ideas the absolute veracity of which must never be questioned, because (so the reasoning goes) once people start picking at any single loose thread, the whole quilt is prone to unravel. This is the methodology of a paranoid, totalitarian system. Not just the "incorrect" answer but the very act of questioning is itself a sin.

Thus, AIDS must be caused by some arbitrary, killer-freight-train of a virus, because otherwise debauched, unhygienic behaviors are a factor and maybe there's a reason for traditional sexual mores after all. Likewise, one must never think that anything good (like a living wage, social safety net, high-trust, the common law) can ever come from ethnic solidarity. Rather, all correct thinking people must know that the next step from any sense of ethnic identity is the German Nazi Party, and those guys were diabolical beyond anything else that has ever been or ever will be, as evidenced by German engineers thinking up all sorts of devices for killing people in extruded, inordinate ways.

Thinking the unthinkable

Re-thinking democracy, from the superb Radish.

Something’s in the air — or maybe it’s in the water supply, but either way, recently we’ve seen a remarkable rise in attitudes and ideas that are frankly anti-democratic, or at least profoundly skeptical of popular government. This is a good thing, of course. These ideas, you see, whether they’re based on history, biology, or esoteric philosophy, form the core of reactionary thought — the essence of the Dark Enlightenment.

Unsurprisingly, Mencius Moldbug (that ancient neocameralist red dragon) was the first to identify the trend, in ‘Democraphobia goes (slightly) viral.’ (‘Democraphobia’ being progressive libertarian Will Wilkinson’s dismissive term.) He points us in the direction of Patri Friedman’s ‘Beyond Folk Activism’ (2009), in which Friedman remarks that while “democracy is the current industry standard political system,” it is “ill-suited for a libertarian state” and has “substantial systemic flaws”; for example, “democracy is a flawed method for choosing” among ideas, “because politicians respond to incentives too.” All right, so he’s not quite ready to bring back colonial rule, but it’s a start. (See also ‘The Old View.’)

Then there’s Peter Thiel’s ‘The Education of a Libertarian’ (2009), in which he confesses “I no longer believe that freedom and democracy are compatible,” and identifies “the great task for libertarians”: “to find an escape from politics in all its forms — from the totalitarian and fundamentalist catastrophes to the unthinking demos that guides so-called ‘social democracy’.” (See also ‘Your Suffrage Isn’t in Danger. Your Other Rights Are.’)

Well, you know those crazy libertarians: they just hate us for our freedoms — no, wait, that’s Muslims or something. Libertarians hate us for our democracy. Also, they’re a bunch of racists. Michael Lind’s response in the ultra-progressive Salon (2011) is typical enough:

Libertarianism really is incompatible with democracy. Most libertarians have made it clear which of the two they prefer. The only question that remains to be settled is why anyone should pay attention to libertarians.

Apparently, the alternative to democracy is autocracy, which is the same as tyranny. Aristotle wept. But this is not really about libertarianism — Carlyle’s “anarchy plus a street-constable.” (Though I refer the reader to Frank Karsten and Hans-Hermann Hoppe anyway.) Consider Angelo M. Codevilla’s ‘America’s Ruling Class — And the Perils of Revolution’ (2010):

The ruling class’s appetite for deference, power, and perks grows. The country class disrespects its rulers, wants to curtail their power and reduce their perks. The ruling class wears on its sleeve the view that the rest of Americans are racist, greedy, and above all stupid. The country class is ever more convinced that our rulers are corrupt, malevolent, and inept. The rulers want the ruled to shut up and obey. The ruled want self-governance. The clash between the two is about which side’s vision of itself and of the other is right and which is wrong. Because each side — especially the ruling class — embodies its views on the issues, concessions by one side to another on any issue tend to discredit that side’s view of itself. One side or the other will prevail. The clash is as sure and momentous as its outcome is unpredictable.

...Something has gone wrong with our political processes, on a global scale. But what? It’s obviously subtle — we haven’t been on the receiving end of a bunch of jack-booted fascists or their communist equivalents organizing putsches. But we’ve somehow slid into a developed-world global-scale quasi-police state, with drone strikes and extraordinary rendition and unquestioned but insane austerity policies being rammed down our throats, government services being outsourced, peaceful protesters being pepper-sprayed, tased, or even killed, police spying on political dissidents becoming normal, and so on. What’s happening?

Here’s a hypothesis: Representative democracy is what’s happening. Unfortunately, democracy is broken. There’s a hidden failure mode, we’ve landed in it, and we probably won’t be able to vote ourselves out of it.

Lots of great links at the OP.

An immigration story even I can like

A Former Taliban From Afghanistan is Baptized at Mount Athos

"The sea was pitch black, it was a moonless night in the winter and very windy. We did not know how to swim. The waves looked like mountains to us. Somewhere in the distance a red light was flashing. The boat was like a nutshell in the waves. I soon realized that the journey to paradise was neither near nor easy. After about ten hours we came to the steep coast with rocks. We were in despair because we did not know if we would be able to climb it, it was so sharp. Eventually we climbed and came to an unpaved road. Before long we came to an elderly woman in black with a head-covering - we thought she was a Muslim - and with a child. My friend spoke a little English, but she nothing. With hand signals she showed us the way to a paved road and gave us a few coins, which we knew was all she had, in order to take the bus into the city. We arrived at the port and took the first ferry to Piraeus. At the door they caught us. After three months in a small reception center for immigrants that had many people like us, they gave us a map and we drove to Athens. I learned Greek and worked various jobs until I found a regular job with a company that placed solar panels. They payed me well, they wrote me up with the Social Insurance Institute, and I did my papers to receive political asylum. I worked for the same company in Athens for six years. All these years after work I would go to the outside of the churches in the beginning - something was pulling me there - and afterwards I began to enter within. I would become calm. As my Greek was getting better, I wanted to know more about Christ. I found a New Testament, however it was in a language I did not understand [Koine Greek]. Eventually I found a blue one in the Greek I had learned. I began to read it. I decided that I wanted to become a Christian. I left Athens when the company closed and went to the provinces to find various rural jobs. Eventually I found a small basement apartment in the city nearby. It had a beach. I like the beaches very much in Greece. Shortly before Pascha in 2013, I decided to ask to become a Christian."

On Wednesday June 5th, in the evening, on Mid-Pentecost according to the Old Calendar, on the balcony of the Athonite Cell of Marouda over Karyes, looking towards the Skete of Saint Andrew and the endless blue Aegean, the same sea he crossed one night from the opposite direction, under a beautiful sky and brilliant sun, Ahmed became a Christian.

He took the name Alexander.

God be thanked, and may His servant Alexander enjoy many years in his adopted home.

The Iron Laws

UPDATE: I've thought about this general theory of prestige some more since I first posted it on June 7. This is not theory but iron law:

When women and gays get access to the institution, it's no longer prestigious.

The Left's high-minded task of breaking the "glass ceiling" that suppresses, in particular, women and gays is as perenially doomed as that of Sisyphus. When the institution finally gets breached (i.e, the Left has kicked in the door, torn out the windows and knocked down the walls), high-performing males just decamp to the next unclimbed mountain and start again.

There are numerous examples, trivial and non-trivial:

The American Kennel Club competitions are mostly women and gays parading around their genetic-freakshow accessories. Men get tired of these poor schizophrenic, dysplastic beasts (and their dogs) and concentrate on schutzhund performance. (Form follows function, an elusive concept to the feminine brain).

The US military is becoming a gay, female pageant. So men just use it to punch their ticket on the way to jobs in the federal intelligence and defense bureaucracies. Or to the merc companies and getting paid $125K a year to be an international bad-ass.

The mainline Protestants: old queens and their female friends play dress-up and call themselves "priests" and "bishops." Men start playing golf on Sunday. Or join the ancient Apostolic rites.

I need a sociologist to describe and explain the phenomenon in scientific terms. Also, The Last Psychiatrist has talked about this before.

Un-American activities

I'm seeing a lot of anti-American sentiment these days.

Of course, Marxists with pseudo degrees in critical theory being anti-American is old news. It is the ultimate irony that such people exist only in societies with the surplus wealth generated by free markets and well-defined property rights. In an actual Marxist country of course, you aren't allowed to protest the civil order or burn its flag.

No, what I'm seeing more and finding far more compelling is this kind of anti-American sentiment:*

[EW]:  "I contend that to be able to "keep the Republic", to paraphrase Franklin, one would first and foremost need to learn about how it was that we (the US of A) got here and where the culture that declared all men equal came from."

[ray]:  yep and you do not know how you got here, so how can you know where to go?

the concept of Equality (and particularly that God created "all men equal") came from the Enlightenment, as did the modern concept of Liberty, which offered the "freedoms" that you cite

Liberty derives from France's version of the goddess, "Libertas" and so whatever "rights" and "freedoms" she permits (via her governments) are the "rights" and "freedoms" her citizens are allowed under her systems of control and governance

if She doesnt think you are worthy of her Civil Rights anymore (hello males and white people) then guess what?

those "rights" and "freedoms" go poof, and you are told you are subject to the Will of the People, tough luck asshole

well fuck that, fuck The People, and fuck that skank Libertas

five minutes of observation in the real world proves that all men are NOT created equal, except that each has an opportunity to seek God

aside from that, they are decidedy UNEQUAL, unless joe biden and EW are interchangeable parts? heh

as for WOMEN being "equal" to men (actually, in practice, supreme over men) it's unbiblical as well as a joke, but hey that's the Way of Libertas, first the Grrls are liberated and purt quick they rule the "republics" that are founded on, uh, oh yeah Equality!

Liberty, egalitarianism, equalitarianism and the "priciples" of the system you defend, EW, all stem from Enlightenment concepts and the ideo-political underpinnings of the Enlightenment (that later formed the "democracies")

the Enlightenment's fanciful dystopianism comes from the European masonic fraternities that conjured and disseminated those "new ideas" for mass human consumption

the masonic fraternities (and their albigensian, cathari, gnostic, and hermetic forbears) have always been led and controlled by satan, and by his demons-of-the-mind

Franklin was a high-ranking mason, and the chief architect of the shaping of the Enlightenment and its euro-french radicals (jacobins, mostly) into the new "republics" of france and the u.s.

the fundamental "all are created Equal" phrase that underpins amerika and all the demonocracies was ALWAYS intended to lead the world EXACTLY to the anti-Christ, totalitarian "governments" and systems that the west now writhes under, whose chief weapon of and iniquity and persecution is your beloved Equality, so vaunted and treasured by conservative americans who dont even understand what it means . . . except continuance of comfy lives under its avaricious tyrannies.

* The excerpt is a comment to a thread at Elusive Wapiti.

I'm feeling pretty anti-American myself these days. After all, the US of A makes it clear that the Anglo-European and Christian stock whose forebears built a civilization out of wilderness in the 1700's have no more compelling claim to the place than the Pakistani Muslim who arrived by plane yesterday. No amount of wealth any white, straight male acquires was ever earned but on the backs of the perennial victim class (and, therefore, subject to redistribution in the name of social justice). The US military attaches far more importance to the borders of Israel, the Sunni caliphates, and the European social democracies than the borders of the US and its taxpayers.

From the beginning, the US set about defining itself ideologically, a true novus ordo seclorum, as opposed to an ethnic offshoot of its mother country. So really, no other outcome than the current democratic swamp was ever possible. The US is truly a Masonic, not a Christian or an English nation.

Here's hoping that conservative, straight, white males start burning the American flag; that's probably when people will get arrested for it.

"Preserving Anglicanism"

From Ad Orientem.

First question, "Preserving what?"

'Anglicanism' is a relatively new term to me, though somebody has been putting a lot of effort into defining it at Wikipedia. 'Anglicanism' seems to be a post hoc effort by theologically conservative Episcopalians to distinguish themselves from their ideological opponents. ('Episcopalian' is itself a post-Revolution nominative to distinguish the American church from its English roots.)

As the Wikipedia entry itself notes, the ecclesia anglicana was simply the Church of the English nation. And in 1559, that church with its hierarchy, clergy and physical assets, declared independence from the Roman Pontiff. Had either side a sense of orthodox ecclesiology, things could have rocked along and settled down, as when the Russian Church took autocephaly from Constantinople in 1448, a theological and practical reality which the mother Church had no real choice but to recognize.

Of course, we're meandering into long-gone alternate history. With its scholars far more rooted in the Reformation than the early Church Fathers, no serious conciliar or magisterial process, and in error ab initio by drawing up a church in Parliament and putting the head of State in charge, the Anglicans have never had any claim to catholicity and orthodoxy.

Go Catholic, go Orthodox, or go play golf on Sunday.