Rachael Jeantel: Voter.

As I've argued in my previous posts, one of the great problems with modern democracy is that political power is placed into the hands of men and women who lack the capacity to make judgements. Furthermore, even amongst those who can make judgements, there appears to be a natural cognitive-emotive defense which prevents facts, which are inconvenient to one's political orientation from becoming recognised.

The problem with this state of affairs should be obvious to anyone who has the ability to syanpse at least two pairs of neurons.  Wrong decisions are going to be made....repeatedly.....even with the best of intentions.

The reason why I bring this up again is because I was familiarising myself with the Trayvon Martin case and became aware of  Rachael Jeantel.

I think its important to put a face to the subject matter, since the topic on hand is not an abstraction but a real life problem.  Rachael is a senior high school student who is illiterate. I mean how are you in senior high school and not able to read or write?  But more importantly, Rachael Jeantel is 19, and therefore, as I understand it, has the God given right to Vote in the state of Florida. She gets the right to actively participate in the electoral process. She gets a say in the running of government.

How much consideration do you think she gives to national defense? Or how to finance health care? Social Security?  How about to environmental care or nuclear power?

Dwell on those thoughts and remember that there are millions or Rachaels out there. Contrast her with Keith Tillage, 

someone I've randomly pulled from the internet for no particularly reason apart from the fact that he came up when I Google successful black small business man. Do you think he is concerned about taxes, national defense and education? Law and order? Do you think he can read?

More importantly which one of these two is more likely, if given power, to turn tyrannical?

And yet, the democratic system of the Western World gives each one of these individuals an equal vote.

This is not a  issue about Left or Right, it's a question about stupid and competent. Mencken was right. In any group of people there exists superior and inferior men.  The notion of superiority chafes the democratic, but not conservative mind. Who can seriously argue, that on matters political Keith Tillage's opinion is worth more than Rachael Jeantel's ? From a conservative perspective, is it right to give a say in the political affairs of the nation to those who have no comprehension of them?  The answer for any rational man is in the negative and therefore how should a rational man view unlimited democracy?

People need to remember that, numerically, the elites form only a small percentage of society. The reason why they are able to exert the influence that they do is by co-opting the unthinking orks of the underclass.  The ideologues know how to play the system to their advantage.  The leftward lurch of western society strongly correlates with the expansion of the right to vote. The French revolution would never have happened if the proles had stayed at home.

The Ancient Greeks felt that democracies eventually evolved into tyrannies. Looking at it from a systems perspective, it's easy to see why. Poor democratic governance keeps piling error upon error until it as a society fails. In the ensuing chaos, it's only the strong and ruthless that survive and such men are not likely to tolerate anyone's idiotic bullshit. Viewed from the vantage point chattering classes who squandered their inheritance he, the leader  is a tyrant, but to the mob, they applaud him as a saviour.  Whether or not he is good or evil is all up to pot luck.

The founding fathers of the U.S were as fearful of tyrants as of the mob. As Erik von Kuenhelt Leddihn shows in his book Liberty or Equality, they established a republic and not a democracy.  It was Jackson who started diluting the quality pool by enlarging the franchise and establishing the spoils system. It may be too late, but conservatives, especially in the U.S need to make a pushback against the universal franchise. If there is any hope, it's not with the people.

Rod Dreher Gets It.

Yesterday's U.S. Supreme Court Ruling should send shivers down the spine of anyone who is traditionally religious. Rod Dreher quite eloquently describes the situation;

Scalia: Open Season on Marriage Traditionalists.

I'm not a American constitutional scholar, but it was my understanding that Supreme court jurisdiction extended only to the judging whether or not a law was in conflict with the constitution.

This DOMA law appears to have been struck off because the court determined that the intention behind the law was malicious. The court made a moral judgement and not a constitutional one and was therefore peddling its opinion of what it considered right and wrong.  The court did not say that congress does not have the power to make laws concerning state marriages, rather, it stated that congress does not have the power to make laws on state marriages that it determines are hateful. God is not the measure of right and wrong anymore. The Supreme Court of the United States is. It's an usurpation of congressional power.

Dreher accurately foresees the implications.


Update.

Apologies to all about the typos and spelling today. Dyslexia in full force.


Update II.

Over a Rod's,  a commentator illustrated just why this decision is so bad:

Apparently, Cardinal George said if gay marriage becomes a reality that in five years, Catholic schools, colleges, charities, hospitals, and organizations will cease to exist. Since it would be contrary to Catholic Christian teaching to hire same-sex couples, those people will not be hired. Since not hiring would now be seen as discrimination, those schools and charities will be sued. So, the only choice is either wait for them to be closed or close them down ourselves. I learned of this from a couple of family members who heard it in a priest’s homily on Sunday.

It won't just affect Catholic institutions, but other traditionalist ones that disapprove of homosexuality, polygamy etc.  What the Supreme Court did today was put itself in opposition to mainstream Christianity.  The salami tactics are about the begin. First it starts with the little laws, then they become more stringent and finally it's full on warfare.

Component Failure.

When a candidate for public office faces the voters he does not face men of sense; he faces a mob of men whose chief distinguishing mark is the fact that they are quite incapable of weighing ideas, or even of comprehending any save the most elemental — men whose whole thinking is done in terms of emotion, and whose dominant emotion is dread of what they cannot understand.

Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

H.L. Mencken.

As I've agrued before in some of my previous posts, H. L. Mencken is a political commentator that is easily enjoyed but rarely taken seriously. Part of Mencken's problems is that he writes so well that his writing becomes more of interest than the message he is trying to get across. Mencken was contemptuous of democracy famously describing it as a system of jackals leading jackassess.  At the heart of Mencken's contention was the notion that the average man simply does not have the intellectual capacity to participate fully in democracy. Mencken was also perceptive to note that the reason why this is so stems mainly from the fact that men tend to make emotional decisions rather than rational ones.

This isn't an idle charge. One of the prerequisites for successful action is the both an an accurate degree of situational awareness and the ability to generate an appropriate response. In order for democratic systems to work democratic theory, likewise requires that the voting public be fully informed and able to act appropriately in order for democracy to function appropriately and adapt to the challenges that threaten its survival. Voters, who act out of ignorance, will support policy responses which don't correspond to the necessities of reality. The net result, then, is that democratic systems gradually become divorced from situational realities and collapse eventually ensures. If Mencken is right,  the democracy is doomed.

Modern America--and the rest of the West--are based on the idea that broadly representational democracy is the best system of government. The one that most ensures an individual's rights and opinions and protects its citizens from abuse.  Indeed, much American foreign intervention is directed towards spreading this ideal; an ideal which I once believed in but do not now.

The position that I have taken isn't based upon some prior belief of a "natural order" or some sense of elitism, rather, it's based upon a notion akin to John Boyd's OODA loop: It's a control theory problem.
If democratic man is unable to weigh evidence rationally and deliberate dispassionately his situational awareness will become lessened and his actions thus become increasingly ineffective.

Unfortunately, the bulk of cognitive neuroscience points in this direction. In this rather depressing survey paper, Motivated Reasoning in Political Information Processing: The Death Knell ofDeliberative Democracy? by Mason Richie, convincing evidence is laid out that the average voter is unable to engage in dispassionate deliberation. Motivated Cognition, a.k.a the rationalisation hamster, ensures that information which is emotionally unpleasant is kept at bay.  Both sides of politics do this, but there appears to be some evidence that the Lefties have a stronger hamster.

Note, that this critique of democracy is not based upon a superior alternative, rather, the fundamental unit of the democratic system, the individual, has been shown to be unable to perform as expected scientifically.  Most people prefer their own version of reality to the truth, and in fact have highly developed defensive mechanisms to prevent their fantasy world from being disrupted.

The reason why all governments in the West are progressively becoming dysfunctional is because of the mental capacities of the average voter. Corrective action which is necessary to stabilise society is politically unpalatable and thus the system errors accumulate till it all comes tumbling down.

Some Conservative Political Art.

One the areas that Conservatives need to do a lot of work on is the incorporation of their political ideals through the medium of art. It's a sad fact that the liberal end of the political spectrum has effectively harnessed this medium to further its political gains.

Whats inspired this post is Ian Ironwood's Pintrest pinboard where he has posted up some manosphere artwork. Now I applaud Ian for the artwork, which is more manosphere orientated than strictly conservative, but in the spirit of constructive criticism I'd like to make a few comments.

Great political artwork lets the image do the talking with a minimum of verbiage. I thought this poster below the most powerful of his images.

Simple and to the point. The stripper sexual reference provides a great psychological contrast the sexually absent daddy daughter imagery. (? Original art by Bernie Fuchs)

I thought that these images were also quite good.

 

 

I think some of his other MGTOW posters on the other hand are much weaker. Not because because of my anti MGTOW position but the posters don't really get their massage across with enough punch. Still, Ian gets high marks for the effort.

A lot of conservative political art is clumsy and lacks punch but I thought I'd post up a few examples of what I think is exceptional good stuff.

Pure gold, this one is going to be a political classic. It's just so good. Virtually no verbiage and its lets the image do the talking. In a similar vein,  this British Conservative party poster really annoyed the Lefty's.

Saatchi and Saatchi did this one. It's modern its simple and conveys left wing menace effectively without moralising.

The next one is also great since it flips the script when it comes to the Left's championing of minorities.

Now, I've always been a fan of humor and the art of making your opponent look like an idiot. I think one of the things that conservative artists have a habit of is overtly moralising when trying to get the message across, this is off putting to the all but the most crude and therefore counterproductive.

Now, the point is that conservatives need to embrace art as medium to get the message across since most people don't respond to reasoned logic but rather emotional argument.  Part of the Left's success lays in the fact that it is percieved party of the "cool people", the group that most of the proletariat seek to aspire to.  This places the conservatives in a difficult position if they want to capture the arty high ground. If they try to imitate the Lefty's they play within the Left's frame, making it difficult to get their message across. Conservatives should not try and cultivate a hipster image.  It's a difficult problem but perhaps some of the Eastern European dissident art may serve as a useful springboard from which a conservative art may emerge.

This one is also good.

Finally, I've always thought this beer commercial by Steinlarger has lot going for it.

Papal Developments.

The whole modern world has divided itself into Conservatives and Progressives. The business of Progressives is to go on making mistakes. The business of Conservatives is to prevent mistakes from being corrected. Even when the revolutionist might himself repent of his revolution, the traditionalist is already defending it as part of his tradition. Thus we have two great types--the advanced person who rushes us into ruin, and the retrospective person who admires the ruins. He admires them especially by moonlight, not to say moonshine. Each new blunder of the progressive or prig becomes instantly a legend of immemorial antiquity for the snob.

 G.K.Chesterton.

Note: This is a religious post so those of an atheist disposition might want to leave now.

It appears that Pope Francis may have been surreptitiously hanging about on this blog. In this speech to some assembled priests, Francis outlines two approaches which stifle the development of the faith. Now, these comments that Francis makes are not ex cathedra, and therefore not binding on anyone, but they represent a certain strain of thought that I've noticed amongst some members of the more intelligent upper echelons of the Catholic hierarchy.

Prior to his election as Pope, Ratzinger/Benedict was colloquially known as God's Rottweiler, a sobriquet earned as result of being the inflexible orthodox enforcer of the Catholic faith.  Now it's on the record that Ratzinger, privately, deplored the modern liturgy, the liberalisation of morals and the general decline of the faith which followed Vatican 2, yet, he never either privately criticised it, and in fact many times reaffirmed it's goodness  privately ,publicly and on theological grounds. I imagine that his failure to "turn back the changes" must have infuriated the traditionalists who initially thought his election was going to put things back on track.

It's also interesting to see the current pope, Francis, in some ways echo his sentiments. Firstly, in the audience where his confirmation of the the "gay lobby" was noted, Francis, also made some disparaging remarks with regard to the traditionalist practices of some members of the Church. Francis, it seems, is operationg with a similar mindset to Ratzinger in that he  recognises that the further development of doctrine involves steering a middle course between errors of traditionalism and "adolescent progressivism";

This freedom of the Spirit requires embarking on “a path of continuous discernment to do the will of God” and this can frighten us, the Holy Father observed.

He warned that the fear that comes with this way “brings two temptations with it.”

The first, is to “go backwards” to say that, “it’s possible up to this point, but impossible beyond this point” which ends up becoming “let’s stay here.”

It’s a fear that “it is better to play it safe.”........

........ The second temptation that comes with relying on the Holy Spirit’s guidance is to engage in “adolescent progressivism,” which ends up sending things off-track.

The temptation, Pope Francis said, lies in seeing a culture and “not detaching ourselves from it.”

“We take the values of this culture a little bit from here, a little bit from there ... They want to make this law? Alright, let’s go ahead and make this law. Let’s broaden the boundaries here a little.”

“In the end, let me tell you, this is not true progress,” he stated.

I think its safe to say that here he is criticising both traditionalists and progressive factions within the Church. Now, this may surprise many orthodox Catholics who tend to blame all the ills of the Church on the progressives, little realising that the traditionalist element is the Trojan horse in Church affairs. It's quite true that the liberal factions of Catholicsm have effectively abandandoned the Church but it is my feeling that should the Church liberalise some of its teachings, not in response to societal pressure but doctrinal development, it will be the Trads who will abandon it in droves.

G.K. Chesterton once said that Catholicism will end up keeping the "best bits" of Protestantism, and I suspect any new doctrinal developments will be "Protestant" in nature I think that the Church will move towards a more "Church assisted" rather then "Church mediated" relationship between man and God. I also think that there will be more room for "rigorous* conscience", and I feel that there may be further developments in sexual ethics and economics. On the other hand, things like the prohibitions against adultery, fornication, abortion  and homosexuality will be reaffirmed again.  I think we're in for interesting times.

*Rigorous conscience means a conscience that is properly formed, not merely opinionated. Note, to both trads and liberals. A properly formed conscience is open to the truth, no matter how inconvenient it is.

Democratic Man Has No Balls.

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Benjamin Franklin.

In my mind there is no doubt that Islamic terrorists are currently making attempts to cause harm to the U.S. and other countries in the West. I have no doubt, either, that should they obtain access to nuclear or biological weapons they would use them in an indiscriminate fashion for the maximum psychological effect.  The threat against the West is real and it is only a matter of time till the Radical Islamicists pull off another spectacular stunt. Many will die.

It is also true that the majority of mass shootings in the United States are committed by individuals with high powered semi-automatic weapons. The current attempts to ban them will, in my mind, significantly reduce the risk of mass shootings such as were seen in Colombine and Sandy Hook. The removal of these weapons in Australia has now meant that there have been none since the Port Arthur massacre.

Now the reason I bring these points up is with regard to the interplay, in democracy, between personal safety and individual liberty. I have no doubt that the recent PRISM revelations (and Echelon, Trailblazer, etc.) are all programs which have been implemented to protect American (and allied citizens). I have no doubt that they probably have saved peoples lives but the question I ask myself is, "at what expense?" The price, I think, is now too high.

Take the proposed semi-automatic firearm restrictions. This is very complex topic (Why is it that Americans are more trigger happy than other nationalities when it comes to mass shootings? But that's for a different time.) but any elemental reading of the U.S. constitution would lead to the conclusion that U.S. citizens have the right to bare arms. I'm no constitutional scholar, but it appears to me that the founding fathers intended for the citizens of the U.S. to fight back against their government if it became too uppity.  The U.S. constitution is front loaded with an ever present potential for war of the U.S. citizenry against the U.S. government.

The U.S. constitution was founded in a time where modern antibiotics, anaesthetics and surgical techniques were non-existent. War was horrible, yet, the fathers of the U.S. felt that the mass slaughter that wound entail should Americans choose to defend their liberty against the government was worthwhile price to pay. The founding fathers valued their liberty more than their security.

I can't imagine Ben Franklin, surveying the tragedy of Sandy Hook, suddenly proposing a semi-automatic ban. He too would have been moved by the horror, but accepted it as a consequence of having an armed citizenry.  The fact that some citizens misused their right to bear arms was no reason to take away the rights from those who didn't-- especially in the name of public safety. It would of been a trade-off he would have been unprepared to take.

Which brings me to the PRISM program. I have no doubts that it has bought benefits to the U.S. state and the West, but at the expense of having every electromagnetic enabled communication monitored. Nothing is private any more. The U.S. government's argument, that there is clear oversight of the program is of no comfort, especially to anyone who has any first hand knowledge of public servants or government officials. I mean, after all, wasn't the IRS mean to be impartial?* Most congressmen, not exactly examples of moral rectitude, have the vaguest idea of what is going on. How do they police the system? More importantly, what happens when these morally ambiguous beings take control of it.

PRISM, Echelon, the Gun control debate and nanny state rules are all enabled by a democracy which values safety over liberty. History has repeatedly shown that those who own the guns make the rules and those without the guns have to take it. Having everyone disarmed and having the government spy on everyone else is a great thing until the government becomes tyrannical, then it's too late.

The terrible tragedy here is that of Edward Snowden. He has given up friends, family, liberty and a hot girlfriend (who seems to be exploiting her situation with a lot of raunchy pics) in order to "inform the people." The problem is that the people are the problem and  seem quite happy with the situation as it is. His efforts were in vain; the people prefer safety to liberty. Democratic man has no balls.

*Just to show that this isn't a Left vs Right thing. Political opponents in the U.S have traditionally used the IRS to their persecute their opponents. Richard Nixon sent in the IRS to hound Curtis Le May after his failed attempt with Wallace in the 1968 elections.

Herman is Hottie whilst Dagfin is a Dud.

Appropriate to my recent posts on the relationship of fascism to masculinity is the relationship of the women in the countries occupied by the Nazi's and the invading soldiers. The other day I purchased a copy of Keith Lowe's excellent (if thoroughly depressing) book, Savage Continent, a book about the violence and killing that occurred in Europe following the end of the Second World War.  Lowe has an interesting passage in the book where he presents some data on the degree of collaboration between some of the local women and the Nazi's.

Many women across Europe embarked on such relationships with Germans during the war. They justified their actions by saying that "relationships" based on love' were 'not a crime', that 'matters of the heart' have nothing to do with 'politics', or that "love is blind'.  But in the eyes of their communities, this was no excuse. Sex, if it was with a German, was political. It came to represent the subjugation of the continent as a whole: a female France, Denmark or Holland being ravished by a male Germany. just as importantly, as I have already mentioned in Chapter 4, it also came to represent the emasculation of European men. These men, who had already shown themselves impotent against the military might of Germany, now found themselves communally cuckolded by their own womenfolk.

The number of sexual relationships that took place between European women and Germans during the war is quite staggering. In Norway as many as 10  per cent of women aged between fifteen and thirty had German boyfriends during the war. If the statistics on the number of children born to German soldiers are anything to go by, this was by no means unusual: the numbers of women who slept with German men across western Europe can easily be numbered in the hundreds of thousands sands.

Resistance movements in occupied countries came up with all kinds of excuses for the behaviour of their women and girls. They characterised women who slept with Germans as ignorant, poor, even mentally defective. They claimed that women were raped, or that they only slept with Germans out of economic necessity. While this was undoubtedly the case for some, recent surveys show that women who slept with German soldiers came from all classes and all walks of life.

On the whole European women slept with Germans not because they were forced to, or because their own men were absent  or because they needed money or food - but simply because they found the strong, 'knightly' image of the German soldiers intensely attractive, especially compared to the weakened impression they had of their own menfolk. In Denmark, for example, wartime pollsters were shocked to discover that 51 per cent of Danish women openly admitted to finding German men more attractive than their own compatriots.

Nowhere was this need more keenly felt than in France. In a nation where the huge, almost entirely male German presence was matched by a corresponding absence of French men - 2 million of whom were prisoners or workers in Germany - it is unsurprising that the occupation itself was often seen in sexual terms. France had become a 'slut', giving herself up to Germany with the Vichy government acting as her pimp. As jean-Paul Sartre noted after the war, even the collaborationist press tended to represent the relationship between France and Germany as a union 'in which France was always playing the part of the 'woman'.

There are several interesting facets to this passage. Firstly, fraternisation will occur wherever young people meet, however this was not normal fraterniation.  The women were fraternising with men who had just subjugated their country and shipped off their men to prisoner of war camps. Secondly, it's interesting to see how the traditional explanations were, even then, being used to justify the behaviour of women. No one, it seems, could bear the thought that the reason why so many women slept with the men was because the Germans were hot whilst their menfolk were not.

Just to put this into perspective, the wiki site on war children estimates the number of babies born to German fathers  (i.e occupiers) in France at between 75,000-200,000. Between 10,000-50,000 in Holland.  Whereas a full ten years of occupation in Germany by the allied forces produced 66000 war babies. I know the figures are very rough but it would appear that the Germans had the overwhelming advantage in more than just armor when they invaded France.

One of the factors which may be correlated to the preference of Danish women for Germans may reside in the fact that the Germans had far more martial spirit. The Danish Army lost 16 killed trying to defend Denmark. Guess their women didn't really find them that sexy after that performance.

The PIll and Divorce.

Roissy recently put up an interesting post on the link between contraception and divorce. Unlike Roissy--and a lot of others--I'm not that convinced that the Pill is a solvent of modernity. While the link between pill use and sexual immorality would appear to be intuitively obvious, in my experience, I have found that what is intuitively obvious is sometimes not how things are in reality. Inuitively, we all know that easy availability should result in a decrease in out of wedlock births.

Sometimes intuition is wrong.

I don't try to complicate things for the sake of complication or try to find complex explanations where simple ones will do, however, the whole "pregnancy as a deterrent to promiscuity" argument has never really appealed to me. From the earliest days of my medical training, it always surprised me just how many women who were sexually active weren't on the Pill. Whilst it's true that the Pill markedly reduces the risk of pregnancy, it takes nothing away from the fact of promiscuity.

One of the problems with men writing about women's issues is that they think like men and not like women. Women are far more social creatures than men are, and when they act, their moral calculus always involves a consideration of how their act will be viewed by others. Shame and social ostracism have their powerful effect on women because of this, and in her mind,  the social consequences are just as important as any benefits accrued through any specific act. In societies where promiscuity is viewed negatively, you can make a woman infertile but you can't make her slut.

It needs to be understood that pre 60's society regarded out of wedlock pregnancy as a big deal.  But is also needs to be recognised that promiscuity was also a big deal in itself, regardless of the natal consequences. No one wanted to go sloppy seconds. Being the town bike, yet without children, was no mark of distinction. Cultural opprobrium rather than fear of pregnancy kept most women in check.

But perhaps I'm wrong and lets see what science says about the matter.

While I'm a bit dubious with regard to the methodology, Divorce and the Birth Control Pill by Miriam Marcem shows only a very small increase in divorce with availability of the Pill.


As you can see, in States where there was an availability of the Pill there is only a small increase in the divorce rate compared to the states where the Pill was less available. (It interesting to note that the difference still exists before the introduction of Enovid. i.e. The Pill)

Zuppan, in a different paper also tried to estimate the effect of the Pill on marital stability. He concluded that women who were married prior to the availability of the Pill had a higher risk of divorce than those who were married after the Pill became available, though the effect was small.

In fact, women who got married after the pill was made available had slightly longer marriages on average. i.e. It exerted a small protective effect against divorce.

This is also in keeping with the latest research on female mate selection whilst on the Pill. Much has been said about the females in estrus preferring cads to dads but when you have a look at the actual data you can see that the preference for cads, whilst significant, is still quite small.

The point is that the Pill's effect on marital stability is small and may in fact be positive. 

The take home summary is that the Pill's effect on marriage is very small. So what then drove the change and the sudden epidemic of divorce?

No fault divorce laws?

Once again, another obvious explanation but one which, on further scrutiny, fails the test.

In a very interesting paper, Does Culture Affect Divorce Decisions, by Furtado et al, the authors set about trying to see how influential culture was on divorce. Their methodology was as follows:

To separate the effect of culture from institutions on an individual’s probability of divorce, we examine divorce patterns of immigrants from Europe who arrived in the US at or under the age of 5. Immigrants in our sample have lived under the laws, institutions, and markets of the United States. However, since their preferences are likely to reflect the attitudes of their parents and ethnic communities, differences in their divorce rates by country of origin may be interpreted as evidence of the importance of culture. For example, if divorce laws were the only explanation for why Italy has a
lower divorce rate than Russia, then when we remove differences in laws by examining Russians
and Italians living in the same city in the US, all Russian-Italian divorce differentials should be
eliminated.


Quite a simple and commonsense approach, though it has some problems. First generation immigrants, whilst strongly being influenced by parental culture, will still become acculturated (to  varying degrees) by the prevailing environment. Still the data is interesting.

It's appears that divorce rates are almost divisible along an North West/South East axis. It's quite possible that the variation in divorce rates may be due to local institutional factors. But when people from these countries move to the U.S. (and the effect of institutional variability is diminished) we get the following data.

What's interesting about this study is that the protective effect was more pronounced in regions where there was a large community of similar people i.e ghettos. The other interesting finding from this study was that the cultural protective affect seem to apply to women more than men, in other words, women adopted their behaviour to group norms more than men. *


These findings were also demonstrated in a very good Australian study, which showed that being of a Mediterranean background was very protective with regard to divorce. The  Meditteranian effect dwarfs all other typical sociological considerations with the exception of maternal employment.

*Just a brief word about maternal employment.  Female employment is highly correlated with divorce but the Australian authors (quite rightly) seem more circumspect with regard to its relationship when compared to American ones. Anecdotally, I grew up in a large Mediterranean immigrant community. In my little bit of the world, the Italian mothers hardly ever worked outside the home, the Croatian mothers nearly all worked in factories and the Greek mothers were 50/50. Divorce in all communities was rare.  I also didn't know what people used for contraception but most families had only two kids.

Now if the Pill, no-fault laws and maternal employment were all causative factors with regard to divorce why do people from Mediterranean cultures seems so powerfully resistant to these corrosive effects when exposed to them?

Briefly, Mediterranean cultures are far less individualistic and see the individual as not only having rights but as also having obligations, especially when it comes to family.  Divorce, even when easily available, is not an option they will choose.

On the other hand, people from  North Western European cultures will take the option when it is available.

I personally don't think that the 60's were a period of cultural revolution, rather it was period of institutional revolution.  The culture had changed well before then and it was a time when the institutions of the land finally caught up with the popular will of the people.  The reason why the whole traditional edifice came tumbling down so rapidly once the floodgates were open is because its foundations were rotten.  The people had already given up on traditional morality and its guise was only maintained by the coercion of the state.  The fact that the Pill made its appearance at the same time is a classic case of correlation rather than causation. It was culture, not the Pill, which drove the divorce epidemic.

*In another interesting paper, aptly titled Breaking Up is Hard to Do, Unless Everyone Else is Doing it Too: Social Network Effects on Divorce in a Longitudinal Sample Followed for 32 Years shows just how pernicious peer group norms are at promoting particular behaviours.

Where Were the Men?

Interesting story in the local paper.

Sometimes there really aren't any marriagble guys out there.

From this article.

"I said: 'Right, now it is only you versus many people, you are going to lose, what would you like to do?' He said: 'I would like to stay and fight.' "

The terrorist in the black hat then went to speak to someone else and Mrs Loyau-Kennett tried to engage with the other man in the light coat. She said: "The other one was much shyer and I went to him and I said: 'Well, what about you? Would you like to give me what you have in your hands?'
"I did not want to say weapons but I thought it was better having them aimed on one person like me rather than everybody there. Children were starting to leave school as well."

Mrs Loyau-Kennett was not the only woman to show extraordinary courage in the Woolwich street.
Others shielded the soldier's body as the killers stood over them.

Joe Tallant, 20, a van loader who lives near the scene, said a friend and her mother went over to help the soldier as he lay dying in the street.

"Her mother was so brave, she didn't care what happened to her," he said. "She knelt by his side and comforted him. She held his hand and put her other hand on his chest. I think she might have been praying." MPs last night praised the "extraordinary bravery" of the women and raised concerns about why it took armed police 20 minutes to arrive at the scene while people's lives were at risk.

Cue this post by Roissy.

And this one by myself.

Update from the Daily Telegraph. It appears that the murderers allowed women to tend to the victim and not men. Still, there was a whole bunch of guys standing in the background there that could have rushed them.

Alpha Socialism II: Swole Hitler

 
Ray Sawhill has linked to an interesting research paper showing a strong link between physical strength and the propensity for right-wing views. Now the study itself seems reasonably good except that the authors conflate right-wing with self-interested. Nothing like a subtle bit of frame shifting.

The study demonstrated that physically stronger men will favour social policies which gain them advantage whilst physically weaker men do not show this affect. Strong men of high socioeconomic status (SES) will oppose social policies which redistribute wealth, whilst men of low SES will support policies that do. The important point is that the effect is not observed amongst physically weak men and women. Strong men are assertive.

It is with these findings in mind that we now turn to the subject of Fascism, and the type of men it would appeal to.

As the study above demonstrated, strong men of low SES will favour social policies which favour wealth distribution. i.e Socialism. The question then is which type of Socialism which such men favour?

Now, anyone who has spent even the slightest amount of time studying fascism will see that it was an outgrowth of early socialism. Goebbels, in this interesting pamphlet outlining the Nazi position, claimed that Nazism was true socialism and that the other variants of it were corrupt. 

We are socialists because we see in socialism, that is the union of all citizens, the only chance to maintain our racial inheritance and to regain our political freedom and renew our German state.....

The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions. The sin of Marxism was to degrade socialism into a question of wages and the stomach, putting it in conflict with the state and its national existence. An understanding of both these facts leads us to a new sense of socialism, which sees its nature as nationalistic, state-building, liberating and constructive. ......

We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces. We have no intention of begging for that right. Incorporating him in the state organism is not only a critical matter for him, but for the whole nation. The question is larger than the eight-hour day. It is a matter of forming a new state consciousness that includes every productive citizen. Since the political powers of the day are neither willing nor able to create such a situation, socialism must be fought for. It is a fighting slogan both inwardly and outwardly. It is aimed domestically at the bourgeois parties and Marxism at the same time, because both are sworn enemies of the coming workers’ state. It is directed abroad at all powers that threaten our national existence and thereby the possibility of the coming socialist national state.

 Dr Goebbels.

 
Nazism was tribal socialism. It viewed life as Darwinian struggle granting victory to only those who will assert themselves. When it came to matters of economics the Fascists were socialists as well, but with a difference,...... they were not stupid. Under the Fascist scheme, the state still controlled everything but permitted some private ownership only because it benefited it:

     Hitler believed that private ownership was useful in that it encouraged creative competition and technical innovation, but insisted that it had to conform to national interests and be "productive" rather than "parasitical". Private property rights were conditional upon the economic mode of use; if it did not advance Nazi economic goals then the state could nationalize it. Although the Nazis privatised public properties and public services, they also increased economic state control.

So while both systems were socialist there were differences. The Fascists or National Socialists, believed in some private property, some inequality, assertion and tribalism. The Marxist Socialists, on the other hand, believed in strict equality, equal outcomes and universal identity.

Now, imagine you're a young man growing up in late 1920's Germany. The Depression has wiped out the old order and Socialism is the new thing. Which variant of it are you going to pick. Fascism or Marxist socialism?

This study by Price et al may help. 

Price demonstrated a medium negative correlation between muscularity and egalitarianism. In other words, muscular people don't seem too enthusiastic on strict equality. (A similar correlation was observed for attractiveness). So given a choice between an equal socialism and unequal socialism the muscular would be more likely to favour the latter. It's not stretching things too much to say that an ideology of force, self assertion, tribalism and worship of the healthy body would be tempting to those who are muscular and attractive. Life's losers, either economic or physiognomic would find a haven in Marxism.

It's interesting when one reads about the rise of fascism how the contemporary observers described them as thugs whilst the communists were thought of as rabble.  Reck describes the Nazi's most ardent supporters being those of the lower middle class; Germany's modern yeomanry. Men who would have had a minor degree of social rank and a degree of personal autonomy but who were totally destroyed by the economic calamity of the Depression. The factory drones and flabby intellectuals embraced Marx.

( Disclaimer. I repeat again, There is no crypto support for the Fascists or Socialists here, both can go to Hell.)

The Right Left

 In my previous post, commentator asdf made the following comment.

Fascism is a version of what Germany was under the Kaiser. Even Japan today is fascist.......

One way to describe the Japanese achievement is to say that they have achieved what the Nazis wanted to achieve but didn’t, largely of course because they were mad serial killers obsessed with a lot of things other than economics. Ironically, Asiatic Japan comes closer than any nation on earth to what Hitler wanted. It is a socially conservative, hierarchical, technocratic, orderly, pagan, sexist, nationalist, racially pure, anti-communist, non-capitalist and anti-Semitic society.

Of course, it would be unfair to describe contemporary Japan as Nazi-like in any of the senses that are notorious (though one cannot help observing that she has never been contrite about her WWII actions the way Germany has.) More correctly, the architects of the Japanese system learned from their disastrous experience in WWII that the kind of society they wanted could not be achieved through a totalitarian predator-state and they calculated that it could be achieved through the forms, though not the content, of liberal democracy, which is how Japan presents itself.

I'm not sure if commentator asdf is a trad or not, but his comments illustrate just how much contemporary right wing thinking is done through a left wing controlled frame.

Japan was utterly beaten at the end of the Second World War. It's military class was stripped of its power and a democracy was forced onto the people of Japan. ( Under the watchful eyes of the U.S. military). Japan's domestic and social policies were thus a product endogenous genuine democratic process and thus to describe the Japanese state as fascistic is disingenuous. What asdf means, I suppose, is that the values that the Japanese have chosen, through the mechanism of democracy, are inherently fascistic.

Under this leftist reframe, fascism ceases being about a system of government but a slur on a set of cultural beliefs, belief's which share a strong overlap with conservatism.  Sensible conservative policies are thus stymied because of the guilt by association with Fascism. Because the fascists worshiped masculinity, therefore masculinity is fascist. Because the fascists were nationalist, nationalism is fascism and so on. Once again, it's guilt by association.

Wilhelmine Germany did have many values which overlapped with the ideals of Nazism but,  as system of government, it never set up concentration camps, practiced eugenics and totally stripped away the rights of an individual. Wilhelmine Germany was conservative but it wasn't evil.  To imply then that Nazi Germany was a fulfillment of Wilhelmine ideals is then to imply that the Nazism is the fulfillment of Conservative ideals. i.e Conservatism and Nazism are the same. It's standard low-brow left wing boilerplate.

But is strange how only certain associations are considered fascistic and other not. When Nazi Germany wasn't fighting wars or killing Jews it was busy implementing other social engineering policies on its people. It was one first societies to recognise the dangers of smoking and enforced anti-smoking bans. It subsidised holidays for the working class. It slashed unemployment through deficit spending. It promoted breast cancer screening,  promoted an  effective national policy of physical fitness, promoted animal welfare and  pushed environmental clean up laws;  all the standard feel good policies of the Left. Yet, even though Hitler enthusiastically implemented them, these social policies are not considered fascistic. Why so?

The answer to this puzzle is best explained by scholars such as David Ramsay Steele* ( a former socialist) and  James A Gregor.  Quite plausibly, they argue that the mainstream orthodox understanding of the phenomenon has been heavily influenced by the preponderance of left wing writers on the subject.  These left winger thinkers downplayed the Socialist origins of fascism and instead  exaggerated the differences between the two strains of revolutionary thought, in the same way that an Ulsterman would emphatically deny that he has anything in common with an Irish Catholic. The Hindu looks on, amused.

Thus, left wing thinkers, wishing to distinguish themselves from their "right wing" co-socialists saw the origins of fascism in the things such as racial theory, militarism and nationalism downplaying the underlying metaphysics of socialism, which justified merciless total war against any opponent of the socialist vision. The reason why Whilhelmite Germany did not set up the gas chambers, even though possessing all the cultural prerequisites for the Final Solution, is because Whilhelmite Germany was Christian; Nazi Germany, Socialist. What unites Auschwitz with Katyn is the metaphysics of Socialism.

And it is within this left "frame" that Modern Japan gets called a "fascistic" country. National policies, which a century ago would of been considered mainstream and sensible, are now prime examples of latent fascism. Japan's economic and social policies are nothing new, they were pretty stock standard throughout the Western World before WW2.  Most nations wanted to maintain their own internal cultural homogeneity, pursue their own economic interests, maintain their religions, and were quite supportive of science and technology. The fact that what was once considered basic common sense conservative social policy is now considered fascistic shows just how leftward the culture has lurched. Today's right is in someways yesterday's less radical left.

The failure of the Right to combat this understanding of fascism has worked towards the Left's favour. Society, wishing to avoid a recurrence of the Nazi experience  and yet understanding that experience through the prism of left wing influenced thought, suppresses the window dressing of Fascism whilst keeping its poison intact. The West wages war against "militarism" (i.e sensible national defence), Xenophobia (i.e an aversion to multiculturalism), Sexism (i.e sexual polarity), Nationalism (i.e national self interest) with an aim to prevent the resurgence of fascism. Thus the social policies which are currently corroding the West are enabled and any attempt to stymie them becomes a battle against the extreme right. i.e the Fascists. The Left's success in conflating fascism with conservatism means that any type of straight out disagreement with the Left is immediately labelled as fascistic. Thus the Right must respond to the Left in degrees, not outright opposition.

But a far greater problem for the Right is the type of conservatism that tends to exist when a country like modern Japan is thought of fascistic. It will a conservatism that is relatively docile, reactionary and concessionary. It will try to be an "all inclusive" conservatism instead of specific militant one. It follow rather than leads, it reacts rather than acts. It defends rather than attacks. It becomes a rearguard action conservatism.

The problem then for contemporary conservatism is how to appear virile without being accused of being fascistic  And this problem is best exemplified by the case of Ernst Junger.

The writer of Storm of Steel(autobiography) was widely praised by the Nazi's. Junger, who saw war as a formative experience and a test of manhood did not tow the All Quiet on the Western Front (work of fiction. G.K Chesterton hated the book) line. He saw the positive aspect of war and battle for the man who was able to withstand it horrors intact.  He was fiercely Nationalistic and hostile to liberalism. The Nazi's lapped up his writings which synched so well with their ideology. So great was his prestige amongst the goose steppers that even when he criticised the regime and was peripherally involved the assassination attempt of Hitler he was left relatively untouched. Yet from the Wiki article.

In the 1920s Jünger published articles in several right-wing nationalist journals, and further novels. As in Storm of Steel, in the book Feuer und Blut (1925, Fire and Blood), Jünger glorified war as an internal event. According to Jünger, war elevates the soldier's life, isolated from normal humanity, into a mystical experience. The extremities of modern military techniques tested the capacity of the human senses. He criticized the fragile and unstable democracy of the Weimar Republic, stating that he "hated democracy like the plague."^] Although never a member of the National Socialist movement around Adolf Hitler, Jünger never publicly criticized the regime before the war. Jünger, however, refused a chair offered to him in the Reichstag following the Nazi Party's ascension to power in 1933, and he refused the invitation to head the German Academy of Literature (Die deutsche Akademie der Dichtung). Even though he never endorsed the Nazi Party, and indeed kept them at a careful distance, Jünger's Storm of Steel sold well into the six-figure range by the end of the 1930s. In the essay On Pain,^[8] written and published in 1934, Jünger rejects the liberal values of liberty, security, ease, and comfort, and seeks instead the measure of man in the capacity to withstand pain and sacrifice.

The Nazi's loved him because they worshiped the masculism of Junger yet he thought them vile rabble. So was he a Nazi?

Well, for many people he was, so intertwined was his philosophy of war with Nazi ideals yet he emphatically denied being so. Junger was a Wilhelmine conservative, but so much has the cultural ground shifted to the Left that even Wilhelmine Conservatives are now thought of as Nazi's. As for himself, Junger thought himself old school. Asked what he thought of the new post war Germany Junger said:

My wife and I are loyal citizens of the Federal Republic, but not particularly enthusiastic ones—our reality is the German Empire

I suppose the point that I'm trying to make is that the Left has been able to conflate a vigorous masculine conservatism with Nazism.  Any resurgence of a virile conservatism has to tackle this problem.

*The essay by David Ramsay Steele is a must read.

Alpha Socialism.

In my previous post, commentator James felt that my view of Fascism, as a man's socialism, was not quite correct.

 I don't buy it— Nazi voters seem to have split almost equally between men and women, but communist voters in Germany skewed heavily male. Going just by voting patters, communism was the more masculine ideology. Maybe the Nazis voters were alphas and the commies were betas, but that would be impossible to prove and it seems like other factors (urban vs. rural, employed vs. unemployed, etc.) were more important.

James then proceeded to provide a fascinating link into the demographic characteristics of those who voted for Nazism.

There can be no doubt that the NSDAP recruited across a broad social spectrum. However, its support was not random. We have already noted the over-representation of Protestants, rural areas and small provincial towns, as well as of the Mittelstand, in Nazi support and there was a similar structure to the movement's working-class constituency. The working class, however, was under-represented in the Nazi ranks when compared to the German population as a whole.

The working-class presence among those who voted for Hitler can be made to correlate positively with the proportion of working classes in the electorate as a whole only when foremen, daily helps, workers in domestic industry and, significantly, agricultural labourers are included in the definition of working class. When rural labourers (who inhabited a world quite different to that of the city dweller and factory employee, often paid in kind or subject to landlord pressure) are removed from the equation, a slight negative correlation arises between Nazi support and working-class presence. And if workers in craft (as distinct from factory) sectors are also removed from the equation, the correlation becomes even more negative. It is negative, too, in the large cities where, the closer we look at the factory working class, the lower the percentage support for the NSDAP becomes.

Nazism and Socialism appealed to different professions and different types of people. City office drones and industrial workers did not vote for Hitler, rather it was the small businessman, the rural worker and professional classes which voted for Hitler. The characteristics of such people are that they are relatively autonomous and socially conservative. On the other hand, the the more a man was an office drone or factory fodder the more likely he was to vote for the socialists/communists. Being a worker did not matter as much as the type.

It is clear that some groups of workers were much more prone to support the NSDAP than others. This applies above all to rural labourers, to workers in rural areas and small provincial towns, and to craft workers in small units of production. Also to former agricultural workers; workers for whom industrial employment was only an ancillary activity; commuters who lived in the countryside but worked in town; workers in domestic industry, (often non-unionised, without socialist traditions and often female)

Furthermore, only 13 per cent of the unemployed -- who comprised some 30 per cent of the manual working class in the middle of 1932 and who were overwhelmingly concentrated in the big cities and in large-scale manufacture -- supported the National Socialists. It therefore is clear that, although large numbers of workers did vote Nazi, these were not in the main from the classic socialist or communist milieux, rooted as these were in the large cities and in employees in the secondary sector of the economy. If the number of workers in this sector plus the unemployed is correlated with electoral support for the NSDAP, the result is clearly even more negative.

But it is the contention of my post that the Nazi party was a party which would appeal to alpha males who had embraced socialism. This does not mean all alpha males were Nazi's, rather, alpha males who thought socialism was a good idea would embrace Nazism.  Alpha in this instance is alpha in the traditional Roissyian sense;  i.e the ability to attract women.  Therefore a party which expressed "alpha" the most would be the party which gave the the frauleins the greatest amount of tingles and consequently their vote.

Now remember, in 1930's Germany,  if a woman decided to vote socialist, she had three main choices: National Socialism, Communism or Democratic Socialist.

Until 1930 women remained unlikely to vote for the Nazi Party. Moreover, in the presidential election of 1932 a clear majority of women preferred Hindenburg to Hitler. However, the early 1930s did see a narrowing of the gap between male and female voting patterns, especially in Protestant areas. Indeed, in some of these by July 1932 the NSDAP was winning a higher percentage of the female to male vote. In that month some 6.5 million women voted Nazi, many of them probably with few or no previous political ties. Where they came from the working class, they were likely to be non-unionised textile operatives or domestic workers.

A further difference resides in the gender of support. The NSDAP, at least in the Depression of the early 1930s, was much more attractive to female voters than the German Left in general, and the KPD in particular. For most of the Weimar Republic women voted less frequently than men, especially in rural areas. When they did vote, wives often followed their husbands; and daughters and sisters, the head of the household; or so many have claimed. It is also not unreasonable to believe that the female vote divided along the same lines of class, confession and region as that of men. Yet there existed significant differences between male and female voting patterns

The relative unattractiveness of the Left to female voters was compensated by a propensity to support those parties close to the churches, such as the nationalist DNVP in the case of Protestants and, to a much greater extent, the Centre Party or BVP in the case of Catholics. In Cologne-Aachen in 1930, 18.9 per cent of male and 33.1 per cent of females voted for the Centre Party. In Augsburg in the same year, 24.8 per cent of men and 39 per cent of women 

If we had to rank the appeal of socialists to the German female on the basis of socialist voting patterns it would be Nazi first (Alpha), Social Democrat Second(Beta), Commie third(Omega).

Do I detect a smirk?

Nazism gets labelled a right wing ideology because it is a variant of socialism that has strongly embraced Paternalism, authority and sexual polarity. It's right wingedness is only relative to the sexual ambiguity and kumbaya social philosphy of the rest of the Left, otherwise it is the same. Great leader, society controlling the means of production, everything for the people, crush the opponents of the people, utopianism etc.  It's the "bad boy" child of the Left.

Finally, the alpha" bad-boyness "of Nazism still to this day serves as a source of sexual stimulation. Nazi fetishism is alarmingly common on the internet. But communist or socialist fetishism is rare or non existant. The reason why, is that the latter two ideologist are pregnant with sexual amorphism and their ideology or kumbaya sexuality is incompatible with the nature of sexual desire.

* Once again, for the retarded, this is not a crypto endorsement of Nazism or Fascism. The ideology deserves to burn in Hell in my opinion.

**The images are from Life Magazine and used without permission. Use is solely for the purpose of public debate and therefore of fair and legal use.

A Man's Socialism.

Hostile to any comparison between Nazism and communism, some authors have sought to find differences in motivation or behavior, beyond the supposed differences in inspiration. “A young man moving in the direction of communism,” writes Jean Daniel, “is at least living with a desire for communion. A young fascist is only fascinated by domination. That is the essential difference.

(Nazism and Communism: Evil Twins. Alain de Benoist. The Black Book of Communism)

Left wing writers like to point out that Fascism is a right wing phenomenon. Never mind the fact that a study of of the origin of Fascism shows a remarkable overlap in both ideology and participants with Socialism.  Even the term Nazi is an abbreviation of the term National Socialist, so it somewhat of a mystery to me why Fascism is considered right wing.

It is the position of this blog that the social conditions in Europe in the late 19th Century gave rise to a situation which traditionalist thinking was unable to solve. The enormous increase in population, industrialisation and lassiez faire capitalism produced a disaffected populace which sought some redress from the resultant social inequities. Most people thought the existing order wrong and there was a need to change it. Traditionalist attempts were made but  ideology which gained the most traction amongst the masses was the socialistic one.  Amongst the socialists themselves, three main streams of thought emerged on how to address the social injustices. Firstly, Parliamentary Socialism, which sought to change society through democratic takeover  of state power, and secondly, Communism and Fascism, which sought to change it through violent struggle. So, just as Protestantism and Catholicism can be thought of as two different strains of Christian thought, both Communism and Fascism need to be seen as two sects of a common underlying ideology; an ideology of the left.

The two ideologies had a lot of similarities. Both saw the group as more important than the individual, with the state being supreme. Both hated the bourgeois. Both sought the destruction of class enemies. Both saw violence as a legitimate means of social engineering and both seemed to revel in the cult of the leader. Both claimed their legitimacy as arising from acting in the interests of the people and both seemed to revel in the cult of the all powerful leader.

However, it's the differences which have always caused the most confusion,  and it's a confusion  which may lay in the fact that it is difficult to separate the two along the traditional right/left axis because of the common ideology of origin.  But the perhaps the best way to explain the differences is not along a spectrum of "Right and Left" but along the lines of sexual hierarchy; "Alpha and Beta". While I'm not the type of man to see everything through the prism of sexual biomechanics, once you start looking at things this way a lot of the pieces seem to fit quite nicely.

The Fascists were outright thugs and saw a glory in violence. They were concerned not about saving the world but about saving their own tribe. They worshiped military valour, manly struggle, competition and emphasised sexual polarity. They didn't mind a bit of inequality if it bought out the best in the tribe. Think of it like being a member in a football team. Each member wants to be a star player but the group psychology is it's us against them. We train hard, elimate the weaklings and conquer the field as brothers. It's a tailor made ideology for jocks. It's no surprise then that businessmen, soldiers, farmers and others with a strong degree of masculine autonomy would find sympathy with the cause.

 
Communism, on the other hand, wanted to save the world. It wanted to include everyone into the project. It tended to avoided  the direct conflict of the thug. Instead it chose the methods of "the bitch" working to sneakily undermine it opponents through the tried techniques of rumor, misinformation and innuendo, directly attacking them when they were isolated and weak.  It valued co-operation, equality and demphasised sexual polarity. It hated competition since no one was allowed any superiority over the other. It promised a utopian future where society would ensure that everyone is a winner.  It was an escape from the the Darwinian struggle of life and the natural pecking order. One can quite easily imagine writers, artists, public servants and others who lacked a large degree of autonomy choosing the communism/socialism cause.

And it appears that there is some scientific data showing a correlation with social conservatism and the dark triad. Though the study has its faults, I think it has a large degree of intuitive credibility. Interestingly the study study shows a far weaker link between the dark triad and economic conservatism which also fits nicely with our hypothesis*. The fact that economic values are poorly correlated with the dark triad will mean that the individuals who possess the dark triad are not necessarily to be associated with any economic position.

Therefore, if an man is an alpha male but an economic idiot, and sees the socialistic worldview as the solution to society's problems, he will find Fascism an appealing ideology. The lower down the sexual hierarchy he goes the more Communism, and then Socialism appeal. Even today the Neo Nazi's tend to be tough skinheads whilst the socialist men...... well....... you know what I mean.

In other words. Fascism is alpha socialism.  Whilst communist/parliamentary socialism is the ideology that appeals to the beta male economic illiterate.

Manboobz of the world unite!

*Arvan did a follow up study and found that liberalism is associated with antisocial personality traits on issues such as climate change and environmentalism.  With Fascism now being totally discredited perhaps those alpha individuals who would have naturally drifted to Nazism are now finding a home in the environmental movement.

** Note for those who are totally retarded and think this post is some crypto support for the Fascists, you can go to Hell.  I regard Nazism and Communism as evils and a pox a both their houses.

Taking on the Cathedral.

The innocuous looking guy to the left has just been recently voted one of Britain's greatest ever foes.

The task facing him was not inconsiderable. How do you beat the worlds greatest superpower with nothing more than a few guns toted by eager youths, a lot of local good will and nothing much else? And yet that is what he did.

Michael Collins is arguably one of the greatest commanders in history. His greatness lays not in his ultimate achievement, rather, in the obstacles he had to overcome to attain it. Obstacles that would have overwhelmed nearly all other mortal men. It was the ultimate challenge; Man vs British Empire.

Collins won.

The task facing Collins was superhuman. How do you secure cure the independence of Ireland from a stubborn British who refuse to yield it?  Collins starting position was tactically woeful. The Irish Republican cause was bedeviled from the outset, by spies, informers, splinter groups factional groups and, of course, the presence of the British Army which at that time was the world superpower. How Collins managed to overcome all of these obstacles is a matter of legend and instruction. He is considered the father of modern urban guerrilla warfare. Mao claimed to have studied his techniques.

The secret to Collin's success lay in his intelligent unconventionality. Collins never did what the enemy expected him to do,  and by outsmarting his enemy he was able to get the British out of Ireland with next to no resources.

Collins serves as a sort of example for the modern manosphere movement, a movement which appears to be gaining some notice amongst the mainstream media. Over the past few months I've noticed a gradually increasing frequency in the media words associated with the mansophere such as alpha male, neg and game. It appears the mansophere is being noticed without acknowledgement and as  the media gives the manosphere more time, sooner or later it is going to be judged by its conformity to the media's program. I suppose that some manosphere writers would welcome the free publicity that comes with media exposure. But it's a poisoned chalice. The liberal media-arts-education complex (a.k.a the Cathedral) has a cultural vision which is profoundly hostile to the underlying ethos of the manosphere. As such, its engagement with the manosphere will eventually be on hostile terms. Those who chose to take the bait (i.e media publicity) are likely to be destroyed.

It is important to recognise that the manosphere would have been impossible without the internet. The ideas which have gained prominence amongst the various factions of it are so politically incorrect and so against the mainstream grain that any airing of them would have been impossible throughout the conventional media.

The official Cathedral line is that it provides for a forum for dispassionate public debate, whereas Cathedral Operations are nothing of the sort. The Cathedral's role is that of culture management and it does it through exploiting the sheep like qualities of the people.  It manipulates public opinion so that the proletariat respond through Pavlovian conditioning in the way which it wants it to. The aim isn't to present a logical argument as it is to enforce an emotional association. For the media have long ago recognised what Jonathan Haidt has recently preached, namely ,when it comes to Joe Average, it's the emotional tail that wags the rational head and not the other way around.

It has a variety of means at its disposal  but the main point is that when the media wants to push a certain line it does so by associating the desired message with positive feelings. On the other hand, when the media wants to ostracise  something it does it by the process of negative association. For example, when the gay marriage agenda wants to be pushed, media presentations of gay marriage will be done in such a way as to elicit positive emotions with the message. Supports will be attractive and highly articulate and socially desirable. Detractors of the gay marriage will be presented negatively. It's classic Goebbellian psych-ops.  The aim isn't to present a logical argument as it is to enforce an emotional association and thereby influence public opinion. Glee, for example, is strong on the song and dance but very little emphasis is made on the gay bar scene; the aim of the producers is to associate gayness with happiness and not disgust.

The machine exists to keep re-enforcing a certain cultural message.The machine is now so well oiled an any person wanting to take advantage of the "publicity" offered by the Cathedral soon becomes a unwitting victim of it if he does not pursue the politically correct line. The Cathedral will promise him a forum where he can get the widest audience whilst setting him up for failure in front of that same audience. The Cathedral is able to do this because, traditionally, the technical means of media dissemination was able to be tightly controlled. And by controlling the dissemination of information, it controlled the public square. Fighting it through the public square means fighting it on the terms set by the Cathedral. It's a recipe for failure.

And lets not forget what the Cathedral can actually do. It can ruin a man's reputation. Wreck his career.  Make him lose his job thus plunging him into poverty and place his marriage under enormous  strain. It can destroy his business. Alienate from his friends. Make him into a social pariah. The point is that the Cathedral is a machine that exists to support its friends and destroy its enemies, it's claim that it is a space for the exchange of ideas is merely a guise.

Michael Collins recognised that the way to take on the British Army was not to take it on directly (which would be suicidal) but to engage it on his terms. The way to fight it was unconventionally. Playing the traditional media's game is to engage it conventionally. Thus, in my opinion, the manosphere should discount any advice about courting mainstream publicity and resist it as best as it can. The aim is to engage in cultural guerrilla warfare. The medium through which this warfare must be fought is the internet, a forum where the media has virtually no control on the subject matter.

The free for all environment of the internet and its distributed nature makes "enforced" consensus extremely difficult. Ideas can't be policed easily. The Climategate story, for example, was all over the internet despite the mainstream media's efforts to quash failure to pick it up.  History will see it as a watershed event.The advantage of the internet is that everyman can potentially reach a world wide audience. Every blog post an opinion piece and every combox discussion a moderated thread. It's true, that for most bloggers and web pundits, their influence will be minimal on an individual level (though there are exceptions)  but taken in total, the manosphere can exert enormous cultural effect outside the control of the cathedral.

Another problem for the Cathedral is any attempt to take down one of web pundits instantly generates more web traffic for the pundit and his cause. This presents a problem for the cathedral. Whereas previously they could isolate an opponent and present the pundit to the public in a manner of the Cathedral's liking, it now cannot regulate what the public actually reads at pundit's site. The pundit actually gets a fair hearing.  The aim then, if media attention is inadvertently gained, is to engage the media of terms of your own choosing. Do not give a media interview, instead let the media interview you on your own blog, that way the media cannot manipulate your public image or selectively misquote you. The worst thing to do is go "live " in an environment where they control what gets said, whom you are associated with  and whom your opponents are. Roosh V's foray onto Ukrainian television was a classic example of what I'm  talking about and a close run thing.

It started normal enough where they asked me general questions and then they started bringing out "surprise guests" which completely caught me off guard. They had me thinking "How the fuck did they find these people??!" 

............I sat in the chair and had the lights on me, the audience on me, and the host and the celebrity panel and so on, I felt quite calm and just focused on answering the questions while not letting them paint me [ED] as someone I was not.

The point is that the way to attack the cathedral is to attack it from outside and on your own terms. Playing the conventional media game only makes you its pawn or its victim.

Thought for the Day.

The state can no more marry people than it can forgive sins.

A thought on Catholic Economics.

Unfortunately I've been busy moving house the last few weeks and haven't been able to devote much time to blogging. In my previous post, an annonymous commentator was critical of my support of some aspects of Protestantism, particularly its work ethic. Now I'm not sectarian, and from perspective can see various problems with Protestantism, I can also see its virtues.  Commentator anonymous said:

Their much vaunted work ethic is generally no more than glorified avarice, an attitude more worthy of Shylock than a man who calls himself a Christian. During the Ages of Faith the people were given a great many Holydays throughout the year, they not only weren't made to work, but would be guilty of sin if they did. This was much better than the frenzy of modern people who go about foaming at the mouth to get more money to buy more useless chinese-made rubbish. If they were Catholics rather than pagans, they might remember Our Blessed Lord's words "What doth it profit a man if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul."

Wealthy economies are not simply made by working hard. For prosperity to ensure a whole lot of ancillary virtues must pre-exist. Things like honesty, punctuality, suppression of envy, etc must exist as well. Catholic South America is dysfunctional not because of a lack of work ethic, but because an absence of an honesty, punctuality and scientific ethic. Being Catholic does not seem to have protected the South American elite from the sin of avarice.

And wealth doesn't just give cars and big houses. It allows medical research, MRI scanners, proper sewerage, electricity that is reliable, the provision of running water, good quality food etc.

I don't have time to elaborate on this tonight but here's a good essay by a man who pretty much shares the same mind with me on  the subject.

I'll reply to comments if I can.