Divide and poke in the eye

Posted by Spandrell on

Most of the discussions in the reactosphere are very abstract. Knowledge of HBD and a certain command of history does that to you. What is human nature? How does it translate to politics? If there are many human natures, how do they translate into politics? While the mainstream goes on 2300 years after Aristotle, still discussing particular constitutions, laws or policies, we go beyond all that and see what is moving the general patterns that create the constitutions, laws and policies.

This gives us greater understanding of the big picture, but little influence in the actual political process. After all, all politics are local, and all change is incremental. We might be right that democracy per se is a dysfunctional system, but you can't just go around saying that we must scrap democracy, as it doesn't work because of the inbreeding or the Dunbar number.

Hereditarianism does explain a lot, and is the single most predictive theory on human (or simply biological) matters, but the fact remains that it doesn't explain everything. The upper bound of IQ heritability is 0.8, people of the same genetic stock do behave quite differently depending on the culture they were raised on. Macro speaking, Taiwan and China, North and South Korea. Micro, you have siblings who develop quite different personalities. Today we are starting to understand that whatever is left after accounting for heredity, is less a function of parenting or schooling than peer pressure and milieu conditioning (the Dunbar group they happen to belong with). All in all, people are not as malleable as blank slatists in the Cathedral would like them to be, but there is still some large margin for them to argue that their intervention can raise outcomes.

As long as there is any window for Cathedral busybodies to ascertain the need for their intervention, hereditarianism isn't going to change much. So what is IQ inheritability is 0.8. We still have 0.2 left to justify huge government programs! We can still close the Gap.

Many dissenters, famously the late Lawrence Auster, argued that opposition to Progressivist must be total, absolute and unforgiving. No concessions must be made to the enemy's ideology. Progressivism is false because its premises are false, and the consequences of its theology are twisted and evil. I admit that as a man I liked very much his approach. Massive frontal assault, take no prisoners, fight to the end. All very appealing to my teenage boy heart. But it's hard to fight against a coherent, steady block of zealots if your faith isn't at list as strong. And ours isn't, as I said before we still lack data to be able to prove all our points. Everything we have is much more truthful and consistent than what the Cathedral has, and even half truths are better than the obvious lies that the Cathedral holds as their dear faith. But you can't raise an army with nuance and common sense.

A common conclusion to this realization has been to stop giving a shit. Moldbug famously said that activism is inherently progressive, so reactionaries must be passive in politics. A might example of making virtue out of necessity. He might be fooling himself but he isn't fooling most of us. He did more for anti-leftist activism than anybody else in decades. But of course he couldn't go further because he doesn't know what else to do. We can talk and read and argue but we know we can't fight Progressivism in the real world. We don't even agree with each other on what we want to do.

So given that we can't go all in into the political process, yet we do have things to contribute, what happened to incrementalism? Of all the points of the reactosphere, not all of them are radioactive, illegal hate facts. Anything that smells of HBD of course will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law and will get you into trouble. But some ideas are eminently reasonable, and normal people who don't directly work for the Cathedral will find it hard to disagree with them. I have been trying some of these in my real life interaction and the results are encouraging.

A comment in my last post was a good example of non-aggressive incremental policy proposal:

William WilberfangJuly 19, 2013 at 20:40(Edit)Someone should push a pro-family/fertilty tax cut: a 5-10% cut for each child that one has. This way the non-taxpayers don’t get a subsidy and those with higher incomes get a greater discount in absolute terms. Of course it doesn’t take a genius to figure out the real purpose of such a policy, but at least it seems more palatable. It doesn’t discriminate by race per se and it’s doesn’t mention the heritability of intelligence. Maybe something like that could slip by the PC-radar, probably not though. It’s soft eugenics.

Anybody who pays taxes and cares about natality will agree with this. Given that cash payments per baby are on force on most of the developing world and the results are quite meager, this sort of proposal could get some attention.

Another idea I have been pushing around is disenfranchising public sector workers. This is a much more radical policy, the backslash from the bureaucracy of course would be massive; but most people today have a good understanding of what interest groups are, and the idea that public sector workers have different incentives from the rest of the voters is easy to explain. When you think about it, the most important idea on the reactosphere is that democracy has to go. Restricting the franchise on racial or gender grounds is of course supreme sacrilege. But a more moderate libertarian-ish argument is more palatable for most people.

I'd rather not scare away my real world acquaintances with maximalist HBD arguments, but I find it increasingly harder to shut up when people parrots Cathedral nonsense. Small, incremental, self-evident arguments are a good way of standing your ground without having to face the Inquisition and potential ostracism. Any other good ideas? The same way that PUAs have a list of pick up lines and share the results their get, perhaps we could have a list of tiny, smart ideas to poke in the Cathedral's eye and open small fractures in their coalition. As the Japanese, say, when dust piles up it becomes mountains.

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  • A few off the top of my head: Adopting a "Nafta" approach to immigration: adopt the laws Mexico uses on illegal immigrants, and adopt Canada's laws on legal immigration (they favor a skills based approach). Congressmen forfeit their pension benefits if they step foot within a 50 mile radius of DC after they leave office. Section 8 reform, where not more than person on section 8 can live on a given suburban block. Instead of restricting the franchise, water it down a bit. Everyone gets one vote, but the more diligent and prudent get extra votes (Own a business with employees, no felony convictions, homeowner, etc.)

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    • Immigration is sacred. See Caplan defending Indians enslaved in Dubai. Hard to enforce a ban on entering DC. Diversity is sacred. You can't argue against section 8 if you don't explain HBD. And that's suicide. 1 person 1 vote is sacred. Rewarding diligence and prudence is racist. I don't think you get good reactions with that. We gotta aim a bit lower than this.

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  • A similar proposal is by Ramesh Ponnuru which is raising the per-child tax credit to $5k, making it non-refundable, but letting it apply to payroll taxes. A lot of incremental reaction looks pretty much the same as the reform conservatism espoused by people like Ponnuru, Douthat, and Yuval Levin.

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    • The smallest possible increment for the assault on Democracy (I'm sorta in favor of small-d democracy) would be to make acquiring citizenship harder with harder tests, maybe a cash payment, etc. That would be pretty popular and it shifts the argument in the direction that citizenship is something valuable that shouldn't just be handed out willy-nilly. Another incremental step that may even attract some leftist support would be a proposal to restore voting rights for felons and to grant them to those under 18 if they passed a difficult test, did X volunteer hours, etc.

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      • I think the raw facts of HBD need to be presented baldly, cries of racism be damned. Elites need to understand that we are on a trajectory to lose civilization itself, in America itself, that we are losing civilization right now in many places, and that civilization has already been lost in many places. Progressives need to be made to understand that they face total loss of every front that they have ever made 'progress' on because HBD and current trends mean the edifice faces collapse with 100% certainty. When your arguments are backed by the blackest possible reality (and they are, for the loss of civilization is THE END for all but the hardiest religionists), you need no consensus because you are speaking the truth. Help smart elites everywhere look into the blackest abyss and never have a proper night's sleep again as long as they live. That is how it is with HBD knowledge and so one should dish out the bitter truth abundantly.

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        • I used to agree with that, until I found the most common reaction was "Civilization deserves to die", "humanity must perish we are just too evil", etc. And I've heard that over trivial stuff, like feminism or foreign aid.

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          • I don't think elites or billionaires or people with kids are like that. That is the reaction of the hippy kid, who is already disenfranchised, but the oligarchs of our world certainly care. They had to bust their hump to get where they are and continue to bust their hump every day. They have a huge amount of their own sweat and toil invested in this thing. Look at the extraordinary steps they took in 2008 as they saw to it that there would be no abrupt discontinuity in the economy. People in power do care; I contend that most are still way too sunny. Consider that from the view of someone born in 1940 or 1950 things look pretty smooth. Technology advances, the cold war was won, starvation is way down. Most are not seeing the Tsunami that is the intersection of demographic trends and HBD, but soon enough they will and they will be huge allies.

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            • That was the reaction of a 50 year old shopkeeper, among others. Unfortunately I have little access to oligarchs.

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              • "Unfortunately I have little access to oligarchs." Who knows, you might. Or others on the Reacto-Webz might. I presume these folks browse the Internet in anonymity just the same as the rest of us, and what's more, they surely read a lot more than average.

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              • Some would care if they noticed, some would not. Whether or not they would care, they can easily afford to buy their way out of it, so ultimately they don't care. But they don't notice. They live fully insulated.

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                • I tend to agree. I bear no hope in the billionaires, they might be smart but that doesn't mean they care about what makes sense. The old socratic idea that evil is ignorance and knowledge is good has been proven wrong in the last couple of centuries.

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                  • "I bear no hope in the billionaires" I think they may turn out to be indirectly crucial because of medicine. If race-based medicine can have a 43% mortality reduction http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Isosorbide\_dinitrate/hydralazine then that will likely extend to nation, region, family and even individual based medicine - if you can afford it. They'll want to live as long as possible and medicine based on individual genetics might give them an extra 20 years? 30?

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              • There just isn't anything that we can do via argument and logic that is going to make a significant difference. This is an emotional thing. Progressives believe what they believe because they believe it is morally right and it makes them feel good to believe in something that is morally right. No argument can make headway against that. Look at the white liberals in South Africa. If any white liberal on the face of the earth should have been disabused of their progressivism by blunt reality, it is white South African progressives and liberals. But from my recent readings around the internet, it doesn't appear that they have significantly changed their opinions in a reactionary direction, if at all. In the face of all that black dysfunction, they are stubbornly clinging to a belief that things will get better and that those who don't like the situation are racists who ought to leave the country. I think they best thing we can do is get rich individually, hopefully while finding ways to avoid paying any more taxes to the Cathedral than necessary. Make a lot of money and then pull strings behind the scenes. We're the new Jews, don't you know - scapegoated for all the problems. We might as well copy the Jews and get rich and manipulate things behind the scenes.

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                • Yes, a part of my soul died when Charlize Theron adopted that black baby. Given that we're close to entering a new Gilded Age, having sympathetic oligarchs is probably our best bet.

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                  • Theron's mom offed her alcoholic abusive dad when she was a kid. I don't think she provides a representative sample.

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                  • I ran into a random white South African family on vacation in the DC metro system (I struck up a conversation because I like to do that with obvious tourists) and after I asked how they stay safe, they figured I KNEW. Then the husband poured upon me a river of unfiltered reaction (plenty of HBD, generous use of the words cancer and plague and all F'ed up, stuff about the gun he carries everywhere there and his shoot first attitude about it, his dark expectations for a Zimbabwe future, his musings about a way to come here) all within easy earshot of other passengers. It was easily the most reactionary conversation I was ever part of and I hardly opened my mouth at all. His wife looked at me nodding intensely the whole time. He was an employee of the S.A. airline, not some farmer from the country.

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                    • From what I have read, many South African liberals left the country in favor of UK, Canada, Australia and NZ.

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                    • In fact I would go further and hypothesize that we will NEVER convince a significant fraction of today's white liberals and progressives. I imagine that the morality of progressivism is too deeply entrenched in their personalities for them to be affected by logical arguments. Perhaps the next generation, or the next after that, who will have suffered mightily because of progressivism, may reject their parents' progressivism and be open to arguments for the morality of the reactionary worldview. It has to play itself out. It has to demonstrate itself irrefutably as a society- and individual-destroying ideology.

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                  • I would recommend for the "dream" Republican party to mirror the left in select areas which will make them competitive with Democrats for mass appeal. Obviously this would be exclude policies that shift demographics in favor of the left (immigration, single motherhood). Consider that a ton of liberal politics is identity politics but whenever their popularity is flagging, they switch back to beating the class war drum as if it were 1930. The former is their actual platform while the latter is empty posturing. Consider that when backed into a corner a liberal will change the subject to how "billionaires are looting our society" or something to that effect. For a good portion of liberals, the old classical economic progressivism is their emotional backstop that lets them know that they are ultimately the good guys even if their side is wrong in specific instances ([SJW](http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=social justice warrior) is displacing this gradually, but still). So the GOP should go after the "1%" and big banks, raise capital gains taxes, have aggressive regulation of the financial sector, protect the environment, stop foreign wars. The differences between the two parties would narrow to the actual identity politics or each parties base of support. (This would contrast to the idealized and forbidden white identity politics of the alt-right which doesn't reflect where white people are at right now, not even for the Republican party base.) But as I'm writing this I realize this is just as much wishful thinking as wanting HBD or even immigration reduction to fall within the overton window. It isn't necessary to look beyond the bounds of political correctness to find evidence of the worthlessness of the GOP. It is unfortunate Perot didn't win, as it was right at the time both parties were adopting globalism and there was sufficient anger for real economic populism.

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                    • People here should read this Charles Murray paper which is basically on HBD, how the debate will be resolve scientifically, and how the results of the scientific debate should be handled politically. http://www.scribd.com/doc/154952653/The-Rediscovery-of-Human-Nature-and-Human-Diversity Now he's a libertarian, so have some quibbles with the end part.... but reactionaries can make common ground with some libertarians on attacking the Equality Premise. But we need to also get real about HBD... even if we win this debate, progressives are likely to still win politically because they'll have the votes... they supported eugenics in the early 20th century and they really will have no choice but to do so again.

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                      • "Another idea I have been pushing around is disenfranchising public sector workers." If incrementalism is the strategy, you should start by de-unionizing public sector workers. That's a far more plausible step politically, and it would already do a lot. (So much, in fact, that it would mark a near-apocalyptic transition, but leaving corrosive skepticism aside for the moment ...)

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                        • Yes, but how do you justify that? How do public workers not have a right to organize for their RIGHTS? I've tried arguing that but I can't come up with an argument simple enough to convince normal people.

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                          • Is it really that hard (as right-wing arguments go)? Public sector unions are not organizing against hated capitalist employers, but against taxpayers, or -- better for PR purposes -- 'the public'. Their relationship with politicians is straightforward racketeering. That's an obviously bad thing, isn't it?

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                            • Arguing towards scrapping civil service job security and other privileges has more supporters in my experience. Gotta be equal.

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                        • This was how the left did it. Private space was used for thrashing out idealogy e.g. destroy the family, destroy the nation. Public space was then used to introduce ideas based on that idealogy e.g. sex education, but initially couched in safe, neutral terms. Then over the years the extent and content of sex education changes to meet the aims of the original idealogy. The example you gave of child support provided in the form of a tax rebate is a very good one. The example i am most interested in is criminal justice policy as eugenics. If you accept certain HBD principles then it should be pretty clear how the use of prison can do this over time and how it can be optimized however the idealogical HBD aspects: hereditary, the testosterone peak etc don't need to be included in the final pitch. The three strikes and you're out policy is an example of a straightforward right-wing Conservative policy. An HBD version could simply be two strikes and you're out till 26 and three strikes and you're out for good. Another example might be to not speak about differences in average IQ between races but simply differences *within* races and then suggest that importing immigrants from the bottom half of the deck will automatically reduce the average IQ of the receiving population. So you make it initially about restricting unskilled and low-skilled immigration. Once people have accepted the basic principle then it can be extended.

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                          • The problem is, how are you going to get any of these things accepted by the wider population? It's easy to say "let's change the tax code". Given that we live in a liberal society where even the so-called conservatives are actually just somewhat more fiscally sensible liberals, how would it be possible to pass laws that in any way undercut liberalism? Or when you suggest that certain arguments are to be made to be people about IQ...if someone's fundamental moral belief is that equality is the highest value, they are simply not going to accept arguments about IQ. I don't want to believe that the efforts that individuals or groups make to change society don't make a difference, but as time passes it seems more and more that societies evolve in accordance with vast meta-beliefs rather than as a result of what some particular individuals do or don't do. If your beliefs aren't congruent with those meta-beliefs then no significant number of people are going to listen to you. In which case you would do best to look out for number one and avoid being eliminated as an enemy of the state. The one thing that I don't understand is why concealed carry laws have spread around the country. That seems illiberal and I wouldn't have expected them to spread. But gun control is definitely a losing battle for liberals. Why? Why is this one un-liberal cause succeeding where no others are?

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                            • Lots of 'illiberal' things are spreading. Let me see if I can think of 10: (1) Knowledge and facts about HBD (2) Decline of unions (3) Increase in the rich-poor gap (4) Hard attitudes toward crime and high incarceration (5) Astonishing military capability such that it is in military areas that the American advantage is largest (6) Resegregation across America. (7) Relative strength of conservative religious groups vis-a-vis the major decline of mainline liberal churches (8) Triumph of capitalism and free trade everywhere (9) Decline in actual practice of homosexuality and clear reductions in promiscuity among these gays (marriage??) (10) Demonization and strong criminalization of pederasty across America Most of these are natural pendulum swings in relation to really bad excesses of the left. (1) The lies became ridiculous. (2) Unions collapsed many companies. (3) Redistribution and Communism failed and impoverished globally. (4) and (6) Crime reached world-historical levels around 1990 and many cities became unlivable. (7) Liberal churches had literally nothing of substance to say or offer. (9) Diseases including AIDs and many others wreaked massive havoc. (10) Massive abuse scandals in all manner of organizations Most of these are also organic and represent natural law asserting herself so forcefully that the left eventually must line up on the side of (or at least acquiesce to) natural law. Obama seems to have the poorest grasp of natural law of any American president in history. He is truly a King Canute.

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                              • (1) Knowledge and facts about HBD I see blogs that talked about this in the eighties, thirty years later, there are many more blogs that talked about them, but most folks simply do not want to look into the abyss. (2) Decline of unions This is true. One of the few consolations. (3) Increase in the rich-poor gap This is due mainly to society increasingly organized to make better use of human capital rather than some deliberate policy or ideology change. In fact, this also triggered its own reaction with the occupy movement. (4) Hard attitudes toward crime and high incarceration This is also true, but has largely run its course as the increased crime push up pass the fiscal limits of the government to keep them in jail. In California, they have to increasingly let the prisoners go early to make room for others. (5) Astonishing military capability such that it is in military areas that the American advantage is largest And what do we do with military? it is a resource drain that accelerates the decline if you ask me. I see a day not too far into the future where internal squabbles will trump foreign policy. (6) Resegregation across America. Segragation along financial lines is the only way to keep out the trash, but how many can afford this? (7) Relative strength of conservative religious groups vis-a-vis the major decline of mainline liberal churches Liberal churches only came about in the last three decades, I am not sure if the decline is of much significance. (8) Triumph of capitalism and free trade everywhere This is true. and one of the few good legacy of the cathedral to the world. (9) Decline in actual practice of homosexuality and clear reductions in promiscuity among these gays (marriage??) Any proof of this claim? (10) Demonization and strong criminalization of pederasty across America How has that changed compared to historical levels. I thought we have always been this way. There are more publicized accusations of such, but I think people always reacted negatively to this.

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                                • (1) Didn't know they had blogs in the 1980s. In any case, The Bell Curve was published in 1994 and IQ and the Wealth of Nations was published in 2002. Web browsers only came about in the 1990s. iSteve, the Godfather blog on this subject, probably goes to 1999 or 2000 or something. (3) Massive tax cuts of the Reagan and Bush years have mostly stuck. (4) I don't think the crime reduction is done. The cities are getting cameras everywhere. (7) The Unitarian church is as old as America and the bet in an earlier era was that it would swallow all churches where people actually believe something. Many 1800s presidents were members. (9) Anecdotal, but in the last decade all you ever hear is about is commitment whereas reports of enormous partner totals were common in the past. (10) NAMBLA was a major organization. Maybe the first organizational face of the gay movement. Now people pretend it never existed and it is ostracized in the gay community. "In 1994 NAMBLA was expelled from the International Lesbian and Gay Association, having been the first US based organization to be a member" (wiki)

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                                  • They were not blogs like the blogs we see today, with participants having a discussion. Some of these were more like some scribbling on someone's hard drive. But I did remember seeing postings dated all the way back to the eighties talking about HBD related subjects.

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                                • King Canute gets a bad rap -- his most famous episode was about making a demonstration of sovereign natural law (not defying it).

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                                • Well that's the thing, for all the big trends of history there's some small efforts that do bear fruit once in a while. After all we didn't all go Soviet in the 1940s.

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                                • @Anon Guy "The problem is, how are you going to get any of these things accepted by the wider population?" Most people already believe there are IQ differences *within* races so all you're saying is restrict immigration to the top half of any race. This can be further muddied by talking about skill and /or education levels as a proxy. It wouldn't neccessarily be easy to do but it would be easier. Taking peak testosterone into account in the criminal justice system would partly appeal to liberals as a potential prisoner reduction measure (even if they wouldn't like the biological explanation) and conservatives would like it for practical reasons (plus most of the population know it's true already).

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                                • HBD (race difference & sex difference) denial, i.e., equalism, has certainly led to some of the worst deformations of modernity. But it is hardly the whole progressive game. The most extreme progressives 100 years ago were HBD enthusiasts... and wanted to get something the hell done about it. It's the getting something the hell done AND NOW (immanentizing eschaton) that is the primary and incurable pathology. We may hope incrementalism may work, but if the ratchet only ratchets in one direction, with non-zero but negligble play in the other, then incrementalism will never be more than a step forward in the face of three steps back. (Or vice-versa, depending on your idea of "progress.") Progressivism is a psychological (memetic) disorder. A contagious cancer. We should, I think, be looking for cures along those lines.

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                                  • The most extreme progressives 100 years ago were HBD enthusiasts

                                    Huh? What's your definition of extreme? Lenin was anti-imperialist. Incrementalism is one step forward and three steps back. The status-quo is three steps back every 4 years. Seriously I don't get the arguments against immanentizing the eschaton. That's like asking men to stop screwing hot chicks. Everybody wants to immanentize the eschaton as far as it's feasible. What's the point of the physical world anyway? The problem is that the West is full of crook salesmen preaching that the eschaton is actually very easy and we're getting eat Real Soon Now.

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                                    • Lenin? I'm talking Maggie Sanger. We're talking Real White Protestant progress here... not for Russian lumpenproles. Who (in 1915) gave a fsck about them? The problem with "immanentizing eschaton" is not in having an ideal or goal and working toward it, but in the universalist assumption that your ideal is for everyone... i.e., forcing everything to fit in your little box (no matter how wonderful it is). I don't think "everybody" is going around trying to stuff the entire sentient universe into their pre-conceived ideal box... In fact, I cannot imagine anything more unnatural. But this is what progressives do... otherwise it wouldn't be true progress... it has to be for everyone.

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                                      • Well today's Progressives' ideas have more in common with Lenin's than with Sanger's. Who had more impact? The Russian lumpenprole understood what progressivism was really about. Forcing your ideals to everyone else is also a very natural instinct. How can it not be? It's very hard to tolerate foreign ideals close to oneself. It goes against every tribalist fiber in our body. And we have quite a lot of those. You might call it hubris, but then again most people aren't just very humble. It's for a reason that tolerance and humility are taken to be virtues. They are rare.

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                                        • http://racehist.blogspot.com/2012/06/margaret-sanger-as-yankee-utopian.html

                                          Margaret Sanger, daughter of Irish Catholics; married first to a Jew; then to a South African; influenced by and conduit of happenings in Europe; also, a "Yankee" and proof that "progressivism" is best conceived of as an offshoot of New England Puritanism. More of an activist than her father, Bill had recently joined a Socialist Party local in the Bronx, where he lived with his father, Edward Ely Sanger; his mother, Henrietta Wolfberg; and his younger sister, Cecilia. Most heretically appealing for the rebellious daughter of a Catholic from a town without a synagogue, William Sanger was a Jew--by heritage, not conviction.
                                          At first, Maggie Higgins and Bill Sanger shared their alien status: she the migratory, rebellious daughter of a poor Catholic family, he a Jewish immigrant still living at home at twenty-six years of age. The, for the rest of their lives, they both obscured the facts of his family heritage, which became easier to do when his father died in 1903. Finding Bill's background exotic at first, she later erased it, lest it compromise the fragile birth control movement and her credibility to lead it. To be married to a Jew in the first decades of the twentieth century was to be associated with the radical political views of socialists and to invite the pervasive smear of anti-Semitism.
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                                    • Physician, heal thyself. Just throwing this out here, but what do neoreactionary ideas say about neoreaction? If HBD is accurate, then you should expect that political opinions and attitudes are largely hereditary (or at least the personality factors that predict the political opinions are) and the evidence is that progressivism is more adaptive in the modern political environment.

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                                      • That's hard-HBD. In my experience it's patently not true, there's plenty of variance of political opinions inside families. I don't know yours, but my parents can't stand me. Not to mention my siblings. Like most scientific theories, soft-HBD is the most plausible.

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                                        • " the evidence is that progressivism is more adaptive in the modern political environment." Definitely not. You can measure how adaptive an ideology is by the reproductive fitness of its adherents. Progressivism is terribly maladaptive for true believers. They aren't replacing themselves, they have to recruit the children of non-progressives. It's adaptive to parrot certain progressive ideas while behaving in a conservative, if not reactionary manner in your personal life. Think Mormons.

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                                      • Some here observed that things have swung the other way in reaction to the last few decades of increasing liberalism. That may well be true. The problem is that the cathedral does not remain static. Due to demographic trends, it is growing every year. In America, the cast is set. As the number of people born today had crossed the threshold. If nothing else changes(and that is not likely), in two decades, when these people grow up, the amount of willful ignorance that characterize the black population during the whole Trayvon Martin trial will become the official national policy. If incrementalism advocated here does not turn this around (I don't think much will change in twenty years), things will become irreversible. Try any of these conservative ideas to help the working class in Indonesia and see how far you go. Try them in Brazil. Logic and truth has nothing to do with social policies, They are bend and warped to help the government in charge and those who control it. As the government are controlled increasingly by the other side, and if it feels threatened, it will simply resort to ever more brutal means of truth suppression and subversion. Right now, HBD does not posed much of a threat to the current order, already, you see Lawrence Summer and James Watson happening. Jason Richwine being the latest victim of this witch hunt. I can't imagine what happens if the beast is threatened. You think that we are dealing with a static mountain that we can chip away inch by inch, In fact, we are dealing with a fast growing behemoth that are destined to gobble us all.

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                                        • 1. The government makes unlimited amounts of funds available at 0.25% real-interest-rate for student loans, with one small caveat, "The institution of higher education agrees to serve as surety for the non-discharageable loan in case of default." Overnight - higher education rationalizes. 2. The government makes makes all benefits to the old-aged into optional highest-priority loans collectible upon demise. If you're poor, the insolvency of your estate is judgment-proof. If you're rich, no legacy passes to your heirs except after government recoupment. The inheritance tax in a year is adjustable to compensate for the sum of all noncollectable benefits-debts, to achieve generational integrity. 3. No tax-exempt status for non-profits and no tax deductions for charitable giving. 4. Import Certificates to achieve Trade Balance (and neutralize foreign currency manipulation) overnight. 5. NGDP level targeting. That's enough for now.

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                                          • What I'm talking about is small, simple but strong arguments that average people understand, instinctively agree with and are unable to argue against. NGDP targeting? Puh-lease. Point 3 is good, but you have to argue against *charity*, which has sacred status.

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                                            • I like point one here, but they are going to say you are against education and some such. Charles Murray tried his best with the argument that college is not good for all people. I think that is a better approach, but it did not seem to go far.

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                                              • 1. Keeping minorities in education as long as possible is a good idea, for avoidance of teen and unmarried pregnancy. 2. Hit the rich and not the poor even though the former paid in and the rich did not? Sounds redistributionist/leftist to me. 3. Slam churches? Very leftist, and obviously hitting charitable giving has been one of Obamas goals. 4. Probably a good idea. 5. If you set GDP goals, the obvious remedy is huge immigration. We're choking on that already. I'd prefer to set a goal on real-income-per-capita. That kills the immigration 'solution', which has driven per-capita income sharply downward for 40 years.

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                                                • You really don't get it, do you?

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                                                  • What don't I get? My point is that Handle's remedies would hurt more than help as far as the right goes.

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                                                    • -NGDP is a monetary policy, it has nothing to do with immigration. - If you think the Churches and Billionaires are our rightist allies you really don't get it. Japan has a 50% inheritance tax. And it used to be 70%.

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                                                      • Spandrell, if you think churches are the enemy, you don't get it. Study this if you want to see how things really work. http://anepigone.blogspot.com/2012/06/education-religiosity-and-fecundity.html Without religion, birthrates collapse, smart people have few kids and civilization decays even without any outside help. Churches may not be very helpful on immigration, but they do provide enormous help on family formation with respect to capable providers. If domestic birth rates are two low, the solution by the powers that be is wholesale replacement from the outside. As for the obsession with GDP, yes, that is a problem. The drumbeat for importation of more workers stems directly from that. Meanwhile per capita GDP plummets.

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                                              • I have a young progressive female friend of the family who totally buys into the Cathedral worldview. Here's an argument I used on her that had her stumped. I said, "you know those remote villages in the Amazon with those people living in their ancient ways?" Yes, she replied. "Do they have the right to want to preserve their identity as a people? To exclude outsiders?" She smiled an awkward smile and said "so you're saying if they have a right to do that, do we have a right to do that too?" She paused and said "hmm...I'll have to think about that." Then I let the subject drop. Since that conversation a few years ago we have generally stayed away from politics because we disagree so fundamentally. But a couple times I have reiterated in the few political arguments that "we have a right to preserve our identity as a people just like anyone else." And she doesn't disagree with me but she doesn't agree either and quickly changes the subject. So it was a good argument, and it stopped her in her tracks and she had no response to it...but it didn't change her mind. It's just this relatively isolated instance of cognitive dissonance in her otherwise homogenous, airtight progressive world. She's not going to seriously start changing her viewpoint, in my opinion, until she or people she knows gets robbed, raped, beaten, impoverished, or otherwise personally suffers enough from the results of her progressivism. And even then she may stick to the "it's not their fault, it's the legacy of racism," etc, excuses for NAM behavior. And if she gets to 35 years old without having changed her opinion, she probably never will regardless of how many bad things happen to her...she will just get bitter and cynical about politics and life without re-evaluating where her premises were wrong. I think you have to be pretty young to have much chance of changing your views. I wonder how progressive the young generation of white South Africans is?

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                                                • But people change their views all the time. What they need is plausible deniability. A good short argument to make it so they never changed their views in first place. Liberals do this all the time. Who was for gay marriage 10 years ago? Let alone adoption.

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                                                • But some ideas are eminently reasonable, and normal people who don’t directly work for the Cathedral will find it hard to disagree with them.

                                                  There are lots of policy wish-lists and authoritarian solutions out there. But the problem is that you need to get authority and power first. There's no indication that reactionaries are making any headway on this front.

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                                                  • Does it really make sense to think about incrementalism in an U.S. context? Incrementalism is a good idea in Poland or Korea, but in the United States? America's future as a non-white nation is already assured, we're just waiting for the minority generation to come of age. If the United States remains one united country long enough, Brazilization is essentially guaranteed. Your downwardly mobile grandchildren will assimilate into the great mixed race underclass. Heck, I already have a cousin with black children (who I've never met) and I'm from a solidly middle class, conservative family that generally sticks to the suburbs. Before you die, the majority of whites you know will have a mulatto or mestizo relative, if they have any kids at all. Once that happens, a country's fate is sealed. There will be no dramatic reaction, just a slow dysgenic decline from the U.S. to an average Latin American country to Brazil and eventually to something that resembles India. So we're essentially in a race against time. The clock is the degradation of the gene pool in the United States, keeping in mind that more and more people become invested in Brazilization every day. If conditions deteriorate quickly enough and in just the right way, a portion of the U.S. gene pool could be saved, through mass emigration, withdrawal into an oppositional parallel culture (temporary respite but could last a while) or even something like secession. So if we really want to make a difference, those of us with clean records should infiltrate the Cathedral and promote plausible sounding ideas that will accelerate the decline of the United States, so that people will react while there is still something left that is worth saving. Something radically left wing, but radically left wing in just the right way. Whoever decided to persecute Zimmerman then double down on it did more to help the reaction than we ever could, operating openly.

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                                                    • I would say since we are a democracy, dysgenic trend is not even the first big threat. Dysgenic trend takes centuries to play out. The line on the sand should be when the majority of the voters are vested with the cathedral. And that wil happen in, at most, a couple of decades. Succession will be very difficult as the country will not tolerate this idea. All that will be left will be little enclaves demarcated by the cost of the homes which keep out the poor. For all we know, that future may already be here.

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                                                      • I guess I should disclaim that I'm not in the US nor will ever be.

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                                                      • One of the weakest links right now in the Left is the environmentalist movement. Do some hardcore entryism and make the Sierra Club take a hardline anti-immigration (both kinds) position. That gives 'moral cover' for 'nice white ladies' to support their own interests.

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                                                        • The Spartans tried offering large lump sum payments for everyone male child born. It didn't help at all with the birth rate. You have to lower female status to increase the birthrate. As long as women have a very high opinion of themselves and high status the birthrate will continue to decline.

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                                                          • I read a while back at Lion of the Blogosphere about how Jews in New York will never sell their property to non-Jews. There are also Jew-only housing developments in upstate New York (look up Kiryas Joel). They get away with the obvious housing discrimination because they never advertise their houses for sale, it is all networked within the synagogue. So my suggestion is to start something like a church. Become like the Hasidics or the Amish. Perhaps an ultra-orthodox fundamentalist protestantism. You need separation from the mainstream, lifeboat communities. It's too late to stop the tide, you need islands to rise above it.

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                                                          • Who writes the xenosystems blog? The admin avatar's name says "annagreenspan".

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                                                          • Here's an idea....repeal the 19th Amendment. White women are the most emotionally-driven, unaware, and uninformed group of voters out there. Black women would be silenced at promoting their anti-European American politics, and racist Mestizo groups like La Raza would be silenced. It works for me. And, yes, I'm a female.

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                                                            • You won't find anyone who disagrees with that here. But the point of this post was to think of policies that could be justified inside the Cathedral's framework.

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                                                              • You said: "A common conclusion to this realization has been to stop giving a shit." Common for a reason. It's probably best to focus efforts on things that are relevant. Yet even I can't escape my own madness. I started a blog once. Got a few threats, then retired it. Took about a week. lol All of us think we have good ideas. Doesn't matter. Should I pretend it does? Or do I accept it doesn't? Most policies are for the worst person, not the best. Therefore they are actually quite accurate in their forecasting manure piles of society. Policies are impossible to be value relevant if society is a pile of morons. A common trait that is observed is that (whatever their beliefs) undumb people get along. Dumb people don't. Unless this is science fiction (of which I love) the framework has to reflect "what is". Realistically this is really boring. Moron world with moron laws. So imagining a false reality is fun, and talking about those laws is fun, it's just not "what is" but "what should be, if...". Fun science fiction. If not laws, then policies. If not policies, then X. If not X, then Y. If not Y, then Z. ...and thus the blog world was born. For bad, we're all in a corner sucking our fucking thumbs. You play CIV 5. So do I. I think I play video games to just "get away" and pretend I don't exist in this world for a few hours. Does wonders for me! ;)

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                                                                • Tell me about it. What threats did you get in your blog? You used your real name and advertised it on facebook or what

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                                                                  • I didn't use anything real then. Could have been trolled though. My friends would never tell me if true. Somehow the threats got to my email. I am terribly paranoid. That's my normal. So after the threats, I had no problem closing shop. Took about five minutes! I'm also quite a germaphobe. I can't tell if I'm being unreasonable when it comes to my fear. I can't even fly. I refuse to get on an airplane - that is, unless I'm completely hammered.

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                                                                    • Yeah you are being unreasonable with your fears. You're a textbook paranoid. You must be a real pain in the ass in multiplayer Civ games. Most germs are good for you. Dying on an airplane is harder than dying from Civ addiction. As I said earlier, if Steve Sailer hasn't been gunned down yet after putting his face and real name online, blogging on goddamn's Google platform, I think we little people are safe. Just take a low profile and avoid telling your boss or clients.

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                                                                      • Oh I hear ya. Rationality plays no role in a condition such as mine. I suspect I have a condition, but I have no need to verify this. However, I am not a pain in the ass when gaming. In life, I'm a huge pain in the ass. Late to a movie, even a minute, auto-moron (in my view).

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                                                                      • (First article, about 35 pages or so...) "Pretending Existing" :) Thank you notepad!

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                                                              • This thread didn't get quite the level of suggestions we might have hoped for, because slipping something that would make a real positive difference into the discourse seems to be very difficult. Right-deviation is becoming ever more difficult and it seems that whatever you could slip in would just delay the inevitable. We can't go backwards, we have to go through leftism to see what comes afterwords, once belief in leftism can no longer be sustained. And for the time being, left-deviation is still quite acceptable. This gives us an opportunity to implant ideas into the Cathedral, but it will require sacrifices. Specifically, the sacrifice of our sacred honor. Blend in with the SWPLs, work your way up through the hierarchy of the Cathedral to a position of some minor influence, repeat whatever left wing platitudes you need to repeat, in order to establish your bona fides. When the time is right, take the opportunity to spread ideas that are impeccably left wing but likely to be self defeating. For example "let's bail out Detroit, Chicago, California". "let's make this white privilege campaign a bit more extreme" or if you're really cynical, "let's call this Pardo a white Hispanic". We can't start things moving backwards, but we may be able to make the decline more rapid. This will have at least two benefits; a) the genetic and moral damage will be less severe if the decline is more rapid and b) some of us might live to see the dawn of the post-left world.

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                                                              • Some of you folks strike me as a long way behind us white nationalists despite the various problems with white nationalism and its feasibility. If you want to try "toned-down" incremental approaches, or a reverse Gramsci march, I wish you well. I wish I could save you time time. You will not fool the leftists. You will confuse ordinary people who might otherwise be sympathetic to the rightist policies that you favor.

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                                                                • I'm just throwing ideas around. I am aware of the limitations of a Gramscian approach, but people should strive to do what they do best. If you are a good social man with strong leadership, by all means go and found a white community. I do think it probably won't do much of a difference in the long term, but you never know. Neoreaction is more of a theoretical geekspace, so it's only natural we are attracted to positions were we can analyze the power structure and possibly influence it.

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                                                                  • Understood. I just found your blog, so I'm not sure how long you've been at this. Your stuff is interesting. I suspect I have a different worldview and theoretical orientation than you and most of your readers. We have more or less the same opposition. WNsts have been fighting them for so long we have developed a keen sense from experience of what will work against them. It is not my intent to throw cold water on your explorations of this topic, but I hate to see smart people waste their time. I can, again, pretty much guarantee you that adjusting or framing good arguments in terms that won't "scare" people will just confuse them without fooling the other side. Auster in my view is correct that the opposition must be open and uncompromising. Just how I shake out on it. Like I said, I do wish you well.

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                                                                    • I'm not so sure that conversions out of progressivism must be done totally and in a single strike. Let's say there's two sorts of people, those who are incapable of abandoning their worldview, but might adopt small changes without really noticing. And those who need consistency, and are able to abandon a worldview and adopt a new one in a single blow. In any case white nationalism is a better sell than our stuff. Nationalism is the leftism of 200 years ago. Neoreaction on the other hand is fighting the roots of leftism itself. We are fighting human nature. It's a hard fight.

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                                                                • My recommendation: Troll the big forums of your country's MSM. Always agree with and support the usual leftwing positions, but always insert something that is over the top and will subliminally will make people sitting on the fence feel uncomfortable with "progress". It's an art form. E.g: - In immigration related threads, agree wholheartedly with the party line, make clear that you are a white women in your 50s or so, and add innocently that you think mestizo babies are way cuter than white ones anyway and that compete race-mixing has always been your dream and you worked hard as a well-payed employee of [some NGO] to make that happen, all your life. - In Trayvon-like contexts, play the well-meaning social-worker and promote "housing" (it's like bussing in the 60s, but instaed of moving black school-children to white suburbs, move whole households there) Demand quotas! They are good! And bussing worked very well, despite what the haters say. - In Syria/Africa/etc.-articles: Demand massive resettlement to [insert your country] and slam the puny dimensions of the current programs as face-saving band-aids of the establishment. Demand tax-rises to cater for them! Everybody in [insert your country] still too rich. Fair wordwide distribution would be $600 per month for everybody! Demand the U.N. get involved and praise [some local govt. agency] for at last showing support for it. If you're feeling bold, argue that this will raise their IQ average from 85 in Somalia to 98, when they are in [your country], due to education and health effects. Cite a nice study. - In food/health-related threads, call for legislation against meat in the same way as against tobacco. This has been your calling all your life, you were successful in the first case, now it's time for progress on the second front. Again, praise the government for being on the case. - Always use the newest lingo (like "P.O.C") and step on other people's toes for using allegedly outdated language ("Times have moved on, this isn't the 1990s any more. You can't say 'Palestinians' anymore"). Don't answer follow-up complaints that, yes you, still can. My favourite newspeak is "FCG-person": formerly-called-gypsy. You can be very creative in this regard.

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