On suggestibility

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, 06 July 2007 00:56.

In our corner of philosophical life I seem to be the only person using this particular six-syllable word to characterise the mind of Man. Now, that could be because it is a very bad characterisation. Equally, it could be that I’m very bad at characterising my characterisations. In the pitiful belief that it must be the latter, I am going to set forth precisely what these six syllables mean, and why they are important.

Readers who wish to live out the rest of their lives in peace and contentment look away NOW.

To the stoics who remain, my commiserations ... and the sincere hope that you will never be the same again.

There are a couple of much-used words - propositions really - that trouble me a lot. They are, respectively, “freedom” and “will”. These are the most dangerous ideas in the world. They are the seat of a political fire that has been eating away at European Man’s existence for the last three hundred and fifty years and, if left unaddressed, will deliver him into a dispossessed, deracinated, dying individualism. By any past or present measure in the life of Man, what is happening now to the most beautiful and creative of all his peoples is an event of incomprehensible scale.

Only those Europeans who cleave to that something called the radical right have noticed this, it seems. We complain ceaselessly about it. We point out that there is no place in the West where our people are not sick with freedom, or sickening fast. So sick are they, we say, that the very ties of love that bind and bring meaning and beauty to their lives are being loosened with each passing day. They are pursuing a vision of freedom that has as its method pure vandalism.

But none of it has the impact we desire. Turning in on ourselves, then, we are haunted by two questions. We return to them again and again. How did it come to pass, and why?

One answer shot through with historicism is that the intellectual and moral dynamics at work in the European mind - Abrahamic monotheism, for example, or Paulian universalism, secularism and rationalism - have worked themselves out as they must. We have been borne to the sea upon an historical river, and though we might sorely wish to feel the joyful earth beneath our feet, to climb to the snowline again and gaze down upon our green valleys and distant hamlets, still the ideas which sustain such a life are absent from the waters which carry us on.

There is another answer to the how/why question: human agency. Certain opportunistic, self-interested groups have fastened upon the historical process and impelled it in directions amenable to them, and only them. Oswald Spengler named two of these groups when he wrote:-

There is no proletarian, not even a Communist movement, that has not operated in the interests of money, and for the time being permitted by money - and that without the idealists among its leaders having the slightest suspicion of the fact.

Any debate about human agency comes down eventually, of course, to the Jewish Question. “Naming the Jew” so completely dominates American WN that, in a comment on my cosmic ants thread, Alex Linder felt able to write off all ambition to a more holistic analysis thus:-

If you want philosophy deeper than a slogan, then you’re not in politics you’re in philosophy.

Well, that’s devaluing the role of philosophy somewhat. We’re only throwing pebbles at an advancing column of tanks, of course. But MR is “in” political ideas, not politics, and looks to change the ideological frame of reference within which politics - and much else - is conducted. Alex is right that a sole concentration on the Jewish Explanation of Everything is limited to short-cut politics for nationalists. It does not begin to address the intellectual dominion of liberalism.

So, the historical dynamics of modernity and the ministrations of the power elite are, in the broadest sense, the active elements in our declension. There is, however, a no less telling passive element, one that goes mostly unremarked by radical-right analysts. And it comes right back to those propositional bon mots, freedom and will.

The suggestible mind

Why is the definition of freedom as the unfettered will accepted so unquestioningly? In what way, for example, can the will to nihilism or vice be held out to us as a liberation? And why is the formulation of the unfettered will proposed by 20th Century culture politics now so dominant? The redistribution of rights away from a supposed oppressive majority was never more than an attack on healthy life-instincts. It has “hate”, defamation and inverted racism written all over it. And yet European peoples everywhere have internalised its dicta, and set aside their own natural rights and interests even to the point of race-replacement (on economic and “fairness” grounds at least).

The timescale involved in this immense communal change of mind is less than a lifetime. In England it cannot be stretched to more than 32 years. The first Race Relations Act was passed in December 1965, and the new One-World-in-England tendency got itself voted into office in 1997 - these being, I think, the outer dates marking the process. In America the dates can be set at 1965 and 1992 ... the span of a single generation.

So great a change in so short a time might fairly be described as a mass psychosis, even a war psychosis - the war being the extended hate-fest against European normalcy and nationhood. Europeans themselves were only dragooned into this War Against Self by a relentless official attachment of racial guilt to their history, and a determined pathologisation of their culture.

We’ve been through similarly violent change in the past. Here’s a passage from The Cambridge History of English and American Literature, Chapter XIV, The Puritan Attack upon the Stage:-

William Alley, bishop of Exeter, whose condemnation of “Wanton Bookes” in The Poore Man’s Librarie (1565) expressly embraces plays ... appears to have been the first in England, since Lollard days, to take up the pen against the stage; he was the first Englishman, also, to cite with approbation the example of the ancient city of Marseilles, which “kept so greate gravitie” that it would never allow a player within its walls. A classical precedent of this kind was so well adapted to the case of the city of London that it was eagerly seized upon by later writers and reappears in almost every pamphlet written against the stage.

... But perhaps the most tangible proof of the rising puritan flood was the quiet but persistent suppression by bishop, preacher and zealous mayor of local plays and pageants throughout England during the middle years of the sixteenth century, as no longer seemly in “this happie time of the gospell.” London, almost the only city in the kingdom with its own stage when the cleansing process was completed, was to be the scene of the great struggle between puritan and player.

Again the ideological attack is present, the personal ruthlessness (which saw many an innocent burned as a witch), the agenda to deliver Englishmen from sin and into a disciplined, godly life. It worked. Over the next century Puritanism became firmly entrenched in the gentry and the emerging middle-class of the southern and eastern counties. In the three Civil Wars the Puritan “Roundheads” fought in the parliamentary army and provided core-support to Cromwell during the Commonwealth.

It is an interesting game to imagine how one might have comported oneself through such periods. It requires the shedding of modern apparel. As I wrote on identity in January:-

We receive the truer part of our psyches from our nature and, to some extent, in and through the historical culture that envelopes us from birth ... (my Englishness, say, which unites me with my kin past and present, and to the England of Shakespeare and Pitt).

... the third component of self [is] the ubiquities of individual personality which are acquired entirely through the accident of time and place ... “a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.”

GW the politically correct 1980s uni lecturer and GW the devout and loyal soldier of the Lord General’s army would not be much different men, except in their time and place. Their racial natures, their cultural Englishness would unite them. Only the acquired superficialities over which we pronounce our name but of which nothing is really us would mark them apart.

And it is here on this shifting ground of personality that the great liberal joke is played. Freedom and will! Neither are known in this place. But neither is there the substance to resist the flow of that historical river I mentioned earlier, nor to identify and guard against the ministrations of the powerful. Revolutionaries, explorers, pilgrims, men of letters, sons of the soil ... it makes no difference. All live through the same, vulnerable psychological medium, filled up from without. The only possibility for freedom is that a sufficiently discriminating intellect will see the oncoming ideological attack, and arm itself ... as we are armed. Failing that, the attack will simply be driven home, and yet one more little political or, perhaps, religious slave will be fabricated. Cultural theorists have known this for eighty years. It is what the term “Captured Intellect” that is associated with, but was never used by Antonio Gramsci, means.

This human weakness cannot be ameliorated. The fate of the vast majority of people is to be the prisoner of their times, if not under one dominant ideology, then another. Dissenters like us, who would wish to change the times, cannot rely upon the support of these people. Alex should understand that. In the end, the rather beautiful and uplifting answer is this:-

Freedom is a rare quality of the individual mind, too rare to be courted. The condition of all the rest is slavery. Therefore, make the slaves your own.

Tags: Political Philosophy

Comments:

Posted by Scimitar on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 01:37 | #

GW,

I was just browsing around on Technorati and noticed that Majority Rights isn’t even listed. Why is that?

Posted by William on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 02:10 | #

Well, some of our weaknesses have to do with not examining our words, those like “vandalism” which refers back to the noble Germanic nation of Vandals, i.e., “They are pursuing a vision of freedom that has as its method pure vandalism.” If we mock our own and use our own names as slurs, what can we expect? So what if the noble Vandal nation pillaged Rome? Many had done it before and many would do it again. The really vicious Roman military dictatorship died so the valiant Germanic nations could revitalize and express the European mind.

============

“Why is the definition of freedom as the unfettered will accepted so unquestioningly?” But it isn’t accepted. If anything, our peoples have willingly accepted growing bonds of servitude…intellectually, financially, socially, and linguistically. From any point of view, the amount of freedom dispensed to centralizing agencies is much greater than 50 years ago when it was much greater than 50 years before that. An increase in sexual libertinism is not the same as an increase of freedom…that is a small part of the overall scenario which is one very much of fettered will. [And who knows whom those moral, puritanical Roundheads spooned with on cold nights on the battlefield?]

Just look at our losses in the areas of freedom of association, freedom of contract, freedom of speech, etc. These are fettered if sexual libertinism is not.

The evocation of “will” rings through the ages as an amoral claim to power, something to be played with carefully just as one would with a 20-foot long metal pole in a thunderstorm.

===============

The student of history is well aware that freedom doesn’t mean individual freedom of action as often as it means a search for expressions of nationality, ethnic solidarity, or religious unity. The claims to freedom for the Greeks from the Turkish menace were not claims to freedom for the individual Greeks, for example.

===============

Liberalism isn’t a philosophy. It’s essentially a solvent flowing through institutions, philosophies, governments, and all our diverse values acting to dissipate their previous force and power. It’s done through ridicule, criminal statues, tax policies, immigration policies, law after law, and media argument after media argument melting the pre-existing structures which had previously been part of the mores of the folk, but never reduced, necessarily, to statute. Liberalism throws out its tentacles to new targets without ceasing its one-way acid rain on all we hold dear. Fighting something like that campaign is difficult for the very reason that it’s not a philosophy, it’s a techique, a strategem, a device, and a tactic.

Because liberalism is not a philosophy unless one assumes a solvent can carry a dogma, conservatism becomes a useless word. The sooner we free ourselves from the fetters of seeing the world through the prism of liberalism versus conservatism, the sooner we can strip off the fetters that bind us.

The only response to liberalism that can be successful is one that uses its own weapons against it.

Posted by Scimitar on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 03:04 | #

Re: your essay, I believe we have arrived at very similar conclusions. The “cult of the individual” in the West is ridiculously overrated. Independent thought is actually extremely rare. Only the strongest, most discerning minds are capable of breaking from the spirit of the times, casting doubt upon their own inherited beliefs, and critically re-evaluating them in light of new evidence; even then a strong dose of character - an unwavering intellectual commitment to the pursuit of truth - is necessary. I would say the minds of over 9/10ths of the human race are purely a construct of their heredity, environment, and surrounding culture.

In so many ways, liberalism is based upon the denial of human nature. “Society” is not something we are born into. We are not social primates who naturally live within communities. Instead, we are purely rational and autonomous individuals who “enter” society (from a pre-existing, in truth non-existent, ahistorical “state of nature” or “original position), exchanging our primordial freedoms for social rights. The highest good is “freedom” defined as the absence of restraint. This gigantic nullity is said to be telos to which all of history has been building to. “Equality” is given lip service as an ideal, but it is impossible to live up to in practice. Who really favors the children of unrelated strangers over their own offspring?

Your point about suggestibility is something I have discussed numerous times before on other venues. Humans are primates. We naturally exist in hierarchial societies. The things most people believe are not so much a matter of reason and evidence as they are a function of custom and authority (even liberalism itself is a tradition). Certain individuals are perceived to possess “legitimacy” whereas others are not. This is a highly irrational process. Some of the most interesting work in political science over the past several decades has involved drawing parallels between “leadership” in human and chimpanzee societies. The way we speak, carry ourselves, make faces, and gesture with our hands convey irrational primal cues about our authority that are received subconsciously. Such things are usually seen as more important in evaluating our status than our ideas.

Posted by Mark on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 15:00 | #

If white men are superior, unfettered freedom will allow them to rise to the top and dominate others. You collectivists are my enemy as much as blacks who wish to kill me for being white and somewhat wealthy.
Always choose freedom for the individual.

Posted by William on Fri, 06 Jul 2007 17:44 | #

“The only response to liberalism that can be successful is one that uses its own weapons against it.”

Here is an example of the kind of thing that makes the hair stand up on your head and rearranges your thinking about current events.

http://www.overthrow.com/lsn/news.asp?articleID=10470

Whatever people think of Bill White, this piece of political street theater was the most stunning piece of propaganda I have seen in a long time. Shorn of Bill’s rough edges, turning left-wing racialist Leonard Pitt’s “Cry me a river.” into this video beats any idea in the book. It’s the use of liberalism’s tactics to beat down liberalism.

We need more of this type of mockery of left-wing racialism. Guys like Pitt are not anti-racist, they are full up with racism all the way to the skin on their scalp.

Posted by Stephen on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 12:04 | #

Now that is a perfect example of the sort of woman you will find underneath the rock upon which our Father gave us to stand. Can you say “Faith” it is an easy” one” syllable word.

‘Diversity is for Dinosaur women who never saw me coming with my Sister”

Posted by festering carbuncle pustule on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 15:37 | #

“If white men are superior, unfettered freedom will allow them to rise to the top and dominate others.”

First, “unfettered freedom”, by definition, must include the right for some to choose to act collectively, if they so wish. Any “freedom” which denies people the right to choose various group evolutionatry strategies is no freedom at all.

Second, even if individual white men are “superior”, they can still be outcompeted by collectivist groups of non-whites, acting in a tightly cohesive ethnic nepotistic manner. How are you going to outlaw ethnic nepotism while at the same time promoting “unfettered freedom?”

Levantines like “Rand” didn’t really want the “cattle” thinking things through, did they?

“You collectivists are my enemy as much as blacks who wish to kill me for being white and somewhat wealthy. “

Very well. You consider us an enemy. Duly noted.

“Always choose freedom for the individual.”

No, survival precedes “freedom.” One does not have much freedom when one - and one’s group - no longer exists.

Posted by Mark on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 18:02 | #

You could not be more wrong. Freedom precedes survival because life is not worth living as a slave to any government or other collectivist body.
And you are free to associate with whomever you choose. Groups usually end up self-destructing, however.

Posted by VanSpeyk on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 19:54 | #

That is a ridiculous statement to make, Mark. If we compare life in Medieval Europe then it surely measures up as more collectivist than current Western socities, in fact I would say almost any epoch of our past was less “free” than today. Does this mean that non-survival is preferable to a - purely hypothetical - revival of these times? I agree with both Scimitar and Festering that ´freedom´ is secondary to the preservation of our race. Besides, what exactly do you understand under freedom? When the American founding fathers wrote about freedom they didn´t mean the freedom of white women to marry blacks, for instance.

Posted by free pustule on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:10 | #

“...life is not worth living as a slave to any government or other collectivist body.”

“And you are free to associate with whomever you choose”

Anyone else see the inconsistency here? Aren’t we “free” to associate as part of a collectivist body?

Don’t get me wrong, Mark - please do live your own life as a radical individualist. But, others here should have the “freedom” to pursue group evolutionary strategies.

Survival - meaning genetic continuity - is an ultimate interest. “Freedom” is a proximate interest. The ultimate freedom is the freedom to pursue genetic interests.

Any person has greater genetic interests at the group level than anywhere else. Therefore, any person’s ultimate interests can be met only by involvement in kinship based population structures. Read Salter.

Surely, any “libertarian” should grant to those interested in EGI the right and “freedom” to pursue those interests if they so choose - even if that choice involves a greater degree of “collectivism” than the “libertarians” find comfortable.

But, alas, “libertarians” - like all liberals - are basically hypocrites. Like the neconservatives, they define “freedom” as people having the “right” to be radical individualist libertarians, and how dare anyone have the temerity to actually value genetic contunuity and group survival over “freedom.”

After all - we just MUST be “free”, or else!

Posted by Scimitar on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:14 | #

You could not be more wrong. Freedom precedes survival because life is not worth living as a slave to any government or other collectivist body.

So, if pornography and interracial marriage were illegal, that is, if restrictions were placed upon your individual freedom, life would not be worth living?

Posted by Scimitar on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:17 | #

Why hasn’t Mark committed suicide? All sorts of restrictions on his individual freedom exist. Oddly, this hasn’t stopped him from taking his own life.

Posted by Scimitar on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:20 | #

After all - we just MUST be “free”, or else!

I’m going to fall on my sword now because laws exist which prohibit me from driving over 70 mph on the interstate.

Posted by pus pustule on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 20:20 | #

“Groups usually end up self-destructing, however”

Yeah, those Chinese sure look like they are on the way out.

I wonder how many Chinamen are “libertarians” I wonder.

Any connection?

For “some reason”, the only group threatened with extinction is the group that is most individualist, and most prone to buying childish notions of “freedom.”

By the way, if whites as a group are displaced by other more collectivist groups, any hope for more libertarian regimes goes out the window.

Paradox: true individualism - which has been historically found only in the West - can only be preserved by a relative shift in the continuum in the direction of collectivism.

Those who value “freedom” and the right to “do what they want” had better be interested in group-centered racial preservation of Western peoples.

They’ll find that Orientals, Muslims, Blacks, and Latinos are not good material for individualist “libertarianism.”

Individualism and collectivism is a continuum. No one suggests that whites adopt an Asian style collectivism that is alien to whites’ inner nature.

However, the radical individualism of today is also an alien construct; any meme that leads to self-destruction is not evolutionarily stable.

“Groups usually end up self-destructing, however”

Yes - libertarians are such a group.

Posted by Scimitar on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:11 | #

This goes back ultimately to the liberal perversion of the republican conception of “freedom.” In the older understanding of the term, “freedom” or “liberty” wasn’t defined negatively. It didn’t refer to a mere absence of restraint. Rather, to enjoy “liberty” or “freedom” was synonymous with being a cultivated person - one who exercised the virtues and through self-discipline achieves independence and enlightenment. Vices were character traits that inhibited the individual from achieving this goal.

Thus, there were laws against prostitution, gambling, miscegenation, drug abuse, and other behaviors which are regarded as “victimless crimes” by libertarians today. What the libertarians celebrate as “liberty” in our own times would have been recognized by older generations as “license.” An excess of “freedom,” or license, is merely the other side the coin of tyranny, or a deficiency of freedom. It has been known since the time of Plato that the former and the latter naturally segue into each other.

That’s why in almost every Western state the growth of permissive social attitudes has coincided with a drastic expansion of government. As people become more atomized, absorbed in their own private lives, social capital wanes. Isolated from each other and rotted by their own viciousness and individualism, powerful interest groups, whether they are ethnic or business lobbyists, go unrestrained and eventually capture control of government and use it for their own ends.

The community, morals, and the law are not the enemies of freedom. These are things which actually make “freedom” possible. In the Roman world, the “res publica” was the “public thing” - that which was not purely private. Libertarians demolish the foundations of freedom in freedom’s name. In the process, they ironically precipitate the “tyranny” they claim to be protecting us against.

Posted by Scimitar on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:19 | #

Libertarianism in One Lesson

- The “Party of Oxymoron”: “Individualists unite!”

- It’s time the new pro-freedom libertarian platform was implemented; child labor, orphanages, sweatshops, poorhouses, company towns, monopolies, trusts, cartels, blacklists, private goons, slumlords, etc.

- Yes, the symbol of the Libertarian Party is a Big Government Statue. It’s not supposed to be funny or ironic!

- All food, drugs, and medical treatments should be entirely unregulated: every industry should be able to kill 300,000 per year in the US like the tobacco industry.

- Central planning cannot work. Which is why all businesses internally are run like little markets, with no centralized leadership.

- In the beginning, man dwelt in a state of Nature, until the serpent Government tempted man into Initial Coercion.

- Government is the Great Satan. All Evil comes from Government, and all Good from the Market, according to the Ayatollah Rand.

- We must worship the Horatio Alger fantasy that the meritorious few will just happen to have the lucky breaks that make them rich. Libertarians happen to be the meritorious few by ideological correctness. The rest can go hang.

- Government cannot own things because only individuals can own things. Except for corporations, partnerships, joint ownership, marriage, and anything else we except but government.

- Parrot these arguments, and you too will be a singular, creative, reasoning individualist.

- Parents cannot choose a government for their children any more than they can choose language, residence, school, or religion.

- Taxation is theft because we have a right to squat in the US and benefit from defense, infrastructure, police, courts, etc. without obligation.

Posted by pustule on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 21:35 | #

Scimitar has essentially stated my own low opinion of libertarianism in better terms than I have so far been able to put together.

Scimitar, job well done.

The key paragraph here:

“That’s why in almost every Western state the growth of permissive social attitudes has coincided with a drastic expansion of government. As people become more atomized, absorbed in their own private lives, social capital wanes. Isolated from each other and rotted by their own viciousness and individualism, powerful interest groups, whether they are ethnic or business lobbyists, go unrestrained and eventually capture control of government and use it for their own ends.”

The Randians among us, I am sure, are well pleased that individualistic hedonistic white gentiles have abdicated their sense of social responsibility and sense of group identity, allowing Rand’s own more collectivist group unprecedented influence.

Rand’s own group, by the way, is of course not well noted for embracing individualism or libertarianism - although that doesn’t stop them from advising others to adopt those creeds.

How convenient.

Posted by Scimitar on Sat, 07 Jul 2007 22:05 | #

The Randroids here have deduced their fawning embrace of laissez-faire capitalism from the nature of reality itself. The true individualist unflinchingly parrots everything Ayn Rand ever said and spams Daniel Pipes essays re: Israel (a nation founded by socialists) ad nauseum.

http://www.capmag.com/search.asp

Posted by wjg on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 02:44 | #

Scimitar,

That was a very well said and fair critique of libertarianism. Adding to what you say, libertarianism is clearly unworkable as a social model by applying the concepts of game theory: organized groups, ceteris paribus, always outperform individuals; in the extreme utterly destroying them.

As “Pustule” says it is just more ideological poison marketed vigorously by Judah but intended exclusively for Euro consumption. It is a brilliant strategy on their part and a sufficient number of our people have fallen for it. How an otherwise seemingly intelligent and principled man such as Joe Sobran embraces such juvenile rubbish shows the degree to which having kosher beliefs is required for respectability - even for “anti-semites”.

Posted by Mark on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 06:05 | #

My goal is to be an empowered individual, having superior wealth and intelligence to be above the fray of government, collectivism and control. Collectivism in any form just leads to suckers and dupes being taken advantage of, hopefully by me in some capacity. I’ll be a hard master, but not necessarily fair.
Yes, libertarianism and anarchy are impractical because most people are peasants at heart and want to be sheared like sheep. As an empowered individual, these rules won’t apply to me if I can help it.

Posted by a Finn on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 07:23 | #

So, Mark, if everything goes as you planned, you will become a parasite.

Does it occur to you, that many groups benefit the individuals living in them. It is wrong reference point to talk about the mainstream collectivism of today, masquerading as individualism, greens, socialism, liberalism, hedonism etc. and deduct that all groups are just for exploitation.

Posted by Rnl on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 08:01 | #

to enjoy “liberty” or “freedom” was synonymous with being a cultivated person - one who exercised the virtues and through self-discipline achieves independence and enlightenment ... An excess of “freedom,” or license, is merely the other side the coin of tyranny, or a deficiency of freedom. It has been known since the time of Plato that the former and the latter naturally segue into each other.

The ancient term for moderation or self-restraint was _temperantia_ (Gk. sophrosyne), one of the cardinal virtues and a distinctive virtue of the good citizen. A state whose citizens practice temperance, while living in awe of the law’s sanctity, will avoid the extremes of anarchy and tyranny, which are the political counterparts of licence and slavery.

It’s a fairly simple idea when one thinks about it. It first appears in the concluding scene of Aeschylus’ _Oresteia_.

In earlier Greek literature temperance is based on the Delphic injunction that “one must think mortal thoughts.” The temperate man knows he can’t marry Zeus’ daughter, no matter how much he might wish to if he were a god himself. He therefore thinks mortal thoughts and behaves humanly, which is to say with self-restraint.

The tyrant typically lacks _sophrosyne_, as does the state he governs.

***

I share the opinion of others here of Scimitar’s contribution at 08:11 PM.

Posted by pustule on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 10:39 | #

Mark therefore plans to be a free-rider on the genetic continuity of his race (assuming he’s white).

As free-riding is the deadly enemy of collective goods such as group genetic interests, one could, in theory, view Mark as attacking _your_ child equivalents.

In other words, Mark’s “plan” is the genetic equivalent of mass murder of all those who you hold dear.

View it accordingly.

One wonders if Mark thinks he is going to be another Bill Gates. Even Gates’ wealth and belongings could be confiscated by a future non-white, antu-white ethnic nepotistic “American” government.

Apparently, for the Rand-addled, the idea that personal freedom can exist only in the context of group survival and _group empowerment_ doesn’t register.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 16:24 | #

A couple of letters-to-the-editor are up this morning over at Vdare.com, letters which I feel are à propos of the present thread:
______

AN EX-SOUTH-AFRICAN HAS A WARNING FOR AMERICANS

From: [Name Withheld]

Re: Don Collins’ Column: The June 26th Frightening Senate Amnesty Vote Recalls Gov. Lamm’s Warning About How To Destroy The U.S.

I am an ex-South African (Afrikaner or “Boer”) who left my country when Nelson Mandela, a convicted terrorist who has been repackaged by the media, liberal establishment and the corporations as a “Freedom Fighter” took over my once staunchly-sovereign First World country.

People like Harry Oppenheimer, world famous mining magnate whose grandfather stole the mining rights and minerals (gold, diamonds) from the Afrikaner with the help of the British crown (two Anglo-Boer wars) wanted it this way.

This all went against the wishes of the majority of Afrikaners, whose voting rights were gutted in 1994.

Afrikaners are now completely disenfranchised. Former Afrikaans universities, such as University of Stellenbosch or University of Pretoria, both created by Afrikaners, have now been turned into black institutions.

Our culture has been systematically destroyed. Our church says we are eternally guilty of racism because of Apartheid. The church, the media, liberal institutions and corporations work in unison.

We Afrikaners have had a long time to think about what happened. This is one of the few benefits of having lost your sovereignty: You have the time to ponder what really happened, since you no longer have to fight and struggle.

The same forces which destroyed the old South Africa are now busy breaking America and turning it into a Third World country.

Next the elites will break up the nations of Europe, after forcing them into the European Union against their will.

The corporations, the rich and the churches can afford to live in the Third World because they simply insulate themselves with money or power.

It’s the common man who loses.

I hope America is successful in its battles to save itself. But after what we experienced in South Africa, I have my doubts.

The writer currently lives in Germany.

______

A CA[LIFORNIA] ROMAN CATHOLIC READER WRITES TO HIS BISHOP

From: John F. Shanahan [e-mail him]

[Shanahan’s letter, a portion of which we post here, is addressed to the Most Reverend Gerald R. Barnes, Bishop of the Diocese of San Bernardino. Barnes (e-mail him) has appeared before Congress arguing in favor of illegal aliens and illegal immigration. Read Barnes’ recent statements on immigration here and here.] [Scroob note: See the original at Vdare.com for all links and e-mail addresses in the text.]

I am very disappointed that you have aligned yourself and the Catholic Church with the powerful forces that use illegal immigration as a damaging tool to destroy the U.S. middle class and to promote a one-world government.

I am aware of your testimony in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee on Immigration in July 2005 that supported the McCain/Kennedy legislation, which promoted and rewarded illegal immigration. I am sure that you are aware that Arlen Specter and others on the Senate Judiciary Committee are members of the treasonous Council on Foreign Relations.

Last year, a lector pointed out to the congregation that only a small number of families had made contributions to the Bishop’s Fund. My heart skipped a beat and leapt for joy—I thought that finally people were frustrated with your support for illegal immigration and were actually indicating as much with their pocketbooks.

But even though your outrageous stance on illegal immigration is well known, the people continue to contribute… perhaps because your leaflets and contribution envelopes are also written in Spanish?

Bishop, is there some mandate in God’s law or the teachings of Jesus Christ that demand that Catholics financially contribute to the demise of our own country?

Bishop, it is misleading of you to imply that your immigration position is the only morally correct one. You and I have such contrary opinions on illegal immigration because of your narrow definition of the word justice. You refer to justice whenever you talk about aliens who have broken our laws to enter our country illegally.

Where is the justice for the US citizens who just lost their jobs to illegals who will work for less money? Where is the justice for US citizens who whose salaries have been decreased because of the wage stagnation caused by illegals? Where is the justice for the average American taxpayer who has to pay the bill for more freeways and longer commuting times, gang activity, failing hospitals, trauma centers and school construction.

Where is the justice and intellectual honesty when politicians like Sen. Dianne Feinstein refer to my position as racist and religious leaders like you refer to my stance as immoral? Why do only you and the elites decide that I should have absolutely no voice in determining the type of people who are allowed to immigrate into my country?

Where is the justice for all of the parishioners who have no comprehension of your motives but will have to live with the consequences a few years from now?

Finally, Bishop, where is the justice when you decide that there is not enough poverty already in the US and that the US government should import more to be subsidized by the taxpayers?

Until we both meet our Maker, may we both continue to live in the sovereign U. S. handed down to us by our forefathers in which the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution protects our freedom of religious expression.

Shanahan is a graduate of Northwestern University and an electrical engineer.

Posted by Wild Bill on Sun, 08 Jul 2007 22:43 | #

You started with “on suggestibility”

It is linked to the Leadership principle.

This is how subliminal programming works. First it lays down a track and the dendrites follow. The solution to negative subliminal programming is positive subliminal programming.

You even cover it with this article
http://majorityrights.com/index.php/weblog/comments/cultural_instauration_a_history_of_government_interest_in_subliminal_audio/

Posted by Wunderhund on Mon, 09 Jul 2007 04:41 | #

Posted by Mark on Sunday, July 8, 2007 at 05:05 AM | #

Hey Mark, either you’re just kidding, OR, ... you remind me of a Libertarian I knew about 25 years ago. He actually believed in individual sovereign rights and property rights to the extent that,..“If someone can get to the sun and claim it, then he owns it!” He literally believed that. Talk about delusions of (potential) grandeur. Ah yes, no limits, no responsibilities to anyone but yourself. The ultimate atomized individual.

Really sad. Except that people like that are dangerous to the rest of us. People like that become known as liabilities and are shunned when the s#*t hits the fan. True leaders never forget their roots.

PS I hope that you were kidding, because if not, let me be plain and say to you:
“you are truly an a$$”

Posted by PF on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:13 | #

Interesting points, GW, Scimitar and Scroob. Good to see Scrooby posting again.

What if the orientation of human attitudes and philosophies was based on maximization of individual well-being, which the individual calculates more-or-less correctly with the help of evolutionary mechanisms embedded in himself? (i.e. wide hips, she’s fertile; food stinks: its rotten; man can kill me: I had better obey him). His philosophy then becomes a function of his calculation of his surroundings.

If this were so, then being born into a society amidst chaos and group-conflict (i.e. Dark Ages) would give birth to collectivist, group-based strategies for problem solving, since only a group can defeat or hold-off another group. (Dark Ages and Middle Ages Thinking).

And being born into a society in which problems of group conflict were already “solved” or rendered supposedly insignificant through a variety of mechanisms (Modern Period, post 1950 especially), would cause one to seek one’s maximum benefit, so calculated, even at the expense of the group, its help being no longer necessary?

When collectivism becomes profitable again for the individual, when there are no more cultural stages for European dawdies to strut up and down on, flaunting their cultural frills,because they will have been smashed to bits from artillery fire, collectivism will be legitimate. The attempts to slander it will look baldly ridiculous, in contrast to the obvious real-world reality of individualist maxim’s nonfunction.

No harm intended, but Soren Renner’s post “Anenome of the State” is for me a profound example of the extremes to which individualism will go when not controlled. I spoke with him via email, and he said that the piece meant nothing- even to him! Essentially, the idea was to be funny, although there was no concept. It was the nearest thing to a capricious, meaningless statement that I have yet seen on MR.

Now, its unpolite to say something you neither mean, nor that is crafted for the listeners ears. (Granted, Im a decadent sinner myself in my posts). Its shows a disregard for the person to whom one is speaking to post something that is essentially avante-guard nonsense. Who would subject his fellows to his own capricious whimsical mind-leakage? A true individualist, thats who.

I dont mean this as a slander against SR, but as he neither listens carefully during interviews, nor introduced himself to me in his correspondence, nor signed anything with something like “regards”, I have to say he comes across as being very “modern”, “individualistic”, and I’m sure on some level he is self-conscious about this and himself regards it as a fault, but finds it somehow irresistable.

Inasfar as “individualism” and whacky capricious I-will-be-different nonsense has replaced the social graces, I think we all can agree we have lost something without price.

Posted by PF on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 00:54 | #

GW wrote:

GW the politically correct 1980s uni lecturer and GW the devout and loyal soldier of the Lord General’s army would not be much different men, except in their time and place. Their racial natures, their cultural Englishness would unite them. Only the acquired superficialities over which we pronounce our name but of which nothing is really us would mark them apart.

I had to shiver as the author of Refuting Racial Myths posted his evidences of nordic origin for Roman and Greek aristocracies. It’s another epiphany one has to take in almost a cold sweat.
Though I acknowledge the incomplete nature of these proofs, I nevertheless find it interesting.

So many historians, puzzling endlessly over what caused The Renaissance, what caused The Enlightenment, what caused The Greek Miracle, what caused The Industrial Revolution. And the most laughable of them, trying to reason why the Industrial Revolution, like it were some kind of weather event, did not also occur in Asia!

I shivered because the naked suggestion laid out in those pages is this: cultural progress = good blood + resources

And the impotent suggestions of PC historians ring in my ears… was it the Medici’s funding? Was it the availability of wool? Was it the confinement indoors forced upon one by a rainy climate? Jesus christ, I shiver to think of it, but it was just good blood and good blood alone that wrought those works! Can anyone see it any other way?

Why of all places did the Renaissance happen in Northern Italy? The lands lost to barbarism, while the southerners, marinated in hundreds of years of “classical civilization” and “culture”, continued to produce nothing? Blood.

Posted by danielj on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 02:28 | #

This is the highest caliber discusison I have seen in a while here! These were the best critiques of libertarianism I have seen before - and the only valid ones from a racialist perspective. I must say that I feel better armed for the war of ideas.

[Keep up the discussion, I’ll post my two cents tomorrow]

I’m slightly drunk because we are celebriting my arrival in BOSTON (no more San Francisco, and if anyone is in the area, let us hook up) so I don’t have anything of value to add to the discussion yet.

Posted by Mark on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 03:37 | #

While I admire the contributions that white men made in creating the modern world, I am very pessimistic about the future. I think the vast majority of white men feel no solidarity at all with other whites, especially the under 30 generation.
I think the problem will, and has always been, blacks, but many, if not most white men will hate me for saying so. To counterbalance blacks, I think whites can use the growing population of Hispanics, but that may be just wishful thinking.
With the levels of debt, I see a depression as inevitable, unless the US seizes Mideast oil reserves, but that would take big brass balls. In a depression, there may be a reordering of society that could provide opportunity for both empowered groups and empowered individuals.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 08:28 | #

Wild Bill,

You are probably right. The judgement as to which is negative and positive programming is entirely subjective. We are back to the Freudian couch, “And was it good for you, Jo.”

Personally, I do believe in freedom, but at the level of self-consciousness - by which I do NOT mean ordinary, waking consciousness, which in my psychological schemata I characterise as mechanicity.

One should not be psychologically mechanical and not belong to any idea. Belonging - or, more accurately, having one’s passing self, one’s mental form submerged in something which is not oneself - is anti-human. This makes me not just a theoretical uber-libertarian like Mark, who I think has no psychological critique of Man, but a struggling practictioner of an impossibly difficult and unworldly freedom. Not for everybody, of course. For everybody is a slavery unchosen or, as you prefer, chosen. For more fortunate, perhaps more able people, there is , however, this other option.

Posted by a Finn on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 15:57 | #

Mark, although you overestimate the number of Whites, who don’t seem to have solidarity with other Whites, in the following article you can read about some of the psychological reasons, why the inner ethnic solidarity of whites doesn’t show as it should. In important political matters we should form our thoughts and decisions without being slave to majorities’ thoughts, because, among other things, their thoughs are subjugated to liberal media, politically correct society etc. It is better to estimate liberalism, political corectness etc., and their effects to Whites, and form opinion from that basis. (Adobe Acrobat -form):

http://www.theoccidentalquarterly.com/vol6no4/MacDonald.pdf

Here are better analysis and solutions to society’s situation (read or listen):

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=511

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=786

http://www.wvwnews.net/story.php?id=936

Mark, quit futile fantasizing about empowering yourself, take responsibility of your group and be a true productive member of your group. Shortly, be a man.

Posted by Mark on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:13 | #

Some of you are pretty free with the insults from the safety of your keyboard. No, I won’t be part of a group of cowards and fools. Those of you who choose some group over freedom deserve the contempt that many have of you.

Posted by Fred Scrooby on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:29 | #

Finn, those three wvwnews.net articles you linked were excellent. Everybody should read all three of them.

Posted by Matra on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 17:45 | #

Those of you who choose some group over freedom deserve the contempt that many have of you.

Do you think the individual freedom you cherish can survive when faced with coalitions of ethnic groups that do believe in utilising a collectivist group strategy to further their goals? A unilateral rejection of collectivism by European-Americans in favour of individualism will do nothing to end collectivism and advance freedom as long as other ethnic groups refuse to follow suit. Is there anything in the the history of Mexicans, blacks, Arabs, and other non-whites to indicate that they are open to the idea of individual freedom as envisaged by libertarians?

Posted by a Finn on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:10 | #

Mark, it was not an insult. It was just an objective assessment. Real empowerment springs from groups. The most important freedom is the ability to reach different goals, and it can be done better in European ethnic groups. And you won’t lose your individuality in them either.

By the way, I am immune to PC contempt, insults or labels.

But by all means, carry on with your journey.

To Fred Scrooby: Good to hear.

Posted by Frank McGuckin on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 18:11 | #

I completly agree with Matra. If White Americans do not organize politically around their legitimate racial interests they will die.

At the present time, White Americans are completly defenseless. White American males are at serious risk for extermination. They are powerless isolated individuals. Very easy to mow down. They are being mowed down by the thouands every day. Foolishly, they brought into the insane individualistic capitalist/libertarian ethic about being an deracinated independent contractor who all by himself, was able to make. We are a nation of Wall Street investors right?

Posted by Scimitar on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 19:56 | #

Hey Mark, either you’re just kidding, OR, ... you remind me of a Libertarian I knew about 25 years ago. He actually believed in individual sovereign rights and property rights to the extent that,..“If someone can get to the sun and claim it, then he owns it!” He literally believed that. Talk about delusions of (potential) grandeur.

LOL . . . I spit out the water I was drinking there.

Posted by Scimitar on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:03 | #

The “free man” is the individual who can count on his friends, neighbors, and kin to come to his aid when he is under attack. The slave is the isolated individual who can be pushed around and intimidated into silence.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:25 | #

The free man, in the ordinary sociological sense, is he who can apprehend his own received patterns of behaviour and opinions and, aghast at such mechanicity, finds in himself a solid alternative upon which to rely.

The slave is he who never formulates that first, nagging question which might, one day and with luck, release his psychological fetters.

Posted by Frank McGuckin on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 20:52 | #

I couldn’t have stated it better Scimitar.

Posted by Frank McGuckin on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:32 | #

Go to Dave Froeman’s-founder of Earth First-Rewilding Insititute web site. Go to his “around then campfire blog”. Go to the retreat on population stabilization thread(June 27). Go have look at my comments before the phony environmentalist Dave Foreman erases what I wrote.

Posted by Frank McGuckin on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:35 | #

Mistake. Go to the the TRI blog on froeman’s Rewilding Institute web site. go to the June 5 thread.

Posted by R. on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 21:38 | #

A heightened sense of individuality is the hallmark of our people, and has been exploited by our enemies in numerous ways, but largely through their media in its various forms. Individuality is only bad per se whenever it supercedes the collective consciousness our people should be able to develop; one that promotes overall their ethnic genetic interest while at the same time allowing the individual members a great deal of latitude.
R.

Posted by danielj on Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:44 | #

Do libertarians think they are going to be able to form a society in which their “rights” are preserved without first forming a big group of people to enforce those rights?

Or will everyone one day spontaneously metamorphize into freely contracting Randians entire?

It is an impossible and a self-defeating philosophy.

Also, if anyone lives in the Greater Boston Metro and wants to rent a room to me and the woman whilst we find a place to live let me know.

Posted by Lurker on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 01:46 | #

Mark - how come you are typing in English rather than some language of your own devising?

English, like any language has evolved collectively over many generations. To be sure some indviduals have added more than others but its still a collective enterprise which you seem hypocritcally able to take advantage of.

Posted by ben tillman on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:02 | #

Collectivism in any form just leads to suckers and dupes being taken advantage of, hopefully by me in some capacity….

Those of you who choose some group over freedom….

What if the cells of Mark’s body followed the advice emanating from Mark’s keyboard? How long would he last?

You must realize, Mark, that you are a “collectivist” project.

Posted by ben tillman on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:14 | #

There are a couple of much-used words - propositions really - that trouble me a lot. They are, respectively, “freedom” and “will”

Freedom means self-ownership, but personal self-ownership can be achieved only through membership in a human group that is itself self-owning.

Posted by R. on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 05:34 | #

Mark is a random conglomeration of cells having no identity other than Mark. He cannot envision something higher than himself, such as a collection of ethnically-related individuals comprising a whole, working together to ensure their continuity in the form of future generations springing from their ancestors, carrying on vitally important traditions of which Mark is totally unaware. The freedom Mark desires is nothing more than the freedom to deny the rest of us our freedom to exist in opposition of Mark’s faith.
R.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wed, 11 Jul 2007 07:19 | #

ben,

It doesn’t mean self-ownership in any literal sense. Literalness is already a coarsening into the usual political furrows. A man may be constrained by prison walls and yet be free. Conversely, another may spend his entire life as a latter-day frontiersman in some high Canadian fastness, untrammelled by other men’s laws, pointless and dehumanising work, debt, taxes and fashionable shoes, and yet lack the subtlety of mind and the questioning of self that might grant him a beginning with true freedom.

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