Welfare Warfare

Border battles are heating up in the EU. The major entry point into Europe for "refugees" has been the Italian Coast Guard, who "rescue" the migrants from the Mediterranean, as Zerohedge reported on the process late last year.

NGOs, smugglers, the mafia in cahoots with the European Union have shipped thousands of illegals into Europe under the pretext of rescuing people, assisted by the Italian coast guard which coordinated their activities.

Human traffickers  contact the Italian coast guard in advance to receive support and to pick up their dubious cargo. NGO ships are directed to the “rescue spot” even as those to be rescued are still in Libya. The 15 ships that we observed are owned or leased by NGOs have regularly been seen to leave their Italian ports, head south, stop short of reaching the Libyan coast, pick up their human cargo, and take course back 260 miles to Italy even though the  port of Zarzis in Tunis is just 60 mile away from the rescue spot.

Here is a map of the rescue zone.

The migrant boats are usually unpowered with no chance to make it to Europe. Smugglers call the Italian coast guard and then drag the life boats out to the nearest waters that can be considered international. The Italians, afraid of being called racists, dutifully perform the daring rescue operation and haul them up to Sicily. By the thousands per day.

This was all prophesied by Gadaffi before Obama/Clinton saw to his brutal murder.

There are millions of blacks who could come to the Mediterranean to cross to France and Italy, and Libya plays a role in security in the Mediterranean.

Italy is not the preferred destination of most migrants. They try to get to the most lucrative welfare states, particularly Germany and Britain. However, many of the migrants remain in limbo in Italy, unable to legally cross into the other countries. The migrants are responding to the incentives provided by northern European countries, but are backlogging in southern Europe. Italy, under great strain by the migrants, is now threatening to unleash up to 200,000 migrants into the Schengen zone by issuing them temporary humanitarian visas. They surely feel they'd be justified, as they are bearing the brunt of the migrant invasion, yet on the other hand they're the ones steaming down to Africa every day to provide free ferry rides to Europe.

Austria has responded, and here's where it gets good, by threatening to militarily shut their border with Italy.

Austria has warned it will send soldiers to close the border with Italy in 24 hours if Rome decides to take the "nuclear option" and grant visas to almost 100,000 migrants stranded in the Mediterranean country.

What a difference a year or two makes. In 2015 Europe threw open their borders in the most egregious display of virtue signaling the world had ever experienced. Anyone who even hesitated to show support was labeled a racist. Most on the right predicted what would happen. The cultural enrichment would soon wear out its welcome, European society would begin to fracture at the seams, the Schengen agreement (and likely the entire EU) would be destroyed, and eventually we'd see the return of civil war to Europe.

And now, just two years later, we have European countries bailing out of the EU and threatening to use their armies for their intended purpose: defending national borders. Talk about a continental schism. In many European countries it is actually illegal to criticize the migrants or migration policies on social media, yet other countries are mobilizing troops to stop the invasion. The good news is that Europeans seem to be transitioning from the heart-warming sentiment of all immigration is good to the realization that there is some limit to how much immigration may be permitted. Now they're just haggling over numbers.

In the meantime, European countries are stuck playing hot potato with the transcontinental guests seeking to leech off welfare. They're playing blackmail with blacks. The gravest threat that can be made to a European country is to flood them with migrants, whom they will be compelled to house and feed. Austria is taking the threat so serious they are willing to militarize their border. It's only been two years. One wonders where we'll be in another two.

Why Can't We Be More Like Japan?

Lately liberals are floating this meme around:

Why can't we be more like Japan? Hey, that's something we can all agree on. A few other relevant statistics.

1. Japan is almost completely ethnically homogeneous.
2. Japan allows very little immigration.
3. Japan has a very strong culture that normalizes modes of behavior.
4. Japanese obesity rates are a tenth of those in the US.
5. Drug addiction is rare in Japan.

If the question is Why can't we be more like Japan? then many on the far right will agree. I guarantee you every last one would make the trade of state healthcare for strongly enforced national homogeneity and norms of behavior. Do you think liberals ever notice that their models for social democracy are places with strong national identities? (Or were until so recently.)

RinoCare: Good News for People Who Like Bad News

Paul Ryan's proposed healthcare bill is out. It's a steaming pile, as you might imagine. It's probably worse even than I expected, and I've already called Ryan out as the biggest traitor in politics ever. Subsidies are still there but renamed. The individual mandate is still there but renamed and penalties offset from the IRS to the insurance companies (a smart political move).  It's still a massive entitlement program that requires heavy taxation, heavy redistribution of wealth, conflates healthcare with health insurance, and doesn't address the high prices.

The bill is being dubbed RinoCare, ObamaCareLite, and ObamaCare 2.0, among other names. Some are calling it TrumpCare, but I'm not sure if that's accurate. Trump campaigned on "Repeal & Replace." This is more like "Rename & Modify." Perhaps modify doesn't signify much. No one claimed that Obamacare would never be modified. After the massive premium increases last year Democrats said that everything would be fine as long as Hillary could go in and "tweak" the legislation. Let's call it "Rename & Recess". The Republican Congressmen can shuffle things around, pass a bill that is fundamentally equivalent to Obamacare, and duck out of town before anyone in the media has time to call them racist.

Here are some handy guidelines to tell you how you should feel about this legislation.

• If you're a conservative, you should be outraged in principle, but not in practice. Make any sense? Because conservatives are in principle rooted in traditional cultural values and small government ethos but in practice tend to borrow and spend to grow the size of government. Since the government plans to spend more on healthcare and on the military you should balance out to contentment.
• If you're a liberal, you'll have to wait and see whether or not Trump supports it. Initial reactions indicate he's pushing for it, so I guess you'll need to be against it.
• If you're a libertarian, you're probably a liberal who doesn't like the government telling you what to do. Your biggest gripe should be that the individual mandate wasn't eliminated, just shuffled around.
• If you're a constitutionalist, you should oppose the bill on grounds that the 10^th Amendment has not yet been repealed.
• If you're a socialist, you should love the bill because it's a government program doomed to failure that Republicans are calling the "free-market solution" anyway. Patience Iago, PATIENCE! As soon as the whole thing collapses on itself you can scream until your lungs bleed that free-market healthcare solutions don't work.

So what if you're an alt-righter or one of those right-wing neo-reactionaries? (There's a decent chance if you follow this blog). Neo-reactionaries are certainly opposed to this kind of legislation that furthers the scope of national largess. And that's why we should support it.

Let's make an analogy. Look at Sweden. Sweden has hit peak insanity, as best as I can tell. That's not necessarily sober analysis, it may just be a lack of creativity. Just because I can't imagine how they could be much more absurd doesn't mean it isn't possible. The long-term prospects of Sweden as a culture and as a nation seem to depend on whether they can bankrupt themselves before they destroy themselves. Bankruptcy is sometimes all that stops the gambling addict, and so it may be all that ends the dangerous spiral of pathological altruism.

The brave Swedes lead the way, but the US doesn't lag terribly far behind. As far as healthcare goes, the expectation that the federal government should provide healthcare to all citizens has been established. Trump ran to replace Obamacare, not to remove national healthcare. At this point, it's practically semantics. The people demand healthcare, and politicians who refuse will find themselves sitting at home watching with the rest of us. Writing blogs, probably.

A democracy that gives universal suffrage to a generally irresponsible populace is without a doubt embarked on a slow boat to disaster. The normal tendency of inevitable disasters is the sooner the better. The longer the tectonic pressures build, the more catastrophic the inevitable earthquake. The longer the bubble inflates, the harder the crash. If you see the United States as such a disaster set in motion, then your motivations should be (1) to precipitate the collapse as soon as possible, and (2) to have yourself in the best possible position when that time comes. In general, this means to spiral the debt so high that the government is impeded in its functioning and that either default or inflation is inevitable, which would help prevent foreign debt holders from sucking all the remaining wealth out.

On healthcare, if the people demand it, that's what we'll get. So we want the plan that tends to be funded by government debt. Not taxes, and not increasing premiums and others costs. The government is largely responsible for driving up the cost of healthcare to begin with. Now they want to take over the industry entirely. Fine, let's just make sure we aren't the ones getting saddled with the cost, and that it serves our intentions of bankrupting the Fedguv sooner than later.

Equality and Other Founding Myths

Equality

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal...

If you had to sum up the entirety of Progressive ideology in a single word, I don't know what you could possibly pick other than equality. (Besides maybe a few pejoratives.)  They are obsessed with equality. Their major gripe, taken from Marx, is that all inequality stems from oppression. Thus they find and fight oppression pretty much everywhere. And as a sane person, if you challenged them on the notion, they will accuse you of being anti-American, of violating our core values. But is this the equality that was intended by the founding fathers?

What do most people today think of when they hear "all men are created equally"? Ask someone. They will likely tell you "equality under the law." Right? All men (in the gender-neutral sense) are afforded the same legal rights and protections. It's as simple as that. It's the only possible interpretation. But is that how the Founders themselves interpreted it?

It is fairly straight-forward to show they did not. Most glaringly, the acceptance of human slavery is certainly the strongest evidence imaginable to disprove the belief in equality under the law. Slaves were granted none of the inalienable rights mentioned. Perhaps the only stronger evidence would be the strong restriction of political franchisement. Here was a government of the people, where a relative few were actually permitted to vote.

So why would the phrasing of equality be given such prominence if equality under the law isn't really what was intended? The answer is actually quite simple, and would be quite obvious to anyone if it we hadn't been educated to think a certain way about this. What is the context of the phrase? It was written in the Declaration of Independence. What was the intention of that document? Was it to lay the framework for a new government? Was is it a philosophical treatise on Enlightenment-era principles of government? Was it to instruct future Americans on what "American values" would be?

No. It was to renounce the authority of King George III over the colonies. That's really it. It was a giant middle finger and, implicitly, a declaration of war. The core of the matter is this: where did King George's authority over the colonies come from? From the colonies themselves? Clearly not. From the British Parliament? Possibly, but then why was the declaration not made to them? Generally speaking, what claim did monarchs of the era make giving them authority to rule?

The answer is the divine right to rule. God Himself graced the monarch with His blessing. It should be no coincidence that the Declaration of Independence was penned shortly after the publication of Thomas Paine's Common Sense, a wildly popular pamphlet that eviscerated royal political legitimacy. The context of the phrasing is clear. Equality meant no divine right to rule. Political legitimacy comes from the consent of the governed, not from the Almighty.

Eventually the definition of equality became applied more liberally, to mean equality under the law as we generally conceive it. And there is much evidence to support this. Slavery has been abolished. Political franchisement has been granted to nearly all adults. And we expect our judiciary to perform their duties in an impartial fashion.

Equality was again expanded to be applied even more liberally again, to mean equality of opportunity. All Americans should be granted the same opportunities for success, no matter their background. Because of this we have universal public education, labor laws, consumer and renter protections, and a whole slew of other regulatory designed to eliminate obstacles that might obstruct citizens from reaching their full potential.

And in the modern era equality was expanded even more liberally yet again, to mean equality of outcomes. The notion is that if there is no general equality in outcomes of different groups of people, it must be corrected by the government. This provides the justification with what has become the large enterprise of government today: social programs and wealth transfers. The non-governmental sector see this as well through affirmative actions programs and scholarships and other aid intended for disadvantaged demographics. Further we are seeing large energetic movements, now mainstream on the left, that condemn the willful oppression of some groups by others, which is merely Marxism. What would the Founders say about such an interpretation of equality? Well interestingly enough, Paine addressed it himself in the first paragraph of the relevant section of his pamphlet.

MANKIND being originally equals in the order of creation, the equality could only be destroyed by some subsequent circumstance: the distinctions of rich and poor may in a great measure be accounted for, and that without having recourse to the harsh ill-sounding names of oppression and avarice. Oppression is often the CONSEQUENCE, but seldom or never the MEANS of riches; and tho' avarice will preserve a man from being necessitously poor, it generally makes him too timorous to be wealthy.

Here he seems to refute the Communist Manifesto 170 years prior to its publication. Perhaps this indicates I give Marx to much credit as the founder of  Oppressionism, as the notion seems to have been prevalent enough in the 1700s for Paine to feel obligated to address it immediately in his own work. Clearly the notion of equality of outcomes was specifically dismissed by the Founders as spurious, although where they stand on equality of opportunities is a question I'll save for a later time.

Universal Rights

The Declaration of Independence quote from above continues.

... that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

What could be more undeniably American than the guarantee of basic human rights? But as before there is no reason to believe the words were not written with the same intentions as they are interpreted today. Today every other political agenda is couched in the terms of human rights. Women's rights, gay rights, abortion rights, consumer rights. All are apparently inalienable rights bequeathed from the good Lord Himself. 

Let's examine a few of the original rights.

Freedom of Speech

The second inalienable right mentioned, so it must be important. But was it really inalienable? Certainly much speech was still limited. Libel and slander laws applied. And the early government passed legislation against sedition, making it illegal to advocate for insurrection. Clearly universal freedom to say anything was not intended. What was intended was that political opinions could not be suppressed by the government. 

Freedom of the Press (from ridicule)

Recently we're hearing the press complain that by routinely criticizing the honesty of the media, Donald Trump is denying them their Constitutionally sanctioned Freedom of the Press. This is the same media which has for over a year run the most ridiculous and slanderous stories imaginable. Did the Founders share the belief that the press shouldn't be ridiculed by the President? We should consult the author of the Declaration and 3rd President himself. (source)

• "I deplore... the putrid state into which our newspapers have passed and the malignity, the vulgarity, and mendacious spirit of those who write for them... These ordures are rapidly depraving the public taste and lessening its relish for sound food. As vehicles of information and a curb on our funtionaries, they have rendered themselves useless by forfeiting all title to belief... This has, in a great degree, been produced by the violence and malignity of party spirit." --Thomas Jefferson to Walter Jones, 1814. ME 14:46
• "Our printers raven on the agonies of their victims, as wolves do on the blood of the lamb." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1811. ME 13:59
• "From forty years' experience of the wretched guess-work of the newspapers of what is not done in open daylight, and of their falsehood even as to that, I rarely think them worth reading, and almost never worth notice." --Thomas Jefferson to James Monroe, 1816. ME 14:430
• "Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day." --Thomas Jefferson to John Norvell, 1807. ME 11:224
• "As for what is not true, you will always find abundance in the newspapers." --Thomas Jefferson to Barnabas Bidwell, 1806. ME 11:118
• "Advertisements... contain the only truths to be relied on in a newspaper." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Macon, 1819. ME 15:179
• "The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Seymour, 1807.

Right to Bear Arms

Many on the right oppose any sort of gun control on principle. "What part of shall not be infringed do you not understand?" goes the common retort. And yet the Founders did not hold themselves to such a strict standard. Guns were forbidden to slaves, criminals, indentured servants, and frequently to Indians, or even immigrant groups such as Catholics. Guns were sometimes registered or confiscated or removed to a central location for public safekeeping. Locales in the Wild West frequently had more strict gun laws than seen today. Clearly the Founders' intention of a well-armed militia capable of resisting state tyranny does not translate into the modern stance of every schizo gets a gun.

Freedom of Religion

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof

Originally meant to restrict Congress from declaring an official state religion, this has been stretched nearly to the point of being interpreted as a human right not to be exposed to undesirable religious speech. Of course the Founders practiced no such hostility to the open exercise of religion by government personnel and even institutions. To understand what freedom of religion means you really have to put yourself into the context of a group that had just broken away from a the British monarchy and the Angilican state religion.

Universal Suffrage

The Constitution makes no mention of requirements for voting, leaving the matter to the individual states. The states tightly restricted franchisement, with restriction to white property-owning males being common. Since that time numerous changes have been made to the Constitution making universal suffrage the codified law. If someone tells you the right to vote is a basic American right, well they are correct. But if they try to say the country was founded so that every man could vote, well that is just not accurate.

Conclusion

Much of what is passed off as traditional American values or founding principles are really nothing of the sort. Often people make the assumption with realizing the actual stance of the Founders on the various issues, and without realizing how much they have been altered in the nearly 230 years of our country's existence.

Hypocrisy and the 4 Stages of Anti-Progressivism

The 3 Stage of Anti-Progressivism

One of the things I have been fueled by in the last year or so is in pointing out the hypocrisy of the left. I always had believed the left vs. right paradigm to be a battle of principles, but in a year that view has been shattered. The progression is something like this:

1. I disagree with the principles of the left.
2. The principles of the left are inconsistent.
3. The left has no principles.

Somone in Stage 1 will point out the flaws of liberal ideology. At Stage 2 all energy will be spent showing the contradictions of the left. That is, pointing out its hypocrisy. Stage 3 will proceed the same, although with increased exasperation. Before I proceed to Stage 4, let's look at what hypocrisy is, what it isn't, and how someone could erroneously come to the conclusion of hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy

Let's look at the two different logical predicates for hypocrisy. Let B be a belief, and a and b be actions or statements. At it's most basic description hypocrisy is this

B  ∧ (a → ¬B)

This would read like "you state a belief in B, yet action a indicates no belief in B." The predicate reduces to  B ∧ ¬B. But B  and ¬B cannot both be true. Thus the contradiction. In practice hypocrisy claims often look like this:

(a → B)  ∧ (b → ¬B)

This would read as "your action a implies a belief B for some principle, but your action b indicates a lack of belief B. This is used to suggest the subject only uses principles when convenient, which would make them not really principles at all, but just crude political weapons.

False hypocrisy is where a predicate of the hypocrisy formula is not actually true. This occurs because it is either false that a → B or it is false that b → ¬B. This is an informal logical fallacy because the predicates are logically consistent, it is the underlying assumptions that are false. The implication that the action implies some belief is at risk of hasty generalization.

Let's use an example of a false implication. I am opposed to the Roe v. Wade ruling. This is a. Almost anyone who hears that will make the assumption a → B₁ , where B₁  is the belief that women should not have legal access to abortions. This could be the basis to make all sorts of hypocrisy claims. But in reality a → B₂ , where B₂ is the belief that Supreme Court rulings have no right to contravene the 10^th Amendment. It's really a parliamentary argument rather than a moralistic one.

Group hypocrisy is a bit more complicated than individual hypocrisy. We'll use the notation G to denote a group, and G₁ to denote a subgroup of group G. We'll use G as a function, so that G(a) means "G does a" and G(B) means "G believes B". We'll also use the function P(G) to mean "the group G is principled."

The false group hypocrisy fallacy to watch out for then is this:

(G₁(a)→ B)  ∧ (G₂(b)→ ¬B) → ¬G(P)

The reason this is a fallacy is because it is entirely possible for different beliefs to exist within a larger group. For instance I am conservative but also an atheist who isn't opposed to legal abortion. At least 90% of claims of conservative hypocrisy I encounter don't even apply to me. We must be careful when making those claims too. Many people who call themselves liberals are really Classical Liberals. They fundamentally have more in common with mainstream modern conservatives than they do with modern liberals (Progressives), they just often don't realize it. There is a growing subgroup of conservatives that reject Classical Liberalism as a reaction against Progressivism. They believe Classical Liberalism naturally leads way to Progressivism, which ironically is the strongest force destroying Classical Liberalism in western civilization. (Or as Stefan Molyneux calls it, civilization.) This subgroup is generally termed the Alt-Right, or the Neoreaction. Modern mainstream conservatives are trying to figure out how to have Classical Liberalism without Progressivism. The Alt-Right is for those who have become cynical of liberalism altogether. Sorry for the tangent, but as you can see applying broad generalizations for the purpose of proving hypocrisy is prone to the error of overgeneralizing a subgroup to the larger group.

Stage 4 of anti-Progressivism

Stage 4 is the realization that modern liberals aren't entirely unprincipled, but that they have one overriding principle that supersedes all others. From this point on in my blog I will refer to it as Antidiscrimination, The Holy Principle, or just The Principle (because Antidiscrimination is a lot to type). 

I've finally stepped into Stage 4, largely thanks to this lecture filmed a decade ago. The lecture is only 30 minutes long and is highly recommended.

I won't get too much into the details of Antidiscrimination, as that video lays it out very well. But do keep in mind that each Stage of Anti-Progressivism does not invalidate the prior stages. Antidiscrimination may be the Holiest of Principles, but still they violate it whenever it is convenient. They still discriminate when it comes to gender rights movements. SJWs I argue with on facebook almost always discriminate when they make mention of the fact that I'm white, as if it invalidates the arguments I make. They discriminate when they call white student unions racist, while permitting them for every other ethnicity. In general they discriminate every time they choose victim and oppressor identities.

If they universally applied the principle it would be one thing. But Antidiscrimination translates to, "Everything I don't like is caused by discrimination, and nothing I like is discrimination." It's not really a principle because it is entirely subjective and itself subservient to Intersectionality philosophy (which is itself subservient to an identity-based culture war of which the good and evil sides have been determined beforehand).

Moving beyond Hypocrisy

My major reason for writing is to encourage others in the right and alt-right to move beyond hypocrisy. You can point out the hypocrisy of the left all day long. Frankly at this point it doesn't matter. People on the left are largely immune to these logical arguments. If pointing out their hypocrisy was effective it would have worked already. The battle is always for the middle, and I'm not sure how effective it is either. When people on forums such the r/the_donald announce they're changing sides, abandoning liberalism, it is almost never, "I read some compelling logic that changed my mind." It is more like "the left has started doing things that completely disgust me." It is always an emotional decision first, rationale comes after.

Thus pointing out leftist hypocrisy may serve no purpose other than its therapeutic value to those of us so disturbed by them. I'm not sure it gets us anywhere. If our goal is to convert those in the center, we will get more success from antagonizing the left, to make them even more extreme. Keep calm and fan the flames of their insanity.