Many people treat technology like magic even in the West. How does a cell phone work? Dunno. Where does it come from? The store. Civilization depends on the knowledge of a small fraction of the world’s 7.5 billion population. The know-how to make pharmaceuticals, complex devices, aircraft, computers, industrial chemicals from scratch is probably confined to a few million people concentrated in North America, Europe, Russia and North Asia. The rest of us are end users.
“Goodbye and good luck to all.”
Out of the Progressive Stack
Well. (language warning)
Hard to argue with him, actually.
Skin in the Game
The Intellectual Yet Idiot is a production of modernity hence has been accelerating since the mid twentieth century, to reach its local supremum today, along with the broad category of people without skin-in-the-game who have been invading many walks of life. Why? Simply, in most countries, the government’s role is between five and ten times what it was a century ago (expressed in percentage of GDP). The IYI seems ubiquitous in our lives but is still a small minority and is rarely seen outside specialized outlets, think tanks, the media, and universities – most people have proper jobs and there are not many openings for the IYI.
“We should invade their countries, kill their leaders and convert them to Christianity.”
“L’Affaire Coulter”, 15 years on.
The Fifteenth September 11
Events since September 11 showed that the globalized world is unwilling to resolve conflicts involving major financial and economic factors by responding with conventional military and diplomatic instruments. Even a challenge like September 11 would be ignored if it were bad for business. Any attempts to resort to these methods will be vetoed.
The end of the Bush era marked the rejection of these former methods and with them signaled the apparent decline of national action, indeed of the nation state. In its place would stand the transnational institutions. In that sense Bush was the “last president” in the old mold, just as Obama was to be the first of the new, one of a different type; a perfect representative of the successor order, a child of the world with no particular loyalties except to some vague arc of history.
The Obama era was an attempt to supersede the old methods with a system where only negotiations between the power elites were permissible to resolve problems. That was the theory at least. Unfortunately this method too is failing. It has failed to secure the future of the EU. It has failed to secure the Middle East, even the safety and existence of Saudi Arabia. It threatens to fail catastrophically in Asia. It has failed everywhere. It did not restore the anticipated stability. All it gave us was the Forever War.
Milo On The ‘Alt-Right’
Here, Tell These People Something They Don’t Know About Me
If you haven’t noticed, our side has been losing consistently since 1988. We can win midterms, but we do nothing with them. Call ours Hannibalic victories. After the Carthaginian’s famous slaughter of a Roman army at Cannae, he failed to march on an undefended Rome, prompting his cavalry commander to complain: “you know how to win a victory, but not how to use one.” And, aside from 2004’s lackluster 50.7%, we can’t win the big ones at all.
Because the deck is stacked overwhelmingly against us. I will mention but three ways. First, the opinion-making elements–the universities and the media above all–are wholly corrupt and wholly opposed to everything we want, and increasingly even to our existence. (What else are the wars on “cis-genderism”–formerly known as “nature”–and on the supposed “white privilege” of broke hillbillies really about?) If it hadn’t been abundantly clear for the last 50 years, the campaign of 2015-2016 must surely have made it evident to even the meanest capacities that the intelligentsia–including all the organs through which it broadcasts its propaganda–is overwhelmingly partisan and biased. Against this onslaught, “conservative” media is a nullity, barely a whisper. It cannot be heard above the blaring of what has been aptly called “The Megaphone.”
Second, our Washington Generals self-handicap and self-censor to an absurd degree. Lenin is supposed to have said that “the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.” But with an opposition like ours, why bother? Our “leaders” and “dissenters” bend over backward to play by the self-sabotaging rules the Left sets for them. Fearful, beaten dogs have more thymos.
Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.
[…]
The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America’s ruling and intellectual classes. Their reasons vary somewhat. The Left and the Democrats seek ringers to form a permanent electoral majority. They, or many of them, also believe the academic-intellectual lie that America’s inherently racist and evil nature can be expiated only through ever greater “diversity.” The junta of course craves cheaper and more docile labor. It also seeks to legitimize, and deflect unwanted attention from, its wealth and power by pretending that its open borders stance is a form of noblesse oblige. The Republicans and the “conservatives”? Both of course desperately want absolution from the charge of “racism.” For the latter, this at least makes some sense. No Washington General can take the court–much less cash his check–with that epithet dancing over his head like some Satanic Spirit. But for the former, this priestly grace comes at the direct expense of their worldly interests. Do they honestly believe that the right enterprise zone or charter school policy will arouse 50.01% of our newer voters to finally reveal their “natural conservatism” at the ballot box? It hasn’t happened anywhere yet and shows no signs that it ever will. But that doesn’t stop the Republican refrain: more, more, more! No matter how many elections they lose, how many districts tip forever blue, how rarely (if ever) their immigrant vote cracks 40%, the answer is always the same. Just like Angela Merkel after yet another rape, shooting, bombing, or machete attack. More, more, more!
This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.
“… charge the cockpit or you die.”
Thank you, Stephen Harper.
Thank you to Calgarians and Canadians for having given me the honour of serving the best country in the world. pic.twitter.com/afidHZ9xgr
— Stephen Harper (@stephenharper) August 26, 2016
Here, Tell These People Something They Don’t Know About Me
Who’s laughing now?
Britain is part of Europe – and always will be
Patrick Moore
I moved the auto-play below the fold.
“Two kinds of Canadians visit Cuba…”
The only difference between Canadian Thanksgiving and the one you guys celebrate a month later is that, besides having to listen to some 30-year-old who reads comic books “graphic novels” and still lives with his parents drone on about Columbus and smallpox blankets, we also have to hear about all the “cute little cars” they have in Cuba.
QOTW
Foreign meddling in Brexit
Now Clinton is jumping in to pump up the Brussels regime.
Meanwhile:
1/ Unfortunate hearing President Obama tell the UK that it goes to the "back of the queue" on trade if it votes for independence from the EU
— Jason Kenney (@jkenney) April 23, 2016
As an aside, does anyone else find it somewhat humorous that the Americans are pushing the UK to be subject to an unrepresentative governing body?
“They say alcohol was a factor.”
Appropriate This!
h/t Rolf

