Whatever one wants to label it, American expansion has led to the habit of empire, expansion, and war. As Americans, we might very well cover our actions and deeds in fair, liberal, and republican language, but these adornments cannot change the essence of imperialism, by whatever name. The repeated government removal of American Indians is certainly one blatant example of this imperialism in the 19th century, which often failed even to discriminate against those Indian tribes hostile to American interests (such as the Sioux) and those in admiration and alliance (the Nez Perce).
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/11/manifest-destiny-american-nimrods-bradley-birzer.html
Category Archives: Politics
Why Are We Still in Afghanistan? – Reason.com
Cultural interventionism v/s Guns
“There is ‘more power in blue jeans and rock and roll than the entire Red Army’ said French philosopher Régis Debray”
Soviet Denim Smuggling – The History of Jeans Behind the Iron Curtain https://www.heddels.com/2014/09/soviet-denim-smuggling-history-jeans-behind-iron-curtain/
Our options have fallen into two categories: bad and worse.
— Read on reason.com/archives/2018/11/29/why-are-we-still-in-afghanistan
Why Are We Still in Afghanistan? – Reason.com
Our options have fallen into two categories: bad and worse.
— Read on reason.com/archives/2018/11/29/why-are-we-still-in-afghanistan
Global Warming: Fake Science Again Serves Far-Left Political Agenda | Investor’s Business Daily
A new White House report makes alarming projections about future global warming. Is it time for panic? Nope. It’s just more fake global warming science.
— Read on www.investors.com/politics/editorials/global-warming-fake-science-agenda/
Learned Ignoramus
It’s normal for political debates to quickly take an *interdisciplinary* turn; topics spanning from climate science, net-neutrality to macro-economics will be seamlessly engaged. And it’s also normal to express very specific and forceful policy positions on all these massive problems. We conveniently forget these are actual areas of specialization. Just imagine a set of cafe intellectuals expressing specific solutions to problems in microbiology, nanotechnology etc! But, when it comes to public policy, any such diffidence is rare, instead curiously strong opinions on complex topics is the norm.
Political opinions are also a lot about voicing our ideology. We enthusiastically state our position to signal who we are, not to debate or reconcile. In that sense, opinions are like badges. Quite like how a savage might use face paint to signal his tribe, we use policy prescriptions to signal our political leanings. Actually, many pick their tribe, and then adopt all the interdisciplinary policy positions wholesale. The surprising aspect is, college educated individuals are equally, or sometimes relatively more tribal in their opinions.
José Ortega y Gasset thought this was a relatively novel phenomenon, and closely related to the age of specialization.
“For, previously, men could be divided simply into the learned and the ignorant, those more or less the one, and those more or less the other. But your specialist cannot be brought in under either of these two categories. He is not learned, for he is formally ignorant of all that does not enter into his speciality; but neither is he ignorant, because he is “a scientist,” and “knows” very well his own tiny portion of the universe. We shall have to say that he is a learned ignoramus, which is a very serious matter, as it implies that he is a person who is ignorant, not in the fashion of the ignorant man, but with all the petulance of one who is learned in his own special line.
And such in fact is the behavior of the specialist. In politics, in art, in social usages, in the other sciences, he will adopt the attitude of primitive, ignorant man; but he will adopt them forcefully and with self-sufficiency, and will not admit of — this is the paradox — specialists in those matters. By specializing him, civilization has made him hermetic and self-satisfied within his limitations; but this very inner feeling of dominance and worth will induce him to wish to predominate outside his speciality.” — José Ortega y Gasset
Ortega y Gasset’s Revolt of the Masses (excerpt)
Sort of ironic that civilization might have made us more tribal, at least in certain ways.
Propaganda as Mechanization
“What caused the disturbances in people’s minds [in the 1920s and 1930s] was that we were all subjected to propaganda of a kind the human race had never before experienced; we were subject to two deliberate scientifically-organised lie-machines, the Nazi one and the Soviet one, operated in the interests of two tyrants who were also demagogues.
What made things unique is the they told opposite lies.
It was like having two anti-Christs contradicting one another.
The machines plunged on whatever anyone said, however young or unauthoratative that person might be.”
—Bernard Wall, Headlong into Change (London: Harvill Press, 1969), 79.
Four invincible libertarian geniuses — do you know them?
For questions pertaining to the U.S. Constitution, I ask Kevin Gutzman (author of James Madison and the Making of America and The Politically Incorrect Guide to the Constitution) or Brion McClanahan (author of The Founding Fathers Guide to the Constitution).
On economics I ask Jeff Herbener (I’ve asked him probably hundreds of questions over the years) of Grove City College, and Bob Murphy, author of many books. On anarcho-capitalism, again I ask Bob. (He wrote a very creative book on the subject called Chaos Theory.)
— Read on mailchi.mp/tomwoods/two-sentences-318861
And, of course, add Tom Woods and Jason Jewell. Six amazing scholars.
Christopher Dawson, BEYOND POLITICS (1939)
Inspired by Gleaves Whitney and Winston Elliott, I first read Christopher Dawson seventeen years ago, this Thanksgiving break. To celebrate that first reading–which changed my life–here is the full PDF of Dawson’s 1939 book, Beyond Politics. Enjoy.
Law and Purpose
Effort required to *enforce* a law is a reasonable indicator of its validity. If we need to go out of the way to enforce something, then it might just not be compatible with English conception of law. Hayek says, law simply helps us coexist. Its function is not to achieve specific goals set by some authority.
“In the usual sense of purpose, namely the anticipation of a particular, foreseeable event, the law indeed does not serve any purpose but countless different purposes of different individuals. It provides only the means for a large number of different purposes that as a whole are not known to anybody. In the ordinary sense of purpose law is therefore not a means to any purpose, but merely a condition for successful pursuit of most purposes. Of all multi-purpose instruments it is probably the one after language which assists the greatest variety of human purposes. It certainly has not been made for any one known purpose but rather has developed because it made people who operated under it more effective in the pursuit of their purposes”— Friedrich Hayek
Law is indeed a lot like language, its function is to help us transact. And when it’s not structured to help us achieve our goals optimally, then alternatives tends to emerge. Black market norms are a good example. In that sense, one of the differences between a failed and a stable nation is also the nature of laws. More the law deviates from individual needs, more the corruption, disorder etc. In other words, lawlessness might indicate a problem with the law, not the law breakers.
The Rise of Viktor Orbán, Right-Wing Populist ~ The Imaginative Conservative
To secular and leftist Europeans, Hungary’s Fundamental Law came as a shock. The preamble set the tone—it is the opening line of the Hungarian National Hymn (anthem): “God, bless the Hungarians.” That was already too much for The Guardian. A writer for that left-wing British newspaper noted that the new constitution’s “preamble is heavily influenced by the Christian faith and commits Hungary to a whole new set of values, such as family, nation, fidelity, faith, love and labour.” It was enough to point this out: further criticism would apparently have been superfluous.
— Read on theimaginativeconservative.org/2018/11/viktor-orban-hungarian-resistance-lee-congdon.html
I consider myself an anti nationalist, but I found this article absolutely fascinating–BB.
Spirit of Cecilia 
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