“I had long remarked that the only way to bring a Conservative and a Radical together was to attack the power of the central government . . . . When, therefore, people assert that nothing is safe from revolutionaries, I tell them they are wrong, and that centralization is one of those things . . . . The enemies of government love it, and those who govern cherish it.”
Alexis de Tocqueville, Recollections (1893)
The mind-control machine is spreading despondency and alarm at the prospect that Roe v. Wade will be “overturned” when the Supreme Court returns abortion legislation to the states. One fretting gargoyle in a televised coven suggested that there is a sinister resemblance between this judicial overturning and the howling mob of murderous sans culotte that attempted to overturn the last election.
What the fretting gargoyle of the mind-control machine would have us forget is that Roe v. Wade overturned political and moral principles that had stood for centuries, and that had been in those centuries universally regarded as superior to the ancient pro-choice principles that these new principals had long ago overturned.
As the great jurist Pufendorf explained in 1672, it was archaic and barbaric to suppose that parental rights include the right to destroy their children.
“It is plain then, that the power of the father doth by no means reach to so extravagant a degree, as that he may destroy the child whilst in the mother’s belly, unless the mother must otherwise perish, or after the birth expose or make away with it . . . . For although it be very true, that the infant hath his rise and original form from the very substance of the parents, yet he is immediately placed by nature in a condition of equality with them; at least so far as to be capable of receiving hurt and injury.”[1]
In 1973 the juridical principal described by Pufendorf was itself overturned and replaced by one in which the power of the mother was extended to the (extravagant) degree that she could hire help to destroy the child in her belly, and the rights of the child were retracted so that it was denied equality with its parents until it had exited that belly, with or without the assistance of hired help.
Since the system described by Pufendorf could be overturned by the Supreme Court, we must suppose that the Supreme Court may overturn the system described as Roe v. Wade.
Overturning is what the Supreme Court does.
* * * * *
I do not believe that the hapless palookas who wandered through the Capitol on January 6th had any clear idea of what they were doing. Some were no doubt acting on the foolish notion that their antics might somehow prevent the consummation of the 2020 presidential election, but their “storming” of the Capital was only the last, lamest, and most luckless of the antics employed in that putrid political pandemonium.
Whenever a political party loses an election, it immediately sets to work “overturning” that election by weakening the elected officials with fabricated scandals, opposing the elected officials with partisan obstructionism, possibly removing the elected officials from office with sham trials run by trousered apes and clowns, and finally preparing to overturn the election of the elected officials in the next election.
One cannot condemn the hapless palooka of January 6th for trying to overturn the 2020 election, only for failing in their attempt to overturn it. If they had succeeded, other people would now be described as as hapless palookas, other people would now be sitting in jail, other gargoyles would now be fretting on television, and other mystagogues would now be turning up the volume on the mind-control machine.
[1]) Samuel, Freiherr von Pufendorf, Of the Law of Nature and Nations, trans, Basil Kennett (London: J & J Knapton, 1728), p. 603.
The Orthosphere 
This has been compared, in certain circles I fly in, to State immigragtion law from over a decade ago, and to the more recent Marijuana laws emanating from mostly the same states, mine included.
It is hard, I admit, for me to understand why such people make such connections. Obviously, at least from my point of view, the “sacred cow” stating that “immigration is a federal issue” is not on the same plane as so called canibus legislation, simply because the latter actually serves the purposes of fedgov (what is better to fedgov than having a bunch more pothead voters on the voter rolls?), whereas the former does not. I suppose we’ll all learn soon enough in any case that the federal principle so vital to legitimate government on this continent was destroyed by the Yankees when they won the WBTS, as I’ve pointed out many times before here and elsewhere.
It remains to be seen whether or not SCOTUS will stick to its (secretive) decision; or, perhaps more importantly, how it will react to legislative acts by the U.S. Congress to “occupy the field, and intend a complete ouster.” I’m betting that the SCOTUS will summarily capitulate to “federal law” when it comes to the proverbial nutcuttin’, just as the ninth and tenth circuits did with State Immigration law back in 2007-2008. We’ll see, I suppose. I ain’t holding my breath.
I was on a grand jury a couple of years back and asked the assistant DA how much pot came down the highway from Colorado. He pretended to believe this wasn’t a chink in our armor, perhaps because stoners are too fuddled to drive 800 miles. I likewise hear Texans boast about the fact that our stretch of the Mexican border is guarded. They don’t seem to understand that no state’s border is stronger than the weakest state’s border. Maybe this is all performative, like the remaining dry counties. When men rode behind mules non bad roads, local prohibition probably discouraged drinking, especially among people without the foresight to stock up; but once you have automobiles and highways, local option just puts drunks on the road to the county-line liquor store.
The local pro-life people succeeded in shutting down the Planned Parenthood clinic in this county, but I expect the result was mostly performative. A women who is willing to kill her child will be willing to drive to Houston, or even fly to Boston. What this comes down to is that federalism works best when transportation costs are high, and the high friction of distance therefore does what porous state borders will not do. The same principle is at work in international immigration. Mobility does not “create a borderless world.” It creates a world where borders are more important than ever before.
I’ve been contemplating how or what to comment on this event and I am glad you got to it first, this is a good take and a much needed reminder. It is easy for those of us too young to remember Roe v Wade to forget that it was a radical and transformative move and it was not the status quo before it became the status quo.
It is obvious to me that a political operative in the Supreme Court is behind the leak, which is in no way a surprise. Everything has been politicized and infiltrated by political people. This leak represents a breach of the confidentiality that used to hold sacramental status. I take it too as a warning to the political activists: wind up the protest machine and get ready to burn cities down over this. That’s the pessimistic side of me.
The optimistic side is that it will pass through the supremes and it will force Congress to come out explicitly on the subject of abortion. Lets all hear plainly and publicly where everyone stands on baby-murder. This might be controversial, but it is nice to know that some people are still against it.
***
Regarding the January 6th palookas, the victors of a revolution always become the establishment, and the losers of a revolution always become the Enemy. Animal Farm illustrated this well: Snowball was the loser and had to be driven out. Now Snowball was the revolutionary, where before he had been establishment.
I know some people who know some people who went to that event, and I can confirm my impression that they were hapless palookas. There was no deliberate work there. The mistake they made was acting on passion and forgetting how powerful a syndicated live video with a headline marquee can form public opinion. The worst thing about that event was the fact that CNN saw it. I don’t think there was any chance of success for them but I think if they managed to avoid generating news coverage most people would have shrugged. It was politically expedient to call their hapless trespassing an “incursion” and so that’s what it became and to most people that is what it is. Truth is dead, long live CNN.
The leak of the draft is a good example of the decay of old forms of propriety. The alleged leaker is not an American gentleman, or even an American. Those are the things that have been really and irreversibly overturned. I wish we treated all leakers as the faithless rats that they are. I wish conservatives would understand that they do not have a right to protest, only to provide footage for propaganda that will be used against them.
The “rule of law” was good while it lasted. Now that the US is filled with people for whom such a concept is utterly alien, the rule of law is dead. All that matters now is getting control of the levers of power.
The most egregious violation of the rule of law is the intentional undermining of the election system.
More egregious than mass murder?
So no abortion would happen if it were outlawed?
I doubt the number of abortions will greatly decline. Airplane tickets are not expensive. But there is always an expressive aspect to law, particularly in a democracy. Passing a law is a way to express disapproval of an activity, just as much as it is a way to curb that activity.
treason never prospers, because if it does,none dare call it treason
No one dares to call it treason when it prospers. Prospering treason is “the glorious dawn of a new era!”
Prediction: a leftist mob will at some point try to storm the Supreme Court Building, and if able, attack one or more the justices who voted to strike down Roe.
The media will then dutifully proclaim that this is totally different from the January 6 riot because Reasons. We can look forward to thinkpieces with titles like “Right-wing media claims that Supreme Court pro-choice protest no different from January 6th insurrection. Here’s why they’re wrong.”
When the Left riots it is a protest; when the Right riots it is an insurrection. The Right “stormed” the Capitol; the Left “gathered” at the Supreme Court. The Left is motivated by “ideals”; the Right is motivated by “prejudices.”
Our speech is violence. Their violence is speech.
The extreme left and the extreme right are both wrong. It is the moderates who will ultimately prevail after the right and left unwad their panties.
Splitting the difference between two errors is a funny way of finding the truth.
Doubling down on error is a funny way of finding truth.
I agree. But the truth of a proposition cannot be judged by its relation to other propositions. It can only be judged by its relation to that which it is about. Splitting the difference is often politic, but it is very seldom epistemic.
Moderation is about doing what works. It just so happens that it falls between the extremes. So it’s not splitting the difference in that sense.
Moderation is not about “doing what works.” It’s about splitting the difference. Does moderate drinking work? Not at getting one drunk or keeping one sober. Moderate drinking is a good example of moderation as the worst of both worlds.
But we’re talking about political moderation, not strict moderation in action.
Politics is collective action. Moderation in politics appeases the extremes by giving them some of what they want. “Half a loaf is better than none.” It is therefore a means to short-term social peace; but it is not a means to right collective action. And wrong collective action eventually ends short-term social peace. Consider a “moderate” approach to collective action on climate change. It could (A) fail to stop climate change (as the left warns) and (B) crash the economy (as the right warns). Short-term social peace and long-term disaster. We call this “falling between two stools.”
In your world everyone is a member of one extreme or the other. Whereas in reality most people are in the middle. The extremes only speak with a disproportionately loud voice. But this does not necessarily mean they have a disproportionate hold on the Truth as they tend to believe.
I don’t know why we do research. Opinion polls and voting are a much better way to discover truth.
Does research tend to support the extreme positions?
In cases where there is true controversy there will be research that supports the extreme positions, but no research the supports the lazy, ignorant “split the difference” positions. Moderation is lazy and ignorant (not to mention cowardly) because it doesn’t need to understand the question, the arguments, the data. One man says 2 + 2 = 4. The other man says 2 + 2 = 5. The moderate smugly concludes that the true answer is 4.5/
It is cowardly to take the moderate position when it does not reflect the truth. Just as it is cowardly to attempt to shame another person who does not hold your view because it is uncomfortable to consider it.
Shaming a person may be wrong but it certainly is not cowardly. Sharp words invite sharp words. Shaming invites blowback. A coward doesn’t say boo to a goose.
It’s cowardly when it’s done passive aggressively as it often is.
And moaning about shaming isn’t passive aggressive?
I think I’ve been direct in calling it out when I see it.
Winston, you should write a guest post for the Orthosphere outlining your pov.
Here is the correct link to a longer form version of my pov. Or use the address below.
winstonscrooge.wordpress.com/2022/05/15/the-second-great-commandment/
I welcome comments btw. I appreciate the perspective of all contributors here.
Welp, there goes the neighborhood. LOL
That’s a good reason to do it.
Winston, we’d seriously entertain your submission. You’ve been a loyal reader and commenter here for years, and that counts. We take you seriously.
But, a word of advice: avoid the topic of shame, in favor of other stuff. We’ve heard a lot from you about shame, so an entire essay upon it would probably be offputting to most readers. Plus I doubt it would say anything about the topic that we have not already heard.
What other topics are you particularly interested to discuss? It would, honestly, be good to know.
Understood and I feel honored by you invitation. Thank you.
Hey Kristor, What is the procedure to make a submission?
Send it to theorthosphere@gmail.com.
T. Morris,
I made the suggestion as a fan of long form. Winston and JM have had several exchanges like the ones in this thread and i think if he gave a long form essay it would skip some of the nattering and allow him to explain himself fully and allow the readers and writers here to engage seriously with him.
His comments are often brief and while brevity is the soul of wit it is not conducive to understanding. I really dont know what is driving his comments so a primer from the horses mouth would be, at worst, edifying.
I know the Orthosphere can be a rowdy bunch when controversy pokes its head in but we arent rude on the main and winstons comments show he can give as good as he gets.
Winston, my comment was aspirational but Kristors endorsement opens the door! I hope you consider it.
Scoot,
I know why you suggested it but, if that is what you are after out of Winston, why not just pay a long visit to his blog and read his articles and essay-length stuff there? Better yet, buy his book and read it. I believe in segregation myself, but if our gracious hosts are supportive of your suggestion, who am I to say otherwise?
Welp, there goes the neighborhood. LOL
You are one to talk, T. Morris.
You have piqued my interest. Don’t hold anything back; do tell!
Abortion is one of those wedge issues that doesn’t, to my mind, doesn’t really matter much in the grand scheme of things, and that is used by the ruling elites as a wedge to divide people who would otherwise come to the conclusion that their real enemies aren’t abortionists or anti-abortion protesters, but the ruling elites who oppress and promote degeneracy to those who are undeniably alive right now– you, me, and everyone reading this comments section.
As far as I’m aware, the de-facto traditional position of both Christianity and Islam is that the fetus doesn’t possess a soul until “the quickening”, when it enters into it at around the middle of pregnancy. Would be interesting if St Origin (Mr. Souls-Predate-The-Birth guy) had anything to say on this.
I don’t know whether that’s supported by scripture or Church Tradition, but that was, AFAIK, de-facto the position held within most of Christendom for most of its history.
The US Christian conservative position has always came across, to me, as akin to “too little, too late” and of picking exactly the wrong battles– they’re always like 10-15 years behind what’s actually happening in the culture right now. Same as how conservatives didn’t start talking about the transgender issue when it was really coming into its own back in the late 2000s / early 2010s, and only finally recognized what was happening with the pornification of culture.
Like, they will strongly oppose abortion, but they say nothing about the culture in-which people engage in all the sorts of pre-marital sex and personal irresponsibility and the economic conditions that would cause for a woman to even *want* to abort her child to start. I’ve always held that we could go so far as to have 100% legal state funded abortions on demand and that, if the culture was fixed, they would be exceedingly rare, much much rarer than in any Western country in this day. That is to say, it would basically be a non-issue.
/// What’s most important about Roe -vs- Wade being overturned this this ///
Right now the Washington Regime is hell-bent on supporting a literal Zionist occupation government and their neo-Nazi cohorts (I.E. Azov Division) in the Ukraine, even if it means WWIII, just because they’re having a gigantic temper tantrum due to the 2016 election results and their ethnic hatred of Russians and the Christendom they represent. They hate everything that strives upward and to be good or wholesome in the world, and Russia under Putin represents exactly that (even if Russia does have a ton of social problems that Western Russophiles don’t want to admit).
Up until this point, the trend has been that neither side has shown any indication of backing down or de-escalating, which would almost certainly mean a global nuclear war.
With this wedge issue taking up peoples attentions, this would be an excellent time for Washington to de-escalate, realize they’re not going to win in the Ukraine, and perhaps save us all from being turned into radioactive dust.
If abortion = bad (I personally don’t like it; leaves a bad taste in my mouth), than we must ask: how many pregnant women are there in any given major first-strike target city? Dropping a nuke on them would be akin to a super-ultra-hyper abortion, much worse than the one-off abortions that women must schedule at their local Planned Parenthood.
That’s the real importance of overturning Roe -vs- Wade. Lets hope they take this opportunity. Otherwise, a lot of souls who might otherwise be saved, were they only given more time, will be cut short and condemned to Hell.
If you think abortion is just a “wedge issue,” why aren’t you trying to convince the pro-choice people to set their prejudices aside? Wedge issues wedge because the issue is not imaginary, there is no obvious compromise, and neither side has any inclination to yield. Proletarian solidarity may be more important to you than abortion, but most other proletarians disagree.
I don’t think the “quickening” notion was used to excuse early-term abortions when the quickening notion was widely believed. A fetus was a being with the potential for quickening, just as it was a being with the potential for speech, reason, and spiritual development. Pro-choice arguments based on the temporary absence of potential properties have no limiting principle, and are easily expanded to excuse elimination of everyone who is not a fully functioning adult. All markers between conception and natural death are arbitrary and subject to change.
I am quite aware of the demographic and dysgenic consequences of uncontrolled reproduction, but consequences do not erase any moral question, especially this one. I think we agree on the mad folly of American geopolitics just now, but this war will end and the world probably will not end with it. I’m not at all sure the same can be said about abortion, since a species that begins to kill its young has devolved into a lower species.
I’m in favor of Roe vs Wade being overturned, its just triggering that conservatives will only voice concerns about X, Y, and Z when they themselves supported A, B,C, and every single other alphabet letter that led up to the last three.
Its very easy for them to see why hacking up a baby in the womb is bad because it can be succinctly displayed in an offensive infographic and pasted on a sign held on the street corner, but its frustrating that they don’t see how the more subtle things like porn, hookup culture, etc ultimately lead to women wanting to get abortions.
If Roe v Wade is overturned, you’re gonna see a lot of young women stop having so much casual sex, which will lead to higher investments in relationships and greater odds of marriage and such. On my end, I certainly would’ve adopted lower time preferences in dating in my early 20s had that been the case and perhaps even be married right now instead of single.
Maybe its a-moral, but my views are basically consequentialist– the morality of an action can ultimately be deduced via the consequences it leads to. This in opposition to *ideology*, which idolizes the *process* instead of the outcome. So, moral qualms or moral arguements don’t really hit super hard for me like they do for more empathic people– also I have no brothers & sisters, never babysat, and basically have zero interactions with children. So the issue isn’t “real” in my mind like it is for many other people. For me, inflation is real, but some woman I’ve never met getting an abortion in a clinic I’ve never been to is just a statistic.
Honestly, I don’t share your optimism about the world not ending. Even if the Ukraine thing wasn’t happening, these elites obviously are doing *something* very nefarious with the “vaccine” and their incessantly pushing it. We can’t say, for sure, what exactly that is… but we know its messing up womens menstration cycles, that more people have died of it than all previous vaccines combined, and that the same people pushing it are also pushing for massive population reduction a la the Georgia Guidestones. Is it really so much of a stretch to assume this is some kind of slow-burn kill shot to eliminate most of the population or “useless eaters”, as they call them? Significantly more women (due to being more conformist) have taken the shot than men. Hopefully I’m wrong about this.
Viewed politically, abortion is a Schelling point around which people naturally organize. As you say, the conservative case is visceral and does not require patient explanation or high intelligence to understand. I’m not sure that Red state abortion bans will have much affect on sexual behavior since the cost a plane ticket to a Blue state will always be so much less than the cost of a child.
I don’t think pure consequentialism is possible since you must always judge an ultimate consequence as good or bad in itself. You may make the hypothetical causal chain very long, but you cannot run it to infinity. Heaven and Hell were the ultimate consequences in the old consequentialism, and to ask why it was good to go to Heaven, or bad to go to Hell, was nonsense. Our secular consequentialism tends to be either hedonistic or Darwinian, with these breaking out into individualist and collectivist forms.
I have no special insight into how our elites think, but suspect they see ordinary humans much as a Rancher sees his herd. I think they have turned against ordinary people of European stock because those people have become lazy, entitled, and hard to work with. Their dream is a nation of Asian technocrats, Latin Labor, and whatever Whites can survive in the face of this competition. The others can be culled with drug overdoses and various sorts of self-sterilization.
Pure consequentialism doesn’t work, you’re correct. However, no system taken to the Nth degree / logical conclusion will work either.
Consequentialism at least fulfills the “keeping’ it real” criteria, as opposed to the “we believe in X process, consequences be damned” system of leftism.
Rightism says: let’s take a look at reality and build up from there— like a pyramid whereas leftism starts off with starry eyed ideals and works backwards from there.
Like, I would like to see significantly less abortion… but like… how bad do you think 2020’s BLM riots would’ve been if Planned Parenthood hadn’t build all those abortion centers in the inner city and there were tens of millions more of certain low socioeconomic demographics? How much more money would the government steal from your paycheque if the lower classes didn’t have access to safe abortion?
Consequentialism works as a moral logic so long as the immorality of certain acts is obvious to a people. In fact that’s the way it works in ordinary life. If I say stay out of the water because it is full of sharks, you will not normally ask me why being eaten by sharks is a bad thing. I understand your point in the last paragraph, but your framing of the problem makes me queasy in a whole new way. It seems inherently dishonorable to shed innocent blood, and also to win a racial struggle by persuading the other side to slaughter its children. If we must fight, let it be an open fight against grown men. Perhaps these scruples ensure that we will lose, but this is what we mean when we say “death before dishonor.”
The commandment says “thou shalt not kill”, not “Thou shalt not kill your own kind”. We should convert our enemies, not destroy them.
Just like the other commandant says, “love thy neighbor as thyself” not “love thy kind as thyself”.
Neighbor = kind.
Not according to Christ. See the story of the Good Samaritan.
That parable doesn’t do what you think it does. It says your true community (“neighbors”) is people who are kind to you. Jesus does not ask us to put ourselves in the place of the “good Samaritan,” but rather to put ourselves in the place of the Jew in the ditch. This means that genuine kindness trumps formal kinship, but in reality kindness tends to go with kinship and be greatest between men who are of the same kind.
Please see:
https://wordpress.com/post/winstonscrooge.wordpress.com/5757
I have seen people argue online that those on the “Right” should support abortions. Otherwise we would be demographically swamped by Black/Minority babies. And would lose the country to foreigners if baby murder was banned.
But as we all know God curses the Nation including the fruit of the womb for such crimes. And the current drought in the USA isn’t a coincidence.
Yet another curse of multicultural society is that it makes demography intensely political.
“Yet another curse of multicultural society is that it makes demography intensely political.”
Our enemy likes to put us in such dilemmas. But this is also a test of Faith since it is allowed by God.
Endorse baby murder or have your own people become a minority like the Boers in South Africa.
Sacrifice your children to Molech to save your own people? Or become a persecuted minority being murdered by your enemies?
My post makes you “queasy”, are you serious?
My thing is: I just literally don’t care about people who I’ve never met before and probably never will meet. When people claim to, what’s usually happening is they’re virtue signaling to score points with other White liberals. You go into the inner city and these people… they’re not “people” in the sense that you and I are. They’re a totally_different_kind_of_people, just like Chinese and the East Asians are. We don’t have the same “thing” going on, we’re on totally different wavelengths– and that’s fine with me, they probably think White people are weird and strange too (and these days, they’d be right– only White people support messed up stuff like chopping little boys privates off and shooting them up with hormones, no other group does)
When Tucker talks about “the murder rate in Chicago”, that’s not really a real thing in the sense he makes it out to be. Those’re not “my people” or “Americans” in the sense that I’m an American. De-facto, many of them don’t even speak the same language. They’re a totally different nation that exists within the geographical confines of the Washington Regime government I must pay taxes to and obey its laws if I wish to not go to prison.
Whatever they do to each other, whether its them doing driveby shootings on each other, or them getting abortions, that literally doesn’t concern me at all, because I’m not Black, and its not my concern what they do. I don’t feel its my place to have a say in their affairs, just as I don’t want them having a say in mine. I’m not a White liberal who feels its my place to force my values on them, and ideally I’d like for a seperation.
From a purely pragmatic POV, literally the only reason it concerns me is because I must have money forcibly taken out of my paycheque to pay for their welfare… and lets be honest here: I go to work in a blue collar job and actually do real physical labor and perform a specialized skill. I bring value to other people. I’m not a welfare leech that sucks value away from other people. Most people who’re aborted would not’ve gone on to become productive members of society, they would just be leeches. I don’t see how our lives have equal value, and that includes lumpenprole Whites as well.
None of this would be an issue if we weren’t all ruled over by an overarching US Federal Government that forced us to live together, but the fact is that we are, for the time being. So that kind of makes it an issue for me. Whether its “politically incorrect” or not, the fact is that more abortions = less votes for the Democrat Party that hates my group and wants to do everything in their power to destroy me and my group.
I literally don’t understand how its honorable to sacrifice your group for the well-being of a group that doesn’t like you and has nothing to do with you. If these Blacks were really smart, they’d go join Louis Farrakhan’s NOI. He actually has the best interests of African-Americans at heart, and is, on a personal level, a really cool guy who I greatly respect.
I guess I’m just not a pathological altruist.
Also, I’m gonna go ahead and say that, if you went back throughout history, 99% of our people (European diaspora), including ones who were super Christian, would agree with my POV.
Hell, i’m actually pretty mind by historical standards. If the BLM riots had been done in 1920 instead of 2020, our people would’ve retaliated by going into their neighborhoods and slaughtered the greater percentage of them wholesale, women and children included, and that’s just a fact.
My thing is: I just literally don’t care about people who I’ve never met before and probably never will meet.
You are framing this all wrong: altruism has nothing fundamentally to do with the anti-abortion position. It’s rather about the impact that legalized murder has on our society and our understandings of things. A society that thinks it is no big deal to murder a child in the womb and even regards this as a ‘right’ will obviously embody justice (the purpose of the state) in a seriously defective way, and this will have all sorts of negative consequences on how people regard sex and marriage and family life, how people relate to one another and to their communities, our understanding of the state, etc.
It’s the same with ‘gay marriage’: it’s not that I particularly care what two sodomites do to each other, but I do care about how enacting ‘gay marriage’ as law is an attack on the institution of real marriage and cannot but weaken it.
I also find it odd that you contrast consequentialism with ‘ideology’, when consequentialism is itself a modern doctrine that is a key component of most modernist ideologies.
“If the BLM riots had been done in 1920 instead of 2020, our people would’ve retaliated by going into their neighborhoods and slaughtered the greater percentage of them wholesale, women and children included, and that’s just a fact.”
Did God ever command Herem nowadays? Its no longer our preogative to do so:
“The Israelites were a people barely removed from idolatry, and constantly in danger of full relapse. They were taught higher religious and moral sensibilities, including an appreciation of justice and mercy, by first being set apart from other nations. Eventually, when they were ready to receive an even nobler ethic, where men do not claim what is their just due, but instead lay down their lives for the good of their enemies, the survivalist ethos in which cherem had arisen was no longer applicable.
There is no prospect of God ever again commanding the slaying of the innocent, since the Christian dispensation has begun. Indeed, the need for such a special mandate had already ended a thousand years earlier, once Israel had established a firm foothold in Canaan. A Christian should not seek to destroy his enemies, but rather to give up his own life, confident that the new Israel, which is the Church, shall never perish from the earth. We should not expect God to command a Christian, or anyone else, to act in a way that is contrary to the superabundant charity that He wishes to bring forth through the kingdom of God. The Christian sensibilities of mercy and charity toward our enemies have become so deeply infused in our culture, that we may say even of Jews, Muslims, indeed of all men, that none of them should ever expect a divine mandate to slay the innocent, even if their own nations are threatened.”
https://www.arcaneknowledge.org/catholic/cherem.htm
Our Job is to preserve our lives sure. But also to convert the Wicked. We aren’t Old Testament Israelites sent to wipe out the Canaanites. Its back in God’s hand’s completely and he implements it in the Book of Revelation.
Likewise the Normative Rules of Warfare is this:
Deuteronomy 20:10-15
“10When you approach a city to fight against it, you are to make an offer of peace. 11If they accept your offer of peace and open their gates, all the people there will become forced laborers to serve you.
12But if they refuse to make peace with you and wage war against you, lay siege to that city. 13When the LORD your God has delivered it into your hand, you must put every male to the sword. 14But the women, children, livestock, and whatever else is in the city—all its spoil—you may take as plunder, and you shall use the spoil of your enemies that the LORD your God gives you. 15This is how you are to treat all the cities that are far away from you and do not belong to the nations nearby.”
Deuteronomy 21:10-14
“10When you go to war against your enemies and the LORD your God delivers them into your hand and you take them captive, 11if you see a beautiful woman among them, and you desire her and want to take her as your wife, 12then you shall bring her into your house. She must shave her head, trim her nails, 13and put aside the clothing of her captivity.
After she has lived in your house a full month and mourned her father and mother, you may have relations with her and be her husband, and she shall be your wife. 14And if you are not pleased with her, you are to let her go wherever she wishes. But you must not sell her for money or treat her as a slave, since you have dishonored her.”
Cherem or Herem is obselete. We aren’t dedicating the Spoils of War to God anymore like Women and Children and what is looted from the enemy.
I think “lay down their lives for the good of their enemies” may be trying to be holier than Jesus. Jesus didn’t lay down his life for those the enemies who rejected him. His great act of love was to “lay down his life for his friends.” I’m not saying we are called to bronze-age slaughter, but the sacrifice of our own lives is at this point superfluous.
Agreed. Too many people use the passages in regards to the Canaanites to justify their warcrimes.
Nope. Obselete and illegitimate.
I spoke to a very nice Irish fellow working a local bar of mine. We agreed sours are good, government tends to mess up and power structures ain’t sitting right. I feel abandoning government overnight is akin to the pitfalls of the french revolution; clarity about everything you are against, but not much about what you are for. I am not a fullblown anarchist anyway, i am anti- corruption (set me up a special team?). Alas. We discussed some history, beer prices, tastes, the inner workings of our city and at some point i said; certain problems, assuming we live in a normal fashion for the next couple decades, can’t be fixed. Most people are incapable of looking past their own projected lives;
‘Ah, so your a marxist too’ was his response. My conversational style changed a little from there, towards the defensive and a possible exit obviously. The amount of assumption and ideology that got dumped on me right there felt like a physical load for a few moments. I remained civil of course, and since the sting operation has modulated peoples behavior we were about to get booted out anyway, but that statement stuck; he wanted me to (re)examine revolutions across the board and history related to it all. And i lacked the time and energy and recollection to explain to him that his youthful energy derived from a questionable figure 180 years old might be utterly misguided.
Tread carefully when crushing dreams yea? So i posted my other not greatest work over at Francis’s blog; https://www.francisberger.com/blog/pitchforks-really#comments
I digress into some other topics but the point would be lost on this slightly younger Irish revolutionary without establish some common frameworks and such. He believes in this 170 year old constructed dream of ‘workers of the world unite’ via mechanisms and institutions that are built to obstruct exactly that. He believes that people can fix the system by re-arranging puppets, and that power will not corrupt once it is his or their turn. He does not realize that despiritualization will keep current problems going, and that he would need to be part of the solution in order not to be part of the problem. A lot of the world is grey scale, but some things are purely black and white.
The political imagination of many people is limited to “Fascists,” “Marxists,” and “Freedom-Loving People Like Us.” Oddly enough, this is exactly the way Marxists saw things, although they called “Freedom-Loving People Like Us” “Bourgeois Politics.” It is probably futile to explain it to a garrulous barfly, but if historical materialism is correct, the era of proletariat power is over.
Garrulous is one word i would have certainly missed in any shape or form of scrabble, and i will not pull out any excuse cards for that, these poetic descriptions of yours encourage me to make a little more effort, even if most people out there will not. I had extreme difficulty to explain to another barfly today that checking a red box every four years is a very far cry from the actual definition of democracy, regardless of its ‘local content’, and why accountability in any (modern) political system needs to be made contractual in some shape or form lest it stay a joke.
Next time that happens i will start talking about movies or claim a headache immediately.
I then tried to explain that people claiming to work ‘in service of the people’ should mean to facilitate and structurally organize certain things, but never hand out ideological mandates of their own accord, that the manager is never more important than the ‘workfloor’ when reframing it later. Gosh i should have gone with the headache already.
Another bystander commented on a different conversation i had a little while before this; ‘but what can i do about it?’ – with; my assumption, a decided ‘i’m just a little civilian’ kind of tone. I repeated the above, the light almost flicked on, but there was no time to make it hit home without mentioning that the managers are trying to make themselves gods of the (material) side of the world (other aspects out of scope/ length here).
Excuse the obvious statements; it just pains me to hear it every single time, all the ism’s, the manufactured opposition and conflict, the captured intentions, and the general relinquishing of power really. What hurts the most is that such a large part of it all is in the mind, not real at all, yet steers the world further into a race to the bottom.
Not quite fully anarcho-capitalist yet, but it’s an idea that’s hard to gauge against the facsimile’s of concepts that we have actually seen in operation; since ‘real democracy’ lasted less then 100 years back in Greece, and Smith’s pure capitalism being dead on arrival, why do we assume we have any such complex system ‘working as intended’ now? The ‘Democracy Party’ in my country abolished every kind of ‘binding referendum’ and you tell me to vote? Yeah.
The only revolution is creating a harmonious relationship between ‘us the people’ and institutions, or have them all go local, and completely ignore globalist notions. If half of the global bullshit market was not nested in planned obsolescence, it would barely exist. Less computers and phones maybe, not exactly the end of the world. No middle way seated in more ism’s, false dichotomies and self-sustaining redundant nonsense. Imagine the managers being the makers, thinkers and artists at the same time, as it should be.
All this will probably sound very revolutionary to my Irish barfriend, so the tables have turned.
Fantastically said. I have been grasping and failing to grasp the words to describe this. Trying to pinpoint this exact problem has become something of a highlight of my thinking and writing.
Thank you for putting this idea to words for me!
Do either one of you happen to be familiar with Voegelin?
You will find plenty about Voegelin if you type his name in the search bar. Our late contributor Thomas Bertonneau was something of an expert on V. and discussed his work in many posts.