Ron Brown and Bill Clinton
All the benefits of virtue without the costs.
Remember when you had to do something virtuous to signal your virtue? Some of the virtuous way back when did virtuous acts and didn’t even tell anyone else about them. If you go into older museums and other civic monuments and look at donors’ names on plaques, you’ll find anonymous donors. They didn’t get a wing named after them, there were no press releases, they just gave to a good cause and that was its own reward. If they were alive today, they wouldn’t have Twitter feeds. Private virtue and public anonymity—incomprehensible!
At least plutocrats who plaster their names where they donate are donating their own money. Perhaps the most odious form of virtue signaling demands everyone’s taxes fund a chosen cause, then claims the same moral stature as the plutocrats. Strictly speaking this can’t be virtue signaling. There’s no virtue, only coercion and theft. The merit, if any, of the cause never justifies the immoral means used to fund it.
Gresham’s law of virtue: phony virtue drives out the real thing. It’s partly mathematical—what the government steals cannot be donated—but it goes much deeper.
There’s an intergenerational understanding rooted in biology: parents take care of children when they’re young; children take of parents when they’re old. Rearing children and caring for aging parents impose inconvenient burdens, but for most of history people had little choice, the only alternative was neglect and abandonment. Enter the state. In most Western countries responsibility for both child rearing and elder care has in whole or in part shifted to it.
Any respectable list of progressive “demands” includes access to day care, either funded or provided by the government. In truly advanced welfare states, day care is already an “entitlement,” like unemployment support or medical care. It’s a comforting sophistry that turning children over to third party caregivers in their formative years doesn’t attenuate the bond between parents and children. Two or three hours a day—always labelled quality time—is not ten or twelve hours a day. Day care personnel attending a group of children cannot devote the time and attention to one child as that child’s stay-at-home parent could.
The flip side of taking care of the young is taking care of the old. Social Security and Medicare are pay-as-you-go transfer schemes masquerading as funded pensions and medical plans. They have, judging by so many aging baby boomers’ lack of assets, nominally relieved individuals of the responsibility to provide for their own golden years. It’s fair to assume that such provision also attenuates for many boomers’ children any obligation they may feel regarding their parents’ support. In fact, the obligation often seems to run the other way, children demanding their boomer parents support them well into adulthood.
People outsource responsibility. but they want to feel virtuous. One way to do so is become an advocate. You may be dropping your own children off at day care, but you can advocate for children’s causes; children at the border is currently fashionable. You personally don’t have to do anything or spend a penny, just advocate that the government do something. You’ll acquire—among the circles you care about—the moral sheen that in days gone by required that you actually do something and spend your own pennies.
That moral sheen is worth less than nothing. Government Programs That Made the Problem Worse is a multi-volume set, each volume over a thousand pages. That’s not a problem for their promoters, what counts is their self-credited good intentions. If the road to hell is paved with good intentions, then hell fire itself is stoked by self-credited good intentions. The cynics—right about politics more often than anyone else—suggest good intentions often cloak a ruthless drive for votes, payola, and power.
Political funerals are revolting spectacles, the guilty living paying tribute to the guilty dead. It’s a toss-up which is more revolting. The “Humanitarian” epitaph for those who spent other people’s money “helping” the downtrodden of various stripes. Or the “Patriot” epitaph for those who blessed waging war on people and countries that pose no threat to the US. Surely the gates of hell open wide for hybrid Humanitarian Patriots. The Lyndon Johnsons, Bills and Hillarys, and John McCains of the world are alway loathsome creatures who unsurprisingly treat real life humans like shit.
Taken to its logical extreme, a government so big and powerful that it’s responsible for everything leaves everyone else responsible for nothing. If you aren’t responsible for anything, you can’t be virtuous or evil…or human. You can, however, signal your faux virtue: the government actions you advocate; the politicians and media figures you admire; the bumper stickers or lapel pins you sport.
Government has subsumed individual choice, responsibility, and thought at a historical juncture that will require individuals to make choices, take responsibility, and think as they’ve never thought before. Based as they are on coercion and their unsustainable ability to extract resources from their subject populations through force and fraud, governments are dominoes, and they’ve already begun to fall. Only ideologically induced analytical myopia accounts for the failure to recognize the fall of the most statist institution ever erected—the government of the USSR—as the beginning of the end of current statist arrangements, including welfare statism (it’s giving humanity too much credit to believe such arrangements will ever be wholly eradicated).
The energy required to maintain statist control is rising exponentially as information technology and weaponry become ever-cheaper and more widely diffused. Governments have plunged into an abyss of debt and welfare state promises. Soon they’ll lack the resources to keep either themselves or their recipients alive. Those that “contribute” recognize governments as their enemy, and most acknowledge no duty to the recipients. They’re on strike in myriad ways and economic growth rates continue their inexorable descent. Soon those rates will be less than zero. They may already be there, a reality obscured by rising debt and phony government statistics and accounting.
The world was caught by surprise when the USSR fell. It will be caught by surprise when the welfare states go, but in neither case is the surprise justified. Stupid is as stupid does: actions have consequences. The writing is on the wall.
The consequences will be especially severe for those who have outsourced their morality, brains, and very souls to politics and the state. If separated babies or kneeling football players can trigger “vitriolic outrage,” then there is no single phrase that describes the anger, frustration, desperation, hate, violence, lunacy, and outright insanity that will reign when politics and states fail. The resulting entropic atomization will force the atomized to fall back on precisely what many don’t have: their own physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual resources.
Within a society, no matter how insane, there are pockets of rationality, true virtue, and wisdom. The wise see what’s coming and have prepared accordingly, to the best of their abilities. The rest will navigate the chaos to the best of their abilities, not an optimistic prospect.
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Ah, but when Songbird McShame joins his buddy Teddy “Swim, bitch!” Kennedy in a warmer environment, just think of the opportunity that will create for an entrepreneur! I wonder who is going to get the toilet paper concession at his grave? That dude is gonna get rich beyond his wildest dreams! As long as he doesn’t run out of toilet paper, of course…
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Wow-so much truth in this article. My personal pet peeve is the “non profits”, that make a fortune, and offer large salaries to the latest set of do gooders. How many times have I heard college grads: “Oh, I’m going to work for a non profit”? As if it is virtue signaling their progressive and learned behavior. Spare me.
It will be a lot worse than any of the NeverTrumpers, Antifas, etc realize, but a sudden fall and stop is just what the world needs. Only God can stop this madness, and God will not be mocked.
Prepare as you can, harden your heart, and be ready for 1859.
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This old coot fought 40 years for constitutional government. I gave up when with the stroke of a pen the Republican’s NDAA destroyed our Bill of Rights. Not one shot was fired. That was 7-1/2 years ago. Same on us.
The inevitable breakup of Lincoln’s Northern model of a supreme centralized government is near. Prepare accordingly. Where do you want your loved ones to be when the breakup happens, an ‘Estonia’ or a ‘Tajikistan’?
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Mostly, the left with their incessant virtue signaling reminds me of a three year old getting into something they shouldn’t and then saying, “Uh-ohhhh!” All they’re doing is trying to convince the grown-ups that they’re good, when the grown-ups already know they’re bad. A grid down situation would give these commie bastards free reign to do and say just about anything they wanted. Like when they ran amok and murdered thousands while they were consolidating power in the USSR, 1917-1923. They murdered the past (older people and professionals) so they could brainwash the present (children). Brilliant piece, Robert. You have a clarity of your thoughts few possess. Roger D, I think here in Texas we’ll be in a Yugoslavia. I just hope we don’t get an East Germany instead.
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Sean,
Thanks. Keep your powder dry and your ammo stocked.
Bob
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one of the most significant virtue signals is
a White adopting a niglet,
since it signals the (((paymaster)))
an active willingness to participate in the extinction
of one’s own race and civilization. Examples
include Hollywood bims (Sandra Bullock), neo-con cucks (David French), nominal billionaires (Mitt Romney), and
a guy living just up the street from me.
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Oh look, the antisemite finds a place to comment outside of Western Rifle Shooters. Pathetic.
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It is not anti-Semitism if it is true. Do some research. Talk to those who have experienced the (((corruption))) FIRST HAND of a once-beautiful, peaceful, state. Do not shoot the messenger.
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((( ))) This tells me all I need to know about you and people who feel as you do. I say feel instead of think because there is no rationality in your beliefs. I’ve done a lot of research, am well- versed in history. I’ve also been reading Haxo’s comments for a long time so I know for a fact he’s an antisemite. And he maintains a rancid, semi-porn site of half naked Jewish women. Were you aware of this? Perhaps you approve. So really, you can just butt out. I didn’t address you. But you’ve obviously thrown in with a known antisemite.
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What more can I tell you, sir. I watched (((them))) and their colored proxies destroy my school district, my neighborhood, and eventually my state. You may not approve of Haxo’s tactics. I get that. As a 30-year Peace Officer and native Californian, I WATCHED IT ALL HAPPEN. I SAW AND HEARD (((WHO))) WAS BEHIND IT. Res ipsa loquitur.
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Dweezil,
Who or what is behind it ‘all?’ it is not the jews. There is more than enough blame to go around all tribes.
who is the prince of this world?
There are jews and there are false jews, this has absolutely nothing to do with tribe affiliation nor skin color.
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Word,
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My parents and grandparents knew virtue, they understood morality even if they weren’t always successful at practicing it. I’ll put myself and many in my generation in the same group. The Millennial generation is often clueless about virtue and morality due to the failure of their parents and society in teaching the concepts and the rewards. It’s another nail in the coffin for our Republic.
On a side note, there is another nail, or a handful of nails coming that you don’t see discussed much, namely the onset of a Grand Solar Minimum. The global warming shite heads have muddied the waters so much that any mention of an impending weather catastrophe gets swept under the rug. Unfortunately the reality of a GSM will be difficult to ignore. The sun drives climate, period. Do your own homework and good luck.g
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I’ve posted a few articles about the GSM and climate “change.” It is difficult to find articles written by people without an agenda about what should be a purely scientific question.
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We certainly live in interesting times and what the future holds may be even more ‘interesting’. ‘Collapse’ is a recurrent theme in complex human societies and will surely play out (or is playing out) for our hyper-globalised and energy-dependent civilization. Governments have been fairly successful (depending on one’s perspective) at kicking-the-can-down-the-road through all sorts of ‘ingenious’ manipulations (financial, geopolitical, technological, etc.) and I have to wonder when a tipping point of people will see behind the curtain and finally notice all the dials and knobs being turned to keep the illusions alive. I also have to wonder that when our society experiences collapse, if it will be a long, drawn out affair (much like the decline of the Roman Empire) or a more contracted and speedy fall (like that experienced on Easter Island).
I sense the excessive virtue-signalling that is so prevalent on social media is perhaps a symptom of the cognitive dissonance so many are experiencing when what they believe to be ‘right/correct’ is being challenged in a number of ways. The human mind can react in rather ‘illogical’ ways to evidence/data that brings core belief systems into question. And rather than attempt to process this new, contradictory information and alter or amend core beliefs, we seek ways to strengthen or signal our fundamental beliefs (perhaps more for ourselves than for others, in order to reduce our cognitive dissonance).
Whatever the future holds, it is sure to create a lot of Black Swan Events for a significant number of people.
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That’s a very perceptive comment, especially the second paragraph.
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They also outsourced US jobs and US borders for decades..
Placed a $21,000,000,000,000 debt on the US that can never be repaid!!
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Outsourcing Morality = the money ex changers.
When you step back and look at any given conflict, you should be able to see the lies and the Truths on both sides.
Blowing a trumpet before you (the do gooders) or setting people to blow a trumpet for you (Rudy Giuliani) as did Trump and many other politicians. This should be eye opening and alarming in your minds. Is this the way of the world? And should we not be set-apart?
One of the comments above refereed to ‘hardening our hearts’
“God can stop this madness, and God will not be mocked.
Prepare as you can, harden your heart, and be ready for 1859.”
Something said often on WRSA, and i see a danger to it. Yahuaha (God) has and will harden a peoples hearts, as a rule this is not a good thing.
i for one do not think my heart should be nor needs to be hardened to defend my self or others.
1859 was filled with lies and the more we see the why, and the who and the agenda, perhaps loving hearts and Truth would have been a better course?
How many died because of man’s lies? Throughout the centuries?
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