Category Archives: Philosophy

Tearing Down the Pantheon of Western Founders and Heroes, by Alastair Crooke

The values that made Western Civilization Western Civilization are being replaced by tissue-thin ideologies that brook no question or dissent. From Alastair Crooke at strategic-culture.org:

The Euro-élites were in desperate need of a Values System to fill the gap. The solution, however, was at hand.

The advocates of American primacy within the United States always move with the times, relying on prevailing trends to reimagine justification for its’ ‘exceptionalism’ through novel imagery.

The rise of the liberal-woke activist-driven, social justice-oriented identity politics has provided its soldiers with their newest justification. It is not just a new ‘policy’, but is something different: It is an ideology brooking no ‘otherness’; no disputation, but requiring simply the signalling of loyalty and compliance for a ‘progressive’ code – showing you have heard the message and seen ‘the light’.

They seek, in short, through conversion of the leadership class, to subvert and overthrow the old deities.

Biden likes to tout the exceptionalism of ‘our democracy’. It is, he said in his commemorative remarks on the 9/11 attacks,“that which makes us unique in the world … We have an obligation, a duty, a responsibility to defend, preserve, and protect ‘our democracy’ … It is under threat … The very democracy that those terrorists on 9/11 sought to bury in the burning fire and smoke and ash”.

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The Grand Inquisitor: How Dostoyevsky Predicted The Bolshevik Revolution & The 4th Industrial Revolution, by the 2nd Smartest Guy in the World

This is a very long article, but using the famous Grand Inquisitor segment from Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamozov as a point of departure, the author reaches some profound conclusions. If you’ve got the time, it’s well worth the read. From the 2nd Smartest Guy in the World at 2ndsmartestguyintheworld.substack.com:

There is a pivotal scene in Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s masterwork The Brothers Karamazov where the atheist Ivan delivers a quasi-religious poem to his novice monk brother Alyosha. In this passage known as The Grand Inquisitor, Dostoyevsky not only predicted the Bolshevik Revolution, but he also envisioned the current Cult global takeover scheme known as the Great Reset aka The 4th Industrial Revolution.

Dostoyevsky created his brotherly characters as his alter egos wrestling with his own profoundly tortured and contradictory belief systems, while intuiting the trajectory of a culture that was careening toward yet another manufactured crisis.

The purpose of this post is to review The Grand Inquisitor as not just a powerful predictive function for today’s technocommunist global power grab, but also to confront our very own conflicted views of the nature of freedom and morality in the face of dark transhumanist forces attempting to wrest from us the last vestiges of our humanity.

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Some Quotes From A Favorite Author and Philosopher

h/t The Burning Platform

Ayn Rand Quotes | Keep Inspiring Me

Good Ayn Rand Quotes

TOP 25 QUOTES BY AYN RAND (of 1049) | A-Z Quotes

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Doug Casey on the End of Western Civilization

And with what do you replace Western Civilization? From Doug Casey at internationalman.com:

End of Western Civilization

International Man: The decline of Western Civilization is on a lot of people’s minds.

Let’s talk about this trend.

Doug Casey: Western Civilization has its origins in ancient Greece. It’s unique among the world’s civilizations in putting the individual—as opposed to the collective—in a central position. It enshrined logic and rational thought—as opposed to mysticism and superstition—as the way to deal with the world. It’s because of this that we have science, technology, great literature and art, capitalism, personal freedom, the concept of progress, and much, much more. In fact, almost everything worth having in the material world is due to Western Civilization.

Ayn Rand once said “East minus West equals zero.” I think she went a bit too far, as a rhetorical device, but she was essentially right. When you look at what the world’s other civilizations have brought to the party, at least over the last 2,500 years, it’s trivial.

I lived in the Orient for years. There are many things I love about it—martial arts, yoga, and the cuisine among them. But all the progress they’ve made is due to adopting the fruits of the West.

International Man: There are so many things degrading Western Civilization. Where do we begin?

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The Fundamental Ideological Question at Stake in Ukraine, by Boyd D. Cathey

Western elites are fundamentally hostile to Russian morality and its foundation of Orthodox Christianity. From Boyd D. Cathey at unz.com:

Since the Russian incursion into Ukraine on February 24, the American and Western European media have been almost unanimous in pushing the template which they wish us to believe and the agenda which they wish us to follow. In the US Congress, as in most deliberative bodies in Western Europe and in such international entities as the United Nations (UN) and the World Economic Forum (WEF), the refrain has been almost identically the same: that President Volodymyr Zelensky’s heroic and noble “liberal democratic” Ukrainian government stands for and defends “our liberal democratic values,” and that it has been brutally attacked in an unprovoked assault by the evil Russians under their evil president—the new “reincarnation of Hitler”—Vladimir Putin, who, of course, wishes to re-establish the old Soviet Empire which expired thirty-one years ago.

It’s as if nothing has changed since 1991—thirty-one years ago—when Russian Communism perished in an ignominious death, scorned and despised by the Russian people. It’s as if no history has elapsed since then, and that somehow the spectre of Soviet Communism, or some newfangled form thereof, still critically threatens “the West.” And thus, we must engage in a new and very dangerous “cold war,” which now in Ukraine turns increasingly “hot.”

Among establishment “conservatives”—in particular, those we denominate Neo-conservatives—this refrain finds strong resonance, as well as among Republican members of the US Congress. It is fascinating, to say the least, to see a Lindsey Graham and Mitch McConnell joined at the hip—no daylight between them—to a Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi, as one, zealously advocating a rapid escalation in American involvement in Ukraine, no matter whether such offensive actions (e.g., no fly zones, US troops on the ground) might bring on nuclear Armageddon. Graham and other political leaders seem to welcome such tactical nuclear exchanges with “acceptable levels of civilian and combat casualties,” oblivious to what actually would happen.

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How Could We Have Been So Naive about Big Tech? By Jeffrey A. Tucker

Once upon a time a lot of Ayn Rand oriented libertarians essentially assumed the “goodness” of business, and that it would never become an arm of the government. Obviously Big Tech these days destroys that illusion. From Jeffrey A. Tucker at brownstone.org:

The 1998 movie Enemy of the State starring Gene Hackman and Will Smith seemed like fiction at the time. Why I didn’t regard that movie – which still holds up in nearly every detail – as a warning I do not know. It pulls back the curtain on the close working relationship between national security agencies and the communications industry – spying, censorship, blackmailing, and worse. Today, it seems not just a warning but a description of reality.

There is no longer any doubt at all about the symbiotic relationship between Big Tech – the digital communications industry in particular – and government. The only issue we need to debate is which of the two sectors are more decisive in driving the loss of privacy, free speech, and liberty in general.

Not only that: I’ve been involved in many debates over the years, always taking the side of technology over those who warned of the coming dangers. I was a believer, a techno-utopian and could not see where this was headed.

The lockdowns were the great shock for me, not only for the unconscionably draconian policies imposed on the country so quickly. The shock was intensified by how all the top tech companies immediately enlisted in the war on freedom of association. Why? Some combination of industry ideology, which shifted over 30 years from a founding libertarian ethos to become a major force for techno-tyranny, plus industry self-interest (how better to promote digital media consumption than to force half the workforce to stay home?) were at work.

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America’s Culture of Death, by Jacob G. Hornberger

The culture of death stems from America’s state-sanctioned death. From Jacob G. Hornberger at fff.org:

In the wake of another mass shooting, this one in Uvalde, Texas, there have been the standard, predictable calls for gun control. The idea is that if more stringent gun-control laws are enacted, there will be fewer mass shootings.

That’s simply ludicrous reasoning. When a person wants to kill a lot of people, he is going to be able to get his hands on a gun, even if he has to go into the black market to do so. After all, drug possession is illegal, and no one has any problem getting his hands on drugs in the black market.

Instead, what gun-control laws do is disarm the victims. The gun-control laws prevent them from defending themselves. Who wants to take the chance of a felony conviction for unlawfully carrying a concealed weapon?

There are plenty of gun shows in Texas. Why didn’t that mass murderer choose a gun show to initiate his killing spree? Because he wasn’t stupid. Mass murderers traditionally look for gun-free zones to commit their mayhem. That’s because there is less chance of someone firing back in a gun-free zone.

But there is a more fundamental issue that I wish to address — the underlying causes of mass murders in America. Until we get a handle on that issue — why it is that there are so many such occurrences here in the United States — we will continue to experience them.

After all, there are lots of guns in Switzerland. In fact, most families are armed to the teeth. If widespread gun ownership was the cause of mass murders — as the gun-control crowd here in the United States claims — then we would naturally expect to see the same large number of mass murders in Switzerland that we do here. But we don’t. Unlike the United States, Switzerland is not besieged by a large number of mass killings.

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Peering Into the Crystal Ball, We See… Instability Leading to Collapse, by Charles Hugh Smith

Charles Hugh Smith is looking into the same crystal ball as SLL. From Smith at oftwominds.com:

We can only choose one: open, dynamic stability (evolution) or autocracy (instability and collapse).

When the fundamentals of life change, every organism must evolve or die. This is equally true of human organizations, societies and economies.

Evolution requires conserving what still works and experimenting until something comes along that works better. We call the fundamentals changing selective pressure and the process of experimenting with mutations / variations natural selection.

In genetic and epigenetics, this process is automatic. In human organizations, those in power influence the choice of what is conserved or replaced and what it’s replaced with. Those who benefit from the current arrangement will fight to conserve it as is, while those being weakened by selective pressure and those hoping to gain advantages with a new arrangement will fight for replacing the old with the new.

Longtime correspondent Ron G. recently shared an insightful economic characterization of this dynamic: wealth defense vs wealth creation. Those holding the system’s wealth have few incentives to risk changing the system, as those changes could undermine or erode their wealth. They have incentives to limit evolutionary forces that threaten their wealth as a means of defending their wealth.

Those who have lost wealth and those with little wealth have incentives to change the system to favor wealth creation.

We can describe the first as orthodoxy–evolution threatens the stability of the status quo, so limit evolution to the margins–and heretics being the second option that tosses out the status quo in favor of a more advantageous variation.

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Libertarianism and libertarians . . ., by Eric Peters

It may sound strange and hopelessly old fashioned, but there are people in this world who neither want to tell other people how to live their lives nor be told how to live their own. From Eric Peters at ericpetersautos.com:

Part of the problem – as regards libertarianism – is that it’s a philosophy or moral code rather than a political movement. Which it probably can never be – because the libertarian moral system is foundationally anti-political. It does not seek office anymore than a fish seeks the desert.

But that doesn’t mean – should not mean – that libertarians ought to retire from politics. That would be like a fish retiring from water.

We live in an imperfect – a political – world. People are going to vote. If libertarians abstain from voting on the moral principle that it is wrong to participate in a morally imperfect (even a deeply flawed) system, then the votes of people who are not libertarians will count more.

If libertarians abstain from putting themselves – and libertarian ideas – forward as alternatives to ideas (and people seeking office) who are not libertarians, they have helped to ensure that libertarian ideas will not be heard (and possibly listened to) and that people who are decidedly not libertarians – or even “small government conservatives” – will end up holding the political offices that will determine whose ideas guide and determine policy.

The libertarian’s moral dilemma is a thing of his own construction. It is the false dilemma presented in the form of refusing to have anything to do with the imperfect (politically) for the sake of the perfect (which will never be) and which necessarily results in the worse-than-imperfect.

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Rage, Rebel, Replace, by Robert Gore

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Let’s try something different.

We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness—-That to secure these Rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its Foundation on such Principles, and organizing its Powers in such Form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient Causes; and accordingly all Experience hath shewn, that Mankind are more disposed to suffer, while Evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the Forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long Train of Abuses and Usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object, evinces a Design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their Right, it is their Duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future Security.

The Declaration of Independence, 1776

It is disheartening how many people are pinning their hopes on the next two elections. We still don’t know exactly how the last one was stolen—the thieves were never charged, evidence was never presented, there was no discovery, cross-examination, or verdict in a court of law—but stolen it was. Yet, many believe Lucy won’t pull the football away this time.

In 2020, no one showed up for Joe and Kamala’s appearances while Trump was pulling them in by the tens of thousands. Trump got more votes than any sitting president had ever received, but Biden supposedly beat him by 7 million votes. There were myriad inconsistencies and irregularities, many connected with procedures concocted to deal with the overhyped Covid threat. However, the election was pronounced free and fair, January 6 protestors were arrested and jailed, Trump relinquished the presidency, and that was that, a bipartisan-endorsed end of story.

Everything the Democrats have done since Biden halted the Keystone XL pipeline on inauguration day seems designed to lose votes, and the polls register fading support. Yet, the Democrats are acting as if they have this year’s elections in the bag, just as they did in 2020.

Politicians interested in winning legitimate elections don’t appropriate $80 billion three months before the election to hire 87,0000 new IRS agents, some of whom will be armed, to harass tax-paying voters. They don’t conduct a raid on the home of their hated opponent, handing him an issue which solidifies his support. They don’t engage in a Quixotic proxy war on the doorstep of a nuclear power. Their nominal leader doesn’t disparage half the population in a creepy, neo-Nazi setting and speech. Is it because the vote doesn’t matter, only, per Joseph Stalin, who counts the votes?

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On that score not much has changed. The documentary 2000 Mules came and went; once in a while someone mumbles something about election integrity, and a few states have passed a few laws purportedly ensuring fairer votes (“restricting voter access” in Democratic parlance).

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