What the Right misses in current events, that the Wokesters (Left & Right) never do

I've watched several news cycles come and go since I started on this post, and what eventually caught my interest in it then, has been evident in each of the newer news cycles since then, and in most of the ones preceding it. This particular incident is from four or five news cycles back, where a woman named Shilow Hendrix was videoed on a playground calling a child, and the person videoing her, the 'n-word'. This was the one where the videographer promised to punish her by making it go viral on the internet, which it did, but in an unexpected wrinkle, wound up reaping her nearly a million dollars through online contributions to a Givesendgo account. I'd initially described my attitude towards that at the time as being 'rabidly uninterested' in it, but as I poked about in the responses to it, and noticed these features regularly persisting across our news cycles, it turns out that despite the event itself being a few cycles behind the 'news', it's still very timely.

The best and most level-headed point for point commentary on that 'event' itself, came from Isiah (though you may want to gird your ears, because Isiah, as he describes it, is commenting from that part of New York City that uses the F'word as a comma). One of the worst features of the issue is that the worst parts didn't come from the pro-regressive Wokesters of the Left & Right ('a turd by any other name would reek the same'), but from the reactions to it from those of the Left, Right, and Center, who've been trying and mostly failing, to be 'Based' in their responses to it.

What nudged me into writing this post, was the responses to James Lindsay's response, to Matt Walsh's response to the video, which is what got me to finally watch the original video. Regarding Lindsay's commentary, aside from a couple minor digs at Walsh in the latter half of the last paragraph that didn't seem necessary, I agreed with his points and with why he made them, as well as with his conclusion that while Walsh isn't 'Woke Right', several of his takes on the issue are wrong in both particulars and principles.

There were three particular issues in Walsh's commentary that caught my attention, the nature of which I recognized from other news cycles before and since. Which can be picked out in Walsh's:

1. ...opinion of what the 'actual issue' is and is not,
2. ...opinion of what contributing cash to unsavory people in difficult circumstances, will and will not accomplish
3. ...Miss Manners-like take on the proper usage of the 'n-word'.

1) The Issue is never about the issue...
The first part of that, begins at the 10.29 mark, where Walsh states what far too many people believe about issues such as this:

'...the most important parameter is that the person is white' [and] '...soley based upon...'

It's painful to still have to say this in 2025, but Race is not the issue. Despite all attempts to make it seem like the reason, Race and 'Whiteness', are not that. Not even when the issue is specifically about targeting 'white people' for the need to redress the systemic racism of their 'Whiteness'.

How can I say that "It's not about race!", when they actually say that it's about race? Easy. It's because their issues are never about what they claim to be about. You can see what I mean for yourself by asking yourself this:

• Do you see the Woke Left embracing Thomas Sowell on the basis of his race?
• Do you see the Woke Right embracing James Lindsay on the basis of his race?
• Do you think the Woke Left began vandalizing Tesla's because of their sudden hatred for the way Tesla manufactured their electric cars & trucks?

See what I mean? Although Race was the vehicle, it was not what drove the Hendrix video, just as it's not what's driving the current news cycle's evasion of the nature of Illegal Immigration (or of "regime change" in the Israel/Iran conflict), and it's frustrating to still be addressing this in 2025, as if people have forgotten Alinsky's dictum:

"The issue is never the issue, the issue is always the revolution!"

, which was the case in the 70s when Alinsky made his point, as has been the case since the Fergusson riots of 2014 here in St. Louis and on through the George Floyd summer of 2020, and it has been the case that has persisted case in education for decades, as I pointed out in these posts on SEL, DEI, CRT in 2021:

Appearances are meant to be deceiving - and destructive
What we are led to believe by all of this, and by the media reporting on it, is that it's all about Race, all about *whiteness*, and all about *white supremacy*, but... believe it or not, it's not really about race. If your reaction is "They're talking about racism, they're calling me a racist, it feels a lot like it's about race... and I'm not going to tolerate it!", that's understandable, and you know what? They understand that that will be your reaction too. Think about that. My dear binary ladies and gents, when the enemy has gone to such great lengths to prepare the ground for you to fight them on, you’d be wise to think twice before fighting them there.

IOW: It's a trap! Seriously. Don’t go there. They go to great lengths to make this appear to be all about race, but it’s not about race, and no matter how many actual racists are involved - and there are many - Race is just the most convenient means of sowing dissension and causing division; the easiest means of putting people on edge; the easiest means of pitting people against each other; which is the easiest means of turning people's good intentions into the means of subduing them, so as to seize more of what this is all about: Power.

Don’t take the bait, don’t bother telling them that you’re not a racist or that they are; don’t tell them they’ve got you all wrong; because those are the very steps that they want you to take, as they will lead you smack dab into the kill zone that they’ve prepared for you...."

The power the Wokesters are pursuing, feeds upon division and discord, which requires suppressing their opponents ability to reason well. If you keep that perspective in mind, it becomes clear that Race is simply one of those issues (along with illegal aliens, gender, class, 1%, etc.,) that the pro-regressive Woke (Left & Right) know will be an effective means of stirring up anger & division amongst Americans, which is what they use to further their actual purposes - the revolution. And as the bewildered owners of Tesla cars & trucks can attest to - having gone from being treated as a kind of cool, virtuous, elite, to being attacked as the scum of society, to being all but forgotten about in the current news cycle - whatever the 'issue' of the moment actually is, is nothing more than what the Woke think will most effectively serve their purposes at that particular moment, and they can & will spin around on a dime the moment they feel the moment has changed.

You might well ask just how much value there is in knowing that 'the issue isn't the issue', when weighed against the real harm that real people suffer from bearing the brunt of the issue being raised. After all:

• Don't Tesla owners have very real cause for anger over the very real harm that's been done to them?
• Don't Tesla owners have a real basis for seeking satisfaction?

Yes, absolutely and undoubtedly. And sure, for the Tesla owners to know that they weren't the reason they were targeted, is unlikely to make them feel a whole lot better. But be that as it may, wouldn't it be at best mistaken, and at the very least foolish & destructive, to propose making it up to those Tesla owners, by vandalizing Ford, GM, Chrysler cars, penalizing their owners, and forcing them to yield to Tesla's in traffic, as if those owners and their Tesla's were the issue?

Just as that special treatment would do nothing but stoke the same flames of agitation & division which the Wokesters' were intending to enflame all along, treating 'Race' or 'Whiteness' as issues that justify singling the particular targets of the moment out for recompensation, would be far worse than merely pointless and counterproductive.

I understand want to approach the issue logically and make a straight forward response to it, but you need to remember that the fundamental requirement of a logical argument is that your premises be true, and when you attempt to form a logical response that's based upon a false premise that they fabricated to set you up with, it's not going to improve your position at all. When you rush into the argument that they've prepared for you, like Walsh does, with logic, facts, & charges locked & loaded for a clear cut reasonable argument to a point they tricked you into defending, you're going to find that you've brought the proverbial knife to a gunfight as they easily brush your facts, premises, and arguments aside in the most irrational manner possible, while subjecting you to being smeared with charges you won't be able to reasonably understand, and which will leave you with no means for arguing against them.

To repeat, when someone who considers you to be their enemy, carefully prepares a battleground to battle you upon, it is unwise to go meeting them on that ground at the time and place of their choosing!

To borrow a phrase... 'Wake Up!' (ahem).

By allowing yourself to be sucked into angrily treating these issues as anything other than a pretext for screwing our entire society over with, you and those you associate with, are likely to get sucked into helping them advance the Wokester's goals. Don't do that.

2) Ideological incentives trump economic incentives (which undermine your ability to act on what is right)
The 2nd issue I saw was Walsh's hot take on using the power of Economics to shape society closer to his heart (!), in that he believed Shiloh Hendrix getting rich off her crude behavior, would provide *us* with the incentive & means for cancelling Cancel Culture. That begins at the 14.08 mark:

'... effectively ended cancel culture... and I think that's right...', and that the '...only way to disincentivize that behavior is to reward the person who's being targeted...', and that '... the only thing that can stop them, the thing that can make them think twice about doing this again, is if they know that instead of getting their target cancelled, they might accidentally make them rich. And more importantly, even than the money ...they must know that their attempt to isolate, to ostracize somebody, will fail...'

, and that at 15.50

'...that for every person condemning the targeted person to more, will rally to their defense...', and at 16.20 '...with this case, that assumption has been flipped on its head, because now the mob knows, that making them famous, might help them, rather than hurt them, rather than the fame being punished, it's being rewarded...'

Sorry, but on two levels, one being how incentives work, and the other being what ideological people are incentivized by, I answer an emphatic no.

Reminder, 'economics' was Marx's means of destabilizing the West, and 'Capitalism' was the term he used to 'polarize it, freeze it' the Free Market with.

In the first case, treating cancel culture as an economic behavior, is at the very least mistaking the nature of economic incentives. Haven't we all seen the Wokester's get publicly skewered in backlashes that financially penalized them for their actions. That happened with the case of Nick Sandman, the Covington High School student targeted by media at the Washington monument, who won millions of dollars in settlements from the Washington Post, NBC, and CNN. It happened in Elon Musk's lawsuit against Media Matters, and Peter Theil/Hulk Hogan's suit against Gawker.

With such obvious economics disincentives involved, have the media changed? No? Gee... it's almost as if something else is motivating them...isn't it? Clearly such 'economic issues' are neither incentives or disincentives for their ideological behavior, but you can be assured that they will double down on continuing to go 'Forward!', if such setbacks mean guaranteeing even more public focus upon the same divisive ideological messages they're using to divide us with.

Of course the Wokesters (Left & Right) would prefer to see the person's life they targeted destroyed - that's in the nature of those who look first to Power - but for them that small bit of destruction is just a 'happy side-effect', of the more destructive revolution they seek. Whatever the issue may have been or soon will be, they are chosen for their ability to stir up publicity and division across society, and they have no meaning for them beyond that (hello: Nihilists!), but so long as their revolution is being served, such small setbacks of prosperity for those they targeted, will be taken in stride as little more than 'unfortunate' collateral damage, so long as it furthers the division & discord that the initial action was intended to ignite in the first place.

So when they see one of their targets like Shilow Hendrix getting a million dollars, which stirs up even more publicity, and stirs up still more division amongst the 'normies' over 'someone like her' benefitting from it, and they take the bait of feeling targeted for 'being white', and that leads them more deeply into 'economic thinking' - then since they are only reaping more of what they initially targeted her for, to begin with - what is there for the Wokesters not to like?!

But to think that someone else - vulgar or not - being economically rewarded or penalized could be even a way, let alone the only way, to deter the ideological fervor behind cancel culture, is to utterly and completely miss what 'this' is all about. On just the 'economics of it' alone, it entirely misreads what 'economic incentives' are - valid 'economic incentives' aren't about what another person receives, but what you personally seek to gain, or avoid losing. And because of the way such incentives actually do work, when people see that those who've been publicly cancelled, could be actually gaining money from Givesendgo dollars because they were targeted, what that's most likely to incentivize is others of similarly questionable character, seeking out similar situations (staged even) so that they can try to appeal to the 'Based' internet and fill up their own Givesendgo's with mega bucks (which seemed to have already happened. Go figure), which, of course, is likely to garner still more of the very same publicity, division, and discord, that the Wokesters sought to inflame us with in the first place.

More importantly, the 'economics' of what 'this' is all about, is that getting you to think about all such issue in economic terms, as Walsh advises, is fundamentally engaging in the act of putting utilitarian ends over doing what is right & best, which cancel culture and everything which makes it possible and probable, fundamentally depends upon your thinking!

Or to picture their words:

James Lindsay, anti-Communist @ConceptualJames
Everything the Woke Left does is in service to its revolution. Every issue it takes up is just a crowbar against the society they hate. This is why you get things like Queers for Palestine and these LA riots. It's also all strategic, which is why a weekend of protest comes next.

Getting you to not only go along with, but to engage in the farcical 'ethics' of 'the Ends justify the means' (which is exactly what the modern field of Economics hinges upon - see my extended post 'Exiting the wizards circle'), is a means of causing your ethical sense to collapse, which is a huge incentive - and primary goal - for them.

The notion of using 'economic incentives' which have no value for the Pro-Regressive Wokester's of the Left or Right (are you using Marx's definition of Value, or Bastiat's?), as a means to end Cancel Culture, can and will have no worthwhile outcome. The Woke are not economically motivated - economics is often their means but it's not their motive - what motivates them is their ideology, and while they will be radically inflamed when they see that those they've attacked are benefitting from that attack - that's not going to incentivize them to back off, it's going to rile them up into going further & faster forward.

IOW, like the Tesla's, the person or issue being attacked is not the target, the narrative & disturbances generated from that attack, is, because:

'The issue is never the issue, it is always the revolution!'

They attack whatever particulars present themselves as seeming useful in promoting their ideology and/or the beliefs that they're associating with them, as that's the best means of elevating their ability to cause further divisions, so as to intimidate the 'wrong people', and further their revolution.

So, sorry, but no, Capitalism is not going to solve society's faulty and failing ideology, it's only going to provide its enemies more of what they seek, while producing more fire for the revolution - which actually is the only 'problem of production' that they passionately desire to solve. And prescribing Capitalism to cure a philosophical cancer, is at best philosophical malpractice and economic incompetence, and there will be no cure forthcoming from such a misdiagnosis as that, and no benefits will follow from whatever additional 'cures' might be prescribed based upon them.

3) If you don't use The Master's Tools correctly, they will use them against you
The third point that I saw persisting across the news cycles, is visible in Walsh's 'Miss Manners' approach to the issue of the proper use of the 'n word'.

20.30 '...totally indefensible...' (one side can say n word, other can't) ...' and ''...if it's wrong to say the word, then it's wrong for anyone to say the word, then they need to not say it...'

They don't defend using the 'n' word, because that isn't their point in using it. Your reaction to their use of the 'n word' is the point of their actions, and here you are thinking that the best plan is to start using the 'n word' as a means of taking a principled stand? To what?! Do you really think that the way they use the 'n word' is the result of a logical or grammatical error on their part? Do you really think that your principled arguments and logical corrections, are going to... what, correct their accidental logical & grammatical errors, and somehow teach or shame them into the proper usage of improper language?!

Really?! Well... thank you Mr. Helper, but I think you need to pay a bit more attention to what they think about your principles and logic ('Ah! Ahh! AHHH!!!' 😎).

See, for instance (as I noted in this post), how Audre Lord gave their answer to that approach, a great many news cycle ago:

That strategic intent was perhaps most vividly illustrated by Audre Lorde, the Marxist, black, lesbian, feminist, activist (do you feel "the exasperated etc” in that listing?), whose infamous statement has become a rallying cry of what Deconstructionism is all about:

"the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house."

Get it?

• The Master's House that they want to dismantle (deconstruct) is the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian West.
• The Masters Tools which they've realized are of no use to them - and which they want to keep out of other people's hands as well, are Reason and Logic and the culture which values them.

Whenever their activist followers and functionaries do and say seemingly senseless, illogical, and unreasonable things, from demanding the use of ridiculous pronouns, to claims of being "non-binary!", or labeling you (meaning any Westerner of any color) as a 'White Supremacist', they're not doing so because they're fools, but because those illogical and unreasonable words and actions are the most suitable tools at hand in their Post-Modernist toolbelt, for them to utilize as 'the right tools for the job' of dismantling 'The Master's House', by producing reactions of discomfort and anger in you, which deconstructs its fundamental norms from within you.

Their 'unfairness' and irrationality are not a result of errors or inconsistencies, and they're not driven by the pursuit of the profit motive, what their actions are, are calculated attacks upon your Logos, and if you don't learn to shield yourself from them, instead of engaging with them (hello Trojan Horse), your mind is going to end up dead (say hello to the battlefield they've prepared for you to fight them upon).

Using the 'n word' is not about the word, it's about the attention it so easily inflames, so as to cause anxiety and division amongst Americans, in order to (wait for it...) further their revolution. And Walsh's plan to use such words to make a point and defend the language, is nothing more than accepting their engraved invitation to meet them on the battlefield at the time and place which they've very carefully chosen, for you to fight them upon.

Come on, do I need to say it again? 'Wake Up!' (sheesh).

'the issue is never the issue, it is always the revolution'!!!

Everything Woke (Left and Right) goes to sh*t
To think that the Pro-Regressive Woke (Left and Right) are going to act in accordance with the very reality they're revolting against, is foolish. Yet Walsh and most of the Right, fail to recognize that what they think of as being the reality-based perspective they're making their observations from, is not a perspective or conception of reality that the Wokesters are working from.

Your being offended by it, has no other effect than to further their goals. You are, as Stephen Coughlin puts it, reacting to the blast radius of the bombs that their dialectical airplane began dropping on you several news cycles ago, instead of looking upwards note to identify, target, and shoot down the plane that's dropping them (See his posts on the Dialectical Airplane, and xTweets on it being used to attack the Constitution).

If you take a moment to look at matters from a wider & higher perspective (which, BTW, is what modern schooling was designed from its start in the early 1800s to stop you from doing), it'll reveal that the goading particulars like 'whiteness' or 'white guilt' are little more than successful marketing campaigns for selling the woke Kool-Aid, and the 'normies' are putting their money down for it, hand over fist. See the threads on the subject from "Yuri Bezmenov's Ghost", and especially Melanie Bennet's (@finkledusty) excellent post: "Settlers, Colonizers, and the Politics of White Guilt"

"...When Indigenous activists say the land was never ceded, they are saying they did not agree to your presence. If the land was never given up, then you are on it without permission. And if you are there without permission, then you are, in their words, a settler, an uninvited guest, a colonizer. That language is not poetry. It is the language of eviction.

The Land Back movement is a political engine that lurks behind these acknowledgements. Its premise is simple: land taken, or unceded, must be returned. The implication, however, is far from simple. If the goal is to restore land to its rightful owners, then those currently living on it have a problem. You cannot be both a permanent citizen and a temporary trespasser. If you tell people for long enough that the land they occupy was stolen, and that they have no rightful claim to it, you should not be surprised when they begin to believe it. And once they believe it, you should not be surprised when Land Back activists begin to act on their demands.

The idea that land belongs inherently to a particular racial or ethnic group is not a new one. In another time and place, it was called "blood and soil." The Nazis used the concept to fuse national identity to ancestral land, arguing that a people and their territory were bound by bloodline. Outsiders had no place in this worldview because they did not share the sacred connection to the soil. Land was not just property. It was the vessel of cultural survival. The Land Back movement, while vastly different in moral tone and historical context, mirrors this framework in structure. It binds land to identity, and identity to legitimacy. The result is a form of ethno-territorial politics...."

While the Woke Left style the concept as "Land Back Movement", the Woke Right style the very same concept as "Heritage American" to do the very same thing. What We The People need to realize, is that both flavors of Woke benefit from whichever way the coin toss of affordance-based narratives (authentic/other, Sex/Genders, Rich/Poor, White/POC) turns out. They are all a means of nudging the populace into the same activist Praxis, and all of their 'competing' aims are used to halt objective thought in those who stop and react to them, so as to instill in the sense in everyone that only recourse we have for deciding our fates are contests of power (AKA: The Revolution).

Left or Right: "...the most intolerant faction will eventually enforce a rigid orthodoxy on its environment " if allowed the chance...".

The fact that Matt Walsh and so many others still fall for the current issues of the moment being all about the same old pretexts of race, economics, language (which are but the same old pro-regressive (Woke) concepts & theories in new clothing), is nothing but a win for both sides of the Wokester's coin being flipped, and a loss for the realist perspective which they imagine they are upholding. Big time. The mayhem of the moment are consequences, not causes. The anti-reality framework of the Pro-Regressive Woke (Left & Right), is what they use to instill, invoke, and utilize the 'benefits' of the chaos we experience from their issues, and our falling for it - pro or con - helps them to fan the flames of their revolution.

Steal their Motte and bomb their Bailey
If you want to fight back against the Pro-Regressive Woke (Left & Right), you first have to decline to be enraged by their provocations, and instead identify the Classical American Liberal principles that they're trying to avoid and subvert (and yes, you need to be familiar with them, to recognize them), in order to strip them of their rhetorical defenses and ability to attack you.

Without going into the details here (which you can find all the details of here and here), what you want to do is to steal their Motte and bomb their Bailey - their Bailey being the wild charges they rush around attacking you with, such as either 'We're being systemically oppressed by your whiteness!' or 'Whiteness is under attack!', and the Motte being the more reasonable sounding defense which they retreat to when called on the ridiculousness of their tactics, with something like 'We're just trying to be fair.'

It's important to realize that when you fail to look beyond their distractions and take the 'Race!' bait, you help generate the rhetorical energy they need to strengthen their evasions of the principle(s) that you should be relying upon. It's also essential to realize that your beliefs are the source of the 'strength' of their arguments; they absolutely rely upon your having only a vague sense of what is just and fair (and even less familiarity with the principles they try to make you evade), so as to employ Alinsky's 'use their own virtues/rules against them' tactic against you, so as to demand a concession from you (whether in support of DEI or 'Heritage American' policies) as a demonstration of your commitment to 'fairness', which unbeknownst to you is but a veiled attack upon the principle that could have saved you from it.

But if you can manage to step out of the perspective of whichever narrative they've generated, and identify the principle that they're aiming at subverting & distracting you from (which in the case of the 'Race' narrative, whether Woke Left or Woke Right, is that of the equality of individual rights before objective laws of justice), you'll find that their own narratives will provide you the means of unraveling them.

To do so, you need only reframe their narrative in such a way as to put the spotlight back onto what they're trying so desperately to stop you from engaging with, by feeding a completely negative version of it back to them, which brings it to the forefront of discussion. By combining that with clearly withdrawing your support from what they are expecting you to stand up for - fairness and justice - you force them to hold to their own rules (their claim that truth isn't objective and Power is all that matters), which with no support from you to prop them up, will force them to face up to their own pathetic reliance upon what you stand for - and that effectively flips their script.

NOTE: I'm not suggesting anything like using Alinsky's or Gramsci's rules, but only that you withdraw from them the aid of what you believe to be true, which is the only real strength they can count on, and the only strength that their system ever had! IOW: Shrug!

That may sound like a lot, but the explanation is way longer than the application of it needs to be, which can be as simple as something like:

"Well... if objective truth is an illusion and Power is what society uses to say what is right & wrong, and 'we' have the power, then why should we see a problem with systemic racism?

"If 'we' have the power, and everything is about power, doesn't that means that crushing the weaker folk, is the 'right' thing to do?"
[You need to realize that this is what they want power over you, to do to you]

, and then to bring their walls down, ask them to give you a good reason (which they will resist, see "The Master's Tools" above) why 'they' shouldn't be imposed upon with every bit of power you can bring against them?... and say nothing more as you watch them try to squirm around the need to use or mention concepts such as objectivity, individual rights, an objective Rule of Law, and equal justice for all.

This highlights the fact that in a power oriented system that has no concept of fairness (something that's only possible to one that respects what's real and true, and people are able to comprehend), anyone complaining of being oppressed by a greater power through 'systemic racism', is counting on you who believes in Truth over Power, to insist that they be treated fairly. If you withdraw that expectation of support, then the only defense they can give, is one that depends upon a classical Western understanding of what is real and true, along with a respect for individual rights under a justifiable rule of law, and doing so destroys their entire modernist position.

And adding insult to injury, any additional response they might try to make, implicitly counts upon everyone's ability to recognize, and communicate, and understand, what is objectively true (which, it's worth noting, affects them like garlic, crosses, and holy water, affects a vampire).

Personally, I think that it'd be best if we stopped helping them to get away with such narratives. How about you?

Stop the cycle
To close, I do not think that Matt Walsh is Woke (yet, though the adjacency that he's maintaining to those who are Woke Right, puts him on unsteady ground), but his & so many other people's reactions which mistake secondary effects for primary causes, become issues that further the revolution that the Woke (Left & Right) seek. Denying the existence of the Woke Right, which does exist and is using the issue every bit as much as the Woke Left is, for their shared goals of furthering the divisions needed for revolution - is blinding ourselves to half of the reality of what's going on.

Every time we fall for identifying any of their particular issues of the current news cycle, as being about anything other than their ongoing revolution, we enable them to use our issues to pour further fuel on the flames of their revolution. The incentives they seek are not to be found in monetary gains or losses, or in winning debates, but in the divisions & disruptions they think are needed to tear down the Master's house - and again, you need look no further than how the controversies of Matt Walsh, Shiloh Hendrix, and advice on using the 'n word', are furthering their revolution on all sides of 'The Right'.

We should stop doing that. In every news cycle

Re-membering Memorial Day, once again

American war dead, Flanders Field, Belgium

Remembering, once again... Memorial Day... it is enough to remember today those who have fallen in defense of our nation. But it's not all we can do, for them or for us, and to leave it there, I think, deprives them, and you, of an important part of what they died for. It seems to me that you can remember them even more completely if you will remember what it was that they gave their lives in defense of. If you remember why it was that their lives came to be remembered on this day, then you can in some sense repay them and also deepen your own position in your own life.

Do you remember what Memorial Day was designated for you to remember? It has changed over the years, but it began as 'Decoration Day', back in 1868, on May 30th, a day chosen because it didn't mark the anniversary of any battle - an important point - as a day to officially mark, what people had unofficially been doing across the land on their own for some while, decorating the many, many graves of those who had 'died in the late rebellion'. After WWI, when many more graves were dug, the day was changed to Memorial Day to remember all of those who have died in service of their country, in all of its wars.

But what does it mean to remember? What can it do? Remember... the members of our lives who were lost can never be re-membered... those who are gone are gone forever, but in the service of... what? Why did they give their lives? Why decorate the graves of soldiers, those who have gone before their time, lives which were violently lost... why? Family and friends will remember their fallen family and friends, they have no need of a national holiday to do that, there is no use for you who they do not know to pretend to remember those you never knew - but that is not what we pause this day to remember.

What did their untimely deaths have to do with your life here and now?

Does their death have any relevance to your life? Asking another question might put us closer to the trail, what relevance can your life have to your nation without remembering why they lost theirs?

Memorial Day is a day of remembrance for those who gave their lives, the 'last full measure of devotion' in the service of the United States of America, but not just to their homeland - any country can do that, and they do - nothing exceptional there.

But we are an exceptional nation, and simple remembrance will not do, because simply defending their homeland is not what they did or why they did it.

Why did they do it? What did it mean?

Maybe it'll help by looking at it from the perspective of the Oath which led them into the military life which put their own lives at risk for yours,

"I, (NAME), do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; and that I will obey the orders of the President of the United States and the orders of the officers appointed over me, according to regulations and the Uniform Code of Military Justice. So help me God."

That is what they risked and lost their lives for, was it worth it? Do you grant their lost lives a value in yours? And that is the heart of it isn't it? Does the life they lost have value in yours?

Well, if you can say the words "your life", as something you live, something which you value and have some measure of control over, then yes, their lives were lost in service of your being able to think of your life as yours, and that - that is something which should cause you a spasmed breath, one abruptly caught in your chest in reverence and awe... that another's last breath was let go as 'darkness veiled his eyes' not just so that you could draw your previous, current and next breath as you wish, but so you could do so in a state of liberty.

Now I think we're getting closer to re-membering them and memorializing their life, through yours. Let's chase that a little further.

What does it take to say 'your life'? What does it take to live your life? What must you do, absent simply having others take care of you, what must you do to live? First off, you must use your head, you must think... but just thinking isn't enough to continue living, after all, you could very well choose to think that by imagining very clearly and distinctly that your shoe would become a salmon if you declare it so, but such thinking would do nothing to advance your life. For your thinking to benefit your life, it must be productive, and to do that it must reflect reality... your life will continue on only if at least some of your ideas help you to transform the reality you face on a daily basis into those materials and conditions which benefit your life... food, shelter, etc, IOW 'nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed'.

For your life, to be lived, you must be free to think, for your thoughts to benefit your life you must see to it that they respect reality - cherish truth -  for your freedom of thought to be anything other than a mockery, you must be free to put them into action, and again, for your thoughts and your actions to be a benefit to you, rather than a mockery, you must be free to retain and use that which your thoughts and actions have produced, and what they produce is called property.

Today, for the lives we remember having been lost, to have meaning and value to us, your life must be able to be lived in the spirit which they gave their own lives up for, that of liberty; the liberty to live your life in the pursuit of happiness in your life.

Those we memorialize today gave their last full measure of devotion in service of the document which makes that possible, the Constitution of the United States of America, a document which outlines the ideas necessary for ensuring your ability to live your life, in liberty and pursuing happiness. They gave their life for the ideas which best reflect the reality of life and the requirements of man living in liberty so that in his life, if he applies his thoughts to actions which serve to produce the materials he needs, that will enable you to live your life and pursue the happiness you seek in life, secure in that property which you expend the actions of your life in producing.

The Constitution was designed to do just that. It was worth fighting and risking death for, because it was seen as the means to securing a life worth living for, for themselves, their families, and their posterity - you.

The Constitution, was designed with a profound understanding of human nature in mind, and was structured in such a way as to give voice to the major perspectives of life so that:

• - the people at large, concerned in the issues of the moment, shall have a voice in the House of Representatives
• - the states shall have a voice through those people who have lived successful will have a perspective favorable for preserving everyone's property through their voice in the Senate
• - these two perspectives shall be combined to use create legislation operating for the benefit of the people, within certain enumerated powers
• - when both houses agree upon laws, the nation has a voice in the President as chief executive, to reject or sign legislation into law and see to it that the laws of the land are faithfully executed
• - the law itself has a voice in the Judicial branch which is concerned that laws are applied justly to the people in whose name they were written

These branches are structured in such a way, utilizing the famous checks and balances, so as to have just enough interest in the other branches as to wish to see them function well, as well as to wish to preserve their own branches from becoming slighted and unbalanced.

The founders knew well that most states fall into ruin not under promises of harm but under promises to better the conditions of one group or another for the betterment of all. And so our system is designed to keep each branches desires to 'do good' in check, by the other branches benefit as well, and that none gains power over the others - each must see 'their point' of the other and work together, securing a state that enables you to live your life in pursuit of happiness.

But the people who ratified the constitution didn't think that the original document, which united government into balanced cooperation, was enough to secure the liberty and freedom of the governed, and so they insisted that it also specifically uphold and defend a few key rights, Rights which long experience as Englishmen... and then as Americans deprived of those rights, knew would be required to prevent a new tyrant from turning their government against their liberty 'for their own good'. They demanded the Constitution be amended to secure the peoples liberty to live their own lives, secure in their property and associations and activities which seemed to them to best hold the promise of pursuing happiness through, and that produced the Bill of Rights.

This foundation of government was and is an ordering of ideas, designed to enable each persons actions the liberty to act and secure their property without violating others rights in pursuit of the same, so that each person can have the incredible gift of being able to live their own lives as they see fit.

This is the Constitution which was, and still is, worth fighting for, and risking dying for, because it makes possible the kind of life worth living, lives in which each person might choose to pursue; and the idea of living in service to that, of making not only your own, but others lives livable... is a glorious pursuit, and those in the military who offered up their life in service of it... they are truly worth our pausing on at least one day a year, in solemn remembrance of the life they offered up to make your life a possibility.

Remember them, thank them, and with them in mind demand the liberty to live your life secured under, and securing, those laws which they gave up their life defending, do that, and you will truly be memorializing their lives and making their sacrifice worthwhile.

In 1915, inspired by the poem "In Flanders Fields, Moina Michael replied with her own poem for Memorial Day:

We cherish too, the Poppy red
 That grows on fields where valor led,
 It seems to signal to the skies
 That blood of heroes never dies.


In Flanders Fields John McCrae, 1915.
 In Flanders fields the poppies blow
 Between the crosses, row on row
 That mark our place; and in the sky
 The larks, still bravely singing, fly
 Scarce heard amid the guns below.
 We are the Dead. Short days ago
 We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
 Loved and were loved, and now we lie
 In Flanders fields.
Take up our quarrel with the foe:

To you from failing hands we throw
 The torch; be yours to hold it high.
 If ye break faith with us who die
 We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
 In Flanders fields.

Remember: The shot heard 'round the world, drew blood - Lexington & Concord, April 19,1775

Because it seems as if 'The shot heard 'round the world' needs to be heard again, a repost: 

The shot wasn't heard around the world to protect an adolescent desire to do whatever you please, it was heard and echoed on down through the ages to give birth to Liberty, and to take up its often weighty responsibility.

Before you blather thoughtlessly on about 'my rights!', take some time to think upon what they actually mean, and what heavy costs are attendant to them. Honor those who first made Liberty a reality, treat it as something more than a glittery trinket.

The shot heard 'round the world, drew blood. If you've forgotten that; remember it. If you never knew it, it's your responsibility to give more than a little consideration to it, and to why it might be that you were never made aware of that self-evident truth.

The shot heard 'round the world was fired at Lexington & Concord, April 19, 1775, may it echo ever on.

Concord Hymn
By Ralph Waldo Emerson
Sung at the Completion of the Battle Monument, July 4, 1837

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
   Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood
   And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
   Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
   Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
   We set today a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
   When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those heroes dare
   To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
   The shaft we raise to them and thee.

Why 1st Principles? The narratives that allow no crisis to go to waste

Why 1st Principles? The narratives that allow no crisis to go to waste

Initially posted at Correspondence Theory

When the Media inflames and polarizes popular opinion along the Left/Right divide over one event after another - i.e. the Oval Office confrontation between Zelinsky & Trump, Trump's address to congress, DOGE - to give the impression that the views of the entire nation can be boiled down to either "What happened to my country!" or "This is what I voted for!", you should understand that by mingling a little agreement in with a lot of misunderstanding, we end up knowing less about those events and each other, than we knew before.

Whether the media intimates that the position you agree with aligns you with the majority or minority of 'popular opinion', what do you imagine that agreement entails? Or more to the point, what is the media suggesting that you are in agreement with, and what does that accomplish? The first part, of course, they'll quickly proceed to explain how 'your group' is either tolerant, wise and kind, or _phobic, ignorant and hateful. The second part, counts on your nodding your head along to either characterization as implicitly cooperating with concealing what each of you actually means from each other (and from yourself) - especially within 'your group'.

How? Your nodding along with either position, enables a great deal of meaning which you don't agree with to further spread into 'your group', without your being aware of it. What meanings those might be, can be partially exposed by asking just two questions of anyone aligning with either response:

• Who are you?
• What do you understand your nation to be?

You might be tempted to write it off as 'it's just politics!', but you should really ask and answer those questions first, because there are meaningful and exceedingly consequential differences in how people might answer them. If there's no understanding of what they (you?) think of themselves, or what our nation is and should be, then neither of you can understand what each other's positions on those or any other issues are, and the "agreement in name only" politics that results from that, is sure to result in the kind of political chaos that produces the kinds of crisis that some will absolutely not allow to go to waste.

Of course, if you ask the questions, many will try to give a shortcut answer (which you shouldn't accept), such as:

"I am an American!"

Granted, once upon a time that could've been reliably taken as a straightforward statement. But to assume that you understand what someone means by that statement today, means overlooking the fact that for more than a century our public (and most private) schools have taught lessons about "I" and "am" and "an" and "American", that are radically different from what those terms were once commonly understood to mean.

And we don't even need to get into what you or they mean by "American", to see how many different ways that such a common term can be meant, can be made apparent simply by starting with what they think of "I" as meaning.

For instance, do they think as I do, that I:

... understand "I" to mean an individual who attempts to make choices that limits their own actions based upon what they understand to be right and wrong, which follows from their knowledge of what is real and true,

, or do they:

... think "I" is someone who should simply do "whatever I feel like doing because "I" feel like it"?

... presume "I" to refer to a "a biological meat sack computer" that has no Free Will, and is capable only of deterministically responding to its environment?

... think that any one or more of those are equally 'valid' choices for any "I" to make (?!).

... think of their "I" as being oppressed by your "I"?

... believe that "I" is a product of national 'heritage' which justifies the use of power to preserve that 'heritage' for their "I", at the expense of all the other "I"'s?

Perhaps the first thing to notice, is that replies 1 & 6 will easily, even eagerly, fit together under supporting the same position of "This is what I voted for!", even though what each one means by that is so diametrically opposed to what the other means, that they will soon come into conflict with each other ... over how to implement the position they 'share'.

See what I mean? If you're unaware that what they mean by "I", is nothing like what you mean by "I", then the positions that you assume you are agreeing (or disagreeing) on, will be misleading and deceiving both of you, and whether you attempt to unify under your group's positions of "What happened to my country!" or "This is what I voted for!", it will soon result in the kind of chaotic crisis that those seeking after power are eager to not let go to waste.

The issue is no better with the "am" and the "an" portion of that statement. And because those are metaphysical placeholders for what an "I" exists as, it's even easier to see why that's the case, in that what if:

• ...that person doesn't think existence is knowable?
• ...they think that what reality exists as, is but a 'social construct'?
• ...they think there are no individual Americans, only instances of an 'American' collective?

Whichever one of those positions they presume - each of which modernity supports & affirms and which the "I"'s of #2 - #6 depend upon - our political 'conversations' become filled with fuzzy terms and misunderstood (at best) buzzwords, and any actual meaning that might've been shared, soon becomes lost in each other's assumptions. It is by means such as these that propaganda is injected into society, and how the regard for what is real and true is removed from it. In the end the only thing anyone can be certain of, is that everyone's assumptions are being used to manipulate all who take part in their popular narratives.

This is especially the case for the more philosophically and culturally loaded terms such as "American".

While we've watched decades of late-night comics yucking it up over (horrifying) 'man on the street interviews' that have shown us how most people's education has left them ignorant of our history, we are somehow surprised over the radically conflicting positions we have over what America is, what its government's purpose is, and why its powers should be limited (I recently had one online friend tell me that having fond feelings for small and limited government is anti-American). And now as a sizable number of certifiably 'educated people' today can't even agree upon when America was founded (1776 or 1619?) or what the significance of either date is, yet will nevertheless loudly express strong opinions about America that range the full spectrum from love, to hate, to utter indifference - what wouldn't such a people as that be willing to imagine that an "American" 'is' or means? And for what purposes?

If you know little more than a person's name and occupation, and nothing of their answers to questions of 'Who are you?', and 'what do you understand your country to be', then the ambiguous nature of the terms that each person's using, means that the same terms mean different things, to different people, which puts everyone into some degree of peril by what they don't understand the other person to mean by them.

If you don't ask such questions of those you don't already know well enough to know, what kind of fool are you to assUme that you know what they mean by the position that they've just echoed to you? Are you really going to assUme that you know what you don't? Or assUme that I'll assUme that we, out of the many 'popular' assumptions about what "I", "am", "an", "American", could mean, will somehow both happen to hold the very same opinion? If you don't ask the questions, you won't actually know anything about what is being said about themselves or yourself, or anything certain about anything that's real and true.

What we need to become aware of is that such opposing positions as "What happened to my country!" or "This is what I voted for!" are steadily advancing ends that no one in either one group is fully aware of, which, once again, creates conditions that are likely to ignite one crisis or another, which those in pursuit of power will absolutely not allow to be wasted.

The only certainty to be had from such positions as these, is that they are necessarily meaningless, and that by generating an enthusiastic response to them - for or against - you enter into the Platonic Nightmare in which your own thoughts are actively separating you from reality. Someone may benefit when you assUme you know what such positions as "What happened to my country!" or "This is what I voted for!" mean, but it's not you, and I suspect they also benefit from what such enthusiasm aids in concealing from us all.

Yep, those who are determined to not allow a crisis to go to waste.

For my own answers to the questions of who I am and what I understand our nation is, my understanding of what I mean by "I" is, is as #1 above, that it means an individual who attempts to make choices that limit their own actions based upon what they understand to be right and wrong, which follows from their knowledge of what is real and true. And as "am" and "an" reflect my understanding that reality exists, and that our ability to know about what it exists as, is dependent upon our recognizing that we are able to make errors in our understanding of that, my understanding of what America is and means, reflects the historical development of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West, whose philosophy culminated in enabling the revolutionary cultural and political events that were summarized in the Declaration of Independence, and in the debates for, and ratification of, the Constitution of the United States of America, and the Bill of Rights that were amended to it, which I as an American, have a deep regard for, and appreciation of.

What I understand that to entail, is a form of representative government that is responsive to, and answerable to, the voter, while also having its few and limited powers bound down by constitutional laws that are dedicated to upholding & defending individual rights.

Is that what you expect? If so, then you are among the few, and not of the many options listed above.

Answering who you are and what your nation is, should also entail an understanding of the How's & Why's that governs the nature and responsibilities that you do and do not have with your fellow citizens under your laws, and what your government's relation to that is.

Sadly, however, simply saying that it's governed by the "Rule of Law", is every bit as ambiguous a statement today, as "I am an American!" is. Before you can meaningfully make or accept that statement, you first must understand what you mean by "Law".

Do you presume "Law" to mean:

Natural Law - where a government's powers are subordinated to a Rule of Law that respects and upholds the individual rights that are self-evidently inherent to the nature of man.

or

Positivist Law

- where government is expected to use whatever powers it can to ensure collective obedience to 'the greater good'.

Only the #1 answer above is compatible with the first of these, and all the others result from the second of these, and they are entirely incompatible with each other.

Laws that follow from Natural Law, are not optional and arbitrary rules of 'democratic agreement', they are dependent upon the recognition of what is real and true, and that begins with recognizing that man is a creature that lives by reasoning (not simply by logic, but by reasoning, which logic is discovered by), that man is fallible, and that disputes or confrontations are inherently instances of reasoning objectively about actions and events, and that the Law operates to 'hear the other side' as a means of 'reason absent emotion', which is a necessity of civilized human life and the fruits of Liberty.

The reality today is that those who haven't considered these questions, tend to make up the 'normal' folk who paid attention in school and got decent to good grades, scored well on their tests, and perhaps went on to get a college degree or two in something or other. They tend to be 'the many' who believe that there's something about you - who you are, what you have, or what you believe - which justifies society's 'right' to penalize or confiscate any or all that you have, based upon what 'others' are perceived (by them) to lack (more than a few 'capitalists' believe that too, by framing the abuse of 'some' people's 'rights' (you) as beneficial to the market/economy).

These economically minded 'normies' tend knowingly or not to favor the ideal of Positivist Law, and whether they see themselves as Pro-Regressive (Left & Right)/Communist/Socialist/Fascist, they think of America in terms of an Administrative State that's full of bureaucratic agencies that are nominally 'overseen by' elected officials, but run by 'civil servants' who "have to" intrude into our lives as needed in order to 'take care' of our education, manage the stock market, see to it that our steaks are FDA Grade 'A' approved, to travel 'safely' under the eye of TSA, their water kept 'clean' by the EPA, their workings regulated by a Dept of Labor, their income divvied up by the IRS, etc., which they excuse as being necessary to serve the 'Common Good'.

Because they've never learned to ask these questions about themselves, they've never considered the possibility that a 'Common Good' that targets & harms some for the benefit of others, is neither common nor good.

When these two outlooks are combined under ill-fitting positions such as "What happened to my country!" or "This is what I voted for!", the better amongst them being made to serve the worse and all to ultimately combust into a crisis that won't be allowed to go to waste.

If you don't ask these questions of yourself and your fellows before you're both sucked into the positions of "What happened to my country!" or "This is what I voted for!" that result from not asking them, then neither you nor they will have a common understanding of who has the rightful authority to acquire & use Power within your governments (local, state, federal), what its limits should be, and what position either of you occupy within that chain of power, then you won't have a chance of pushing back, and you'll all be eaten up by the power hungry beast of modernity which exists to ensure that no crisis will be allowed to go to waste.

If you scoff at that, you've already told me a great deal about how you'd answer, 'who you are' (if you could), and what you too seek to 'transform the United States of America' into, and I'm going to do my very best to thwart you & your fellows on both counts.

Who are you, what do you understand your country to be?

Ask the questions of yourself and give some consideration to your own answers. Then ask your neighbor. Who knows, you might even find that you have neighbors that are worth having.

Understand Classic American Liberalism and decline to be mislabeled

Understand Classic American Liberalism and decline to be mislabeled

Part 22 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

When the 'Economic' wizards invite you to step into their wizard's circle of 'managing the economy', you need to recognize it for what it is: a choice between your retaining a foothold in the reality of living a life worth living, or taking a step into an isolating, confused, and meaningless miasma of competing powers, garishly adorned with fleeting utilitarian pleasures of ever diminishing value.

Unlike the period of Political Economy that thrived during our Founders era by seeking to discover and defend an integrated understanding of what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what we should do in regards to that (ethics), which is what leads to liberty and prosperity, 'Economic Thinking' is rooted in the pro-regressive presumption that Power is what is of value, and that it should be used to violate principles of individual rights and property in order to advance the current narrative of what 'THEY've decided is best for the greater 'Common Good'.

TURD's (The Umpires of Reasonable Discourse) spin honeyed falsehoods to ease their popular consumption.

Whether it comes from who we recognize as coming from the political (ideological) Left, Right, or Center, such economic Utilitarianism is aimed at solving the 'problems of production' by implicitly creating a victim class of those that the pro-regressive T.U.R.D.'s deem to be at odds with those of the 'greater' class of the moment, which transforms both segments of the population into a fungible pretext that ensures a steadily growing audience for the Oppressor/Oppressed narrative, which their dialectic is focused upon producing and distributing. Don't be deceived, no matter how dazzlingly 'Economic Thinkers' might predict various inflationary rates, income distribution curves, or the 'velocity of money', their positions come no closer to validating the 'reality' inherent in their fundamental presumptions, than the apparent accuracy of Ptolemy's epicycles validated that Mars 'aksually' orbited around the Earth.

These modern narratives that the new 'Economic Thinkers' have developed, were understood by their leading philosophers (now misosophers) to be incompatible with the West's existing Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian culture. Rather than correcting course with respect to what is real and true, they evolved a new system that was soon dubbed with the seemingly old name of 'Epistemology', to sometimes embrace & sometimes ignore contradictions (AKA: errors & lies), so that their 'new' systems of ideas could be accepted as if they were 'real & true'. The common familial trait which their new 'schools of thought' produced (idealism, pragmatism, modernism, post-modernism, and the various strains of critical theories, are the parents, siblings, and inbred progeny of 'Economic Thinking'), justify violating the individual rights (of all), in exchange for those benefits their narratives promise to deliver for the greater 'Common Good'.

One consequence of these school's 'new' approach of having the 'Ends justify the Means', immediately resulted in recasting Ethics into a dis-integrated field for concocting rules that most usefully serve whatever the current narrative might be. What follows from that is that those who engage with these ideological systems - no matter which 'side' they support - become demoralized and apathetic towards 'ideas' that are incompatible with the reality of human nature, morality, and science.

Consequently, just as the good physicist dismisses the schemes of perpetual motion cranks for violating well understood principles of physics, 'Economic Theories' and its kin should be dismissed out of hand for not even being up to the level of being considered 'wrong'. It is important to realize that failing to do so, will draw your own thinking into those perilous currents which will eventually dash them against one or both of the competing dangers of Scylla and Caribdis. To successfully navigate the path through those two perilous poles of dialectical doom, requires you to maintain a principled observance of reality, because only that can enable you to pass by those systems and ideologies - whether political, economic, educational, or otherwise - which are intended to drag you into their dialectical wake.

Don't take the bait of those who've already been lured into that wake.

Recognize that those who sling a legion of labels at you that may range from 'fascist' to 'simping for Leftists', while advocating for being more 'realistic', hold positions that ultimately rest upon nothing more than their own assertions of 'Your truth isn't my truth'. Recognize that such labeling and positioning means that they don't actually care about or even recognize anything as being real and true, and that they're content to conceal that from themselves as well (hello: Demoralized).

Don't allow them to pretend to care about the reality which their own positions depend upon denying! Don't forget that arguing over their positions, implicitly grants them the appearance of legitimacy that they so desperately desire. Don't do it. Decline to be mislabeled, identify the nature of their ploy, state what is real and true, and move along.

The reality is that history has no record of Liberty and the prosperity of a Free Market, developing outside of a reasonable and law-abiding people who respect each other's property and individual rights, and such a society as that has developed nowhere else than through the Greco-Roman/Judeo-Christian culture of Western Civilization.

History also shows that undermining and rejecting the Western understanding of those principles that underlie the Rule of Law and Liberty, has consistently led to a rapid loss of prosperity and a return to a barbarous brutality of misery, crime, and if unchecked, eventually to horrific scales of mass murder and war.

The distant and arbitrary decisions of 'Economic Thinkers' regulations are the means of violating those proven principles that lead to liberty and prosperity. Thy sell their aggression on the basis of their promises to 'help' a popular 'some' at the expense of an unpopular 'Other', but promises or not, that can only inject ignorance, confusion, and stupidity, into everyone's lives, which will only produce unanticipated chaos, corruption, and a resurgence of barbarism, for all.

That same history also indicates that if we turn away from the lures of 'Economic Thinking' that actively separate our concerns from what is real and true, and re-engage instead in the pursuit of those ideas and principles that America and Political Economy were derived from; principles which lead to limiting the power of government to a Rule of Law that's dedicated to upholding and defending the lives, individual rights, and property of its people (see Bastiat's The Law) - then we will be achieving greatness once again.

However many pages worth of HTML I've generated with these 22 posts that go into the details behind what I've said in this concluding post, it can be all boiled down to keeping these questions running on a loop in your mind:

• What is this, does this follow from that, and if so, should it be followed?

What I hope these posts have shown, is that the scope of change that's needed cannot be fully encompassed under popular well intentioned labels that not only fall short in their scope, but unwittingly admit antithetical positions (as is the case with 'Classical Liberal'), or are far too narrow in scope (as with 'Anti-Communist'), to succeed against what we're up against today.

What we're up against is not a single philosophy, gnostic or otherwise, that's been taking us backwards. What we're up against is a rebellion against what is, and what they seek above all else, is regress, not progress. 'Economic Thinkers' seek to pro-regress us to a time before our Founders' era made the greatest instance of true progress in the last two thousand years, and indeed they seek to take us even further back than before Christianity, to the sophistical Utopia which they imagine the powerful ruled over without any interference coming from that wisdom which began to be introduced following Moses, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Cicero and Christ, and that ethos of rebellion is what has been embedded into the modernized fields of religion, philosophy, art, history, literature, education, law, and 'economics', which have been 'taught' to generations of Americans through their own schools (get your kids out).

They - whether Leftist, 'Conservative', RINO, Woke Left, Woke Right - are all Pro-Regressive, and that is what I am opposed to.

What I support, is that one small sliver in time which came about within a fragment of the 'Classical Liberal' period, whose understanding gave birth to America, and which fully rejects those ideas that have been used to undermine it, and which has the understanding that is capable of refuting those ideas which oppose it, and that label is one that I'll happily tape to my back: Classical American Liberal (thanks again Clint!)

So if you need any labels to call me out for my positions, they are: Classical American Liberal and Anti Pro-Regressive.

So at least I've gotten that much out of my time on X-Twitter. How about you?

Exiting 'Economic Thinking' and re-entering into the Reality of what is real and true

Exiting 'Economic Thinking' and re-entering into the Reality of what is real and true

Part 21 of 22, from Exiting the Wizard's Circle of Economics

So what do we do to escape the Wizard's Circle of the 'new economics' of J.S. Mill, Marx, and Lord Keynes? We start where we always should: at the beginning.

The first step in considering the legitimacy of any theory, economic or otherwise, is to look into its principles; examine its metaphysical standing, its causal connections, and ethical coherence. If a theory doesn't conform to, or even violates what you know to be real and true, there's no need to test it further, let alone show any deference or respect to the theory or theorizer because of the predictions they assert will justify it - those arbitrary claims are without actual causes, and so are meaningless. It's important that we understand this, not as a 'debating tip', but as a survival tip, because failing to do so will deaden your own ability to assess what is real and true, and that failure will draw you further into alignment with still worse theories and assertions, as time goes on.

It's instructive what a Physicist does when presented with what purports to be a shiny new theory for a Perpetual Motion machine, without its theorizer having first refuted or significantly amended the laws of thermodynamics which rules such a scheme out. A good physicist isn't going to parse its formulas, crunch its numbers, or debate its predictions - no matter how elegant or grand its promises may be - they'll simply throw it into the trash where it belongs. If the principles that a claim is based upon are clearly unsound, then it cannot be of value. Likewise, any theories presented by 'Economic Thinkers', that propose violating property rights or 'managing markets' (a distinction without a difference), or otherwise limiting freedom of speech and action, should be thrown directly into the trash without a second thought - no matter how fine its promises to improve the 'Common Good' are, and it would be unethical to not do so.

If we ever expect to escape the downward spiral of 'Economic Thinking', we have to recognize that its nature is not confined to obviously economic issues, but is equally reflected in its fellow 'Social Sciences' of Positivist Law, Progressive Education, Social Studies, and so on. Together they envision experts utilizing the Rule of Rules to 'manage' an economy (meaning the lives of all of those living within it) to produce outcomes which they deem favorable to the 'Common Good', which are ultimately supported by those aspirations alone.

'Economic Thinking' formed the substance of the 1933 Humanist Manifesto, and was signed by everyone from professors of Economics & Law, to church Ministers and 'Progressive' educators like John Dewey, and all endorsed its demands, such as its 14th plank:

"…A socialized and cooperative economic order must be established to the end that the equitable distribution of the means of life be possible. The goal of humanism is a free and universal society in which people voluntarily and intelligently cooperate for the common good. Humanists demand a shared life in a shared world."

Against political economy's understanding of Value as the product of uncoerced exchange, and of Say's Law of Markets, or against the philosophical realism that underlies the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West's history and literature, 'Economic Thinkers' have and can have no good arguments. Even if their 'Epistemology' permitted them to believe that objective truth was possible (which it kant do), their lack of, or rejection of metaphysics, means that they are unable to prove their claims to be *true*, or to prove Classical American Liberalism and Political Economy to be *false*. Where that leaves them, is, with no other recourse but to use old-fashioned sophistries to deride, dismiss, and ignore those principles of the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West that might lead people into a deeper understanding of the world and their place within it.

Men like Frederic Bastiat were among the last leading figures to understand that a sound economy has far more to do with morality, and laws that comport with Natural Law and Justice, than with the machinations of finance. Those fundamental principles are what a society must understand in order to establish a Rule of Law where Liberty - meaning that you are at liberty to make those decisions you choose to make in living your life, and understand how vital it is that your neighbor is able to do so as well - can be enjoyed, upheld, and defended.

Once those fundamental principles are respected, then the magic of the marketplace (meaning we can't see how it happens, only that it does) transmits something of each interested person's judgment of value and expectation into the wider market to an extent which no 'expert' has or ever will fully comprehend, let alone manage (see 'I, Pencil', and "That Which Is Seen and that Which Is Not Seen").The result of those principles in action are what reverberate in the observable effects of a Free Market, such as the 'mechanisms' of Pricing and Supply & Demand, and the attempt to manipulate those effects into causes - Price Controls, 'Caps' on profits, etc. - floods the market with corrupted information which impedes the operations of the market, and eventually kills it.

Liberty is an effect, not a cause. The Free Market is an effect, not a cause. Both are what result from respecting fundamental principles, and neither can long survive their violation.

The reality then, is that when you adopt positions which stray from or discard those underlying principles, and justify doing so on the basis of the promise that going against what you know to be real and true will somehow benefit the 'common good', as Bastiat pointed out the 'capitalists', utilitarians, socialists, and communists were doing in their false & misleading claims about what Value is (in his "IX Landed Property of The Harmonies of Political Economy, book one"), then as those principles predicted, and history has since confirmed, what you can be sure of is that what all of their numbers, promises, and broken principles will commonly 'add up' to, will be massive amounts of waste, confusion, and misery that will be felt by all.

Bastiat's clear and accessible writing embodied everything that 'Economic Thinkers' have been desperate to dialectically 'evolve' mankind out of, and like the alchemists he once compared them to, their positions are often made in willful ignorance & utter contempt of those who have firsthand knowledge of what is of value in their lives (that'd be you & me), as they unhesitatingly seek the power to impose their own decisions over what the market - you & I - might otherwise have decided, despite the fact that their ignorance of that and more, can only result in depleting and destroying real value from within our lives, and *their* economy.

Recognize this: If the principles that a theory has based its promises upon are unsound it is and can be of no value to you or your society, and its use will deplete what value you do have.

Don't fail to learn the lessons of intellectual history
Ask yourself this, if you don't start from the position afforded by the high ground of principles rooted in reality through common sense, how long might you otherwise continue listening with an interest that ensnares you in its details, unaware of the faulty intellectual ground that you've begun standing upon, and unsure of where it's leading (you) to? If you don't identify its principles first and check both your position, and the direction you're being led in, you'll soon find yourself having stepped into the Wizards Circle, and its dialectical funhouse mirrors will make it seem like there is no escape for you.

Recognize that the 'Economic Thinker's standard reaction to any mention of principles is to deride, dismiss, and ignore them (bring up 'Free Speech' or 'Property Rights' to see a free demo), which is an expression of the modernist ideas that 'Economic Thinking' evolved from. Their aggressively surface level thinking urges you to resist applying what we might call the 'perpetual motion principle', because principled thinking is an inherent threat to their positions.

TURD's (The Umpires of Reasonable Discourse) spin honeyed falsehoods to ease their popular consumption.

For the 'Economic Thinker', by nature, is less concerned with what might result from his theories, than with how best to utilize your desires towards their ends, and to do so they need for you to follow them down the same path that they travelled, which begins with appealing to your pride with the power to causelessly doubt what is real and true" which Descartes' Method of Doubt urges you to indulge in. The next big step is into the Pragmatic assertion that '*Truth* is whatever works', and from there it's but a short step to the Post-Modernist "Your *Truth* isn't my truth", and 1-2-3 you've been led into an interior world of untethered ideas, where you'll be unable to fully resist whatever the TURD's say is '*true* enough'.

The rationalism that began with Descartes, and developed into Rousseau's latter 'General Will', 'Noble Savage', and 'child centered' education of 'Emile' (which one day Marx, Dewey, and Mussolini would find so useful), made it relatively easy for the skeptic David Hume's radical 'empiricism' to make the claim that only measurable 'empirical facts' are credible, and therefore people should gather up their metaphysical and moral claims, and:

"...Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion..."

What most don't realize, is that the consequence of a person putting Hume's supposedly 'Scientific Empiricism' into practice, is that they'll become demoralized (see previous post), not because they're being 'Scientific', but because they're not - without due regard to what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what should be done in regards to that (ethics), Science cannot be meaningfully practiced, it can only be 'empirically' deconstructed.

To *counter* Hume's skepticism, Immanuel Kant declared that "I found it necessary to destroy reason [which of course is the very same faculty he used to formulate the words he used to do so] in order to save religion" [which is a condemnation of both religion and reason], which left his followers defenseless against the ultimate in arbitrary assertions, Kant's claim that reality isn't knowable at all,

"You cannot know the thing as it is" [if true, by what means could either he or you know that?]

, and so Kant claims that the only 'good' that you can do (what 'good' can be Good, without regard to what is real & true?), is to do your duty by obeying the Categorical Imperatives of experts which demand that we:

"...act in accordance with a maxim of ends that it can be a universal law for everyone to have..." [sorry, but within a reality that cannot be known, what could in 'accordance with', and 'universal', possibly mean?]

, whose commands are formulated as *reasonable* rules for behavior in a *reality* where there can be no context for arguing either for or against them - 'Just do it!' Obey!

Those form the basis for legitimizing the thin-as-ice surface appearances, as the *foundation* of modern thinking, and serve as the warp & woof of all of the later Hegelian, Marxist, Pragmatist, and Post-Modern expectations that the TURDs of modern life have spun from them, which keep popular attention efficiently skidding across the surface level of events, too distracted to even think of looking any deeper.

But to begin cracking that ice often requires nothing more than asking a question. For instance, when they advise you that:

"You cannot know what is objectively true!'

, instead of nodding along or looking awkwardly away, ask them how they can know that is 'true'? And if it is *true*, what could that possibly mean?! Raising even trifling questions like that, reveal a glimpse of what their words are so desperate for you to remain unaware of, that their words don't really have any meaning - not even to them - they are only nominal tools for manipulating popular opinion with. Their powers of mystification depend upon your thinking no further than the surface appearances of what they're verbal presenting for you to accept without question.

The health of your society hinges upon your asking what they expect you to fear will sound like 'stupid questions'. Ask them!

As Thomas Sowell observed, there are few ideas that are too ridiculous to be accepted by an Intellectual, so long as they feel it will improve their position.

It is urgent that we realize that what they mean by 'improve their position', is not what you & I would mean by that, as our sense of 'working' that achieves what was planned, isn't the point of their theories, having the power to take action is - say hello to the meaning of "*Truth* is what works", actually means. 'Economic Thinkers' are 'unprincipled on principle', so to speak, and they expect that any position can be 'improved' upon by tossing another arbitrary epicycle onto whatever objections are raised against them:

'You don't like that Idea? Then try this one, argue it against that one, and we'll see something more useful come out of it.'

, that is the nature of the dialectical dance they perform, and to whichever scheme evolves out of that process, they will confidently proclaim that this time they've foreseen everything, and so "This time it will work!"

Explaining to them the fact that an economy cannot be managed from the top down, it can only be destroyed from there, is not a lesson that will teach the TURD & 'Economic Thinker' a new respect for principles, it will only make them more committed to formulating a craftier and more stringent Rule of Rules to get around what you've pointed out is real and true. Their idea of success is injecting the decisions that they've made at a great distance in time and place from those who are actually involved in any exchange (you & I), even though their ignorance of the realities which those actually involved in an exchange (you & I) are concerned with, and the fact that real Value will be depleted from *their* economy, and from our lives, they'll greet that as an opportunity for another turn at the Wizards' dialectical dance.

As Yuri Bezmenov said, the demoralized person will not see (or care) that the exceedingly predictable results of such 'Economic Thinking' as theirs has already been attested to in the wrecked economies and tens of millions of dead across the 20th Century. You can show them in graphic detail what such 'Economic Thinking' as theirs produced in Nazi Germany, the USSR, Red China, Cuba, Venezuela, but they will not be affected by it, it simply does not make sense to them.

The question to ask yourself, as you come to realize the nature of their 'theories', is how much of their self-refuting nonsense that direct people's attention to the shallowest details of surface appearances, do you think that you should continue to read?

Engaging with arbitrary assertions as if they were worthy of consideration, serves to weaken the Common Sense of expert and novice alike, and lowers those defenses that the literary, philosophical, and moral center that the Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian tradition provides. Agreeing to 'think it over', rather than rejecting it outright as you should, is how they utilize your pride and less savory desires, to progressively separate your interests from what is real and true, which will quickly enclose you within their ideas of it.

Be aware that it was by being artificially 'reasonable' in thinking their ideas over, that We The People's common sense understanding of the self-evident truths that America was founded upon, became so quickly distanced from popular opinion that the regression from the Political Economy of Classical American Liberalism, into 'Economics', workforce training, and Positivist Law, took little over a half-century to accomplish.

If we want our lives back, an understanding of what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what should be done in regards to that (ethics), is what We The People must recover for ourselves.

Back to the real future
To get back to the reality that 'Economic Thinking' separates us from, requires our thinking past the surface image that they present us with as being 'the big picture', and we'd best realize that the dirty little secret of 'Economic Thinking', is that its real currency is the power to oppress, and that their ploys and policies could have no power over us, if we didn't imagine some value in our agreeing to that exchange.

Neither of us should look too innocent at that. How closely do you listen to the promises that the TURD's on your side of the political aisle, are continually making and advising you to support? Do you look for reasons and principles that do or don't support them? Or do you look no further than how it appears on the surface to support what you think of as being for the 'Common Good', and nod up-down or side-to-side accordingly? We are all susceptible to the temptation of blaming 'THEY' and 'THEM' to justify our gaining a benefit for ourselves, especially when 'everyone agrees' it is 'for the Common Good'.

Have 'THEY ever succeeded in riling you up into supporting or opposing the raising or lowering of H1B Visas, Test Scores, boosting Human Capital, 'School Choice', interest rates, capital gains taxes, or the minimum wage? Have you argued for government implementing more or less of any of those?

If so, then I'd be curious what your argument was for the limited government of a constitutional republic, having any role in is something such as how you choose to educate your child? Or how and why should Govt's responsibility to ensure that visitors and immigrants are capable of abiding by our laws, be in any way subordinated to helping some corporations secures specialized Visas to hire some number of aliens that still other corporations will benefit from their hiring? Etc., etc., etc.?! If so, you need to admit that you've agreed to engage in the currency of oppressive power, in exchange for participating in the Rule of Rules to rule over We The People with.

Those who are demoralized are those that can be manipulated by their own ill-considered notions of 'Justice!' that've been reduced to benefits, and our own conceit that we wouldn't do anything wrong, is easily used to involve ourselves in concealing the consequences of our own thinking. Willfully blind to our own faults, we see only that what's being done 'to me', is being done to you by those others - Democrats, Republicans, The Rich, The Poor, Da Joos - which we of course don't have anything to do with, noOooo no, no, no, it's not you, it's all 'THEY'!

It is a confidence game, and you have to 'think' that way for it to work, because as every conman knows: 'You can't cheat an honest man'.

The Cold War dissident, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, saw all too clearly how 'THEY' is used to hide us from ourselves, noting:

"...If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?"

Our getting past dealing in the currency of oppression, begins with our being able to see if we're engaging in it. Only then will we be able to realize that 'THEIR' utilitarian affordance traps aren't just designed to get their way, but that they are specifically designed to involve We The People in them, so as to sever ourselves from what is real and true.

Those systems of 'Economic Thinking' that we agree to participate in daily, are what ensures that 'We' become an active part of 'THEY', and by involving ourselves in that perspective, 'THEY' know that we will resist cutting off that 'beneficial' part of ourselves with all of our strength, because it appeals to those incentives and sensibilities which we've accepted as part of 'an economy' that we give too little thought to.

When you see that someone's ideas and plans are inviting you to blindly enter into the matrix of their ideas, so as to destroy your ability to think anything other than those ideas, what more do you need to know before dropping those ideas like a hot potato? Take the plank out of your own eye, before worrying about the mote in another's, and look for what is of actual substance. As Solzhenitsyn noted, 'THEY' is a picture that is too easily distorted in our favor, and oh how much easier it would all be if we could just isolate who "THEY" are, and "...remove them from our presence!" (Where would 'THEY' go to? How?).

America was the result of the best of the West, which developed into the Classical American Liberalism of our Founders' era, and the Political Economy that was able to develop from Adam Smith, through Jean Baptiste Say, to Frederic Bastiat. The Greco/Roman-Judeo/Christian West is what formed the foundation of their understanding, and is what is able to provide the Red Pill that you need to be able to reject modernity's Matrix of Ideas.

Gradually, progressively, over the course of over 150 years, We The People have allowed that foundation to be eroded from our own understanding, which we've duped ourselves into allowing to continue for 'The Common Good!', and We The People have to recognize that the system we're engaging with, has been constructed to appeal to our basest desires, to fulfill the evil fantasy that it is.

The price of liberty is eternal vigilance in defense of what is real and true (metaphysics), what follows from that (causality & logic), and what we should do in regards to that (ethics). If we want our lives back, that understanding is the price that We The People must pay.