A new blog policy

As most of you are aware, I don't have a lot of free time these days. To say that I am "busy" doesn't really quite do the concept justice. I'm behind on practically everything with the exception of  Alt★Hero, Avalon, Jeeves, and Quantum Mortis. So, let's just say my ability to tolerate idiocy is not at its peak right now.

Now, my tolerance for Gamma behavior is never high. But in the last few weeks, my understanding of a specific Gamma tactic deepened a little when I noticed something: no matter what the subject is, from immigration to free trade to free speech, certain critical commenters ALWAYS attempt to somehow make the debate about ME. I had never previously stopped to think about why they do this. But this time, when I finally took the time to think the matter through, I realized what their game was: trying to win an argument through an appeal to the genetic fallacy. It's a passive-aggressive variant of the classic SJW discredit and disqualify game.

This is a stupid and futile approach. But then, these are stupid and futile people. Consider this incredible protest of my actions:

"I refuse to tolerate critics who insist, every single fucking time, attempting to personalize these topics and make them about me, any longer."

Vox, you personalized the topic first when you refused to answer my questions on the ground that they were "stupid," and that I "ask lots of stupid questions." You didn't even bother to explain what was stupid about these supposedly stupid questions. You just declared them stupid, and that was that.

You're delusional if you think that isn't getting aggressively personal. And, ok, you can do that. I don't really mind. But of course if you behave that way toward me, then I'm going to behave that way toward you. And you're in no moral position at all to complain about it, because you started it--*you* set the personal tone. I was only responding to the tone that you set.

Oh, did I? Read the questions. Notice who, rather than what, is the subject of most of them.

Anyhow, let me make this new policy perfectly clear for everyone. If your argument is about me rather than the topic, if you attempt to address a macro topic by referring to me as a micro counterexample, or if you attempt to bring me up in any way as the basis, relevant or irrelevant, of your argument, I am going to delete your comment. If you do it more than once, I will spam you.

Example: Vox emigrated from the United States, therefore all immigration, past and present, is necessarily beneficial and desirable. Futhermore, any observation of problems that may be caused by the mass migration of tens of millions of people is automatically negated by the fact that Vox himself does not presently reside in his city of birth.

Such arguments are stupid, irrelevant, and illogical. And I am simply not going to continue to waste any more time spelling out, again and again, why this form of argument is a complete non-starter that can never even possibly prove anything.

There is absolutely nothing that I do or say that bears any significance whatsoever with regards to the intrinsic morality, justice, or legitimacy of an action, a policy, a regulation, a law, a historical pattern, or a probability. I am not the measure of all things. So stop trying to present arguments on that basis!

Armbands for gun control

Sadly, James Woods eviscerated the whole thing before we could even properly laugh at it.

You might have a little trouble getting Jewish Americans to embrace this look. Do you have some shiny jackboots and brown shirts to go with it? Guessing maybe you skipped history class while you were shilling for the @DNC.
— James Woods (@RealJamesWoods)

Apparently the tweet has already been taken down and the armband campaign is over. Perhaps next time they could go with Mao jackets? And isn't I'm Totally Not A Crisis Actor, I Swear David Hogg's tuff guy look precious?

Nationalists detained

The globalists in the UK are cracking down on European and American nationalists:

Austrian activist Martin Sellner of Génération Identitaire and his girlfriend, American author and YouTuber Brittany Pettibone, have been detained by airport police in England for nearly three days.

Nobody from the US State Department or embassy contacted Pettibone’s family.

Sellner was on his way to give a speech that authorities say would cause “tension among local communities and possibly incite hatred.”

Brittany Pettibone & Martin Sellner are being held in a detention centre in London. They have been there for 2 days and don't know when they will be allowed to leave. The immigration officer told Brittany she was being detained for 'planning to meet Tommy Robinson, an extremist".
— Caolan Robertson (@CaolanRob) March 10, 2018

“Yesterday, Martin Sellner and Brittany Pettibone were detained by the UK Government and effectively declared political dissidents. The government has decided that Martin’s talk about free speech is too dangerous to be heard. Don’t worry, some of our activists will be reading his speech at Speakers’ Corner at noon tomorrow in his stead. We can’t allow either the far left or the government to silence us,” a statement from the British GI chapter read.

Sellner frequently speaks out about the dangers of European nations taking in migrants. He was supposed to be addressing the issue at Speakers’ Corner in Hyde Park on Sunday.

Journalist and researcher Nick Monroe spoke to Pettibone on Saturday afternoon when she called him from the detention center. She told him that she is expecting that they will be released on Sunday — 72 hours after their initial detention. She has not been permitted to speak to Sellner.

Remember, this is the very same UK government who expect the public to be outraged - outraged - when China and Russia detain journalists of whom they don't approve. And it is the same UK government that has allowed millions of Muslims and other third world natives to freely enter and settle in England, despite the way that has definitely caused considerable tension among local communities and incited hatred.

This is why it is a waste of time to talk about free speech. There is no free speech in the UK, in Europe, or the USA anymore. So stop pretending there is.

Ostracized together

Taleb's Skin in the Game is one of the best books I have read in some time. I'll be doing a Voxiversity review of it in the future, but in the meantime, I thought that this observation from Fooled by Randomness was apt, in light of the participative legion of evil we have operating here. Some call it a fan club, others call it a cult, but I think "school of thought" is probably the most accurate description.

It may be a banality that we need others for many things, but we need them far more than we realize, particularly for dignity and respect. Indeed, we have very few historical records of people who have achieved anything extraordinary without such peer validation—but we have the freedom to choose our peers. If we look at the history of ideas, we see schools of thought occasionally forming, producing unusual work unpopular outside the school. You hear about the Stoics, the Academic Skeptics, the Cynics, the Pyrrhonian Skeptics, the Essenes, the Surrealists, the Dadaists, the anarchists, the hippies, the fundamentalists. A school allows someone with unusual ideas with the remote possibility of a payoff to find company and create a microcosm insulated from others. The members of the group can be ostracized together—which is better than being ostracized alone. If you engage in a Black Swan–dependent activity, it is better to be part of a group.

As I was reading this, it occurred to me that an easy way for people who would like to get involved  somehow but don't have much time to do so in a very time-efficient manner is the translation of the comics. Translating the books is a labor-intensive bear, but the comics are much shorter and feature minimal text in comparison. If you're native in German, French, or Italian, this would be a useful way to help us rapidly extend Arkhaven's reach to the larger foreign markets now that we have global print distribution.

UPDATE: We have Italian. Now looking for German and French.

Conservative free speech activists

We are supposed to be alarmed because the universities are not permitting students, particularly male ones, to speak out against the university-approved narrative:

A student at Indiana University of Pennsylvania has been barred from attending a religious studies class required for graduation after pointing out that there are only two genders.

“Later this week I will be defending myself and my FIRST AMENDMENT RIGHTS in front of the Academic Integrity Board (AIB) of the Indiana Univ. of Pennsylvania (IUP) against allegations of Classroom Conduct violations,” Lake Ingle stated in a Facebook post, which was deleted after Ingle retained legal representation.

"I am fighting to make my voice heard. Not only my voice, but the voices of others that oppose popular university opinion." 

“The decision made by the AIB that day will determine whether I will be able to continue participating in my full course load, as well as graduate this May as scheduled,” Ingle continued, adding, “This is not transgender, woman’s rights, or wage issue. This is about free speech and the constant misuse of intellectual power in universities.”

The thing is, the conservatives speaking out against this are the some of the same conservatives who also celebrate disemploying and jailing people for racism, anti-semitism, and Holocaust denial, and support both state and federal laws criminalizing speech in support of the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions Movement and denying federal contracts to corporations that boycott Israel. All of which result in penalties considerably more harsh than simply not being able to graduate from one particular university.

Why is the enforcement of the cuckservative narrative any more acceptable to these self-professed champions of free speech than the SJW narrative or the Fake Science narrative?

So, to be blunt, I don't give a damn about any these so-called "free speech" rights anymore. The First Amendment is observably dead and it's now clearly all just a power game of "who, whom" between rival identity groups, which means it is time for Anglo-American Christians to go back to having the temporal courts enforce blasphemy laws that criminalize all blasphemies against God, including denying His being or providence, all contumelious reproaches of Jesus Christ, all profane scoffing at the Holy Scriptures, and exposing any part thereof to contempt or ridicule, and punish violators with death, imprisonment, corporal punishment and fine.

That is not only more legitimate than these various anti-speech laws and public policies, it is actually part of the common law that has been degraded by non-Anglo immigrants who never understood it due to their historical lack of exposure to it.

Snicker-snack

I seem to recall someone observing that further declines in the traditional comics market are highly probable.

Marvel managed to take lead for both sales numbers and revenue raised in terms of that marketshare. Marvel Comics had a 34.86% retailer dollar share and a 36.94% unit share compared to DC’s  31.79% dollar share and a 36.61% unit share.... However the market itself is still slumping. 2017 was down around 10% on 2016. And the year to date for 2018 is down on January and February 2017 by 6.8%. Not a great start.

Let's see, a 6.8% decline from $79.7 million is... $73.4 million, only $1.4 million more than my forecast. Considering the nature of the changes at DC and Marvel, we can be confident that 2018 will be down more than 6.8% by the end of the year. And, in fact, year-to-date unit sales are down 15.61% already. But don't worry, real change is coming... and it is off the chain. What is exciting is that more and more veteran illustrators and colorists are hearing about us and getting in touch, learning about our new, flexible business models that give them a real interest in the success of their creations, and signing on with both Arkhaven and Dark Legion.

Wardogs Inc. in action.

"California represents the future"

Bankrupt and brown, apparently.

Harris took the side of states' rights when it comes to immigration. and threatened that "California's going to fight" because the state "represents the future." She also claimed the Trump administration and Sessions "in particular" have "clearly put a target on the back of California."

"This Administration and Jeff Sessions in particular have clearly put a target on the back of California and California’s going to fight," Harris proclaimed. "And, I think that these folks are really mired in rolling back the clock in time and that’s not going to happen. California represents the future. And -- and they don’t like it, but there you go."

"There’s a distraction in that they are trying to suggest that this is about the Constitution when in fact what they’re doing is they’re playing politics. They’re playing politics and they’re playing politics with California. This attorney general is doing that and he’s going to lose," Harris said.

Harris said she supported the mayor of Oakland to warn illegal immigrants of an impending ICE race because she is making a decision based on her "estimation of what’s in the best interest of their constituents."

It strikes me that the last time states' rights Democrats wanted a war, they lost. It's interesting that California politicians haven't figured out what the Chinese and North Korean politicians clearly understand, which is that it is a mistake to directly challenge the God-Emperor.

Anyhow, a war over immigration makes considerably more sense than a war over slavery. Because, as we know, immigration and war amount to the same thing in the end.

What happened... and who was responsible?

Fred Reed laments the destruction of the national culture of the United States.

Countries are happiest when they have one national culture, or at least one dominant culture to which all must perforce conform. We see this in countries like Japan and Korea, homogeneous societies which, because homogeneous, have no race riots or religious wars. It was largely true in, for example, Sweden and France until they began admitting immigrants from incompatible cultures. Today, most of the news from such countries deals with the consequences.

Diversity, never a good idea. is in fact the cause of most of the world’s conflicts: Shia and Sunni, Jew and Arab, Hutu and Tutsi, Tamil and Sinhalese, Hindu and Muslim and, in America, black, white, and brown. Diversityis the cause of the dissolution of American society.

Until roughly the Sixties, America was homogeneous enough, overwhelmingly white, European, Anglophone, and Christian. This provided sufficient commonalty that people all regarded themselves as Americans. At the same time, there were many geographically separated subcultures which had little in common and didn’t like each other, or wouldn’t have if they had come into contact. Massachusetts, Montana, Alabama, West Virginia, and New York were different civilizations....

Then everything changed. Diversity began, not at first of people so much as of ideas. Reasons were several. Communications improved. Interstates appeared. The federal government gained in power and reach. The Supreme Court began making sweeping decisions on manners, morals and faith–that is, on culture and values–which it had not done before. Now Washington–New York, really–could enforce these decisions.

The result was unwanted cultural diversity. The Court decided in decision after decision that increasingly explicit pornography enjoyed protection as free speech, imposing an alien ideology on small towns in Kansas. This culminated in internet porn accessible to children of ten, uncontrolled and uncontrollable. Obscene music poured out of New York as local stations were bought by Manhattan, from which rap came–unfit, in most regions, for a toilet wall. Towns could not defend themselves because of the doctrine of free speech and the massively increased power of the northeast. Television became national with similar trampling of local values of faith, propriety, and race.

Particularly invasive was the newly invented doctrine of separation of church and state. For at least a hundred and fifty years no one, neither court nor individual, had noticed that the Constitution forbade manger scenes on the town square at Christmas, or the singing of carols on public streets, or mention of the Bible in schools. It was yet more compelled cultural diversity.

One hardly needs William of Ockham to discern the central problem. The United States of America worked when it was American and Christian. It no longer works because it is now saddled with a government that is not-American and not-Christian as well as a substantial minority population that is not-American and not-Christian. These days, the US government is essentially an Athenian-style empire, albeit one with an emperor who is heavily influenced by a foreign grand vizier who is hostile to Christianity and far more concerned with those foreign interests than with American interests.

And the fact that both the emperor and the grand vizier are collectives rather than individuals does not change either the relevance of the observations or the probable outcome. Lament this reality if you will. Hurl accusations and labels if you want. None of that is going to alter, in the slightest, the way the inevitable patterns of history are going to play out.

Only the most foolish of fools can be stupid enough to claim temporal exceptionalism will somehow inure themselves to the great waves of history. If you don't understand what I'm talking about, read Tolstoy, specifically, War and Peace. There are very sound reasons that we see the same events play out again and again and again across the centuries.

Corception

Last night at the Voxiversity Q&A event, the discussion about a prospective Voxiversity on rhetoric and dialect revealed the need for a word to express the concept of something that is technically false but rhetorically true that tends to guide one towards the truth.

If you think about it, we use the term deception to indicate the opposite, when one expresses that which is technically true, but leads others into a false understanding. And to the extent we express the concept at all, we would probably resort to the oxymoronic and awkward construction "deceived into the truth."

My first thought was to describe the concept as inceit, but the problem is that "inception" already has a fairly well-understood and unrelated meaning due to the popular movie. So, I landed upon the construction corceit, as it fits rather nicely with the etymology of the term "correct".

1300-50; (v.) Middle English correcten (< Anglo-French correcter) < Latin corrēctus past participle of corrigere to make straight, equivalent to cor- cor- + reg- (stem of regere to direct ) + -tus past participle suffix; (adj.) (< French correct) < Latin, as above

The reason the term is needed is because none of the similar terms accurately describe the concept.

A correct statement is one free from error, mistakes, or faults. An accurate statement is one that shows careful conformity to fact, truth, or spirit. A precise statement shows scrupulously strict and detailed conformity to fact.

None of that is true in the case of what can be described as a corceptive statement or story, such as the parables told by Jesus Christ. That pointed to another possible approach to the concept with a term such as parabole, (which, interestingly enough, is a little closer to the concept in French than "parable" is in English) but again, "parabolic" has already been utilized for "having the form or outline of a parabola."

Now, I am aware that many, if not most of you will completely fail to appreciate the point of this sort of thought exercise, but that's fine. I happen to find it very useful to be able to identify and articulate specific concepts like this, even if it is only for my internal use. It helps me clarify my thoughts when I am contemplating questions like the morality of corceptive rhetoric vs deceptive dialectic. If it happens to be useful to anyone else, so much the better, but rest assured, I don't expect anyone else to utilize my idiosyncratic constructions.

A major announcement

Then again, whenever a TV show claims "a major character" will be killed off, it's always some tertiary character you barely realized was even on the show. We'll see.

President Donald Trump told reporters Thursday that South Korea will make a "major announcement" concerning North Korea at 7 p.m. ET.

It was not immediately clear what the South Korean announcement would entail, but it came after a South Korean delegation came to the White House to brief officials on its most recent talks with North Korea -- the most significant talks between the two countries in more than a decade.

The South Korean officials visiting the White House on Thursday talked to Trump, a person familiar with the matter said. They delivered a letter from North Korean leader Kim Jong Un to Trump, according to a foreign diplomatic source. A senior US official confirmed a message from the North Korean leader had been delivered.

But we're still not tired of winning, so it should be interesting to see what's shaking. It will certainly be amusing if the media is forced to admit, through gritted teeth, that the God-Emperor's "bluster" has proved to be conclusively effective.

The actual announcement was more a prelude to a possible future major announcement, but I suppose in diplomatic terms this sort of thing is a massive deal. No actual change yet, but the prospects for positive change in the future are good.

President Trump will meet with North Korean leader Kim Jong Un by May for high-level talks toward a nuclear-free Korean peninsula, a South Korean official said outside the White House Thursday.

The extraordinary and unexpected opening came through shuttle diplomacy by a South Korean delegation arriving in Washington Thursday. Trump heralded the development as a "major announcement" after speaking with the South Korean president.

"I told President Trump that in our meeting, North Korean leader Kim Jong Un said he's committed to denuclearization. He pledged that North Korea will refrain from any further nuclear or missile tests," South Korean national security adviser Chung Eui-yong told reporters after meeting with Trump at the White House.

UPDATE: Q says Iran is next, and by the end of this year.

Iran next.

A tougher nut to crack, Q-Team. I hope your negotiations with Mahmoud are going well.

Resolved by 11-11.
Q

What we are witnessing may - MAY - indeed be greatness in the White House. But let us not forget that the two priorities are still BUILD THE WALL and DRAIN THE SWAMP.

Tactical proliferation and the decline of US military supremacy

Quick, form a UN Task Force! Clearly we need a global Anti-Proliferation Treaty to stop the spread of advanced infantry tactics.

Is there evidence that the bad guys are getting better at basic tactics? Yes. Consider Boko Haram. Having only launched its military campaign in 2009, it has already mastered the use of coordinated fire and maneuver elements at the tactical level to execute complex raids, ambushes, assaults, and even withdrawing by echelon when on the defensive. It even staged an amphibious assault that overran a Nigerien Army garrison on an island in Lake Chad. Another example is from much closer to the U.S. homeland. Utilizing tactics diffused through U.S. military training, drug cartels such as the infamous “Zetas” and “Jalisco New Generation” have institutionalized combat training that allows them to regularly wreak havoc on Mexican security forces. In the wake of a recent downing of a Mexican military helicopter through the employment of rocket-propelled grenades, the disturbing discovery was made of tactical gear emblazoned with “CJNG – High Command Special Forces” (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion).

Further evidence comes from the Iraqi campaign to defeat ISIL. Conventional forces struggled mightily to eject ISIL from Iraq’s territory, and only succeeded due to the heavy use of Iraqi special operations forces and liberal American airpower. The battle of Mosul, for example, lasted for nine months despite significant material U.S. support and a 20:1 force ratio against the ISIL defenders. Afghan conventional military forces are often defeated by an increasingly competent Taliban. On the other side of the world, Filipino forces had to destroy much of the town of Marawi to liberate it from jihadist insurgents during a five-month siege last year. Furthermore, these enemies seem to be gravitating towards operations in urban areas. These environments hinder the United States and its partners from utilizing their high-tech advantages, resulting in a playing field that could get ever more level. Finally, given the ease with which such groups can infiltrate poorly vetted partner forces, the U.S. military has probably provided tactical instruction to the enemy directly and indirectly for a long time. As one U.S. military advisor in Afghanistan told one of us: “Sometimes a trainee just doesn’t show up right before graduation, and then – sure enough – you are fighting him on the next objective.”

In summary, rather than celebrating the (shockingly slow) destruction of the ISIL caliphate, the U.S. military should realize that one of its enemies just learned a whole lot about combat: basic infantry tactics, urban operations, and the clever blending of emerging technologies. These lessons will spread globally, and faster than many expect.

This points out two more very good reasons not to engage in unnecessary foreign wars. First, you're implicitly training your enemy. The longer you fight him, the more he will learn. Second, if you compound your error by engaging in "nation-building", you will usually find yourself literally and explicitly training your enemy.

Over time, opposing forces tend to become more and more symmetrical. This is the process that we are beginning to see, both in terms of tactics and the demographics of the militaries themselves. US military supremacy was always bound to erode, because no military, not even the Roman legions have ever remained permanently superior. But this increasingly observed tactical symmetry is a clear indication that the erosion is picking up speed.

The rest of the show

From the last part of my appearance yesterday on Dialogue.

US TARIFFS A PRELUDE TO A TRADE WAR
President Trump seeks to renegotiate NAFTA

YANG: President Trump accused his predecessors of making stupid mistakes, as a result Americans have suffered $800 billion of trade deficits almost annually. So what do you think of his negotiation ploy to use the issue of a trade imbalance for renegotiating NAFTA with Canada and Mexico? The Minister of International Trade in Canada and politicians in Mexico both made it very clear that they would not allow the U.S. government to hurt their respective economies. What do you think of this war of attrition?

VOX: I think the Trump administration's long term goal is to get rid of NAFTA altogether. NAFTA is extremely unpopular in the United States, the negative effects of it have actually been worse than its enemies predicted, and none of the benefits that were promised to Americans have been delivered to them. And so, I think that the threats and the posturing of the Mexican and Canadian governments is almost completely irrelevant. Trump has made it very clear that he understands. His focus is on the American working class and finding jobs, finding manufacturing jobs.

That's why the services perspective that you mentioned with regards to China is really just a tactical measure. It wouldn't solve... it may solve the issue from the economists' point of view, but it doesn't solve it from President Trump's point of view or from the point of view of the American people. And so I agree with the gentleman who said that's not a long-term solution. It's not, because it doesn't meet the goals that have been expressed by the President.

YANG: We'll see what happens next. I thank you so much for being with us.

It appears to have been received rather well, so there is a reasonable chance that I will do this again. It's rather fascinating to observe, as one reader noted, that the Chinese state-owned media is demonstrably more free and open to genuine discussion of the relevant issues than the US media that is owned by no one in particular and certainly isn't owned by anyone who should be criticized or even identified.

Pedos at the EFF?

At first glance, one might assume that the Electronic Freedom Foundation's opposition to sex trafficking laws is based on principle. But based on their actions, that clearly isn't the case.

The EFF argues repeatedly that the existing law is “not broken” but they are wrong. In fact the EFF itself has used the existing law to argue that the most flagrant promoters of sex trafficking should not be held accountable for their crimes against humanity.

In Government Pressure Shutters Backpage’s Adult Services Section the EFF acknowledges that “Backpage knew that its website was being used to post ads for illegal prostitution and child sex trafficking, and directly edited such ads to make their illegality less conspicuous” but argues that Backpage should not be held accountable for those actions.

The EFF goes on to congratulate themselves on having supported Backpage by filing a brief on their behalf when they were sued by child sex trafficking victims. The EFF published an article about that case entitled Court Finds That Section 230 Shields Website From Child Trafficking Claims.

The legislation that the EFF is fighting against is needed specifically because the existing law shields the most egregious child sex traffickers from liability for their crimes and prevents children who have been enslaved and raped from seeking damages against those who have made millions from their exploitation.

The EFF knows this all to well because they have been in court arguing on the behalf of criminal enterprises like Backpage that the existing law gives them immunity.

And, let's face it, for all its merits, the EFF does have more than a few of those obese bearded weirdos who look as if they just might have a small body or two stashed in the cellar.

Voxiversity 002

The second Voxiversity video is now live! This is a short video of the kind we are calling A Lesson from History. This one is called Sink the Ships.

Episode Two: Sink the Ships

• BitChute
• DailyMotion (HD)
• Facebook
• YouTube

A few of the comments on YouTube, before they get disappeared like those on the first one.

• First the production was excellent, better than the first.  Second, what a great lesson from history, wake-up America & European Nations!
• Unbelievable!  I've never heard so much said in under 3 minutes.
• Excellent follow up, even better than Voxiversity #1!

We will be holding the first Voxiversity Q&A tomorrow at 7 PM Eastern. Check your email if you're a backer. If you are a backer and you didn't receive one, please email me for the URL. And if you're not yet, but you want to support Voxiversity and attend, you can do so here.

We already have that word

"I still think we need a word for cultural self-genocide."
- Stephen Green, Instapundit

We have it. That word is "immigration".

"Having spent some time perusing the genetic imprints of invaded populations, it is clear that if the warriors coming from the Eastern steppes left a cultural imprint, they certainly left their genes at home. Gene transfer between areas happens by group migrations, inclement climate, and unaccommodating soil rather than war."
- NN Taleb, Skin in the Game

Immigration is not "good for the economy". Immigration is the precise opposite of "who we are". And as genetic science has conclusively proven, it is quite literally worse than war.

Judeo-Christian values

I look forward to seeing the evangelical Churchians twisting themselves into pretzels to somehow avoid criticizing this rabbi, lest they risk losing the many-fold blessings of Judeo Christ.

On Saturday, an openly gay Leftist rabbi twisted the Bible to support transgender identity, and in so doing he explicitly named eight Bible figures who he suggested were transgender or gender non-conforming.

Responding to a recent statement from the Kansas Republican Party rejecting transgenderism, Jay Michaelson disputed the idea that "God's design for gender" involves accepting biological sex.

"[W]hat about those men and women who deviate from gender roles in the Bible?" Michaelson asked in a Daily Beast article. "The patriarch Jacob, for example, is clearly gendered female in comparison with his twin brother Esau. Esau is hairy, Jacob is smooth; Esau is a hunter, Jacob 'stays in the tent' (which is where women stay) and cooks; Esau is favored by his father, Jacob by his mom. And yet Jacob is the chosen one who becomes Israel, who fathers a nation" (emphasis added).

Yes, this rabbi suggested Jacob was "clearly gendered female." Since Jacob was biologically a male, and even fathered children, this would necessarily make him transgender. Michaelson went on, "Of course, Jacob didn’t go on hormone therapy, but the way the Bible constructs his gender identity makes it very clear that, at least until his transformative nighttime wrestling match, he is gender non-conforming."

The rabbi didn't stop with Jacob, however. "Likewise, Deborah the Judge, who performed a male societal role. Likewise, the beautiful young David in his 'armor-carrier' relationships with Saul and Jonathan. (1 Sam. 16;12, 1 Sam. 18:1-3) Likewise the Apostle Paul, who rebelled against the most fundamental gender role of his time, fathering children, by becoming celibate," Michaelson wrote.

So, what's the plan? Declare he's not a Jew? That's straight-up Hitlerism! Declare he's not a true rabbi? What sort of anti-semite polices another religion? They can't, of course, simply declare that he is evil, because that would not be inclusive and welcoming.

Now, tell us more about these "shared Judeo-Christian values".

US tariffs and trade war

As I mentioned yesterday, I was asked to pinch-hit for Steve Keen on a Chinese English-language business show this morning. They arranged for a trip up to the studio, which frankly struck me as more than a little overkill considering that they only asked me four questions. But it was a real learning experience, although unfortunately I was on a bit of an audio delay. Please keep in mind that I had no idea what the host was going to ask me, except that it would have something to do with China and President Trump's recent comments about tariffs, because I wasn't tuned in until about 10 seconds before the host addressed me.

The transcript follows. The sections in italics are the graphics that the producers popped up while we were talking.

YANG RUI: Let me cross over to Mr Vox Day, author of On the Question of Free Trade: An Economic Discourse, for his comments on the latest. What do you make of the impact on the European Union.

VOX DAY: Well, I think the threats from the European Union are essentially toothless. There is very, very little that the European Union can do when it comes to US trade policy. I think it's a lot of political threat, but ultimately there is nothing they can do about it.

YANG: You mean there won't be any reprisals from the European Union? Let's look at such statistics. The exports as a percentage of each economy: Germany is 46 percent, South Korea 42 percent, Mexico 38 percent, and Canada 31 percent. China is just 20 percent, but we are still very much exposed compared to 12 percent (for the USA). So, all would suffer in a trade war if there would be a trade war. What do you think of the collective repercussions.

VOX: First of all, I think it's important to understand that not everyone will suffer equally in a trade war, and some parties will benefit from it. For example, if you simply look at the United States alone and we take it to the most extreme, absurd example and suppose that the United States were to stop all imports and exports, that would immediately translate into a 3 percent annual boost to the US economy. If you look at how the GDP is calculated, it's very simple. And so the fact that it might have a negative outcome on Europe, the fact that it would have a strong negative impact on South Korea, says nothing about what the impact on the United States is. And, of course, President Trump has made it very clear that with his America First policy, he is not as concerned about the economic state of the rest of the world.

US TARIFFS A PRELUDE TO A TRADE WAR
US has high domestic demand

YANG RUI: Vox, what do you think of the Chinese response? What would be the most likely response from China, which was accused by the US government of only paying lip service instead of turning to actions, to reciprocate in terms of deals that are not quite in favor of the US. According to President Donald Trump, the US suffers $800 billion of trade deficit, that's quite a lot.

US TARIFFS A PRELUDE TO A TRADE WAR
How will China respond in a trade war?

VOX: I think China's response is going to be very calm and measured. I don't think there is any advantage to China in trying to engage in reprisals, simply because, you know, by definition, the reduction of imports into the US is going to boost their manufacturing and boost their GDP. And so the best thing for China to do is to simply play a long game, play a waiting game. It's something they're very good at. This main steel and aluminum tariff is not directed primarily at China and so there is no reason for China to overreact. Trump will do what he says he's going to do; he's pretty good about that.

YANG: But last year we enjoyed a trade surplus of $300 billion with the United States and John, the guest speaker here in the studio, says that China is likely to open up our capital market and to lay the groundwork for more American services to be provided here in the Chinese market. What do you think of the prospects?

US TARIFFS A PRELUDE TO A TRADE WAR
US "has an $800 billion yearly trade deficit"

VOX: I don't think that is going to be effective because Trump is not that concerned about Wall Street. He's not that concerned about what you call the services market. He's much more concerned about the industrial base, he's much more concerned about the working class who have lost so many jobs over the last few decades. I think the most important aspect of that development you're talking about is that it indicates that China is not disposed to respond to Trump's harsh rhetoric with harsh rhetoric or ill-considered actions of their own.

I'll share some of my thoughts on the experience later. And somewhat to my surprise, I was informed that they liked my answers and would like to have me back again sometime.

Main Street First

This is a good sign of the God-Emperor's America First economic agenda in action. And the Main Street of America at that.

White House chief economic advisor Gary Cohn has resigned from President Donald Trump's administration.

The former Goldman Sachs president and free trade advocate Cohn, whose departure date will come in a few weeks, decided to quit after Trump announced he would impose stiff tariffs on steel and aluminum imports.... Cohn clashed with Trump's protectionist advisors on the issue of tariffs. At a meeting with steel and aluminum executives last Thursday where Trump announced the move, Cohn argued against it, warning about price increases for steel and aluminum products, according to a person in the room.

Free trade is not good for the US economy or the American public. But it is good for the financial elite that lives as a useless parasite off both as it plays the "heads I win, tails you bail me out" casino. And for those who missed my debate with economist Bob Murphy, the best thing about tariffs is the fact that they are an alternative to income taxes, a benefit that Bob even conceded during the debate.

VOX: My fourth argument against free trade is practical. Bob wrote that “the most obvious way to realize that tariffs make a country poorer is to realize that tariffs are taxes on domestic citizens, not on foreign producers”. That’s correct but that would only be true if the alternative was no taxes. That is obviously not the case now, it will never be the case, and it should be readily apparent that a nation with a government funded by tariffs will be wealthier and freer than a government funded by income taxes. Tariffs are considerably less intrusive and less economically disruptive than the personal and corporate income taxes that have replaced them. Free trade is unlikely to make a country wealthier if it replaces its tariffs with income taxes. (So to answer Bob’s question of how do politicians make a country wealthier, they do so by substituting tariffs for income taxes.)

BOB: One last thing here. Let's see. He admitted, and I think it was very telling, that Vox admitted that tariffs are taxes on US citizens. So I wasn't sure if he was going to go with me on that. He does. So again, Vox is now admitting that yes, the US government imposing taxes on US citizens make us better off and in some sense wealthier and he is just saying in comparison to income taxes. Well, fair enough, I do concede that. By the same token, Obamacare can make America richer if the alternative is socialized medicine. But, clearly, if we were debating if Obamacare makes us better off or not, I shouldn't have to be forced to use the default option or the baseline case of an even bigger government policy. So, by the same token here, when I say tariffs don't make Americans wealthier I am not saying the only other alternative is to say the income tax. So I do agree if we want to have some shared issues in the debate here, I do agree that tariffs are better than an income tax, dollar for dollar, but I still don't think it is correct to therefore conclude tariffs make us wealthier.

It's fine to hypothesize about a world with no taxes, no debt, and no government spending, but back here in the real world, we have a choice between a) income taxes, b) government debt, and c) tariffs. And tariffs are by far the economically preferable option that does the least harm to the citizenry.

REVIEW: Right Ho, Jeeves #2

Jon Del Arroz reviews Hungry Hearts, the second in the Right Ho, Jeeves series.

The first issue of Right Ho, Jeeves had a lot of set up. Characters were introduced almost with bios, the scene was set for nearly half the issue. It was enjoyable, but it took for issue 2 for this series to really hit full stride. Kwapisz shows a mastery of cartoonist-style art that gives characters poignant and identifiable features to amplify the humor of the situation. The period pieces and drawings are absolutely gorgeous in the background, which won’t get much credit, but should.

This issue starts where the main character has set a bunch of his colleagues up in different romantic schemes to impress their ladies, and all of them have backfired. Instead of extricating himself from the situation, he doubles down and tries to repair them with more schemes based on deception, only resulting in more hi jinx and more troubles. Jeeves, the butler, is the confidante in these schemes, and one can tell he thinks his master is somewhat crazy, but he’s very diplomatic in the way he phrases his thoughts on the plans.

Read the whole thing there. And just think how this issue is going to look in print!

While we're at it, one minor bit of production news. After meeting with our printer today, we've learned we are going to be able to offer limited edition gold logo comics to add a collectible aspect to Arkhaven and Dark Legion comics. The first 2,500 comic books and 1,000 graphic novels off the press for each issue will sport the gold logo. We have ZERO interest in getting into the games of variant covers and fake #1 issues that the more established publishers play, but this is a harmless way of giving collectors a potential long-term reward for being the first to support us.

The backer editions will not feature the gold logos, but will be set apart in other ways, including the unique covers for the hardcovers.

Free traders freak out

It's not hard to know who doesn't have a real case when you see free traders going full-retard over two tariffs.

Trump needs to be impeached immediately to head off the trade war he has declared. His appointees who support that trade war, namely Commerce Secretary Ross and Trade Representative Lighthizer, should be fired immediately.

I am not trying to punish him, I am trying to stop the trade war. He has turned himself into a colossal mistake made by American voters in 2016. I don’t care whether he goes to the Leavenworth Penitentiary or Mar-a-Lago. I voted for Gary Johnson.

Let me give you a list of pertinent facts that cannot be denied:

• U.S. GDP has never been as high as now
• The number of U.S. jobs has never been higher than now
• Trumps claims he wants to increase the number of jobs. For whom? There are no U.S. residents left to hire. The Fed chair said we are at full employment and maybe have more people employed than full employment (you need a certain amount of unemployed because people quit, get fired, go to college or grad school, take vacations between jobs, etc.)
• The Smoot-Hawley Tariff bill (Smoot and Hawley were Republicans) was a large campaign issue in the 1928 presidential race. Republican Hoover said he would sign it. He won and took office in March 1929. He did sign it.
• The stock market crashed repeatedly starting on Black Tuesday October 29, 1929. “...by 1932 stocks were worth only about 20 percent of their value in the summer of 1929.”
(http://www.history.com/topics/1929-stock-market-crash) A similar thing happened to real estate, although there were few statistics on real estate back then. They used a study of real estate prices in the New York Times during the Depression to retroactively create the stats.
• Before the 1929 crash, the stock market was booming with shoe-shine-boy/taxi-driver speculative mania fueled by high-loan-to-value-ratio margin loans. There are lower loan-to-value-ratio margin loans now. But they contributed to the recent drop in stocks forcing some to sell to meet margin calls.
• In 1932, when FDR was elected, the U.S. national debt-to-GDP ratio was 17%. Today it is 105% meaning the U.S, government is in no position to provide the sort of government financial help it did during the New Deal.
• In 1929, international trade was 7% of world GDP. Today, it is 25%. Furthermore, about 40% to 60% of all imports coming to the U.S. now were, in turn, imported into the exporting country to make the product in question—including raw material and manufactured components from the U.S.
• “Buying American” today is near impossible. Virtually all manufactured products are a sort of international all-star team as depicted in the essay “I, pencil.” 

Let's address those arguments in order.

1. US debt has never been higher. US population has never been higher. That's why US GDP is at record highs, not semi-free trade.
2. There have never been more Americans out of the work force. The record employment is an artifact of the record population. The employment/population ratio is not anywhere near its record highs and is nearly as low as it was prior to the second wave of women entering the work force.
3. There are currently 94.6 million Americans not in the workforce. The fact that they are not looking for jobs offered at lower average wages than 1973 does not mean that they are entirely uninterested in ever working at any wage.
4. Smoot-Hawley had nothing to do with the Great Depression. First, the annual decline in exports from 1929 to 1933 was less than the decline from 1920 to 1922. Second, the net effect of the change in the balance of trade amounted to less than 0.3 percent of GDP.
5. None of this garblefarbling about the stock market is relevant.
6. The government will be in a much better position to help manufacturers when it has $500 billion in tariff income at its disposal.
7. This is an argument for why less semi-free trade, not more, is needed.
8. Buying American is not "near impossible" and it will get considerably easier and more cost-effective when imported goods are taxed.

In other news, I was very flattered when Steve Keen suggested that I serve as his substitute in a live interview tomorrow concerning on US tariffs, their global implications, and the concerns of a trade war. Of course, I agreed. So, I will be on Dialogue with Yang Rui tomorrow, which can be seen live here.

Wanna bet?

What a pity Doug Jones wasn't talking like this before the special election:

Alabamians are ready for more gun control.

At least that’s what their Democratic Sen. Doug Jones said.

Jones wants tighter background checks for gun sales and to raise the age requirement to purchase a gun from 18 to 21, and he thinks Alabamians are on the same page.

“People in Alabama love their guns, but they also love their children,” Jones told CNN Friday at an event at Birmingham’s Civil Rights Institute sponsored by the Faith and Politics Institute, NOLA.com reported. “And they like to be safe in theaters, and they like to be safe in churches, and I think there is common ground.  People look at the tragedy and say its the tragedy that all of a sudden called us to action. [But] we’ve never had a group of students like we have at Parkland.”

Those students are “going to get people talking,” Jones said, “and their voices are going to be heard all the way to the election in 2018.”

Of course they haven't. They never had a collection of crisis actors on stage before. And I certainly hope that their voices are going to continue to be heard all the way to the 2018 election, because that will ensure a better midterm election cycle than average for the God-Emperor.

The Trump tariffs and economic independence

Pat Buchanan figured all this out long before I did. And he's been remarkably consistent all along in his correct argument that free trade is economically destructive for the United States. He was right about this in 1992 and he is right about this today.

The hysteria that greeted Trump’s idea of a 25 percent tariff on steel and 10 percent tariff on aluminum suggest that restoring this nation’s economic independence is going to be a rocky road.

In 2017, the U.S. ran a trade deficit in goods of almost $800 billion, $375 billion of that with China, a trade surplus that easily covered Xi Jinping’s entire defense budget.

If we are to turn our $800 billion trade deficit in goods into an $800 billion surplus, and stop the looting of America’s industrial base and the gutting of our cities and towns, sacrifices will have to be made.

But if we are not up to it, we will lose our independence, as the countries of the EU have lost theirs.

Specifically, we need to shift taxes off goods produced in the USA, and impose taxes on goods imported into the USA.

As we import nearly $2.5 trillion in goods, a tariff on imported goods, rising gradually to 20 percent, would initially produce $500 billion in revenue.

All that tariff revenue could be used to eliminate and replace all taxes on production inside the USA.

As the price of foreign goods rose, U.S. products would replace foreign-made products. There’s nothing in the world that we cannot produce here. And if it can be made in America, it should be made in America.

Consider. Assume a Lexus cost $50,000 in the U.S., and a 20 percent tariff were imposed, raising the price to $60,000.

What would the Japanese producers of Lexus do?

They could accept the loss in sales in the world’s greatest market, the USA. They could cut their prices to hold their U.S. market share. Or they could shift production to the United States, building their cars here and keeping their market.

I have already proved that free trade is totally incompatible with nationalism, national sovereignty, and the future survival of the nation due to the labor mobility required by it. Now I will prove that even complete autarky would, in the present circumstances, be of material benefit to the United States economy.

First, what passes for the macroeconomic facts, courtesy of the BEA:

• Q4 2017 GDP was $19,386.2 billion.
• Net exports were $2,420.7 billion
• Net imports were $3,020.8 billion

Now, let us accept the free trade advocates' standard argumentum ad absurdum and suppose that Donald Trump actually does shut down all international trade going forward. Let us suppose that China, Japan, and the EU all retaliate with 100-percent tariffs and refuse to sell into the world's most profitable consumer market. What does this mean in statistical terms?

It means the US economy loses $2.4 trillion in exports and gains $3.0 trillion in imports. Remember, GDP is calculated by the following formula: C+I+G+(x-m). So, this much-feared trade war, at its theoretical worst, would result in the instantaneous growth of the US economy from $19,386.2 billion to $19,986.3 billion GDP.

That is three percent annual growth, which is faster economic growth than the USA has enjoyed since the 1990s. In other words, the very worst scenario that the free traders can envision actually guarantees a bigger and better economy growing faster than the USA has seen for more than 20 years. And given the fact that US manufacturing prices are more expensive, the actual GDP growth will probably be in excess of that.

And just to be fair to the less intelligent, a word of warning to free traders before they resort to the obvious and anticipated rebuttals. Be very, very careful on what basis you attempt to pull your "yeah, but" arguments out of a hat. Remember, any assumption you negate here will also be negated in your own pro-free trade arguments. To put it plainly, I am hoisting you on your own macroeconomic petards.

In answer to the specific question, the Trump tariffs are a very small, but positive first step towards Americans regaining their economic independence from their globalist financial rapists.

The fake civility of the cuckservative

Kurt Schlichter seems to be gradually getting it:

When the liberals and their squishy-soft allies in Conservative, Inc., start moaning about your dreadful incivility, that’s a clear indicator that you are doing something right and that you need to double down. Civility, once properly understood as a means to an end rather than an end in and of itself, has morphed from an aspiration into a political/cultural gimp suit designed to prevent you from effectively asserting your interests and your point of view.

For liberals, civility is a grift – they think it’s a punchline and they’re waiting to laugh at you for embracing it. It’s a way to keep you from interrupting their non-stop attacks on your rights, your faith, and your dignity by convincing you that it’s somehow wrong to get upset when, say, some Astroturf Tot backed up by a bunch of leftist Red Guard orgs like Planned Parenthood and Move On starts shrieking that you have blood on your hands.

For the Fredocons, civility is just an excuse for lounging on the Lido Deck while those of us not signed onto Team Submissive wade in and fight. It’s also an excuse to push back against the revolt of the Normals that their incompetent, self-serving bumbling created. They will never, ever attack the progressive cultural aggressors, those leftist savages spewing their death wishes against conservatives while saving the grossest sexual slurs for the brave female warriors whose will not back down in the face of progressive hate. Your refusal to knuckle under shames the sissycons.

No, they will attack you when you resist. It’s unseemly to fight back, according to some True Conservative Principle™ we never heard of but that they insist is the central tenet of conservatism. Not giving in is not who we are, or something....

Yeah, we’re done with their version of civility because their version of civility is a lie too. George W. Bush was civil, oh so civil, or so dignified. He was so civil and dignified that we got eight years of Barack Obama and we came that close to going under forever. But funny how Dignified George’s civility lasted for only eight years of his pal/successor then vanished once the guy who beat his soft bro to a pulp showed up and took what was supposed to be one of the Bipartisan Civility Crew’s gig. Suddenly, when someone who wasn’t part of the Approved Elite got elected, George found his ability to attack again. Of course, it was his own (supposed) side.

Bush was not just attacking Trump. He was attacking us Normals for daring to elect Trump. Many of us defended him when he was busy being oh-so-dignified and civil. And when we defied him and his class, he turned against us. Like a true gentleman.

Civility is desirable, but it is not a necessity. Civility is the way disagreements between friends and neutrals and even civilized enemies can be handled, but it must always be cast aside when dealing with savages and satanists. You simply cannot shake the hand of an enemy who is concealing a dagger in his other hand; you must always keep him safely at a distance.

Fair play is for sports. Winning is for cultural wars.

A nice conservative once told me that the important thing was "to win with grace and style." No, I corrected rather sternly, the important thing is to figure out how to win, then do it. If you can do it gracefully, stylishly, and civilly, so much the better. But don't let those things increase the degree of difficulty if the outcome is in any doubt at all.

And if a cuck claims you're doing it wrong, then you are, at the very least, on the right path.

Civility is not a sign of weakness when a system of reasoned debate is in effect. But it is a sign of weakness, and will be taken as such by our enemies, when we cling to civility because we are too weak and afraid to admit the awful truth, that we are no longer a society ruled by reason but by power.

Build your own... or else

One wonders what they imagined the likely outcome was going to be:

Rare.us, the viral content site launched by Cox Media in 2013 to take on the ever-evolving digital landscape from a right of center lens, will shut down at the end of the month, according to Facebook posts by its top editors.

Why it matters: It's another example of a viral website built on Facebook traffic that is shutting down after Facebook announced it would be making changes to its News Feed algorithm to weed out publisher content.

Rare has amassed 2.3 million Facebook fans since launch. The site's traffic peaked in 2014 at around 22.5 million global unique visitors, according to Quantcast. The site's global traffic had fallen to 5.5 million global unique visitors in February of 2018.

Last week, LittleThings, a 4-year-old publisher which built an audience by sharing happy stories on Facebook, also shut down, citing Facebook News Feed changes.

It's heads they win, tails you lose. No matter what you do, they're not going to let you win. No matter how big you get, they won't hesitate to cut off their own nose if that's what it takes to trip you up. So don't play their game!

Know your enemy. ALWAYS know your enemy. And build your own platforms.

He's no Jack Ward

I do not stand with Jack Burroughs, whose thinking demonstrates why conservatives reliably lose:

The Left's assault on Free Speech in the US--outside of the Universities--has really only just begun. Most of the public recoils from these repressive excesses. At present, the Right has the considerable political virtue of being pro-free speech. That is a powerful moral and political weapon against the Left. It is an important reason why the ranks of the Right are growing.

But if you try to fight fire with fire by arguing that since the Left does censors speech, we should do it, too, then you have sacrificed the moral high ground in the eyes of the broad public. The Right will then be no better on this defining issue than the Left, and will have given up one of the main reasons why fast growing numbers of people prefer the Right to the Left.

If the Right becomes hostile to free speech, then it will drastically weaken its moral standing in the eyes of the broad public, thereby diminishing its political appeal.

Every bad argument has its roots in false foundations. Can you identify the false foundations here?

It's amusing that he thinks "moral standing" is relevant in a political environment in which basic, fundamental concepts such as "male" and "illegal" are treated as variable, and traditional definitions are designated as outdated and immoral. It's understandable, though just as incorrect, to claim that free speech is a moral issue. It is not. In fact, the pro-blasphemy position is actually the observably immoral position.

But his biggest mistake is to claim that "the moral high ground" is why one side wins. This is simply more conservative posturing that reliably leads them into disaster. The center is not abandoning the Left because the Left has abandoned a moral high ground that it never held, it is being abandoned by a Left that moves ever deeper into madness.

Those who believe in a path to victory through "the moral high ground" inevitably find themselves outflanked by those who are willing to surrender even more nobly. That is why no successful strategist in history has ever designed a strategy that relies upon moral posturing. And appealing to the moral sense of an immoral people whose morality is constantly in flux is neither a rational strategy nor a winning one.

Listening to a conservative talk about strategy is like listening to a blind man's advice on how to drive a Formula One race car. They are reliable counter indicators.

"In terms of speech, the Left would reword it: “Say what thou wilt.” And to preserve their natural right to expression–whether it’s pornography, vulgarity, blatant or tongue-in-cheek anti-Christian propaganda–the Left has enacted the Strange Doctrine, happily bludgeoning their enemies on the Right, and this has been going on for quite some time."

Hey, let's just censor them, then. Why the hell not?

It's only going to make the Right much less popular, because it will needlessly sacrifice one of the main positive values that increasingly differentiates the Right from the Left in the public mind.

But when you have people out there who are saying whatever they want--including many mean things about the Right, and even about Christians--it's obviously far more important to shut them down than it is to prevail politically over the long term.

Let's just do to them what they do to us, without any consideration of the strategic consequences at all.

We already know what the strategic consequences of relying on the moral high ground are, which is decades of consistent defeat. Not only have we considered the strategic consequences, we have done so and we have found the conservative strategy of "hold the moral high ground and win" to be entirely wanting.

Silence the SJWs

Like all SJWs, Peter King reveals that he is not fit to live as a citizen in American society.

The AR-15 is a killing machine, and it will continue to be a money-making machine for gun companies unless our elected officials make it illegal to privately own. That has to happen. If you’re in favor of private ownership of the gun, you can say whatever you want to justify it, but you value a murderous weapon over the lives of Americans, and certainly over the lives of 17 children. Second Amendment, schmecond amendment.

He seriously wants to take YOUR unalienable right to self-defense away. He does not respect your Second Amendment rights. At all.

So, why should we respect his First Amendment rights? We should not, as NN Taleb advises in his excellent new book Skin in the Game.

Start by being nice to everyone person you meet. But if someone tries to exercise power over you, exercise power over him.

This philosophy means that every individual who attempts to infringe on our Second Amendment rights, in any way, has lost any claim to our consideration for their First Amendment rights.

Forza Italia!

Italy deals a serious blow to the globofascists of the EU:

Italy entered a period of political instability on Monday after national elections boosted populists but failed to produce a winner with enough support to patch together a parliamentary majority. With about 95% of votes counted early Monday, the antiestablishment 5 Star Movement was projected to win 32% of the vote—exceeding expectations and emerging as Italy’s largest party.

The 5 Star Movement, which has won a large following by denouncing Italy’s conventional politicians as corrupt, has long been hostile to the idea of forming governing pacts with other parties. Despite some signs of greater flexibility recently, many observers believe a government led by the movement will be difficult to assemble.

“Nobody can govern without the 5 Star,” Riccardo Fraccaro, a leading party member, told a news conference after the vote.

On paper, the 5 Star could form a government with another populist group, the anti-immigrant League. Such a populist coalition, which would shock Italy’s and Europe’s establishment and possibly challenge European Union rules on economic policy, faces political hurdles, however, given major differences between the parties’ ideology and political strategies up to now.

The conservative coalition that includes the Forza Italia party of former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi was projected to win about 37% of the vote, falling short of a majority in either chamber of parliament. Forza Italia itself emerged as one of the big losers on the night, getting 14% the vote, about four points less than its main ally, the League.

The center-left Democratic Party, mainstay of Italy’s government in recent years, suffered worse-than-expected losses and was projected to win only around 19%.

Movimento Cinque Stelle makes the establishment nervous, because they are unpredictable. But it is Matteo Salvini and La Lega that really scares them, as you can see by the way The Wall Street Journal doesn't even directly mention the fact that they got 20 percent of the vote, more than the so-called "mainstream" Democratic Party.

I, for one, would love to see a Cinque Stelle / La Lega government. Stop the migration, deport the migrants, get out of the Euro, get out of the EU. Those should be the first four government policies and both parties should be able to agree on them. This is particularly important since the idiot Germans just assured themselves a fourth term of Merkel's disastrous and destructive regime. Salvini has rejected the idea of a populist coalition, but it is still very early days and the final results haven't even been announced.

Right Ho, Jeeves #2 and more

HUNGRY HEARTS is the second issue in the RIGHT HO, JEEVES series, which tells of the travails of the inimitable Bertie Wooster, who is summoned from the comforts of #3A Berkley Mansions, London to Brinkley Manor by his imperious Aunt Dahlia. Love is in the air and Wodehousian shenanigans are afoot, as Wooster's well-meaning attempts to help out his friends sort out their romantic difficulties only leads to one disaster after another.

Adapted from the classic Wodehouse novel by comics legend Chuck Dixon and drawn by SAVAGE SWORD OF CONAN illustrator Gary Kwapisz, RIGHT HO, JEEVES #2: HUNGRY HEARTS is issue #2 of 6 in the series.

On a related note, as you may already be aware, RIGHT HO, JEEVES #1: A Binge at Brinkley is now available in Kindle and in print. But that's not all. During the Alt★Hero campaign, we were asked to offer a discussion forum as a stretch reward, which we duly offered and was subsequently funded. The stretch reward was originally conceived as follows:

Commenting on the Alt★Hero site will be limited to campaign backers and site subscribers in order to reduce the amount of SJW vandalism. Site Heroes will receive a subscription to the website, the ability to create new topics, the ability to edit the wiki (subject to moderator approval and discipline), a series of special icons available only to them, and a dedicated forum. Please note that SJWs who use this Reward to infiltrate the site for the purposes of vandalism, politics, or social justice will be identified and stripped of both their backer and Site Hero status.

Last week, a special online meeting was held with the Site Heroes to introduce the new Alt★Hero site, which is now live. After a discussion in which a variety of ideas were kicked around, we collectively decided to make some changes to the original conception. First, no subscriptions to read the site will be necessary, at least for now. Second, all APPROVED (not registered) users can comment on the forums, although certain closed forums are accessible only by Alt★Hero Backers  and Artists, respectively. Approval will initially be limited to those two groups. Third, the wiki will utilize an Infogalactic frame, but is not yet operative and only Backers will have the ability to modify it. Fourth, we have established separate sections for discussing Books and Games, as well as separate subforums for discussing comics published by Marvel, DC, and the major independents. And fifth, we set up several volunteers as site moderators, who will police the forums and keep the commenting under control.

Anyone can register, but please read the site guidelines before commenting. Because we anticipate a number of younger readers, we will be much more strict on policing language and content there than I am here. Only Alt★Hero Backers and Artists will initially be approved for commenting, so if you are a backer, please email me with your backer number and new username in the subject after you register. Please note that you will know that you have been approved, have Backer status, and can access the Backer's Only subforum when your username turns green. Artist status is limited to industry professionals and the Arkhaven/Dark Legion team.

Once the Alt★Hero Backers who have registered are all approved, we'll move on to approving Voxiversity backers, Brainstorm members, and Will Caligan campaign backers for general commenting. Please be patient, as this process could take as long as a week since not everyone reads this blog every day.

UPDATE:

#1 in Books > Comics & Graphic Novels > Graphic Novels > Adaptations
#1 in Kindle Store >Comics & Graphic Novels > Historical & Literary > Literary

Mailvox: Brave Prof. Robin

Free traders always talk a big game. They love to name drop Ricardo and pretend that the false syllogisms of an 18th century con artist still has relevance to economics today, but their arguments are nothing more than outdated theory that will not stand up to two centuries of evidence-based criticism anymore and they know it. Consider the following email exchange with a reader.

I was discussing free trade with a Macroeconomics Professor at George Mason University named Garett Jones. I brought up your debate with Dr. Miller and he didn't have kind words for your work. I brought up Steve Keen and he didn't have kind words for him either. I @ Steve Keen a request to debate this guy and I said maybe you would be willing to host it. Prof Keen said he would be willing to do that. I am sure you have Steve Keen's email. This would be a great debate because George Mason University is one of the better libertarian economic departments in the country. We'll see.

Sure, we can do a 500-seat Brainstorm. Let me know, I'll host and see if the guy will show.

the professor backed out after talking you know what on twitter. He said he has too many deadlines. He spends hours on twitter so that's a nonsense excuse. I told him it would probably only be around an hour but if he doesn't want to back up his rhetoric then that's fine. You and Steve would destroy this guy so it's no wonder he didn't want to debate. Free traders only want to show up on corporate media to shill. 

This is my surprised face....

Sounds rather like the professor spent a few hours poking around here and Steve Keen's site and belatedly realized that he was volunteering for the sort of treatment one normally only experiences in prison washrooms when the guards aren't around.

The truth is that the free traders have NO DEFENSE WHATSOEVER against my labor mobility argument. The best they can do is offer up a lame "nations don't matter" protest that renders their precious free trade abhorrent to 99.9 percent of the population.

Stop fighting on their ground

YouTube hits Infowars with a third strike preparatory to deleting Alex Jones's channel:

After one strike was removed earlier in the week, YouTube hit the Alex Jones Channel with a third strike for a video that had already been appealed and restored.

In the video, Jones clearly explains how the victims of the Parkland shooting were not “crisis actors”.

YouTube’s flagging system is clearly being abused in a flagrant effort to shut down Infowars following a public campaign by CNN.

This sets a horrific precedent for free expression and the First Amendment and YouTube is in direct violation of the Communications Decency Act in adopting this approach.

Protest! Shock! Horror! Unfair! Come on, now. The inevitability of these deplatforming actions is why I have been repeatedly and relentlessly advising people to build their own platforms. There is little point in building up a highly fragile operation on your enemy's turf that they can literally take out at will without warning.

The high-profile men and women of the Right absolutely need to stop thinking about maximizing their short-term benefit and start looking to support the platforms that are not going to a) silence them, b) sell them out, or, c) leave them completely exposed to their enemies. And they also need to stop "fighting for free speech". Free speech is little more than anti-Christian Enlightenment propaganda, which very few of its self-appointed defenders seem to know.

In case you haven't noticed, it is utterly useless to appeal to the ideological purists who run these Big Social platforms. No amount of reason is going to sway them. So stop relying upon them! If you notice, I used Freestartr instead of Kickstarter and Bitchute instead of Youtube for Voxiversity. If even 10 percent of the Right would stop bitching and wailing and whining about their inevitable ill-treatment at the hands of the Left and publicly support the alternative platforms instead, we would have a fully functional Alt-Tech ecosystem before the end of 2018.

Stefan Molyneux clearly gets it. One hopes that others will before it's already too late.

UPDATE: This again. I had a feeling someone was going to leap in to "call me out" for "hypocrisy" sooner or later. At least this was friendly concern.

This post being made on a Google-owned property, is at best hypocritical (which is fucking horrible to your credibility). Please take a look at platforms like Steemit, Minds, etc. because Goolag can bring the ban-hammer down on Vox Populi in a nanosecond. You're a sonofabitch, but you're an excellent sonofabitch, and I do not want to see you banned or discredited.

First, I was reliably informed that my credibility was destroyed back in 2001. So, who cares about that. Second, do you really think I am not prepared for Google to take down the blog without warning for no reason, or that Google does not know that? And third, Blogger is not a critical platform. It is merely a delivery vehicle for text on a screen and literally no one is dependent upon it.

Zero cultural power

Appendix N author Jeffro Johnson takes David Brooks to task for a shockingly ignorant statement about the cultural power of conservatives:

Writing in the pages of The New York Times, conservative commentator David Brooks closes out a column with this striking kicker:

Conservatives have zero cultural power, but they have immense political power. Even today, voters trust Republicans on the gun issue more than Democrats. If you exile 40 percent of the country from respectable society they will mount a political backlash that will make Donald Trump look like Adlai Stevenson.

It’s audacious, really. I mean sure, non-leftists have been steadily filtered out of education, academia, journalism, publishing, Hollywood, and the arts for so long that most people can’t even imagine it being any different. But zero? Really?

It takes a special sort of ignorance to embrace such a position. Even the residual power of Tarzan, Cthulhu, Middle Earth, and Conan remains a potent force, even in a marketplace flooded with both bastardized derivatives and hostile critiques. Smarmy elites dismissed the staunchly Catholic Tolkien in his lifetime and declared heroic fantasy bad for us from every platform they could manage to subdue. And yet he outlasted all of his detractors to become Author of the Century. And right at this very moment, Jordan Peterson’s number one international bestselling book is a sensation precisely because it is making the timeless wisdom that infuses the Bible accessible to a generation that is starving for answers and common sense.

The reason the ideological Right has limited cultural power these days is because the Left, with (((David Brooks))) and his nation in the vanguard, have worked very hard for at least four generations at attempting to eradicate everything from the culture that betrays any sign of Christian influence or Western tradition.

And the reason that they are failing despite their near-complete control of the cultural high ground is because they have literally nothing to offer in its place. All they ever had to offer was reaction, negation, ugliness, filth, and snark. Sure, you can adulterate Christmas, and you can substitute Silver Bells, shopping, Santa, and Seasons Greetings for Silent Night, Hark the Herald Angels Sing, Scrooge, and We Wish You a Merry Christmas, but at the end of the day, either you come up with a substitute or your efforts will eventually prove futile.

What did they come up with in over a century of frantic effort? Festivus, the Hannukah Aardvark, and horrible movies that are bad even by Seth Rogen's standards. Hardly an attractive exchange for even the most godless pagan.

We not only can win this cultural war, we cannot lose it so long as we continue to create things that are good, beautiful, and true, and continue to refuse entrance to the infiltrating wormtongues who are always there with their helpful blandishments and seductive offers to sell your creative soul to Mammon.

So let them turn Elsa of the Crowleyesque anthem into a lesbian. Let them transform Superman into an SJW superhero fighting for global migration, one-world government, and AIPAC. Let them continue to preen and posture and sneer and snark in futility. It will avail them nothing. Like their Father the Devil, they cannot create, they can only corrupt. And that is why the greatness of Tolkien, of Howard, of Lovecraft, and of Wright will continue to be recognized over time despite the Left's best efforts to denigrate and diminish it.

Here are three more shots in the cultural war for the West. Another will be fired tomorrow.


UPDATE: Jeffro responds to a defeatist gamma who took exception to his post, then showed up here to lie about him.

The end of the Bush dynasty

It would have been preferable to see it end sooner, but the main thing is that America's worst political dynasty is coming to an end:

George P Bush is the young, half-Hispanic, grandson of the 41st president, nephew of the 43rd and son of a former Florida governor. When he was elected Texas land commissioner four years ago, that background gave him a significant advantage as a fledgling Republican candidate seemingly on a fast track to stardom. Now, with conservative politics turned on its head by Trumpism, Bush is facing a tough primary election that threatens to doom his political career – and with it, bring to a close his family’s 70-year political dynasty.

The land commissioner job – which manages state-owned land – was perceived to be a stepping stone to higher office, but the evisceration of his father, Jeb, in the 2016 Republican presidential primary showed that as it lurched to the right and was seduced by sound and fury, the GOP was no longer in the market for a quiet moderate named Bush.

Though he has far more campaign cash than his rivals and has reportedly spent $2m in the past month, Bush has run an anaemic – one might say low-energy – campaign, with scant media availability and no events listed on his website. He is still the favourite, but if he fails to get above 50% of the vote on 6 March – when Texas holds the country’s first primaries ahead of the 2018 midterms – he will face a potentially dangerous runoff.

“It’s quite possible that the Bush political dynasty, at least for this generation, could end in the spring of 2018 because if George P Bush fails to win the GOP nomination for land commissioner it’s tough to see him coming back from that any time soon,” said Mark Jones, a political scientist at Rice University. The dynasty began with Prescott Bush – George P’s great-grandfather – becoming senator for Connecticut in 1952.

The Bushes have done more than enough harm to the nation. About the last thing that America - what is left of it - needs is a watered-down fourth-generation edition to deal with the damage meted out by his ancestors.