The other great replacement

One of the reasons Jewish politicians like the feckless Minneapolis mayor Jacob Frey are being parachuted into places like Minnesota to run for office is because they can't safely expect to win elections in their historical strongholds anymore. Unlike easily-deceived white Americans, the replacements their predecessors summoned in 1965 are not interested in being "represented" by an alien tribe.

Eliot Engel, a Zionist warmonger who has been in Congress since 1989, has been crushed at the ballot box by Bernie Sanders and Ilhan Omar endorsed black leftist Jamaal Bowman in New York’s majority non-white 16th District.

The outcome is a stunning blow for the Zionist lobby. The Israeli Engel is the chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee who voted for the Iraq war and advocates extreme neo-conservative policies. While Engel is a Democrat, he is considered to be an important AIPAC asset in Washington.

Engel touted high powered endorsements from Hillary Clinton, Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer, and even the bought out Congressional Black Caucus over his black insurgent opponent.

Nevertheless, Bowman’s unexpected momentum prompted a massive avalanche of Jewish money to Engel, including from Republican Party Super PACs, in an attempt to try and save his seat.

While Engel and his Super PACs outspent the underdog many times over, Bowman is currently leading him by 25 points with 670 of 732 precincts reporting.

Notice that even Republicans were donating heavily to the longtime Democrat on purely ethnic grounds. This alone should be sufficient to convince you that an ideological perspective on politics is intrinsically incorrect in a multiracial, multireligious state.

The superiority of homogenuity

It's mildly amusing to see the neocons feigning indignation over the fact that foreign enemies of the United States are utilizing its internal unrest against it, in much the same manner that the USA has utilized the internal unrest of other nation-states for the last 60 years:

Foreign propagandists are exploiting the death of George Floyd to question the legitimacy of the U.S. political system and deflect concerns about their own human rights abuses.

China, Russia, Iran, and other authoritarian regimes have offered wall-to-wall coverage of the Floyd protests and ensuing riots on their propaganda outlets, using the unrest to paint democratic systems as prone to turmoil. The propagandists—as well as top-level government officials—have also exploited the Floyd protests to smear specific pro-democracy or anti-regime movements within their own countries, associating the movements with scenes of chaos and disorder in U.S. cities.

The spate of propaganda coverage and public statements are indicative of how foreign adversaries are manipulating an American tragedy to delegitimize anti-regime voices in their home countries. This is especially the case for China, as the Floyd protests served as a welcome diversion from the 31st anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre and public outcry in Hong Kong, where demonstrators are out in the streets opposing a new national security law that would allow the Chinese government to crack down on anyone conducting what it considers seditious or terrorist activities.

It's actually much worse than that, of course. The champions of alternative societal systems of are pointing, very convincingly, to the intrinsic instability and structural contradictions of the current post-Christian, post-European, diverse, multi-racial, multi-religious, multi-culturalWest, in order to demonstrate the observable superiority of their more homogenous approaches.

Antiheureusitarianism

A question asked on SocialGalactic: What tribe does the American who’s ancestors include multiple Europeans nations belong to?

None. Such individuals don’t have a tribe or a nation. That’s why US society is described, correctly, as “atomized”. It has been literally blown apart by mass immigration and labor mobility. Forget tribe, many US citizens don't even have a clan, as their extended families are spread out across the continent from the Atlantic to the Pacific.

It's rather like asking what AKC-registered breed a mongrel is. The correct answer is "none". No matter what the mongrel's genetic pedigree might be, it is not accepted as any of the 193 breeds recognized by the American Kennel Club.

Passport-based civic nationalism is pseudonationalism. It’s the substitute of state paperwork for nationality. It's the "divided" state that precedes the "conquered" state in the "divide-and-conquer" concept.

It may help to remember that the truth is not heureusitarian and the concept of nation is not determined by whatever makes the greatest number of individuals feel good about themselves.

The end of the EU is in sight

The Germans have decided that their law takes precedence over what passes for EU "law":

A ruling by Germany’s constitutional court has sparked serious fears of the unravelling of the European Union.

It’s a delayed judgment from an old fight that has hit the EU at its most vulnerable. A group of German academics, including a former leader of the far-right party Alternative für Deutschland, Bernd Lucke, took a case in 2015 to challenge the bond-buying programme of the European Central Bank (ECB).

They hardly hoped to win, but thought they could make a political point. During the euro zone crisis, as now, the ECB was buying the debt of economically weaker EU countries to bid down their borrowing costs and rescue them from the threat of a debt spiral, and directing national central banks to do likewise.

This is an emergency measure taken to hold the euro zone together when its economic imbalances threaten to tear it apart, but it has long been hated by German conservatives who believe it harms savers and pension funds.

Last week, the German constitutional court unexpectedly sided with them. It ruled that the ECB failed to conduct a “proportionality” analysis of the effect of its bond-buying policies on “public debt, personal savings, pension and retirement schemes, real estate prices and the keeping afloat of economically unviable companies”.

In a pithy 110-page judgment, the court ordered the German central bank to stop buying bonds if the ECB failed to produce such an assessment within three months. This immediately raised fears it could jeopardise current bond-buying efforts, and cause a run on Italian debt.

This is perilous to the euro zone, but not as damaging to the EU as another part of the ruling, which has tugged at a thread that some fear may lead to the unravelling of its very order.

The German court stated that it was free to ignore an earlier ruling from the European Court of Justice (ECJ) on the issue because “the Court of Justice of the European Union exceeds its judicial mandate”. This is contrary to the concept of the primacy of EU law. Under this precept, if laws of a member state are in conflict with EU law, EU law takes precedence, and the ECJ is the final authority to adjudicate on it. For the European Commission, agreeing to this is what it means to be a member state.

The Germans have effectively declared the EU to be nothing more than a treaty that nation-states can ignore at will. It's a bit of a surprise, as I would have expected the Italians to be the next to leave the would-be Fourth Reich, with the Hungarians and Poles as dark horses.

The nations are rising at last.

Is there nothing she can't do?

Corona-chan is believed to have the potential to break up the Fourth Reich:

European leaders warn coronavirus could lead to the breakup of their union. The coronavirus pandemic, with its simultaneous health and economic crises, is deepening fault lines within Europe in a way some leaders fear could prove to be a final reckoning.

The cohesion of the European Union had been battered by Brexit, bruised by the political fallout from the 2015 migration surge and the 2008 financial crisis, and challenged by rising autocracy in the east that runs contrary to the professed ideals of the European project.

Now, if Europe’s leaders cannot chart a more united course, the project lies in what one of its architects described this week as “mortal danger.”

This pandemic is best pandemic! Thank you, Corona-chan!

Open borders is open disease

Australia is closing its borders, but it should have done so four weeks ago:

The Prime Minister has closed Australia's borders to prevent the spread of coronavirus. From 9pm on Friday night, only Australian permanent residents and citizens will be allowed to enter the country.

Scott Morrison said he made the drastic move because 80 per cent of Australia's 636 coronavirus cases have come in from abroad.

The ban, which has no end date, is likely to cause chaos for thousands of temporary residents who live and work in Australia, such as people on skilled work visas.

If they are overseas on holiday they have one day to return to their lives here. If they are in the country they cannot leave because they will not be able to come back.

Think about how much better off these countries would have been if they never permitted foreign invasions in the first place, and prioritized the well-being of their citizenries rather than sacrificing them at the altar of GDP. Whether the issue is bad government or disease, open borders and centralized governments are like building a ship without watertight compartments. It increases both the risks and the costs of anything going wrong.

Never forget that efficiency is a double-edged sword that always cuts both ways.

Extremists vs moderates

The Z-Man explains a pair of natural divides. I point out a third.

Michelle Malkin is a good example of why civic nationalism must inevitably lead to someone like Ben Shapiro lecturing you about the creedal nation. Her speech was pretty much what Ben Shapiro says, except she strongly opposes immigration and what she calls globalism. For obvious reasons, Malkin must argue on ideological grounds, rather than from nature. Her brand of dissident politics must be open to everyone, who accepts the ideological points of her program.

It’s one of those things that sounds good in theory, but in reality it is impossible to police ideological borders. The Left has been trying to solve that puzzle since the French Revolution and it always ends in disaster. The right-wing effort at it led to Buckley conservatism and eventually David French. For now, ideology and argument are the tools required to win people to our side, but ultimately the goal must be boundaries that do not require constant maintenance…

Listening to Fuentes speak, I was thinking about how this spasm of white identity politics has mirrored previous iterations. The alt-right split in two. One group is seeking to operate above ground and gain legitimacy. The other group retreated into a self-imposed ghetto. The TRS crowd is really just a younger version of the old Stormfront community that formed up after the Buchanan movement. Go back further and it is a replay of the Bircher-Buckley split.

Fundamentally, these splits are over presentation. The “optics” side cannot fathom why the hardcore cannot understand the need to make a good presentation. The hardcore cannot understand why the optics guys don’t see the dangers of compromise. Both sides are right, but both sides have always failed. The hardcore ends up in something similar to a cult and the optics guys get gobbled up by the system. There really needs to be a different approach to this in order to avoid a repeat of the past…

The reality is that every successful movement requires both its extremists and its moderates. See Sinn Fein and the Irish Republican Army, or the Palestine Zionist Executive and the Irgun. In this case, the core problem that the moderates face is that no matter how flawless their optics might be, their position simply isn't a viable one. Like communism, like socialism, like secular humanism, civic nationalism has been thoroughly tried and tested. And it has failed, even more spectacularly than these other ideological catastrophes.

Of course, the one thing the political activists of every stripe never seem to grasp is that the political philosophers simply aren't interested in activism of any kind. In my case, both the activists and their enemies alike fail to grasp that I'm neither interested in joining a cult nor in being gobbled up by the system. I'm not interested in joining anything, least of all a mass movement. There are no shortage of opinion leaders who seek attention and influence in pursuit of their ideals, and that is well and good, but there should always be someone to observe the events and make sense of them in a historical context too.

Those who venerate Aristotle, Virgil, and Thucydides are seldom inclined to follow the paths of Alexander, Caesar, and Alcibiades.

Socialism is the better option

That isn't to say that it is a GOOD option or the best option available. But it is a better option than continuing the post-1965 trajectory of driving the price of labor ever downward in order to keep the usury pumps going:

Every single economic policy change since about 1990 has had two primary effects:

a) lowered real wages through increased labor market participation and/or lowered demand for labor
b) increased the value of fixed assets or investment instruments

In other words, if you were “holding” in 1987, when the oldest Boomers were forty and the youngest were twenty-five, you’re golden now. If you were just starting your career in 1987, you were racing against time. If you’re starting today, the deck has been stacked against you higher than you’ll ever clear. Want to live the middle-class life of 1975? Better hope your IPO nets you ten million bucks. The wealthiest of the Baby Boomers deliberately created a world in which they’d pay less for the things they wanted (employees, labor, televisions) while being paid more for the things they owned (real estate, index funds, 1959 Les Pauls, 1985 Porsche 911s). It was a hell of a trick, wasn’t it?

Eric Chester looks at the hellscape generated by his generation and what he sees is that there aren’t any more paperboys. I look at it and I have serious concerns. I note that support for explicitly socialist government is growing by leaps and bounds. Some of my friends think this is because the Millennials are stupid. “Don’t they know that they won’t be the people who benefit from a communist government?” This is what I think the proto-socialists have figured out:

a) In the event of a Red Revolution in this country, they have a very slim chance of becoming part of the nomenklatura who have power, real estate, and freedom to determine their own lives.
b) If there is no Red Revolution, they have precisely zero chance of ever owning a home, saving for retirement, or starting a traditional family.

This is why the Nationalist Right is inevitable. This is why the globalist world order will fail, either in Nationalist ice or Socialist fire. And the painful economic reality is that either course will be more viable than the status quo. This explains the otherwise inexplicable appeal of Bernie Sanders. As awful as he is, the jewish socialist is legitimately a less horrific candidate than the jewish corpocrat.

Nationalism keeps rising

It's not about Left and Right anymore. It's about not being a part of the neo-liberal global establishment:

Shock election results in Germany and Ireland are signs of a political earthquake that rumbles on across Europe and with more polls penned in for this year, the voter upsets will roll on much to the dismay of the establishment.

The political tremors rumble on in Germany after the main governing party lost its leader and future chancellor Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer amid the self-flagellation of an AfD-assisted win for the CDU in a regional German vote.

Elsewhere, Ireland’s general election resulted in the previously unthought of scenario of Sinn Féin (which started its life as the political wing of the paramilitary IRA) topping the poll.

Both incidents are part of a massive seismic shift that has hit politics in the Western world and shows no sign of easing, and while the career politicians and their pals sit around and scratch their heads, puzzling over what went wrong and why they didn’t see it, they fail to acknowledge one simple truth that every voter knows.

The problem is them.

It's interesting to observe that governments that were for decades considered to be bad and unrepresentational are now much more popular, and much more trusted by their people, than the nominally "free" governments of the so-called democratic West.

But people have learned that their foreign-dominated governments simply don't have their best interests in mind, in fact, they don't have any interests in common with the people at all. This is why the wars of the 21st century are very likely going to be far more vicious than the wars of the 20th century, and why many, if not most, of them will be fought within the borders of the state.

Denying public charges

This tightening of immigration restrictions is a good first step.

The Trump administration will be allowed to tighten immigration restrictions with a policy that could see immigrants denied a green card if they are likely to receive public benefits, the US Supreme Court has ruled.

The 5-4 decision on Monday overrode the block on the policy imposed by a federal judge in New York and upheld by an appeals panel. The controversial new rule, which opponents have slammed as a “wealth test” meant to keep out immigrants from poor countries, can now take effect.

Last August, the Trump administration expanded the so-called “public charge” rule, which required immigration officials to turn away individuals likely to become primarily dependent on direct government cash assistance or institutionalization, to include a wider range of government benefits. A New York district court ruling blocked its implementation in October, which was upheld in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals earlier this month.

Immigrants deemed likely to receive Medicaid (government health insurance), Supplemental Security Income, housing, or food assistance over a total of 12 months within any three-year period may be denied permanent residency under the new version of the rule. Immigration officials would examine applicants’ age, education, and ability to speak English, among other attributes, to determine their fitness.

The second step, of course, will be repatriating all resident immigrants who receive any government assistance. And for those who want to appeal to the poem on the Statue of Liberty as a counterargument, the obvious answer is to send all such indigent immigrants to the poet's nation, which was not the United States of America.

Let each nation live up to its own standards.

Russia bans dual-citizens

No wonder the neoclowns have been clamoring incessantly for war with Russia. They recognized, before anyone else did, that their "hello, fellow Russians" jig was up:

Dual citizens and holders of foreign residency permits will now be barred from holding official positions within the Russian Federation. In addition, 25 years of Russian residency will be required of anyone running for President instead of the current 10. This may seem like a minor change, but it is causing Russia’s fifth-columnists and members of the liberal opposition to tear their hair out while gnashing their teeth because most of the current ones will be automatically disqualified from holding office while any future ones will be forced to choose between serving Russia and having a bug-out plan.

More specifically, given their new outsider status, their Western masters will consider them useless and will no longer funnel funds to them or offer them free regime change training. This approach is sure to be more effective than the current, more labor-intensive one of playing whack-a-mole with foreign-financed NGOs and foreign agents attempting to infiltrate Russia’s government.

The United States and other Western governments desperately need to enact a similar law. Ideally, even being eligible for dual-citizenship would disqualify a citizen from holding office or working for the national government.

The return of Santo Matteo

He may have miscalculated when he broke with Movimento 5 Stelle last year in pushing for an election that never happened, but Matteo Salvini is still the most popular politician in Italy and La Lega is a ruling party in waiting:

Luigi Di Maio has resigned as leader of the anti-establishment Five Star Movement in a step that will shake up Italian politics and prompt fears of a snap election after months of internal party dissent and coalition infighting.

“It is time to rebuild,” Di Maio said in a speech in Rome confirming his departure as M5s leader. He added that he had worked to grow the movement “and protect it from the profiteers and traps along the way,” but “I have completed my task” and others must now step in to take on the role.

Despite his resignation, Di Maio insisted he remains fully committed to the party, and said the government “must go on” and have time to fix “the mess made by those who governed for 30 years before.”

Earlier, ministers of the co-governing Five Star Movement (M5S) met to discuss strategy ahead of crucial regional elections in Emilia Romagna and Calabria, where the party is expected to face defeat to the right-wing League party led by Matteo Salvini. The 33-year-old insurgent politician is expected to remain on as foreign minister for the coalition government which looks to be on increasingly shaky ground. 

The nationalist forces are rising and are stronger than ever. That's why the global imperialists, from Scotland to Lampedusa, are desperately trying to avoid elections by hook, crook, or previously unthinkable political alliances.

Falsifying the NPPN hypothesis

Here is a thought concerning the oft-expressed assertion that an overrepresentation in the number of Nobel Prizes awarded to individuals of Jewish descent is an indicator of Jewish intelligence, or what may be described as the Nobel Prize Per Nation (NPPN) hypothesis. What got me thinking about this was that on Russia Today, it was pointed out by a Los Angeles film critic that the film Jojo Rabbit, which has been nominated for six Oscars, is an average film that would never have been nominated for an award if its subject matter was not the Holocaust.

So, it should be possible to count up the number of Oscar nominations awarded to Holocaust-related films, then compare the Oscar nomination/Holocaust film ratio to the ratio of Oscars nominations given to all non-Holocaust films. My hypothesis is that the Holocaust film overperformance will actually exceed the reported statistical Nobel Prize overperformance of 99,900 percent, and thereby add additional weight to my statistical demolition of the ridiculous "115 average IQ" rhetoric.

I am not going to bother testing the hypothesis for the obvious reason that a) I have already proved what I wanted to prove to my own satisfaction, b) I don't care who is, on average, smarter than whom, and c) I really don't care about prizes, Hollywood, or Hollywood prizes. But if some film buff feels like putting in the effort, tell me how it works out and I'll post the results here.

Of course, the most obvious disproof of the NPPN hypothesis is to simply turn the argument on its head. If it is true that a high ratio of Nobel Prizes per nation is a proof of high average national intelligence, then a low ratio of NPPN  must be a proof of low average intelligence. Since China only has 11 Nobel Prize winners despite having a very large population, (6.9 percent of its statistical share) and India has only 10 despite a population of 1.2 billion, (6.6 percent of its statistical share), the NPPN argument rests upon the idea that the Chinese and Indian people are considerably less intelligent than most of the nations on Earth.

It is also worth noting that although Jews are said to have won a total of 41 percent of all the Nobel Prizes in economics, there is no Nobel Prize in economics. It is actually the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel, a prize that was established in 1968 by a donation from Sweden's central bank, the Sveriges Riksbank, on the bank's 300th anniversary and is not one of the prizes that Alfred Nobel established in his will in 1895.

Anyhow, the Nobel Prizes awarded to Barack Obama and Bob Dylan should be more than sufficient to demonstrate the total absurdity of the hyphothesis. The NPPN hypothesis is no more credible than the argument that the three greatest science fiction novelists are Lois McMaster Bujold, NK Jemisin, and Connie Willis because they have won the most Hugo Awards for Best Novel.

Neither credentials nor participation trophies are indicative of intelligence.

Nationalist economics

I was asked to address the intersection of nationalism and economics two years ago, for an anthology that was never published, at least, not to the best of my knowledge. But the conclusions I reached, though not what one could really call timeless, are still definitely relevant as 2019 comes to a close. Consider it a Christmas present of sorts to the old school readers who enjoyed my focus on economics in the past.

NATIONALIST ECONOMICS AND THE NEW RIGHT

by Vox Day

It is one of the great ironies of modern politics that free trade and economic globalism have somehow become identified as not only right-wing policies, but right-wing dogma. This was not historically true, though, as from the very start, free trade has generally been a hallmark of the LEFT side of the political spectrum. If you recall, the infamous mercantilists attacked so furiously by Adam Smith in The Wealth of Nations were, almost to a man, royalists, not revolutionaries, while the great prophet of the Left, Karl Marx, openly advocated free trade on the grounds that it would help bring about world socialist revolution and the emancipation of the proletariat.

In the 240 years since Adam Smith triumphed over the mercantilists, the question of free trade has generally revolved around whether it is good for the nation concerned. However, this is not actually the right question to ask, as the more fundamental one is whether free trade and nations are even compatible. And, as it turns out, the answer is no.

But let us not get ahead of ourselves and instead begin at the historical beginning. It is vital to first understand that the intellectual foundation for free trade is considerably shakier than most conservatives realize, particularly those conservatives who believe that David Ricardo settled the matter once and for all with his articulation of the Theory of Comparative Advantage.

Read more »

The return of Sweden

Swedes are beginning to reconsider their national suicide:

Sweden’s right-wing Sweden Democrats are now neck and neck with the ruling Social Democrats in opinion polls. Though vilified and demonized, the party’s success represents a complete failure of liberalism in the face of reality.

The Sweden Democrats - who were until recently dismissed as a fringe, racist party - are now surging in the polls. A voter survey, commissioned by the Dagens Nyheter newspaper last week, puts the party within 0.2 percentage points of Prime Minister Stefan Lofven’s left-wing Social Democrats. Moreover, voters now agree with the party’s policies on nine out of nine issues.

On immigration, 43 percent of voters side with the party and its leader, Jimmie Akesson. Only 15 percent favor Lofven’s policies. Likewise, 31 percent favor Akesson’s position on law and order, compared to 19 percent for Lofven.

The nation is not an idea or some Platonic abstract, the nation is the people. The physical, material human beings who share blood, DNA, language, and culture. If the nation does not survive, the individuals who comprise it will not either.

The stages of U.S. decline

Men of the West apply Sir John Glubb's stages of the life cycle of empires with the rise and ongoing fall of the USA:

Let’s look at the Glubb’s stages of the life cycle and see how they match up with the life cycle of the United States.

Stage I: Outburst.   This stage is the pioneer stage.  As Glubb states, over and over again in history, we see a small native people exploding and conquering large land masses.  To many, this will make them think of Manifest Destiny and the western expansion, but to my own eye, the outburst was the Revolutionary War.  Before the war, the colonies were insignificant on the world stage.  Then came the defeat of the English.  It is after all called the Shot Heard Round the World for a reason.

Stage II: Age of Conquest:  In this stage we see the great expansion.  This is where manifest destiny comes in.  Old weapons are mastered and improved, new weapons are invented, and massive lands are conquered.   While conquering and settling these new lands, massive amounts of wealth are generated.  Again, this should all be sounding familiar.

Stage III:  Age of Commerce:  Industrial Revolution, anyone?  All of that wealth ends up being put to use, as infrastructure in this stage explodes.  In this stage, we see art and luxury.  You see grand state buildings.  The rich build themselves palaces.  Now think of Mr. Vanderbilt’s Biltmore.  Is it not a palace? It should be noted in this stage the schooling of boys is still intentionally rough.  Fortitude and courage and honesty are all priorities.  I would note that American Football was developed during this period to drive those qualities home.

High Noon:   This is the peak of the Nation. It’s the point where the nation goes from growing to dying.   For the US, this was the 1940s.  WWII was won. Evil was defeated, and everyone relaxed.  Money was everywhere. The US was the most powerful nation in the world.  And now, for the first time, we had something to lose, and we noticed we may want to protect it.

The USA is not unique. No nation or empire are, their inevitable protestations notwithstanding. The historical trends are clear, and it is only a matter of time before China replaces the USA as the leading global power. The intriguing question that remains to be settled is whether China will resist the call of empire or not, although history strongly suggests that it will eventually succumb to the temptation to rule over others as most other powerful nations before it have.

Civic nationalism in Britain

This campaign for the leadership of the Labour Party is built upon an open admission that civic nationalism is fake nationalism for fake nations:

David Lammy has hinted at a potential bid for the Labour leadership to succeed Jeremy Corbyn.

The Tottenham MP would become the first BAME leader of the party, and has today set out plans for a type of 'civic nationalism' that is based on 'shared values' rather than race or religion.

He set out his stool in today's Observer, saying that he would decide over Christmas whether to run or back another candidate who might be better suited to beat Boris Johnson in 2024.

'The alternative to Boris Johnson's ethnic nationalism that Labour should offer is a civic nationalism,' Lammy writes.

This is why "healing the world" means the death of the nations. It amounts to forcing every nation on Earth to accept the "shared values" that are dictated by those who are powerful enough to impose them on everyone else. And if you can't understand that this is a primary objective of the globalist Prometheans, then you are far too short for this ride.

Civic nationalism is intrinsically evil and fundamentally imperialist. It may sound emotionally compelling, but it is nevertheless a short-term band-aid applied to a gaping demographic wound that only delays the inevitable.

A linguistic blow to multiculturalism

It is becoming abundantly clear that not only is it impossible for people of different cultures to successfully live together, it is not possible to correctly understand cross-cultural communication even when both sides think they are speaking the same language:

Many languages have words whose meanings seem so specific and nuanced that there’s no way to translate them; they can only be imported wholesale. Consider the German “schadenfreude,” the pleasure derived from another’s misfortune, or “sehnsucht,” a sort of deep yearning for an alternative life.

Those kinds of emotion words often feel rooted in the culture from which they emerged, said Asifa Majid, a cognitive scientist at the University of York in England. She pointed to the feeling of “awumbuk,” which Baining people in Papua Guinea experience when their guests depart after an overnight stay. It leaves people listless, she wrote in a commentary that accompanies the study, something akin to a “social hangover.”

Yet many languages also have words that English speakers might think of as “basic” emotions — love, hate, anger, fear, sadness, happiness. Early theories, influenced by Charles Darwin and pegged to shared biological structures in humans, suggest there are certain universal emotions that serve as the source material for all others, as primary colors might be blended to create many new shades.

But just as later work has suggested that different cultures do not always categorize color in the same ways, there’s a growing understanding that even those supposedly “primary” emotions may hold their own meanings and nuances in different cultures that aren’t directly translatable.

Good fences make good neighbors. And strong borders make friendly relations possible.

Let Scotland go

Boris Johnson and the Tories are making a massive blunder if they fail to support the Scottish National Party and embrace Scottish independence:

Already this morning the Twittersphere buzzes with talk of a renewed Scottish independence campaign, while the SNP yesterday announced its support for another referendum if a "material change in circumstances" arose between Scotland and the greater union. Surely a landslide victory by the Tories — who are widely disliked by the Scots — and a flashing green light for a deeply unpopular Brexit represent exactly such a change.

Scotland and England are not magically joined at the hip. If the Scots don't want Brexit, don't want Boris Johnson, and don't want the Tories, who says the current political makeup of the UK is forever and unchanging? Political arrangements are not something to impose on reluctant, disbelieving people. If we favor independence and political self-determination only when we like the results, the only liberty on offer is the liberty to agree. But political universalism is an abstraction, and an arrogant one at that.

If Scots choose Holyrood over Westminster, or even Brussels over Holyrood, who are we to object?

Given the way in which the Scots have been the primary engine of left-wing power in the United Kingdom, Boris Johnson can secure not only the restoration of British sovereignty, but a multi-generational defeat of the Labour Left by excising the Scottish nation from the British crown.

This will, of course, mark the penultimate stage in the end of the British empire, but the empire has been shrinking steadily since the beginning of WWII. And there is absolutely no point fighting the nationalist trend in favor of a dying and discredited imperialism.

The Scots deserve to rule themselves. Let Scotland go!

At long last

The question of whether Jews are a nation or a religion has been definitively and officially settled, at least for the people of the United States:

President Trump will sign an executive order defining Judaism as a nationality, not just a religion, thus bolstering the Education Department's efforts to stamp out "Boycott Israel" movements on college campuses.

RamZPaul reaches the obvious conclusion:

I guess this means that the United States government’s position is that Jews are not Russians, Germans, Swedes or Americans, but they are a separate nation and a separate people.

Which, of course, has always been the case, despite the various self-serving attempts by immigrants to redefine Americans as some sort of walking, talking manifestations of an ideological Platonic ideation. And, of course, it tends to raise the question of where in the Constitution the executive branch is empowered to create an "Education Department", much less play economic and speech police for the institutions of higher education across the country.

Anyhow, it is nice to have this age-old debate resolved once and for all.