Maverick Philosopher

Anti-'Woke' Parents versus Antifa 'Wokesters'

Here:

Antifa members who showed up outside a public meeting for the Glendale, California school system on Tuesday got beat down by the Armenian parents who showed up to voice their opposition to LGBTQ+ curriculum in the classroom.

Andy Ngo comments:

Local sources tell me it was this use of Armenian colors/symbols mixed with LGBTQI+, pup play pride in the shape of a Christian cross that incensed Armenian-American families in Los Angeles & caused them to mobilize against the school boards.

Historical comparisons are tricky and in any case I'm no historian. Are we in something like a Weimar period? You know what came after that.  Or are we in something like the waning days of the imperium romanum? You know what came after that too. 

Is there an historian in the house? 

One thing is clear: we have a government that gives aid and comfort to anti-civilizational elements.  At the head of this government we have a man who is not only morally corrupt personally, but also in dereliction of his constitutional duties. A little south of this entry I quoted David Horowitz on Joe Biden:

He began with a brazen lie that he would unify the country and represent both those who voted for him and those who did not.

Then he issued a series of executive orders that illegally and unconstitutionally nullified our immigration laws, and welcomed a flood of unvetted illegals from 200 countries to invade our country. This was the greatest crime ever committed by our government against its own people.

The fish stinks from the head as the proverb has it, and in this case it stinks to high heaven.

More footage.

The Moral Depravity of the Democrat Party

David Horowitz:

“Woke” has become a term to describe the enemies of our country who have colonized our schools and taught our next generations to hate America, hate white people and trash our history and national pride. How to explain this travesty? It began fifty years ago when the anti-American, Marxist left set its sights on taking over our schools.

[. . .]

Many of you may have thought that the takeover of our educational system by anti-American Marxists happened overnight. It didn’t. It was five decades in the making. But conservatives and Republicans chose not to notice it. And when they did notice it, they were reluctant to fight.

If you want to understand the disasters that have befallen our country, you have to begin with the failure of Republicans and conservatives to aggressively wage the political war necessary to defend it.

The anti-American left attacks patriotic Americans as “white supremacists,” “racists” “domestic terrorists” and “insurrectionists.” And we respond by calling them “liberals.” There is nothing about them that is liberal. They are vindictive bigots, determined to demonize and destroy us.

[. . .]

The Democrat Party is no longer controlled by a liberal left but by Marxist zealots who willfully disregard the Marxist atrocities and failures of the past. Democrats no longer respect the sovereign individual, the rule of law, or the primary values of the Constitution –the equality of races, the spirit of compromise or the decentralization of power.

Instead, Democrats regard the Constitution as a white supremacist document written by rich white slaveowners, designed to oppress all other genders and races. Its mentality is that of European fascism and Soviet communism, and its immediate goal is a one-party state.

{. . .]

January 6th was the date set to certify the electors. On that day Trump gave his famous “Stop the Steal” speech, which has been maliciously described by Democrats as a criminal “incitement to insurrection.” This was absurd on its face, since Trump had offered the Capitol Police and Nancy Pelosi 10,000 national guardsmen to control the crowds. Trump’s offer was duly noted by the Inspector General who attended the meeting. Pelosi and the Democrat-controlled Capitol Police rejected the offer.

[. . .]

Biden’s inauguration was January 20. He began with a brazen lie that he would unify the country and represent both those who voted for him and those who did not.

Then he issued a series of executive orders that illegally and unconstitutionally nullified our immigration laws, and welcomed a flood of unvetted illegals from 200 countries to invade our country. This was the greatest crime ever committed by our government against its own people.

[. . .]

Read it all and propagate it. Do your bit. Vote with your feet and your wallet. Study the many works of David Horowitz to understand the depredations of communism and its latest incarnation as 'wokery.'

'2A' a Terrorist Marker?

It emerged in the Congressional FBI whistleblower hearings that the abbreviation '2A' is a "terrorist marker." That came as news to me. (But see here.) I have been using '2A' from time to time as an innocuous abbreviation of 'Second Amendment.'  The context, of course, is the Bill of Rights which are the first ten amendments to the United States Constitution.

I have written sentences like this:

2A does not confer, but protects, the citizen's right to keep and bear arms.

My use of the harmless abbreviation makes me a terrorist, a white supremacist, and what all else in the eyes of the regime.  What does it make the regime? A police state.

So I suppose it is a good thing that it has been a very long time since I attended a Latin mass. These masses, as is now well-known, are notorious gathering points for insurrectionists, militiamen, and other violent extremists out to overthrow 'democracy.'  Much less known, however, is that these masses are conducted, not in old Church Latin, but in coded Latin.  Thus hoc est corpus meum is code for create mayhem. De mortuis resurrexit means: he rose up and committed insurrection.  There really are very few threats to the powers that be stronger and more insidious than the Latin mass, which is why Pope Francis, that faithful custodian of the depositum fidei, is such a staunch defender of the old mass against the forces of reform.

Sarcasm aside, part of understanding  the destructive Left is understanding their commitment to the hermeneutics of suspicion.  You can learn about said hermeneutics, and cognate topics, from my essay From Democrat to Dissident section 16.4. It is published in Hillman and Borland, eds., Dissident Philosophers: Voices Against the Political Current of the Academy, Rowman and Littlefield, 2021.  Available via Amazon where you can read some editorial reviews.

 

Amerika, the Police State

Have you been paying attention, or are you a useful idiot?

America, No Turning Back

The Catholic Case for Guns

A Maoist Cultural Revolution?

We're All Michael Corleone Now

Let's hope so.

Anarcho-Tyranny in the USA

Here by Auron MacIntyre at The Total State (Substack):

The city of Philadelphia has announced an agreement to pay a $9.25 million settlement in connection with the police response to protests after the death of George Floyd in 2020. While dozens were killed and billions of dollars of damage were done during the riots that raged across America for weeks in the summer of 2020, it is the participants themselves who will be paid restitution by the government.

Law and order in the United States have now descended to a level of anarcho-tyranny in which the government funds rioters with the tax money of their victims. The slow death of the rule of law in America would be ugly enough, but what we are witnessing instead is the twisted, grimacing corpse of a system that was once designed to protect the safety of Americans now being used to punish us for disagreeing with our political elites.

UPDATE 3/24

This fellow and I so far appear to be 'on the same page.' Two days ago, before I had heard of him, I spoke of our time as 

. . . a time when those in control of the state apparatus have forgotten, or rather willfully ignore, the purposes that justify government in the first place, namely, the tasks of securing the life, liberty, and property of those governed. But the Orwellian wokesters now in charge invert these values in the Orwellian manner and aid and abet those who aim at the opposite.

As MacIntyre points out, what we are witnessing is "more than the slow death of the rule of law," but the inversion of our founding values. And yet brazen liars such as Nancy Pelosi yammer on about the rule of law while her shills in the media intone in unison the scripted mantra, "No one is above the law," as they pervert the law Soviet-style to destroy Donald J. Trump.  Thankfully, Nancy dear is no longer with us (nor against us) politically speaking; others, however, far worse and more dangerous because less stupid, will take her place.

And as usual the Left Coast leads the way. (Because it is closer to China?) Here is Substacker David Zweig on lockdown and surveillance Santa Clara-style.

American Restoration

Substack articles by Bruce Abramson. From his About page:

Suppose you think that it’s wrong to discriminate based on race. To the Woke, you’re a racist.

Suppose you say that humans are either male or female. To the Woke, that’s dehumanizing.

Suppose you champion free speech. To the Woke, you’re promoting hatred.

Suppose you think that the ends don’t justify the means. To the Woke, you’re impeding justice.

Suppose you believe in God. To the Woke, you’re an unstable superstitious bigot.

The list of such absurd defamations is long, and it grows longer every day. But it’s no joke. Once the woke have labeled you a hateful, dehumanizing, unstable racist whose mere existence stands in the way of justice, they will treat you as if that’s who you really are. They will work to destroy you—terminate your personal relationships, professional aspirations, and financial possibilities.

Worst of all, the Woke are winning. The United States is mired in a Second Civil War. The country no longer functions as either a free society or a constitutional republic. Every single one of our major institutions has been corrupted: Academia, K-12 education, the media, the civil service, Hollywood, Silicon Valley, Wall Street, the legal and medical professions, and nearly every important professional society. Recent years have even uncovered deep Woke rot running corporate boardrooms, the IRS, FBI, CIA, NSA, and the military.

Leaders and organizations that are not Woke themselves cower in fear and fall in line. More than 60% of American report being afraid to voice their opinions; they fear woke reprisal.

This situation is neither tolerable nor sustainable. If we don’t move quickly to restore the free society America was born to be, we will slide irretrievably into an autocratic, elitist oligarchy.

We are beyond the time of timidity and prudence. We have become both the counterculture and counterrevolutionaries. Very little of what we have done in the past is suited to those roles. If we are to restore America, we will need new lessons, strategies, tactics, and priorities.

This essay series is for those who want to master the techniques we need.

Is Abramson exaggerating? I'd say he isn't. What say you?

Naomi Wolf on Tucker Carlson's J6 Revelations

A rich Substack article that ends thusly:

The gatekeepers who lie to the public about the most consequential events of our time — and who thus damage our nation, distort our history, and deprive half of our citizenry of their right to speak, champion and choose, without being tarred as would-be violent traitors - deserve our disgust.

I am sorry the nation was damaged by so much untruth issued by those with whom I identified at the time.

I am sorry my former “tribe” is angry at a journalist for engaging in — journalism.

I am sorry I believed so much nonsense.

Though it is no doubt too little, too late —

Conservatives, Republicans, MAGA:

I am so sorry.

DIE: 'Equity' Can Get You Killed

Here:

America’s top medical schools, worried [that] they have too few minority students, are doing something about it. They are lowering academic standards for admission and trying to hide the evidence. Columbia, Harvard, the University of Chicago, Stanford, Mount Sinai, and the University of Pennsylvania have already done so. The list already tops forty, and more are sure to follow.

A 'progressive' would call that progress. I suggest that you never use 'equity' or 'progressive' without the sneer quotes. 

Question for the syntactically punctilious: In the sentence immediately preceding, are the inverted commas being used to mention, to sneer, or both?

'Equity' is an obfuscatory woke-left coinage the purpose of which is to elide the distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.  The tactic is to promote the confusion of equality of opportunity -- which everyone is for -- with equality of outcome. The latter would be good if it naturally came about. Unfortunately, the various hierarchies of life make that impossible without massive governmental interference.  For it is a plain fact that individuals and groups are not equal by any empirical measure. (People are loathe to admit this because the admission sounds 'racist,' 'sexist,' 'ageist,' 'ableist,' etc., and being fearful, they fear being tagged with these pejoratives. But in a contest between a smear word and Reality, the latter wins in the end.) 

The achievement of equality of outcome requires equalizing agencies with vast power centered in a Sino-styled Sicherheitsstaat, a security or police state with social credit scores and omni-intrusive surveillance. But note that even then you would not have 'equity,' i.e., equality of outcome, because the equalizers would not be equal in power, position, pelf, and perquisites to the equalized. Would-be socializers, equalizers, and top-down planners typically imagine themselves ending up among the socializers, equalizers, and planners and not among the socialized, equalized, and planned.  More importantly, history shows that outcome-equalization from the top down leads to inanition as in the good old USSR the menus of whose restaurants listed many a dish only one of which was available: borscht. Yum!

Leftists are semantic smugglers. They are trying in this instance and in others to pass off something destructive under cover of something appealing.  Equality of opportunity, equality of political rights, equality before the law, etc. appeal to almost all of us. So what the stealth-ideological leftist does is to use this attractive wrapping to smuggle into uncritical heads the pseud0-value, or disvalue, 'equity,' understood as governmentally enforced equality of outcome or result.

Now my dear friends: if we we don't punch back hard against this destructive nonsense we are 'screwed,' all of us, even the wokesters themselves, and their usefully-idiotic fellow travellers, though their evil and cooperation with evil disallows their cognizance of the fact.  

If you haven't had enough of this delightful topic, here is an exchange between Bill Maher and Bernie Sanders in which B. S. demonstrates what a clueless and/or mendacious specimen he is.

Naomi Wolf on the Return of the Demons

Over the last three years, many of us who are naturally and by training skeptical of supernatural explanations have wondered whether the astonishing upsurge of irrationality and outright evil society-wide and, most depressingly, in the institutions that ought to serve as bulwarks against this madness, may be due to demonic influence. For the scale of the evil wokery on all sides, and the speed of its spread, seems beyond the reach of naturalistic explanations. See, for example, my Does the Demonic Play a Role in the Politics of the Day?

Naomi Wolf, a former lefty who has seen the light, develops the theme in detail and in depth in her essay Have the Ancient Gods Returned?

Since 2020 the world, I feel, has been bathed, infused, bombarded even, with intensely powerful energies that are totally unfamiliar to us in this generation, but that may derive from a pre-Christian, pre-solidly-Jewish time, a time when early Judaism was struggling with the seductive and oppressive entities that always sought to seduce the Children of Israel away from the monotheistic truth, the One God. 

The ancient “shedim” are the only “principalities and powers” I can imagine that are capable of manifesting a national, and now a global, network of policy advocates, social workers, graphic designers, Members of Parliament, who are all on board with an escalating euthanasia death cult. The ancient “daimones” are the only entities I can imagine powerful enough in just two years and a bit, to destroy families, to ruin sexuality and fertility, to make a mockery of human rights, to celebrate the end of critical thinking, to march us all in lockstep to worship of technocrats and technocracy; medical cultism and an orgiastic cult of self- and other-annihilation.

And — I must notice — if these “shedim” or “daimones” are powerless — why are their symbols reappearing everywhere? I used to see fundamentalist Christians who warned of Satan lurking in rock and roll, as fanatics. But what I myself am seeing around me, I cannot unsee. 

A Temple of Baal archway was in fact expensively reconstructed from its original in Syria, and moved to a appear at a major thoroughfare in London, and was now unveiled in Washington, DC, and in New York.

Why? 

A bizarre opening ceremony in a new train site in Switzerland, at which European leaders were present, included a horned entity (“an Ibex”), the upholding of a symbolic lamb, the appearance of a terrifying angel, and the writhing of nearly naked men and women in S-and-M-themed and bondage postures.

Tucker Carlson Exposes the Malevolent Lies of the Biden Admin re: Jan 6th 'Insurrection'

Neither  deadly nor an insurrection.

Trump's take.

Diana West's commentary.

Tucker Carlson Tonight - Wednesday, 08 March 2023

Surveillance Video Dismantles January 6th Narrative

Narratives and the Left

Leftists love narratives because a narrative needn't be true to be a narrative. Their assessment criteria are identity-tribal rather than logical.  A good narrative is a coherent  story that enhances the tribe's power. Whether true or false is not to the point, the point being power. Truth is not a leftist value. It is not a norm that constrains their speaking and thinking.   That is not to say that leftists don't sometimes speak the truth; they do when it serves their purposes. They don't when it doesn't.  Truth for a leftist has a merely instrumental value, not an absolute value.

Addendum (3/9).  I wrote to Tony Flood anent Tucker's exposure of our government's police-state tactics:

I think that the U.S. has finally completed its transmogrification into the S.U.

And Tony reined me in a bit with this response:

Analogies with trajectories to totalitarianism (total statism) lose in precision what they may offer in rhetorical bite. We have our near-equivalents of Pravda and Izvestiya. (You know the old joke: Pravda has no news; Izvestiya, no truth.) But we also still have Tucker, Diana [West], et al. When the transmogrification is complete, we won't, and the result won't be Sovietization or Nazification, but probably given the technological means something even worse. I cannot measure the distance yet to be traveled, and hope we never do. I hope we're at a turning point and we'll turn the right way in light of the recent exposures.

Yes. Here's hoping that Carlson's display of serious testicular fortitude will have some positive effect on his journalistic colleagues who, most of them, have utterly forgotten the important role of the Fourth Estate in a democratic but constitutionally-based republic and are now shills for the ruling power-hungry, greedy, anti-democratic, globalist elites.  To gauge just how far we have sunk in this country, give a listen to this exercise in mendacity and misdirection by Senator Charles Schumer.

So Carlson invited Schumer to come on TV and talk about it.

But Schumer said he will appear on Carlson’s show only if Carlson takes back everything he has said.

The rest of the good senator's crapweaselry here.

Addendum II (3/9) Tony Flood adds:

Bill, a thought about your suggestion: Lysenko, the Stalin-era Lamarckian biologist who denied the reality of genes, was a poster boy for political interference in science. The current popular denial of the reality of chromosomal distinction (as though xx can "transition" to xy or vice versa) puts me in mind of this episode. Unlike the imposition of Lysenkoism, however, the ascendancy of the latter denial (and other, equally insane denials of reality) cannot be explained as a top-down affair. Contemporary ideologues conspired outside the corridors of political power until they wormed their way inside whence they can put finishing touches. We're living through something like Bolsheviks patiently working their way through generations of Romanovs and Russian nobility, undermining traditional institutions and beliefs one by one until society falls into their laps. No need to storm the Winter Palace if you already control the institutions that maintain it. Over time, one cultural hegemony replaces another. At least that's what I think they've been trying to do, but reality hasn't been cooperating.

I think you are on the right track, Tony. The capture of our culture and our institutions is not top-down, but bottom-up. It is akin to the "long march through the institutions" that David Horowitz often refers to. The student radicals of the '60s wormed their way into the professoriat, the entertainment and news media,  the churches, the schools, the judiciary, etc. and now -- horribile dictu -- into such precincts as before they were not to be found: the military and corporate business worlds. Thus the bizarre phenomena of 'woke' capitalism  and a 'woke' and therefore weak  military as promoted by the likes of 'General' Milley under the 'control' of the demento-puppet, Joey B. What's next? Bespoke pacifist generals?

Sorting through this socio-cultural garbage is a challenging intellectual exercise. We shall continue. But now I am going to take Bro Jackass out for a hard ride.

Does Classical Liberalism Destroy Itself?

Joe Odegaard sends us to The Orthosphere where we find Classical Liberalism Destroys Itself. The opening paragraph is stylistically brilliant, especially the concluding sentence, and I agree with the paragraph content-wise, though not with the quotation from Dreher:

“Classical liberalism detached from the Christian faith is what got us here.” 

Rod Dreher, “David French: Not Woke Enough For The Times?”  The American Conservative (Feb. 16, 2023)

The above is from a long thumb-sucker in which Dreher sadly ponders the performative conservatism of David French.  Performative conservatism means striking conservative poses rather than striking blows that actually conserve.  Performative conservatives have plenty of principles but precious few wins.  Dreher is himself what Sam Francis called a “beautiful loser,” which is to say a conservative pundit who is admired for his prose, his erudition, his broadmindedness, and his many, many friends on the left, but who is not and cannot be admired for success.  French and Dreher are the spiritual sons of George Will, a belletristic bimbo and court clown who went down fighting by the Queensbury Rules.

As I said, brilliant writing and a delightful skewering of that yap-and-scribble lap dog of the Left, George Will, of the Beltway bow-tie brigade. There is only one mistake: the rules are Queensberry, not Queensbury. My pedantry having now been satisfied, I proceed to the substantive issues.  My disagreement begins with the second paragraph:

Classical liberalism is detached from Christian faith because classical liberalism detached Christian faith from public life. It did this intentionally and by design. Does Dreher really not understand that the first task of classical liberalism was to liberate men and women from classical Christianity. Some emancipated Christians went straight to atheism while others chose a couple of generations of decompression in the halfway house of liberal Christianity. Many worked as thoughtful Christian conservative columnists who believe that the United States was not really a Christian country until passage of the Fourteenth, perhaps Nineteenth, amendment.

The bias of the author surfaces with "the first task of classical liberalism was to liberate men and women from classical Christianity." Not so. The task was to separate church and state, not to "liberate" men and women from "classical" Christianity. What does "liberate" mean here? And what is "classical" Christianity? Roman Catholicism? Some form of Protestantism? The author is attributing nefarious motives to the Founders who were classical liberals and men of the Enlightenment.  A government that is neutral on such theological questions as the divinity of Jesus Christ and the tri-unity of God and that allows for freedom of religion and the freedom to practice no religion is not inimical to Christianity but tolerant of different forms of Christianity as well as tolerant of other religions and of those who practice no religion. 

There may be some truth in Dreher’s proposition that classical liberalism only works so long as the United States contains a great many Christians. But that is just additional evidence that classical liberalism destroys itself. It is a simple and obvious historical fact that Christians fare no better under classical liberalism than they fared under the Roman Emperor Nero. The disappearance of Christians under the former is not so swift and sanguinary as under the latter, but it is equally certain.

The "obvious fact" is neither obvious nor a fact. Would the author prefer to be a practicing Christian under Nero or under Biden? Christians obviously fare better now under Biden and those who pull the puppet's strings than they did under Nero.  And the talk of "equal certainty" is a wild exaggeration. Undoubtedly, Christianity is presently under assault. That is an obvious fact.  But there is no necessity that Christianity succumb. There is no inevitability at work here.

More importantly, there is nothing in the nature of classical liberalism that necessitates that Christians be forced into latter-day catacombs.  After all, the touchstone of classical liberalism is toleration. Toleration is part of the very essence of classical liberalism. That toleration extends to Jews, Christians, and even Muslims if the latter renounce Sharia (Islamic law), which is incompatible with the principles and values of classical liberalism. Toleration has limits.  Perhaps the thought of people like the author is that if you tolerate many different views, then you must tolerate all, including the view that Christianity must be destroyed. But the inference from Many to All is a non sequitur. Logically viewed, all slippery slope arguments are invalid.   If we tolerate the consumption of alcoholic beverages, must we also tolerate drunk driving? Obviously not.  To tolerate drinking is not to tolerate drunkenness, let alone drunk driving. To tolerate drinking by adults is not to tolerate drinking by children. To tolerate private inebriation is not to tolerate public inebriation. And so on.  A government that tolerates sodomy in private between consenting adults can also tolerate the existence of private schools in which it is taught that sodomy is a mortal sin.  Why not?

Besides the Many to All fallacy, there is also the fallacy called post hoc ergo propter hoc (after this, therefore because of this.) From the fact that classically liberal government has been followed temporally by the decadence and insanity all around us (wide open national borders, celebration of worthless individuals, destruction of monuments to great men, the institutionally-mandated DEI agenda, et cetera ad nauseam) it does not follow logically that the first is the cause of the second.

Dreher admits as much when he writes

“I cannot imagine a form of government and a social compact that most of us can consent to, that upholds classical liberal standards without a broadly shared religion..”

Nor can I.  I cannot imagine that form of government and social compact because classical liberal standards necessarily destroy a broadly shared religion.  Classical liberalism destroys a broadly shared religion because it removes all civil disabilities from apostates and infidels.  The natural result is that there are more of both and the broadly shared religion disappears.

I disagree with Dreher. We don't need a broadly shared religion; what we need is a minimal conception of the common good to which most of us can consent, whether we are Christians, Jews, Buddhists, atheists, agnostics, etc.  Of course, the commonality of a broadly shared religion freely subscribed to by its adherents would greatly enhance comity.  Imagine the social harmony and social cohesion we would all enjoy if each of us, sincerely, and without coercion, subscribed to and lived by the Baltimore Catechism!  But that is hopelessly utopian. Our Protestant brethren would surely raise a stink to high heaven.

I even more strongly disagree with the author. We are being told that classical liberalism "necessarily destroys a broadly shared religion because it removes all civil disabilities [liabilities?] from apostates and infidels." First of all, where does this necessity come from? There is no necessity or inevitability at work here.  That's the slippery-slope trope once more. And again, to tolerate broadly shared religions is not to destroy them.  And what exactly is the author proposing? A politically totalitarian theocracy? What  then  would he do with the "apostates" and "infidels"?   What penalties would he exact? Would he support a throne-and-altar form of 'woke cancellation'? 

To mask the disappearance of the broadly shared religion, our court clowns and progressive propagandists have invented preposterous pseudo-religions like Judeo-Christianity, or now “People of Faith.”  What this shows is that our broadly shared religion is that there shall be no broadly shared religion—classical liberalism, in short.

I agree that there is no such specific religion as Judeo-Christianity, but by that reasoning there is no such specific religion as Christianity either given the manifold sects and doctrinal divergences. My friend Dale Tuggy, noted philosopher of religion, is a unitarian, a denier of the divinity of Christ, and someone who thinks (gasp!) that Platonism has nothing to contribute to Christianity. And he has said bad things about Trump in my presence. But he is probably a better Christian than me in some ways.

And surely it is a slovenly misuse of 'religion' to refer to classical liberalism as a religion. Call it an ersatz religion if you like, but note that an ersatz X is precisely not an X. A salt substitute such as potassium chloride is not table salt (sodium chloride).

The irony is that Dreher knows this and says as much when he writes about Christianity and not politics.  Christianity cannot survive as a broadly shared religion if it does not possess a political community in which apostasy comes at a price, and from which infidels are rigorously excluded.  Classical liberalism forbids both of these necessary measures, and this is why Christianity and classical liberalism both are doomed.

This is doubly mistaken. Christianity can easily survive as a broadly shared religion under a limited, constitutionally-based government whose provisions secure, inter alia, religious liberty. No politically totalitarian theocracy is need to assure Christianity's survival.  Toleration and limited government suffice. Of course, we have neither now. So what we have to do is get back to American conservatism which includes a sizable admixture of classical liberalism. I understand what animates those on the Reactionary Right, just as I understand what inspires those on the Alternative Right who, unlike the Orthospherians, think that Christianity is the problem, it having weakened us and made us unfit for living in this world, the only one (they think) there is. But both of these right turns lead to dead ends. There will be no return to throne-and-altar conservatism.  

Finally, neither Christianity nor classical liberalism are doomed. Again the inevitability 'argument' which is akin to the slippery-slope trope, and the fallacies of Many to All, and post hoc ergo propter hoc.   That being said, things in the near-term look bad indeed, and I am none too sanguine about turning things around and returning to America as she was founded to be.

Down with Tobacco, Up with Marijuana

Why down with the first (I allude to the menthol cigarette ban) and up with the second?  Why the differential treatment and the misplaced moral enthusiasm? The locoweed I smoked with band members in the late '60s was tame stuff, poor in tetrahydrocannabinol as compared to the potent THC-rich product on the market today.  Since then, cigarettes have been wussified what with the addition of filters and lower nicotine levels.   

So why the differential treatment? The short answer is that it is not in the interest of a police state to promote alertness and attention, which is what nicotine does, while it is in such a state's interest to promote dopiness and lethargy and escapism and every manner of vice.  

It is the tried-and-true panem et circenses principle. Keep the masses fat and stupid, doped up on hooch and weed, distracted by mass sporting events such as the Stupor Bowl and pornography, expectant of regular initiative-inimical handouts and 'freebies,' and they will be easy to control. 

Sate the peoples' blood-lust with HollyWeird brutality and gun violence while at the same time stripping law-abiding citizens of their Second Amendment rights.   Alec Baldwin easily serves as poster-clown for this sort of thing: he make big bucks in movies that celebrate violence while knowing nothing himself about firearms and their safe handling. The nimrod is on record as opposing the National Rifle Association, an outfit that promotes gun safety and defends constitutionally-protected (not constitutionally-conferred) natural rights.  Baldwin is a contemptible fool whose willful self-enstupidation resulted in a young woman's death. He has been brought up on charges of involuntary manslaughter, which sounds just right to me. (It's a stronger charge than negligent homicide.) 

We saw the same panem-et-circenses pattern with the COVID-19 lockdown. The churches were targeted for closure while the liquor stores stayed open. Police states brook no critique or competition from organized religion, but a liquored-up citizenry is kept distracted and manipulable.

Similarly with Biden's wide-open border policy. It is not just to flood the nation with 'undocumented Democrats' so as to insure in perpetuity the hegemony of what is now a hard-Left party, but also to allow in as much fentanyl as possible to poison and kill off the native population, and in particular the poor white trash of Appalachia and elsewhere in fly-over country, the people Hillary spoke of as deplorables and Obama as clingers to guns and Bibles.

A government worth having promotes virtue in the people and in particular the virtues of self-reliance and self-control. A totalitarian state, however, works best by promoting vice. A reader sent me to this perceptive article portions of which I will now share:

Remember that the “government,” as I describe it, is much more than just the state. It includes schools, banks, and corporations, collaborating with the state to govern a population. This need not be a conspiracy — although it often is — it can simply occur because of a shared set of objectives and priorities. For the government to cooperate correctly with itself, it needs maximal data and predictability in the population.

That’s why modern governments exert an inverted form of pastoral power to promote vice. Greed, lust, and vainglory are very predictable: if you know that every merchant will do anything to maximize profit, then you can predict their trading patterns with precision. The “rational actor,” the utilitarian automaton, and the pleasure-maximizer are the ideal constituents of the modern population. This means we can expand Dr. E. Michael Jones’ well-known dictum that “sexual liberation is political control”⁴ by saying: manipulation of any vice is political control.

This is why the government is promoting Impossible burgers, even though the company loses money: they want to centralize all protein production. Impossible is a tool to nudge the population’s behavior through a desire for “meatiness” in food. The government seeks to steer the rudder of our vices until all protein comes from patented software and gene edits. They won’t even have to pass a law.

To summarize and expand upon three of the main points made in the above quotation:

1) The government is not just the State but the latter together with all its adjuncts and extensions including Big Tech and Big Pharma. But 'adjunct' might not be the best word given the regulatory capture of the former by the latter.

2) If the interests of different groups align and they move in the same direction, this need not be due to any  conspiracy among the groups. It follows that anyone who alleges a commonality of direction, towards increasing wokeness, say, is not automatically a conspiracy theorist.

3) ". . . modern governments exert an inverted form of pastoral power to promote vice." A genuine insight beautifully expressed.  I hope you won't take it amiss if I nominate that good Catholic, Joe Biden, for the annual Pastor of Vice award.

You may recall that in 2016, Joey B. received the University of  Notre Dame's Laetare Medal. Read this for a good laugh:

“We live in a toxic political environment where poisonous invective and partisan gamesmanship pass for political leadership,” said Rev. John I. Jenkins, C.S.C., Notre Dame’s president. “Public confidence in government is at historic lows, and cynicism is high. It is a good time to remind ourselves what lives dedicated to genuine public service in politics look like. We find it in the lives of Vice President Biden and Speaker Boehner.

Might we call this the 'regulatory capture' of a once-great university by the WokeState and its puppets and pimps? (Or is that going too far?)  The (so-called) Catholic universities are the most corrupt of all, for they have fallen the farthest. They are in dire need of defunding by sane and reasonable alumni. Not a dime for those who support DEI.

The churches, the RCC in particular, the universities, the once-great ones especially, and the Fourth Estate should serve as checks on the State and its omnivorous appetite for power and control.  They should function as bulwarks against and critics of the government and its metastasizing octopus of grasping and sucking agencies and agents.

Moral Community and Civil War

Malcolm Pollack writes, and I respond in blue:

 

Visited your blog today . . . and saw this striking passage:

 

But also: haven't the barbarians forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration? Do they form a moral community with us at all? 

 

I am just asking. Or is inquiry now verboten?

 

It's not verboten - I think it's pretty clear that the foe has already asked it of our side and found us fit for exclusion. (Joe Biden's "Red Speech" made that plain enough.)

BV: Yes. Biden's 'semi-fascist' is a weasel-word equivalent in meaning to 'fascist,' which itself is an abuse of a legitimate term.  The Left's favorite 'F' word is a toxic blend of psychological projection and Orwellian subversion of language. Leftists drain the term of its descriptive meaning so as to employ it as a semantic bludgeon.

But it is chilling, nevertheless, to be asking it in serious immediacy, rather than as a speculative, worst-case example of where we might get to if we aren't careful. It seems though, that now we really are pretty much there, and that is - even for folks like us who have been thinking so hard about the road ahead for so long - a grim mile-post.

 

BV: Yes, we appear to be reaching a critical juncture at which  we will either put the destructive Left in its place and start the long march back to comity, or else advance into hotter and hotter forms of civil war, thereby weakening ourselves over against our geopolitical adversaries who believe we are ripe for collapse if the right shocks are administered. (For example, what has the Biden administration done to protect the power grid? Nothing. The ChiComs could easily knock out most if not all of it. The Biden admin, however, thinks delusionally that the non-threat of 'white supremacy' and the very distant possible threat of 'climate change' are imminent existential threats.) 

 

What makes our predicament so dire is that the worst of the threats to the Republic are not external, but internal, emanating as they do from the extreme ('woke') Left which has infiltrated all of our institutions aided and abetted by a vast number of Useful Idiots  who do not understand what is happening.

 

I have read a great deal in recent years about the history of civil war, and when things get to this point - when large numbers of people begin seriously questioning whether their fellow-citizens have forfeited their claim to moral inclusion (which really is the same as saying they are no longer to be seen as fellow humans) - then a nation is approaching the final exit. 

 

BV: Yes, if you are using 'human' normatively and not merely biologically. I am reminded of someone who when asked how many men he had killed, replied in effect, "Not a one, I killed only communists."

 

What strikes me here is to look back over your own slow and cautious approach to this point over these many years: always thoughtful, always trying to hang on to the better angels of the American nature, and always wary of the most inflammatory and divisive voices on the Right. 

 

BV: You understand me, Malcolm, and I am deeply appreciative of that fact as well as of your gentlemanly conduct even when I was unduly harsh in my responses to you. You and 'Jacques' [a Canadian academic philosopher who must use a pseudonym to protect himself against the depredatory Left which is apparently even more vicious up there than down here] have had an influence on me.

 

But here you are. (And so am I.) When those who hate you have branded you as unpersons, and make clear that they want you dead and gone, to keep your own circle expansive enough to include them is just unilateral disarmament, and suicidal folly. Woe that we should have lived to see such times in America.

 

BV: I should make clear, though, that when I asked in the passage you quoted "whether the barbarians have forfeited their (normative) humanity to such an extent that they no longer deserve moral consideration," I was not asking rhetorically. I was not making a statement but genuinely  asking a question. And the same goes for the question whether they, the barbarians, form a moral community with us at all.  By barbarians I mean  the BLM and Antifa thugs and all who would erase our history and traditions together with the criminal element in which blacks are 'over-represented,' as well as all the civilized-looking enablers of the explicitly barbarous from Biden on down, and let's not leave out the hidden operatives who pull the strings of puppets such as Biden.

 

As a philosopher, my interest in these questions is not just here-and-now practical, although it is that inasmuch as I cannot do philosophy if I am dead or in prison. I am no Boethius.  My interest is also theoretical.  We are not just clever land mammals, bits of the Earth's fauna. We are also persons, rights-possessors, and as such equal regardless of race, sex, and other biological differences.  Here is a mighty bulwark against the biologism of the (true) fascists.   To the extent that the alt-Right moves in that direction I must oppose them.

 

This bring me to the topic of tribalism. I have been strenuously opposing it. Unfortunately, it appears to be the historical norm (statistically, not normatively).  If the reversion to the tribal is inevitable, then I fear that humanity is finished given the existence of WMDs.

 

Still and all, I have been considering that a pro tempore white tribalism might be necessary, though not in itself desirable, given the vicious assault on Western civilization that we are seeing.  We should discuss this, Malcolm, practically and theoretically. What is to be done by people like us who are not about to withdraw into the petty particulars of private life, but want to do our bit to preserve a civilization that has made it possible for us and so many around the world to live long and productive lives. You and I are not about to acquiesce in the suicide of the West or accept dhimmitude, whether of the Islamist, Communist, or 'woke' variety. And so it becomes quite the pressing question whether our political enemies have forfeited their normative humanity and can still be tolerated. Toleration, you have heard me say, is a great value of the classical liberalism of the Founders. But toleration has limits, as I have also repeatedly said. We are approaching those limits, and the patience of patriots is wearing thin.

 

If the USA, as she was founded to be, collapses, there will be nowhere left to escape to. The rest of the Anglosphere is shot.

'Democrats' Aping National Socialists

Excellent commentary here:

In two years, the Nazis went from being a fringe party to having a stranglehold on the German government and people. It was then that they unleashed their previously subdued anti-Semitism, from boycotts to book burnings to de facto discrimination to de jure separation (Nuremberg laws) and, finally, to the Final Solution.

We can be almost sure that, if we asked any German in 1932 whether it would be okay to enslave and murder Jews, he would most certainly have said no. But within two years, Jews would officially be defined as an inferior race and have their political and economic freedoms curtailed. Within a decade, millions would be murdered.

As Martin Niemöller suggests in his 1946 poem “First they came,” the Nazis were able to accomplish their goals by taking baby steps of oppression with little discernible pushback from a willfully gullible public.

So it is that we find ourselves in America in 2022 with fascism ascendant. And unlike what the media would want you to believe, it’s not Donald Trump who’s leading the parade. For just over two years, we’ve seen the evil of fascism take hold as it’s never held sway before. Consider the following:

In the summer of 2020, Democrats rained hell down on America by allowing, encouraging, and funding urban terrorists who destroyed property, attacked citizens and the police, and killed dozens of people.

In 2020 and beyond, despite years of watching Democrats assail election integrity, anyone who questioned the highly unlikely outcome of the 2020 election was branded as an anti-democratic conspiracy nut and accused of supporting insurrection.

The riot that occurred on January 6, 2021, was labeled an “insurrection” and hundreds of citizens who had been welcomed into the US Capital or standing on its grounds were arrested, labeled as terrorists, and thrown in solitary confinement for months without charge or bail. At the same time, among the crowd were provocateurs in whom the FBI was suspiciously uninterested.

By politicizing the Department of Justice, the Biden administration and other Democrats have used the “insurrection” pretense to harass, intimidate, arrest, and jail Trump’s supporters, members of his administration, and his legal team. This harassment eventually led to the unprecedented step of the Justice Department and the FBI raiding the home of the former president and future presidential contender.

Beginning in 2020, in response to COVID, primarily Democrat-run states and municipalities across the country instituted draconian lockdown edicts that eviscerated individual rights, destroyed small businesses, and ostracized or arrested individuals who resisted. Simultaneously teachers’ unions nationwide forced school shutdowns, leading to extraordinary declines in student learning and dramatic increases in youth depression. Those seen questioning the efficacy of or damage from such lockdowns and shutdowns were unconstitutionally muzzled when the administration covertly worked with social media companies to silence and de-platform them.

The Biden administration issued mandates for rapidly developed vaccines of dubious efficacy and unknown danger; then coerced private enterprises to enforce them. Questioning that policy or non-acquiescence with it was seen as a proxy for opposition to the regime, so the government and allied businesses threatened and destroyed livelihoods.

When Americans stood up to school boards, complaining about their children being exposed to sexualization in schools or being accused of being racists because of the color of their skin, Biden’s Justice Department branded them as terrorists.

The Biden administration’s threatening, intimidating, and jailing of its opposition set the backdrop for Joe Biden’s extraordinary speech on September 1, when he stated, “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our Republic.” This was not a campaign speech; this was the President officially addressing American citizens…and calling 70 million of them terrorists.

Is the January 6th 'Insurrection' the Left's Reichstag Fire?

I put the title question to an historian. Here is his response:

It is not too far of a stretch to consider January 6^th as the Left’s Reichstag fire, in that the Left is portraying the former event, chaotic but minor, as a serious insurrection against the Republic, the very Republic that the Left despises, as the Nazis despised the Weimar Republic. Obviously, the Reichstag Fire Decree (suspension of habeas corpus and all the basic freedoms) , coupled with the arrest of thousands of Communists, went much further in suppressing the civil liberties of those opposed to the Nazi Party, but one sees something of the same pattern in the Left’s reaction today, as in the imprisonment without bail of many innocent persons who were in the Capitol on January 6^th, and in the attempt to destroy the MAGA movement by discrediting President Trump and ostracizing, as much as possible, those who support him.  

But I would say that another similarity should be kept in mind: that of the massive street violence of ANTIFA and other leftist and nihilist groups in the months preceding the 2020 election, violence encouraged and condoned by the Democrat Party in its urban bastions and among its national leadership; for me, these riots are akin to the violent and murderous actions of the SA [Sturmabteilung] in the 1920s and early 1930s by which the Nazis sought to beat its opponents into submission and to create a climate of fear and disorder.

Related: Roger Kimball, Regime Propaganda, Ray Epps, and The New York Times

Does the Demonic Play a Role in the Politics of the Day?

This just in from Vito Caiati:

Your thought provoking post An Oligarchic Pathocracy and in particular the twenty characteristics of this collective psychological derangement, each of which is an absolute inversion of the natural, the good, and the rational, leads me to consider whether potent demonic (Satanic) forces are at work here and now, either directly or through possessed human agents, forces whose presence is unnoticed, since it falls beyond the scope of the established explanatory frameworks of the social sciences. Although such an account may seem farfetched, I find that I must at least entertain the possibility of its validity, given evilness of the political and social destruction and the moral and cultural darkness propagated by the pathocratic Left:  Evil is instantiated in everything it touches.  Does this seem too farfetched to you?

Too farfetched? Not so farfetched as to be beneath consideration. Of course, proper method requires that we search first for naturalistic explanations.  This methodological principle is accepted not only by naturalists, who will omit the word 'first' in my formulation, but also by those who hold that certain phenomena are explainable only by supernatural agency.  (See for example the criteriology set forth by the great Spanish mystic Theresa of Avila in her Interior Castle for the assessment of the veridicality of certain mystical states, and also the procedures of the Church of Rome for the evaluation of putative miracles of different kinds, the Marian apparitions, stigmata, Therese Neumann, Padre Pio, et al. , and so on.) 

A committed naturalist will of course never accept any supernatural explanation of any occurrence however unusual and apparently inexplicable. He will either proffer a naturalistic explanation or, in the absence of a convincing one, state that there must be one whether or not we ever find it.  The italicized phrase signals the naturalist's a priori and presuppositional commitment to naturalism, to the metaphysical scheme according to which reality is exhausted by the space-time system and its contents. The naturalist 'knows' a priori and thus in advance of any particular investigation into any putative apparition, etc., that nothing could possibly be evidence of supernatural agency.  Nothing will be allowed by the naturalist to count as evidence against his naturalism.  To misuse, as in common parlance, the word 'theological,' there s something 'theological' about the naturalist's naturalism and his scientism. (Scientism is the epistemology of naturalism.)

Consider the case of the Russian monk, Rasputin. He was a hard man to kill, so hard to kill that some will surmise that he was under demonic protection. But there are naturalistic explanations of his toughness that are implausible, perhaps, but not impossible.  Adolf Hitler was another man who proved hard to kill until he decided to do the job himself.  I myself am open to the possibility that he 'enjoyed' demonic protection, but the evidence of its actuality is far from compelling.

Can we definitively rule out demonic interference in human affairs and thus in our politics? No. There is no proof of naturalism.  

While I cannot prove that there is demonic involvement in our affairs, it is reasonable to believe that there is. Here I argue that there is no plausible naturalistic explanation of  the ubiquity, magnitude, and horrific depth of moral evil. Fidel Castro, for example, that hero of the Left, did not merely imprison his political opponents for their dissent; he had them tortured in unspeakable ways.

An Oligarchic Pathocracy

That may well be what we have going in the good old USA at present. You decide.

Oligarchy: a government in which a small group exercises control especially for corrupt and selfish purposes. (Merriam-Webster)

Pathocracy: "A system of government . . . wherein a small pathological minority takes control over a society of normal people." (Andrew M. Lobaczewski, Political Ponerology: The Science of Evil, Psychopathy, and the Origins of Totalitarianism,  Red Pill Press, 2022, p.  195.)

What are some characteristics of normal people? Normal people understand and can explain the difference between men and women.  Normal people grasp instantly the unfairness of allowing biological males to compete in female sporting events.   Normal people understand that "Words mean things" (Rush Limbaugh) and must not be hijacked to Left coast destinations. Normal people have moral sense enough to know that it is wrong to lie in the manner of Joe Biden, Alejandro Mayorkas and the rest of the pathocrats in control of the country.  Normal people understand that 'equity' is a sham construct designed to elide the self-evident distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

From the Pathocracy Blog:

Pathocracy

from Greek pathos, “feeling, pain, suffering”; and kratos, “rule”

A totalitarian form of government in which absolute political power is held by a psychopathic elite, and their effect on the people is such that the entire society is ruled and motivated by purely pathological values.

A pathocracy can take many forms and can insinuate itself covertly into any seemingly just system or ideology. As such it can masquerade under the guise of a democracy or theocracy as well as more openly oppressive regimes.

Characteristics

1. suppression of individualism and creativity.
2. impoverishment of artistic values.
3. impoverishment of moral values; a social structure based on self-interest and one-upmanship, rather than altruism.
4. fanatical ideology; often a corrupted form of a valid viable ‘trojan’ ideology which is perverted into a pathological form, bearing little resemblance to the substance of the original.
5. intolerance and suspicion of anyone who is different, or who disagrees with the state.
6. centralized control.
7. widespread corruption.
8. secret activities within government, but surveillance of the general population. (In contrast, a healthy society would have transparent government processes, and respect for privacy of the individual citizen).
9. paranoid and reactionary government.
10. excessive, arbitrary, unfair and inflexible legislation; the power of decision making is reduced/removed from the citizens’ everyday lives.
11. an attitude of hypocrisy and contempt demonstrated by the actions of the ruling class, towards the ideals they claim to follow, and towards the citizens they claim to represent.
12. controlled media, dominated by propaganda.
13. extreme inequality between the richest and poorest.
14. endemic use of corrupted psychological reasoning such as paramoralisms, conversive thinking and doubletalk.
15. rule by force and/or fear of force.
16. people are considered as a ‘resource’ to be exploited (hence the term “human resources”), rather than as individuals with intrinsic human worth.
17. spiritual life is restricted to inflexible and indoctrinare schemes. Anyone attempting to go beyond these boundaries is considered a heretic or insane, and therefore dangerous.
18. arbitrary divisions in the population (class, ethnicity, creed) are inflamed into conflict with one another.
19. suppression of free speech – public debate, demonstration, protest.
20. violation of basic human rights, for example: restriction or denial of basic life necessities such as food, water, shelter; detainment without charge; torture and abuse; slave labour.

Servility Will Cower to Force

Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America:

For my part, I am persuaded that in all governments, whatever their nature may be, servility will cower to force, and adulation will follow power. The only means to prevent men from degrading themselves is to invest no one with that unlimited authority which is the sure method of debasing them. (Quoted in Zbigniew Janowski, Homo Americanus, p. 15)

No man, and no group of men. We need checks and balances all up and down the line.  

And yes the people are ovine and servile and will cower to power. That has been amply demonstrated of late by the masses' mindless donning of useless masks. Don we now our fey apparel! Let us signal our specious virtue and adherence to the party line of Lord Fauci and his minions.  And when the party line shifts, we shift with it!

The other day I espied a lady, driving alone, windows rolled up, wearing a big black mask. But I was in a charitable mood. I thought to myself, "Well, maybe she just left a doctor's office where entrance required the fashion accessory in question, and she forgot to take it off." But then I waxed rather less charitable. "Is she so oblivious to the mechanics of respiration that she would leave that rag around her face when alone?"

As for Dr. Fauci, RFK Jr. has his number. You all should read his The Real Anthony Fauci.  Look it up. Buy it. Study it.  The author's an outlier, a decent Dem, like Tulsi Gabbard.

Political Ponerology

Ponerology is the theological study of evil. Political ponerology is thus the political-scientific study of evil. A tip of the hat to Tony Flood for referring me to this Mises Wire review by Michael Rectenwald of Andrew M. Lobaczewski's Political Ponerology.  I just now ordered a copy from Amazon.

A new edition of Political Ponerology, by Andrew M. Łobaczewski, edited by Harrison Koehli, is now available on Amazon.1 This strange and provocative book argues that totalitarianism is the result of the extension of psychopathology from a group of psychopaths to the entire body politic, including its political and economic systems. Political Ponerology is essential reading for concerned thinkers and all sufferers of past and present totalitarianism. It is especially crucial today, when totalitarianism has once again emerged, this time in the West, where it is affecting nearly every aspect of life, including especially the life of the mind.

[. . .]

Speaking of ideology, Political Ponerology explains a phenomenon that had vexed me. How did Communist ideologues manage to convince the masses that they undertook their crimes for “the workers,” “the people,” or egalitarianism? But even more perplexing, how did the ideologues convince themselves that their crimes were for the good of the common man? Łobaczewski explains that totalitarian ideology operates on two levels; the terms of the original ideology are taken at face value by true believers, while the party insiders substitute secondary meanings for the same terms, and normal people are subjected to gaslighting. Only the cognoscenti, the psychopaths, know and understand the secondary meanings. They recognize that actions purportedly undertaken on behalf of “the workers” translate into the domination of the party and the state on behalf of the psychopaths themselves. The truth is the opposite of what the party insiders claim to be the case, and they know it. Political Ponerology thus explains the origin of “doublespeak,” which George Orwell portrays so well. Coincidentally, Łobaczewski finished Political Ponerology in 1984.

[. . .]

Łobaczewski argues that an adequate study of totalitarianism had hitherto been impossible because it had been undertaken in the wrong registers. It had been treated strictly in terms of economics, literature, ideology studies, history, religion, political science, and international politics, among other approaches. One is reminded of the literary accounts and studies of the Soviet Union, the Eastern Bloc, and Nazi Germany—of the classic works by Hannah Arendt, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Václav Benda, Václav Havel, and many others. These made indispensable contributions but had, owing to no fault of their own, necessarily failed to grasp the root of the problem—namely, the psychopathological dimension of the inception and development of “pathocracy,” or rule by psychopaths.

The responses of normal human beings to the gross injustices and disfigurement of reality perpetrated by the ruling bodies had hitherto only been understood by members of the social body in terms of conventional worldviews. Emotionality and moral judgments blinded victims to what beset them. The deficiencies in the approaches of scholars, as well as the moralism of laypersons, had left pathocracy essentially misapprehended and likewise left humanity without any effective defenses against it. Łobaczewski redresses these deficiencies and provides these defenses. In this sense—that is, in using a scientific methodology to treat socialism—Łobaczewski’s work is analogous to Ludwig von Mises’s Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, first published one hundred years ago.