Obama Vs Roark: You Didn't Build That!

Left: Howard Roark's Speech in The Fountainhead (vid)
Right: Barack Obama: "You didn't build that"

In Egalitarianism, equality is the fundamental moral value: the standard of good and evil. Equality rejects equality at birth. Equality before the law isn't good enough. Equality of opportunity is insufficient. The value of equality transcends Christian and Marxist ethics; Egalitarianism wants much more: equality of outcome - HERE and NOW!

But here's the catch. Men are not equally deserving for what they are, but because they are essentially nothing. Obama's now infamous quote "You didn't build that!" perfectly sketches this implied tenet of Egalitarianism.

If you have a brain, a will, some skills, knowledge, character, desires, money, power, any ability or attribute, you were lucky, that's all. The actual producer is the state in the name of the collective.

And since the bottom is by definition made up of losers, equality can only be reached by cutting down the top. Egalitarians hold that for everone to end up with a fair share of zero, those leading the race should have their legs broken: "We must cut down the high flyers," animal rights wingnut, Peter Singer has stated.

Egalitarianism is sheer evil: strip man of all the attributes that make him an individual and the achievements that distinguish him from any other, and all men become equal. But what is left is an empty shell, in essence a zombie: the ghost of a human being.

The root of the ideology is Kantian Nihilism. The elevation of nothing to something. The zombie demands the sacrifice of the living man. The walking dead as moral man is the philosophy that rules the pOmo world!

Since there is so much unfairness, egalitarians dispense with a rational system and priorities. They compensate with swiftness and affirmative action wherever a case of perceived inequality presents itself. They are proud of their achievements, but in fact it is racist and evil.

Since egalitarians are ardent collectivists the first duty of government is overall redistribution and compensation. The moral standard is not man's life, happiness or the pursuit of it, but fairness, the elimination of nature's random inequalities.

The vehicle for compensation and redistribution is identity politics. Women seek to address sexism, the elderly ageism, the handicapped ableism, the ugly looksism, multicults imperialism, animal rights lunies speciesism. Competition is evil. There are no winners, no losers: everyone gets a prize, whether deserving or not. All demands are meritous, regardless of merit.

Egalitarianism is so detached from reality (perception as well as conception), most adherents do not even bother validating it. Equality is simply a moral axiom, an end in itself, a floating abstraction. This load of crap is ruling our world; it is the mental suicide of civilization.

The evil of Egalitarianism has come home in Environmentalism. For some reason no one has been able to explain inanimate nature has the same status as man. Therefore it has equal rights and we must stop defining better as richer, bigger, faster, more.

Watermelons (reds in a green jacket) is a charming idea, but it's inaccurate. The flag of environmentalism is not red or green, but the black of death.

Evil consequences are irrelevant to this ideology: intent is everything, so the ethics are infallible, regardless of the outcome.

While Marxism still had a vision of a better world, Egalitarianism is a postmodern construct to rescue the Socialist notion of equality (see flow chart Evolution of Socialist Strategies To Rescue Socialism From Failure); but it does so by a strategy of scorched earth: in death all men are equal. Man is a moral monster that deserves no better.

This all puts abortion and 'the right to die' in a somewhat less humanitarian light.

Related:

- Leonard Peikoff's "The DIM Hypothesis"
- Peikoff on the Election of Barack Obama

- John Rawls On Justice
- Margaret Thatcher on redistribution (vid)

- Think about this: is democracy Egalitarianism applied to government?

The Evolution from Value to Non Value

For reasons we shall see shortly many people today have lost track of the meaning of the word 'value'.

It means simply - within an ethical system - something worthy of pursuit and effort to keep it.

In the relativist Marxist dialectic and its frame of ethics, morality became a social construct of the Oppressors - i.e. the bourgeoisie. Middle class values became synonymous with the concept itself.

Like the entire field of ethics came to be defined in accordance with the Kantian ethics system, and 'morals' are understood as limited to sexual behavior, for entire swathes of Westerners 'value' currently means 'suspect middle class decency', usually slightly false and hypocrite. Value became a non value.

Pop culture consists almost entirely of non values, and even anti values. No one pursues health hazards, ugly things, refuse, dilapidated buildings, rags, music as a loose jumble of unrelated sound waves, ditto in literature (word salads), faecal art, urinals, and anything else skatological. In short, that which in real life we need to get away from as soon as possible because it's, well ... worthless -- valueless.

Postmodern art and culture tries to sell us refuse - non values - as if they were a value, something worth pursuing and keeping ... in effect, anti values.

The entire edifice of Left and Right collectivist ethics, is based on a fallacy (not reality as it is, but as it should be, according to their false ideologies) and the subterfuge, that aims to persuade us that what we see in front of us, is an illusion and thus unworthy of pursuit.

The consequence is the upside down, relativist world we live in today: in which our senses are said to be deceiving us and man is thus incapable of knowing anything (epistemological nihilism); black is white from a certain point of view and true (subjectivism); that reality will cease to exist at the moment of our death because it is 'thought that creates reality'.

Much has been said about the parallels of the Weimar Republic in the German interbellum, and the present times. In reference to values this is most certainly true: the same postmodern non and anti values in art and culture, and in society rampant relativism, sexual deviasion and permissiveness, and an obsession with death and the gruesome.

Yesterday Dutch TV aired an interview with a young Muslim woman who was in the Turkish Airlines plane crash at Amsterdam airport this week. The interviewers, who never hesitate to brutally deride and ridicule Christian believers, softly-softly pushed her on her beliefs and the Muslim approach to the afterlife.

She explained that in Islam our earthly life is not something worthy of great pursuit, and that real life, is the afterlife. It is in the unity with Allah that true life begins. While the same thought has certainly crossed the minds of many Jews and Christians, for a very good reason the basic credo has always been the absoluteness of the sanctity of life. This is but one basic aspect why the three faiths of the book are not "all the same".

Any other inference that may be drawn from that premise for the moment aside, it is obvious that to her and her co-religionists death is clearly a value, while life is not. Now, answer the question, why would anyone devise a thought system that makes death a worthy pursuit?

The conclusion is justified that two and half millennia worth of civilization is currently under attack by some form of nihilism, on some level or other: ethically, epistemologically, metaphysically, culturally, ideologically, politically, you name it!

Hampered by idealistic collectivists who are naive enough to have put their money on a happy, post Christian and post racial global cumbaya, and caught in a pincer between on the one hand, nihilistic postmoderns who lost their belief in anything, hell bent on tearing down the rest of humanity with the demise of their morally bankrupt ideals; and on the other hand the Islamic collective of the Ummah that is obsessed and in the throngs of a fanatical death cult.

Boy, are we knee-deep in skatological goo ...

Armistice and Veteran's Day 2008

For Armistice and Veteran's Day we have attempted to collect a few edifying morsels of interest.

This is a lot less easy than it sounds. Most of what is available are isolated video snippets; or there's a choice of the pacifist anti-war stuff, either of the hefty Gothic or of the sentimental tear-jerk variety.

However, given the current upsurge of interest - primarily in the US - we've unearthed some intriguing, if highly emotionally charged footage on the Weimar Republic, and the German Revolution that followed the chaos of World War I. It's got some rare historical material, as well as background information on whatever fateful constellation of events led to such a profound and total collapse of morality. (For more reading here's the Wiki on Christopher Isherwood.)

The music would certainly not have been our initial choice; we felt however as its message grew, that it serves the purpose of conveying some of the nihilism and the obsession with surreal horror that is so typical for the period, and that led to its inevitable outcome in World War II.

In this respect we can also refer you to earlier postings on the subject of the German interbellum: "Resist Commie Prop, Support Indy", "The Postmodern Anti-War Hero, the Red Baron", "The German Revolution".



From the cultural angle, we proudly present a collection of World War I propaganda posters from all countries involved in the Great War. The entire site is rather a gem and worthy of further exploration. For example, Prose and Poetry reads ...

"More than any other conflict, the Great War inspired writers of all generations and classes, most notably among combatants. (...) This section profiles the more renowned authors and contains samples of their work. Also available in this section are extended features, including a profile of Robert Graves - and, more unusually but nevertheless intriguing, a piece on literary ambulance drivers... There are also two articles written about the author of the war's most famous poem: In Flanders Fields. The 1917 collection of wartime poetry The Muse in Arms has also been republished here in its entirety. (...) >>>

An index of authors - including Sir Winston Churchill - is attached.

Next there's World War I American Legacy, a DVD documentary directed by Mark Bussler.

Wall Street Journal has a reality check for the US. "Soldiers of the Great War" lays an provocative link with the present: "(...) the victors failed to prevent the rise of the totalitarian regimes in Russia and Germany, the fascists in Italy and the militarists in Japan (...) the U.S. withdrew from its global responsibilities. (...) Now we are at a similar pass in Iraq, where the U.S. has effectively defeated Sunni and Shiite insurgents on the battlefield. But whether this costly achievement will hold depends largely on our willingness to support the Iraqi government and steel it against its own fascistic challengers, particularly Iran. If there's one lesson to be learned on this Armistice Day, it's of the price that's paid when we allow victory to slip from our grasp. >>>

One of the blessings of living part of one's life in cyberspace is the human connection one gets with people you will never know on a personal level. Following document was made by someone who remains anonymous, in commemoration of his great grandfather Aaron Kennett who fought in the Great War. He flourished from 1887 to 19187. May God bless them both, and all who fought and continue to fight for freedom, against barbarism and oppression.

The music accompanying the touching family document is the hymn "I Vow to Thee my Country", created in 1921 when a poem by Cecil Spring-Rice was set to music by Gustav Holst. It expresses the unconditional love, loyalty and self-sacrifice that was once unquestioningly devoted to one's country. It is a victory of the Postmodern One Worlders that these words - while warm and patriotic only a few years back when played at my father's funeral - now sound strangely surreal.

But make no mistake: whereas giving one's life for a state in Europe today seems unthinkable and alien, a renewed fight for individual freedom against neotot pocket potentates is certainly not. The same forces taunting national colours and hymns also whisper of collectives and the redundancy of democracy, suggesting that the value of 'enlightened dictators' is somewhat underrated. Ignore them at your peril ...





- Filed on Articles in "History Compiled" -

The Savage Logic of Nihilism

This title is a fallacy. Nihilism is an assault on reason and as a consequence, doesn't follow logic. It is however not uncommon - indeed tradition - to present violations against logic as just another form of reason. Much like Hegel's anti-philosophy - which considers contradictions a sign that 'something interesting is going on' - was presented as the New Reason. We've been mentally impaired ever since.

Anti-modern' thought' is filled to the brim with Orwellian oxymora: 'true freedom' through the state, society as manifestation of 'real self' and the source of 'pure ethics'? Whatever next? A secular, Muslim broadcasting association? (in Dutch)

The politically correct thought police is enforcing the rules of Pragmatism, a branch of relativist philosophy that should not to be confused with 'the practical'. Key here is the expedient. Everything else is subordinate: the end justifies the means - pick and choose among all possible causality whatever fits your agenda and apply it unilaterally (no need to be consistent, ever).

So when a Finnish knucklehead starts slaughtering his classmates one by one in cold blood, it's not the perpetrator who is at fault, but the morally neutral means he used to commit the crime: handguns (morally neutral, because weapons don't have brains or Free Will).

The narrative (or 'logic') of the Hegel dialectic in Europe runs something like this: the American Republican Party - the gun-toting, Bible-thumbing arch reactionaries, support the Second Amendment; this party belongs to the political Right. Therefore - since we proudly declared for progressivism - our subjective position must be that we are against guns, irrespective of the merits (sub current ... and that goes for hunting (the 'murder of animals') as well ...!).

Enter the British Left's in-house news rag Al Guardian, home to unrepentant Marxists and Al Qaeda apologists: "Finland school massacre brings day of mourning and review of gun laws", subtitled "Prime minister says he is 'very critical' of easy access to handguns after gunman kills 10 at vocational college." It's the gun that did it, not the hand that moved it, goes the new 'logic.'

The Left's approach to crime does the rest: criminal behavior is not the result of Free Will made a bad moral call, but on the contrary, follows from a person's inability to conform to society's arbitrary conventions. Therefore society is at fault, not its 'victim' who is unable - through no fault of his own - to conform to arbitrary social norms (hence the frantic pursuit of genetics which - with gland activity - opens up a whole new field to attribute blame).

Very integrated piece of 'philosophy', is Leftist ideology!

Returning to the Finnish school shoot-out, we suppose this has nothing to so with the nihilist thought processes that lurk at the bottom of the subjectivist pond? Surely third millennium adolescent mass murders are unrelated to anti-modernist champion Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who gave us the organic collective's Common Will; or to Kant's ethics of sacrifice to the collective as man's highest moral achievement?

Nationalism (not to be confused with expressions of patriotism!), Communism, as well as Fascism and National Socialism can all be traced back to these notions: that individual man is Nothing, and pursues non-values in an unknowable universe, that makes a mockery of his being and capacity to reason; the existential trauma that - as the grandfather of postmodernism, Heidegger, put it: life is an absurdity.

After the subversion of Liberalism, we currently witness the deconstruction of Humanism as it is hijacked by the Scions of Nothing. Both have been perverted to the point of becoming their own antithesis. Humanism got divorced from the center principle, human life as an absolute value. For the last couple of decades or so Humanism advocates 'the option of death'. And subjected to the slippery slope that is the fate of all demoralized ideology, the message is now morphing into 'the duty to die'.

Must we be surprised that this is staring us in the face? Go ahead, blame the tools! Embrace environmentalism, the pseudo religion of anti-humanism.


- Filed on Articles in "Life Ethics" -

The Primacy of Politics

The author Douglas Murray wrote the book on neoconservatism. In his 2006 illumination "Neoconservatism, why we need it" he writes that the intellectual father of this philosophy, Leo Strauss posited in his work "On Tyranny" - a commentary on Xenophon's Hiero (or Tyrannicus) - that he (Strauss) ...

"maintains that in his own time, 'when we were brought face to face with tyranny - with a kind of tyranny that surpassed the boldest imagination of the most powerful thinkers of the past - our political science failed to recognize it', (...) one of the clearest allusions (...) to the early lessons observed by the philosopher in Weimar Germany."

Political scientists may not have been particularly observant, neither is humanity as a whole. After having past a century of great wars and tribulations resulting in the deaths of over 100 million lives sacrificed upon the altars of relativist ideologies, they still appear not to have learnt the lesson that Murray puts forward: that relativism is democracy's disintegrating component..

But then, the result of relativism is invariably a (deliberate) confusion of ideas and definitions, imprecision and fallacies against reason; revisionism and the erasure from the collective memory of pre World War II history, coupled with the debilitating influence emanating from generations of people rendered permanent wards-of-state: they would not recognize an ukase if they were to fall over one.

As a consequence we fail to see the ominous signs that are taking place before our very eyes: people being made subservient to ideas, legislation casting surrogate morality into law at the expense of freedom and true equality, resulting in the criminalization of the most unlikely categories of persons: grannies taking an offence at bare gay posteriors, clergy refusing to perform same sex marriages with an appeal on the freedom of conscience, which is increasingly seen as second class liberty, the list goes on.

Groups of people are emerging whose ends are so vile they must be stopped whatever the means, justifying even violence against them. To be specific, against rightists of various hue: neocons, Classical Libertarians, neo Nazis, nationalists (often no more than good patriots), Stop Islamization activists, what have you, they are equivalenced to the same subhuman level. Where did we hear that again?

Good intent producing bad results, the absurdity and injustice of it all, nothing sets off the alarms bells! This is happening while bullying and intimidation, repeated threats and (minor) acts of terrorism against private citizens, officials and scholars go with impunity. The police seem to be unwilling or unable to guarantee safety. The result is toleration of the intolerant: a message that in Strauss' book equals nihilism. Indeed cynicism and nihilism are enshrined today. The mad man never recognizes his own folly.

The political Left have reverted to the radical mode, only selectively defending freedoms and rights when at the expense of the 'Power Structure': the classical Marxist dialectic expressed in repressive tolerance. Just in the nick of time they've restored contact with their totalitarian memes, triggering the realisation of the roots they share with a theist branch of relativist thinking, Islam; timely bringing to semi subconsciousness the recollection that the unremittant promotion of permissiveness and self-indulgence was just part of the same strategy to undermine Western civilization's hegemony.

Through the remarkable rationale that is the Left's pecking order of victimhood, they have managed to throw overboard without hesitation or any cognitive dissonance the former position of serving the minority interests of women, blacks and gays. That is because the victimhood detection apparatus is minutely fine-tuned to recognize the superior social mileage that can be sqeezed out of the new gays: Muslims. Every prior held conviction and moral highground has by now been jilted in favour of furthering the causes of the intolerant.

That it is proving increasingly difficult to distinguish the well-willing innocents from the radical bullies is through another pernicious peculiarity that calls relativism home. On the basis that it isn't fair to lump the innocents with the radicals, the moral choice between the two has been abdicated: the terrorists have now become lumped with the innocent. As a consequence they don't get the support they need to distance themselves from Islamist influence: not a gratuit process by any means, but one wrought with personal danger and hard choices. They are left behind, caught in the multicultural ghetto. Perhaps even more importantly, any chance there is of reforming Islam from within may hence been forfeited.

The refusal to make the moral choice for the good has the effect of getting the radicals a free pass: the Left's abdication of passing judgment even extents to blatant evil. In fact, all things being equivalent evil isn't even recognized when at stares them in the face, let alone that it is condemned for what it is! And so we are left defenseless in the face of present danger. At this point the hammer on moral bankruptcy finally falls.

Westerners who take an opposing stance, taking up their duty to defend the values of liberal democracy against encroaching Sharia type laws and Muslim privileges, are harassed by the radical elements as well as criminalised by their own political representatives. In Europe the pernicious peculiarity has been cast into law, thus insulating terrorists and radicals even from verbal critique. Like innocent Muslims lumped with the radical camp, the defenders of Western values are cast into the Right-wing asylum for the ultimately vile.

The current tendency is blaming the victim. The reasoning goes along lines like "as it is well known that Muslims are a temperamental lot, why speak your mind and offend them?" The next position will be that freedom of expression must be punitively curtailed to prevent provocation! From the looks of it, far from conducting a war on terrorists, Europe has unleashed a wave of repression on the critics of the Third Jihad!

The theme of this assignment is, why should we care about politics and involve ourselves in the political process. I would say that the preservation of the state of liberty is about as good as it gets. We must realise that freedom isn't free, that ideas have consequences (especially bad ones), and that liberty requires a permanent state of vigilance against forced and unforced error.

America waits a difficult task. On her shoulders rests the responsibility to choose a new leader of the free world. His is not an ordinary job. It takes a person of outstanding character to perform this task with dignity, wisdom and courage. The world is facing some tough choices. He may be facing crises of importance and magnitude not seen since 1962. Please choose wisely.

- This article was first published on All American Blogger on 17th January 2008, and picked up on even date by 2nd Amendment blogger Concealed. It was seeded by Daweb on Newsvine. -

- Filed on Articles in "Postmoderism", cat. Philosophy

A Not So Merry Christmas!

More news about Christmas in progressive (read: decadent) society. A news item that fills one with dismay!

Yesterday evening near the town of Liège, Belgium, Père Noël (Santa Claus, Babbo Natale, etc., you name him) has been attacked by three fifteen year old teenagers. Apparently, just for the fun of it. And we are left with a shocked and wounded Père Noël and a sense of sadness, despair even.

That's what you get when relativism is the leading line. When morals disappear. The result is an uneducated young generation who proudly say that "we are a society that doesn't care about anything anymore, that doesn't believe in anything anymore" (read French Leftist newspaper Libération, November 28, 2007).

This nihilism is an open door for all kinds of extremism, violence, intolerance, for moral bankruptcy, unemployment, loss of tradition, culture ... It's the end of the Western world: in a few words, it's what the Socialists have always sought.

We have to change this sort of society, and fast. The answer must be swift and severe. We have to reestablish education, discipline, authority. We have to kick some asses rather than play the card of comprehension, appeasement, reward when confronted with a misguided youth. (Last time some teenagers stoned a public service bus, they were interviewed, understood and awarded free tickets for soccer games!)

If in your country the situation is less critical, please block the progressive morons' way! I'm thinking of our American friends who'll face an important election soon.

And as far as Europe is concerned, we have been guilty of a lack of concern, lack of vision, lack of cleverness and so we have been digging our own graves.

Let's react - in a hurry - because we have little time left. Let's spread Politeia!

Thank you for reading us, but it's not enough my friends, we need to ...

... ACT NOW!