A couple of people have asked about my comment “high IQ people are by and large easier to brainwash.”  Is it really true?  I think so, and will explain why.

Let’s take feminism, which along with Marxism and racial egalitarianism is one of the “big three” evils that have cursed the modern world.  How might a smart person be easier to brainwash in a women’s studies course?  We can look at some feminist material to see.

We were having dinner with friends last night, and got on the topic of suffering. I made some comments and the more disjointed they sounded the more I wanted to make additional comments. All of which suggested some thoughts:

1. Talking about suffering is like talking about God. Anything you say is going to be inadequate and is probably going to miss the point. The more someone blathers the less he probably knows.
2. That's not an accident. Both are too real to deal with. They disrupt comfortable patterns of life. We mostly say things about them because we want to make them manageable but the point is that they're not manageable.
3. The problem of evil is impossible to deal with in a way that satisfies anyone. It seems that the world would be worse for us if there were no evil, since wisdom comes from suffering and we would all become self-satisfied consumers or whatever. The reason it has that effect though is that it really is evil and as such lacks redeeming qualities that would let us tell a nice story about it that gets rid of it as a problem.

Julius Evola (1898-1974) was an important Italian intellectual, though he despised this term intensely. As poet and painter, he was the major Italian representative of Dadaism (1916-1922). Later he became the leading Italian exponent of Integral Traditionalism or Perennialism, the intellectually challenging esotericism of René Guénon (1886-1951). Evola enjoyed an international reputation for books on eastern religious traditions that won the respect of scholars such as Mircea Eliade and Giuseppe Tucci. His 1943 book on early Buddhism, The Doctrine of Awakening, was translated in 1951. It was more than a generation before a second translation appeared, in 1983, when Ienner Traditions published 1958’s The Metaphysics of Sex, reprinted as Eros and the Mysteries of Love in 1992, the same year it published his 1949 book on Tantra, The Yoga of Power. The marketing appeal of books about sex is obvious, but these works are serious studies, not sex manuals. In 1995 Inner Traditions reprinted The Doctrine of Awakening and began publishing translations of his other books, including Revolt against the Modern World, his fullest account of the World of Tradition, which he opposed to the degenerate modern world.

In Europe, Evola is also known as a brilliant and incisive right-wing thinker. His books, New Age and political, were translated into French under the aegis of Alain de Benoist, leader of the French Nouvelle Droite. His books and articles have appeared in German since the 1930s. Translations into English continue to appear. Italian New Age publisher Edizioni Mediterranee keeps his books in print and has republished some with good texts and new introductions. Evola never belonged to a political party or held a political or academic post, but 25 years after his death his books are available in Italian, French, German, and English.

After the appearance of Sarah Palin’s ghost-written Going Rogue in November 2009, the former Alaska governor saw her celebrity soar. Her book sold over 600,000 copies within 36 hours of the time it went on sale. And even that paradigmatic liberal Oprah Winfrey worked hard to have Sarah on her TV programs. FOX News went agog over her 320-page work, and for about a week, her face was more visible on FOX than that of any of the channel’s other favorites.

The only influential people on the establishment right who expressed reservations about her, up until her recent overexposure on TV, were David Frum and Charles Krauthammer. But within the neoconservative camp, other opinions also surfaced. Bill Kristol and his fortnightly Weekly Standard have been high on Sarah, a fact that may be attributed to her Christian Zionism and her outspoken defense of Israeli settlements on the West Bank. And Krauthammer has moderated his critical attitude by observing on FOX that Sarah “will be a significant force in Republican politics, even if she never becomes president.”

A Discussion about the Future of Fatherhood in the West

The birth rate of whites—native Europeans—in Europe is well below replacement level. As many writers including Pat Buchanan and Mark Steyn have noted, the aging, bloated European welfare states will increasingly be sustained by immigrants who are openly hostile to European culture. In America, our immigrants are much less likely to blow themselves to smithereens. But Hispanics are having 59% larger families than whites on average. Whites have long been headed for minority status, and Latinos are already flexing their demographic muscle in government and entertainment. The new majorities have their own cultures, and they will have their own interests to promote. The stewardship of Western Civilization isn't their responsibility or their problem.

Somewhere in the litany of "hate facts" about the decline of white birth rates is a lesson about what happens to people-any group of humans, really-when they abandon family life and choose instead to promote consumerism, self-indulgence, non-reproductive sexuality and female careerism.

Ron Paul is coming off of a straw poll victory at CPAC this past month, not to mention a strong showing by Campaign for Liberty and Young Americans for Liberty, two groups founded by his acolytes. But despite--or perhaps because of--this, it appears Paul may not coast to victory in his congressional primary race, according to Politico:

It’s an unusual turn of events for a veteran congressman who has reached stardom in conservative populist circles and who just last week emerged as the victor of the presidential straw poll at the Conservative Political Action Conference.

Yet despite his solid anti-establishment credentials and non-conformist views, Paul finds himself under siege from three Republicans who are embracing many of the themes that have defined Paul’s career. At the heart of the resistance is the notion that the 10-term Paul has gone Washington, abandoning his constituents as he pursues his white whale—the presidency.

“To be honest, I was surprised when these guys started coming out of the woodwork,” said Fort Bend County GOP Chairman Rick Miller. “They’re trying to tap into the idea that it’s time for a new face. It’s a sign of the times. It’s what’s happening in our country.”

Paul remains the favorite in the race but the opposition clearly has him looking over his shoulder.

In a January email alert titled “They’ve Turned Their Attack Dogs Loose On Me!”, Paul warns that both parties are “doing everything they can to make sure I am defeated.”

“These candidates include three Republicans in my own primary on March 2,” he wrote, “and they will stop at nothing to tear down and destroy all we have worked for.”

Richard Murray, a University of Houston political scientist, said strong anti-incumbent winds are buffeting even members like Paul who have never been embraced by the political establishment.

I have written before about the need to create an alternative universe, where dissidents can find economic and professional opportunities and sources of status that are independent of those dispensed by the mainstream of culture. This is because many who privately agree with the views of the Alternative Right dare not voice them for fear of ostracism and loss of livelihood: many are, after all, on payrolls and their livelihoods depend on their employers' willingness to continue to employ them.

But what would this alternative universe look like? This is a topic well worth exploring, and to my mind even more important than the topic of what exactly is wrong with the world we live in today and why. We need to be aware of the latter, of course, and keep ourselves well educated and informed; but we must also show a way forward, and do so in a manner that is not only serious but also displays our capacity for humour and fun -- otherwise, the average person out there will continue to perceive our camp as comprised of grumbling old codgers, fearful and suspicious of progress, waving a fist at the world. Who said being a dissident cannot be fun? Only the enemy, of course!

For these reasons, I will start this blog in good style, by giving our enemy a taste of their own medicine!

  
 
  
 

 

Though his name is a gesture to the château of debauch, perversion, and female submission in The Story of O, I've always sensed a certain Spenglerian quality to Roissy's blogging--a perception that was reinforced while I was reading his commentary on this fascinating news item:

Transsexual performer vomits on Susan Sarandon
By James Hirsen

Oscar winning actress Susan Sarandon has had a bad time of it lately. The actress recently separated from her long time partner, actor Tim Robbins. Sarandon attended the third anniversary of The Box in New York’s Lower East Side.

A transsexual cabaret performer named Rose Wood engaged in projectile vomiting on stage and hit Sarandon with it .

Standing nearby were Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber.

According to Wood it was not intended as an affront to the actress and she didn’t take it that way.

“Apparently [Sarandon] got a big kick out of it. She squealed with surprise and loved it when several handsome gentlemen wiped it off of her. She had a ball! I saw her assistant downstairs afterward, and he was moved by it! She was in great spirits,” Wood told the New York Press.

Wood explains that vomiting on people is fitting is this establishment. “[It was a] fitting time for an outrageous act: the third anniversary of The Box. Everybody wants to offer safe and ordinary, not The Box!”

And the impossibility of conservatism.

It’s 1964. A stranger approaches and tells you two political movements will arise in the near future, the New Left and the New Right. One of these movements will dominate American politics for a good quarter century. Indeed, political scientists will define the entire period in terms of the ascendancy of this group; historians will write books naming this age after the movement’s most successful leader. Politicians, scholars, and activists on right and left will go so far as to call it a “Revolution.”

Imagine then that you could look at the America (such as it is) of November 5, 2008, at the end of this era.