Saturday, June 29, 2019

CENTER IMMIGRATION STUDIES: 'TRUMP HAS A POINT'

25 Years of failed policies built on the lie  -- that if we deny that terrorism is rooted in Islam, we can stop radicalization -- have resulted in the most powerful terror army since Genghis Khan: the Islamic State. It's time for a change.



Dec 9, 2015 Mark Krikorian fine tunes Trump's point. 

UPDATE: Center for Immigration Studies' Mark Krikorian argues that Trump's "crude" immigration comments actually open the conversation to formulate effective policy.


Friday, June 28, 2019

PLANET TRUMP: 50 PARADIGM SHIFTS, ONE YEAR ON

Donald Trump won the Presidential election of 2016. But what does that mean? Welcome to planet Trump. The repercussions of the new President as leader of the most powerful nation on earth are almost infathomable. The political and media establishment (but also entire swathes of the world population) still don't know what hit them.

UPDATE: A year ago we posted 50 paradigm shifts as a result of the Donald J. Trump presidency, either as a cause of his policies or indirectly by the transformation in the political and cultural landscape. One year on we are taking stock of the situation.

Thursday, June 27, 2019

TRUMPISM: PRAGMATIC AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM IN 10 POINTS

Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again Movement" can be summed up in three words: Pragmatic American Exceptionalism. The program comprises pride in economic achievement, striving for excellence, fighting cronyism, fair bilateral trade deals and strong relationships with allies.



Mar 15, 2016 Donald J. Trump: The Long Road to the White House (1980-2015). (Source) (About)

With the demise of the Soviet Union in 1989 the world added peace dividend to unparalleled post World War II prosperity. But the paradigm is collapsing. A number of very complex problems are developing that can't be resolved within the present conceptual framework. The present situation challenges the ideological Right to develop a new strategy that is suitable for the new world. Rinoism -- paying lip service to Conservatism while pursuing Progressive policies -- is dead and can't be resuscitated without causing a popular revolt. In order to be relevant in the new age a pragmatic political program has been devised by Republican presidential front runner, Donald Trump. It is a hybrid of successful negotiating tactics, the best elements of Conservatism and a brand of grassroots populism. These are the major points.

THE 6 STAGES OF WESTERN CAPITULATION

Western leaders -- from heads of Government and the lapdog media to local authorities and their partisan supporters  -- are displaying the mentality of a conquered people. They have abdicated their basic duty to protect the people and have capitulated in almost every respect. This siege mentality is well known in psychiatry.


The best strategy to conquer a people doesn't require any force. Just convince them that their cause is unjust, breaking their will to resist.

Two of the more common conditions of siege and abuse are Battered Wife Syndrome and Stockholm Syndrome. (Source) With each new beating, the scarred and bruised victims of siege and abuse tend to excuse and rationalize the actions of their tormentors. A stubborn unwillingness to accept the facts of reality, plunges the victims into a morass of self-deception that spawns further violence. Our political leaders have similarly proved unable to liberate themselves from the delusions that it has spun about the nature of Islamic extremism. After each Islam driven outrage, the West's Rulers are quick to castigate its own countrymen for a catalogue of sins, both real and imagined.

With a perverse combination of self-loathing and adoration of the enemy, our Rulers' mantra preaches that if only we were nicer, Muslims could not fail to love us back. It’s our own fault if Muslims don’t realize what good people we are. And all the while, these progressive academics, pundits, and politicians engage in ridiculous intellectual contortions designed to mitigate the guilt of the terrorist perpetrators. The streets of Paris and San Bernardino were still damp with innocent blood in the latest outrages, when the same obscene dance of political self-flagellation began. Within hours of the attacks they were blamed on Western guild.

And then came New Year's Eve and the cover up of mass violations of human rights in an orgy of sexual assault on women. The reactions of the usual suspects, feminists and other postmodern traitors to the values of Western Enlightenment became even more obscene. (Source) From a code of conduct by the Mayor of Cologne and blaming the victims, to most perverse, feminists volunteering to be sexually violated by 'refugees'  just to demonstrate that maybe they did so out of free will. Rather than blame the Muslim men who visited such attacks on innocent women, our Rulers were urging citizens to adjust to changing mores. (Source)

In a posting dating a few years back, Dr. Sanity -- a blogger and former NASA psychiatrist -- described her experience with many battered women and the complacency many Muslim women show with their own oppression under Islamic law. (Source) After a patient was beaten to death by her own husband, even after numerous warnings, she concluded:
(...) you cannot force someone to change psychologically. The professional part of me understands that Alice had many opportunities to make a change in the toxic relationship she had with her husband. (...) Alice, who was without doubt a tragic victim of domestic abuse, was at the same time a willing accomplice to her own murder. (...)
The behavior of the Left (...) is very similar to cases like Alice: denial; distortion of reality; appeasement; enabling behavior; and ultimately, the willing accomplices to their own murder. Will they change? Can they change? Before that crocodile gets around to eating them? (Source)

In another posting Dr Sanity illustrates the demoralization process on the national level.
Dr. Kenneth Levin, a Harvard psychiatrist and author of The Oslo Syndrome: Delusions of a People Under Siege (...) discusses how in the 1990s, Israel believed that it had found a "partner for peace" in Yasser Arafat, even as he made speech after speech calling for the annihilation of Israel. The United States of the 21st century likewise believes that it can negotiate with Islamic totalitarians post-9/11. 
This is all part of the psychological dynamics of people who feel under siege and who desperately hope that negotiation and appeasement will finally bring about a cessation of hostilities. Unfortunately, this hope is at best wishful thinking; at worse a serious delusion. It is far more likely to bring about an escalation of hostilities and violence, rather than peace. In an earlier interview Levin was asked why people under siege often end up internalizing the hatred against themselves and delude themselves about the malicious intentions of their enemies? He replies:
They do so because they are eager to feel some control over a painful situation which is, in reality, out of their control. Chronically abused children - more specifically those subjected to parental abuse - typically blame themselves for their victimization because to do so supports a fantasy that if they reform, if they become "good," their parents will treat them differently. 
To look at their predicament more realistically would force them to accept their helplessness to change their terrible circumstances, and children, and adults as well, prefer to fend off acknowledging such bitter realities. Similarly, within populations under chronic siege - whether minorities marginalized, demeaned and attacked by surrounding societies or small nations besieged by their neighbors - some will invariably seek either to avert their gaze from the severity of the threat or rationalize the threat and blame themselves or others within their community for the danger. 
Their doing so reflects wishful thinking that if only they would reform sufficiently the danger would be alleviated. Israel has, at best, a capacity to respond effectively to attacks by its neighbors; it does not have the capacity to end the Arab siege, to force peace upon the Arabs. Peace, if and when it comes, will do so on the Arabs' timetable, not Israel's. Unfortunately, all the evidence indicates the Arab world is not about to choose genuine peace with Israel in the foreseeable future. This lack of control over a painful situation led many Israelis to embrace delusions of control; delusions that the right concessions could not help but win peace from the Arabs.
The key of the condition is, that the situation is actually or is perceived to be, beyond the victim's control. The case can be made that this entire predicament we find ourselves in is man-made, but that is not how the demoralized public and our leaders see it. Let's look at it from the limited perspective of the current migrant crisis. 

The Refugee Convention was signed in 1951. It was designed for a bi-polar world in which entire nations were locked up behind the Communist Iron Curtain. The aim was to aid dissidents and defectors escape to the free West. Air travel was nothing compared to the scale of the present day. Communications were limited to telephone and cable. 

If our political leaders had any common sense, they would long have adjusted the treaty to fit present conditions in which millions are on the move. The truth is, that the treaty is a centre piece to the Internationalist ideology that sees the nation state as an impediment to "world peace". (Source)

Angela Merkel made the migrant crisis far worse than it needed to be when she publicly announced the EU shouldn't be expected to uphold its own laws when she suspended the requirements of the Schengen Treaty that requires refugees to register in the first safe country of entry.

But all those self inflicted conditions do not alter the psychology of our elites. In their minds there is no other way and that this is in fact force majeure. In the evolution of the suicidal psychology of demoralization the following stages are passed on the way to civilizational extinction: 
  1. Refusal to follow the will of the people, leading to increased autocracy and authoritarian rule.
  2. Moral neutrality.
  3. Denial, passive tolerance of intolerance.
  4. Abdication of core functions (i.e. protection of rights and the territorial jurisdiction). 
  5. Capitulation. 
  6. Normalization, enforcing hostile rule (i.e. collaboration). 
The root is the arrogance of power that is innate in the ideology of Progressivism. The pedantic "we are the rulers and we know best" attitude comes with every elite, that is, a Ruling Class that has lost its connection with the source of its authority, the people. 

We have passed the first three mental stages of demoralization: alienation from the people, moral neutrality and denial and passive tolerance of Islamic intolerance. From now on we will increasingly witness the next stages: abdication and capitulation leading finally to unfettered collaboration and enforcement.

This is already partly the case where Governments are effectively enforcing UN Resolution 16/18, the OIC's 10 year program regarding the violation of Islamic interests, either by law or by extra legal means, i.e. by exerting peer pressure and shaming, otherwise known as political correctness. (Source)

In the case of the Dutch vet being prosecuted for the unlawful killing of Islamic State fighters in Syria we have another example, typical of the last stage of demoralization. While an active participant in the coalition against ISIS, the Dutch Government is nevertheless prosecuting one of its own citizens for taking a courageous moral stance. (Source)

As the Soviet defector, Yuri Bezmenov makes clear it is almost impossible to effectively reverse the process of demoralization.(Source) Our best hope is that a generation of moral, free thinking leaders will rise to replace the old guard, who have become worse than useless. It is also a matter of the utmost urgency. This can't wait any longer.

Furthermore, we shall have to prepare ourselves individually and as a family for the final stages of demoralization and the collapse that is inevitable. We must work on different level, morally, mentally but also physically and practically. We shall be posting in these pages more on those issues in the near future. 



Dutch version


Related


UN RES. 16/18: ENFORCING ISLAMIC LAW

Major Stephen Coughlin (ret.) was a researcher on Islamic law (Sharia) for the Joint Chiefs of Staff until a complaint from a Muslim advisor prompted the termination of his contract. Today he is Senior Fellow at the Center of Security Policy.



Stephen Coughlin, Part 5: The Role of the OIC in Enforcing Islamic Law.

UPDATE: As Coughlin is explaining in the video, our leaders are basically enforcing UN Resolution 16/18 (the OIC's 10 year program), lying to our face and using law fare against us. As Hillary Clinton made clear, if legislation stops short, they will simply use the pressure of political correctness until we comply. As we can see in this tweet, they are also knowingly endangering the lives of our citizens.

Wednesday, June 26, 2019

Americans Are Born Free, Europeans Are Born Illegals

In America people are born free, meaning it is assumed things are permitted until there is a law that prohibits it. In continental Europe and many other countries things are forbidden until the state says it's permitted



Dan Hannan MEP about liberty in Europe and America at the Heritage Foundation (shorter version in Melbourne)

A new book, "How We Invented Freedom and Why it Matters ", written by the Libertarian MEP Dan Hannan @DanHannanMEP illustrates a major difference in the perception of freedom on the continental Europe, as opposed to Great Britain and the Anglophone countries. It points out the differences in the way Americans have always looked at freedom versus the way it's always been looked at in Europe and most other countries. It's fundamental and the best way to illustrate it is this. In the United States, citizens presume that everything is legal until a law is written making it illegal. It's something that is taught, but it's also something that is simply assumed.

HOW THE GLOBALIST ELITE CARES FOR ITSELF

The globalist cabal of Governments and Financial Institutions have produced yet another product hedging itself against the collapse of the phantom economy. But in the end they can only save themselves by destroying freedom and democracy itself. Nationalism versus globalism is not about Left or Right; it's about to be, or not to be. 


Postmodern art: a true depiction of the globalist, phantom economy.

Some observers are surprised consumers have less and less money to spend. Savings in the bank are shrinking. A silent killer of wealth is at work. Inflation is relatively low in the euro zone. So what can it be? Having lived both in the Netherlands and in Greece I can attest to living standards in both countries dropping to unprecedented levels. Internal euro zone devaluation has been a reality for a long time. It takes the form of ever lower wages. The Greeks know all about it! The phantom economy is not based on true value, but on make belief and Monopoly money. It's fictional. Above piece of postmodern art is not just disgusting; it is a true depiction of how the phantom economy works. It's captioned "To: The World. From: Capitalism", but the very opposite is true! Capitalism is about added value. The phantom economy is about the artificial reproduction of causeless effects.

Tuesday, June 25, 2019

Objectivism is Radical and Hard to Apply

Yaron Brook's talk "Objectivism is Radical (and Applying it Can Be Hard)" was delivered at the Objectivist Summer Conference 2013 in Chicago last week



H/t Ayn Rand Institute YouTube channel and @YaronBrook

Yaron Brook is the author of



Related

Sunday, June 23, 2019

Losing the War Against Islam

I will not submit! 
We are losing Western civilization and liberty because of three fatal flaws in our doctrine. These are all matters of wrong identification due to political correctness and the wrong frame of reference.
We are failing the first rule of warfare: know thy enemy!

(Essay) Guide To Objective Parenting

For a limited time, the editors of The Objective Standard are making the cover article, “How to Raise a Life-Loving Child,” written by Sarah and Craig Biddle accessible for free. The purpose of this essay is to convey a fundamental principle that governs their approach to parenting.


"The Unknown Awaits" by Bryan Larsen inspired by Ayn Rand's essay Apollo Versus Dionysos on the cover of the Fall Issue of the Objective Standard (TOS). Order prints


How To Raise a Life-Loving Child


Give me a child for the first seven years, and he is mine for life. —The Jesuits 
Raise a child with the Master Question, and he is his own for life. —Sarah and Craig Biddle 
During the twelve years we’ve been raising our daughter, we’ve often been asked about our approach to parenting, and we’ve enjoyed sharing our thoughts in countless conversations. Now that our daughter is almost thirteen, we’re happy to present the essence of our approach in the form of an essay. Because we’re only part way through this wonderful adventure, our discussion here is limited to our experiences and thoughts about raising a child through her preteen years.