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• Posted February 2: A new Unsilent Truth column by Ronn Neff.
• Posted January 26: A new Strakon Lights Up column.
Table of contents for Part I of Ronn Neff’s book A Penrose Stairway.
Posted January 31, 2017.
Lower than false. The other day I asked a young fellow what he thought of the proposed
20 percent tariff on Mexican goods. "Sounds like discrimination to me," he said. I snorted. I couldn't help myself.The schools are so soaked in leftist memes and gobbledy-gook that apparently we can no longer depend on our adversaries even to offer trite, mercantilist fallacies. [Ronn Neff] Ω
Off-site alert. Steve Sniegoski has a hard-hitting, protein-rich piece of analysis up at the Unz Review, and I heartily recommend it to your attention: "Liberals Morph from Peaceniks to Warhawks on Government Intelligence Agencies." Steve comments:
This is my analysis of theSober scholar that he is, I'm afraid that in this article Steve can't help making an awful lot of people look silly. [Nicholas Strakon] ΩJanuary 6 intelligence report — "Assessing Russian Activities and Intentions in Recent US Elections" — which the mainstream media have presented as clearly showing that Russia interfered in the 2016 U.S. election to aid Trump. I point out that while mainstream liberals in the latter years of the Cold War were skeptical, and largely critical, of U.S. policy, they now have become warhawks and automatically accept the claims of the "Intelligence Community."I also deal with some aspects of the intelligence report that have received little attention: e.g., no mention of "fake news" and lack of statistical analysis to demonstrate alleged Russian media bias. Most significantly, the report does not even claim to focus on the 2016 election but is concerned about an alleged broader Russian goal to combat the United States' "liberal democratic order," of which support for Trump was only one part. As a result, the report is filled with information that does not pertain to Russian support for Trump.
Posted January 28, 2017.
Mad. Thomas Merton, in Raids on the Unspeakable, writes that "the wicked little characters in the Lord of the Flies come face to face with the lord of the flies, form a small, tight, ferocious collectivity of painted faces, and arm themselves with spears to hunt down the last member of their group who still remembers with nostalgia the possibilities of rational discourse."
It is an image we should draw on often: the Left has become "a small, tight, ferocious collectivity of painted faces, [who] arm themselves with spears to hunt down the last member of their group who still remembers with nostalgia the possibilities of rational discourse."
Trump's electoral win has pushed the Left far beyond "Red Guard" status. They exhibit Chesterton's definition of madness: "They are speaking nonsense and they cannot stop." Their madness comes "by settling down in some dirty, little, self-repeating circle of ideas." And of course, the one thing madness cannot endure is rational discourse. [Ronn Neff] Ω
And joyless. Many have noted the Left's inability to laugh, except when their jokes are vulgar and filthy. Which brings me to Chesterton again: "In anything that does cover the whole of your life — in your philosophy and your religion — you must have mirth. If you do not have mirth you will certainly have madness."
That in turn reminds me of Kellyanne Conway's observation that Hillary Clinton was "one of the most joyless presidential candidates in history."
If Chesterton and Conway are right, then Hillary Clinton and her most ardent supporters are close to being outright mad (if they are not yet). Perhaps that is the main problem with socialism: it makes joy ever more difficult. Perhaps the Russian people were sustained by their own gallows humor ("we pretend to work; they pretend to pay us"). What else, humanly speaking, can possibly enable the human spirit to hold up under Stalinism? [RNN] Ω
Posted January 27, 2017.
But sir, we're just trying to serf you better! In the next month or so, Wells-Fargo will start requiring its drive-through account-holders who make cash deposits to supply a photo ID with their deposit slip.
How, pray, does this protect me? or make my money safer?
How does it even protect Wells-Fargo from fraud? Do they check the cash for counterfeits later and plan to get back to the depositor?
It's pretty obvious that this new policy responds to some demand made by the government. (Treasury? Homeland Security? IRS? Who can say?)
Only the government is worried about who is depositing cash. Only the government needs or wants a record of who put cash into my account. And once again, your neighbors employed in banks put their heads down, say "Yes sir," and work as an arm of law enforcement.
But wait! I get it. When my enemies decide to frame me for embezzlement or selling nuclear and copy-editing secrets to Tajikistan, the investigators will see the princely cash deposits to my account and say, "Aha!"
I guess I'm being ungrateful to the bank that is just trying to protect me. But I think I'd prefer to take my chances. Besides, I've arranged to put that money in my Dubai account. [Ronn Neff] Ω
Clever. Voting is silly (at best), because your vote will never change anything, except maybe your own moral status (for the worse). But I have to hand it to a "Friend" on Facebook for the following observation, sharp as a needle. If there could be some point to voting, this might be it:
... [T]he main reason to vote Republican if you simply have to vote for candidates from one of the two major parties is that, if a Democrat wins the election, criticism in the mainstream media largely vanishes. This is not so bad when talking about, say, the diameter [of] drain pipes in your neighborhood. But it's disastrous in areas like foreign policy. The United States has a proud tradition of bombing the crap out of Third World countries, killing children at wedding parties, and just generally spreading death and destruction throughout the world. When the Democrats are in office, the anti-war movement shuts down. This is bad. So do your part by voting Republican. Keep the dialogue going.Tip o' the hat to K.A.H. [Nicholas Strakon] ΩFurther reading: "Double Standards: Where Were the Liberal Protestors During Obama's Wars?," by Mike Whitney, CounterPunch, January 26, 2017.
What do you think?
"Stop and think" archive.
TLD is a forum of opinion, edited by hard-core market anarchists, that does not flinch from any of the most pressing issues of our time. We are especially interested in questions of culture and ethnicity, our Polite Totalitarian ruling class, and the homicidal humanitarianism of the U.S. Empire.Our writers include anarcho-pessimists, Old Believers in the West, unreconstructed Confederates, neo-Objectivists, and other enemies of the permanent regime. We are conscientiously indifferent to considerations of thoughtcrime. Thus, from individualist and Euro-American perspectives, we confront the end of civilization — and do our level best to name its destroyers. (More about who we are.)
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"If this government cared about ideas, it would crack down on The Last Ditch. It could be called The Joy of Thinking."
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Permanently recommended readings
"What Is Austrian Economics?" (Mises Institute)
"I, Pencil," by Leonard E. Read (Liberty Fund;
scroll down for text)
"The Epistemological Basis of Anarchism,"
by Roy A. Childs, Jr. (TLD)
"Polite totalitarianism," by Ronald N. Neff (TLD)
Published in 2017 by WTM Enterprises, P.O. Box 224, Roanoke, IN 46783-0224.
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Nicholas Strakon