There is no better outcome that the Democrats could have hoped for than the demographic despair that has overtaken some sections of the conservative movement. While the Republican establishment prepares to accept Obama as the new FDR, the grass roots feels alienated and willing to write off the whole country.
Demographics is a serious issue, but it's not a done deal either. Countries are not static. America was created because a large number of Europeans moved to a place that had formerly been populated by the descendants of Siberian refugees crossing over the Bering Strait. I have often said that demographics kind is destiny, but it's a mathematical destiny. Change the numbers and you change the destiny.
Taking back America demographically is a matter of having enough children within a cultural structure that passes down the values of adults to the children, while focusing on limiting immigration as much as possible. This isn't an impossible task.
The Amish population doubles every 20 years and they retain the majority of their children within their communities despite the obvious appeals of the outside world. There are 250,000 Amish in the United States and Canada now. By 2040 there will be over a million of them.
Utah has the highest fertility rate in the country and 9 out of 10 children are born to married couples. The Mormon Church is slowing down its expansion, and is having some retention and birth rate issues, perhaps due to its liberalization and growing investment in overseas missionary work, but its numbers are still a reminder of what is possible.
Demographics can be deceptive, because what we are really talking about are the economic and cultural factors that dissuade large family sizes and that alienate children from the values of their ancestors. What we are really talking about is a clash between progressives and traditionalists.
As an Orthodox Jew, I represent a group that is at the front lines of the clash. In the last century and a half, Jewish progressives have done everything possible to destroy Jewish religion, values and even nationhood. For half that time they were enormously successful, wreaking havoc across entire communities, using state power to force parents into their own schools, and building a literary and cultural infrastructure aimed at ridiculing and destroying traditional values.
They are still at it today, and their tactics and propaganda are as bad as they ever were, but they also losing. While the progressives embrace the culture of abortion and gay rights, the traditionalists have children. Within a decade, a majority of New York Jews will be traditionalist and the impact of that is already being felt in elections. The progressives have ramped up their usual hate campaigns against Orthodox Jews, which is why you see so many negative stories in the media, but the demographics of their progressive culture doom them to extinction.
This same outcome would have taken place nationally in the clash between American traditionalists and progressives, if not for the ace in the hole of immigration. And yet immigration is only half the picture. The bigger half of the picture is culture.
Would the Amish be who they are if in between plow breaks they were watching Reality TV and getting lessons on liberal values? Instead the Amish segregated themselves from the culture and have thrived because of it. And that can be done without completely abandoning technology as a whole.
Orthodox Jews built a cultural infrastructure to convey their values to our children while cutting them off, as much as possible, from the cultural programming of progressives. The largest expense of Orthodox Jewish parents and the community as a whole is on the infrastructure of private schools that teach traditional values to their children. An Orthodox Jewish community is defined by its schools and its best and brightest go into Chinuch or Education.
But schools aren't enough. Orthodox Jews raise their children on their own books and their own music. Everything that children are exposed to from the youngest ages is supposed to come from within their own culture to such an extent that when Oprah visited a Chassidic family they had no idea who she was, or who Mickey Mouse and Beyonce were. Obviously this isn't universal and the degree of exposure varies, but retention rates and birth rates are highest among those with the lowest levels of progressive cultural exposure.
Modern Orthodox Jews, a group of which I am, obviously, a member, have the highest levels of cultural exposure, the lowest birth rates and the highest susceptibility to progressive views. The Modern Orthodox approach was viable in 1950s America where the outside culture was healthy, but I have come to question its survival value in an era where the culture is decaying and hostile to any form of traditional family values. Chassidic Jews, with the lowest rates of cultural exposure also have the highest birth rates and, unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, I have yet to meet a single liberal Chassid.
So is cultural secession the solution? For traditional Jews it might be, but for traditionalists as a whole, who have the demographic reach to turn the national numbers around, it can be a temporary solution until the numbers and the political power that goes with them are theirs. As with Orthodox Jews, there is a Christian culture industry, but it isn't enough to have positive messages as an alternative, it's equally important to cut out as many negative messages as possible.
Above all else, education is the future. Traditionalists who fail to understand this will allow the educational system and the entertainment industry to transform their children into progressives. Progressives know that control of the educational system means control of the future. Without the educational system and immigration, progressives are doomed to be cafe radicals. With them, they can count the generations until they control everything.
The progressives have few children of their own. Your children are their children. If they can corrupt your children, then they have a future. If they cannot, then they will go off and die in a corner. The progressives have three strengths, class warfare, cultural programming and immigration. America had prosperity that negated class warfare, but it neglected to safeguard its culture from the left and did not consider the consequences of Third World immigration. With their political and culture power, the left destroyed prosperity and now with all three cards in their hand, the progressives are rising high.
But too many conservatives have despaired because they have fallen prey to the myth of a perfect America that once was and can never be again. But America was never perfect, like every person, it was a work in progress. It was a struggle between ideas and ideologies and that struggle did not end because the progressives have worked and plotted to get this far. Defeating them is a matter of exploiting their weaknesses and firming up our strengths.
Most of the Republican Party remains unwilling to acknowledge that this is a cultural war. And it is. Culture is one of the things that the left is good at. It's an easy and profitable way for the left to pursue its ends. And it's fun. But it only works with captive audiences.
The left's cultural infrastructure is wired to feed its programming to an audience that sits there waiting to receive it and is willing to even pay top dollar for the privilege. Like every Iago, it has no idea what to do if Othello not only doesn't pay for the privilege of going to its schools and movies, but actively tunes it out and forms a community that makes its own entertainment and education.
Forget physical secession for the moment and think cultural secession. Physical secession, even if it were achieved, would do little good without putting cultural secession first. And if you cannot manage cultural secession, then how will you ever achieve physical secession?
Cultural secession means cutting away the educational and entertainment culture of the left out of your home. It means creating your own alternative education and entertainment and grouping in communities that act as a support structure for traditional values. Is it easy? No. It involves sacrifice. But groups such as the Amish and Orthodox Jews have done it and have thrived doing it.
Some wars are settled by guns, but cultural wars are settled by the schoolbook and the movie. They are settled by the family.
The progressive agenda is to destroy the family, to undermine it, ridicule it, economically disadvantage it and burden it until it falls apart and is replaced by the Big Brother of the State. The traditional agenda is to maintain the family and pass along traditional values across the generations. That is what this cultural war is really about; whether the family or the state will the defining unit of human experience.
The progressives are out to break the family, to slice it up in a thousand ways from the ghetto to the Castro. Everything they do is aimed at eliminating any rival to the state. The traditionalist goal has to be to form communities that are capable of preserving the family despite the power of the state. This is not easy and will become harder as time goes on. But it is what has to be done to reclaim the country.
Raising children within a traditional community is a revolutionary activity. It is an act of cultural and demographic defiance against the progressive state. The traditional community is becoming the new underground of progressive countries. It is the place where parents pass on subversive ideas to their children and teach them to pass on those same subversive ideas to their children.
Progressives want every child to grow up to be a slave of the state, thinking the same empty thoughts, laughing at the same things and trotting tamely along to the slaughterhouse. What they fear most is a future where the majority of children do not worship the state, do not accept their premises or parrot their propaganda. What they fear most is a demographic revolution.
Can American traditionalists quadruple their numbers in 40 years the way that the Amish will? Doing that will require taking lessons from the Amish, from Orthodox Jews and from other traditionalist groups that have found ways to build tight knit communities that protect their values and preserve their children. Building those structures is the hardest part. But once the structures are there, then the future is yours.
Taking back America demographically is a matter of having enough children within a cultural structure that passes down the values of adults to the children, while focusing on limiting immigration as much as possible. This isn't an impossible task.
The Amish population doubles every 20 years and they retain the majority of their children within their communities despite the obvious appeals of the outside world. There are 250,000 Amish in the United States and Canada now. By 2040 there will be over a million of them.
Utah has the highest fertility rate in the country and 9 out of 10 children are born to married couples. The Mormon Church is slowing down its expansion, and is having some retention and birth rate issues, perhaps due to its liberalization and growing investment in overseas missionary work, but its numbers are still a reminder of what is possible.
Demographics can be deceptive, because what we are really talking about are the economic and cultural factors that dissuade large family sizes and that alienate children from the values of their ancestors. What we are really talking about is a clash between progressives and traditionalists.
As an Orthodox Jew, I represent a group that is at the front lines of the clash. In the last century and a half, Jewish progressives have done everything possible to destroy Jewish religion, values and even nationhood. For half that time they were enormously successful, wreaking havoc across entire communities, using state power to force parents into their own schools, and building a literary and cultural infrastructure aimed at ridiculing and destroying traditional values.
They are still at it today, and their tactics and propaganda are as bad as they ever were, but they also losing. While the progressives embrace the culture of abortion and gay rights, the traditionalists have children. Within a decade, a majority of New York Jews will be traditionalist and the impact of that is already being felt in elections. The progressives have ramped up their usual hate campaigns against Orthodox Jews, which is why you see so many negative stories in the media, but the demographics of their progressive culture doom them to extinction.
This same outcome would have taken place nationally in the clash between American traditionalists and progressives, if not for the ace in the hole of immigration. And yet immigration is only half the picture. The bigger half of the picture is culture.
Would the Amish be who they are if in between plow breaks they were watching Reality TV and getting lessons on liberal values? Instead the Amish segregated themselves from the culture and have thrived because of it. And that can be done without completely abandoning technology as a whole.
Orthodox Jews built a cultural infrastructure to convey their values to our children while cutting them off, as much as possible, from the cultural programming of progressives. The largest expense of Orthodox Jewish parents and the community as a whole is on the infrastructure of private schools that teach traditional values to their children. An Orthodox Jewish community is defined by its schools and its best and brightest go into Chinuch or Education.
But schools aren't enough. Orthodox Jews raise their children on their own books and their own music. Everything that children are exposed to from the youngest ages is supposed to come from within their own culture to such an extent that when Oprah visited a Chassidic family they had no idea who she was, or who Mickey Mouse and Beyonce were. Obviously this isn't universal and the degree of exposure varies, but retention rates and birth rates are highest among those with the lowest levels of progressive cultural exposure.
Modern Orthodox Jews, a group of which I am, obviously, a member, have the highest levels of cultural exposure, the lowest birth rates and the highest susceptibility to progressive views. The Modern Orthodox approach was viable in 1950s America where the outside culture was healthy, but I have come to question its survival value in an era where the culture is decaying and hostile to any form of traditional family values. Chassidic Jews, with the lowest rates of cultural exposure also have the highest birth rates and, unlike Modern Orthodox Jews, I have yet to meet a single liberal Chassid.
Above all else, education is the future. Traditionalists who fail to understand this will allow the educational system and the entertainment industry to transform their children into progressives. Progressives know that control of the educational system means control of the future. Without the educational system and immigration, progressives are doomed to be cafe radicals. With them, they can count the generations until they control everything.
The progressives have few children of their own. Your children are their children. If they can corrupt your children, then they have a future. If they cannot, then they will go off and die in a corner. The progressives have three strengths, class warfare, cultural programming and immigration. America had prosperity that negated class warfare, but it neglected to safeguard its culture from the left and did not consider the consequences of Third World immigration. With their political and culture power, the left destroyed prosperity and now with all three cards in their hand, the progressives are rising high.
But too many conservatives have despaired because they have fallen prey to the myth of a perfect America that once was and can never be again. But America was never perfect, like every person, it was a work in progress. It was a struggle between ideas and ideologies and that struggle did not end because the progressives have worked and plotted to get this far. Defeating them is a matter of exploiting their weaknesses and firming up our strengths.
Most of the Republican Party remains unwilling to acknowledge that this is a cultural war. And it is. Culture is one of the things that the left is good at. It's an easy and profitable way for the left to pursue its ends. And it's fun. But it only works with captive audiences.
The left's cultural infrastructure is wired to feed its programming to an audience that sits there waiting to receive it and is willing to even pay top dollar for the privilege. Like every Iago, it has no idea what to do if Othello not only doesn't pay for the privilege of going to its schools and movies, but actively tunes it out and forms a community that makes its own entertainment and education.
Forget physical secession for the moment and think cultural secession. Physical secession, even if it were achieved, would do little good without putting cultural secession first. And if you cannot manage cultural secession, then how will you ever achieve physical secession?
Cultural secession means cutting away the educational and entertainment culture of the left out of your home. It means creating your own alternative education and entertainment and grouping in communities that act as a support structure for traditional values. Is it easy? No. It involves sacrifice. But groups such as the Amish and Orthodox Jews have done it and have thrived doing it.
Some wars are settled by guns, but cultural wars are settled by the schoolbook and the movie. They are settled by the family.
The progressive agenda is to destroy the family, to undermine it, ridicule it, economically disadvantage it and burden it until it falls apart and is replaced by the Big Brother of the State. The traditional agenda is to maintain the family and pass along traditional values across the generations. That is what this cultural war is really about; whether the family or the state will the defining unit of human experience.
The progressives are out to break the family, to slice it up in a thousand ways from the ghetto to the Castro. Everything they do is aimed at eliminating any rival to the state. The traditionalist goal has to be to form communities that are capable of preserving the family despite the power of the state. This is not easy and will become harder as time goes on. But it is what has to be done to reclaim the country.
Progressives want every child to grow up to be a slave of the state, thinking the same empty thoughts, laughing at the same things and trotting tamely along to the slaughterhouse. What they fear most is a future where the majority of children do not worship the state, do not accept their premises or parrot their propaganda. What they fear most is a demographic revolution.
Can American traditionalists quadruple their numbers in 40 years the way that the Amish will? Doing that will require taking lessons from the Amish, from Orthodox Jews and from other traditionalist groups that have found ways to build tight knit communities that protect their values and preserve their children. Building those structures is the hardest part. But once the structures are there, then the future is yours.
Comments
Americans no longer want children really. They marry late and limit kids.
ReplyDeleteThe problem with the Orthodox model is that it puts us in a cultural ghetto. If we are not engaged and part of the society, we allow ourselves to be deemed as outsiders. That has never been a good place for us to be.
ReplyDeleteWe need more kids. That's true. But we need to assume mantel of educational insurgents and take back academia. Without it, we cede to the progressives the a unity to dictate what is taught. Before the cultural shift in the 1960s and 1970s, the progressives were marginalized in academia. They eventually slid their way past the old guard. The same can happen again. It will take time.
it's a cultural ghetto only if you're a minority
ReplyDeletetaking back academia would be good, but it's a longshot at this rate
Sorry, Daniel, but the left is totalitarian. They will impose there will on religious schools. In fact, they started to do so in the 1970s. Businesses run by the religious will either have to do or financially support perverse things.
ReplyDeleteThe left does not propagate in America by having children. It does by stealing yours, and importing people with grievances or on welfare.
Again. Hit the nail on the hea. Having children is a pain in the ass. So the left has outsourced it to immigrants, and has focused its efforts on indoctrinating their people's kids to rebel against everything that made America the place that everybody wanted to immigrate to in the first place.
ReplyDeleteSame thing is happening up here in Canada. It's very fashionable to blame the West for all the world's ills, while daring to criticize backwards hellholes is an act of ethnocentrism,cultural imperialism and racism.
I fully plan on removing as much of the Left's influence on my child's development, to spare him the lost years I had to go through believing in the insane parallel universe that the Left convinced me of.
By the way, as an immigrant myself, I am sickened by people's knee jerk reaction to any criticism of immigration policy. Anything other than "Hey, immigrants are great. Let's bring in unlimited numbers of them", is again, you guessed it... racism. Suggesting any reasonable limits or measures to safeguard the country are dismissed as bigotry.
Absolutely sickening.
I do agree with AngryBell here: Even in Israel where the rest of the Jewish population has at least a smattering of understanding of the Orthodox culture but mostly very little sympathy for it, the truly orthodox do not partake in much of society except their women that earning the small and often insufficient family income. In a religiously mixed society like i.e. the USA the way the others would look upon orthodoxy if it grew would vary from contempt till outright hostility because of a complete lack of understanding the why and how of such a group. Also without interaction there is no contribution to society in it's entirety, nor could real orthodox groups sustain themselves once they have reached a critical number/percentage, look at Israel where the Haredim live in poverty and are sustained for a too large part by public funds.
ReplyDeleteIsrael is a country where traditional Jews are winning the demographic war. Religious Zionists and haredi Jews are having large families.
ReplyDeleteSecular Israeli Jews don't have as many kids. This shift is beginning to make itself felt at the polls. The Left is not winning too many Knesset seats and it looks to get only worse with time.
The Israeli Left in the 1950s and 60s thought traditional Judaism was a relic that would soon disappear. Instead, the opposite happened.
From today's perspective, the Left has the demographic clout. A few generations down the road, they are the minority. The very culture that has given them such influence is the same culture that also dooms them them to oblivion.
Is this not Marxist dialectics and is all this not contradictory? Yes of course it is - but it fully reflects life itself.
At the very least tune out their 'news' and don't buy their newspapers ... it's working; watch them go bankrupt one by one.
ReplyDeleteAnd the left warn us who do that about echo-chambers - the echo-chamber on the right - and even some conservatives seem to think it is important to engage the left.
But Daniel has pointed out something here: there are echo-chambers and there are echo-chambers. There are those that a life affirming, and those that are destructive. There are Amish and Chassidic Jews in the former camp and there are, as a prime example, modern day Episcopalians in the later - who even today can probably identify the last member ... who will turn off the light.
Consider the Jim Duggar family of Arkansas with 20-plus kids. If each of his kids follow in his footsteps, in two generations the offspring could number the amount of the election difference. This is how one man can change the world.
ReplyDeleteThat depends on who you're talking about. The MSNBC brigade would like nothing better than every 'undocumented worker' to have 9 kids.
ReplyDeleteA helpful and ultimately uplifting post. We can keep our values alive if we work at it.
ReplyDeleteI weep to realize how much of my character was formed by the prevailing culture of my youth--I was a teenager in the swinging 70s, part of the just-say-yes generation that thought it had invented the "counterculture." We called it that. We had no idea we were in the thrall of the same stupid self-worship that has befallen every idiotic teenager without sufficient role models who has ever walked the earth.
I weep to realize how much I didn't learn from my parents, especially my father, who held the views I do now but was himself influenced enough by our rotting culture to think it was right to be a permissive parent and not try to shape our views.
Several years ago I saw Patricia Hearst being interviewed on TV. She sounded extremely sensible, and I realized that although I remembered her kidnapping very well, I had no idea what had really happened. I read her book and was astonished to learn how different the story was from the way it had been portrayed in the news. She was brainwashed, and so were we.
RonL, they can try to impose their will. That's the subversive part of the equation.
ReplyDeleteMindRider, Haredim aren't the only possible group to imitate. That said, progressives already look at traditionalists with outright hostility.
Anonymous, indeed
Brett, definitely. Don't feed your enemies.
Trudy, that's why limiting or cutting off immigration has to be on the table.
Sarah, that is the dynamic that the left counts on, more so on the parental side, than on the teenager side. Getting the providers of values to doubt themselves and question their values.
"Europeans moved to a place that had formerly been populated by the descendants of Siberian refugees crossing over the Bering Strait."
ReplyDeleteThere is also some evidence suggesting that the first americans were from Europe and came 10000 years before the people from Siberia.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/new-evidence-suggests-stone-age-hunters-from-europe-discovered-america-7447152.html
http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2012-02-29/national/35443796_1_archaeologists-blade-stone-tools
Yes, on the plus side, "progressives" should theoretically cease to exist demographically because they discourage sexual activity that leads to procreation, and encourage any "sexual" activity that leads to extinction.
ReplyDeleteBut a big part of the problem is the war of words. For example, "progressive" sounds like a good thing, "liberal" sounds like a good freedom-loving thing. "Conservative" and "traditional" sound very limiting. Young people are attracted to the more positive-sounding words. So even if there is not an increase of "progressives" through procreation, there is an increase as a result of verbal propaganda.
I'm over 50 years old and only in my 40's realized that "Liberal" actually means wanting the GOVERNMENT to have more freedom, NOT the individual. A lot of "Liberals" think they're rooting for the freedom-loving side of the issues, when they're actually rooting for the opposite. The only freedoms that "Liberalism" is actually in favor of is abortion and alternative sexuality, both which lead to no natural procreation, which is right out of Brave New World.
I'm convinced the Liberal powers that be are actually just using the sexual issues to lure people in, and then BAM! those will eventually be controlled by the government too.
It is so very ironic to read this because these huge families that you tout as the way to defeat liberalism are usually extremely dependent on the benefits and subsidies that come with liberal governments. The Amish are a bit of an exception, but in both American and Israel the Hassidim are huge welfare leeches whose enormous broods are only possible because of such state subsidy, and Christian baby factories like the Duggars would be starving if it weren't for child tax credits and food stamps.
ReplyDeleteSome wars are settled by guns, but cultural wars are settled by the schoolbook and the movie. They are settled by the family.
ReplyDeleteI think both are necessary in order to recover the Republic.
fizziks,
ReplyDeletelarge families take welfare benefits if they exist, but historically those same large families existed without the benefits
Chassidim had large families in Russia and Eastern Europe when there was no such thing as food stamps.
Large families without an equivalent income source do mean poverty. For some it will even mean grinding poverty. But then again most people have lived that way throughout history.
That said there's a certain fitting irony to piggybacking a traditionalist revival on the left's social spending.
I agree Daniel, overpopulation only creates other problems.
DeleteI love your blog.. very nice colors & theme. Did you make this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you?
ReplyDeletePlz answer back as I'm looking to design my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from. appreciate it
Here is my site :: file management
An excellent call to action! I do believe that you, Daniel, have described a workable way to recapture our culture and nation. We need more discussion, planning and debate on this subject, but I do agree that waging an effective culture war is essential. That culture war will involve forming tight knit communities that filter out the progressive programming in both education and entertainment, and substituting our own in their place. Now, how do we do this? We can and will find a way!
ReplyDeleteThank you so much for this article. I've been having conversations about this topic with my 10-year-old daughter and now I have a better way to frame our discussions.
ReplyDeleteShe recently received a CD called "Songs we sang at Camp" or something, and it's full of 1960s radical progressive songs with Jewish themes like "Lo Yisa Goi" and "Blowin in the Wind." I mentioned to her that these songs are being used to try to undermine our traditional Jewish values but all she really hears is fun music. She said, "Mom, why do you always have to find negative things to say?"
Well kid, it's because the liberals insert their agenda into our lives in many tiny ways until we come to see their point of view as normal (she attends a Jewish Day school but it's really a lot more liberal than I wish it were). I'm trying to keep her mindful and aware of what's going on here. Why are we singing "Salaam?" Exactlt who is banning the cannon balls? I'm trying to save you!
Taking back the academic culture isn't a long shot, its an impossibility... for now. It took the left almost 100 years to get control of education. It will take a long time for us to get it back, but only if we try.
ReplyDeleteIn reading this, and then the comments, no one mentioned homeschooling. More people are homeschooling today than in prior years and would fit into the revolutionary sector.
ReplyDeletehomeschooling is indeed important and revolutionary
ReplyDeleteI took it for granted that it was one of the cultural secession approaches that people would utilize
This article is right on point. As someone with two children in the public high schools I can say that the "progressive" agenda is insidious. It worms its way into every book, every paragraph, the choice of literature, the way history is presented. On the surface, for example, their US History book looks like your old history book, the chapter headings are the same. Then you look inside and you will see the history of WWII is presented as a history of women, hispanics, blacks and native Americans during WWII. Whites only exist in opposition to the true "Allies": women, hispanics, blacks and native Americans. The war itself is barely touched. The real war a student will learn, was against the prejudice of US society at the time. This is not an exaggeration at all and it is only one example. It takes a tremendous effort to counter it because nothing you say is reinforced by the surrounding culture. Your version of history is not in their books, not in their movies, not on the TV screens. Your WWII may as well be the version written by unrepentant Nazis in terms of how it may be heard and received.
ReplyDelete@Passer by -- Fascinating citations! Thank you!
ReplyDeleteHow cam White Americans have more ( or even one child) when we are being taxed to death to pay for illegal invading mexicans and their multiple anchor babies. Demographics is destiny and we are giving ours away to third world invaders....
ReplyDeleteToday my week-old second grandchild followed his elder brother and entered into the covenant of mila (circumcision). Three of their grandparents are baale teshuvah (Jews who chose Orthodoxy though raised otherwise) and one is a lapsed Southern Baptist gentleman. All four of us were there and as proud as could be of our children, a Mir and Lakewood father (two prestigious men's religious colleges) and a Bais Yaakov and Maalot mother (excellent women's schools known for their piety and intellectual rigor as well). These little boys will grow up with very, very subversive values, bless them!
ReplyDeleteWell, Daniel, you certainly are better at making friends and influencing people than I am. A few posts ago, when I wrote the same thing, folks here called me an "idiot" and a "provocateur".
ReplyDeleteYou are wrong about both grinding poverty and control of education. Grinding poverty need not happen if an effort is made to build self-sufficient, closed communities. Take a State with a Homestead Law, like Louisiana. A community there pays no tax on its members' land. Assume this community grows most of its own food and exchanges goods and services internally, via a Local Currency (e.g. Ithaca Hour). A small town can exist in this manner without any of its inhabitants actually having ANY large reportable income. Believe it or not, this need not mean living in the 19-th century, either. The Open Society Project is tailor-made for the needs of those who do not wish to join "mainstream" society, but do not want to live like the Amish, either.
Now, extend this to education. All you need to educate people are books, blackboards, chalk and pencils. Everything else, even roofs and walls and desks, is optional. Why should American Christian conservatives send their children to Harvard? They can establish their own Harvard. The Mormons already have BGU, and we Jews have Bar-Illan and Ariel, and YU in America. A Jew need not join Chabad and refrain from teaching his children math and physics to shut out the chiloni poison. You can take the science and toss the culture. We ourselves learned the Pythagorean Theorem, but who here learned Pythagorean philosophy? It's been done before, you know. All the way back to the Rambam, and before.
Tired... So tired...
ReplyDeleteI'm tired of getting excommunicated from groups, that say they respect individuals and individuality, as soon as I say something threatening to the groups Identity.
Group think.....I'm at the point were I don't think we can form groups with out group identity taking over.
I'm Anarcho-Capitalist (But this is a label & now ever body going to expext me to be & act a certain way. More later.), because I think that system that will produce the strongest Individual able to live together. Not with out conflict, but with a means to settle disputes. Will everone get their way all the time, no!
Life not fair, and we will not and CAN NOT agree with each other one hundred percent of the time; unless, we want to get some form of hive-mind going.
Am I doomed to wander, from group to group, never quite fitting in; al á Road Warrior?
Do I build my Sea Steading, going Galt, until some outside group says I can't do that, because what if their members do the same?
So, with this in mind were does your plan leave me?
Culture(?) We are in a war of Ideals!
Culture is just the medium we fight in & maybe for. Must cultures agree on a lot main points & are just fighting over the details. It becomes a matter of us vs. them.
It has been said that we are on a sliding scale between Statism & Anarchy, but that is framing it politicly.
But in actuality it is a sliding scale between Slavery & Freedom/Liberty. The sweetspot is what Thomas Jefferson called Rightful Lyberty.
This is the Catch 22 that I'm living.
Groups don't create individuals (especially self-sufficient individuals they might leave the group) they create members & orthodoxy.
So, if you say I want to create the strongest individuals possible, groups and the people in them see it as a threat to their *identity* both individually and group.
So, I guess I'm screwed always to be an outsider? :-)
Josh,
DeleteWould you be interested in a group where instead of loyalty to the group, a pledge to support, defend and live Rightful Liberty was the primary requirement to be in the group? Where the members agree that peaceful arbitration is the best way to resolve disputes? Where free markets are considered the best way to provide goods and services? Where it is explicitly stated "no liberals allowed"?
If you are ok with it Daniel, I'd like to share some links to our group.
iiiCitadel.blogspot.com and iiiCitadel.com
We are pessimistic about the prospects for social, economic and political stability in the U.S., but don't want to just hide in a hole and despair. This article is incredibly timely. It perfectly describes the dilemma we face. We intend to do something about it.
As our response to this dilemma, we want to create something that can preserve and promote Rightful Liberty and free enterprise. Something that will preserve a core of civil society if worse comes to worse. We refuse to give up the ideals this country was founded on. We refuse to stay isolated and be picked off one by one, either literally or culturally. We will band together and support each other both physically and culturally.
This effort is less than five months old, so it is barely getting started. We intend to separate physically and culturally from liberal society but without secession and without cutting ourselves off from interaction with the rest of society. Ours is only one possible approach to the current situation you have described. We don't claim it is the best or that it is even suitable for more than a small minority of the population. It is simply the one that we choose.
Everyone involved is a volunteer and we truely believe we can make a difference. Please check it out and if the idea appeals to you, consider joining us.
VJ
this is the kind of article I've been waiting for from a master of social commentary...but I'm still somewhat disappointed...come out and say it Daniel! The progressives are led by the sodomites...they have invaded and basically taken over our media, our libraries, have invaded our school system so much so that we have to teach gay history in California schools...they have grabbed power in the Supreme Court (Kagan and Sotomeyer)..they are in control of the fashion industry where our women are have been butched up...they are the natural enemies of the Jews who represent the Biblical as the chosen ones...it was them who booed Israel and the inclusion of G-d in the democratic party platform...the abortion movement is a zealously guarded gay institution...Roe was lesbian...the feminism movement is a gay movement designed to create gender conflict...the gay movement is aty wart with the family and seeks in all its forms to stop the birth process...the sin of Sodom was that there was no children and the gays are the great corrupter s as ten righteous men could not be found in Sodom.. and like Sodom they have gotten the women to rebel from the traditional values... it is they who are denigrating jews everyday in the media and are out to destroy the Jewish homeland and Jewish reputations wherever and whenever they can...and it was they who were the secret enemies of the holocaust...they were the ones who relentlessly attacked the Jews in the German press...the same culture existed in Weimar as in today's society...abortion movement, women's lib, and a large gay society which as the great corrupter s caused a cultural breakdown which the Jews were blamed for and brought about the rise of a strongman (Hitler) to clean it up with an Aryan pride background...and the gays are constantly trying to paint the Jews as enemies of the state..this is what is meant by the word progressives
ReplyDeleteg-d gave the gays a certain kind of power to test our wills...and test our loyalty to Him...as the great corrupters they encroach on all the values taught by Judaism...followers of false principals, called the arch deceivers and arch villains by the rabbi's the are a choking veed...and the weed extends itself in all directions until everyone is perceived as dirty until a great upheaval occurs...(war) and the fractured society is in no moral shape to fight one...expecting the worse for their sins the downfall begins.. great empires lose their force and it begins from within...we, despite our weapons, are no different as we are up against a force beyond our comprehension... that force being G-d...unless the sodomites are brought to justice we are guilty of a lack of faith and a lack of loyalty...who, then, is on G-d's side? Start marching on the gay rights parades, the abortion centers, their inclusion in the military, the newspapers, their filthy movies and trashing of our libraries (witchcraft sections!) our disgraceful fashion industry...and other corruptions...do it before its too late..G-d warned Sodom for over fifty years before he destroyed that totally corrupted society...and our time is almost up...we all know the axe is going to fall...
ReplyDeleteThomas, it's a challenge. Living a life that most Americans expect to live will be a lot harder with a large family. It means doing without a lot of things.
ReplyDeleteAnon, Baruch Hashem
Moshe, there are indeed ways to reduce expenses and form viable communities. That said poverty will still often be a reality, even if relative poverty.
Josh, I'm not exactly a big grouper myself and I'm not thrilled to be proposing this, but I do see events approaching a last resort stage. I have little confidence that trying to win the fight within the culture is still viable. If you believe that it is, I'm happy to cheer you on. And this is not about cutting everyone else off, it's about fighting to preserve and revive what's left.
Anon, homosexuality is a symptom of cultural problems. Reducing it to the central focus is unhealthy.
Christopher, taking back the academic culture will require organization and hard work. I agree that it is doable, but it will not be easy.
ReplyDeleteThe left was ambushing America in the dark. We will have to go up against a ruthless and manipulative foe.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteWhy do I get a sense of historic déjà vu; like progressives were setting around in bars having this same discussion.
Why do I see similarities between the reasoning behind people like the young Bill Ayers & a lot of the IIIer's, both fill that only violent oposition to the government is the only path foward. This just pissed of most of the IIIer's, but both felt change was happning to slowly or not at all. Questin, and wat is older Bill Ayers doing right now?
Will libertarianism or Traditionalism be the new counter culture?
There is a reason I don't call myself a Libertarian and that is because it is so infested with Social-Anarchist that has lost it's rootes in clasic liberalism. I argue this with libertarian all the time.
I have a plan, and I'm irorning out the details.
Just some of the things/ideas flotting around in my head.
Take care,
Josh K.
Sultan: "Jewish progressives have done everything possible to destroy Jewish religion..."
ReplyDeleteI think you're on to something. Caught a story this weekend somewhere (CBS Sunday Morning show?) that was a blanket slam on the Satmar Hasids of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. Apparently a prominent rabbi is accused of sexual assaulting of a 12 year-old girl over some time.
Now, I have no idea whether he's guilty or innocent. I do know that the MSM was just salivating to report the story and use it as an opportunity to try and destroy the Hasids.
Funny how in the MSM you never, ever hear about a prominent union goon or a gay teacher molesting any kids. Nope, it's just the Catholic priests and rabbis that are doing all the diddling.
Hmmmm.....
Cheers from India Daniel,I love your clarity and coherence. This is hands down my favourite blog on the internet. Ever since I discovered your blog by accident 4 years ago, I have read almost every article of yours. Your blog was the most prominent factor in my change from liberal to conservative.
ReplyDeleteHowever now a question occurs to me that somehow evaded me for the last 4 years....What does Sultanknish mean? I tried googling it but to no avail.
Keep up the great job!
Josh, it already is the counter culture
ReplyDeleteMapper, forget union bosses, try Governor Jerry Brown, Harvey Milk and the Dem link to Jim Jones' child abuse.
Ever since Orthodox Jews came out against gay marriage, these stories have kept coming in, for the same reason they came in targeting Catholic priests.
Anon, welcome. Glad to have you as a reader. Sultan Knish has no meaning. It's an offhand joke.
Daniel,
ReplyDeleteIs it?
FYI: I like to think in questions as away to identified assumptions. Some/a lot of that last comment was half formed thoughts ping off what others have said/commented.
As Elisandra pointed out there is this war on words.
"Classic" Liberalism vs "Traditional" Liberalism.
For a lot of youth Libertarianism means freedom to do what you want with out responsibility, al a OWS vs Tea Party.
OWS is what the youth think liberty/freedom means.
Sarah Rolph's talking counter culture reminded me of Alex P. Keaton from the early 80 show Family Ties.
The danger, I see, with an isolationist aproach is a childs natural tendense to rebel as a way to form their own identity seperate from their parents. This is the *secrete* that the progressives have used to great effect.
I falls into what I think the focus of education should be, and that is on chritical thinking skils like logic, ethics, problem solving with a basics understanding of everything else. Any advocacy over the finer points should be left up to parents. Not exposing kids to defering points of view just might make them seem even more exotic when kids are exposed to them for the first time or out in the world on their own.
Hmmm...,
Josh K.
I don't believe a group such as the Amish is necessary to reclaim the children. All that is needed is the dedication of the parents. I give as an example my neighbors.
ReplyDeleteFather: German immigrant
Mother: Raised on an Alaskan homestead
Children: Two boys 14 & 16
I don't know the education background of the parents but I don't think either has much past high school. Ordinary intelligence.
I've known the two young men since the youngest was born. I call them young men because I can have a conversation with either at least on par as with a typical 20 yr old.
Both are home schooled and have always been at least two years ahead of their age group. Both are also bilingual.
The older one is the intellectual type and the younger one is the worker bee but both are excellent workers. The younger one is extremely interested in the work I do and if it wasn't for child labor laws, I'd hire him in a heartbeat for next summer.
I don't know whether these young men will end up liberal or conservative,but whichever I expect it will be a reasoned position.
If your neighbors only have two children, that's replacement rate.
ReplyDeleteDan,
ReplyDeleteThanks for the encouragement. My 3 daughters are homeschooled, and have been since birth. My son is older and we tried Private schools... Not good enough.
I'd like to have MORE kids... Now I know why...
Be well & God Bless.
excellent
ReplyDeleteThe Muslim population is growing in India while Hindus are buying into the one child or two kids tops socialist government policy. If it were not for the demographics jihad of Muslims, zero population growth for a country smaller than the US with over a billion peopl would be ok. But the only reason why Hindus of India are not in the pitiful state as their counter parts in Pakistan and Bangladesh is because of their current demographic dominance. Even with that Hindus of India are attacked on several fronts. The two usual suspects being the left and Muslims with the MSM also biased against Hindus. Sound familiar?
ReplyDeleteThat is the dilemma for Hindus of India. To have lots of kids when your country is over populated may be necessary to survive Muslims and the left but it will tax the resources of the country which is already reaching its limit.
Some thoughts (from a political independent):
ReplyDelete1. Not sure that this victory for Obama was all about demographics. Part of it was turnout - I think Republicans did not organize as effectively to get the vote out. Another was the skillful manipulation of power - the executive order on immigration as well-crafted and successful in getting Latinos to vote for Obama.
2. Republicans neglected what should be a natural vote for them: Asian Americans. The Chinese, Korean, Vietnamese and Indian immigrants should vote 3:1 Republican, at least, based on their values and interests. Instead they voted 3:1 Democrat, from what I read.
3. Attempting to win this war through long-term demographic change seems to me an impossible task if the system is rigged to inculcate Democratic Party values among the elite (which I agree, it is.) Fight the battle of ideas with websites, books - as you are. People with Harvard and Yale degrees can generally think on their own (or a reasonable number can.) I would guess a significant portion that spend enough time thinking about this will realize that their interests do not clearly lie with the Democrats. I know that I have made that transition despite many years of being steeped in an academic and social environment rigged towards Liberal Democrat ideology. I made the transition after reading blogs and articles such as yours and after some reflection. I bet there are others capable of discarding their blind allegiance.
Nobody who identifies as a Jewish traditionalist could possibly want to limit immigration "as much as possible". It was precisely arguments such as these that led to the draconian restrictions of immigration to the US during the mid-20th century, and as a result the Six Million had nowhere to which to flee. And
ReplyDeletemost immigration to the US is by quite traditional people: Christians from Latin America and the Philippines, and people from the mainland of Asia with strong traditional family values. Why should this not be considered racist?
Latin Americans actually rate high on Anti-Semitism according to ADL surveys. So I don't exactly see the Jewish immigrant for promoting the immigration of people who hate Jews.
ReplyDeleteNot to mention that Asian immigration includes Pakistan and Bangladesh. The sort of people who like to blow up synagogues.
That said, I believe in limiting immigration based on population outcomes, which is entirely reasonable and fair.
The progressive/totalitarian state relies on tax revenue to fund its propaganda, as well as to put sticking plaster on the ills that ensue.
ReplyDeleteOne can cut tax revenue.
Have more children, educate them with traditional values, then each election, more traditional politicians will win. They will be forced to reduce taxes. Long term strategy.
Go on a tax strike. All it requires is 30% of the tax paying people to go on a tax strike, and the progressive/totalitarian state will collapse.
DP111
This is, indeed, the long-term solution.
ReplyDeleteWe do need to think in terms of the longer view instead of rolling in self-pity and grief.
Great post, Sultan!
The Amish and Chassidic are strange. People do not relate to them. They are too set apart to the point of being sensed as alien, weird outsiders, no matter how many generations have lived in the US. As an insular minority that does not interfere with the majority they can be tolerated. Their insular world then poses no threat to the politics of the majority. But if they grow bigger and they impact the larger politics, they will gain the attention of the rest of the people and become a focus of that attention. Strange alien insular people have few allies. When politics gets hot they may find themselves alone.
ReplyDeleteNeither the Amish nor Chassidic are the models to follow. Having more kids and being active in teaching them values is one thing but do that while not making yourselves too alien, without isolating yourselves too much from the larger society.
Fizziks is wrong. The Duggars do not use welfare. They are self-supporting.
ReplyDeleteAnyone have any further suggestions for concrete steps, other than having plenty of kids, home-schooling, not partaking of the liberal media, possibly aiming to reduce dependence on taxable income, and creating communities of like-minded people? Even little ideas would be very welcome...
ReplyDeleteJ
J,
ReplyDeleteThat's a pretty good looking list of concrete action steps.
Here is a baby step idea. How about finding people who are already doing those things and hang out with them and give them moral support.
I led my Family in those steps starting 15 years ago, and it can be a lonely journey. Not many people really understand what we are trying to do, and frankly, I often don't have all or any of the answers and it is uncharted territory.
United we stand.
Go join up with other people already doing those things.
Be well,
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