...for your thoughts.
I am feeling rather directionless of late, and I wonder what is on your minds out there. What would you all like to read about or discuss?
I've noticed that certain topics on the forum draw very few views. One such subject area that people are staying away from in droves is immigration. Are we all burnt out on immigration these days? It is hard to discuss it without repeating oneself endlessly. I confess I am rather burnt out on the topic, but yet I know we can hardly afford to relax our vigilance.
Another subject that draws few comments is politics and the elections. There are a few desultory comments but not much real discussion on the forum. Over at Brave New World Watch, John Savage registers his displeasure and boredom with the elections and bloggers' commentary on the subject. I can sympathize, although I am by turns bored and irritated by the seeming gullibility I am seeing among conservatives regarding the 'electable' candidates. But I can see how one can be fed up with the whole election cycle. It's the most annoying campaign in my memory.
So is that a common feeling on the subject?
What should we be talking about more? What isn't being discussed that should be, or that you would like to discuss?
And finally: how do my readers feel about commenting here as opposed to over at the Forum?
Shall I throw caution to the winds and re-open comments here? I will for at least this post.
11 comments:
A topic that I think we would all like to talk about and see discussed seriously is WHAT TO DO ABOUT IMMIGRATION. How can we stop this monster? What practical steps can we as individuals take to make a difference in this matter. Talking endlessly about how wrong it is, and how it is destroying our society and our way of life, at some point simply becomes demoralizing.
Short of armed intervention, there do seem to be some steps that some people are taking that are having an effect. I am thinking about legislation in Oklahoma and Arizona specifically. How did that get organized and pushed through? I don't know, but I'd like to know. There was also a recent meeting in Oklahoma reported by David Yeakley to do some major consciousness raising regarding immigration. How did that get organized and put together? I don't know, but I'd like to know.
What can we do to take steps to make this nightmare come to an end? This is something that could very productively be discussed at length.
Dr. D, I agree with you that not enough is discussed about what action to take. I am afraid I am not the activist who can give much advice on those things. I know there is activism being organized via groups like ALIPAC and Save Our State, NumbersUSA, probably Fire Society and others. I think the important thing to do is to act locally, network with others in your area and contact local/county/state officials as appropriate, start a blog dealing with local activism or issues.
This is something that can't be done top-down; I had hoped that there would be more input of this type from readers on the forum, where readers can start discussions on anything they feel moved to discuss. Unfortunately not much of this is being done. The only thing I can suggest is to check out the activism that is being done locally or on the Internet.
Even if I were to attempt to organize people, the reality is we are scattered across the country and we have to connect with people near us, contact our local representatives, and involve ourselves in local politics.
-VA
Short of armed intervention, I'm not sure what is even possible at this point. The government refuses to do anything because the white elites want cheap labor or voters. I imagine that the secession movements on both the Mexican and white sides will gain strength, and balkanization will eventually occur. I don't see two mutually antagonistic groups (whites and Mexicans) occupying the same country for an extended period of time without some sort of problem.
Definitely leave the comments open. The link to the Forum isn't very prominent on the sidebar, and I'm not sure if people will find and use it.
PRCalDude, thanks for your response, and for your thoughts on the comment system. I know some people have been unable to access the forum and some prefer not to post there.
I hate to be pessimistic but I too tend to think that our electeds are intent on their course of action and our efforts and influencing the system are destined to be ignored and flouted. I base that opinion on their actions so far -- or their inaction, as may be.
However on the off-chance that normal political activism might have some good effect (we can only try) I hesitate to discourage anyone from doing anything. I think our 'leaders' would like to see us demoralized and passive, so they can act completely unimpeded. Actually they do act unimpeded anyway, don't they?
I think we have to try every legitimate avenue, if only for our own peace of mind, to say that we did all we could reasonably do. But I tend to agree that we are headed toward balkanization along ethnic/racial lines. I suppose our government's frantic efforts to bring in as many ethnic groups as possible is probably a way of trying to neutralize some of the clashes by making no one group the dominant majority. Otherwise it makes no sense.
-VA
I think a lot about what I think is the closing of the era of post-WWII collective security, energy independence of the U.S., a Europe with far fewer illusions about human nature, and a West with a far greater sense of its own excellence.
Law schools pump out brigades of students who have no appreciation of the fundamentals of preserving liberty or of the wholesale abandonment of the federalism established in the un-"interpreted" Constitution of 1789. Even less is done to teach Americans about liberty. "Freedom" is something vaguely associated with the triumph of arms not legal protections and is something no more specific than burgers and hot dogs on the Fourth.
The "lesson of Naziism" turns out not to have been learned at all and Europeans act now as though every last one European during the War was actively involved in exterminating the Jews. They too fervently believe that "discrimination" was what caused all the killing and so resolve never again to discriminate. That National Socialism was a radical leftist phenomenon and an example when you let the horse of excessive state power out of the barn (or the genie out of the bottle) is not understood or held up as an object lesson. The E.U. rushes to centralized, unaccountable government.
In the U.S. we did the same -- bent ourselves into a pretzel to avoid the deadly sin of discriminating and our politics became hugely distorted as we failed to acknowledge the egregious behavior of the underclass, failed to defend white rights against the claims of the race baiters, failed to proclaim the superiority of Western culture, and failed to object to immigration policies that will make whites a minority in the blink of an eye.
The ineffectual U.N. and the degree to which it caters to the despots and flakes of the world only illustrates the failure of the idea of collective security and the mistake we made in forming a parallel organization of democracies.
Finally, the post-WWII paradigm, to use that $25 term, did not include consideration of Islam as there was no need to consider a political ideology that had no hope of organizing an effective economic or political challenge. That absolutely correct perception is now challenged by utterly barbarous people who enjoy worldly influence and power only as a result of the accident of their being born over oil bearing strata.
Whether you agree with all or none of the assessments, I still think there are other examples that can be cited to illustrate how the present is dominated by ideas came out of the politics and realities of that earlier time or that grew up behind the protection afforded by the existing or remaining vitality of the West. Some of the latter are positively destructive.
I thus am little inclined to pay close attention to the campaign as it, and the 2006 election, seems about nothing. The long-term danger of a large Muslim presence here, the influence of Saudi money on our foreign policy, the decrease in the white population from 89% to 67%, the history of Islamic slaughter, out sourcing of manufacturing capability, whether we are preparing adequately to meet the challenge of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, and reliance on supranational organizations for peacekeeping, to name a few issues, simply will not be discussed in the coming months.
I think it useful to consider to what extent old thinking is now harming us and keeping us from making a healthy shift. Above all, I think it vital that we fiercely embrace all that is necessary to ensure that we speak the absolute and stark truth about immigration and the deleterious influence of the ideology of victimhood as described it so well.
9/11 was something of a ball peen hammer on an immensely stressed geological fault line. It wasn't big enough to effect the salutary shift in the position of the plates, so the tension of outmoded ideas is still building to high levels. I fear that our national blindness, or unwillingness to fearlessly consider new paths, is going to require us to experience something far worse than 9/11 before we will have the courage to consider abandoning our beloved intellectual fairy tales.
We've been eating our seed corn, if I may switch imagery here. A lot of complete insanity has been tolerated, even embraced, behind the shield of the old. But few think today to maintain the shield. We will realize the high cost of the failure when the U.S. turns into a Third World slum that is nothing more than a random goulash of the cultures whose standard bearers decided on their own that it was their right to move in and set up housekeeping.
Colonel - very impressive assessment there. It could be the basis for a blog entry on your blog.
I agree with most of what you say, especially the part about the harmful influence of 'old thinking' , at least if I understand your meaning there. What I understand you to mean (and I may be wrong) is the 'old thinking' which is manifested in political correctness, etc. Or do I have it backwards?
Thanks for your response; very thought-provoking.
-VA
VA --
You're overly kind wrt something that struggles for simple coherence.
No, it's not PC. That's just an example of something in the culture that actively impedes understanding. As Confucius said, "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names." PC prevents that.
Then there are activities that actively create falsehood and confusion. An example of that is this from Richard Morgan's Disabling America. The "Rights Industry" in Our Time (1984):
"Societies are sometimes disabled totally and suddenly [as a result of war or natural disaster]. More often, they are progressively disabled in a viariety of subtle, interlocking, and marginal ways [to which process the rights industry contributes in pursuit of costless innovation which process is often couched in technical language incomprehensible to even educated Americans]."
So, we have prevention of understanding and active clouding of the understanding (or exclusion of people not of the priesly caste from intellectual participation in determining operating principles).
What I am talking about is a third thing. The failure of society to adapt its thinking to new realities. Visions of WWII naval armadas, nuclear detonations over Japan, and countless other images of American technical military prowess dance in the heads of citizens. But these are images that are of an era long past or one about to change significantly.
Consider: China practices shooting down spy sattelites with its missiles, Pakistani and North Korean scientists (and European firms) work to spread nuclear weapons technology, a disgusting Saudi regime sponsors terror and subversion with vast unearned wealth obtained from their betters, vast numbers of Third World immigrants are allowed in next to the Western hearthstones pursuant to utterly deranged policies, Westerners illogically see that all of Western civiliation, not just an abberant bastard child of that civilization, is responsible for the Holocaust (with endless atonement due to Muslim immigrants), and the vast elaboration of rights and the weakening of the ability of the U.S. governments to maintain order . . . .
These are new realities that have snuck up on those people who think that the sons of Bull Halsey, Patton, and McCarthur are just waiting for the call to step in and apply some of the old knowhow and industrial capacity to make all irritants go away. Our politics are frivolous. Our lives pleasant but made possible by a very long holiday from the realities of the world made possible by two huge oceans.
The failure to come to grips with these vast changes is what is going to bite us sooner rather than later.
I have written about this as being comparable to the perception Chinese have had at times in their history that the emperor had "lost the Mandate of Heaven." Even in times when there were no mass media, ordinary people came to understand that something had gotten out of whack and withdrew their support.
I think we're at a similar divide. The current campaign (and very possible the next three campaigns) will not discuss the implications of 25,000,000 illegal immigrants (the U.S. equivalent of Rotterdam's having become 40% Muslim). This is the equivalent of a slow nuclear blast over the U.S. (and the Netherlands) but . . . post-WWII thinking is paralyzing decent people.
(Our excessively generous nature has led us also to favor that "bastard kind of generosity, which, by being extended to all men, is as fatal to society, on one had, as the want of true generosity is on the other." "The Crisis. Number III" in Common Sense, Rights of Man, And Other Essential Writings of Thomas Paine . Signet Classics, 2003, p. 81.)
I've no doubt exceeded your useful attention span. Suffice it to say, the current debate over which leader and which direction to choose is not illuminating. The stampede to the center, to the nonedescript is on in earnest.
Right now, I say we're paralyzed by the Unanalyzed Is. We debate the future as though the Is is natural and the time honored.
It's neither.
VA, i have been feeling rather flat and disenchanted recently - and even paranoid. A few people on the internet .. quite isolated and powerless - easily tracked down. But after your absence - you came back with some great posts. And the forum seems to be picking up - so i will start contributing there. Though i shared your concerns about the forum - especially as it was dropped in your lap rather.
'Face it, face it, always face it' as Joseph Conrad i think put it :)
(the commenter formerly known as james c).
Colonel - another comment with a lot to ponder and chew over. Your posts really do demand some thought so it isn't possible to give a quick response. I will re-read and consider your words.
kindred - so that's you. I wondered if you had dropped out after the changes here on this blog. Glad to see you are still with us.
I sometimes go through the moods you describe. I think a lot of us do.
The forum is still slow at times, but things have picked up a little, and I still have mixed feelings about it. I am hoping it will take on a life of its own without needing my constant efforts.
I hope you will participate, whether here or over there, or both.
-VA
VA --
My input borders on being an imposition for its length. A long way of saying that outmoded thinking is bad for you and that the center is getting more and more friable. One whisp at a time, the blogosmear is attempting to tweaze out the problem with the old and to point to new ways. And I get impatient with the excessive focus of some on the campaigns, which are light years from being any kind of a serious forum. Why not just issue all of them bathing suits and have them play the piano and be done with it?
I don't expect a response any more than I would to the observation that "Dark matter appears to play a part in influencing events in the universe."
O/t, may I commend Americans Against Hate? Joe Kaufman is very into doing his homework on All-American Islam. I just ran across him at FPM.
This can't have effect in actual fact, that's exactly what I suppose.
astronomie
Post a Comment