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The Sacred Capitol
What is the legitimacy of the government of the United States based upon, if not from the consent of the governed?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xA62Daxv1Mg
Well said. As it so happens, I just got through the first 18 chapters of Locke's Second Treatise just today. It's been really fun after trudging my way through Leviathan recently.
What They’re NOT Telling You about the Eclipse
https://odysee.com/@AwakenWithJP:9/what-they%E2%80%99re-not-telling-you-about-the:8
Remember, when the Moon eats the Sun tomorrow, it's everyone's duty to make it spit it back out...
Irish Patriots Defeat Antifa and Find Feds
https://rumble.com/v4o7sg0-irish-patriots-defeat-antifa-and-find-feds.html
The Behavioural Sciences and the Populist Revolt - Ben Pile on The Corbett Report
https://rumble.com/v4odrk8-the-behavioural-sciences-and-the-populist-revolt-ben-pile-on-the-corbett-re.html
Joining us today is Ben Pile of The Net Zero Scandal and Climate Debate. We discuss his recent article, "Behavioural Scientists Aren’t Just Wrong About How to Win Over Electorates to Crackpot Progressive Policies; Their Evident Contempt for the Masses Has Contributed to the Global Populist Revolt" and what it tells us about the out of touch elitists of the globalist technocratic jet set . . . and why they are losing the war for the public's hearts and minds.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2SSVIg4Noqc
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TCSCJtuyfUY
And now for the Weekend Update...
The Anatolian Myth of Illuyanka
Text and notes: https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/handle/2027.42/77487
Story and commentary: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9UqmQJ-VkbI
Last week, Abraham bought from Ephron the Hittite his field and the cave of Machpelah that sat thereon to bury his dead for 400 shekels of silver, and so I figure this would be an opportune time to look at the Hittites. It is unclear if there is a link between the Biblical Hittites and the eponymous historical empire. The first are identified as the children of Heth (second son of Canaan, who was the youngest son of Ham, and who was singled out for a curse by his grandfather Noah on account of Ham's indiscretion), while the latter take the name from the Hatti people and the city of Hattusa in central Anatolia, and their identification with the Biblical Hittites in the 19th century because of the similarity of names (Hatti and Hetti). The Hittite Empire fell with the phenomenon known as the Bronze Age Collapse (c. 1177 BC), although a group of Neo-Hittite states survived in southern Anatolia and the northern Levant for several centuries into the Iron Age, which were Aramaean and Luwian in culture.
I think Biblical tradition places Abraham at roughly 2000 BC, which actually precedes the historical Hittite Empire (c. 1750-1178 BC), and moreover their occupation of the northern Levant, let alone their collapse and the establishment of the Neo-Hittite states. On the other hand, Israel principally emerges in the historical record during (or just prior to) the early Iron Age and these northern Levantine Neo-Hittite states would likely be relevant in the formation of any associated traditions during this period. Given how early in the project I am, I'd prefer to err on the side of older works, from which I thought I'd pull the stories of Illuyanka this week.
In these stories, the Storm-god of Nerik (in north-central Anatolia near the Black Sea) battles a great primordial serpent called Illuyanka as the central ritual around the spring festival of Puruli. Normally, the Hittite storm god would be Tarḫunna, although it is also closely identified with the Luwian Tarḫunz from southern Anatolia and the Hurrian Teshub; however, in this account, the only named identification I've seen is with Zaliyanu, which is supposed to be the name of a divine mountain responsible for bestowing rain on the city. The actual work is rather short. In addition to a transliteration of the Hittite text, and several pages of notes, the pdf available through the link only has about three pages of a translation that is highly fractured in places and split between two stories. However, I found what I think is a good podcast that discusses some of the nuances around the story while making a reasonable compromise between creatively filling in the gaps and staying faithful to the original work found in Catalogue des Textes Hittites (CTH) 321.
Tucker: Klaus Schwab, Transgenderism, and AI | Russian Philosopher Aleksandr Dugin
https://twitter.com/TuckerCarlson/status/1785066534995714067
On the big ideas, I think Dugin has a lot of it right. However, on the conceptualization of his terms, I've come to favor different models. His horseshoe theory of individualism sounds to me like an attempt by people to behave like individualists and who then fail to do so - that is instead of making decisions independently based upon reason and prudence, they make reflexive decisions that might be described as counter-cultural or anti-social; maybe a sort of hipster take on individualism.
With liberalism too, what's old is new again. The difference between classical liberalism and modern liberalism isn't the difference between the sane liberalism of yesteryear and the postmodern utopianism and/or nihilism of the present. Prior observers have already identified that classical liberalism has two faces. Hayek drew the distinction between the British tradition and French tradition, while Thomas Sowell would present these as the constrained vision and unconstrained vision, respectively. A more precise terminology is required than old versus new or classical versus modern liberalism because these are profoundly different ideologies sharing common labels, and a more or less coterminous history of oscillating prominence. I don't know if it's the best hill on which to plant one's flag, but I've heard James Lindsay go as far as to declare Rousseau was not even a liberal, which has some truth to it but which defiantly informs centuries of historical tradition that it's wrong. Whatever language we settle on, it seems to me that the classical liberalism which Tucker defends is of the constrained vision, while the liberalism towards which Dugin is hostile is the unconstrained.
As for Russia, it is my perception that a decision to return to tradition is a part of the animosity of the progressive West; however, I think Dugin got closer to the real motivation in his identification of Russia as a strong sovereign state. My principal lens for interpreting Western relations with Russia right now is globalism - namely, the chief globalist goal is to both consolidate power to globalist institutions and to simultaneously weaken any entity willing and able to resist globalist agendas. The end goal is a maximum entropy order where no state or any other entity has the wherewithal to resist domination by the collective. So long as powerful sovereign states are useful as leaders and enforcers of the globalist agenda they can remain stable, albeit very tightly controlled even as the underpinnings of their society are compromised, but when they seriously attempt to shake off globalist control, they must be weakened and punished. (I also entertain the idea that commies and fellow travelers are salty that the Russian people rejected glorious communism, and therefore now act out of a spirit of revenge.)
He is correct that liberalism is at fault to a degree but where I diverge from him is that I believe that the problem is our obsession with innovation and revolution. In individualist countries that means taking individualist values to an extreme, of course.
However, in all countries of the West, destructive revolutions are lionised and when leftist run out of causes to fight for and win they have to artificially create new ones. There is where we go wrong: in calling for revolution when none is needed.
Eventually, we begin to deconstruct all that is built.
I blame progressivism, though.
Progressivism is entirely unnecessary. Debates between conservatives and liberals would completely suffice. Progressivism is destructive and suicidal.
Genesis (Biblical Hebrew: בְּרֵאשִׁית, romanized: Bərēʾšīṯ, lit. 'In [the] beginning') chapters 37 - 50
AudioEbook: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgFT_IxwJJY&t=8597s
Text: https://quod.lib.umich.edu/cgi/k/kjv/kjv-idx?type=DIV1&byte=1477
This concludes the book of Genesis largely discussing the story of Joseph, favored son of Jacob (Israel) who was hated by his brothers, sold into slavery, and rose to become the Pharaoh's most powerful and trusted official. As this book leaves off, the Hebrews are in Egypt, as honored guests of the Pharaoh, where they will remain for 430 years (according to Exodus).
A very interesting event is described here, which we would do well to heed. Beware spoilers:
Joseph, as Pharaoh's faithful administrator, directs a fifth of all the yields of Egypt to be stored during the seven years of plenty in preparation for the seven years of famine. And as the famine afflicted all lands, the food that had been stored was sold back to the Egyptian people as well as those from all other countries. In time, the money was said to fail in Egypt and Canaan, even as the famine continued and so Joseph offered to exchange cattle and other livestock for bread, and when that was exhausted, the people exchanged themselves and their lands for food. In this way all of Egypt, save for the lands of the priests, became Pharaoh's, and thereafter, a fifth of the productivity of the Egyptians was given to Pharaoh.
And so to recap, a 20% tax is levied on the Egyptian people in preparation for the coming famine. Meanwhile, it kind of sounds like the purpose of this is not public knowledge, so the people don't know the importance of saving and capital formation at this time. But assuming secrecy may also be reading too far into it. Then afterwards, the people are allowed to buy back their product that was taken through taxation, even to the point of selling all their lands and themselves into servitude. It almost sounds like some kind of big socio-economic reset powered by people's own expropriated productivity.
Of course, Joseph was a faithful agent of his benefactor, from whom he had been entrusted with this task, and in the process Joseph brought him great prosperity while saving the people from starvation. So there's that. Nonetheless, there's probably a lesson to be learned here about how to (not) set out upon the road to serfdom.
Carl Benjamin - Why Liberalism Leads to Communism
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gDqr6TxIKuY
Liberalism =/= the unconstrained vision
Hobbes, who preceded Locke, was of the unconstrained vision (at least as it pertained to the authority of the sovereign person of a commonwealth). Rousseau, who succeeded Locke, was of the unconstrained vision. As an intermediary of these social contract theorists, Locke's primary role is the rehabilitation of the state of nature (better considered as a thought excise than an pre-societal anthropological stage) from Hobbes's war of all against all to a state of nature that he explicitly differentiates from the state of war. In it, he posits an individual in this state of nature enjoys both freedom and equality. This equality is not a prescription, but an observation that those who are neither in a state of war nor in a civil society will be equally free to conduct themselves. It also does not imply that every individual will have the same material benefits, as this is the result of mixing one's labor with the provisions of nature, and constitutes property, from which another is proscribed from expropriating in the state of nature, lest one enter into a state of war.
Say what you will about Rousseau. He is for certain a paving stone in the road to communism. He had an irrationally romantic view of the state of nature and Man's goodness, and his theory of the general will can be used to rationalize virtually anything done in its name.
But I simply see no major errors in Locke's liberalism, save but for inspiring (but not causing) Rousseau's own errors. To blame liberalism is not productive. Locke isn't responsible for Rousseau, and the philosophers of the constrained vision for the most part aren't responsible for the abuses of the unconstrained vision, let alone these useful idiots who call themselves liberals today, but who are bereft of knowledge of their own purported philosophy. The problems we see today do not have their origins in ideology (not even communism). Their origins are with the cyclical nature of society and prosperity, an unmooring from the accumulated knowledge and wisdom of countless past generations, and the ease with which people can be enticed to foolhardy ideas that sacrifice long term well being for what feels good in the moment.
Obviously Benjamin is not condemning classical liberalism for being liberal. He is explaining why the very concept of liberty is a slippery slope for communism.
That being said, I still am not a fan of Locke since his theory presupposes individualism and social homogeneity.
I know he mostly meant equal opportunity but it is still utopian.
Okay. So, I think I'm having difficulty pinning down the meaning of 'leads to'. Did Marx and other communists use some of the theory and terms of the liberals, critiquing it and altering much of it to suit their ends and worldview? Sure.
So then, could it then be said that liberalism also leads to a Burkean articulation of conservatism?
You're saying that his theory doesn't work when people aren't individualists or when society isn't homogeneous? Or are you referring to the end state it brings about?
That's interesting. I tend to think of him as an optimizer. What is your measure of being utopian?
No, because conservatism was never meant to bring equality. Liberalism presupposes it in opportunity (under the Law). It is a pleasant fiction which the marxists then exploit to justify morally how said equality needs to extend to outcome.
Correct. You cannot be equal under the Law or assume the implementation of laws will be equally predictable when the society is too heterogeneous.
That individual meritocracy is universal and results in stable societies.
The rest of the world is not the North Sea...
Liberalism doesn't just value equality. Commonly, it is characterized by a cluster of values that can be tenuously related to one another. Didn't Burke, as an Old Whig, express some values that were promoted by the liberals before him that differed from older conservative sensibilities?
Certainly the predictability of a law's effect will be more varied with a more heterogeneous population, but surely a reasonable approximation of equality under the law is achievable when that is a value held in common, or imposed by a government that is less responsive to public opinion? And if social cohesion is too weak to hold together a heterogeneous society, then it will be prone to fracturing into more homogeneous subdivisions would it not? Or should the goal be to hold the heterogeneous society together?
So, meritocracy must be a widely held value as a condition of (Lockean) liberalism's successful implementation? Within this scope, it would preclude certain societies from its effective practice (at least until they have meritocracy as a common value), but it doesn't seem to invalidate it in particular others. I have trouble seeing how this is utopian.
Absolutely but there is an important distinction to be made: he valued liberal principles in a society which had formalised and internalised them.
In other words, he valued traditional liberties for being traditional and not for being liberties.
Indeed, when analysing France, he defended a number of inequalities for being traditional as well.
Both are possible.
India was never held together thanks to common values.
Conversely, many an empire collapsed due to separatism; the Austro-Hungarians, for instance.
For me at least, utopia follows from the artificial presupposed fictions that liberalism requires.
Whereas conservatism is much more particular and realistic in its application.
So then, in addition to having equality as a value, liberalism is objectionable because (at least as far as the social contract theorists are concerned) it is justified through a theoretical framework, as opposed to being something in the observable world? Suddenly, I'm getting flashbacks of the MBTI Sensing versus Intuitive dimension (INTP, btw).
Still, I must take issue with Carl Benjamin's choice of semantics. Yes, I'm aware of the historical lineage between liberalism and communism. There are historical figures who were either liberal or at least take much of their instruction from liberalism whose ideas then go on to be the basis for communism. But to say that liberalism leads to communism is deceptive. If this is a statement of history, I can be amenable to liberalism led to communism (although I still am of the opinion that there is a great historical error afoot when no distinction is made between constrained liberalism of the British tradition and the unconstrained liberalism of the French tradition - it's the unconstrained vision that led to communism, among other things, while the constrained vision was of a more libertarian nature and its legacy also became at least partially integrated into some conservative traditions of the former British Empire). But to say that liberalism 'leads to' communism, in the present tense, is to assert more than history. It sounds like an assertion that liberalism of any time, place, and species is always sliding leftward towards the communist abyss, or that liberalism is only an intermediate logical step, of which communism is its ultimate fulfillment. I simply can't sign off on these ideas.
I'm not entirely sure if we're operating with the same idea of utopianism. I associate it with ideas that either ignore or require an outright rewriting of the constraints of reality, or in a looser sense, require significant violations of moral precepts (the proverbial cracking of eggs to make an omelette).
But moving on from the semantics of utopianism, is the Lockean praxis dependent upon artificial fictions, or are these observable preconditions that can arise, and historically have arisen, by organic means? It seems like this sort of liberalism works quite well in particular applications.
I don't think he is being that predeterministic. I think what he meant is that liberalism is suggestible to progressivism. As long as progressivism was a hokey cokey fringe isolated trend, liberalism was able to keep its integrity but now it has become completely ideologically permeable to progressivism.
Agreed.
Liberalism rewrites all societies where its implementation is attempted though, doesn't it?
In very peculiar ultra-individualist homogeneous societies, I suppose, it can work.
Truth be told, I'm not sure I can precisely isolate any meaningful difference between classical liberalism of the French tradition as expressed in the French Revolution and progressivism. The revolutionaries wanted to grant themselves novel positive rights (entitlements), much as a progressive would, and the Rouseauian general will was to be unbound by any constraint, which is the same mentality that produces the American progressive's contempt for constitutional limitations. This sort is not only susceptible to progressivism, I think they could have always been progressives from the outset. And it seems like it is this vein of liberalism, in which we see the neo-Marxist attack make its advances.
As an ideology, it would have a prescriptive vision for the ordering of society. However, I don't think that it is uncommon as an ideology in this regard.
And while a government can promote the foundational conditions that enable liberalism to flourish, it can't force these conditions upon a people. The people have to make this choice themselves, and if they choose against it, liberalism will give way to something else.
It seems like it worked rather well for a time, with caveats, in 18-19th Century Britain and was instrumental in the formation of the United States, where it was dominant until the Progressive Era. Even when the classical form of American liberalism diminished in popularity, its legacy remained and influenced its successor ideologies. I also think that it is important to keep in mind that despite being under assault now, these have historically been among the most resilient societies against Marxian and post-Marxian ideology.
The Instruction of Ptah-hotep and the Instruction of Ke'gemni of the Prisse Papyrus and the Instruction of Amenemhê'et (Amenemhat) by Vizier Ptah-hotep (the elder), Vizier Ke'gemni (dubious), and Amenemhat I (dubious, most likely a scribe of his son Senusret I)
Translation by Battiscombe G. Gunn: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/30508/30508-h/30508-h.htm
Ptah-hotep Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mazTcX8Xsk8
Ke'gemni Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBW05-7xbqs
Amenemhat Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tn-hWwyuSGw
The Prisse Papyrus is a papyrus scroll discovered by the inhabitants of Kurna in the rishi coffin of pharaoh Sekhemre-Wepmaat Intef of the 17th Dynasty, and given to the French Egyptologist Émile Prisse d'Avennes at Thebes and published in 1847. It contains the only complete surviving copy of the Instructions of Ptah-hotep, as well as the last two pages of the Instructions of Ke'gemni.
The Instructions of Ptah-hotep are thought to be from around 2375-2350BC during the rule of King Djedkare Isesi of the Fifth Dynasty (Old Kingdom). The instructions are a set of maxims thought to be from Vizier Ptah-hotep to his son, who was to succeed him as vizier, in order to instill in him wisdom that otherwise would only come with age.
The Instructions of Ke'gemni are alleged to be by one Ke'gemni, vizier to Pharaoh Sneferu (r. 2613–2589 BC) founder of the Fourth Dynasty. However, current dating estimates it to originate during the 12th Dynasty of the Middle Kingdom (possibly around 1900 BC). Like the Instructions of Ptah-hotep, the Instructions of Ke'gemni are ostensibly intended to be a collection of maxims for the son of the vizier, and its surviving text instructs against giving offense.
Gunn included the The Instructions of Amenemhat as a contrast against the other two from the Prisse Papyrus. This work has been interpreted to either be written late in the life of Amenemhat I, or more likely after his death and delivered as a ghost, to the benefit of his son, Senusret I, who likely commissioned it. Its contents detail Amenemhat's accomplishments and counsel his son to trust no one.
How the Canon Defines Culture | 5/8/2024
https://odysee.com/@AuronMacIntyre:f/how-the-canon-defines-culture-5-8-2024:7
I know, I know. I'm working on it.
Entitled Women RAGE Over New Dating Trend Going Viral On TikTok! Men Are Turning The Tables!
https://www.bitchute.com/video/wGUmhZmYNXs/
Kings?
The Machinery of Fascism Revisited
https://brownstone.org/articles/the-machinery-of-fascism-revisited/
Discusses the Vampire Economy by Günter Reimann and As We Go Marching by John T. Flynn
War and Foreign Policy: Top-5 Influences on the Founders
https://odysee.com/@TenthAmendmentCenter:6/path-050824:a
Another great topic from TAC.
Windows User FAQs about Linux
https://odysee.com/@switchedtolinux:0/windows-user-faqs-about-linux-2:1
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