Tag: fascism

Collectivism Addiction – The US Society Circles the Drain

The masses have been sold that collectivism, the whole “Diversity and Inclusion” agenda (typical these days to name things opposite of what they actually accomplish, like war on terror, war on poverty, Anfifa and BLM), has been projected to make a better tomorrow, for the “greater good”.

Puke. Anyone with critical thinking skills knows that people are unique individuals, endowed by their Creator with unique talent and gift set, that in community with others “can” achieve amazing things to the benefit of society. Most of the time, this is serendipitous, luck or I contend, a God-arranged group for such a time. Think militias in South Carolina colony that kept Cornwallis behind in his agenda to roll up the southern colonies and join Clinton in the north to finish off George Washington.

From an eight year old article in Lew Rockwell’s web site ( ‘The Scourge of Collectivism’ ) comes some pretty accurate critique of this whole collective approach to life, that no doubt only benefits the ruling elites in the long term.

Unless a man has talents to make something of himself, freedom is an irksome burden. Of what avail is freedom to choose if the self be ineffectual? We join a mass movement to escape individual responsibility, or, in the words of the ardent young Nazi, “to be free from freedom.”

~ Eric Hoffer

Yes, Nazism is pure collective and totalitarian thought. You can group this with Fascism, Socialism, Communism and even Democracy.

As Butler Shaffer pointed out in the past in his great article titled Collectivist Utopias:

“All political systems are socialistic, in that they are premised upon the subservience of individual interests to collective authority.”

Politics is the place where good ideas go to die. I have seen this inside big business, small churches and the US government.

“Collectivism holds that, in human affairs, the collective — society, the community, the nation, the proletariat, the race, etc. — is the unit of reality and the standard of value. On this view, the individual has reality only as a part of the group, and value only insofar as he serves it.”

~ Leonard Peikoff

This is America’s greatest loss in the last century, the lure of collectivism is an easy out for the masses to pretend they are helping.

The mind of the collectivist is empty and pitiful, and has not the ability to think on its own. It has no uniqueness; it has no individual personality. It does not create, nor does it possess any sense of self. The collectivist mind can’t possess these virtues because it is only a very small cog in a wheel of the group. It is but a speck in the midst of a mob. This is the story of America today, as collectivism runs rampant and individualism is shunned.

It is a very sad story that runs counter to what the founding generation had to offer each colony, the American colonies and the world. Acting as individuals that each could think for themselves, militias came and went, bad battles/strategies had no one to fight them, good battles/strategies had plenty of volunteers. The collective Continental Army was not as lucky.

When collectivism takes hold, individual rights naturally disappear, and mob rule policies take root. This policy transformation of course, is affected by the state. The progression from a system that is based on individual self rule and individual sovereignty to one of community or nation is not in the interest of freedom and liberty. When any political system is in place, this negative progression is easily achieved nonetheless. Only peaceful anarchy allows for the individual to be truly sovereign. Only when the state is absent can freedom flourish.

Ruling “elites” crave this merging of individuals into a societal tumor, because this cancer destroys the power of individual thought. The result of this diseased system can lead only to consensus and compromise. It can lead only to corruption. Consensus leads to no real decision at all, and the following compromise is nothing more than a mass combining of ignorance. When political policy is decided in this manner, it serves only to limit the individual’s ability to achieve.

The state is the poison for society. The state must be minimized for liberty and freedom to thrive. Perceived safety as a goal always leads to little liberty and little safety in the long term.

“.. In the United States today, virtually everything is decided by the few, but with the implied consent of the mob. The U.S. political system has major aspects of socialism and fascism, and is certainly an oligarchy, but most have the misguided notion that the mob is in charge. This is due to a belief by the masses in the farce of voting. Voting gives the false impression that the voters themselves are in control, but nothing could be further from the truth. In essence, those voted into office as “representatives” of the people, are fully controlled by very powerful interest groups, and these groups are the real rulers. This is a very flawed system, but it is one that gives the false impression that the majority rules. That is simply not the case, and even if it were, it would still be immoral! This system is accepted and embraced by the crowd, but in reality, why should anyone rule over anyone else, majority or not? How can freedom survive in a place where one has the power to rule over another? I can tell you, it can’t!..”

In 2020, only those in denial still believe that voting matters.

Finally, be aware of all the ways this collective thought, sounding so true when first heard, can be destructive of families and communities, which is the ultimate goal of the ruling elites.

“.. The collective “we” has been brainwashed into believing that self-interest, self-responsibility, and self-sufficiency are not in the best interest of the group, but just the opposite of course is the case. This brainwashing has been accomplished through a long indoctrination process that is still firmly in place…”

  • Consider the government’s “public” school system, where most every child in the country is taught the same nonsense for most of his learning years, and is indoctrinated throughout childhood to love first his community, state, and nation.
  • Consider the worship for a constitution that gave massive and in some cases, unlimited (not limited) power to a federal government, and lessened greatly the importance of the individual in favor of the “general welfare.”
  • Consider the reliance on government welfare by the people via the multitude of social programs that are meant to make dependency on government almost mandatory.
  • Consider the mindset of the “99 per centers” that aim to force the so-called 1 per cent to be more inclusive, fair, and responsive to the group.
  • Consider the mob’s acceptance of a heavy and progressive income taxation used as a way to equalize outcomes by redistributing private property for the so-called benefit of all.
  • Consider “public” lands or “public” anything.
  • Consider the idiotic term, “giving back.”
  • Consider today’s strict concentration on race, class, society as a whole, community, state, and nation, all more important than the individual.
  • Consider the mass acceptance of the National Anthem and the communistic Pledge of Allegiance.
  • Consider the constant call “for the greater good of society!”

We need to challenge the promotion of this poisonous thought in unique ways that only the individual can carry out being wise as a serpent and harmless as a dove 🙂

Peace out

-SF1

A Federated Republic Would Never Have to Depend on One Person for Its Survival

I will lay the blame primarily on Abraham Lincoln, whose reaction to the secession of seven states in 1861 led to this republic’s change from version 1.0 in 1781 to version 2.0 (thanks to the US Constitution(1787), a coup d’etat by any simple analysis) to version 3.0 in 1865 that rendered the states as impotent servants to the master (general/federal government), a virtual democracy (i.e. mob rule).

Lincoln’s effort to save actually destroyed!

The genius of the Articles of Confederation is that it recognized as each state was in fact a sovereign country (just like the 1783 Treaty of Paris recognized). The presidential election pre-US Constitution was a non-issue, and 99% of Americans only saw the federal government when the post-rider stopped a few times a week. Furthermore, if one state had a tyrant, it would minimally impact other states.

In 2020, I would give almost anything to have the federal politics happen hundreds of miles away and have little impact on my day to day, year to year life in my own community. Can it be that whatever “federal” power is necessary that it be with this aim:

The said states hereby severally enter into a firm league of friendship with each other, for their common defence, the security of their Liberties, and their mutual and general welfare, binding themselves to assist each other, against all force offered to, or attacks made upon them, or any of them, on account of religion, sovereignty, trade, or any other pretence whatever. – Article III ‘The Articles of Confederation” 1777

The US Constitution brought the executive branch to a much more powerful level encouraged by those like Alexander Hamilton who saw royalty and a central government as the path toward empire. The empire has been realized, but at what cost? The cost was the soul of this republic.

Today’s situation did not happen overnight, and most people could trace it back to the 1970s, but few realize that the real roots of this go back much further. The wedding of big government and big business was a Whig wet dream from the early 1800s that Lincoln himself believed in like a religion. Even by 1861 the US Constitution was easily raped by Lincoln himself all in the name of “safety” for the “union”. Preserving all thirty-some states with territories to the west complicit with big business barons working their behind the scenes magic with the US government to eliminate the competition.

Enter a recent book review “The Election to End All Elections” by Angelo M. Codevilla on Michael Anton’s new book called ‘The Stakes: America at the Point of No Return‘

[Michael Anton] urges Americans to vote for Trump, disappointed though they may be with his performance, because they know even better than before how much this country’s ruling class would use control of the presidency to hurt us in our private and public lives for having dared to reject their mastery. Trump, imperfect as he is, is like a finger in a dike that, if removed, would loose a deluge. Anton describes how the Democratic Party-led complex of public-private power has been transforming our free, decent, and prosperous country into its opposite—and how it’s going to do to the rest of America what it has already largely accomplished in California.

Personally, I find more and more people disillusioned with how the Marxist inroads into not just the colleges but also much of corporate America has been achieved in the past few decades. Many went to college for “communications” finding out that the MSM is nauseating to consider working for, and others now feel the same way about the medical fields (MIC – Medical Industrial Complex) with the Covid-19 “over-reaction”!

It is intriguing that a rather young person would see with such clarity just into what California is experiencing right now, and all the dots that line up as to the sequence of bad decisions to get to where millions are in a state of exodus there. Angelo writes in the review of Michael’s book:

[Here] in 2020 productive middle-class families are fleeing California—so much so that the state will probably lose a seat in the House of Representatives after this year’s census. And all because its government—controlled by oligarchs in the entertainment and high-tech industries, as well as the state bureaucracy and public sector labor unions—raised taxes, imposed regulations, let public services decay, stopped defending against criminals, and empowered left-wing social activists. Today’s California is for government-favored oligarchs and those who service them. You want a career? If you don’t conform every word and action to the ruling orthodoxies, your work and talents will be wasted. You want your children to grow up intelligent and decent? The schools will teach them little reasoning and much depravity. Like you, they will also learn to compete by favor-seeking rather than by performance. You see crime rising, sense that you have to protect yourself, but know that, in most of the state, the police will arrest you for it. And you are sick of paying for it all.

The bottom line it seems is that in much of middle-upper class America, most kids do not become taxpayers until they are almost 30. This allows the Marxist/totalitarian mindset to take root the longer kids are in college, making PhDs the ones with the most student debt and the most likely to be compliant in whatever corporation will have them! This is by design.

Michael Anton goes on to say:

The real power…resides not with elected (or appointed) officials and “world leaders”; they—or most of them—are a servant class. The real power resides with their donors, the bankers, CEOs, financiers, and tech oligarchs—some of whom occasionally run for and win office, but most of whom, most of the time, are content to buy off those who do. The end result is the same either way: economic globalism and financialization, consolidation of power in an ostensibly “meritocratic” but actually semi-hereditary class, livened up by social libertinism.

The intellectuals from the monarchy days is what I am reminded of. These types do NOT like competition, and government is big and bad enough to wield a club apparently. Angelo continues:

Despising any divine or natural authority and contemptuous of America’s history, those in the ruling class make war on the American people’s culture and national identity. Ironically, this ruling class, led almost exclusively by white men, has cast white men in general as the proper targets of universal vengeance—an inversion of reality sustained by a near-monopoly of power over corrupt institutions and mass communications. Anton’s section on “Propaganda and Censorship: Narrative, Megaphone, and Muzzle” is particularly worth reading.

Insightful stuff here. It is at this point where the talk turns to conservative vs. liberals .. and right away I think of the civil approach the South had with the “rule(US Constitution)-breaking” North where the ends justifies the means:

Truth-bomb time from Angelo:

They [ruling class] do not believe they have to worry about controlling their own violent troops because they are sure that they have nothing to fear from conservatives. That is because conservatives have continued to believe that the United States’s institutions and those who run them retain legitimacy. Conservative complaisance made possible a half-century of Progressive rule’s abuse. The War on Poverty ended up enriching its managers while expanding the underclass that voted for them. The civil rights movement ended up entitling a class of diversity managers to promote their friends and ruin their opponents. The environmental movement ended up empowering the very same wealthy, powerful folks while squeezing the rest of America into cookie-cutter living and paying inflated energy prices. The feminist movement delivered divorce and abortion—far from benefiting women, it has made millions dependent on ruling class favor. The COVID-19 pandemic has had almost nothing to do with public health and almost everything to do with separating, impoverishing, and disconnecting people inclined to vote against the ruling class. As leftist judges rule, conservatives respond by appointing judges who pledge not to rule. As leftist governors establish their brand of effective sovereignty by decree, conservative ones obey court orders. So long as, and to the degree that, the illusion of legitimacy stands—so long as the Right obeys while the Left disobeys and commands—there is no end to what the Left can do because there is so little that conservatives do to fight back.

.. until there is physical fighting, and like with the War Against Southern Independence, all the gloves will come off.

The boomerang and blow-back are real things that the Left is not ready for, and some in rural America are hoping for, so for now Trump, just one person, is holding it all back. Federation to Democracy to Socialism/Fascism/Marxism which is a very toxic brew.

Peace out.

-SF1

Source: Claremont Review of Books

The State: Friend or Foe?

Demonstrators wearing Yellow Vests (Gilets jaunes) walk past the Arc de Triomphe (Arc of Triumph) in Paris on November 17, 2018
(Photo by STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN / AFP) / ALTERNATIVE CROP

What brings protestors to state monuments and state capitals? The feeling that they have been done wrong by the state. Was this inevitable? Of course, every state can’t possibly follow through on all the promises its politicians make, ever. There will come a time when the people have had enough of this parasite activity.

The state itself is not being questioned here, just the state’s actions (over time sparked by recent actions as in this case, a gas tax). I question the state because it actually always comes up short on their end of the deal. I think Jesus would agree, when He could have received justice, He got the cross. He knew that would happen, however, it is something we should ALL know, that the state can mean DEATH!

From The Burning Platform, in an ongoing dialog with Doug Casey reflecting on the 1st amendment to the US Constitution that has in it a fourth provision stating the right of assembly:

I’m opposed the very existence of the State. I’m opposed to it on moral grounds, because its essence is coercion. I’m opposed to it on economic grounds, because it’s more a threat to everyone’s property than a guardian of it. On practical grounds, since it’s necessarily inefficient in doing what it’s supposed to do, and does everything it’s not supposed to do. On aesthetic grounds, since it inevitably draws the worst kind of people to its employment. On evidential grounds, since its main products are wars, taxes, regulations, inflation, pogroms, and the like…

… I’ll just say that it speaks poorly of the average person, that he not only thinks the State is necessary, but enthusiastically supports it. And a constitution—whatever its positive aspects—enshrines and legitimizes the idea of the State.

I favor individuals cooperating as individuals, not as cogs in the State’s machine.

Doug Casey – Transcript from Interview with “JB” on The Burning Platform

I contend that while the US police forces, under direction of the federal government in times of crises (“insurrection”) may put up with peaceful assembly that does not destroy property (especially the destruction of state property in their eyes), in time they will remove this right (we still have the natural right, just that the government will not protect us to have this right) as they have done with all the others.

In the future, if the economy gets as bad as I expect, there will be serious riots—which are always a danger when the hoi polloi assemble. There are now means of crowd control much more effective than tear gas. There are beam weapons that, when directed at you, make your skin feel it’s on fire, and will absolutely make you run away and hide. Directional sonic weapons that will make you cover your ears, and run away. Ultra-slippery chemicals that make it impossible to walk. And of course they have means of identifying people in crowds, both with facial recognition and gait recognition. It may not be against the law to assemble, but the “authorities”—if they choose to– can certainly make it unpleasant.

Doug Casey Transcipt in Interview with “JB” on The Burning Platform

Beyond this, there is the whole marginalization scheme that technology has afforded centralized government in measuring individual’s adherence to state policy and narratives and thereby giving them a score that reflects on what a good citizen they are. This then plays a role in what interest rate you might be eligible for or IF government benefits are due you, or not.

There’s no question that the Chinese Social credit system will be adopted in the U.S. You can tell by the way people cherish their Experian and credit scores, even now. Although you’ll theoretically have a right to protest and gather, you could put yourself at risk by doing so. Freedom of Assembly is on its way to becoming a dead letter, if only because of technology.

Doug Casey Transcipt in Interview with “JB” on The Burning Platform

So what is there to know about the recent efforts in France toward making a case that their government has gone to far or failed to uphold their part of the “social contract”? For a more global view of these events in context I will refer to two sources (that I do not always agree with), Eric Margolis via Lew Rockwell and Moon of Alabama:

The storm that is hitting France came out of what looked like a clear blue sky.  The angry demonstrators, known as ‘gilets jaunes’ (yellow jackets), for the warning vests all motorists must keep in their cars, inundated Paris last weekend in peaceful  protests over the government’s planned increases in fuel prices, which were already among Europe’s highest.
As too often in France, violent vandals known as ‘the breakers,’ infiltrated the demonstrators and sought to put the most beautiful parts of Paris to the sack.  I watched with horror as the magnificent Arc de Triomphe, France’s premier war memorial, was befouled by spray-can graffiti.  The majestic Champs Élysée was ravaged by hoodlums, who smashed showroom windows, burned cars, looted luxury stores and set scores of fires.

Paris Under Siege By Eric S. Margolis

As is often the case, a movement, peaceful at first, gets hijacked by those with no principles. This is the hardest way to get government to retract and to do the right things as usually the revolution gets you something worse than what you already had. France’s history has proved this before! (Us in the US should know this as well, for how many of us would willingly go back to the British Empire’s tax rate of 3% that was effective in the American Colonies before the Revolutionary War?)

In a France24 report from a small town in the country side shows extraordinary solidarity between the people. Police passing through an occupied toll road entry sign the protesters petition, other pass by and gift food to the middle-aged protestors.
One woman makes an good point. Yes, the violence as seen in Paris last weekend was not nice. But only after last weeks protest went violent were the yellow vests really noted by the media and by the otherwise tone deaf politicians.

Moon of Alabama

It is too bad that the politicians are not close enough to kick in the butt when they misbehave and squander tax revenue for their pet projects and also enter into alignments with other countries that the people do not always appreciated (i.e. EU) This is the very fact that makes me think secession into smaller republics, states, city-states is the peaceful way forward. Having to use violence against private and public property carries its own negative long term unintended consequences.

From Mint Press, who I use to get a more unbiased view (at least not a US Empire centric MSM view) of world events:

The Yellow Vests held their first demonstrations on Saturday, November 17, on the Champs-Elysées in Paris. It was totally unlike the usual trade union demonstrations, well organized to march down the boulevard between the Place de la République and the Place de la Bastille, or the other way around, carrying banners and listening to speeches from leaders at the end. The Gilets Jaunes just came, with no organization, no leaders to tell them where to go or to harangue the crowd. They were just there, in the yellow vests, angry and ready to explain their anger to any sympathetic listener.
Briefly, the message was this: we can’t make ends meet. The cost of living keeps going up, and our incomes keep going down. We just can’t take it any more. The government must stop, think and change course.

Mint Press By Diana Johnstone

This is the “sound” of tax slaves that are at the end of their rope. 50% plus income taxes in addition to all the other taxes in place or proposed makes for a life for those on the margins a very tough go with no hope for the future!

There were young women who were working seven days a week and despaired of having enough money to feed and clothe their children. People were angry but ready to explain very clearly the economic issues. Colette, age 83, doesn’t own a car, but explained to whoever would listen that the steep raise of gasoline prices would also hurt people who don’t drive, by affecting prices of food and other necessities. She had done the calculations and figured it would cost a retired person 80 euros per month.

Mint Press By Diana Johnstone

The very real failure of socialism is on display here as it has been in Venezuela for several years, the state in the long run will never live up to its propanganda of utopia!

A significant and recurring complaint concerned the matter of health care. France has long had the best public health program in the world, but this is being steadily undermined to meet the primary need of capital: profit. In the past few years, there has been a growing government campaign to encourage, and finally to oblige people to subscribe to a “mutuelle”, that is, a private health insurance, ostensibly to fill “the gaps” not covered by France’s universal health coverage. The “gaps” can be the 15% that is not covered for ordinary illnesses (grave illnesses are covered 100%), or for medicines taken off the “covered” list, or for dental work, among other things. The “gaps” to fill keep expanding, along with the cost of subscribing to the mutuelle. In reality, this program, sold to the public as modernizing improvement, is a gradual move toward privatization of health care. It is a sneaky method of opening the whole field of public health to international financial capital investment. This gambit has not fooled ordinary people and is high on the list of complaints by the Gilets Jaunes.

Mint Press By Diana Johnstone

In the end, the state is a parasite, and efforts however novel (i.e. US Constitution), will fail time and again in this broken world.

Putting your trust in the state is madness IF you research it long enough. Do not forget history, even if the state indoctrinates you to.

‘Democracy, the God that Failed’ is an epic book by Hans-Herman Hoppe that suggests that a monarchy is better than democracy [which is better than socialism, marxism and communism, but are all collectives in nature].. at least with a king, they want to give their heirs a better kingdom .. but as 1 Samuel 8 shows, even God says there are some significant drawbacks to having a king:

“.. Samuel told all the words of the Lord to the people who were asking him for a king.He said, “This is what the king who will reign over you will claim as his rights: He will take your sons and make them serve with his chariots and horses, and they will run in front of his chariots.Some he will assign to be commanders of thousands and commanders of fifties, and others to plow his ground and reap his harvest, and still others to make weapons of war and equipment for his chariots.He will take your daughters to be perfumers and cooks and bakers.He will take the best of your fields and vineyards and olive groves and give them to his attendants.He will take a tenth of your grain and of your vintage and give it to his officials and attendants.Your male and female servants and the best of your cattle and donkeys he will take for his own use.He will take a tenth of your flocks, and you yourselves will become his slaves.When that day comes, you will cry out for relief from the king you have chosen, but the Lord will not answer you in that day. ” – 1 Samuel 8:10-18 

SF1 in an e-mail sent out this past week

So if God’s view is that even monarchy is never ideal, what is?

More on that next time! Stay tuned.

-SF1