Brought to you by Anthony DeMarco and Nick B. Steves, Ascending the Tower is a podcast distributed by Social Matter and represents the latest project of the Hestia Society. Please leave feedback in the comments, and if you’d like to get in touch with Anthony DeMarco, you can find him at: survivingbabel@gmail.com

Produced in part with the support of JerseyGuy, Reactionary Tree, and Crab Aesthetics.

Notes:
2:21 – Can’t Stump the Trump!
10:51 – Could Trump consolidate executive power?
23:36 – A “culture first” approach does not work
32:00 – The teleology of action independent of sentiment
42:36 – Leftist Power Words that suppress real social science
51:40 – The Antiversity: dedicated to the production of Truth
1:05:43 – Observation as basis for Antiversity social science
1:17:57 – The stunning power of real social science
1:26:06 – Profiting from Truth and overcoming the problem of scale
1:45:28 – Out of Left Field question

Related Show Links:

Music:
Opening – “Memories” by Silence Kingdom (excerpt)
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/365055/memories

Closing – “Summertime” by Al J
https://www.jamendo.com/en/track/554758/summertime

Trump’s Immigration Troll
https://www.donaldjtrump.com/positions/immigration-reform

Pregnancy is the new shooting yourself in the foot
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2560032/The-maternity-military-How-nearly-100-female-soldiers-sent-home-Afghan-frontline-getting-pregnant.html

Moldbug’s first Antiversity post
http://unqualified-reservations.blogspot.com/2009/10/gentle-introduction-to-unqualified.html

Overview of Aristotle and constitutions
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/

Distance from Harvard
https://westhunt.wordpress.com/2013/10/15/distance-from-harvard/

Global Existential Risk (lots of possibilities!)
http://www.nickbostrom.com/existential/risks.html

Picture of the New Balance Royal Caribbean
http://bit.ly/1Vt3lDE

The post Ascending The Tower – Episode IX – “Learning to Think Well” appeared first on Social Matter.

Libertarians and other sensitive liberals tend to oppose between one and three of the major ‘war’ initiatives of the post-World War II American government. With nuclear weapons intimidating major powers away from conflicts between one another, they turn towards internal struggles to provide a collective sense of purpose and motivation while addressing what the press and the general public see as pressing crises.

All of these conflicts arise from the contemporary understanding of equality. When the concept of citizenship becomes diluted to include absolutely everyone — and potentially ever-larger groups of people from around the world — then no one enjoys a secure, privileged social position. Because the people are wary of any sort of hierarchy, any perceived or real inequality will often be portrayed as a problem to be corrected. When some people are poor and other people are rich, this tends to be portrayed as an affront to the natural order rather than something which is entirely natural to humans and animals of all kinds.

Liberals critical of these ‘war’ measures tend to criticize them because they correctly see that, when all people everywhere are held to be equal, any oppressive treatment towards one group in society can and will be extended to everyone in society. In some cases, this policy tends to be preemptively extended to everyone immediately, as with humiliating & ineffective airport security measures put into place after the attacks of 9/11/2001. To avoid damage to the equality principle through the use of extensive profiling, the state put into place a policy which harasses everyone who comes through the security lines equally, while compromising a bit by providing some extra roughing-up of people on a special list. The point of the mass pat-downs is to provide some political cover for the special watch lists (which disparately impact Muslims, who are supposed to be equal citizens). Without the need to defend ever broader expressions of the equality principle, the security measures would probably be restricted to the people who posed the greatest risks of bombing or hijacking planes.

The War on Drugs emerged in the 1970s and 1980s in response to the rapid increase in crime following the Civil Rights and judicial reform movements. Under the pretext of controlling drugs, the state presumed a long list of new powers to wield over all citizens equally in an attempt to suppress crime. It wielded these powers unequally, violating the sometimes-historically-observed rights of some groups of citizens while leaving others mostly to their own devices.

In this, liberals correctly see that when the state rounds up Muslim citizens to detain without trial, the practice could easily be applied to all citizens within the state. They are correct in this, but tend to fail to see the larger problem presented by the extension of citizenship to anyone with a pulse. Retraction of citizenship and the franchise tends to be seen as impossible — liberals portray each extension as a historical advance on the same level as the development of vaccines and antibiotics. Because of this, it becomes much harder to resolve the actual problems posed by a relatively small religious minority. The inability of the state to recognize differences between groups of people, owing to the myths it tells itself about itself, results in a maddening decay of the underlying society that supports it.

Because the state proclaims to treat all citizens equally, the SWAT raids and aggressive pat-downs which tend to be restricted to some portion of the population in a furtive manner are sometimes seen as a threat to the liberty of the population as a whole. The state, being run by not-entirely-stupid people, doesn’t actually want to oppress the entire population. Just the segment of the population that causes more problems than they provide in revenue and opportunity to the state itself.

In this, liberals tend to sabotage their own state which enforces the pretense of the equality principle. If the state decides to not aggressively control crime, it loses valuable industrial centers to blight. When it does use aggressive measures against crime (‘victimless’ or otherwise, on pretense of drug control or without the pretense), then liberals complain about the violation of the equality principle in abstract. But the liberal way of life can’t survive without that sort of aggressive enforcement — as we’ve seen in the destruction and scattering of countless American cities and towns since the middle of the 20th century.

Further, without basic peace and order, there is no liberal way of life. Your butcher shop can’t go on selling meat if it’s being used as a place for hostage rescue dramas. It becomes harder to operate a train system if at any moment, assault rifle wielding bandits can start shooting it up. It becomes harder to run a shop downtown if at any moment some intellectuals at a national newspaper might raise a mob to burn down the local businesses. Less dramatically, it becomes more challenging to maintain bourgeois life when a large portion of a town’s inhabitants are derelict drug addicts. Also, it becomes impossible to live a bohemian, individualistic, hedonist lifestyle if your neighborhood comes under the authority of shariah law or local gangsters. But in the name of preserving their own autonomy and authority, liberals will often extend their umbrella of toleration to startlingly illiberal groups.

Liberal intellectuals tend to regard these threats to order as secondary to threats to the popular assumptions which provide them with power and influence. If the general population loses fervor for the equality principle, then it loses fervor for providing the liberals with the authority to administer the government. And that group of people goes far beyond what the popular press usually calls ‘liberals’ — it applies to broader groups than that.

One of the reasons for this is that new frontiers in inequality are occasions for power grabs and new job opportunities for new cadres of liberals, who are much greedier for protected, make-work positions than the old aristocracy ever was. Inequality as a fact of existence is a sort of zero point energy source for the creation of new bureaucracies for the care and feeding of new classes of pious liberals. Resolving the problems is impossible — but what is possible is to create ever larger occasions for job opportunities for educated bureaucrats.

Fortunately or unfortunately depending on your perspective, the cycle can’t go on forever.

The post Equality and the Wars On Poverty, Terrorism, and Drugs appeared first on Social Matter.

Classical Sparta had the reputation of being an extremely conservative society, its constitution unaltered through the centuries, and its people cautious and slow-to-bestir themselves. Thucydides draws a contrast between the Spartans and the Athenians in a speech by King Archidamus of Sparta before the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War in 331 B.C.: Archidamus describes the Spartans almost like reclusive shut-ins clinging to their traditions and ascribes to the Athenians an unheard-of daring and lust for new things. In fact, the Spartans were extremely innovative and adaptive, remaining on the cutting-edge of political and military technology throughout the Archaic and Classical periods.

Popular belief attributed the origins of the Spartan constitution to Crete, another region famed for the antiquity of its institutions. Plato, an admirer of Sparta, sets his dialogue on the proper political arrangements for a city, Laws, on Crete and portrays a conversation between a Cretan, a Spartan, and the Athenian Stranger. According to legend, the semi-mythical Lycurgus studied the Cretans’ ways and brought them back to Sparta. This Lycurgus is the one described in Plutarch’s Life of Lycurgus, and historian date his life—if he existed at all—to the 10^th or 9^th century B.C.

The Spartans themselves, however, claimed that Lycurgus’ reforms were much newer, and modern scholarship agrees, placing them in the late 7^th and early 6^th centuries. Before these reforms, the Spartans had “the worst-governed city in Greece” by their own description. Like other major Greek cities in the 7^th century, Sparta emerged out of a process of synoikismos, the merging of multiple small villages into a larger conglomerate. Integrating the governments of these villages proved difficult, however. In particular, two local royal houses, the Agiads and the Eurypontids, refused to yield to each other’s authority and conflict ensued. This was in addition to the conflict between commoners and Eupatridae which every city experienced.

The Lycurgean constitution put an end to the civil strife partly by granting the two houses equal standing but eliminating most of their powers. The kings sat on the Council of Old Men or Gerousia alongside twenty eight others and held absolute command over the army when it marched out to war but otherwise had virtually no power—at first they retained the right to declare war and conclude peace, but this was eventually revoked. Every month the kings had to swear an oath to abide by the constitution alongside the ephors, who swore to not abolish the kingship so long as the kings abided by their oaths. Even so, every eight years the ephors observed the heavens for portents signaling that the kingship should be eliminated.

Contrary to their portrayal in the 300 film, the five ephors were absolutely not monstrous creatures but ordinary men. Originally stargazing priests, the Lycurgean constitution made them annually elected magistrates and transferred to them the bulk of executive responsibilities. The senior ephor gave his name to the year for the sake of record-keeping. The Gerousia functioned as the chief deliberative body, but at the same time, the whole citizenry, some nine or ten thousand men at the city’s height, was given the final say on important issues. Still, the Apella or Assembly could only vote yay or nay on the Gerousia’s proposals and outcomes were determined by the volume of each side’s shouting.

According to legend, the Spartan constitution was never written down but was preserved orally. Archaeology has proven this to be false, uncovering inscriptions detailing the Spartan’s laws dating back to the 7^th century.

The Spartan constitution differed from those of other cities in a few key respects. The first was the relatively prominent role of the kings: despite being largely emasculated, the Spartan kings did hold real power in certain spheres, very much unlike the kings in other cities who were merely magistrates responsible for state sacrifices. The formally limited powers of the kings meant that Sparta could benefit from the brilliance of a king like Cleomenes I, while a less-than-stellar king like Agis II could still be useful.

Also notable was the relatively small number of elected positions. Between the Gerousia and the ephorate, Sparta had thirty three elected officials, only five of whom were annually elected. This kept electoral politics to a minimum. Indeed, most political conflicts described in the ancient sources concern the kings trying to gain additional power or influence. There were plenty of other positions, but they were assigned by merit, positions like officer roles in the army, the kings’ bodyguard, and the Agathoergoi, “Do-gooders,” free-floating troubleshooters.

The final distinctive feature was the relative size of the citizen body in Laconia. As with all Greek cities, not all inhabitants of Sparta were full citizens. The perioikoi, “those who dwell around,” constituted the bulk of the Laconian population and even possessed small villages all their own. How many perioikoi there were is difficult to determine, but estimates for around 500 B.C. suggest there were 50,000, including women and children, while the citizenry, also counting women and children, was roughly 25,000. The Spartan state was thus the most inclusive in all of Greece, aside from the Athenian democracy which it preceded by more than a hundred years. By the end of the 5^th century, Sparta’s status in this regard had declined, but at its inception it was revolutionary.

The combination of a large ruling class but severely limited electoral politics was remarkably stable. On the one hand, with few opportunities for electioneering, the best way for an ambitious man to advance his position was to be a good soldier and earn the respect of his comrades-in-arms. On the other, a broad franchise satisfied the commoners clamoring for reform and provided a large army with which to defend the state and subjugate nearby Messenia.

Control of Messenia was the most important aspect of the Spartan political system, as well as the key to its dominance in Greek affairs generally. The territory of that region was apportioned equally among the Spartan citizens: upon attaining the age of 20, a young Spartan man was assigned a portion of Messenian land along with helot serfs (technically owned by the Spartan state) to work it. Out of the produce of this land, the Spartan was expected to pay dues for his membership to one of the common messes and his children’s education in the agoge, the uniquely Spartan system of public education, as well as to purchase hoplite arms and armor. The apportioning of Messenian lands made the Lycurgian reforms go more smoothly—in other cities, nobles strenuously resisted losing their lands, but in Sparta they were at least partially compensated.

Though a conquered people, the Messenian helots were remarkably well-treated compared to slaves bound to other masters. The helots were enserfed, forbidden to leave their land without permission and turning over half their produce to the Spartans, but otherwise allowed to handle their own affairs themselves. Though the Krypteia, bands of Spartan boys armed with daggers, was a threat, so long as helot paid his taxes and went to bed at a decent hour, he had little to worry about. The Spartans forbad the helots to own weapons and armor, but despite repeated rebellions they still took helots to war with them and rewarded those who performed well. At Thermopylae, the helots died fighting side-by-side with their Spartan masters.

Hierarchy and differentiation defined the Spartan system. The Spartans called themselves homoioi, “peers,” and prided themselves on the large degree of equality in their ranks, but they still had officers, priests, magistrates, elders, and kings. Spartan women had a large degree of autonomy, conducting most business and instilling in their sons the masculine virtue the Spartans were famous for, but they had no role in politics. Men and women had separate, non-overlapping spheres.

Nor was Spartan hierarchy the kind feared by Leftists: one overbearing power crushing all others under its heel. The kings sat at the top but precariously; the ephors held great power but only for a year at a time; elders made most political decisions but needed approval from the citizenry. The Spartans in general stood above the perioikoi and helots, but they treated their inferiors generously. In Sparta, hierarchy was more extensive than in any other Greek city.

Next week, we’ll take a look at Sparta’s military and foreign affairs, where Sparta’s capacity for innovation allowed it to hold supremacy in Greece for almost two centuries.

The post Sparta’s Attempt At Balancing Innovation And Tradition appeared first on Social Matter.

What is an ideology? How, in practice, do ideologies gain followers? How do they organize? How, and why, do they suppress competing ideologies?

The first five hundred years of Christianity are an epic of ideological warfare: the story of a tiny religious cult which grew to dominate a continent-spanning empire, and then, after the empire’s collapse, built an organization amidst the ruins which would endure for a thousand years.

One core assumption I make is that people’s actions are moral and rational within the framework of their own ideology. Given Christian beliefs, it was rational for Christians to try to take over the world; given Roman beliefs about religion, it was rational for the Romans to persecute Christians.

As a conservative atheist, I was surprised by the intellectual rigor and integrity of early Christians. Early Christianity was not a collection of vague platitudes formed by feel-good consensus: early Christians lived every premise of their creed, held fights over a single word, and died defending their ideas.

Definitions

The word ideology was first coined to refer to a proposed science of ideas. [1] Napoleon Bonaparte was the first to use ideology in the modern, pejorative sense.

The definition of ideology I will use is: a set of ideas which collectively answer fundamental questions of existence, which are integrated into an internally consistent doctrine, and which are held by an organised group of followers.

A related, but distinct, concept is that of culture: a culture is a set of ideas which collectively answer fundamental questions of existence, and which are shared amongst a self-identified group of people (such as a tribe or nation).  The ideas in a culture are not normally integrated into a single doctrine, and may not be universally shared amongst the group. [2]

Cultures develop naturally as a group of people exchange ideas, whereas ideologies are created consciously by individuals. Cultural groups are defined by ethnicity, location or some other criteria; ideological groups are defined by their ideology.

Cultures and ideologies answer the fundamental questions of reality and morality, e.g. “what is true?”, “what is important?” and “what is good?”. By answering these questions, cultures and ideologies direct the course of human lives; on a grand scale, they shape the course of human history.

Three cultures which are relevant to Christianity’s story are the culture of Greece, the culture of Rome, and the culture of the Jews. The culture of the Jews is also an ideology: specifically, it’s a culture which hardened into an ideology, Judaism.

Stoicism, another influence, is a school of thought, not an ideology. Though Stoicism answered fundamental questions, it didn’t have precise membership requirements: anyone could call themselves a Stoic. Stoic ideas, like the ideas of other Greek philosophical schools, therefore permeated through Greek and Roman culture without an organised movement.

Early Christianity

I’m going to cover Christian history from AD 33 to 476, i.e., from the purported death of Jesus to the fall of Rome. This period can be split into three eras.

The first era covers from c. AD 33 to 100, when Christianity was led by the initial disciples, and when the first churches were established.

The second era covers from AD 101 to 324, when Christianity grew from a few thousand to several million followers, and ends with the official end of Roman persecution.

The third era covers from AD 325 to 476 when Christianity became the state religion of the Roman Empire. Ultimately, the Empire split in two, and our story ends with the fall of the Western Empire, and the survival of Christianity amidst the ruins.

Era 1: Personal Authority

AD 33

Jerusalem and the surrounding province of Judaea have been part of the Roman Empire for over 90 years. For the Jews, though, the Romans are merely the latest empire in a long series of foreign rulers. The bones of Egyptian, Assyrian, Babylonian and Persian conquerors lie buried beneath the ground upon which the Roman legionaries now walk.

Over two centuries prior to the Roman conquest, Alexander the Great had led an army of Greek hoplites southward down the eastern coast of the Mediterranean, taking Judaea — then known as the Persian province of Yehud — on his way to conquer Egypt, where he celebrated his victory by founding a city in his own name. By AD 33, Alexandria has grown to become the second largest city in the Roman Empire and, with its famous libraries and schools of Greek philosophy, a major cultural and intellectual centre. It’s a true cosmopolis: a world city.

Judaea, then, along with the rest of the Eastern Roman Empire, has known more Greek than Roman influence for the last three centuries. In this part of the Empire, Greek philosophical ideas are widespread, and Greek is more widely spoken than Latin.

Jerusalem, though outshone by nearby Alexandria, is a large and diverse city. Ethiopians, Egyptians, and Arabs live alongside the predominant Jewish and Greek communities. Overlooking the city is the Jews’ Second Temple, newly expanded and reconstructed after a project started 46 years earlier by King Herod.

The Temple is a place of pilgrimage for Jews from across the Empire. Pilgrims often arrive by boat in the nearby port town of Jaffa, before embarking on the three-day trek up the road to Jerusalem. When they arrive, they change their Roman and Greek coins in the courtyard of the Temple for religiously-approved Jewish and Tyrian coins.

A few years previously, a charismatic local preacher, enraged by the practice of business in a holy place, had roared with disapproval at the money-changers, flipped over their tables, and chased them out of the Temple with a rope whip.

History knows very little about this man aside from the writings of his own followers. We can surmise that he inspired fanatical devotion, since shortly after his death, a group of them met and agreed that they must spread his ideas across the entire world.

—

One possible key to Christianity’s unprecedented success is that it was the first missionary religion in Western history. No ideology before it had set its followers the goal of converting all of humanity. What the Romans had conquered with their swords, the Christians planned to conquer with their creed.

These initial followers, the apostles, rapidly dispersed from Jerusalem, aiming to gain converts across the empire.

The apostles were strategic. Rather than focusing only on places near to Jerusalem, they traveled far, establishing Christian communities in major cities across the Mediterranean Basin. The four largest cities of the Empire — Rome, Alexandria, Antioch and Ephesus — all became major early centres of Christianity.

The Greek word ekklesía, assembly, came to be used both for these individual communities and for the global community of Christians. An alternative Greek phrase, Kyriakós oíkos, House of the Lord, entered Old English as cirice and is the origin of our modern word church. These individual churches, and the global Church, grew rapidly.

Christianity at first was seen as a Jewish sect, one of many which existed in the highly political atmosphere of Roman-occupied Jerusalem. Ideas of the coming apocalypse were then popular in Jewish culture and predicted God’s impending destruction of the seemingly-invincible Rome.

The book of Revelation, the last book of the Bible, was written around this time and expresses a purely Jewish version of Christianity. In Revelation, God’s angels pour out endlessly imaginative punishments on an unrepentant humanity, and Rome is depicted as Babylon the Great, the Whore of Nations. Revelation is also the book which defines 666 as the number of the beast, likely a numerological reference to the Emperor Nero.

The gospels, in contrast, express a mix of Jewish and Greek influences, and were likely written at a later date. John’s gospel, for example, begins by equating the Jewish concept of God with the Greek concept of the logos, the transcendent Word. Jesus, as portrayed in the gospels, appears to express Stoic ideas, and recommends the cultivation of serene detachment from worldly cares.

Christianity’s split from Judaism began with Paul of Tarsus, who was the first to propose the idea of converting non-Jews. A Jew who’d started out persecuting Christians before himself converting to Christianity, Paul was also a Roman citizen and saw himself as a bridge between the Jewish and Gentile worlds.

Paul’s own experiences trying to convert Gentiles had shown him that the Jewish religious requirements, such as male circumcision, were a major sticking point for potential new Christians. Paul proposed that most of these requirements be dropped. This was controversial: at least one Jewish Christian sect publicly rejected Paul.

In AD 50, the Council of Jerusalem was held by the leaders of Jewish Christianity to discuss Paul’s proposal. They decided in favor, and their decision came to mark the beginning of the official split between Judaism and Christianity.

Paul is arguably the individual most responsible for creating Christianity as an ideology. Not only was he was the key figure in establishing Christianity’s independence from Judaism, he also played a major role in defining early doctrine, and in organizing the early Church. Paul has more words in the New Testament than any other Christian figure, Jesus included.

—

Like a cell split by mitosis, Christianity had developed from an outgrowth of Judaism to an independent entity. Christianity’s independence now brought it to the attention of the pagan Romans.

The Roman attitude towards religion appears strange to modern eyes, but was based on their culture’s need to transform many diverse tribes into a unified society. Though they were tolerant polytheists, who would happily let conquered tribes worship their own gods, the Romans also expected good citizens to make frequent public demonstrations of their religious faith, their pietas. Pietas had a wider meaning than English piety, and it wrapped up duty to one’s parents, duty to one’s country, and duty to the gods in a single concept.

The Romans had frequently attempted to deal with social instability by using public religious ceremonies as a means to ensure unity. Christians, as monotheists who refused to worship the Roman gods and who perversely insisted on only worshipping in private, were therefore seen to be flaunting their lack of pietas and appeared to be a destabilising influence.

The Jews, although another troublesome group of monotheists, at least piously followed the ancient God of their distant forefathers. Christianity was something worse: a novel religion, or superstitio. Another concept with a wider meaning than the English superstition, superstitio covered things ranging from divination to druidism to overly excessive religiosity. (Though the Romans expected citizens to express pietas, taking it too far was considered indecorous and a dishonor to the gods). Calling Christianity superstitio marked it as a depraved, excessive cult.

The first recorded persecution of Christians — and the first appearance of Christianity in a non-Christian source — came in AD 64, after the fire in Rome. Rumors were spread blaming Nero for the fire, and Nero in turn blamed Rome’s Christians, a number of whom were executed. This was the beginning of constant low-level persecutions of Christianity. Christians began to go underground, in some places literally; Christian groups began meeting in the underground cities dotted across Anatolia, and in the catacombs under Rome.

A Jewish revolt in AD 70 led to the Romans sacking Jerusalem and destroying the Second Temple. Jews and Christians dispersed, and this was the end of Jerusalem as an early centre of Christianity.

Era one ended with the death of the last of the apostles in AD 101. By this time, over forty churches had been founded, mostly in the Greek-speaking East. With no-one who had known Jesus left alive, authority shifted to the emerging Church organisation.

Era Two: Church Authority

With the fall of Jerusalem, Christianity was firmly established as a Gentile religion. As of AD 100, it likely numbered fewer than ten thousand converts.

At the time, the worldwide Church was a decentralized organization. The basic organisational unit of Christianity was the local church, where authority rested with a council of presbyters, or elders.

By 110, some cities had multiple churches, with the oldest church usually being pre-eminent. The head of this primary church would lead the other churches in the city and was granted the title of bishop, literally overseer. A subordinate role was that of deacon, literally caretaker: a person who cataloged the elders’ decisions and distributed information to members.

Initially these roles were unpaid, part-time positions. With rapid growth the need to instruct new members, and to train new deacons, began to take up more time. The position of elder remained a hands-off, advisory role, but the positions of bishop and deacon eventually became full-time, professional jobs.

As a distributed organization, the global Church did not yet share a single doctrine. Churches were independent and maintained their own doctrine and collection of texts. Communication between churches enabled the spread of ideas. Regional councils of bishops, known as synods, occurred from 160 onwards and were key in deciding doctrinal disputes.

Over time, a hierarchy of bishops formed. This hierarchy was typically based on Roman provincial borders, whereby the bishop of a provincial capital would lead other bishops in the province. The Bishops of Alexandria and Antioch, the second and third largest cities in the empire, became pre-eminent and were granted the title of Patriarch in recognition of this fact.

Rome had not yet become a major centre. It’s not clear whether the Bishop of Rome gained eminence early on, or if there was a deliberate push from a later faction to centralize Church power in Rome.

The documents which circulated between churches included letters, gospels, personal memoirs, predictions of the coming apocalypse, uplifting advice, and practical teachings. At the time there was no uniquely Christian holy book: Christians instead used the Hebrew Bible (the book later known as the Old Testament).

Marcion of Sinope was the first to propose compiling a canon of uniquely Christian sacred texts, c. 130. Marcion justified this with his theory that the God of the Hebrew Bible was clearly not Jesus’ God, but a tyrannical usurper, and that Jesus’ teachings offered humanity a path back to the true, secret God. Ergo, Christians needed their own book.

Marcion’s theory did not catch on in mainstream Christianity, but it did sow the seeds of a resilient underground movement, Gnosticism. Gnosticism was a motley collection of secret societies and cults, which typically found converts amongst urban elites, and which flourished in intellectual centres such as Alexandria. Mainstream Christianity tried to suppress it, but as we’ll see later, never truly managed to wipe it out.

Marcion’s proposal for a Christian canon did catch on, though, and by the end of era two there was a general agreement as to which texts should definitely be considered canon, which were debatable, and which should be rejected. The canonical texts were eventually used to compile the New Testament, with the debatable texts sometimes included in a section entitled the apocrypha.

With new churches being founded across the empire, and with the increasingly effective organisation ensuring each church continued to gain converts, Christianity sustained its rapid growth. One estimate is that it was growing in numbers by about 40% per decade, a figure similar to that of Mormonism in modern times, and which would imply that there were around two hundred thousand Christians by the year 200. [2]

—

The rapid spread of Christianity unnerved the Romans. In 112 Emperor Trajan received a letter from Pliny, a provincial governor, asking for advice on dealing with the Christian cult [3]. Pliny had heard bizarre accusations about Christian practices in his province and had set out to investigate:

“They [the Christians] asserted, however, that the sum and substance of their fault or error had been that they were accustomed to meet on a fixed day before dawn and sing responsively a hymn to Christ as to a god, and to bind themselves by oath, not to some crime, but not to commit fraud, theft, or adultery, not falsify their trust, nor to refuse to return a trust when called upon to do so. […] Accordingly, I judged it all the more necessary to find out what the truth was by torturing two female slaves who were called deaconesses. But I discovered nothing else but depraved, excessive superstition.”

Pliny later describes Christianity in terms reminiscent of a plague:

“I therefore postponed the investigation and hastened to consult you. For the matter seemed to me to warrant consulting you, especially because of the number involved. For many persons of every age, every rank, and also of both sexes are and will be endangered. For the contagion of this superstition has spread not only to the cities but also to the villages and farms.”

The advice given in Trajan’s response to Pliny typifies imperial policy towards Christianity at the time. Christians brought before Pliny should be punished, but they can be pardoned if they deny Christ and publicly worship the Roman gods. Furthermore, Pliny should not actively seek out Christians, nor should he listen to anonymous accusations. That would set a “dangerous kind of precedent.”

Most Roman emperors of the 100s and early 200s followed Trajan’s example. Christians frequently faced bottom-up persecutions from the mob, but not top-down persecutions from the state. That would change in 250, during the reign of Emperor Decian.

—

The background to the Decian persecution was the ongoing crisis faced by the Roman Empire between 230 and 280, and which almost tore it apart.

The crisis began with the appearance of two new military threats: the Sassanid Persian Empire to the east, and the increasingly aggressive barbarian tribes in Germania to the north. An outbreak of plague in 251 further damaged the Empire’s economy and depleted the available manpower for military campaigns.

In the early days of the crisis, Emperor Alexander Severus was forced to cut a deal with the German chieftains. To his troops, this action exposed a shameful lack of manly Roman virtue, and they murdered him. In the chaos and civil war of the following fifty years, twenty-six different men were sworn in as emperor.

With the breakdown in loyalty, the Romans did what they normally did during times of social disunity–they doubled down on pietas. In 250, Emperor Decian ordered every citizen to perform a sacrifice in front of a magistrate, a kind of empire-wide loyalty oath. Those who refused faced imprisonment or execution.

By this time, there were over one million Christians in the Empire. Many refused to perform the sacrifices, which led to a widespread state persecution of Christians: the first state persecution, in fact, since that of Nero in AD 64.

The Decian persecution was a grave blow to the Church. Many Christians were killed, including major leaders such as the Patriarchs of Alexandria and Antioch, and the Bishop of Rome. Following Decian’s death in battle, the next emperor, Valerian, ordered a new round of persecution in 257.

In 260, however, the Emperor Gallienus inaugurated a policy of tolerance towards Christianity while he focused his efforts on holding the empire together. This period of tolerance lasted for 40 years, and allowed Christianity to continue to grow rapidly throughout the bloody years of crisis.

Ultimately, Rome’s military prowess triumphed, and a succession of strong and decisive leaders was able to reunify the Empire, fight off the barbarians and restore international military supremacy.

—

By 300 there were over six million Christians in the Empire, representing 10% of its population. Hermits in the deserts of Egypt were forming the first Christian monastic communities, and large churches were being built in Roman cities. The bishop of Rome, by then generally regarded as the leader of the Church, gained the epithet Father, or Papa — Pope.

Christianity had previously been an urban, lower-class religion, but by this time it was gaining converts in rural areas and among the aristocracy. Christians were filling important positions in the army and the civil bureaucracy. Families were torn apart when people disowned relatives who converted.

Emperor Diocletian, who came to power at the end of the crisis, was a decisive, autocratic ruler. He took the unprecedented step of splitting the Empire in two, then into four, appointing three co-emperors to rule alongside him. He overhauled the bureaucracy and instituted widespread tax reforms. He also launched an all-out attempt to eradicate Christianity from Roman life.

Diocletian issued a series of anti-Christian edicts. His first edict ordered Christian churches to be razed and Christian books to be burned. Christians were forbidden to meet and stripped of various legal rights; some who opposed were burned alive. His second edict ordered the arrest of all clergy–so many priests were arrested that Roman prisons were forced to release ordinary criminals.

His third edict offered an amnesty, but his fourth edict required all Christians to make a public sacrifice to the Roman gods on pain of death.

Though these edicts were not enforced at all in some parts of the empire, they were brutally enforced in others. Later Christian writers painted the events as an attempted genocide of Christians, and portrayed Diocletian as a murderous fanatic.

In 305, Diocletian and his right-hand-man, Maximinus, retired, perhaps feeling that they’d managed to break Christianity for good. Christianity survived, however, while the persecution eventually fizzled out. The severity of the persecution had even won Christianity the sympathy of many pagans. A new co-emperor, Licinius, signed the Edict of Milan in 313, declaring the beginning of official tolerance towards Christians.

One of Diocletian’s co-emperors, Constantius, had been consistently opposed to the persecution. His son, Constantine, who succeeded him as co-emperor, was even more sympathetic towards Christianity, and eventually converted.

After Diocletian’s retirement, the system of four co-emperors proved unstable, and the next generation of leaders held a series of civil wars. In 312, Constantine defeated Maxentius in the West, and in 313 Licinius defeated Daia in the East. Constantine and Licinius held an indecisive war in 314, followed by an uneasy truce. In 324, Constantine finally defeated Licinius, and became sole emperor.

After centuries of imperial persecutions, a Christian emperor now ruled Rome.

Era Three: Church Authority vs State Authority

Rome didn’t officially convert to Christianity until 380, but from 325 onwards it was ruled by Christian emperors and gradually became a de facto Christian state [4]. (Armenia was the first nation to convert, c. 314, followed by Ethiopia in 325 and Georgia in 337).

Though Rome was sacked by barbarians in 410, it’s a mistake to see the 300s as a period of constant decline. By the time Constantine came to power, Rome had partially recovered from the crisis of the mid-200s, and it appeared that Diocletian’s decisive reforms had begun to turn things around. Still, the economy in some provinces had been wrecked, and Gaul and Britain were already beginning to shift to a feudal system of entirely local trade.

To Diocletian, it had seemed that Christianity was infiltrating every Roman institution, and uprooting the pagan faith which held Roman society together. Still, it couldn’t be denied that the Church was a stable, unified organization, now centralized in Rome and with a reach spanning the entire empire. Constantine’s plan was to convert the Empire to Christianity, unite the Church with the Roman state, and use Christianity as a force for social unity.

First, though, Christianity itself had to become unified.

During era two, the Church had slowly standardized on a single doctrine. Two new terms came into use: orthodoxy, right-thought, and heresy, choice, i.e. freely chosen ideas [5]. Right-thinking orthodox bishops had been persecuting free-thinking heretics with as much gusto as earlier pagan emperors had shown when persecuting Christians.

Over the centuries, many independent intellectual movements had arisen within the decentralized Church, been denounced as heresies by the emerging orthodoxy, and were squashed before they could organize into independent ideologies. Two heresies, though, arguably survived long enough to form ideologies in their own right.

The first was Gnosticism, which we encountered earlier, an ideology which grew outside of orthodoxy. The second was Arianism, an ideology which split orthodoxy from within.

—

Gnosticism clashed with orthodoxy over the authority of the Church. In era one, authority rested with the original apostles. From era two onwards, authority was based on a person’s degrees of separation from the apostles. If a person had been taught by someone who’d been taught by an apostle — who had himself been taught by Jesus — that person was worth listening to. Over time, the bishops came to be seen as the main inheritors of apostolic authority, and therefore of Christian doctrine.

The Gnostics subverted this idea and claimed that the apostles had given them secret teachings. They also maintained their own collection of sacred texts: the Gnostic gospel of Thomas, for example, presents a Jesus who resembles a Zen master or Hindu sage. Gnostic comes from gnosis, knowledge, and the Gnostics held that their secret knowledge was far more authoritative than any doctrine preached by the Church.

The Arian heresy, in contrast, started over an intellectual dispute. The famous catechetical school in Alexandria was a centre for both Christian and Greek thought, where ideas from both traditions were debated and exchanged. A fairly secular intellectual hub, Alexandria proved to be a “safe space” for the development of ideas which would have been denounced as heretical elsewhere.

Alexandria’s Christian thinkers, trained in Greek philosophy, had been slowly working through the logical implications of Christian doctrine. In doing so, they exposed some seeming paradoxes. Arianism arose from the following question: if Christ is both God and the Son of God, does that imply that God is His own Son?

The Arians, named after their leader Arius, said no. God obviously can’t be his own Son, and so Christ cannot himself be God: he’s just the first and greatest creation of God.

The other side, best described as Trinitarians, said yes. They attempted to resolve the paradox by developing the idea of the Trinity, which held that God consisted of three persons yet was still somehow a single being. [6]

This seemingly minor conflict had big ramifications for Christianity. Trinitarianism maintained the status of Christ at the cost of logic, arguing that the nature of God was ultimately beyond human understanding. Arianism was arguably the more straightforward position, but it lowered the status of Christ, and Trinitarians saw this as blasphemy.

—

In 325, Constantine ordered a global meeting of Christians to resolve the dispute. Held in Nicaea in northern Turkey, and hosted by Constantine in the imperial palace, the Council of Nicaea was attended by about three hundred bishops and possibly over a thousand deacons and presbyters. One famous delegate was Saint Nicholas, the original Father Christmas. Arius led the debate for the Arian faction, and another Alexandrian, Athanasius, represented the Trinitarians.

It was an an intense and emotional debate; Saint Nicholas slapped Arius in the face during one particularly heated argument. Still, despite being a charismatic speaker and learned philosopher, Arius ultimately lost. Even the small number of bishops who had initially agreed with him switched to side with Athanasius, and in the end only two bishops voted in Arius’ favour. Arianism was condemned as a heresy, and Arius was excommunicated. Arians were exiled, and their books were burned.

The Council of Nicaea issued a creed, the Nicene Creed, declaring Trinitarianism as the orthodox Christian position. (The debate between the two factions had ultimately come down to a single word within the creed — homoousios vs homoiousios, i.e. whether Christ was of the same-substance as the Father or merely of a similar-substance).

Arianism, however, proved to have a wider following than Nicaea had suggested, and Christianity remained divided.

In 330, Constantine moved the imperial capital from Rome to his new city, Constantinople, modern day Istanbul. This move to the wealthy and populous East marked a recognition of the relative decline of the West.

Another exiled Arian, Eusebius of Nicomedia, later convinced Constantine to let him return to the Empire, where he joined the court in Constantinople. A skilled politician, Eusebius swiftly began making allies within the court and turning the emperor against Trinitarians.

This was a major shift in Arianism’s fortunes. Eusebius eventually managed to have the leaders of the Trinitarian faction exiled, Athanasius included.

Constantine died in 337, and was baptised on his deathbed by Eusebius [7]. After his death, the empire was divided once again. Eusebius, by this time Patriarch of Constantinople, persuaded the new Eastern Emperor, Constantius II, to convert the empire to Arianism.

Eusebius also sent a Gothic monk, Ulfilas, on a mission north of the Danube to convert the Gothic tribes there to Arian Christianity; Ulfilas’ success would later have significant consequences.

Athanasius was allowed to return to Alexandria after Constantine’s death, but in 338 was exiled again by Constantius, and over the course of his life was exiled a total of five times under four different emperors. He spent many of these years hiding in the desert monasteries of Egypt, 3,000 of which had been established by this time. His curmudgeonly refusal to bow to state pressure earned him the epithet Athansius contra mundus, Athanasius against the world.

Over the next four decades, Trinitarianism remained predominant in the Western Empire and in influential Alexandria; Arianism became predominant in the Eastern Empire and in the imperial court, and gained a foothold in the West under Constantius, as the Arian-dominated state brutally attempted to suppress Trinitarianism.

The doctrinal differences between Arianism and Trinitarianism helped define them as political forces. As the arguably simpler doctrine, easier to sell to those not versed in the details of Christian theology, Arianism was a better fit with Constantine’s plans to unite Church and state. Trinitarianism, in contrast, by making the central concept of Christianity a holy mystery, something to be accepted on faith alone, served to reinforce the authority of the Church.

Trinitarianism finally became dominant at the court in the same manner Arianism had — through personal influence over the emperor. The wife of emperor Theodosius was a staunch Trinitarian, and her influence inspired him to issue the Edict of Thessalonica in 381, banning pagan practices and formally establishing Christianity — specifically, Trinitarian Christianity — as the state religion of the Empire.

—

From 380 onwards, the situation in the Western Empire deteriorated rapidly.

Population movements far away in Central Asia led to increased numbers of barbarians appearing along the Empire’s borders. The Visigoths, fleeing the Ostrogoths, who were themselves fleeing the Huns, were allowed to settle in the Eastern Empire, but rebelled in 378.

There was a civil war between East and West; the leader of the Visigoths, Alaric I, took advantage of Rome’s internal conflict and started another rebellion. With the Rhine border stripped of troops, Vandals, Alains and Suevi invaded Gaul.

The East, struggling to survive itself, could not spare the forces to save the West. Alaric I and his men sacked Rome in 410.

The Western Empire limped on in some form for several decades, but was gradually dismembered by barbarian tribes, with the last emperors being little more than the puppets of barbarian kings. In 476, Odoacer, a Germanic chieftain, killed the last Western emperor and became the first King of Italy, marking the symbolic end of the Western Roman Empire.

476 AD

476 marks the traditional beginning of the Early Middle Ages in Europe; an era sometimes described, due to the scant records of this time, as the Dark Ages. What did the world of 476 look like?

The former territories of the Western Empire had been divided into small Germanic kingdoms, while the Eastern Empire had survived, and would endure for almost a millennia as a Greek-speaking, Christian state.

Alexandria was no longer an intellectual centre, its temples and libraries likely destroyed during the persecution of paganism in 391.

Though the Western Empire was gone, Rome, the eternal city, still stood, and the Bishop of Rome still claimed the title Pope and supreme authority over the Church. Christians in the Eastern Empire, however, saw him as merely one of five primary bishops, and this dispute would later develop into the split between the Roman Catholic and Eastern Orthodox Churches.

Arianism, brought to the Goths by Ulfilas, flourished amongst the barbarians. The Franks in Gaul, the Visigoths in Spain, and the Ostrogoths in the Balkans built Arian churches and maintained a separate Arian hierarchy of priests; Arianism would not be fully suppressed by the Catholic Church until the 600s.

Two final strands of our story epitomize the complicated role of Christianity in European intellectual history.

Christian monastic communities, modeled after those which had hosted Athanasius in the Egyptian desert, spread into Europe via North Africa and the Middle East. Christian monks would be key in preserving Classical ideas through the Dark Ages, squirreling away Greek and Roman texts in their monasteries. Hundreds of years later, these monasteries would develop into a network of knowledge-sharing institutions: the medieval universities.

Gnosticism, suppressed but seemingly never eradicated, disappeared from history during the Dark Ages; hundreds of years later, it would reappear in Bulgaria and from there spread into Western Europe in the form of Catharism. The Catholic Church would ultimately root it out by by establishing that notorious group of anti-heresy organisations: the medieval inquisitions.

The University, the Monastery and the Inquisition: the symbols of Christianity as the creator, preserver and destroyer of ideas.

—

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antoine_Destutt_de_Tracy

[2] Yes, this is narrower than the standard definition of culture. I’ll justify the reasons for my revised definition in a future post.

[3] Rodney Stark, https://books.google.co.th/books?id=HcFSaGvgKKkC&pg=PA6

[4] Pliny, http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html

[5] With one exception: Julian the Apostate, a follower of Neoplatonism who ruled for less than two years, and who was a rather interesting character: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julian_I

[6] Another great term, heresiarch, meaning the founder or leader of a heretical movement, has sadly fallen out of common use.

[7] Trinitarians were careful to argue that God did not consist of three parts, which was another heresy, partialism. Nor did He possess three different aspects, which was yet another heresy, modalism. The nature of God was simply a holy mystery, inconceivable to humans.

It’s actually hard to explain the Trinity without accidentally expounding some ancient heresy, as this video humorously demonstrates: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQLfgaUoQCw

[8] Constantine actually spent most of his life as a catechumen, not a fully baptised Christian.

References:

The two best general online resources for early Christianity I found were:

The Catholic Encyclopedia (pro-Christian): http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/

Early Christian History (neutral to mildly anti-Christian): http://www.earlychristianhistory.info/

Other useful resources:

On the History of Early Christianity, Frederick Engels, https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/

Pliny and Trajan on Christians, http://faculty.georgetown.edu/jod/texts/pliny.html

“What if Arianism had won?”, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sa_3a0bT_98

How Arianism Almost Won, https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/magazine/article/how-arianism-almost-won/

Documents of the Early Arian Controversy, http://www.fourthcentury.com/index.php/urkunde-chart-opitz/

Those without a spare few months to read Gibbon’s Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire may enjoy this selection of choice quotes: http://www.his.com/~z/gibbon.html

The post An Ideological History Of Early Christianity appeared first on Social Matter.

Dear Advocate,

Like you, I once supported fewer restrictions on foreign immigration. While I’m not sure of your specific views, in my case, I believed that it was important to break down barriers to high-skill immigration, and that the US should maintain and expand its policy to take in refugees fleeing oppression.

There are a number of reasons why my positions were wrong, but the main reason why I was wrong was because the beliefs rested on a few faulty assumptions:

1. Cultural differences are malleable — most immigrants just want to assimilate into the historic and distinctive American culture.
2. Genetics is mostly cosmetic — observed differences in intelligence and behavior are mostly due to differences in upbringing rather than inborn.
3. People have no moral right to use state power to prevent property owners from importing as many or as few people from foreign countries as they want to.

Point #1 — that all people everywhere are simply Americans-in-waiting — is both logically absurd and readily observable to be false, even when traveling to relatively homogeneous regions like Western Europe and Latin America. While Americans are accustomed to having one big language group over a vast territory, in much of the world, linguistic and cultural fragmentation is a given. In countries like France, there are substantial differences in cuisine, accent, dress, and cultural expression from one region to the next.

There’s also the question as to why corporate leaders looking to increase the supply of skilled labor that they can hire should have superior rights to property owners and others who might want to restrict access to their territories. What gives those leaders superior rights to the existing skilled laborers who might want to restrict immigration?

In practice, the corporate leaders are just more effective at manipulating the political process, but it’s entirely possible to see the reverse happening at another time.

Further, despite postwar and post-cold-war consolidations of political models, there’s still substantial diversity in terms of the types of governments people support worldwide, what policies they favor (if they can even articulate a political consciousness), and what morals they follow.

As for the second point, it requires a staunch denial of the entire body of knowledge of genetics, going back centuries. Thinkers as diverse and well-known as Stephen Pinker, Charles Murray, and James Watson (whom you should remember from your High School biology textbook as one of the co-discoverers of the structure of DNA) have all done a better job of deflating the ‘blank slate’ myth than I could in a short letter to you.

The political implications of substantial biological diversity between groups of humans means that any model which rests on the assumption that humans are roughly uniform in terms of their economic productivity, cultural practices, and political beliefs is not a good model to base your legal reasoning on.

Point #3 is more esoteric, as most people nowadays have a fuzzy notion of what governments should and shouldn’t be permitted to do, with most people hewing towards a contradictory grab bag of custom and abstract principles.

The chief reason why you should consider changing your position on immigration is that it creates social incoherence and makes it more challenging to run an effective government along any given lines, regardless of whatever your beliefs about government are.

If we, for a moment, imagine importing 30 million Frenchmen into the American Midwest and giving them citizenship, the results would be the creation of a big exiled France-on-the-Prairie. The original population would be politically displaced, linguistically marginalized, and also marginalized from existing economic networks within the exiles.

The original government of those regions would have to make way for power-sharing with the new French majority, which would likely move to change the political and cultural climate to one much more like France than it was like the Midwest, with its distinct history.

Immigration advocates could counter that that is largely what happened with the original settling of the Midwest in the mid-19th century, except with immigrants from Germany, Ireland, and elsewhere. And in fact, the history of the settling of that region is one of inter-ethnic conflict between Irish, Germans of different Christian persuasions, the Native Americans, and Yankee settlers from New England. And part of that incoherent internal conflict is what lead to the heinous Civil War, in which Yankees conscripted immigrants straight off the boats to fight against the South.

We like to think that we shape our own political beliefs, but we are also shaped by the results of past wars, rather than an exercise of pure reason which we conduct isolated from others. One of the reasons why debates about immigration are so tendentious in contemporary America is because it’s long been a contentious debate, in large part due to the civic rights granted to all citizens to vote.

In democracies like the United States, the winners of domestic political conflicts have imported foot soldiers to use against their rivals, both in a literal sense and at the ballot box. Ambitious Americans from the founding onward have seized upon dislocations and conflicts in Europe to gain an upper hand in their domestic schemes. When the ambitious see fewer advantages in importing a new class of foreigners, they tend to stop doing it. That’s one of the reasons why, in the early 20th century, Progressives opposed immigration for a time — they were trying to bust local political machines run by largely Catholic rivals descended from immigrants.

In these debates, as in most issues, we tend to try to re-frame self-interested politics in terms of general principles. We ask “is immigration good or bad for the general welfare?” — and then construct arguments based on those terms, rather than in the particular terms of power politics, because enlightened political structures are not supposed to be about conflicts between interest groups and powerful individuals seeking advantage.

What I’d like to ask you to do is to consider looking past the airy expressions of principles and thinking more in terms of the contemporary political scene in the same way that you would look at a conflict in a foreign country. Americans became comfortable talking about the ‘conflict between Sunni, Shia, and Kurds’ as the US struggled to create a modern state in Iraq governed by a fictional nationality with a similar persuasive weight to the fictional nationality that Americans tend to believe about themselves.

Thinking about immigration with the detachment that you’d feel reading a news story about a conflict between tribes you’d never heard of before is a good exercise to cut away some of the emotional responses to terms which have been carefully cultivated in you by the many different interests who want to persuade you to change your beliefs.

Intellectuals under liberalism tend to see themselves as warriors in the ‘battle of ideas,’ but really, ideas are just the early skirmishes in the actual battles in which people shoot each other over scraps of land to determine who controls it and under what terms. The ideas are important, but the people doing the fighting over those ideas — and the results of those fights — are what tend to matter more.

Consider getting out of the debating hall on the immigration issue. One of the lessons we should learn from the 20th century is that it’s entirely possible for people with terrible, contradiction-ridden ideas to win enormous wars, which gives them territorial control over enormous swaths of the earth. The USSR didn’t have to be run on solid principles for it to conquer much of the planet. You can win the debate, and then lose everything anyway.

The immigration issue is less of one of universal, abstract principles and more one of particular conflicts between particular groups of people in a given country, with different interest groups grasping for advantage at the expense of others. This harms our vanity of seeing our political culture as ‘above’ all of that petty grasping, which was supposed to be characteristic of the ‘old world’ and not of the new political order of popular sovereignty, but that’s the case.

When the determination of what policy to support becomes one of which faction aligns with your interests, it deflates much of the rhetoric and intellectualizing around the issue. That rhetoric tends to be a thin veneer over personal ambition. In democratic politics, political actors use such rhetoric to tout people into their camp, even when it undermines their personal interests. Do what you can to immunize yourself against that.

The post A Letter to Mass Immigration Advocates appeared first on Social Matter.

The major problem with the empirical case against democracy is the lack of data. The first democracies arose in Greece, but we have good historical records for Athens alone, with partial information about Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, and a few other city-states. After the Classical period, states calling themselves democracies have been few and far between. The first such state was Republican France, but the rise of democracy worldwide has taken place primarily in the 20^th century and gone hand-in-hand with the rise to world supremacy of the United States of America.

Another issue is definitions: even the most radical democrat in antiquity would never have dreamed of putting the political franchise on a territorial basis, of handing out citizenship to anyone simply born within his city. Athens didn’t even have universal manhood suffrage, let alone extend voting rights to women. If we want to condemn democracy as it is understood today, then we have virtually no data whatsoever. Pretty much all we have are governments which we claim are in the process of destroying themselves and their societies, but which, for better or for worse, haven’t gotten around to it yet.

We do have one good example of the dysfunction of democracy in France. The horrors of the French Revolution are well known, and in the end, the First Republic couldn’t even preserve itself for fifteen years before it fell. Still, a single datum does not a convincing argument make.

At the same time, the Athenians back in the days of yore did call their government a democracy, and many advocates of democracy today hark back to the Athenian example, so it does seem reasonable to count Athens as a democracy. Indeed, it was the example of Athens, and especially the opinions of historical commentators, which gave to democracy the unpleasant reputation which it held until very recently.

Thucydides and Xenophon chronicle Athens’ fall in the late 5^th century and paint a grim picture. Thucydides’ account of the civil wars throughout Greece which resulted from the titanic clash between Athens and Sparta makes for gripping reading, and it is hard to come away from these sections without being deeply moved. Other stories, such as Cleon’s high-handedness with his political enemies and the judicial murder of Socrates, also darken democracy’s image.

But there are problems.

For one, the civil wars throughout Greece were in no way the fault of democracy or even democratic ideology. Oligarchic parties were just as complicit in the wars as democratic ones, and they could be just as ruthless in victory, as the behavior of the Thirty Tyrants shows. Also, Athens was not subject to such civil discord, at least not until the oligarchs gained Spartan support. Indeed, Athens, Sparta, Argos, Corinth, and Thebes, all the top-tier Greek cities appear to have been domestically quite placid since no outside force was in a position to change their government. Whether a city was governed by an oligarchy or by a democracy made little difference as long as it stuck to its choice of regime.

Additionally, the constitutional distance between an oligarchy and a democracy was quite small in the ancient world. Every Greek city had magistrates, an aristocratic Council, and a popular Assembly. A democracy had a proportionally larger citizen body and vested more power in the Assembly, while an oligarchy placed the balance of power with the Council. Both democratic and oligarchic parties justified their power through appeal to the general populace: democrats offered the common man participation in government, while the oligarchs claimed to be better at governing. If these two constitutional arrangements produced radically different domestic policies, the surviving historical record does not show it.

Foreign affairs appears to be the realm where democracy performed badly. The Athenian democracy was very aggressive, provoking Persia, subjugating its Delian allies, antagonizing Sparta and other cities, and striving to regain its empire even after its crushing defeat in 404 B.C. Thebes also adopted a democratic constitution in 378 B.C., and this moment signaled Thebes’ aggressive rise to supremacy in the Greek world. In the 3^rd century, the Achaean League emerged as a power in the Peloponnesus as a democratic confederation.

One should not be surprised at this point to learn that there are problems with this assessment.

The first is that democracy is far from unique in presiding over foreign aggression. All societies go through periods of waxing and waning, and when waxing, tend to be aggressive toward their neighbors. Argos subjugated the Peloponnesus under a tyranny; Sparta did so under an oligarchy; the Achaeans repeated the feat under democracy. Countless non-democracies have been just as aggressive: Persia, Macedon, Babylon, Assyria, Carthage, and Rome.

The second is that a society, even a democratic one, tends to expand when under the leadership of a small number of extraordinary men. Athens had Themistocles, Aristides, and Cimon; Thebes had Pelopidas, Epaminondas, and their companions; the Achaean League had Aratus and his fellow tyrants. Once again, this feature is not unique to democracies, but it even more strongly suggests that democratic government is not what causes foreign aggression.

When the men who have led a society to greatness perish, there arises the challenge of maintaining their gains, and it is here that democracy fares poorly. New territories and new peoples have to be incorporated into the political order and governed effectively, and the new geopolitical reality has to be comprehended as well.

A monarchy or aristocracy moves smoothly into an imperial position because it is already accustomed to ruling over one society. Forging personal connections with conquered peoples and finding experienced administrators is relatively easy for people accustomed to doing so just to govern their own society. Additionally, elites tend to have a better idea of what their society is actually capable of, since they administer, if not constitute, much of its wealth and institutions. Cimon knows that trying to conquer Boeotia is a bad idea; a random Athenian on the street probably does not.

Though Athens is considered the archetypal democracy—which makes sense, considering it was the first one—the Achaean League deserves some special attention. The Achaean League began as a coalition of democratically governed cities in Achaea, naturally, but expanded by admitting new cities on equal terms to the founding cities. They also did not oppose tyrants who ruled cities they wanted to conquer, but instead offered them jobs in the League government. This gave the Achaeans a pool of talented administrators and generals and helped maintain a balance of power among the League cities. The scheme was remarkably successful—the Achaean League only fell because it ran afoul of Rome.

The best historical argument against democracy is simply that democracies have not emerged organically very often. Some kind of popular government seems well-suited to cities and very small societies, but for large, spread-out societies it just hasn’t worked out until the modern day. And these historical, small-scale, and limited democracies have not been noticeably worse at governing than monarchies or aristocracies. The main failing of democracy comes in imperial government, something that a lot of societies don’t have to worry about.

Modern democracy, however, is a very different animal. Ancient democracies belonged to ethnically homogenous societies rather than geographical areas, women did not participate in politics, and the corrosive ideology of Leftism did not hold sway. It is these features that have transformed a perfectly good form of government into something hostile to civilization itself.

The post Ancient Democracies Weren’t As Terrible As Modern Democracies appeared first on Social Matter.

“Equality is related to the direct interests of individuals who are bent on escaping certain inequalities not in their favor, and setting up new inequalities that will be in their favor, this latter being their chief concern.”

Many make the mistake of thinking that our current decline and ever-spiraling civilizational death is because of the practical implications of the egalitarian ideology, the leveling of the ancient hierarchical society. Were it only that simple, we might actually have some hope of correcting this error before it consumes our world completely. The egalitarian ideology, so integral to the Cult of Progress and its physical manifestation in what many call the ‘Cathedral,’ does not result in an egalitarian society, any more than Marxism resulted in universal equality for citizens of the Soviet Union.

Put into practice, this ideology creates something much worse. Almost as if the whole of Western civilization has capsized, we find that instead of flattening hierarchy, Modernity in fact rotates hierarchy. Those who once ruled our unofficial caste system, the natural Brahmins and Kshatriyas (priests and warriors) have been replaced. The roles remain the same in general practice, but the spiritual constitution of those filling the roles has been completely turned on its head. Today it is the Harijans, the Pariahs, the Untouchables who wear the vestments of priests and particularly wield the enforcement of law through force.

You had better believe you are under a hierarchy. What should truly shock you is how the worst and most unstable elements sit at its peak. No, they don’t wear the finery and regalia, or bear the impressive titles of the ruling castes of bygone eras. After all, they don’t need your respect or awe (that can all go to the supporting castes of smug scientists and vapid celebrities). All that the malicious snowflakes setting policy require from you is your sympathy for their fraudulent plight, and your fear of speaking out against their protected status.

I wish to reproduce in paraphrase a comment that I read recently posted on the Canadian online publication ‘The Globe And Mail‘, specifically relating to the controversial speaking tour of popular neomasculinist author Roosh V. The comment from Helen I. Scott is a rare, candid display of this faux-hierarchical principle of Modernity in action.

“It’s easy to ignore/laugh at/dismiss a guy with a knife (Roosh) when you’re the one holding the gun (the privileged never-been-raped among us who say “just ignore him”). […] But anyone who is vulnerable (women, children, LGBTQ etc…) deserves the comfort of having society give at least lip-service affirmation (through twitter, “moral outrage” etc…) that it is wrong and that we don’t actually believe that rape is ok. […] Denouncing t-shirts, calling out harassers, and expressing moral outrage at hate speech is categorized as mob rule by some – I prefer to call it direct democracy – where everyone has a voice and (via social media) a relatively equal platform. […].”

To make a factual correction, the ‘direct democracy’ referred to here has also included physical assault, an attempted visa ban, doxxings, false rape threats, and ‘swatting’. However the reason I am presenting this is to show how people who are apparently in this ‘privileged’ group feel about those of the professional victim class. Like so many words twisted by our Modern lexiconographers, ‘privileged’ actually translates as ‘Sudras (peasants) – and deserving of it!’.

What you’ll find if you look into those accused of being ‘privileged’ in our day and age is that they are in fact despised by those with power. Not as badly as the avowed racists, sexists, and homophobes of course, but limited in potential by their own tragically unnoticed bigotry. It seems that Ms. Scott is likely one of these such people, and thanks to remarkable Cathedral brainwashing, she defends her betters with gusto.

In practical terms, the ‘privileged’ are below the ‘vulnerable’. See how language works here on Sesame Street? Could it be any more clear, the direction of this hierarchy, when the commenter actually declares that the ‘privileged’ owe tribute to the ‘vulnerable’ in the form of “at least lip-service affirmation”–in other words, a humiliating declaration of inferiority and fealty. In order to appease this new ruling caste, all of us must flagellate ourselves for our wickedness. If anyone steps out of line to challenge this insanity, then direct democracy must be rallied to crush them, critics crying hypocrisy be damned. It is just too easy for the Canadian people to dismiss hateful bigots, without realizing how damaging they truly are to the highest and most exalted individuals. A dereliction of duty takes place when we fail to pay the tribute to our cultural wardens in the form of an open pledge of loyalty to the new order and brutality towards its enemies.

I suppose the genius of this hierarchy is it creates a kind of victimhood optical illusion to fool the common people into thinking that, even while they are acting as if the ‘vulnerable’ are above them, the reality is that such groups, be they victims of imaginary college campus rape, ethnic minorities, or the LGBTBBQ cartel, are actually the lowly oppressed class who should be defended out of charity. It’s a remarkable, rebellion-proof strategy. How can the people rebel against that which they don’t even realize is ruling over them?

The term ‘kakistocracy’ comes from the root words kákisto (worst) and cratia (rule). While Modern governments take on many different representative forms, this word describes all of them on the meta and hierarchical-descriptive level. All of them have reached or are reaching (though delayed in some circumstances) a ‘Rule of the Worst’. The elements of human society that were yesterday consigned to the gutter (liars, cowards, deviants, and foreign bandits) today have more safeguards around them than any Pope in history.

A slavish devotion by the self-harming majority means there is no need for a 24/7 detachment of Swiss Guard, however. All potential threats to the newly installed hierarchy will be handled by ‘direct democracy.’ Undoubtedly the most tragic element of this is that unwittingly, by serving the will of the worst and catering to their every parasitic whim and wish, the laypeople of Western civilization who thresh the crop, man the industries, tend to the sick, and generate the vast capital that keeps society ticking over, are in fact furnishing their own tomb in many respects. We can save very few of them. But let us hope that when this tomb is finally sealed, those who today are pretenders to the glory of the high castes, are sealed inside as well, to rot with the masses they so vindictively tricked with their legacy of deception.

The post Paying Tribute To The Kakistocracy appeared first on Social Matter.

For years, academics, demographers, and pundits have been discussing the implications of the impending minority status of Whites in America. This trend projection is usually portrayed as an inevitability, regardless of whether or not there’s much of a change in immigration policy. The usual tack which pundits take is that the Republican party in particular needs to embrace diversity to improve its appeal to African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians.

On the left, especially among academics, there tends to be an avid celebration of the demographic displacement of European-Americans. The theology of ‘white privilege’ holds that Europeans as a whole are guilty of unique historical crimes which morally justifies their cultural and physical displacement from their lands. If anything, the sentence placed on Europeans collectively is harsher than anything dreamed up at the Nuremberg tribunals, with the charges being more vague, subjective, non-specific, and targeted to an entire population rather than specific political leaders.

If this political rhetoric has a purpose, it’s to help the multicultural political coalition to tighten itself. Intellectuals intended to discourage the political right from dissenting on the perceived fait accompli of mass immigration to the postwar coalition in the Western world. The chain of reasoning went:

1. Whites will become a minority in all major Western nations in 50 years or less.
2. The current political right, especially in the US, has a mostly mono-cultural appeal, which means that its agenda will never be able to succeed in universal suffrage democracy in which the ethnic group it most appeals to becomes a minority.
3. Therefore, the right must pander to more diverse ethnic groups in order to salvage some of its political viability.

The problem with this chain of reasoning is that it forecloses an almost infinite number of alternative political strategies that could be adopted in response to changing conditions. Liberal, universal suffrage democracy is itself not a permanent fixture either in Europe or globally — if you tell a population that it’s going to have to give up power over its own affairs in order to maintain a political system that’s at least legitimized by popular vote, there’s a good chance that at least some portion of those people are going to be more willing to drop the popular vote than they are to give up power over their own affairs to a largely foreign population.

This is how that rhetoric wound up backfiring on the academics and intellectuals — by being so clumsy and open about telling the native populations that they were terrible-bad-people who needed to be abolished, they triggered a defensive response that might not have happened otherwise with nearly as much vehemence.

So far, most of the rhetoric on the populist right has been around restricting immigration — which will do little to alter the demographic trajectory of Western countries other than reducing the acceleration of the decline of the native populations. Because this would be necessary but not sufficient to alter the ultimate future of Western civilization, there are a couple further moderate proposals which actually could — one would be mass deportations, and the other would be some combination of restrictions upon the popular vote and experiments in various forms of private government.

The reason why universal suffrage encourages open-borders policies is that it encourages political adventurers to import enormous numbers of potential voters for their personal power or (more typically) their party — regardless of the future consequences to the quality of life in the country in question. If you give a vote to anyone with a heartbeat, it encourages politicians to fight with one another by importing people with heartbeats, regardless of the character of the people who have those blood-pumping organs.

It’s well and good to treat the symptoms of a larger political error, but in order to prevent a recurrence of the same problem, more significant changes are going to be necessary.

The post How ‘Permanent Minority’ Rhetoric Backfires appeared first on Social Matter.

To one skeptical of religion, this looks suspiciously like either superstition or propaganda. The hand of God did not actually give victory to the Israelites, but saying that it did certainly bolsters the case for believing in Him. Indeed, a god who does not promise victory (provided he has anything to do with war at all) is rather hard to find.

This is not by accident. Whether the gods exist or not, increased religious devotion could actually help in battle, making the difference between victory and defeat.

Picture an standard ancient battlefield: two armies facing each other on an open plain. At the sound of trumpets the troops advance, first at a brisk walk, then at a jog. When the two sides get close enough, they stop and form battle lines. The rank and file exchange poorly-aimed blows or missiles, while well-armed officers duel. Very few people die, and when a man does fall, the troops standing behind him step forward to fill the space he left. On the flanks, squadrons of mounted nobles throw javelins or shoot arrows or perhaps charge at each other and fight with swords and spears—at least until they get tired of it and take a break. The battle isn’t exactly a picnic, but for the most part the only people seriously risking their lives are the highly-trained and well-equipped aristocrats who declared the war in the first place.

There is no grand, Hollywood-style mêlée for fairly straightforward reasons. For one, in a mêlée you can’t tell friend from foe, whom you’re supposed to defend and whom you’re supposed to kill. It’s also much easier to defend yourself and your friends if you’re all in a close formation. People don’t want to die, and they don’t generally want to kill either, so they leave the deadly fighting to the professionals. Fatigue is also a major factor: even the officers and nobles can’t fight hand-to-hand in heavy armor for more than a few minutes at a time.

This happy equilibrium usually collapses quite suddenly. If one side’s cavalry drives their counterparts from the field and turns on the enemy infantry, the foot soldiers, threatened from the front and the rear, will run away. Alternatively, if an officer falls in a particularly spectacular fashion, the troops around him may give up hope and flee. Or the soldiers in the rear could simply decide to turn tail and run; lacking support, the men in the front ranks follow. At this point, the victorious army commences pursuit and kills a great many of the enemy soldiers, who are now more interested in getting away than in actively defending themselves.

Morale was the primary deciding factor in an ancient battle. Superior equipment or fighting skills certainly helped, as did effective use of terrain and combined arms, surprise and stratagem, and just pure dumb luck (the favor of the gods, indeed), but all of these were in practice simply more effective means of driving the enemy off the field, of convincing him that to continue resisting was pointless. As long as an army retained its formation, the casualties it suffered were dramatically lower than if it broke and ran. Bloody battles of attrition like Cannae were the rare exception, not the general rule.

Ancient armies had a variety of techniques for bolstering morale. One was to place older, more experienced troops in the rear, where they could keep the greener fighters from slinking off. Having aristocrats or even well-trained commoners serving as officers was another method: with their distinctive equipment they could serve as rallying points and would inspire confidence by their mere presence. On the flip side, an officer’s death could cause morale to plummet. With aristocratic officers, bonds of patronage also held soldiers in place: the noblemen supported them in peacetime, so they returned the favor in war.

Beloved generals could use their troops regard for them to great effect as well. At the battle of Orchomenos in 85 B.C., Sulla ran to where his soldiers were fleeing, climbed upon a rock, and shouted, “When they ask you where it was that you left you commander in the lurch, you may tell them it was at Orchomenos.” Sulla’s soldiers were ashamed to disappoint their general, so they resumed fighting and won the battle. Some commanders, such as Alexander the Great, actually did engage in combat, but the general’s presence was far more important than his prowess.

The core of morale, however, was assabiyah. A soldier fought for the men standing beside him, men who come from the same country, who speak the same language, who pray to the same gods. These were the same ties that bound a community together; indeed, an ancient army was a microcosm of the soldiers’ society.

So when a people met defeat in battle, a likely explanation was that their group feeling was weak; if assabiyah had been strong, they wouldn’t have run away and been beaten. At the very least, strengthening assabiyah couldn’t hurt anything. Thus, charges of impiety and renewal of religious devotion.

There were dangers, however. Specifically ginning up fervor could easily go too far: the Romans, for instance, loathed the Carthaginians for engaging in the barbarity of human sacrifices (gladiatorial shows didn’t count), but after repeated defeats by Hannibal, the Romans revived that ancient practice for that one special occasion.

Modern weaponry has substantially diminished the importance of morale in war. In times gone by, valor could at least be said to carry the day; now, fighting spirit is one of numerous factors a commander must consider. This does not mean that morale is unimportant, but merely that it does not even come close to deciding battles all by itself.

The old ways don’t die easily, however.

Democratic politics provides a venue for recurring conflict and runs a very grave risk for it. Though a democracy exists to ensure the supremacy of one faction over its rivals, those rivals are still allowed to participate in politics, in effect tricking them into accepting a subordinate role by holding out the vain hope that they might one day win power for themselves. This means that the submissive faction is supposed to keep losing over and over while still believing in the system that disempowers them. Eventually they’ll wise up.

Repeatedly trying to win elections and influence policy and failing results in the same response as marching out to battle and losing: mutual recriminations and holiness spirals. Newer, more ideologically extreme candidates emerge and win prominence. However, because winning elections often requires broad appeal, these extreme candidates aren’t much more successful at the ballot box, and when they do attain office, since governing effectively requires compromise, they don’t accomplish very much. And so the cycle continues.

Ideally, when a people or political faction keeps losing, it changes its approach to the conflict, as well, since mere team spirit is often insufficient. The Romans’ adoption of the Fabian strategy was probably more effective at defeating Hannibal than burying a poor, innocent Gaul alive. In a democracy, this means that the repeated losers will decide to stage a coup, a move which can win short-term success but doesn’t work as well in the long run.

The case of the oligarchs of Athens is instructive. The Alcmaeonidae established the democracy to assure their own supremacy in Athenian politics, and their rivals kept trying to seize power. Building alternative institutions failed when the democrats struck back and defanged them, and playing politics according to the democrats’ rules went nowhere. In 411 B.C., extreme oligarchs attempted to stage a coup but were quashed by the democrats and moderate oligarchs; the regime of the Thirty Tyrants was predicated on Spartan support which failed to materialize. After the civil war, the democrats had had enough of the oligarchic party and drove its up-and-coming leaders out of politics. These young ideologues were forced to express their views through only literature and philosophy.

Today, we have conservatives as the perpetual losers. Name a major conservative victory from the past fifty years, if you can, outside the venue of gun rights. The Republican Party establishment shrewdly encouraged and rode the wave of opposition to Obama but would much prefer that right-wing extremists just vote Republican and nothing else. Donald Trump is a threat to them simply because he rallies the crazies. When the Republicans lose their bid for the presidency again next year, there will be even more disenchantment with political affairs among those of us over on the Right. Anger and resentment won’t be the only emotion results; zeal will be another.

The trick will be in channeling this righteous fury in constructive directions and not into electoral politics.

The post Losing Battles And Losing Elections appeared first on Social Matter.

As much as he is loathed by the Establishment, he is a demon of their design.

Trump has toyed with the idea of running for president in prior elections. Trump would make television appearances and discuss the idea of being president. He was also an employee of NBC. Those runs were seen as momentary public relations moves to give himself visibility before declining to run and saying, “Oh by the way, check out The Apprentice that starts next month.” It was very savvy for a man who knows he needs to generate ratings and an awareness of his brand. Even then, Trump had high polling numbers versus the field.

This reveals the first contribution the system made to Trump’s run: the celebrity effect. Barack Obama was “Obama: the cool black guy” Hollywood had always told Americans about–until we discovered Obama was not that guy. There is the Clinton brand, and no one would vote for Hillary unless she was Bill’s wife. The Bush brand exists. There is value to being a symbolic figure that has some cache and is cool. How much power does the presidency really have? Not much, so let’s promote cool types who fit roles for our voting coalition to identify with to get into the booth. Trump is an international brand with decades of exposure. He can parlay this into solid polling numbers early solely due to name recognition. Why else would Hillary Clinton take selfies with Kim Kardashian that look like stills from a “Weekend at Bernie’s” reboot?

Hillary is alive right?

Trump is aware of branding. It generates income for him in his incredibly convoluted wealth holdings. Half of his value seems to be in being “The Donald”. Trump understands the media game runs the show with elections, and he is a skillful publicity hound and generator. Chuck Johnson has written about Trump’s understanding of the modern game. He can get everyone talking about him, which sucks the air out of the room for everyone else. Other candidates can die purely from obscurity and lack of air time. Trump has years of active Twitter use to get inside the media’s OODA loop and change the framing of any report. The media’s biased use of Twitter, as if it is the pulse of “the people” despite Twitter’s proven liberal and black demographic skew, allows Trump to use what is the equivalent of an Internet CB Radio to increase visibility and shape media coverage. The system has allowed Twitter to have an effect because Twitter is a leftist tool to shape narratives in the left’s favor.

The media itself contributes to his rise by how far left it leans, how it selects our leaders for us, and how nasty it has become. This is the media that included Barack Obama on a list of 100 greatest Americans–in 2005. Planting proper voting seeds can never be too early. The narrative framing and media reports feed Trump’s outsider appeal. Any attack on Trump by the media he can spin as baseless, gutter-style attacks, and the American public eats it up because the media is at record low approval ratings.

The media has spent decades slanting the news one way and chopping conservative heads off (see Gov. Christie + Bridgegate), so a conservative primary audience cheers as Trump calls them names and throws schoolyard insults their way. The media thinks this will doom him, yet he keeps bouncing along as Teflon Don. The media lives in a bubble and fails to see their faults. Proof of this is that Don Henley’s pop hit ripping the news media “Dirty Laundry” is thirty-years-old. Has the media improved since 1982? No, and Trump can prey on that track record and societal frustration with the media.

Trump is also tapping into a vein of life that is devoid on the professional left and barely existent on the professional right: machismo. Trump has a masculine energy that progressives have worked hard to erase from the managerial class and the pool of officials to select for a president. This energy exists in all walks of life on both the left and right, but the media, academics, and government officials do their best to subvert and attack it.

Trump could be slayed quickly if an experienced politician took him to task for his lack of substance or experience. None have yet because modern conflict values the victim and group consensus that requires persuasion and amiability. His bravado is magnetic, and the role of president has lacked magnetism for countless years. Americans have watched a black president admit to not smoking because he is afraid of his wife. Most of Governor Chris Christie’s draw early in his governorship was his “in your face” attitude when dealing with greedy public employees. With the talk of a rising Hispanic voting pool, forget Trump, maybe machismo has a bright future in American politics.

Trump’s very wealth and celebrity is a product of our modern economic and political system, and here is the second contribution made by the system to Trump’s run: the FIRE economy. In the early 1980s, the American economy transitioned to push more of the financial, insurance, and real estate sectors of the economy for growth. This created a debt-based asset bubble in the ’80s, but was not cemented until the Clinton years. Clinton’s administration took a finance-centric, strong dollar policy approach, rather than a weak dollar, labor-centric stance. Robert Rubin beat Robert Reich in the Oval Office meetings. Trump inherited massive real estate holdings. His wealth is based on government and monetary policies of inflating asset bubbles, ever decreasing interest rates, and policies that cater to wealthy asset holders and leverage. Trump is not a billionaire without this system’s policies.

The system’s fifth contribution is the absurd election process for picking a national leader. Anyone can run as long as they have the cash to spend on a staff and pay for media exposure through advertising and what not. As long as a candidate will spout what wealthy donors want said, they can run. This allows anyone to enter, which is exhibited in this cycle not just by Donald Trump, but by millionaire, failed executive and failed candidate Carly Fiorina and Dr. Ben Carson. Fiorina has money, can speak well, and is a woman. Dr. Ben Carson gave one speech where he chastised Barack Obama, and the GOP handlers can use him to make money consulting this election round for a guy going nowhere, who should not be within 100 miles of the Oval Office.

What qualifications do any of these three candidates have for what is supposedly an active role leading the nation? It is hard to argue against them after the whirlwind rise of Obama from middling state senator to president within five years.

Trump would still have nowhere to go and nothing to pitch, though, if not for the structural contribution by the system: creating the sandbox. The progressive cathedral has constructed a sandbox for polite, approved politicians to play in with many important topics off limits. Crime and immigration are two topics that are off-limits. Everything has become off-limits due to political correctness.

The system limited the sandbox’s size so much that they did not realize the wide open playground they left behind. Trump is running free in that zone. He openly states that there is no time for PC nonsense, which only makes him more appealing in an age of progressive endorsed protests of fast food chicken joints over private political opinions. He even noted in the first debate that if not for him, they would not even be talking about immigration. There are few critical jobs a national government is responsible for, and securing the territory from invaders is one. Trump latched onto this failure, and now he has a unique topic to run on that differentiates him from everyone else. He has an issue to pair with his name recognition.

The last contribution is that the system’s architects created such a transparently fake system that a man lacking sincerity like Trump can gain legitimacy by pointing out its fraudulent nature. Trump has donated to politicians on both sides. He can point out how bought and paid for all politicians are and the begging that politicians have to do because he has dealt with it first hand. In a world drowning in illusion that seeks authenticity in everything, Trump is supposedly offering voters a real candidate.

America elected Barack Obama with the tagline of “Hope and Change”. In eight years, not a single Wall Street executive has gone to jail or even been charged for any shenanigans in the 2007-2008 era. “Hope and Change” covered for the the 21st century Democratic corporate donor base. Obama’s greatest gift to the nation may be the disillusionment of the Millennials at such a young age about our corrupt political process. Boomers still cling to their ’60s illusions.

Perfect storm is a bad cliche in this instance. Trump is a logical manifestation of the system’s design. Todd Marinovich was a child bred and trained from his infancy to be the perfect NFL quarterback. It worked as his size and skill turned him into one briefly, but it failed. Why? All of those careful decisions and choices created a player so capable, so focused and impervious to stress that he could abuse drugs, drink and still play at a sharp, professional level. The progressive system has created a perfect little election process for their puppet leaders to rise and defeat the false opposition which never brings up taboo, yet critical issues. It increasingly became disconnected from the electorate.

Do not blame Trump for this wild, anti-system run. Blame the architects of the American political process. They created a Potemkin village.

The post Trump Is A Demon Of The Establishment’s Design appeared first on Social Matter.