Chaos Manor View, Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

I’ve been in something of a funk the last few days, and have conserved what energy I have for fiction. I’ve managed a couple of thousand words of new text, and some revisions of old text, but I suspect I brought a bug home, and it’s going to take a few days to get it out of my system.

I did manage to get a newsletter out to my platinum subscribers, with the intent of making it the subject of my next View (this one). I thought it important information and said so. I give it next, but before you go read it, read my second letter I had to send.

 

“He did great. His new meds seem to be working very well.”

<http://www.amren.com/features/2016/08/drugs-and-ipads-in-the-class-room/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

I had never seen or heard of that site. Of course in my haste I sent it without reading the comments to that post. Fortunately a friend did, and almost immediately advised me to do so. I realized I had to send this:

Subject: Maybe that will teach me

To: “Jerry Pournelle” <jerryp@jerrypournelle.com>

Date: Sunday, August 28, 2016, 4:16 PM

On inspection of the comments to that school piece I sent, I send this warning.

I have no authentication of that particular piece, but I do have a number of reports of much of what’s in it from sources I know personally.  Thus I cannot guarantee that this is actually by a working teacher, but I have enough reliable information to believe it could be an exact account. Conditions in many LAUSD schools are exactly as described. Most of the iPads are locked up, and many EMR (Educable Mentally Retarded) students are mainstreamed where they take up at least as much of the teacher’s time as the rest of the class put together; you may draw your own conclusions as to the effects on the education quality for the ordinary students of all races.  I note that fewer and fewer teachers send their own children to public schools in LAUSD according to the Times.  Apologies for not doing the checking earlier; it’s busy around here. You may find the comments to that piece offensive.

Jerry Pournelle

Chaos Manor

South Room

Keep in mind that the map is not the territory, and I have many sources to verify that incidents like those described in the article have taken place, so that while I do not endorse the site, I can say that I find the entire article not only credible, but common. The schools were as early as The National Commission on Education indistinguishable from an act of war against the United States, and far from improving, they get steadily worse. Now California has an initiative to give the schools even more money. Of course it is vague on what improvements it will generate, but it certainly hints that they are lousy and need more money. That’s been the remedy advocated by educational authorities for forty years. The result has been they get the money, but the schools get worse.

I had many comments, but this one is typical:

Maybe that will teach me

Having worked for a school district My opinion is this is just the tip of the iceberg.

A consequence of what you call ‘creditialism’ is the idea of following mindless rules is a substitute for common sense and sound judgment.

This infects every level of government, it infects private industry also which is a consequence of the heavy regulatory environment we have today.

When I worked in government, if a person squandered massive amounts of money but did so within the agency parameters, they would be in less trouble than if they saved a fortune, but broke even a minor rule by doing so.

When I worked for the State of Alaska they could afford to pay 4 computer programmers overtime every weekend for 4 years, but could not afford to hire another programmer.

At Juneau, they had a massive transmission tower failure (a consequence of the salt water spray) but because the power company and utility company were separate entities. The Utility company could not pay extra to have a new transmission tower built in an expedited manner (costs extra) due to regulations, so the city and all the surrounding area had to run on the diesel generators for 3 weeks. Diesel costs a lot more than hydropower.

B-

Russian Military Deployment

This is worth noting:

<.>

Russia has announced plans to position a new coastal defense military

division along its eastern coast, with some troops expected to be

stationed approximately 50 miles from Alaska.

The new division, expected to be in place by 2018, will be responsible

for defending Russia’s sparsely populated Far East, stretching from

the Alaskan border to the Kuril Islands, which are disputed with

Japan.

</>

http://www.infowars.com/russia-positions-troops-50-miles-from-alaska/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

We want to put missiles in the suburbs of St. Petersburg; why should they not have a garrison on their eastern frontier?

Media Protects Investment (Hillary)

I read the other day that Dr. Drew’s show got canceled after he speculated about Hillary Clinton’s negative health. And it’s not just

him:

<.>

Hillary Clinton and her media allies have been working overtime to put out numerous fires that continue to pop up and spread during the final weeks of her campaign for president. Recently, the flames have gotten more difficult to smother as reports of Clinton’s frail health have bled into the mainstream media, despite the unanimous and unilateral decision by the MSM to treat anyone who even raises a question as akin to a Holocaust denier. (On Sunday night, for example, Huffington Post fired contributor David Seaman and deleted his columns simply for linking to a Hillary health video that’s been viewed four million

times.)

Julian Assange stoked more flames when he suggested a murdered DNC worker was the Wikileaks source for the DNC hack. Most recently, the Associated Press released a blockbuster story concluding that more than half of the people Clinton met with as secretary of state gave donations to the Clinton Foundation.

Despite these ongoing scandals, Clinton’s close yet questionable ties to media outlets such as Google, CNN, PBS and The New York Times have seemed to pay off. These entities have gone out of their way to censor negative stories about Clinton, particularly ones involving the Clinton Foundation. There’s one common thread though these media outlets suppressing harmful Clinton stories all share: they’ve donated to the Clinton Foundation.

</>

http://observer.com/2016/08/media-orgs-donate-to-clinton-foundation-then-downplay-clinton-foundation-scandal/

And the media continues to protect their investment. I sent you a video of some CNN talking head named Cuomo or Como or whatever his name is admitting that they give Hillary a “free ride” and so her presidency “better happen” on air on CNN during a newscast.

This behavior is so shocking and disgraceful that I can’t see how anyone who admits trust in the corporate media can be taken seriously in conversation any more than one would care to listen to a five year old’s opinions on dating and night club experiences.

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Huma Abedien Corruption

I cannot keep up with all the corruption. I have tons of tabs open and I need to sleep. I just can’t believe how much crap is coming out about Hillary Clinton, the Democrats, the Clinton Foundation, and still everyone keeps chanting and clapping. Now Huma is in a pay to play scam:

<.>

Judicial Watch today released 725 pages of new State Department documents, including previously unreleased email exchanges in which former Hillary Clinton’s top aide Huma Abedin provided influential Clinton Foundation donors special, expedited access to the secretary of state. In many instances, the preferential treatment provided to donors was at the specific request of Clinton Foundation executive Douglas Band.

</>

https://www.judicialwatch.org/press-room/press-releases/new-abedin-emails-reveal-hillary-clinton-state-department-gave-special-access-top-clinton-foundation-donors/

◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊

Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan

Innerscapes Meditation

the Paint Job

Dear Jerry Pournelle:
Your alt-right-ish correspondent Mark says that the politics of the 21st Century will be about ‘clan, tribe and identity’. Such particularism is one side of an ancient equation. The other side is universalist. Benjamin Barber called this “Jihad versus McWorld”. There’s nothing new about any of this; the game is the same as ever, just the stakes have grown.
Part of the trouble with tribalism is that tribal identity is largely illusory, and its arbitrary definitions are cynically manipulated by power elites, to control the uncritical. This has been well understood for a long time.
One of the more pernicious identity-illusions is race. The genetic science is clear: race is skin-deep. DNA differences within any so-called race are generally far greater than differences between alleged races. This science is intellectually disruptive; but for political disruption, try technology. I therefore invite you to imagine this future technology: germ-line skin-tint re-editing, a.k.a. the Paint Job.
Here’s the Paint Job’s salespitch:
“Dear future parents of color: have you been stalked by guards in department stores? Are you constantly pulled over? Do you fear for your life when a policeman looks at you? Have you been denied loans, schools, homes and jobs at first sight? If you have, and if you want a better life for your children, then have we got a cure for you! Just one injection of our patented Paint Job ™ serum, and all of your children will be so white and blonde and blue-eyed that they’ll never need to hear the Talk!”
I predict that the Paint Job will be genetic engineering’s killer app; simple, cheap, safe, but with high demand in a massive market. Racial identity-jihadists will object to this erasure of the very concept of race, but the corporations will smell money.
To see the inevitable end result, read “The Sneetches” by Dr. Seuss:
http://teacherweb.com/VA/WarwickHS/Elliot_T/Text-The-Sneetches.pdf

– paradoctor

While hair straightener and various “make you lighter” cosmetic products were once best selling items among American Blacks, I think that is no longer the case. I do know a Black colleague of my wife’s once told her son’s school principal to list him as white, and when the principal was startled asked if there were something wrong with her hearing – after which came the plea to change that racial designation because they needed “good Black students” for their statistics, and calling him white would cost her school money.

Long ago when I was a graduate assistant I told an education class that I thought the racial problem would be solved entirely by the American Melting Pot; that lecture caused quite a stir at the time, and certainly I have hardly been proved correct; and since that time I have visited many places where I learned a lot more about assimilation. I was introduced by a very high ranking corporate officer of one of Finland’s biggest companies and he introduced his assistant with these words: “He’s a Swede, but he lives in Finland, and he’s my head of the xxx Department.” I later learned that this man’s family came to Finland in the 19^th century. I have similarly been introduced to people in Japan with the statement that they were Koreans, although it was soon clear that their families came to Japan 200 years ago.

Edmund Burke and many others had a different view from The Paint Job:

To observing men it must have appeared from the beginning, that the majority of the Third Estate, in conjunction with such a deputation from the clergy as I have described, whilst it pursued the destruction of the nobility, would inevitably become subservient to the worst designs of individuals in that class. In the spoil and humiliation of their own order these individuals would possess a sure fund for the pay of their new followers. To squander away the objects which made the happiness of their fellows, would be to them no sacrifice at all. Turbulent, discontented men of quality, in proportion as they are puffed up with personal pride and arrogance, generally despise their own order. One of the first symptoms they discover of a selfish and mischievous ambition, is a profligate disregard of a dignity which they partake with others. To be attached to the subdivision, to love the little platoon we belong to in society, is the first principle (the germ as it were) of public affections. It is the first link in the series by which we proceed towards a love to our country, and to mankind. The interest of that portion of social arrangement is a trust in the hands of all those who compose it; and as none but bad men would justify it in abuse, none but traitors would barter it away for their own personal advantage.

I do not think we will settle it here. The question of differences has been with us a while:

“There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor free, there is neither male nor female: for you are all one in Christ Jesus.” St. Paul may have been an optimist.

How _A Spaceship for the King_ inspired the creators of the Traveller RPG.

<http://www.castaliahouse.com/retrospective-a-spaceship-for-the-king-by-jerry-pournelle/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Perhaps, particularly in the early days of the game. Spaceship for the King was the title given to the first part of the novel King David’s Spaceship; it was serialized in Analog and in those days they were reluctant to run longer works, and three part serials was all John Campbell would accept. The story still holds up well even now. So does the full novel. I gather Traveler has done well also.

Obama to ratify treaty without Senate

Obama will bypass Senate, ratify Paris climate accord himself during trip to China:

http://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/aug/29/obama-will-bypass-senate-ratify-paris-climate-acco/

What is going on in his little world?

Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan

Innerscapes Meditation

I suspect the Congress can deal with that threat. I do appreciate all the work Mr. Jordan does in finding stories for me.

Enough for tonight. We’re going to try an new gluten-free restaurant.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Chaos Manor View, Monday, August 22, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

 

Money will get you through times of no Hugos better than Hugos will get you through times of no money.

Jerry Pournelle

Just back from Kansas City, where I was nominated for a Hugo. Didn’t expect to win, and I didn’t, but I had a good time, as did everybody there. I got more exercise than if I’d stayed home. The WorldCon was in a Convention Center, and although I was at one of the closest hotels, it was still a half mile walk to and from the Convention Center. Then, in the Convention City, it was another half mile of walking from the Green Room to some of the panels, the ballrooms and big event halls were spread about over a wide area, and if I got away with fewer than three miles a day I’d be surprised. My son Frank gave me one of those gadgets that measure how far you’ve walked, but alas I didn’t pack it, although I did pack far more than I needed. Ginny Heinlein once told me the proper way to travel was with seven elephants, and always to be sure there were two bathrooms available.

The last time I was in Kansas City was 1976 for a WorldCon. Mr. Heinlein was Guest of Honor, and somehow I got into the act as his executive officer. Sarge Workman drove my son Alex out from California and served as security, everything went well, and I have some stories including Walter the Lobster but for another time. It’s too late tonight.

Had breakfast with Tom Doherty, who recalled 1976 vividly: he had just bought Ace Books, and when he came into the Mulebach Hotel where the convention was, the first person he saw was me, proclaiming “I’m the Chairman of the Grievance Committee, and I’m auditing your company’s books.” They certainly needed auditing. The previous owner had engaged in some odd practices that resulted in quite a bit of money being owed to the authors, and back while I was President of Science Fiction Writers of America I had invented the Grievance Committee (which consisted of me at the time). When Fred Pohl became President he asked if I’d stay on, which I foolishly did, for several years, until I caught Joe Haldeman in a merry mood and got him to accept the job, thus letting me out of it. Anyway, it became a race to see who could find what money was owed to whom. Tom wanted to beat me to it and pay before I could find any, while I wanted to find it first. I don’t recall who won, but it cleared up all the suspicions of the writers against ACE, and also helped SFWA’s reputation as good for authors. Saturday night I went to Tom’s big party which was so loud I told him I was going to flee for my life, and he came with me, letting his subordinates run the party. We walked back to our hotel together. 

I also had a strenuous book signing, lasting more than an hour, after which I had to go to a reception so there were still people standing in line when I left. I apologize, but there was nothing I could do about it. They should have scheduled it at an earlier hour, but that might have been difficult. I did have a lot of people to see. This was my first WorldCon in years, what with recovering from brain cancer – still all gone – and the stroke.

Met some new friends in the SFWA suite, saw a lot of old ones, and had a great time. Due to the layout of things – no really central hotel, the huge Convention Center a half mile from the nearest hotel, and no obvious place for it – the usual pro party in the main hotel bar didn’t happen and I never did see a lot of people I should have. But I had a great if somewhat exhausting time.  I also got to spend some time with Eric Kaplan, the Executive Producer of one of my favorite TV shows, The Big Bang Theory.  He lives half a block from me, but we had a great afternoon in Kansas City; we’re both usually too busy when at home.  He was glad to meet Larry and some other writers he reads but has never met. Made for a good afternoon.

One of my functions seems to be as an intellectual honeybee, introducing people who ought to know each other but don’t. That happened a lot in Kansas City.

More another time.

Bunny inspectors, meet shellfish monitors

This appears to be the last “news” story on the doomed website Gawker.com:

http://gawker.com/south-carolina-is-giving-body-cameras-to-shellfish-moni-1785566901

.              png

My old friend Peter Glaskowsky is one of those whom I managed to introduce to some people who ought to know him.

‘Whatever job you do, Cato wants seven billion others in domestic competition.’

<https://kakistocracyblog.wordpress.com/2016/08/14/guanabara-knocking/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

Odd. Very odd. Then there’s

Lind: ‘And how exactly did we get caught up in this mess? By keeping troops in South Korea long after the Cold War ended, an event that removed all reason for their presence.’

<https://www.traditionalright.com/the-view-from-olympus-watch-korea/>

—————————————

Roland Dobbins

We also kept troops in a lot of other places they didn’t need to be. We nearly went to war over Soviet Missiles in Cuba, but somehow we don’t understand that US missiles in Estonia worry the Russians. Odd, that.

This is when we NEED a space program.

http://www.universetoday.com/130276/earth-like-planet-around-proxima-centauri-discovered/

They’ve found what appears to be an Earth-like planet orbiting Proxima Centauri.

In the “Goldilocks” zone.

I don’t know whether the Hubble can be pointed precisely enough to image the planet, or whether it could get anything useful.

John

Hubble probably can’t but we have new ones coming up.

Pedagogy of the Oppressed

Jerry,

   This may be a contributing factor to the current cultural embracing of the far left by the education community.  I was having a discussion with an individual who was explaining to me how I was racist (and some other choice terms) simply because I am a white male conservative.  She made these statements before knowing any more about me, such as the fact that my wife (and hence my children) are native American, that I spent years in Africa putting systems in hospitals to help with the distribution of anti-retro viral drugs, have been involved in several programs through foundations and my church to help minority groups.  She then told me about a conference they were having discussing ‘The Pedagogy of the Oppressed’ and

Two excerpts from the Wikipedia discussion on the treatise and the Wiki discussion on it:

Dedicated to what is called “the oppressed” and based on his own experience helping Brazilian adults to read and write, Freire includes a detailed Marxist class analysis in his exploration of the relationship between what he calls “the colonizer” and “the colonized”.

Since the publication of the English edition in 1970, Pedagogy of the Oppressed has been widely adopted in America’s teacher-training programs. A 2003 study by David Steiner and Susan Rozen determined that Pedagogy of the Oppressed was frequently assigned at top education schools

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pedagogy_of_the_Oppressed

 

 

 

Pedagogy of the Oppressed – Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

en.wikipedia.org

Pedagogy of the Oppressed (Portuguese: Pedagogia do Oprimido), written by educator Paulo Freire, proposes a pedagogy with a new relationship between teacher, student …

And it’s getting late. This will have to do.

From Last Monday

 

Nice view. Obviously, I lean in your direction. Uncontrolled tech is potentially bad, leave most of this to the states and better yet local communities. They bay area for example. Read the constitution and follow it. If a section needs improvement, amend it. Don’t screw with it.

A practical example. Fluke meters for the USA are built here by hand with a life time warranty. They have a China plant in China that builds them for Chinese. I’ll take mine from the USA plant, built by Americans.

While they could be built by robots cheaper, I’ll take mine built by American hands. That way, people have jobs, and worth, and I don’t have to pay taxes to take care of them. Who knows, we might find people built is better than machine built.

A lot of the bay area wants a socialist utopia. Ok, let the bay area try it. Get rid of the cars, tax everyone at 50 to 90 percent and see what happens. It should be interesting. Most of the Chinese will run like hell, many of the whites already have. I may finally convince my wife to move to Texas or Florida where saner heads exists.

in about a hour, I take Katelin to high school and Angelin to junior high. What happened to my little girls?

—

Phil Tharp

There will always be a market for reliably built and improved only when improvements are needed durable goods.  Of course that’s not a growth industry and Capitalism puts growth ahead of good service, steady but not large profits, and social stability.  Its inevitable, and of course regulations make it necessary to grow or die by raising the cost of doing business and supporting regulators and compliance officers increasingly necessary.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.

Tuesday, August 11, 2016

At Oh Dark Thirty Larry, Michelle, Alex, and our friend Michael Donahue are supposed to meet here and shortly after a limousine capable of taking all of us and our luggage to the airport will appear.  We will get there in time to get past the alert crackerjack team of TSA agents, and have breakfast in the Crown Room of Delta Airline. This is supposed to happen without incident.

I’m about to go to bed with my hearing aids on because I don’t know if I will hear the alarm clock without them.

 

I’m nominated for a Hugo, but I don’t expect to win it.  It’s for Best Editor, based on There Will Be War Volume 10, which came out last year new along with reissue of four of the original There Will Be War volumes.  Those I should have won a Hugo for; they were that good.  It wasn’t the practice to nominate anthology editors, and anyway, There Will Be War was not a popular title back then; Harry Harrison hated it so much that he rushed out an anthology called There Won’t Be War, but I think the first volume of that was the last.  The series was published when we did not know what outcome would end the Cold War; but the stories were good, some timeless, and all hold up well.  The essays were about principles, not tactics, and while most relevant to the Cold War are all important today – and their lessons are not being learned as widely as they should be.

 

 

Volume Ten contains some very good stories, essays relevant to modern problems, and continues the series nicely.  May I did deserve a Hugo for it.  It had two Hugo=nominated stories in it, one about as serious as you can get, and all very readable.

Anyway, I’m off.  They have me on many panels, so I doubt I’ll get much work done, but I am taking a ZenBook with copies of my current projects,  just in case.

 

I’ll be back next week.  Perhaps I’ll have something during the week, but no promises.

 

Fifth Force in the Universe

This is exciting:

<.>

Recent findings indicating the possible discovery of a previously unknown subatomic particle may be evidence of a fifth fundamental force of nature, according to a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters by theoretical physicists at the University of California, Irvine.

“If true, it’s revolutionary,” said Jonathan Feng, professor of physics & astronomy. “For decades, we’ve known of four fundamental

forces: gravitation, electromagnetism, and the strong and weak nuclear forces. If confirmed by further experiments, this discovery of a possible fifth force would completely change our understanding of the universe, with consequences for the unification of forces and dark matter.”

</>

http://phys.org/news/2016-08-physicists-discovery-nature.html#jCp

If you want the original paper: https://arxiv.org/abs/1608.03591 ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ ◊ Most Respectfully,

Joshua Jordan, KSC

Percussa Resurgo

Chaos Manor View, Sunday, August 14, 2016

Liberalism is a philosophy of consolation for the West as it commits suicide.

James Burnham

If a foreign government had imposed this system of education on the United States, we would rightfully consider it an act of war.

Glenn T. Seaborg, National Commission on Education, 1983

It’s late Sunday evening, and at o-dawn-thirty — actually well before dawn here at Chaos Manor – on Tuesday night/Wednesday morning I am off to WorldCon in Kansas City. I’ll be taking the Surface Pro as my mail system and in the off chance that I’ll have a bit of time I’ll have a ZenBook that has a keyboard I can use easily, but I doubt I’ll get any real work done. I might, but they’ve got me on a bunch of panels, I have business meetings, and lots of old friends to see, most of them for the first time since the stroke, and some I haven’t seen recovering from brain cancer. The chances of having time to work are low. I won’t be back until a week from Monday, so things may be thin here.

Worse, for this place, the preparations have eaten a lot of time. After all this is the first trip I’ve taken since the stroke. Yesterday and today was spent getting mu luggage out, emptying it of congealed lotions and other stuff that deteriorated over time, and locating what I will need on the trip. I have put in two closable garbage bags which ought to serve to contain the mountain of dirty laundry I am likely to accumulate, made up bags of pills for seven days – 14 bags, 7 morning and 7 night – and tried to anticipate any other special needs I’ll have. I’ll keep a log, and let you know if there are any adventures that ought to be shared.

We have reservations on Delta. My walker must be checked, but I can check it at the boarding gate, so I don’t need a wheelchair. I’ll manage to get on board with a cane. Alex and Michelle are coming, and Larry Niven, and Mike Donahue, so I’ve got a lot of companions, and don’t anticipate any problems.

Conservatism isn’t an ideology; Russell Kirk called his book “The Conservative Mind”, and when specifics were demanded he wrote a book for his times, A Program For Conservatives; not an ideology.

He was my mentor, but we were not in full agreement. I understand technology better than he did, and technology can be very disruptive; indeed that is my main difference with nearly all paleoconservative groups. I don’t hate technology. I welcome it. I have some sympathy for people who can only do mind-stultifying endlessly repetitive work, but I have more for those who have no choice but to do work they not only dislike, but despise. We all dislike some aspects of our work, but we should not hate it, and we we are all better off if no one is forced to spend his life at tasks he hates.  I embrace technology that liberates us from drudgery even if it robs some people of the only jobs they can do.

Example: a very long time ago I was set the task of reducing high turnover in the miniplug soldering department. Miniplugs were terribly important to airplanes – still are – and it was exacting, boring work. It took a while to train intelligent people to do the job, after which they soldered wires into plug connections. There were a lot of them on any given airplane, and hundreds of copies of each airplane were sold, each with dozens to hundreds of miniplugs. I was in human factors then, and not concerned with manufacturing, but I was also the only guy in the company with advanced psychology degrees, and someone thought of asking me to take a look at the problem, so I did.

Solved it too. The problem was that since getting the work exactly right was important, the job specification included reasonably high intelligence. It paid accordingly. But even for high pay, above average intelligent people soon got bored out of their minds doing the same meticulous task day after day. My solution was to hire retarded people. Not all of them could learn it, but most could; it wasn’t a difficult job, you just had to be meticulous, getting the right color wire soldered into the right pin or socket. Educable mentally retarded could learn it. For them it was a high paying job. It took no intelligence to get the right color to the right pin, just diligence. You could also hire EMR to be quality inspectors, and they didn’t cost much. The solderers got paid what skilled riveters did, and were proud of their work, as they should have been. They didn’t mind doing the same thing over and over again; they were proud to do it.

Of course miniplugs are soldered by robots now, and far fewer are needed because of LSIC. That’s progress, and it had to come.

I suppose you could call me a conservative who promotes high technology, but I retain a bit of nostalgia for work that the EMR can proudly do.

We will now get on with some comments on the nature of conservatism.

Ten Conservative Principles

Dear Jerry,

“I urge you to follow this link and read this. It shouldn’t take long.”   

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/10/ten-conservative-principles.html

I reread them.  I was already well familiar with them, having subscribed to National Review in my late teen years in the mid-1970s.  You may recall that subscribers in those distant days received complimentary subscriptions to Dr. Kirk’s “University Bookman”

And unsubscribed from N-R in 1992 after Desert Storm when eighteen years of US Army service had already demonstrated to me that most of “Conservatism” as defined and continuously redefined by NR and WFB was arrant nonsense at best, with the remainder composed of equal portions of tawdry self-seeking careerism and cowardice.

Rereading these precepts now makes its more plain than ever they are mainly subjective and lacking in fixed anchor points.  Almost all of it could be offered without editing as a political philosophy suitable for Salafist Islam, Shi’ite Ayatollahs in Tehran or even the kings of Sodom and Gomorrah.   Here’s a good example:

“First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.”

Without further definition, such the New Testament, this can mean anything or nothing.  Maybe the moral order is defined by the Koran, or the Babylonian Talmud, or the Kabbalah, or the Egyptian Book of the Dead.  It certainly had and has utterly no relationship to the America of the late 1940s when this idea was being formalized.

Principle Ten in particular is so lacking in specificity that it forms an entryway through which NASA crawler-transporter size liberal programs can and have slowly rumbled like juggernauts in the decades since Dr. Kirk’s post-World War II articulation of these supposedly timeless verities.

The Conservative defeat and surrender on point Eight – “voluntary community” – has been so thorough that contemporary “conservatives” at National Review joyfully sanction anyone even daring to mention it, let alone attempting to practice it.

In response I invite the ever dwindling band of “Principled Real Conservatives” – whoever they may be and imagine themselves to be – to consider this article by Dr. Paul Gottfried:

http://www.radixjournal.com/journal/2015/9/9/the-logic-of-the-conservative-purges

Best Wishes

Mark

I would have said Judao Christian ethics myself.  When I was young nearly every public ceremony had an invocation by a protestant minister and a benediction by a catholic priest although sometimes they switched places, and important ceremonies usually had a couple of each plus a rabbi.

You may or may not be aware that Sam Francis and I corresponded amicably, I have always found Distributism and Trust Busting important, and I opposed the First desert invasion headed by my West Point classmate. Why the hell did I care which set of thuggish enemies held Kuwait? Although if April Glaspie had done her job, Saddam would still be running Iraq and pounding Iran.

Ah well.

Jerry Pournelle

“You may or may not be aware that Sam Francis and I corresponded amicably”

I wasn’t specifically aware of it but I’m not surprised, either.  The paleocons were few enough in the 1990s I’m sure most of you kept in loose contact.   The seeds Francis and others planted have since grown into the “Alt-Right”, which is the only place on the Right that shows signs of vibrant intellectual life. 

“I have always found Distributism and Trust Busting important”

Distributism is far more practical now than when Belloc and Chesterton were articulating it in the very early 20th Century.  The trend of technology a century ago still greatly favored massive centralization of industrial and economic structures.  They were definitely far ahead of their time in some senses.  Hilaire Belloc’s “The Servile State” is a much underrated classic.  Its freely available online at Gutenberg and elsewhere.  Belloc foresaw our time far more clearly than virtually any of his contemporaries.  He joins a handful of far seers like Alexis de Tocqueville, who also clearly foresaw the dim outlines of the USSR ninety years in advance in the mid 1830s.  The raconteur and impoverished nobleman Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn was over a century late in his statement that “Democracy” in no way precluded a totalitarian dictatorship.  de Tocqueville clearly stated this in “Democracy in America” in 1836.

However, Distributism was never popular with the Roman Catholic Church hierarchy and it never will be.

Kirk probably reflected some influence from Belloc and Chesterton.  Unfortunately Distributism never occupied his and Conservatism’s central attention the way it should have. 

“For a nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed.”

This is an axiom.  The same thing is true of armies.  Unfortunately 20th Century “Conservatism” was almost content-free on means by which “numerous little communities” could be sustained and strengthened.

I didn’t know Russell Kirk, of course.  My perception at several removes is of a real “Christian gentleman” with aspirations to petty nobility.  An “eccentric antiquarian” who apparently hated automobiles, “electronic computers”, mega scaled universities and almost all other manifestations of the 20th Century would be another description.  He appears to have thought he would have been happier living in the early 18th Century, probably in one of the Habsburg dominions in central Europe.

Kirk’s home base on “Piety Hill” in the village of Mecosta Michigan is an area I know well.  The summers of my youth were spent in that latitude about 70 miles west around Ludington, Michigan, and also further north around Traverse Bay, Grayling, and the UP.  It is or ought to be impossible to virtually tour these towns on Google Street without a deep sense of mourning for the stasis and slow decay to which “Free Trade” and the media monopolies have subjected them and wide swaths of the Midwest. 

Your friend Greg Cochran (and the rest of the Alt-Right) are precisely correct.  The 21st Century is about clan, tribe and identity.  The Neocons, more accurately labeled NeoCohens, never lost sight of this.   I think anyone who refuses to deal with this will be well advised to catch the next trip back to 1985 or 1955 on Doc Brown’s DeLorean Time Machine. 

Mark

Russell and I disagreed on technology; I argued that as its advance was inevitable, and with that advance came military power, we had no choice but to embrace it. But of course I was an associate of Possony and coauthor of Strategy of Technology and I took the Cold War very seriously.

I think Marx was right in saying that capitalism inevitably concentrates more and more wealth into fewer and fewer hands, and David McCord Wright was correct in his analysis of the importance of trust busting rather that building bureaucracies to control that. But then I am not an ideologue, just an old operations research man.

 

Dear Jerry,

First, I don’t expect you to publish any of this.  The “Purge” of professional writers that Paul Gottfried documents is very real, and extends well past “Conservatism” to any professionally published writer who strays off the strictly defined reservation of acceptable thought.  I know you know this.  I think you are hoping that your oeuvre will provide Mrs. Pournelle and your other heirs with some continuing income.

Nor do I think it matters in the Big Scheme of things.  The “USA” is already as dead as door nail and merely awaits interment, decent or otherwise.  And I’m also grateful to God that I grasped the essential outlines of this well before 9-11-01.  Grasped well enough to begin a non-stop lecture to three then middle school aged kids on 9-12-01:  “Not your war!”  “Not your people!”  “Stay out!!”  “Follow the example of the Clinton and Bush daughters (ouch)”.

I have no regrets whatsoever.  In the alternative I offer Col Andrew Bacevich, US Army Retired.  He kept his respectibilities.  And as a consequence of this lieutenant son has been stone cold dead for 13 years now.  “Wasted” as they used to say in Vietnam.  The Colonel himself wanders from internet pillar to post in ashes and sackcloth attempting penance and expiation.  None of which will ever return his son to life.  No thanks.  I prefer my way, determined in advance of the event.

So mostly I’m doing this for my own edification.  I ceased thinking of myself as a “Conservative” in the mid 1990s when I terminated my NR subscription and switched my registration from Republican to Independent.  If you find any value in it, good enough.  My present beliefs are an amalgam of “Alt-Right”, Jeffersonian-Jacksonian ideas on yeomanry and the economic ideas of the Catholic Distributists like Hilare Belloc and E.F. Schumacher.  Plus a component of white separatism or white nationalism.  So no, I don’t despair.  I ceased to despair for the USA when I said “goodbye to all that” a long time ago.  And I’m even somewhat optimistic for my family.  “God and family”.  So-called “country” fell out along the way.

My remaining purpose is to begin a post-mortem on an intellectual Movement that has utterly failed the nominal Base to which it was directed in 1953.   I don’t even propose to debate the fact of this epic failure.  The present condition of the Supreme Court and the enduring revolution that will occur there should Hillary enter the White House are enough evidence in themselves.  The dwindling number of Brian P’s can continue to “double down” on Free Trade and Minority Outreach until they’re cleaned out by the rigged casino they’re playing in, a bustout that will occur very soon now. 

http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2013/10/ten-conservative-principles.html

“Perhaps it would be well, most of the time, to use this word “conservative” as an adjective chiefly. For there exists no Model Conservative, and conservatism is the negation of ideology: it is a state of mind, a type of character, a way of looking at the civil social order.  The attitude we call conservatism is sustained by a body of sentiments, rather than by a system of ideological dogmata. It is almost true that a conservative may be defined as a person who thinks himself such. The conservative movement or body of opinion can accommodate a considerable diversity of views on a good many subjects, there being no Test Act or Thirty-Nine Articles of the conservative creed.”

Translated into action “where the rubber hits the road”, this broadly means we can have pro-abortion and anti-abortion “conservatives” (hereinafter “Cons”); pro and anti Hate Speech Code Cons, pro and anti Sodomite Liberation Cons, pro and anti gun control or even outright gun ban Cons, pro and anti Israel Uber Alles Cons (an idea however denied by ‘Neocons’ like David Frum), pro and anti racial discrimination directed exclusively against whites, pro and anti Free Trade cons, etc etc.  This in fact is the position that Jonah Goldberg at National Review maintains and which prevails in the GOPe.   Examined at the root source it increasingly appears that modern post World War II Conservatism was always about “whom”, not “what”.  This is confirmed by the essentially policy free Republican primaries we’ve experienced from 1968 until roughly this year.

Those rank and file “Conservatives” upset by their never ending betrayal by GOPe types and “RINOs” on subjects like abortion, gun control and immigration need look no further than here for the source explanation.  Alternately they can “double down”, which a great many of the ever diminishing numbers of True Believers do.

“In essence, the conservative person is simply one who finds the permanent things more pleasing than Chaos and Old Night. (Yet conservatives know, with Burke,”

Burke.  i.e. Edmund Burke, Anglo-Irish Tory and likely crypto-Catholic.  This is one of the biggest ‘foreign parts’ I alluded to previously.  I have found zero point zero evidence that Burke exerted the slightest influence on any of the “Founding Fathers”, roughly defined as the signatories of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.  On the contrary, it is known that Edmund Burke redistributed in London pamphlets authored by Thomas Jefferson.  Influence was clearly running the opposite direction!  The sources of Kirk’s and modern Conservatism’s Edmund Burke Fetish is therefore a topic of some interest.  Perhaps it arose from Russell Kirk’s doctoral studies at the University of St Andrews in Scotland.  Perhaps it arose from cosmopolitan William F Buckley own lack of connection to flyover country in his youth.  

Equally mysterious is Conservatism’s general suppression of Thomas Jefferson.  At least mysterious until Jefferson is actually read.

that healthy “change is the means of our preservation.”) A people’s historic continuity of experience, says the conservative, offers a guide to policy far better than the abstract designs of coffee-house philosophers. But of course there is more to the conservative persuasion than this general attitude.

At this point in history we can therefore describe as “Conservative” a Big Government Liberal who absolutely hates working class white people and loves the barely disguised Clausus Numerous enacted against all white people under the rubric of Affirmative Action, and thinks it should continue until the white birth rate drops to zero.  This is likely why repellent white hating creatures like the grotesquely obese Kevin Williamson thrive at National Review.   Such a person clearly wants to preserve the present ‘permanent’ order.

“First, the conservative believes that there exists an enduring moral order. That order is made for man, and man is made for it: human nature is a constant, and moral truths are permanent.”

This is almost directly contradictory to Kirk’s introduction.  But as George Orwell had already explained in 1948 in “1984”, all Goodthinkers must learn to master the art of Doublethink.  And in the absence of any absolute definition of that Moral Order – which Kirk never provides in this essay –  this is just as relative as everything else before and after.  One is left to pick and choose which Holy Writ one subscribes to, or simply reject them all and believe in nothing.  This surely explains the easy editorial cohabitation at National Review of the many Catholics, Jews, atheists and agnostics who populated its editorial ranks, lightly salted with a few lapsing Protestants enroute to their own Catholic conversions.  Russell Kirk himself, for example.

Among the original Founding Fathers (signers of the Declaration of Independence or Constitution who numbered 56 + 39) I’ve found exactly three Catholics.  Two were members of the Carroll family of Maryland, plus Thomas Fitzsimmons.  There were no Jews, no avowed atheists and no Muslims. 

Second, the conservative adheres to custom, convention, and continuity. It is old custom that enables people to live together peaceably; the destroyers of custom demolish more than they know or desire. It is through convention—a word much abused in our time—that we contrive to avoid perpetual disputes about rights and duties: law at base is a body of conventions. Continuity is the means of linking generation to generation; it matters as much for society as it does for the individual; without it, life is meaningless. When successful revolutionaries have effaced old customs, derided old conventions, and broken the continuity of social institutions—why, presently they discover the necessity of establishing fresh customs, conventions, and continuity; but that process is painful and slow; and the new social order that eventually emerges may be much inferior to the old order that radicals overthrew in their zeal for the Earthly Paradise.

Conservatives are champions of custom, convention, and continuity because they prefer the devil they know to the devil they don’t know. Order and justice and freedom,

In practice in the Year of Our Lord 2016 this means no change in: 1) the present system of higher education (a position being actively advocated by a “conservative” here: http://www.theimaginativeconservative.org/2016/08/lie-student-debt-crisis.html), 2) untrammeled Free Trade irregardless of the demonstrated destructiveness of this ,3)  the open subversion of the immigration laws in an effort to “elect a new people”, 4) codified anti-white racial discrimination in the form of Affirmative Action and other measures, 5) the rapacious anti-white male hate expressed in contemporary family law, 6) our present military deployments,  etc etc etc

Fifth, conservatives pay attention to the principle of variety. They feel affection for the proliferating intricacy of long-established social institutions and modes of life, as distinguished from the narrowing uniformity and deadening egalitarianism of radical systems. For the preservation of a healthy diversity in any civilization, there must survive orders and classes, differences in material condition, and many sorts of inequality.

No Real Conservative anywhere has any remaining reason to complain of the Diversity of having hordes of illiterate Somalian migrants injected into their communities.  Or of other similar methods by which anti-white race haters are “rubbing their faces in it”, as the British Labor activists said of their immigration surge.

“Eighth, conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism.”

If this means anything it means the right to discriminate on the basis of race, religion, national origin and gender in one’s personal, professional and commercial relations.  But all of Modern Conservatism long ago ran away from this principle.  Conservatism now enthusiastically joins “the Left” in instinctively persecuting anyone taking this matter up.  In the interests of intellectual honesty “Eighth” should  be replaced with <deleted>

“For a nation is no stronger than the numerous little communities of which it is composed.”

There no longer is any ‘nation’, which the Bible and I both define as groups of genetically related people of reasonable closeness.  There are simply regions of increasingly atomized Walmart consumers going to and fro as they trundle cheaply made Free Trade goods back to their Federal Reserve System mortgage crushed “homes”.   These cannot be described as “communities” by any stretch unless this word’s definition is devalued to only mean an area where residential dwellings stand in close proximity to each other.   Nor is this is accidental in my view.  “Divid et impera” is an ancient and effective practice for neutralizing potential political opposition to one’s activities and goals.

But I absolutely subscribe to this idea in general.  This is why I’m now a Jeffersonian-Jacksonian Distributist rather than a “conservative”.  And I’m also favorable to aspects of E.F. Schumacher’s “Small is Beautiful”.  On this account I have a question.  Had you read this book at the time you condemned it in “A Step Further Out”?  It wasn’t until later that I discovered E.F. Schumacher’s brother-in-law was Werner von Heisenberg. 

Best Wishes,

Mark

I reject Schumacher as an ideologue; I embrace technology. I also understand that it cam be disruptive, particularly if unrestrained, one of my many objections to Free Trade as we practice it. Technological progress should be used properly which means it should not be an instrument of blind and unrestrained “progress.”

At the same time I reject Federal Regulation as a means of focusing technology. Building a powerful bureaucracy is almost never the answer, even though bureaucracy is the only tool governments have in many situations. I prefer many bureaucracies to one Federal one. Which means I would leave many regulatory matters to the States; let them compete. Some will prefer unrestricted growth, but others will not, and stability at least has a chance in that situation.

Actually. I would leave a great many matters to the states, including “growth”. We are obsessed with growth, when many people would prefer a bit more stability; companies that make high quality goods and sell them at a small profit, and don’t try to grow at super rapid sates. But this was once a nation of states.

But that’s another discussion, as is distributism (as opposed to growing state bureaucracies with high taxes as a means of diminishing inequalities). Again a matter for another time.

Freedom is not free. Free men are not equal. Equal men are not free.