DebateGate

What America Lost as Women Entered the Workforce

It?s a shame that Phyllis Schlafly had a corner on skepticism about women?s liberation. ?Why should we trade in our special privileges and honored status for the alleged advantage of working in an office or assembly line?? the conservative crusader, perhaps best known for her successful campaign against the Equal Rights Amendment, asked in 1972. ?Most women would rather cuddle a baby than a typewriter or a factory machine.?

Schlafly masterfully sold the narrative that women?s rights, including those which would enable their greater participation in the workforce, would hurt women. In the process, she polarized the debate, making conservatives loath to recognize women?s gains, and liberals equally reluctant to acknowledge that progress might entail trade-offs. As more women have joined the workforce and become leaders in traditionally male spheres, gender roles have shifted, and women have lost their exclusive hold over traditionally female spheres. One of these is the home, as Schlafly argued. But women?s dominion over another part of public life has also declined: civil society.

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Triumphs and trials of women in leadership
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Women have long formed collective organizations intended to improve American society. They volunteered their time, waged political campaigns, and advocated for the poor and elderly. They organized voters, patronized the arts, and protested the government. In the years since women?s liberation, this kind of civic engagement has dropped precipitously. The kind of community involvement that has replaced it, where it has been replaced at all, is a weak substitute: When women advocate, it?s often on behalf of their own kids or families. And when they get involved in causes, they tend to cut checks rather than gather in protest. The most vulnerable members of society have lost their best allies?women?partly because those women are too busy working.

That?s not to indulge in nostalgia for a period of American history when women primarily led clubs rather than companies. Women frequently organized to fight for rights they had been denied by men, and they often aspired to lead charitable organizations because they were prevented from pursuing other paths. But ironically, in winning fuller equality with men, some women lost a share of the meaning and purpose that comes from life outside of productive labor. This is not a story about women?s failures, or a polemic against their advancement. It?s a cautionary tale for men and women alike. The corner office isn?t always the pinnacle of leadership. Often, the most important leadership happens in local communities.

* * *

Women?s groups haven?t just existed since America?s founding?they were instrumental in creating the nation. In her book, Natural Allies: Women?s Associations in American History, Anne Firor Scott writes that during the Revolutionary War, women ?banded together to raise money, provide amenities to the soldiers, and support the movement for independence.? During the Second Great Awakening in the early 19th century, ?voluntary associations of all kinds proliferated, to supplement the old institutional structures of family, church, and local government.? Women often took up the causes of the ?worthy? poor, especially women and children, forming organizations with elaborate names like the Female Association for Relief of the Sick Poor, and for the Education of Such Female Children as Do Not Belong To, or Are Not Provided for, by Any Religious Society.

Men formed associations, too, but they were different from those led by women. Men often did good works individually, rather than as groups, Scott wrote, and when they gave money, ?they tended to make large gifts to institutions, particularly those that might bear their names.? Most of all, their civic activity was largely a form of self-advancement, Scott argued: ?Benevolence figured in the building of a man?s career, both as a means of forming associations with other men and as a means of promoting a favorable public image.? But for women, participating in these organizations was their career??an accepted extension of their defined roles as wives and mothers.?

Most importantly, these associations helped women develop a nascent sense of class and political consciousness, Scott argued. Charitable work exposed well-off white women to people of lesser means, and it offered women the chance to see themselves as independent of their husbands. As time went on, these organizations took up political causes such as suffrage, citizenship rights, and, later, equal-pay legislation, wrote the Duke University professor Kristin Goss.

As empowering as civil society was for American women, it was also constraining. ?For centuries ? we had this very distinct public and private realm in America,? said Melissa Deckman, a professor at Washington College. ?Women were not allowed to participate in business or industry or politics. So women who had skills and time on their hands went into more civic activity.? Although groups such as the gender-integrated Independent Order of St. Luke were founded and sometimes led by black women, many of these organizations were led by white women, and ?volunteering used to be in the arena of women with wealthy husbands,? said Thomas Rotolo, a professor at Washington State University. While men went off to be captains of industry, ?women would stay home to deal with philanthropic activities.?

As women?s organizations got more politically oriented, they also started proliferating. In the second half of the 20th century, a number of new women?s rights groups formed, like the National Organization for Women, in 1966, and the Women?s Equity Action League, in 1968. But elsewhere in America, a shift was happening in traditional associational life.

In 1955, at least two dozen ?membership? groups?made up of local chapters that held national meetings?could claim at least 1 percent of American adults on their rolls, according to the Harvard sociologist Theda Skocpol. These were not just groups for women; they included mixed-gender organizations like the National Congress of Parents and Teachers, along with single-gender groups such as the Women?s International Bowling Congress. These kinds of organizations enjoyed success into the mid-1960s, Skocpol wrote. But as national-level, advocacy-oriented groups proliferated?almost all of them in New York City or Washington, D.C.?local, membership-oriented groups started seeing major declines. By the end of the 20th century, Skocpol wrote, this had led to a ?top-down civic world?: When Americans get involved in public life, it?s usually to ?send checks to a dizzying plethora of public affairs and social-service groups run by professionals.?

There are a number of pitfalls to outsourced communal involvement. The focus on national-level advocacy takes away from local groups; the vibrancy of grassroots-driven community organizations can?t be recreated by staffers in offices hundreds of miles away. People also lose the chance to mix with people outside of their wealth and class context: ?Pre-1960s membership associations were much more likely to involve less privileged participants along with the privileged,? Skocpol wrote. ?Privileged men and women who climbed the ladders of vast membership associations had to interact in the process with citizens of humble or middling means and prospects.?

?The moms do everything for the kids, and it spills over into school.?

In many communities, associational life is still going strong, but it can come with struggles. At the fall kick-off meeting of the Parent Teacher Organization at Benjamin Banneker Academic High School in Washington, D.C., three women greeted newcomers and ushered parents toward trays of tube-shaped pasta and salad. Mia Pettus, one of the co-presidents who has a junior at the school, said ?it mostly is moms? who do the volunteer work for the group, even though nearly ?all of us are working parents ? [with] full-time jobs.? Another woman, Rhonda Davis Smith, said dads often get more involved with PTO at the high-school level, when they can coach or lead other activities for their adolescent kids. Over the course of an hour, roughly 40 parents showed up?three times as many women as men.

?The moms do everything for the kids, and it spills over into school,? said Angela Anderson, another of the co-presidents, whose daughter is also a junior at Banneker. Anderson is one of the few parents at Banneker who doesn?t work outside the home, at least while each of her four children has been young; but her husband jokes that she?s ?the only stay-at-home mom with 10 jobs,? she said. Besides volunteering in her kids? schools, she has been a Girl Scout leader for a decade and serves on nursing boards that lobby on Capitol Hill; she?s trained as an RN. But ?I?m very sympathetic to other moms,? she said. ?A lot of moms are obligated to work and don?t have the opportunity to stay at home with their children or go on field trips.?

In general, parenthood is a huge determinant of how women volunteer. In one study, researchers found that childless women are less likely to volunteer than their peers who are moms, although working mothers of young kids also had a hard time volunteering. Having a kid in school, however, makes women more likely to volunteer. ?School-age children link their mothers to their community, often through the medium of social institutions organized around children?s needs, such as schools, churches, sports teams, [and] youth-development organizations,? the authors wrote. ?[Far] from being an impediment to volunteering, children turn into an incentive; they become a strong tie to the community. Volunteer work becomes an extension of the mother role.?

American society desperately needs volunteers in order to function. For many families, kids make this need most clear: As the scholars Heather E. Price and Patricia Herzog Snell, the authors of American Generosity, wrote in an email, ?Schools, activity clubs, carpools, and parent organizations commonly rely on volunteers to do work that has no budget, but needs to be performed to provide the children with a quality education, sports training, club interactions, schedule coordinating, and parent leadership.? Overwhelmingly, said Price and Herzog Snell, the people who do this work are stay-at-home moms. As Anderson put it at Banneker, ?What we want to do is fill those gaps that the administration is not providing.?

Banneker is a magnet, and one of the academically strongest high schools in the District. It makes sense that parents would be so involved, but even at a such a great school, the principal said, ?Sometimes we?ll have a meeting and there are five of us here.? Not all communities have parents who are able to spend time volunteering to support their kids? education. And in those communities where parents can provide support, there can be an element of tribalism to the way people spend their time and resources. Christine Woyshner, a professor of education at Temple University, called it ?amoral familialism.?

In the world of schools, this has been underscored by the rapidly declining membership in the once-powerful National Parent Teacher Association. Banneker is just one of the many schools whose parents have recently decided to form a PTO?a parent-teacher organization that isn?t affiliated with any national policy or advocacy group. The Banneker parents largely did it for the dues money; having to pay fees to the state and national PTA was effectively ?a tax on parents,? Anderson said. Other parents at different schools have complained that PTA dues go toward lobbying for causes they don?t agree with.

The result can be that volunteer efforts, and money, often stay concentrated in the schools of kids from well-off families. Even at a place like Banneker, which is a Title I school, the involved moms who led the PTO were eager to eliminate as many fees as possible to get more parents to participate; membership has been low in the past due to costs, Anderson said. While local involvement is no doubt good for some kids and helps build the leadership skills of moms and dads alike, it can also exacerbate inequality among children in different areas.

By far, the people who have lost the most from the decline of local associations are those who are least educated and wealthy. College-educated Americans have always been more likely to participate in civic organizations than their less educated peers; according to a 2010 study by the University of Virginia?s National Marriage Project, 77 percent of this group was part of a non-religious community group in the 2000s, compared to 86 percent in the 1970s. But the change has been much more significant for high-school drop-outs: While 51 percent of these Americans were involved in a non-religious community organization in the 1970s, only 22 percent were members in the 2000s. Another study found that highly educated Americans are roughly twice as likely to volunteer compared to those without much education. Evidence also suggests that low-income Americans are the least likely to volunteer their time, while middle-class Americans are the most likely.

?I work,? she said. ?I just don?t have that kind of time.?

Although women?s workforce participation is one potential explanation for their lower levels of communal involvement, it?s not a complete one. Robert Putnam argued in his book Bowling Alone that these changes only account for part of the overall decline of American civil society. One of his key pieces of evidence is men: They, too, have largely quit their social clubs and civic groups.

Women have arguably lost more from the change, though. For uneducated women in particular, lower levels of participation in civil society means they have fewer chances to build leadership skills. A generation ago, the Boston College professor Kay Schlozman and her co-authors found that women state legislators tended to have a background in volunteer work, rather than careers in insurance or law like their male peers. Serving on a community-service steering committee or being responsible for kids on a field trip are ways of building communication and organizational skills, she said. ?The domain of adult life in which that happens most frequently is work,? she added in an interview. ?But one of the things about work is that it?s very stratified in terms of social class, so people who work with their hands get none of these opportunities.?

In terms of skill-building, working can be great for women?s leadership, especially in politics, Schlozman said. ?Working women are more politically active than women who are out of the workforce. Even if women have traded volunteerism for jobs, that would enhance, not deter, them from political roles.? Yet, in the two decades since the mid-90s, when there was a major bump in the number of women elected to hold political office, those numbers have stagnated. In her research on young, female law-school and public-policy graduate students, Shauna Shames, an assistant professor at Rutgers University-Camden, found that these elite, Millennial women aren?t highly motivated to seek political leadership roles. They don?t think they can ?make a difference? with careers in politics.

Some of the community work women once did now happens at non-profit organizations, where women actually get paid for the labor they previously volunteered. But non-profits aren?t exactly a bastion of women?s equality and empowerment. A strong majority of non-profit workers are women, and yet they only make up 43 percent of non-profit boards?and a third of boards for organizations with large operating budgets. Labor conditions at non-profits often mean women are taking pay and benefit cuts to work on behalf of causes.

Meanwhile, working in general can crowd out women?s volunteer work. One study found that the percent of women doing weekly volunteer work decreased from 16.4 percent in 1965 to 9.3 percent in 1993, a period during which women?s participation in the labor force went up significantly. The simplest explanation is that there just aren?t enough hours in the day; even Deckman, the Washington College professor, sighed a little when she mentioned being asked to bake for her kids? school events. ?I work,? she said. ?I just don?t have that kind of time.?

It?s not that cultural infrastructure has changed so that women?s volunteer time is no longer needed.

It?s not that cultural infrastructure has changed so that women?s volunteer time is no longer needed. It?s that the infrastructure has selectively crumbled. Women with the time, education, and resources to support their communities do so, and other communities struggle. While the government can?t provide a sense of community connection, it could provide women and families more support so that they can lead their communities, including with policies that support mandatory overtime, for example.

Not all civic organizations are on an equal path of decline. A spokeswoman for the Daughters of the American Revolution, for example, reported that the organization?s membership has grown every year since 2007. With 183,000 members nationwide, the group is working to make itself more appealing to younger generations and put a greater emphasis on service work over high society. Some African American women?s organizations have also seen renewed interest, like the Links or Jack and Jill.

But in general, the organizations that were once the hallmarks of women?s leadership have much smaller memberships and less influence than they once did. While the United Methodist Women, the Woman?s Missionary Union, and the General Federation of Women?s Clubs each boasted more than 1 percent of American women as their members 70 years ago, for example, these organizations had lost 70 percent, 53 percent, and 83 percent of their memberships by 1995, respectively, according to Skocpal.

While this decline has affected the structure of society, it has also had cultural consequences. Women don?t just have more access to career opportunities?their lives are simply more. As Shames, the Rutgers professor, put it, ?I sometimes think our own success in feminism ? has done us in.? If feminism is a belief in the social, economic, and political equality of the sexes, perhaps this is an area where both women and men should strive to change the standard to which they?re aspiring: Everyone in the United States could benefit from more communal involvement, whether that means advocating for causes, volunteering with a charitable organization, joining a church, or just showing up to that Thursday night parent-teacher-group meeting.

As women have taken greater positions of leadership in the United States, they have also left a leadership vacuum behind them. In middle-class, highly educated communities, women may be busier and more tired than their mothers and grandmothers once were, but they mostly figure out ways to advocate for their kids at school-board meetings or volunteer to chaperone a class trip to the zoo. The people who have suffered most aren?t white and well-off; they?re lower income, poorly educated, and largely disconnected from the rich network of membership-based associations that used to provide both a local sense of community and a national voice in politics. Women in these positions have lost access to one of their only means of gaining leadership skills. And while many of their educated, wealthier peers now have alternatives to the suffocating housewife?s life that so enraged Betty Friedan seven decades ago, some experience it as an opposite kind of suffocation: a never-ending, ladder-climbing work life, the height of which is making money for someone else rather than building a world in which they?re invested.

http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/09/what-women-lost/500537/#article-comments

The Doomed Mouse Utopia That Inspired the 'Rats of NIMH'

Dr. John Bumpass Calhoun spent the '60s and '70s playing god to thousands of rodents.

By Cara Giaimo SEPTEMBER 14, 2016

On July 9th, 1968, eight white mice were placed into a strange box at the National Institute of Health in Bethesda, Maryland. Maybe "box" isn't the right word for it; the space was more like a room, known as Universe 25, about the size of a small storage unit. The mice themselves were bright and healthy, hand-picked from the institute's breeding stock. They were given the run of the place, which had everything they might need: food, water, climate control, hundreds of nesting boxes to choose from, and a lush floor of shredded paper and ground corn cob.

This is a far cry from a wild mouse's life?no cats, no traps, no long winters. It's even better than your average lab mouse's, which is constantly interrupted by white-coated humans with scalpels or syringes. The residents of Universe 25 were mostly left alone, save for one man who would peer at them from above, and his team of similarly interested assistants. They must have thought they were the luckiest mice in the world. They couldn't have known the truth: that within a few years, they and their descendants would all be dead.

The man who played mouse-God and came up with this doomed universe was named John Bumpass Calhoun. As Edmund Ramsden and Jon Adams detail in a paper, "Escaping the Laboratory: The Rodent Experiments of John B. Calhoun & Their Cultural Influence," Calhoun spent his childhood traipsing around Tennessee, chasing toads, collecting turtles, and banding birds. These adventures eventually led him to a doctorate in biology, and then a job in Baltimore, where he was tasked with studying the habits of Norway rats, one of the city's chief pests.

In 1947, to keep a close eye on his charges, Calhoun constructed a quarter-acre "rat city" behind his house, and filled it with breeding pairs. He expected to be able to house 5,000 rats there but over the two years he observed the city, the population never exceeded 150. At that point, the rats became too stressed to reproduce. They started acting weirdly, rolling dirt into balls rather than digging normal tunnels. They hissed and fought.

This fascinated Calhoun?if the rats had everything they needed, what was keeping them from overrunning his little city, just as they had all of Baltimore?

Intrigued, Calhoun built another, slightly bigger rat metropolis?this time in a barn, with ramps connecting several different rooms. Then he built another and another, hopping between patrons that supported his research, and framing his work in terms of population: How many individuals could a rodent city hold without losing its collective mind? By 1954, he was working under the auspices of the National Institute of Mental Health, which gave him whole rooms to build his mousetopias. Like a rodent real estate developer, he incorporated ever-better amenities: climbable walls, food hoppers that could serve two dozen mice at once, lodging he described as "walk-up one-room apartments." Video records of his experiments show Calhoun with a pleased smile and a pipe in his mouth, color-coded mice scurrying over his boots.

Still, at a certain point, each of these paradises collapsed. "There could be no escape from the behavioral consequences of rising population density," Calhoun wrote in an early paper. Even Universe 25?the biggest, best mousetopia of all, built after a quarter century of research?failed to break this pattern. In late October, the first litter of mouse pups was born. After that, the population doubled every two months?20 mice, then 40, then 80. The babies grew up and had babies of their own. Families became dynasties, carving out and holding down the best in-cage real estate. By August of 1969, the population numbered 620.

Then, as always, things took a turn. Such rapid growth put too much pressure on the mouse way of life. As new generations reached adulthood, many couldn't find mates, or places in the social order?the mouse equivalent of a spouse and a job. Spinster females retreated to high-up nesting boxes, where they lived alone, far from the family neighborhoods. Washed-up males gathered in the center of the Universe, near the food, where they fretted, languished, and attacked each other. Meanwhile, overextended mouse moms and dads began moving nests constantly to avoid their unsavory neighbors. They also took their stress out on their babies, kicking them out of the nest too early, or even losing them during moves.

Population growth slowed way down again. Most of the adolescent mice retreated even further from societal expectations, spending all their time eating, drinking, sleeping and grooming, and refusing to fight or to even attempt to mate. (These individuals were forever changed?when Calhoun's colleague attempted to transplant some of them to more normal situations, they didn't remember how to do anything.) In May of 1970, just under 2 years into the study, the last baby was born, and the population entered a swan dive of perpetual senescence. It's unclear exactly when the last resident of Universe 25 perished, but it was probably sometime in 1973.

Paradise couldn't even last half a decade.

In 1973, Calhoun published his Universe 25 research as "Death Squared: The Explosive Growth and Demise of a Mouse Population." It is, to put it lightly, an intense academic reading experience. He quotes liberally from the Book of Revelations, italicizing certain words for emphasis (e.g. "to kill with the sword and with famine and with pestilence and by wild beasts"). He gave his claimed discoveries catchy names?the mice who forgot how to mate were "the beautiful ones"' rats who crowded around water bottles were "social drinkers"; the overall societal breakdown was the "behavioral sink." In other words, it was exactly the kind of diction you'd expect from someone who spent his entire life perfecting the art of the mouse dystopia.

Most frightening are the parallels he draws between rodent and human society. "I shall largely speak of mice," he begins, "but my thoughts are on man." Both species, he explains, are vulnerable to two types of death?that of the spirit and that of the body. Even though he had removed physical threats, doing so had forced the residents of Universe 25 into a spiritually unhealthy situation, full of crowding, overstimulation, and contact with various mouse strangers. To a society experiencing the rapid growth of cities?and reacting, in various ways, quite poorly?this story seemed familiar. Senators brought it up in meetings. It showed up in science fiction and comic books. Even Tom Wolfe, never lost for description, used Calhounian terms to describe New York City, calling all of Gotham a "behavioral sink."

Convinced that he had found a real problem, Calhoun quickly began using his mouse models to try and fix it. If mice and humans weren't afforded enough physical space, he thought, perhaps they could make up for it with conceptual space?creativity, artistry, and the type of community not built around social hierarchies. His later Universes were designed to be spiritually as well as physically utopic, with rodent interactions carefully controlled to maximize happiness (he was particularly fascinated by some early rats who had created an innovative form of tunneling, where they rolled dirt into balls). He extrapolated this, too, to human concerns, becoming an early supporter of environmental design and H.G. Wells's hypothetical "World Brain," an international information network that was a clear precursor to the internet.

But the public held on hard to his earlier work?as Ramsden and Adams put it, "everyone want[ed] to hear the diagnosis, no one want[ed] to hear the cure." Gradually, Calhoun lost attention, standing, and funding. In 1986, he was forced to retired from the National Institute of Mental Health. Nine years later, he died.

But there was one person who paid attention to his more optimistic experiments, a writer named Robert C. O'Brien. In the late '60s, O'Brien allegedly visited Calhoun's lab, met the man trying to build a true and creative rat paradise, and took note of the Frisbee on the door, the scientists' own attempt "to help when things got too stressful," as Calhoun put it. Soon after, O'Brien wrote Ms. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH?a story about rats who, having escaped from a lab full of blundering humans, attempt to build their own utopia. Next time, maybe we should put the rats in charge.

Naturecultures is a weekly column that explores the changing relationships between humanity and wilder things. Have something you want covered (or uncovered)? Send tips to cara@atlasobscura.com.

http://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/the-doomed-mouse-utopia-that-inspired-the-rats-of-nimh?utm_source=twitter&utm_medium=atlas-page

The Flight 93 Election
By: Publius Decius Mus
September 5, 2016

2016 is the Flight 93 election: charge the cockpit or you die. You may die anyway. You?or the leader of your party?may make it into the cockpit and not know how to fly or land the plane. There are no guarantees.

Except one: if you don?t try, death is certain. To compound the metaphor: a Hillary Clinton presidency is Russian Roulette with a semi-auto. With Trump, at least you can spin the cylinder and take your chances.

To ordinary conservative ears, this sounds histrionic. The stakes can?t be that high because they are never that high?except perhaps in the pages of Gibbon. Conservative intellectuals will insist that there has been no ?end of history? and that all human outcomes are still possible. They will even?as Charles Kesler does?admit that America is in ?crisis.? But how great is the crisis? Can things really be so bad if eight years of Obama can be followed by eight more of Hillary, and yet Constitutionalist conservatives can still reasonably hope for a restoration of our cherished ideals? Cruz in 2024!

Not to pick (too much) on Kesler, who is less unwarrantedly optimistic than most conservatives. And who, at least, poses the right question: Trump or Hillary? Though his answer??even if [Trump] had chosen his policies at random, they would be sounder than Hillary?s??is unwarrantedly ungenerous. The truth is that Trump articulated, if incompletely and inconsistently, the right stances on the right issues?immigration, trade, and war?right from the beginning.

But let us back up. One of the paradoxes?there are so many?of conservative thought over the last decade at least is the unwillingness even to entertain the possibility that America and the West are on a trajectory toward something very bad. On the one hand, conservatives routinely present a litany of ills plaguing the body politic. Illegitimacy. Crime. Massive, expensive, intrusive, out-of-control government. Politically correct McCarthyism. Ever-higher taxes and ever-deteriorating services and infrastructure. Inability to win wars against tribal, sub-Third-World foes. A disastrously awful educational system that churns out kids who don?t know anything and, at the primary and secondary levels, can?t (or won?t) discipline disruptive punks, and at the higher levels saddles students with six figure debts for the privilege. And so on and drearily on. Like that portion of the mass where the priest asks for your private intentions, fill in any dismal fact about American decline that you want and I?ll stipulate it.

Conservatives spend at least several hundred million dollars a year on think-tanks, magazines, conferences, fellowships, and such, complaining about this, that, the other, and everything. And yet these same conservatives are, at root, keepers of the status quo. Oh, sure, they want some things to change. They want their pet ideas adopted?tax deductions for having more babies and the like. Many of them are even good ideas. But are any of them truly fundamental? Do they get to the heart of our problems?

If conservatives are right about the importance of virtue, morality, religious faith, stability, character and so on in the individual; if they are right about sexual morality or what came to be termed ?family values?; if they are right about the importance of education to inculcate good character and to teach the fundamentals that have defined knowledge in the West for millennia; if they are right about societal norms and public order; if they are right about the centrality of initiative, enterprise, industry, and thrift to a sound economy and a healthy society; if they are right about the soul-sapping effects of paternalistic Big Government and its cannibalization of civil society and religious institutions; if they are right about the necessity of a strong defense and prudent statesmanship in the international sphere?if they are right about the importance of all this to national health and even survival, then they must believe?mustn?t they??that we are headed off a cliff.

But it?s quite obvious that conservatives don?t believe any such thing, that they feel no such sense of urgency, of an immediate necessity to change course and avoid the cliff. A recent article by Matthew Continetti may be taken as representative?indeed, almost written for the purpose of illustrating the point. Continetti inquires into the ?condition of America? and finds it wanting. What does Continetti propose to do about it? The usual litany of ?conservative? ?solutions,? with the obligatory references to decentralization, federalization, ?civic renewal,? and?of course!?Burke. Which is to say, conservatism?s typical combination of the useless and inapt with the utopian and unrealizable. Decentralization and federalism are all well and good, and as a conservative, I endorse them both without reservation. But how are they going to save, or even meaningfully improve, the America that Continetti describes? What can they do against a tidal wave of dysfunction, immorality, and corruption? ?Civic renewal? would do a lot of course, but that?s like saying health will save a cancer patient. A step has been skipped in there somewhere. How are we going to achieve ?civic renewal?? Wishing for a tautology to enact itself is not a strategy.

Continetti trips over a more promising approach when he writes of ?stress[ing] the ?national interest abroad and national solidarity at home? through foreign-policy retrenchment, ?support to workers buffeted by globalization,? and setting ?tax rates and immigration levels? to foster social cohesion." That sounds a lot like Trumpism. But the phrases that Continetti quotes are taken from Ross Douthat and Reihan Salam, both of whom, like Continetti, are vociferously?one might even say fanatically?anti-Trump. At least they, unlike Kesler, give Trump credit for having identified the right stance on today?s most salient issues. Yet, paradoxically, they won?t vote for Trump whereas Kesler hints that he will. It?s reasonable, then, to read into Kesler?s esoteric endorsement of Trump an implicit acknowledgment that the crisis is, indeed, pretty dire. I expect a Claremont scholar to be wiser than most other conservative intellectuals, and I am relieved not to be disappointed in this instance.

Yet we may also reasonably ask: What explains the Pollyanna-ish declinism of so many others? That is, the stance that Things-Are-Really-Bad?But-Not-So-Bad-that-We-Have-to-Consider-Anything-Really-Different! The obvious answer is that they don?t really believe the first half of that formulation. If so, like Chicken Little, they should stick a sock in it. Pecuniary reasons also suggest themselves, but let us foreswear recourse to this explanation until we have disproved all the others.

Whatever the reason for the contradiction, there can be no doubt that there is a contradiction. To simultaneously hold conservative cultural, economic, and political beliefs?to insist that our liberal-left present reality and future direction is incompatible with human nature and must undermine society?and yet also believe that things can go on more or less the way they are going, ideally but not necessarily with some conservative tinkering here and there, is logically impossible.

Let?s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.

If your answer?Continetti?s, Douthat?s, Salam?s, and so many others??is for conservatism to keep doing what it?s been doing?another policy journal, another article about welfare reform, another half-day seminar on limited government, another tax credit proposal?even though we?ve been losing ground for at least a century, then you?ve implicitly accepted that your supposed political philosophy doesn?t matter and that civilization will carry on just fine under leftist tenets. Indeed, that leftism is truer than conservatism and superior to it.

They will say, in words reminiscent of dorm-room Marxism?but our proposals have not been tried! Here our ideas sit, waiting to be implemented! To which I reply: eh, not really. Many conservative solutions?above all welfare reform and crime control?have been tried, and proved effective, but have nonetheless failed to stem the tide. Crime, for instance, is down from its mid-?70s and early ?90s peak?but way, way up from the historic American norm that ended when liberals took over criminal justice in the mid-?60s. And it?s rising fast today, in the teeth of ineffectual conservative complaints. And what has this temporary crime (or welfare, for that matter) decline done to stem the greater tide? The tsunami of leftism that still engulfs our every?literal and figurative?shore has receded not a bit but indeed has grown. All your (our) victories are short-lived.

More to the point, what has conservatism achieved lately? In the last 20 years? The answer?which appears to be ?nothing??might seem to lend credence to the plea that ?our ideas haven?t been tried.? Except that the same conservatives who generate those ideas are in charge of selling them to the broader public. If their ideas ?haven?t been tried,? who is ultimately at fault? The whole enterprise of Conservatism, Inc., reeks of failure. Its sole recent and ongoing success is its own self-preservation. Conservative intellectuals never tire of praising ?entrepreneurs? and ?creative destruction.? Dare to fail! they exhort businessmen. Let the market decide! Except, um, not with respect to us. Or is their true market not the political arena, but the fundraising circuit?

Only three questions matter. First, how bad are things really? Second, what do we do right now? Third, what should we do for the long term?

Conservatism, Inc.?s, ?answer? to the first may, at this point, simply be dismissed. If the conservatives wish to have a serious debate, I for one am game?more than game; eager. The problem of ?subjective certainty? can only be overcome by going into the agora. But my attempt to do so?the blog that Kesler mentions?was met largely with incredulity. How can they say that?! How can anyone apparently of our caste (conservative intellectuals) not merely support Trump (however lukewarmly) but offer reasons for doing do?

One of the Journal of American Greatness?s deeper arguments was that only in a corrupt republic, in corrupt times, could a Trump rise. It is therefore puzzling that those most horrified by Trump are the least willing to consider the possibility that the republic is dying. That possibility, apparently, seems to them so preposterous that no refutation is necessary.

As does, presumably, the argument that the stakes in 2016 are?everything. I should here note that I am a good deal gloomier than my (former) JAG colleagues, and that while we frequently used the royal ?we? when discussing things on which we all agreed, I here speak only for myself.

How have the last two decades worked out for you, personally? If you?re a member or fellow-traveler of the Davos class, chances are: pretty well. If you?re among the subspecies conservative intellectual or politician, you?ve accepted?perhaps not consciously, but unmistakably?your status on the roster of the Washington Generals of American politics. Your job is to show up and lose, but you are a necessary part of the show and you do get paid. To the extent that you are ever on the winning side of anything, it?s as sophists who help the Davoisie oligarchy rationalize open borders, lower wages, outsourcing, de-industrialization, trade giveaways, and endless, pointless, winless war.

All of Trump?s 16 Republican competitors would have ensured more of the same?as will the election of Hillary Clinton. That would be bad enough. But at least Republicans are merely reactive when it comes to wholesale cultural and political change. Their ?opposition? may be in all cases ineffectual and often indistinguishable from support. But they don?t dream up inanities like 32 ?genders,? elective bathrooms, single-payer, Iran sycophancy, ?Islamophobia,? and Black Lives Matter. They merely help ratify them.

A Hillary presidency will be pedal-to-the-metal on the entire Progressive-left agenda, plus items few of us have yet imagined in our darkest moments. Nor is even that the worst. It will be coupled with a level of vindictive persecution against resistance and dissent hitherto seen in the supposedly liberal West only in the most ?advanced? Scandinavian countries and the most leftist corners of Germany and England. We see this already in the censorship practiced by the Davoisie?s social media enablers; in the shameless propaganda tidal wave of the mainstream media; and in the personal destruction campaigns?operated through the former and aided by the latter?of the Social Justice Warriors. We see it in Obama?s flagrant use of the IRS to torment political opponents, the gaslighting denial by the media, and the collective shrug by everyone else.

It?s absurd to assume that any of this would stop or slow?would do anything other than massively intensify?in a Hillary administration. It?s even more ridiculous to expect that hitherto useless conservative opposition would suddenly become effective. For two generations at least, the Left has been calling everyone to their right Nazis. This trend has accelerated exponentially in the last few years, helped along by some on the Right who really do seem to merit?and even relish?the label. There is nothing the modern conservative fears more than being called ?racist,? so alt-right pocket Nazis are manna from heaven for the Left. But also wholly unnecessary: sauce for the goose. The Left was calling us Nazis long before any pro-Trumpers tweeted Holocaust denial memes. And how does one deal with a Nazi?that is, with an enemy one is convinced intends your destruction? You don?t compromise with him or leave him alone. You crush him.

So what do we have to lose by fighting back? Only our Washington Generals jerseys?and paychecks. But those are going away anyway. Among the many things the ?Right? still doesn?t understand is that the Left has concluded that this particular show need no longer go on. They don?t think they need a foil anymore and would rather dispense with the whole bother of staging these phony contests in which each side ostensibly has a shot.

If you haven?t noticed, our side has been losing consistently since 1988. We can win midterms, but we do nothing with them. Call ours Hannibalic victories. After the Carthaginian?s famous slaughter of a Roman army at Cannae, he failed to march on an undefended Rome, prompting his cavalry commander to complain: ?you know how to win a victory, but not how to use one.? And, aside from 2004?s lackluster 50.7%, we can?t win the big ones at all.

Because the deck is stacked overwhelmingly against us. I will mention but three ways. First, the opinion-making elements?the universities and the media above all?are wholly corrupt and wholly opposed to everything we want, and increasingly even to our existence. (What else are the wars on ?cis-genderism??formerly known as ?nature??and on the supposed ?white privilege? of broke hillbillies really about?) If it hadn?t been abundantly clear for the last 50 years, the campaign of 2015-2016 must surely have made it evident to even the meanest capacities that the intelligentsia?including all the organs through which it broadcasts its propaganda?is overwhelmingly partisan and biased. Against this onslaught, ?conservative? media is a nullity, barely a whisper. It cannot be heard above the blaring of what has been aptly called ?The Megaphone.?

Second, our Washington Generals self-handicap and self-censor to an absurd degree. Lenin is supposed to have said that ?the best way to control the opposition is to lead it ourselves.? But with an opposition like ours, why bother? Our ?leaders? and ?dissenters? bend over backward to play by the self-sabotaging rules the Left sets for them. Fearful, beaten dogs have more thymos.

Third and most important, the ceaseless importation of Third World foreigners with no tradition of, taste for, or experience in liberty means that the electorate grows more left, more Democratic, less Republican, less republican, and less traditionally American with every cycle. As does, of course, the U.S. population, which only serves to reinforce the two other causes outlined above. This is the core reason why the Left, the Democrats, and the bipartisan junta (categories distinct but very much overlapping) think they are on the cusp of a permanent victory that will forever obviate the need to pretend to respect democratic and constitutional niceties. Because they are.

It?s also why they treat open borders as the ?absolute value,? the one ?principle? that?when their ?principles? collide?they prioritize above all the others. If that fact is insufficiently clear, consider this. Trump is the most liberal Republican nominee since Thomas Dewey. He departs from conservative orthodoxy in so many ways that National Review still hasn?t stopped counting. But let?s stick to just the core issues animating his campaign. On trade, globalization, and war, Trump is to the left (conventionally understood) not only of his own party, but of his Democratic opponent. And yet the Left and the junta are at one with the house-broken conservatives in their determination?desperation?not merely to defeat Trump but to destroy him. What gives?

Oh, right?there?s that other issue. The sacredness of mass immigration is the mystic chord that unites America?s ruling and intellectual classes. Their reasons vary somewhat. The Left and the Democrats seek ringers to form a permanent electoral majority. They, or many of them, also believe the academic-intellectual lie that America?s inherently racist and evil nature can be expiated only through ever greater ?diversity.? The junta of course craves cheaper and more docile labor. It also seeks to legitimize, and deflect unwanted attention from, its wealth and power by pretending that its open borders stance is a form of noblesse oblige. The Republicans and the ?conservatives?? Both of course desperately want absolution from the charge of ?racism.? For the latter, this at least makes some sense. No Washington General can take the court?much less cash his check?with that epithet dancing over his head like some Satanic Spirit. But for the former, this priestly grace comes at the direct expense of their worldly interests. Do they honestly believe that the right enterprise zone or charter school policy will arouse 50.01% of our newer voters to finally reveal their ?natural conservatism? at the ballot box? It hasn?t happened anywhere yet and shows no signs that it ever will. But that doesn?t stop the Republican refrain: more, more, more! No matter how many elections they lose, how many districts tip forever blue, how rarely (if ever) their immigrant vote cracks 40%, the answer is always the same. Just like Angela Merkel after yet another rape, shooting, bombing, or machete attack. More, more, more!

This is insane. This is the mark of a party, a society, a country, a people, a civilization that wants to die. Trump, alone among candidates for high office in this or in the last seven (at least) cycles, has stood up to say: I want to live. I want my party to live. I want my country to live. I want my people to live. I want to end the insanity.

Yes, Trump is worse than imperfect. So what? We can lament until we choke the lack of a great statesman to address the fundamental issues of our time?or, more importantly, to connect them. Since Pat Buchanan?s three failures, occasionally a candidate arose who saw one piece: Dick Gephardt on trade, Ron Paul on war, Tom Tancredo on immigration. Yet, among recent political figures?great statesmen, dangerous demagogues, and mewling gnats alike?only Trump-the-alleged-buffoon not merely saw all three and their essential connectivity, but was able to win on them. The alleged buffoon is thus more prudent?more practically wise?than all of our wise-and-good who so bitterly oppose him. This should embarrass them. That their failures instead embolden them is only further proof of their foolishness and hubris.

Which they self-laud as ?consistency??adherence to ?conservative principle,? defined by the 1980 campaign and the household gods of reigning conservative think-tanks. A higher consistency in the service of the national interest apparently eludes them. When America possessed a vast, empty continent and explosively growing industry, high immigration was arguably good policy. (Arguably: Ben Franklin would disagree.) It hasn?t made sense since World War I. Free trade was unquestionably a great boon to the American worker in the decades after World War II. We long ago passed the point of diminishing returns. The Gulf War of 1991 was a strategic victory for American interests. No conflict since then has been. Conservatives either can?t see this?or, worse, those who can nonetheless treat the only political leader to mount a serious challenge to the status quo (more immigration, more trade, more war) as a unique evil.

Trump?s vulgarity is in fact a godsend to the conservatives. It allows them to hang their public opposition on his obvious shortcomings and to ignore or downplay his far greater strengths, which should be even more obvious but in corrupt times can be deliberately obscured by constant references to his faults. That the Left would make the campaign all about the latter is to be expected. Why would the Right? Some?a few?are no doubt sincere in their belief that the man is simply unfit for high office. David Frum, who has always been an immigration skeptic and is a convert to the less-war position, is sincere when he says that, even though he agrees with much of Trump?s agenda, he cannot stomach Trump. But for most of the other #NeverTrumpers, is it just a coincidence that they also happen to favor Invade the World, Invite the World?

Another question JAG raised without provoking any serious attempt at refutation was whether, in corrupt times, it took a ? let?s say ... ?loudmouth? to rise above the din of The Megaphone. We, or I, speculated: ?yes.? Suppose there had arisen some statesman of high character?dignified, articulate, experienced, knowledgeable?the exact opposite of everything the conservatives claim to hate about Trump. Could this hypothetical paragon have won on Trump?s same issues? Would the conservatives have supported him? I would have?even had he been a Democrat.

Back on planet earth, that flight of fancy at least addresses what to do now. The answer to the subsidiary question?will it work??is much less clear. By ?it? I mean Trumpism, broadly defined as secure borders, economic nationalism, and America-first foreign policy. We Americans have chosen, in our foolishness, to disunite the country through stupid immigration, economic, and foreign policies. The level of unity America enjoyed before the bipartisan junta took over can never be restored.

But we can probably do better than we are doing now. First, stop digging. No more importing poverty, crime, and alien cultures. We have made institutions, by leftist design, not merely abysmal at assimilation but abhorrent of the concept. We should try to fix that, but given the Left?s iron grip on every school and cultural center, that?s like trying to bring democracy to Russia. A worthy goal, perhaps, but temper your hopes?and don?t invest time and resources unrealistically.

By contrast, simply building a wall and enforcing immigration law will help enormously, by cutting off the flood of newcomers that perpetuates ethnic separatism and by incentivizing the English language and American norms in the workplace. These policies will have the added benefit of aligning the economic interests of, and (we may hope) fostering solidarity among, the working, lower middle, and middle classes of all races and ethnicities. The same can be said for Trumpian trade policies and anti-globalization instincts. Who cares if productivity numbers tick down, or if our already somnambulant GDP sinks a bit further into its pillow? Nearly all the gains of the last 20 years have accrued to the junta anyway. It would, at this point, be better for the nation to divide up more equitably a slightly smaller pie than to add one extra slice?only to ensure that it and eight of the other nine go first to the government and its rentiers, and the rest to the same four industries and 200 families.

Will this work? Ask a pessimist, get a pessimistic answer. So don?t ask. Ask instead: is it worth trying? Is it better than the alternative? If you can?t say, forthrightly, ?yes,? you are either part of the junta, a fool, or a conservative intellectual.

And if it doesn?t work, what then? We?ve established that most ?conservative? anti-Trumpites are in the Orwellian sense objectively pro-Hillary. What about the rest of you? If you recognize the threat she poses, but somehow can?t stomach him, have you thought about the longer term? The possibilities would seem to be: Caesarism, secession/crack-up, collapse, or managerial Davoisie liberalism as far as the eye can see ? which, since nothing human lasts forever, at some point will give way to one of the other three. Oh, and, I suppose, for those who like to pour a tall one and dream big, a second American Revolution that restores Constitutionalism, limited government, and a 28% top marginal rate.

But for those of you who are sober: can you sketch a more plausible long-term future than the prior four following a Trump defeat? I can?t either.

The election of 2016 is a test?in my view, the final test?of whether there is any virt? left in what used to be the core of the American nation. If they cannot rouse themselves simply to vote for the first candidate in a generation who pledges to advance their interests, and to vote against the one who openly boasts that she will do the opposite (a million more Syrians, anyone?), then they are doomed. They may not deserve the fate that will befall them, but they will suffer it regardless.

http://www.claremont.org/crb/basicpage/the-flight-93-election/

SORE LOSERS

HANNIBAL BATEMAN ? JANUARY 22, 2016

Sam Francis called the American conservative movement a collection of ?beautiful losers.? To look at them now, a more apt descriptor would be ?sore losers.? The meltdown of the mandarins of Conservatism, Inc. over at National Review about Donald Trump can only be seen as the last gasp of an increasingly irrelevant ?movement.?

The heirs of Buckley would love nothing more than to exercise his inquisitorial powers over Donald Trump and the growing ?alt-right? movement. Over twenty ?movement Conservatives? penned diatribes against the Donald in the latest issue of National Review. For the most part, these barely rise above the level of ?democrats r real racists guyz!? to denunciations of ?nativism? and faux patrician concerns about ?vulgarity? as defined by Leo Strauss (I?m looking at you, Kristol). What we are seeing is no more than the death throes of Conservatism, Inc. in a wild temper tantrum.

Events have accelerated quickly. First there was GOP ?cucksultant? Rick Wilson?s pathetic whining on MSNBC about Donald Trump and the alt-right, to Rush Limbaugh?s acknowledgement that nationalism and populism had overtaken conservatism. The lame conservative movement is on life support.

The dispossession of the Beltway Right is a moment that should be celebrated and seized. Sam Francis once denounced ?the managerial verbalist class? which includes the oh so precious contributors to National Review. The controlled grammatical tyranny they have exercised over the thought of the Right is nearing its end. Instead of writing their obituaries with a period, let?s do it with an exclamation mark!

The truth is, publications like National Review and the entire ?conservative? movement are nothing more than sinecures for a b-squad managerial elite on the Potomac. Like the collapse of the Soviet Union, the collapse of Conservatism, Inc. has been swift and unexpected (at least, to them). They?ve even lost the RNC (Ha!) But with the destruction of this false opposition to our reigning liberal hegemony, a new opposition can take hold.

That?s where we come in. Donald Trump has been a great beginning towards restructuring politics in the United States. In the last year we have seen moves towards nationalism, and even a nascent whiff of a white ?identity politics.? Seizing the mantle of opposition brings new possibilities and new dangers. Of course, this is the only way forward.

Francis said the choice:

Between the present elite and its challengers is not merely between one power and another. It is a choice between degeneration and rebirth, between death and survival, for survival is not a right or a gift freely granted by the powers that be. Survival, in the jungle or in political society, is a hard-won prize that depends ultimately on power itself. In this world, wrote Goethe, one must be the hammer or the anvil.The essence of the message from MARs [Middle American Revolutionaries] is that the messengers want to work the forge.
We have to be the hammer! The death of Conservatism, Inc. is going to leave an ideological void on the right. One that we should be eager to fill. Where they offered platitudes, we will offer identity.

One of the main currents that run through all of those pathetic squawkers in National Review?s ?symposium? (we get it! You?ve read Plato) is a loyalty to abstractions. They rant and rave about ?liberty,? ?the Constitution,? ?muh rights,? etc. But the truth is, none of those things matter much outside of the particular people that gave birth to them. Our people. Who are being hammered by the pincers of mass immigration and cultural marxism being pushed by our managerial elite.

National Review likes to claim that they have been ?standing athwart history yelling, ?Stop!?? In reality, they have done nothing more than stand behind history yelling ?me too! me too!? while chasing off its best minds and adopting yesterday?s liberalism. With this latest stunt, they fall further into irrelevancy.

The ?beautiful losers? of yesterday?s conservatism have morphed into today?s sore losers. We're going to wipe the floor with them.

http://www.radixjournal.com/blog/2016/1/22/sore-losers

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ruiYTegjOzU

The Daily Caller has picked up a new term, ?cuckservative,? which ironically describes that publication. One of their writers found it on Radix, although it has been known around the alt-right for a while and was likely first used by someone from TheRightStuff.biz, or maybe mpcdot.com, or this Twitter account. Sorry if I?m wrong but no one is really certain since it?s a meme. The point is, we all use it and we get a kick out of it and now the people we set out to ridicule know about it and are upset and spreading the word. Delicious. I myself have written on the issue of conservatives cucking as well, a few weeks back during the Charleston flagfest. Here?s what The Daily Cucker had to say:

So what does this have to do with conservatism or politics? By supporting immigration reform, criminal justice reform, etc., a white conservative is therefore surrendering his honor and masculinity (and it won?t be long before his women folk are compromised, as well!). A cuckservative is, therefore, a race traitor.

The suggestion is that whites should only support policies that help whites. The goal is to stir up fear among whites ? and to encourage more tribalism and polarization.

I bring this up because I suppose it?s possible that some conservatives might embrace this term without fully understanding the racial and sexual implications. To some, it might be seen as an innocent jab ? like calling someone a ?squish? or a ?RINO.? But as Erickson correctly observes, ?Remember, if you hear the term ?cuckservative,? it is a slur against Christian voters coined by white-supremacists.?

Do you know what encourages tribalism and polarization?

- Everyone else doing it. Every non-white country on earth doing it. Israel, China, Japan, India, South Africa, etc.
- And speaking of Israel, conservatives (and some liberals) cuck extremely hard for that little country. It?s like a socially acceptable and surrogate form of nationalism. Israel can be a Jewish state with a Jewish majority but the United States belongs to everyone right? Even non-citizens. We should just be an entrepot for third world migrant labor right?
- The mass importation of non-white people into the United States since 1965. and the subsequent decline of the Anglo-American White population from almost 90% of the population to 62%.
- The forecast that by the 2040s Whites will lose majority status and become a plurality, the largest minority. As we are constantly reminded, minorities are oppressed. We should avoid becoming one, like Whites were in colonial Haiti and Rhodesia.
- The rise of black and Hispanic identity politics, and to a much lesser extent Asian and LGBT
- The intensity of the white guilt narrative, whether in the form of white privilege or the old-fashioned blaming Whites for everything.
- Politicians kowtowing to political correctness and media and social media enforcing it upon thought heretics.
- The rise of men like Donald Trump who are willing to hold shamelessly pro-American policies without apologizing to the left to make their ideas more appealing to non-Republican voters like blacks, Latinos and feminists.

Here?s some more food for thought:

- ?White supremacist? is a slur used against pro-White advocacy and any White person who uses it is inherently a cuck.
- Republicans who try to appeal to demographics they cannot win without adopting Democrat policies?black and Hispanics?are selling out their White majority base for twenty units of fiat money; They are C U C K S.
- Republicans who support Immigration Reform? and more cultural enrichment?rather than defending the border and repealing Hart-Celler?are cucks. That?s literally making the United States non-white and the people who voted for you are White.
- Republicans who aggressively serve multinational corporate donors or the Israeli lobby, neither of which have the best interests of Anglo-America in mind, are cucks.
- Finally, if you?re just a liberal who?s ten years behind, cuck.

TRS?s Mike Enoch left a pretty clear definition on Daily Caller itself for their audience to ponder.

Look, you guys have lost, even on the issues important to you as Christians because of your cuckholdry on the race issue. You?re not doing anything to preserve the white majority, but you?re not winning on your issues either. Gay marriage is a done deal. Abortion is here to stay, particularly as more broken nonwhite families enter the social services system and are encouraged by bureaucrats to abort. You lost, you lost, you lost.

With a white majority these issues were winnable, because whites vote conservative in the majority. But by being cowards on the issue of immigration and bending over for the left?s quite open plan of demographic replacement of whites in order to secure a permanent nonwhite left wing majority you lost. In 8 years it may be demographically impossible for the GOP to win a national election ever again. Even your precious Christian issues are done. Even your cucking for Israel is under threat. Do you think a nonwhite majority in the US is going to be keen to support your favorite ethnostate? They side with the Palestinians!

You lost everything, and all because you were afraid a group of communists, atheists and homosexuals would call you racist.

I couldn?t agree more. Gas the cucks, waifu war now.

https://atlanticcenturion.wordpress.com/2015/07/23/cuckservative/

Who?s In Charge of the Oncoming Train

A sense of palpable depression came over conservative America after the Supreme Court upheld Obamacare subsidies and decided that gay marriage was a constitutional right.  Many felt as if the America they knew and loved had been abducted by space aliens and replaced with something new and hostile.  In contrast to this emotional devastation the left seemed buoyed by euphoria.

?Look ma, I?m on top of the world!? Yet over the same period the liberal landscape fell apart even faster.The last decade has witnessed a vertiginous decline in Washington?s economic, political and military power.  The economic engine of liberalism was dying under them, sustained only by the vapors of deficit spending and illusionism.

Its political dominance was being challenged by totalitarian regimes in China and Russia.   Even the triumphant tide of liberal values was being offset by the rise of neo-Nazi parties in Europe and the spread of Islamic ideas throughout the world. Justice Kennedy?s decision was answered in the real world by the Turkish police breaking up the Gay Pride parade in Istanbul.  Elsewhere its adherents were experiencing rapid descents from multistory buildings in without the benefit of an elevator at the hands of ISIS executioners.

If the world that conservative Americans once cherished has diminished; it has not been as rapid as the shrinkage of the liberal universe.  Both aspects of old world are dying  never to come back.  The post World War 2 era of Franklin Roosevelt has nearly run its course.  The difference is that the conservatives are more aware of its passing and may become more active in building what replaces it.

A miniature representation of the crisis is being acted out in Greece where the left is embarked on a Battle Royale against reality. With reference to reality ?we refuse to accept it,? says the Greek government, vowing to block expulsion from the Euro. There are no reasons, no math, no proofs that 1+1 <> 2. Just refusals. Insistence has taken the place of facts, and is uttered in the confidence that Someone will provide it.  Yanis Varoufakis, the finance minister said:

?We are taking advice and will certainly consider an injunction at the European Court of Justice,? he told The Daily Telegraph.

?The EU treaties make no provision for euro exit and we refuse to accept it. Our membership is not negotiable.?

The defiant stand came as Europe?s major powers warned in the bluntest terms that Greece will be forced out of monetary union if voters reject austerity and reform demands in a shock referendum on Sunday.

Not that lawyers can restock the ATMs, the supermarkets or the gas stations. All they can produce is paper, of the kind the Supreme Court decisions are written on. But paper has its limitations ? once past the world of paper  Greece is being ripped apart as a sacrifice to the European fantasy. It seems like Greece must die so the narrative may continue live as explained by Ivo Daalder, president of the Chicago Council on Global Affairs, in an NPR interview. Obama was working to keep Greece in the EU because it is part of the Plan.


ROBERT SIEGEL, HOST: Washington wants Europe to work out a deal that keeps Greece in the eurozone that is using the common currency. President Obama has called German Chancellor Merkel. Treasury Secretary Jack Lew has spoken with Greek Prime Minister Tsipras. Why are the highest-ranking figures in Washington working the phones so ardently? What?s in it for the U.S.? ? Why is it so important for the U.S. to avoid a so-called Grexit ? a Greek exit from the eurozone?

DAALDER: Well, Greece ? been a member of NATO since 1952 ? and if the Greeks were to leave the European Union, or even the eurozone, there is a fear in Washington ? particularly at a time when we see a growing confrontation with Russia, that Washington is saying this is probably not the time to shake up the system ? Potentially you can see the Orthodox getting together and saying these are the kind of traditional values that ? you hear that already from Russians and from President Putin ? that need to be strengthened against the immoral values that are coming from the West ? it?s that kind of thinking that I think we need to prevent from happening by not pushing Greece in the direction that it?s moving.

The Plan must be saved. The EU project and ?progressive values? are a project that is too big to fail. Therefore it will be saved. Yevgeniy Feyman described how deceptive paper victories can be. He writes, ?King v. Burwell is in the history books. Subsidies on federal exchanges will continue to flow and supporters of the ACA will (correctly) see this as a big win for the president. But to pretend that this means smooth sailing for Obamacare from here on out would be disingenuous at best.?

Federal backstops for insurers (risk corridors and reinsurance) will disappear after 2016, likely resulting in significantly higher premiums on the exchanges. Additional changes to how subsidies for premiums are calculated in beginning in 2019 also threaten to push more premium costs onto consumers. The exchanges have also largely failed to attract younger enrollees, and middle-class enrollees have been frozen out by (unsubsidized) Obamacare-sticker shock.

The Supreme Court just upheld a program that will bankrupt the treasury and send the health insurance industry into a death spiral. ?Maybe not today, maybe not tomorrow, but soon and for the rest of your life.?  That?s what Greece is learning now, after the ?victory? of entering Europe.

Saving these sacred cows will come at the cost at a high cost. George Selgin at Cato writes ?if you think that the Fed isn?t involved in the Greek mess, you may want to think again. Paul-Martin Foss, our good friend at the Carl Menger Center, wrote a very nice post a few days ago concerning how the Fed may be getting itself tangled-up in an impending Greek default, through its swap lines with the ECB.?

According to the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, those swap lines were first established in December 2007 ?to improve liquidity conditions in U.S. and foreign financial markets by providing foreign central banks with the capacity to deliver U.S. dollar funding to institutions in their jurisdictions during times of market stress.? ? but then, in October 2013 ? what do you know! ? they were made permanent. ? What has all this got to do with Greece? Here is Paul-Martin: ?If you want to get a sense of the Fed?s involvement in Europe, watch the swap lines. ? even if the Fed doesn?t say anything about Greece, its money-printing to pump up the swap lines will do plenty of talking.?

Greece illustrates how incredibly fragile the liberal world order has become.  That one small, almost insignificant European country has the potential to wreak major damage on the entire world economic system is terribly frightening and gives lie to all the bombastic claims about claims to being the wave of the future.

Conservatives shouldn?t feel too bad about the Supreme Court?s decisions. It?s the liberals who are living a house of cards.  If liberals were rational they would making alliances with conservative Christians, Third World Roman Catholics, Orthodox Christians and that favorite sector, the moderate Muslims to fight godless Communism and radical Islam.  To paraphrase Casablanca, ?I wouldn?t bring up transgendersism and gay marriage in Tunisia, where hotel workers tried to defend their guests with ashtrays and bottles against the ISIS gunman, if I were you.  It?s poor salesmanship.?

But they don?t care, they?ll do it even though it costs them. Do it because there was always someone to pay for things; someone to fix what they broke. Therfore they will destroy Greece in order to save it as they will ruin Puerto Rico in order to prop up Democratic economic policies. Max Ehrenfreund at the Washington Post explains:

Alejandro Garc?a Padilla, the governor of Puerto Rico, is expected to say publicly Monday afternoon that the government of the island territory cannot pay its debts. The consequences could be serious both for the island and the rest of the United States. ?

Puerto Rico has been doing worse than the rest of the country for the past 15 years. The economy began to contract in 2007, a couple of years before the economy collapsed on the mainland.

It?s no surprise that people have been leaving Puerto Rico if they can. The population is declining at an alarming rate of 1 percent per year. ?

The report cites one surprising problem: the federal minimum wage, which is at the same level in Puerto Rico as in the rest of the country, even though the economy there is so much weaker. There are probably some people who would like to work, but because of the sickly economy, businesses can?t afford to pay them the minimum wage.

Someone working full time for the minimum wage earns $15,080 a year, which isn?t that much less than the median income in Puerto Rico of $19,624.

The report also cites regulations and restrictions that make it difficult to set up new businesses and hire workers, although it?s difficult to know just how large an effect these rules might or might not have on the labor market.

A report by the New York Fed also suggests that Puerto Rico has a relatively large underground economy employing a big part of the population. These workers aren?t taxed or counted in formal employment numbers.

In any case, it?s relatively expensive to hire and pay workers in Puerto Rico, which along with the high cost of transportation, energy and other goods, means that fewer tourists are planning trips to Puerto Rico than they were a decade ago and the number of hotel beds is the same as it was four decades ago, according to Krueger and her colleagues.

PR has a Caribbean level of productivity and a Washington DC level of bureaucracy, a grotesque combination rivaled only, with the possible exception of Chicago, by something like Greece with its pastoral body upon which the Brussels regulatory machinery has been grafted. Both are struggling in their mutant state but in any such clash of interests it?s the island which must die so that the greater bureaucracy can survive.

Their sacrifice will not be enough to save the post-war world, however. If conservatives are disturbed by the changes shaking their universe, their vision is at least unobstructed by the Narrative, which is blocking the sight of a freight train bearing down the Western liberal elite. When it hits, boy will lots of people be surprised.

The more perceptive individuals are already beginning to feel the rails vibrate beneath their feat and are inquiring into the cause. Paul Krugman wrote a few days ago that ?it has been obvious for some time that the creation of the euro was a terrible mistake. Europe never had the preconditions for a successful single currency ? above all, the kind of fiscal and banking union that, for example, ensures that when a housing bubble in Florida bursts, Washington automatically protects seniors against any threat to their medical care or their bank deposits.?

Maybe Krugman can tell Obama about the ?obvious? Euro mistake.  Perhaps he thinks the freight train crushing Greece will pass the other set of rails. Wait till he realizes there?s only one set of tracks in the globalized world they?ve made.

http://pjmedia.com/richardfernandez/2015/06/30/whos-in-charge-of-the-oncoming-train/

From someone who gets it...

http://thefutureprimaeval.net/we-support-diversity-and-equality/