On the emergence of the bizarre collectivist mind

I have always been disturbed by ritualistic collective behaviour. Peculiar gestures repeated by groups of individuals who no longer understand what it means to be an individual. I suppose this is one reason I find clowns so creepy. Their odd exaggerated movements, peculiar makeup and dress which instantly identifies them as clowns. Not the least of that which I find disturbing about them are their antics which to me are not a bit funny. It wasn’t until the last five years or so that I thought much about my disgust for them either. Moving abroad changed that. Janteloven (tall poppy syndrome) is rampant in Scandinavia. There social conformity is based upon a mono-cultural socialist collective where conformist thinking is deemed mandatory.

As a baby boomer I often watched war movies. We were inundated with films about totalitarian societies which had lost affinity for the individual. Individuality in these societies had been replaced by some form of freakish inhuman collectivism. It doesn’t matter the type of collectivism, be it Fascism/Nazism, Radical Socialism/Communism, Crony Corporatism/Statism, or Islamism. All of these ideologies include peculiar affected behaviours which are repeated ad infinitum within the group that reinforce the fact that the collective group appears to share the same brain. One reason I find this so odd and off-putting is that such behaviours were so utterly foreign in my home as well as in the society in which I grew up where individuality was admired. It was expected that each person would have their own peculiar idiosyncrasies which were not the result of some weird collective will. It also led me to wonder, even as a child, how folks who had immigrated from such collective tyranny could, or even would, adapt to the openness of Canada where no single ethnicity defines our cultural mojo. It turns out that was a better question than I could have possibly imagined. The conclusion I have come to after much consideration and observation is they very often cannot adapt and most often do not.

As I became friends with children whose families had fled such collective tyranny I noticed a disturbing trend among these families to propagate the very ideology from which they had fled. The love of big government, state control and intervention into every cloying aspect of private human affairs caused them to favour political ideologies that would have left my ancestors horrified at the assault on individual liberty. The respect for parliamentary limits and separation of powers was simply too much of a foreign concept for these newcomers. They, for the life of them, could not understand why small government is more liberating even though the tyranny they fled was brought about by an over-vaunting centralized state which tyrannized people.

Jump forward through the many stages of decay which the Liberal Party has undergone as it betrayed its Classical Liberal roots. This corrupted party now boldly proclaims it represents the real identity of Canada in spite of their gross malfeasance. Today we have universities which demand social conformity ostracizing any who contradict their postmodern and Cultural Marxist agenda. "Social Justice Warriors" march in alt-left rallies wearing ‘pussy hats’ while howling at the moon since they can no longer respect the democratic outcome of elections. We live at a time when globalist oligarchs are waging war against the sovereignty of nation states as they attempt to create supranational collectivism by attacking the spiritual foundations of individual liberty under constitutional law. If you ask many today the purpose of constitutional law their answer will often be that such laws exist to provide some specific identity group with collective rights which of course, by extension, are therefore denied to individuals who are viewed by them as entitled. As a result bear witness to the rise of identity politics. Because of this the law is no longer administered blindly. People have sunk into some form of bizarre collective madness just as they did in the Soviet Union, Nazi Germany and Maoist China replete with weird collective affected beliefs and behaviours. Read the latest news as advocates of this kind of tyranny gather to express their resentment toward the injustices of the patriarchy while protesting against the very foundational principles of the freest, most tolerant and open societies the world has ever seen. Even now our tax funded universities are targeting TA’s who attempt to broaden their students’ minds while the likes of Professor Jordan Peterson are labelled as alt-right by a corrupt Fourth Estate while the man is clearly not. We had better get our shit together and learn to think for ourselves in the face of this attack on empiricism, the rule of law and the individual. The individual has become the most at risk oppressed minority. The collective will always lie to gain power. The greatest tyrannies were created out of attempts to bring about utopia. Politically correct postmodernists, quit acting like a bunch of clowns, your antics are creeping me out!

The gradual shift toward progressive politics in Canada

Bent Andreassen who is an avid contributor to the debate in 'The Antioligopolists' Forum' on Facebook asked me a very important question today and one which deserves a thoughtful and detailed response. He asked why conservatives in Canada sold out to ‘progressivism’? To understand we must examine the following. Who were the original conservatives in Canada? Who were the Classical Liberals in the English sense? What did each believe and why? Where and when did these beliefs originate?

Let us begin with the British conquest of New France and the battle for Québec: The Battle of the Plains of Abraham,13th of September 1759, was a pivotal moment in the Seven Years' War and in the history of Canada. A British invasion force led by General James Wolfe defeated French troops under the Marquis de Montcalm, leading to the surrender of Québec to the British. The resulting colony would swear allegiance to the British Crown yet continue to pay tithes to the Catholic Church, live under Civil Law and endure the seigneurial system, an institutional form of land distribution established in New France in 1627 and officially abolished in 1854. In New France, 80 per cent of the population lived in rural areas governed by this system of land distribution and occupation. It was also a form of feudalism.

However, in what is now Ontario, as well as on the East Coast, something very different happened. It is said that roughly one half of the population of the original 13 Colonies in what would become the United States were not in favour of armed rebellion against the King. Although many of them were Classical Liberals as well as religious dissenters, they believed that discourse and debate would eventually cause the King to relent and end the injustice of taxation without representation and grant them representation by population. During the Revolutionary War many of the loyalists lost their land and were forced to take refuge in the British colonies to the north and east. Their loyalty to the Crown had cost them a great deal yet we also owe an even greater debt to them. Loyal to the British Crown they may have been, but they were no fans of absolutism and tyranny. They had reform on their minds to create a freer, more democratic and open society. Unlike their American cousins, these settlers, now known as United Empire Loyalists, used reason, discourse, and parliamentary debate to bring about democratic reform. It took much longer than the American Revolution had done to bring about suffrage yet the slower more discourse based process established a vital tradition in Canadian politics, that of reasoned, tempered debate. This group of liberty lover therefore became our first liberals in the English sense of being Classically Liberal. They favoured free trade, laissez-faire, maximum personal liberty under law, and a minimum of government intrusion on personal freedoms, low taxation and the freedom to worship and associate with whomever one wished. This group was comprised of farmers, small business interests, tradesmen and religious dissenters such as Methodists, Presbyterians and the like.

So, who opposed them? Why the Tories of course! Tory is still the name used to describe conservatives in Canada. What did the Tories represent? The Monarchy, the Church of England, the status quo and keeping the underclasses in their place. Who supported the Tory point of view? Senior government officials, military officers, the judiciary, bureaucrats, the High Church clergy, bankers and big business interests who hoped to maintain the stable British, stayed, status-quo. The entitled in other words.These folks were certainly not interested in sharing their privilege with the common rabble.

In understanding our history, we may begin to appreciate where the loyalties of differing voters are most likely to lie. It is also reasonable to assert that people today often vote based upon family loyalties irrespective of how political parties have changed over the years. It was the Classical Liberal element in Canada who did the most to move the nation toward democratic reform, it is also reasonable to state that it was the Tories who did the most to establish the institutions and system of governance required to support such reforms. Our first Prime Minister Sir. John A. MacDonald, who was a Tory, is renown for centralizing sufficient power (a great deal less than we have today) to unify the Dominion while driving an impossible railroad across the continent. Without his unifying vision the nation as it exists today would not have been possible.

In this way and in the historic sense both Liberals and Tories added greatly to the Dominion of Canada. Yet sadly this is woefully and blatantly no longer the case. Each has deserted its original vision and therefore lost its validity only to be replaced with a miasma of postmodern nonsense which hasn’t an ounce of historical or philosophical integrity. The moment we forget where we have been, we cannot possibly know where we are so that we may steer a course toward more responsible government. The lack of philosophical and spiritual insight informing today’s political discourse is stunning. It is small wonder that religions from abroad are replacing our ancestors’ deep passion for Christianity, and the free and open society it gave us! You may read my blog about the co-opting of Classical Liberalism by postmodernism here; https://therealistsadvocate.blogspot.ca/2017/03/the-coopting-of-liberalism-by-social.html

‘The Short Hills Affair’ MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion 1837-1838

The following is a paper I wrote for a guided tour of St. JOhns ontario which was the scene of one of the engagements during the mackenzie-papineau rebellion of 1837-38

http://www.niagaragreenbelt.com/lis...

http://www.niagaragreenbelt.com/ima...

http://www.biographi.ca/en/bio/chan...

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

http://www.uppercanadahistory.ca/tt...

I am excited to speak with young people about Canadian history. History is living. It has often been written in the blood of patriots and tyrants. Many have defended liberty so that you may enjoy the freedom you are enjoying today. Yet there are forces at work today which seek to rob us of our liberties. Please allow me to explain.

“Every man has a property in his own person: this no body has any right to but himself. The labour of his body, and the work of his hands, we may say, are properly his.” - John Locke, "The Second Treatise On Civil Government” It may surprise you to know that Locke’s philosophy of having a property in and of one’s own person resonated so deeply among the colonists of North America in the late 18th and on into the 19th century. Yet Locke’s ideas were based upon traditions founded many centuries prior to him. From Anglo-Saxon times parliaments in England had placed limits upon kings and their governments to protect and respect the rights of the individual. Absolute monarchy was unheard of until the time of “Bad King John”. Because of King John’s excesses the English barons forced him to give his assent to Magna Carta in June 1215 at Runnymede. Magna Carta is the first legal document constituting of a fundamental guarantee of rights and privileges. It took centuries for these legal rights to be extended to the common man, however Magna Carta forms their basis.

Law must be blind to race, creed, colour and sex for all to be deemed equal under it. Law must also recognize that our rights as individuals are an extension of our person, inherent to our very being. We are not free because governments afford us rights, rather we are born free. Professor of History John Robson of the University of Ottawa has often stated that this understanding of inherent rights is unique to the Anglo-sphere. He refers to this as our “Shared Legacy of Liberty”. It winds like a golden thread throughout all our history. Time and again kings and governments exceeded their legal mandate to govern. Time and again common people rebelled against tyranny to bring about more responsible government.

How do these ideas, noble as they are, affect us today? I will be direct, special interest groups do not have rights. If the law is to recognize equality it must be blind, without prejudice of respecting one person’s interests or group’s interests above that of another. This is a significant challenge today when special interest groups are given special treatment. This idea is fast replacing an understanding that our rights are inherent. What do I mean by this? Let me quote Edmund Burke on this topic; “The great inlet by which a color for oppression has entered the world is by one man’s pretending to determine concerning the happiness of another, and by claiming to use what means he thinks proper in order to bring him to a sense of it. It is the ordinary and trite sophism of oppression.”

Let these great ideas frame our walking tour through St. Johns. Let your imagination travel back to the late 1830’s when what was then Upper Canada was involved in a mighty struggle to bring about suffrage and responsible limited government. We will learn what challenges our ancestors faced and how some of these challenges apply to us today. “In spring 1837, Lord John Russell, the British Whig politician who was then Leader of the House of Commons (the prime minister was then Viscount Melbourne), authored his "Ten Resolutions" on Upper and Lower Canada. The Resolutions removed the few means that the Legislative Assembly of Upper Canada had to control the Executive Council. The Ten Resolutions were the final straw for William Lyon Mackenzie, and he now advocated severing Upper Canada's link to Great Britain and recommended armed resistance to the British oppression.”, (edited by David F. Hemmings for the Niagara Historical Society, 2012). Government both at home and in Britain had again exceeded its legal mandate to govern us be ignoring our rights. Folks from the local populace who, like Samuel Chandler, had been born in the U.S. remembered why the American Constitution had so clearly protected and defined those rights while guaranteeing limited government under law. The rights of the individual were to trump those of the state. Therefore, some were ready to take up arms against our government of the day which they viewed as tyrannical. These circumstances formed the backdrop for the MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion of 1837-1838 and therefore the part of that rebellion that occurred right here in St. Johns, Ontario where this incident is known as the “Short Hills Affair”.

Not all were in favour of rebellion however. There were more sober and moderate voices who were advocating for reform by renewing the vigour with which they petitioned the government. Both the moderates and the rebels essentially wanted the same thing, namely suffrage and an end to the tyrannical practices of the governing “Family Compact”. However, the moderates and the radicals employed radically different means to achieve this goal. In the end, the moderates won as the MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion failed to overthrow the government. However, democratic reform came through parliamentary discourse and debate in the form of the Baldwin Act of 1849 which finally brought limited suffrage to Upper Canada. Despite the success of the moderates in advancing the democratic process while placing limits on governmental overreach, it is also fair to say that the threat posed to the government by the MacKenzie-Papineau Rebellion had helped cement the outcome. The government could no longer continue to resist the will of the people.

Throughout the Anglo-sphere this story has often been repeated. When governments became a law unto themselves the citizenry forced their governments to be recognize their rights under the law. The American Revolution was one such instance which was fought for perhaps the most British of all reasons, that is that no government has the right to tax its citizens without representation. This is the basis for the parliamentary system we have inherited. Our nation is founded on these ideals; “Law above government, the individual before the collective and fair play as opposed to raison d’état”. These underlying principles continue to guide our ideals of limited government under law. We must guard them jealously. There are powerful forces who would rob us of them.

At the end of the tour I will provide you with a list of web-sites. In using them you may research the many topics you may wish to research since my time with you today is limited. I hope all of you will develop a passion for understanding how it is that we have achieved a society renown for its tolerance, fairness and love of liberty under law. I encourage you to learn more about the tyranny of the “Family Compact”, the grievances suffered in Upper and Lower Canada during the 1830’s, discover more about the firebrand MacKenzie himself, his newspaper “The Colonial Advocate”, his Lower Canadian colleague Papineau, as well investigating more about Samuel Chandler and his fellow rebels. Their leader Colonel James Morreau was the only one executed for the Short Hills Affair while many others, like Chandler, were deported to Van Diemen’s Land, now known as the state of Tasmania, Australia. Learn how Chandler escaped from that penal colony to return to America undergoing many harrowing exploits of daring do. Thank you for listening. Now let us walk down the valley to the former site of Chandler’s home. There we will begin our tour.

What is populism?

Today we most often hear about populism in the pejorative sense. But is it an insult? Why do the powers that be view it as such? Firstly, populism does not necessarily assert political affiliation. That's the first thing we need to be aware of regarding the populist movement.

The second characteristic of the populist movement I have drawn from Wikipedia: “Populism is a political doctrine that proposes that the common people are exploited by a privileged elite, and which seeks to resolve this. The underlying ideology of populists can be left, right, or center. Its goal is uniting the uncorrupt and the unsophisticated "little man" against the corrupt dominant elites (usually the established politicians) and their camp of followers (usually the rich and the intellectuals). It is guided by the belief that political and social goals are best achieved by the direct actions of the masses. Although it comes into being where mainstream political institutions fail to deliver, there is no identifiable economic or social set of conditions that give rise to it, and it is not confined to any particular social class.”

The third characteristic of populism is that it is fundamentally a negative reaction to an external, unknown and indefinable post-national identity being foisted upon us by supranational globalists in an attempt to replace our natural birth identities with their ideological identity. Here in Canada this post-national identity is most commonly referred to as 'multiculturalism'. Multiculturalism results in the migrants’ cultures taking precedence over the currently existing one(s). This includes more than a healthy dose of ‘white man’s guilt’. The migrant's culture is viewed by the political elite as having value while the value of our own is negated. In other words, they are attempting to impose a post-national and post-ethnic identity on us, unless of course you are a newly arrived migrant. If that is the case then the migrant is more than welcome to keep their cultural identity and religion intact, even if it poses an existential threat to our western way of life. As a result we are witnessing throughout the western world our cultures (most commonly Anglophone and European but to a lesser extent Francophone) being supplanted in favour of that of more recent migrants. The excuse used by the supranational social progressives to justify this is that somehow we should feel guilty for our ‘white privilege’ and surrender our identities to some new and undefined post-national identity proposed by them even though they are unable to define what such an identity might be.

I will make my fourth point. The complete rejection among Canadian populists, in fact among populists all throughout the western world, of the notion that our governments have the right to define what it is to be a Canadian, a Norwegian, a Dutchman, or a German, etc. and surrender our identity and sovereignty to globalism. Why? Because globalism's desire to impose its supranational identity on us lacks the validity of our own natural birth identity. Also because globalists have no right to interfere with our sovereignty. Populism is first and foremost a repudiation and rejection of such collectivist ideologies. For the populist, gloablist ideology not only doesn't make sense, it is insidious and an assault on our free and democratic right to govern ourselves. Remember Prime Minister Trudeau stating that we have no core cultural identity as Canadians? After which he further asserted Canada is the first post-national state? http://www.torontosun.com/2016/09/14/trudeau-says-canada-has-no-core-identity Well, he can go pound salt! The man is dangerous and his government poses an existential threat to Canada and our identity as Canadians!

The coopting of liberalism by social progressives

“Historically, Canada has had two liberal phases. Prior to the 1960s, Canadian politics were classically liberal, i.e., there was a focus on individual liberty, representative government, and free markets. This brand of liberalism can be traced to the arrival in Canada of the United Empire Loyalists and the enactment of the Constitutional Act of 1791. The Constitutional Act established representative government through the elected assemblies of Upper and Lower Canada. While the Loyalists were faithful to British institutions and opposed to American republicanism, they were committed to North American ideals of individual liberty and representative government. This brand of liberalism was prominent though the Liberal government of Wilfrid Laurier, which advocated such policies as free trade with the United States, and beyond.

The second liberalism began, roughly, in the 1960s with the election of Lester B. Pearson as leader of the Liberal Party of Canada and can be traced through the politics of Pierre Trudeau, Jean Chrétien, and Paul Martin. This liberalism is what is properly called in a global context social liberalism, or what contemporary North American use of the word signifies as liberalism: liberal democracy, social justice, social progressivism, Third Way, multiculturalism, diplomacy in foreign policy, and a regulated free market economy (during the Trudeau era the Liberals arguably supported a mixed economy). In this second sense, the Liberal Party of Canada is presently one of the more liberal political parties in the Americas. By contrast, prior to the 1960s, the Liberal Party was one of the most liberal parties in the world in the first sense.

There is argued to be a third phase of liberalism emerging that is centred on a more sustainable form of politics. The argument is that action is needed to ensure that the environment, economy, and social elements of society will function not only in the short term, but long term as well. If action is not taken on all of these pressing issues then it can cause a direct threat to our freedoms. This emerging new liberalism is centred on an ideal of 'timeless freedom' which seeks to preserve the freedom of future generations through proactive action today. This would extend both positive and negative rights and responsibilities to future generations.” - from Wikipedia

The second phase of liberalism defined above has led to its complete coopting under the third phase of post-nationalism, otherwise known as globalism. Justin Trudeau has openly stated that Canada is the first “post-national” state. Liberal Parties throughout Canada have completely repudiated their own Classical Liberal roots by selling out to extra-national interests, multi-national conglomerates and the big banks. Provincial and national interests have been replaced by globalism. Since progressive liberals no longer place Canadian interests in the fore, they now answer to extra-national interests such as those posed by George Soros. Progressive liberals openly disavow the importance of protecting our borders, recognizing our cultural identities as Canadians and these most Canadian of all values: “Law above government, the individual before the collective and fair play as opposed to raison d’état”. The current situation under their fiscal and social mismanagement has therefore become intolerable. They have utterly reneged on dealing with indigenous issues which remain a national crisis of conscience. We must put an end to our current reserve system which is effectively a system of apartheid. We encourage you to work with those who, like me, are dedicated to restoring true Classical Liberalism. Together we can renew a parliamentary focus on individual liberty, representative government, and free markets in Canada. While remembering the 150^th year since our Confederation, and in defence of true Canadian ethics, we invite you to join us in restoring Classical Liberal values to the Dominion!

Collectivism Revealed: Why victory has 100 fathers and defeat is an orphan

This instalment of my ‘I shall reveal unto a mystery’ series will address why collectivism impedes discretionary efforts. From Aubrey Daniels International:

“Discretionary effort is the level of effort people could give if they wanted to, but above and beyond the minimum required. Many organizations manage performance in such a way that motivates employees to do only enough to get by and avoid getting in trouble (negative reinforcement). Typically, these organizations manage by exception, providing consequences for worker’s performance only when it falls below the standard or minimum required. This approach gets immediate results, but just enough behavior to stop the threats and the potential for other negative consequences in the near future. It suppresses discretionary effort because there’s nothing in it for people to do more than the minimum required.”

In a system which eschews individuality discretionary efforts will be limited in direct proportion to the measure of conformity to the status quo promoted within this system. I know of one senior bureaucratic adviser who was asked to write an in depth report which would examine the efficiency of critical processes in the system on which this person advised. She assembled a team of international experts to advise her throughout this complex process. The ensuing report took an entire year to complete at great expense and discretionary effort. Here is the thing, when the report was completed and some of her colleagues had read it this person was warned about ‘sector loyalty’. The basic message was ‘How dare you suggest improvements that would return greater value to the end user and the taxpayers? The current status quo serves this bureaucracy very well indeed!’ This person was ostracized and had her salary reduced after the report was completed. So, I ask you, what motivation is there for someone to wish to excel at their work in such a broken system? The clear message is, ‘Do nothing more than absolutely necessary.’ If fact, she was advised by a family member to do just that. However doing such is extremely difficult if a person of integrity is intrinsically motivated. Nevertheless, for many such a system will drive out all intrinsic motivation. This is indeed why collectivism does not and cannot sustain success nor pursue excellence.

I would like to cite another example from another situation with which I am familiar. A mentor of mine was seconded to Lansing MI to manage a project on behalf of his firm. I was working as a consultant in Grand Rapids at the time and on occasion would visit him on returning to my condo in Kentwood. My friend took a great deal of care while exercising discretionary effort managing the project in Lansing. I saw him go to great lengths to ensure his project's success as he dealt with its needs while also encountering managers who resisted his efforts. Sometime afterwards he overheard a conversation back at his own facility in Ontario. Someone who had not been involved with Lansing was claiming credit for things it was not possible for him to have accomplished since he hadn’t been on site in Lansing. My mentor approached him and inquired in front of other colleagues as to how these claims could possibly be accurate. After embarrassed giggling from those who were present while my mentor called this fellow out for his prevarication the crowd melted away and the false father of success was left more than a little humiliated. Ah yes, success has a hundred fathers and failure is an orphan.

Both scenarios share this in common: collectivism. The inability to stand on one’s own two feet accompanied by the need to hide in some collective group. In a 'collective' successes will be shared by the group while failures will be blamed on whoever dared to buck the status quo. And so, I return to the definitive tome on the subject, "Manipulism and the Weapon of Guilt" written by Mikkel Clair Nissen which is available free of cost to you at this link: http://manipulism.com/ I quote from Mikkel’s forward:

“This exposure (of collectivism), based almost entirely on social science, is so controversial and comprehensively detailed that Denmark’s perceived right-wing newspaper—ironically the same newspaper that caused the Muhammad cartoons controversy in 2005 in the name of freedom of speech—will not review my book. This explicative psychological index (e.g., collectivist traits, indoctrination methods, intimidation techniques, and ways of passive coercion) is meant as a gift from me to the reader for self-empowerment through social observations, as well as a subconscious journey for the readers themselves. Please share this knowledge with friends and support my effort to alert the world.

The intimidations (threats, lies, and deceptions) in attempt to discredit me and deny this book’s honesty and preciseness are all worth my while. Regardless, this book will raise questions and effect societal changes, and the outcome will speak for itself. Wars should be fought with words—the right words—and never through coercion or terror. Welcome to my words of revolution.”

“The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”  —Albert Einstein

Mikkel’s book is a game changer and a must read. His main assertions are directed toward socialism, however any form of collective thought which impedes discretionary effort certainly applies as well. We live in the age where the alleged rights of groups have replaced individual liberty under law. We need now, more than ever, to be reminded of why it is critical to be deemed equal under the law. No group has more rights than any other. No matter how many social justice warriors hit the streets in pussy hats! We need to be reminded why individuals and their individual discretionary efforts count. The needs of the many do not trump the rights of the individual. Every society and every nation which has gone down that collectivist path to Hades ended up with tyranny accompanied with shared failure characterized by an adoration of the status quo.

Freedom isn’t lost overnight. It’s about trends.

Here is another instalment in my ‘I shall reveal unto you a mystery’ series. Allow me to begin by stating that freedom isn’t lost overnight. Its loss is about trends. Trends driven by our commonly held beliefs, our world view, our cultural mojo. These trends emerge over time and have an origin in some specific philosophy which requires examination. But before we do so, let’s examine the symptoms of societal decline. Society will become arbitrary where subjective thought will replace objective reality. This, more than anything else, is the main symptom of social and governmental decay. Society and the way it chooses to govern itself can be compared to steering a great ship. It requires a known, predetermined course. To set such a course one must know true north, longitude, the ship’s position in relationship to them and its destination. If all things are viewed as purely subjective rather then objective, then such determinations become impossible. When empiricism is replaced with ‘feelings’, then no objective determination regarding a course can be made.

Societies and their respective governments will become ever more arbitrary under such circumstances. People will lose the ability to understand such simple things as their inherent rights. Laws will become ever more poorly understood. Governments will pass new laws which contradict previous laws, especially when the new laws ignore the very foundation for law in the Anglo-sphere, namely Magna Carta and Common Law. Government will gradually emerge as a law unto itself. Checks and balances intended to limit government will fail. The inherent rights of the individual will be replaced with rights awarded to special interest groups. Individuals in such societies will be categorized and lumped into collective entities. Woe betide the person whom the bureaucrats and collectivists cannot easily place into a predetermined group that suits their feelings about what people should be like and how they should behave. Cultural conformity will become mandatory.

Of course, such societies will always have people within them who will develop cognitive dissonance under these circumstances and thus begin to warn their fellows that their ship is about to hit the shoals. In such a system, this person will be viewed as ‘difficult’ since they dare to contradict the collective group in which they have been placed. As a person who has been an entertainer, I have experienced this very thing. My love of liberty is viewed by my fellow musicians as completely unconscionable. Waste and bureaucratic control will grow immensely in order to administer the government’s grip over the people. Government sponsored arts and sports will emerge as a means of controlling thought. The reason for such is simple, feelings will become legislated. Anything that assaults the emerging collective will be attacked by the collective. More so if there is some measure of cognitive dissonance among some of the persons who are responsible for misdirecting the ship. Empiricism will be mocked. Any call for the use of reason will be labelled as a threat to the very existence of this emerging dysfunctional system. We see this very example with Islamophobia being condemned by the Canadian government. Since a phobia is a feeling, it is certainly not up to the government to tell its citizens how they should ‘feel’. But they have.

'Feelings, nothing more than feelings'. And if you feel your government is trouncing on your rights, you’re wrong! And now as to the philosophy behind this which requires our examination, from Wikipedia http://en.metapedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Marxism :

“Cultural Marxism places great emphasis on analyzing, controlling, and changing the popular culture, the popular discourse, the mass media, and the language itself. Seeing culture as often having more or less subconscious influences on people which create and sustain inequalities, Cultural Marxists themselves often try to remove these inequalities by more or less subtle manipulation and censorship of culture.

A term describing such censorship is political correctness where all views on equality that disagree with the Cultural Marxist view are avoided, censored, and punished.

Related to Cultural Marxism are various forms of relativism/subjectivism and denial of the existence of objective knowledge.

The phrase "The long march through the institutions of power" refers to Cultural Marxists slowly taking over key positions in the institutions controlling culture in order to create a new culture. In effect this will create revolutionary changes without having to resort to political violence. It also reflects a worldview where Cultural Marxists view themselves as infiltrators and subversives. (The phrase is often attributed to Antonio Gramsci but was instead coined by another Cultural Marxist (Rudi Dutschke) who was influenced by Gramsci's ideas.)

The Frankfurt School and critical theory:

The idea that a culture may be problematic is not new but Cultural Marxism in its current form originates in the Frankfurt School. The Frankfurt School is a neo-Marxist school which originated around 1923 at the Institute for Social Research in Frankfurt, Germany.

The Frankfurt School developed critical theory in order to analyze and explain how culture creates inequalities. It has been extremely influential and today has branches in numerous fields such as critical race theory, critical whiteness studies, critical gender studies, critical criminology, critical legal studies, etc.

Freudian psychoanalysis was an important influence on critical theory. One example is the influential book The Authoritarian Personality where psychoanalytic ideas are used to pathologize Western love and pride of Christianity, the family, and the nation.

The tendency to pathologize opponents as being irrationally sick has continued with, for example, labels such as homophobia and Islamophobia.”

So, now you know, yet another mystery has been revealed unto you. I wish you and yours, liberty and self-determination and to hell with cultural Marxism because that is where it originated.

What is it to be a Norwegian? Yes, this applies to all nationalities. Your culture is under attack from social progressives.

Written by Helge Lurås,

Director of the

Centre for International and Strategic Analysis (SISA)  

Oslo, Norway and poorly translated by me with apologies to Helge.

In this article, Helge speaks to the complete contradiction in the belief system held by many social progressives. On the one hand, they dismiss their culture as having no intrinsic value yet on the other hand they state they have no culture. If culture is valueless why is it so important to strongly deny its very existence? Both assertions cannot be correct. But the illogic goes deeper. The detestation social progressives have for their own culture is not equally applied to the migrant's culture. To social progressives the migrant's culture must be respected to the point of being preferred to that of their own. This is insanity on lysergic diethylamide. The amount of cognitive dissonance created by such blatant contradictions should be sufficient to make a social progressive’s head explode. 

I apologize to Helge as well as to my readers for any inaccuracies in meaning in my translation of his wonderful article. It was necessary to reword some of it rather than transliterating it directly. Many phrases would have lost meaning if I had done so. Please share this blog post with your family and friends. We are in a war for the survival of our culture.

“What is a Norwegian? Yes, what is an ethnic Norwegian, and has these "Norwegians" some moral reason to still exist in two hundred years? This has actually been a highly topical, and controversial, issue in contemporary Norway. On Dagsnytt 18 (21.02.2017) a major Dagsnytt commentator Hege Ulstein stated no when she was asked if she saw any problem about ethnic Norwegians becoming the minority in Norway in the future. In 2017, the proportion of ethnic Norwegians between 77-84%, depending on how one calculates an ethnic Norwegian. When there was a halt in immigration in 1975, the proportion was about 97%.

But Ulstein went further than it. Having first recognized completely spontaneously that she had a sense of what an ethnic Norwegian was, she went on to question whether the term ethnic Norwegian should be used. For what is an ethnic Norwegian? What is the definition? What criteria should be the foundation? There were other guests in the studio who were given the task of trying to defend that ethnic Norwegians are actually something that exists. Culture and language was mentioned, and also a particular set of values. But the underlying question is very sensitive as to what role lineage, physical relationships, genes and biology have to say about "Norwegian" identity.

Ulstein and her many likeminded fellow progressives look to lure those who would use terms like "ethnic Norwegian" and also expresses concerns about those who are worried that ethnic Norwegians are becoming the minority in Norway and that national identity has a relationship to kinship and descent. As though those who use terms about how ethnic Norwegians appear should wish to deny that such a physical dimension is possible, as if this were a deeply damaging accusation.

This shows how uptight, guilt ridden and removed from reality we have become in Norway. We are human beings, we are physical individuals who (until further notice) are born of the merging of egg and sperm cells from a woman and a man. Our mind, culture and values cannot exist without the central nervous system, which is a physical thing. Therefore, unless one takes a child from the biological parents at birth, there is consistency between bloodlines and culture and values. When you come, for example, as a refugee to Norway as an adult, one has grown up and been socialized in a different culture than the one which exists in Norway. This you take with you.

It also a cultural ballast even if one has moved to Norway and takes Norwegian citizenship. And when a migrant in Norway has children, they would naturally bring at least parts of their original culture and values into the upbringing of their children. Thus, it takes a long time before a migrant will become "Norwegian" culturally, even if they wish it with all their hearts. And perhaps this may never happen, because the migrant wants to preserve parts of their culture and values even if they and their descendants reside in Norway. And biological conditions will also play a role in further assimilation. If a foreigner with Norwegian citizenship marries an ethnic Norwegian, their biological children will most likely receive more of the original Norwegian culture and values than the children of two foreigners who live (accidentally) in Norway.

And the proportion of foreigners with Norwegian citizenship living in Norway will of course have a bearing on how much of the original Norwegian culture is transferred to the immigrants. For if foreigners hardly meet Norwegians in their immediate environment, they have no opportunity to "learn to be Norwegian." Then there will be a lack of Norwegian values and culture to continue, but something else as well. And brought forward it will be characterized by the culture of those who moved here had with them as their cultural baggage.

There is thus a connection between kinship and descent on one side and the values and culture on the other. Hypersensitivity to think about the concepts of human and biological sciences in the same breath is due to, of course, the Western settlement with racism and Nazism after World War II, but it has led to some absurd fallacies and denials. The case is obvious, but will be denied the same way: it makes sense to talk about "Chinese", "Sherpas," "Eskimos" and "Swedes", it also provides meaning to talk about "Norwegians". And a person who is born of two Norwegian parents, with four Norwegian grandparents, has very high probability to have at least some other values and culture than a person born in Norway of two Somali parents. If people within the country live in a parallel society, these differences can persist in hundreds and thousands of years. And if the starting point is so in appearance different ethnic groups that Somalis and Norwegians, these cultural differences will also be visible for just as long, including for geneticists studying DNA.

It has become commonplace to ask the question: but what does it mean to be Norwegian? And it is not one single criterion or a single common denominator for this. But such a lack of absolute precision, is no different for the question about what it means to be Chinese. And strictly speaking, also not for the question of what it means to be Christian, or Muslim or Buddhist. But that does not mean it does not exist, or is meaningful to talk about Chinese people, Muslims, Norwegians, Christians and Buddhists. And all can relate in practical life to the fact that there are Muslims and Chinese people even though none of them manage to answer with one simple criterion what that would entail.

So, the problem is not that there is no single criterion for what it means to be Norwegian/ethnic Norwegian (we are now forced to call some ethnic Norwegian rather than simply Norwegian because e.g. a Somali with Norwegian citizenship in the political correct sense will also be called "Norwegian"). The problem is rather that anyone would expect there to be any single criteria for what it means to belong to a specific ethnic or national group, that is, that one at all ask the question: what will it mean to be Norwegian, Chinese etc.? And that one would expect a concrete answer.

To make a diagnosis in psychiatry one needs to meet the "diagnostic criteria" for various conditions and diseases. There can, for example, be twenty different criteria that are related to a personality disorder such as psychopathy. Patients are not expected to meet all of these criteria. But one can, for example, assert that the condition is met if one turns out of 14 of the 20 criteria, or one to get ‘so and so’ many "points" in a total "score for psychopathy." So, we can also understand the suffering "ethnic Norwegian." Now it is fortunate that we need not make such research on ethnicity as we do for a disease such as psychopathy, but for both the "Norwegian" and "psychopathy", there will be obvious cases after cases where we can rule out that one is a Norwegian or a psychopath.

Keep this in mind the next time people with utopian ideas of social and political experimentation trying to put you on the defensive with questions such as: what does it really mean to be Norwegian? Most will likely understand very well and intuitively if they are ethnically Norwegian, if they are partial Norwegian ethnics or if they are of foreign ethnicity who hold Norwegian citizenship. And when such people want to remove the concept of Norwegian and ethnic Norwegian from the vocabulary, then it is indicative of an extreme desire to change the social and political realities. Hege Ulstein and Company are probably not always conscious of it themselves, but such a social manipulative system of political correctness was perfected in the Soviet Union, and it is totalitarian.”

'I shall reveal unto you a mystery'

And the latest in my 'I shall reveal unto you a mystery' series is as follows: I spent a great deal of my career as a quality resource and lean consultant diligently looking for ways to reduce waste, cost and variation. Why? Because to service the customer better private industry must produce component 'X' at ever higher quality at increasingly lower cost. If you hope to understand why bureaucracy is failing the reason lies there. Instead of creating a culture of energetic hunters of waste they diligently set about creating a culture where fewer and poorer services are provided at ever increasing cost. Thus, bureaucracy grows. It then also follows that bureaucrats will often support those political parties most willing to continue to increase funding to them thereby entrenching ever greater wastefulness. If you take this same paradigm and apply it to the private sector it would equate to managers reducing the shareholders' dividends as well as losing market share due to their products and/or services, no longer remaining competitive in an open market. Of course, such a manager would be fired if they were foolish enough to pursue such a course. In the public sector, however, managers who pursue this course of action (inaction) are rewarded for 'sector loyalty'. This is also why they are dead set against permitting the government from offering solutions in the private sector since bureaucracies cannot compete in an open market.

And the second assertion in 'I shall reveal unto you a mystery' today is this: This explains why socialism will always fail to provide what it has promised. Equality of opportunity to compete is replaced with equality of outcome. Let me cite a few examples; Obama increased the cost of American healthcare under Obamacare hence the new administration looking for more cost-effective options to better serve Americans to ensure they have access to affordable and superb health care. Yet, social progressives are behaving as though the new administration wishes to rob Americans of affordable health care instead of helping them obtain it at a lower cost. You see, progressives loathe the very idea of competition and choice. It precludes Big Sister from doing their thinking for them and in the progressive mind free market capitalism is anathema. The same also applies to the incredible and inexplicable increase in cost of K-12 education here in Ontario. The entrenched and gross inefficiency in Ontario's education system serves the government's agenda while absolutely destroying our children's future thereby making them ever more beholden to and indoctrinated by Big Sister. https://www.fraserinstitute.org/sites/default/files/education-spending-in-canada-whats-actually-happening.pdf

And my third and final assertion in today’s, 'I shall reveal unto you a mystery': “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.” - Winston Churchill. I quote Winston in this regard as it reminds us, albeit in simplistic terms, the real mojo which lies behind socialism and modern social progressivism. Yesterday I asserted that progressive doctrine is dependant on self-pity, self-loathing, and self-righteousness, for they lie at the heart of the illness, but let us examine the illness’s symptoms beginning with envy. To define this, I will borrow an idea with which I am lamentably all too familiar having lived in Scandinavia; ‘Janteloven’, otherwise known as ‘The Law of Jante’. If I were to attempt to define it, I would say that it's a principle placing importance on equality and egalitarianism while disparaging individuality and personal achievements or otherwise challenging the status quo. Here are its ten principles:

1.   You're not to think you are anything special.

2.   You're not to think you are as good as we are.

3.   You're not to think you are smarter than we are.

4.   You're not to convince yourself that you are better than we are.

5.   You're not to think you know more than we do.

6.   You're not to think you are more important than we are.

7.   You're not to think you are good at anything.

8.   You're not to laugh at us.

9.   You're not to think anyone cares about you.

10. You're not to think you can teach us anything.

I believe that I can make a very good argument supporting that this is the overwhelming consensus of thought behind social progressivism. It is no wonder that it has taken hold so well in Scandinavia since the cultural framework which would support social progressivism already pre-existed socialism. Also since laissez-faire capitalism is completely dependant on individualism and the honouring of individual achievement, it follows that Scandinavia was the perfect place where socialism would take hold. In Norway, the Scandinavian country with which I am most familiar, there are only two areas where personal achievements are lauded: arts and sports, since both may be used to further the state’s socialist agenda. This trait is also common to all socialist states. I certainly see the same situation here in Canada where virtually all the artists whom I know, and I know a great many personally, are social progressives. I hope I have challenged a few of you to think and perhaps offended more who cannot abide free thinking, it was my intention to do so.