The first victims of imminent ecocide will be our fish. This will have consequences that rock the human world. However, the solution is both harder than we think -- and much, much easier.

Postmodernists like to blame our use of language for our limited truth capacity. Their reasoning goes that if we use "x=y" sentential, linear logic we are doomed to see false truths.

As someone with experience in the area of communicating complex ideas, I think the postmodern analysis of truth is only partially true. Our sentential logic means we can only express one detail or idea at a time. But what limits our truth capacity is something different.

Despite much media hype over global warming, the population is backing down from supporting it. From their perspective, the issue got hyped to a fever pitch, then got corrupted and used as a justification for other agendas, and finally got debunked when it came out that scientists were faking the data.

In the "out of sight, out of mind" world of modern media, where information overload is so great that a story two weeks ago is 100% forgotten, this means that ecocide has slipped again from the public eye. This is not a repeat from 1974, 1981 or any other time this issue has gained mass momentum.

Yet ecocide, like a slow cancer, keeps coming closer even when we're not watching. As a species, we're like toddlers hiding under a blanket thinking that if we can't see the parent, maybe they can't see us. The truth is that much like mortality is always there, our errors and their ongoing consequences are there even when we're not looking. A tree falling in a forest DOES make a sound, after all.

The first tier of ecocide is going to hit us in an ugly place. There are some food supplies we take for granted, because nature provides them and we just take them. The one we rely on most but think about the least is our fish supply.

Worldwide, we eat 14kg of fish per person per year. Although we use fish farms to produce much of our intake, they are expensive and so limited to the first world, and also environmentally destructive because we must feed farmed fish some source of cheap protein, usually wild-caught fish. We're talking about a large part of our protein intake as a species, especially in the developing world.

But as the data points out, our fish supplies worldwide are declining possibly to as low as 10% of their strength at the beginning of the last century. Even more, the fish that are left may be poisoned with heavy metals, which cause cancers, mutations and sterility.

We're of course freaked out by this because there seem to be no solutions. So, we say a sad platitude and move on. After all, how are we going to stop people from eating fish? Outright commercial fishing regulation as Obama proposes will only stop one country from fishing, and others will continue the mania.

Populations disappear -- ecocided -- when they are unable to successfully breed. This means that below a certain number, the species is unable to breed healthy individuals and some epidemic wipes it out. We won't get a warning call from God (or for you secular humanists, Government) when we're approaching this number. The fish supply will just slow to a trickle, and then we'll notice some species missing.

Slow death is hardest for us to face. We can handle events before they happen, and after they've happened. But what really limits our truth capacity is our perspective as individuals. We are thinking "but what will happen to me?" and if we don't see an immediate threat to us personally, it's out of sight and out of mind. Fixing that is the only first step to a solution.

Our 20th century morality is obsolete. We can talk about compassion for other individuals, or grow up and get real, and talk about compassion for the whole of our world, including nature and our own common sense.

No one lacks a morality. Each of us has a moral interpretation and if we mapped them all out, we'd find there's only a handful of structurally different ones, but many nuanced interpretations that add up to those same few ideas.

As the 20th century wore down on us, more of this kind of stuff started appearing:

Imagining what it is like to be someone other than oneself is at the core of our humanity. It is the essence of compassion, and it is the beginning of morality. - Ian McEwan

Descended from Christianity, and convenient for commerce, this is humanism at its core. We must not be selfish as individuals; we must see it from the other guy's view, and as a result acquiesce to his demands.

Never mind that this becomes a race to the lowest common denominator, because whoever comes up with a new demand now wields the power of making others yield to them.

But as the 21st century warms up, we're seeing a new struggle. Actually, it's the old struggle hybridized with the 20th century struggle. Instead of human against human, we're looking at human against nature, with the human against human struggle being necessary to determine that outcome.

• Environment. Do we keep growing and take up all the space on earth, committing ecocide in the process? Our problems are twofold: third world overpopulation and first world economics, which reward constant growth.
• Economics. Putting the cart before the horse, we approve of things if they earn money. The problem is that this outlook is addictive. Command economies under socialism do not thrive, but under capitalism, they may thrive too much.
• Biology. The quality of the average human being is declining. They have lower IQs, less physical health, less moral alertness and tend to be rather short-sighted as a result. Do we become supermen, or recede into being apes again?
• Unity. Politics, values, religion, and ethnicity divide us, yet they're also what defines us -- and one of the few forces that can resist the "everything goes" mentality of commerce and mob rule. Do we agree to disagree, or agree to separate?

Compassion for other individuals will not solve the problems above. In fact, it's a non-sequitur. We need compassion for the whole. The process of nature, the natural selection we impose upon ourselves, and even compassion for economics and politics so we can understand them and master them.

For too long, intellectuals in the West have declared the world a cinder and backed away from having a practical plan. Instead, they tell us we should have compassion. Unfortunately, that's the most easily-coopted view, and the radical strides of the hippies and progressives are now standard fodder in advertising and big media entertainment.

A new way must be found. Having compassion for individual humans, or humanity itself, is a subset of the actual question, which is how we adapt to life on earth, improve ourselves in morality and abilities, and find a balance with nature so we don't commit ecocide on our way to self-destruction. Compassion that, tweebs.

Justice and freedom are 'blind' according to Western tradition. This means that all citizens are guaranteed certain liberties and right to just trials, regardless of their position in society. This is a noble tradition harnessed for thousands of years through several civilizations in "the West." It's therefore not surprising that the series of revolutions we've undergone have begun to undermine this system.

Because we feel the pillars of our society are no longer taken seriously or defended against alien values, we begin to stare ourselves blind at our own basic values. What follows is that we miss the big picture and fail to comprehend how and why they were invented in the first place. This Dutch debate with Geert Wilders illustrate my point:

Wilders' opponent has become blind before justice and freedom. Of course all citizens have equal rights, but that's not the point. If certain groups among those citizens don't share the belief in those rights, or in other ways cause problems that threaten the platform serving those rights, that is a pattern problem. We call it 'pattern problem' because by looking at patterns and trends emerging demographically, socially and economically, you are able to more effectively secure rights for everyone.

Obviously it's very controversial to discern certain patterns. Religion and race are the two most touchy holy cows in Europe right now, and to a certain degree in America as well. Liberals especially feel this way, so they deny these patterns and instead use the Western tradition as a justification for only looking at uniform citizens. It's a rhetorical trick. Justice is blind to citizens, but people are not. We cannot deny certain citizens their rights, but we can adjust policies so that certain groups among them don't threaten the rights of everyone. Social pragmatism, if you will.

In Europe that means limiting and toughening up immigration policies, decreasing the role of bureaucracies regulating individual rights, and refusing to back down before those same Western values liberals say are so important. The only way to do so is to discern patterns in society and being wary of negative, destructive trends. If minorities riot in suburbs and disrespect the law, it's not a blind issue. It's an eye-opening issue, and leaders like Geert Wilders are concerned about what we do about them. Social reality, we call it, and it's here to stay.

Regarding Alex's recent post about Ron Paul, I think Paul's recent actions are more about legacy than about Paul's current political aspirations.

The man will be 76 when the next election comes around and he hasn't come out and said he'll run for president for 2012. Who would elect a 76 year old man when they wouldn't elect the better, 72 year old version in 2008?

And so, instead of continuing to talk about how right he was regarding the economy, he's let others do that and is setting up a legacy of his career in the event he gets elected out of office, or gets too old/weak to run. This involves some tough choices and some odd partnerships; hence, Chuck Baldwin and changing churches. There really aren't many with the common sense of Ron Paul out there in politics, who for years unapologetically shouted at whoever would listen about the virtues of a lean banking system and protecting constitutional freedoms (read: American culture) instead of entitlements. Interestingly, he's done this despite unsubstantiated cries of "racism" from the crowd, who would rather see entitlements protected than basic rights for all - but guarantees for none.

Ron Paul's blog at house.gov/paul is still valuable reading for any American citizen who cares to stay involved in the political process. You get weekly updates from the Congressman himself on relevant issues making their way through Congress.

Who Paul buddies up to today is one thing, but some basic facts about his policies remain:

• He wants an audit of the fed and an overhaul of our banking system with more transparency - not so the average joe gets transparency to our banking system but so that our own leaders can speak intelligently about the state of that banking system.
• He wants to pull back our unnecessary military operations and revamp where we spend our resources abroad.
• He's a medical doctor who knows that gov't intervention in health care would be an absolute disaster.
• He wants the federal government to limit its involvement in our daily lives, and let states run most functions by themselves. He says this not to get people riled up about control conspiracies, but rather because that's what the leaders who built our country envisioned.

It shouldn't matter to most what religion Paul is; in fact, the irrelevance of his religion is part of his political philosophy. I could ask similarly irrelevant questions, such as, do we even know Obama was born in this country, or which God he bows to? Does anyone care? Not really, they just care about the (empty) promises. At least Paul would follow through on his.

I've explained in an earlier post how and why Ron Paul's career ended with extremism. Unsurprisingly it didn't make me a rock star among the Ron Paul fans at Facebook. But that's also very telling of the current Paulite climate in general. His fans have become dogmatic followers and profess dogmatic beliefs beyond the sound rationalism that's always been a Ron Paul hallmark. World government conspiracies, 9/11 truth movements, and now outright religious extremism:

Ron Paul publicly endorsed the loony far Right John Birch Society. Ron Paul even went so far as changing his church from mainstream Episcopalian to a fundamentalist Baptist variety. Now Ron Paul has come out of the closet and endorsed the extreme Right Constitution Party.

Paul said: “I’m supporting Chuck Baldwin, the Constitution Party candidate.”

The Constitution Party is specifically Christianist and wants to impose fundamentalist Christianity on the United States. They don’t even pretend to respect the religious values of others. They instead claim that “our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ” is the “Creator, Preserver and Ruler of the Universe and of these United States.” Please note they specifically claim that Jesus Christ is the “Ruler of the Universe and these United States.” How much more clear can their theocratic tendencies be?

As much as we still like Ron Paul, let us face an obvious fact: Ron Paul's campaign wasn't destroyed by Fox News or Neoconservatives. Ron Paul radicalized over time, began to attract nutcases, took questionable interviews, promoted fundamentalist religious views openly, and gradually lost fire power for his mainstream supporters. It's a conservative dilemma; over time conservatives tend to either radicalize to the extreme or go too liberal to enact their original policies once they are in power. Ron Paul, while intelligent and capable as congressman, spells FAIL as political leader. Time to move on.

Alex's latest post touched upon how unifying religion, and concomitantly culture, can be. In Toronto, social culture especially is strange, in that it tends to be very exclusive or dominated by introversion, shyness, and extreme forms of social etiquette. (Intentionally bump into someone in this fair city, and auto-pilot will prompt the other person to apologize profusely.)

As a fun experiment, I decided to sign up for JDate, a fairly large dating site for Jewish singles to connect. (Hint: I'm not Jewish.) The tight-knit mode of networking was truly impressive, and most of the people on the site tended to be marriage-minded. I've flirted with internet dating briefly in the past, and it was a much flakier experience. Also, most of the Jewish singles on the site were attractive professionals, so even provided with the pre-selection and screening the internet affords you, practically everyone was desirable in some way.

There is no stronger tie than religion and culture. Unfortunately, I'm not afforded either so the social initiative and the powers of charisma and personality rests entirely on me. I think more people than not are plagued with loneliness for the sheer effort it takes to constantly try and connect with people.

Politics is the new religion in dating, so I'm concerned about getting back on the market considering that most of my views are not status quo. When I decide to date again, it might do me well to convert.

I am happy to read about inspiring activities some of our readers are involved in. "fafner" enjoys physical activity:

I write, visit the gym and teach yoga besides working.

Teach yoga? That sounds like a healthy experience, and a perfect complement to lifting weights.

"EinZeta" is probably a very busy guy:

I'm a member of my local art gallery, volunteer as an adult literacy/ESL tutor, a designer/promoter for the local game design club, and am in the process of grooming some of my friends into a proper Germanic Heathen kindred.

You're doing a lot of fun things on the side, it would be seriously interesting to follow how that Germanic club is going to develop over time.

"Tommy D" describes something quite unusual:

Every months we do conferences about the Cosmos and I help to make people more connected with the Universe with personal experiences.

This sounds like a mystical alternative to visiting a church, very interesting idea.

"Wargozer" works for an entire community:

pierogi making parties, ice fishing, bbqs, beer brewing, gardening, potlucks, fixing ramps at the town skate park, surplus of garden goods goes to food kitchen

Apparently I'm not alone in believing in the power of people rather than bureaucracies. So what do people do when they're not working together with people? Well, they complain:

Now that you've brought up the subject, I have to ask: do most church going Swedes think differently than the reigning social democrats?

Then I have to ask in reply: Why would that matter? But to give you an answer, I think most church goers are pretty conservative, even if their political beliefs probably vary a lot. We can expect that most Christian Democrats are active church goers. Regardless, they all seem to value a few central ideas, which at least beats just voting for a party and living the dummie lifestyle for the rest of the time.

... capitalism causes people to become super materialistic, you'd be hard pressed to pry everyone from there wealth, whether that be TV, sports, games, or what have you.

...so, what are you doing about it, except complaining? I don't think computers and televisions actually stop people from taking an active civil role in society. I do think some people are doers and others are complainers by nature. Which one are you?

Forget this, now it's all about boosting your high self-esteem by doing something that people consider as "cultural".

What's wrong with that? If people feel good about working together with others to create culture (I don't know how you define that term, but over a thousand years of Christian heritage lies behind most of Western art, education, architecture and philosophy), how is that wrong?

We can now recognize the following simple dichotomy: doers and complainers. Some people fall in the middle, e.g. they don't feel motivated to work, but don't want to complain. I expect most readers fall under this category. So I'd thought I'd blog some about my civil work and maybe inspire you to do something similar.

My civil work will consist of working as sound technician during church service. It's in a small community church where maybe around a hundred people show up on Sundays. My job is to discuss the service together with the priest and other church workers, setting up the audio system, checking mics etc. I then sit in front of a mixer board during service to change sound channels depending on what mic is active and generally make sure everything goes as planned.

Afterwards there's supposed to be a coffee break, which is a time when I get to know people around here and learn something new. It's also possible I'll be helping out with ads for the church paper, taking photograph sessions during concerts for the web and other media-related work. I'm sure I'll learn a few things along the way and maybe spread some New Right Christian Jihadism among church goers. I'll try to blog about my experiences to describe just how a job like this can develop over time and what may come out of it. Stay tuned.

Sofia's latest post on her brand of conservatism highlights an interesting point. She identifies her struggle of resolving typical traditional values -- or perhaps more widely what she ideally may want to typically support -- against the way she lives. Despite coming from different perspectives, I identify perfectly with the sentiment she makes using the comparison of chastity: trapped between two extremes and not truly belonging to either. We must invent a middle ground.

This is something we all go through. How can we support measures that would disadvantage us in any way? How can a person who's tried cannabis in their youth and come to no harm advocate harsh measures which would punish those in similar situations?

If I didn't give a thought to it, I naturally may want softer policies on immigration for my own self-interests. Most often people do this and brainwash themselves, believing what's good for them is good for everyone. They deny evidence to the contrary. They fail to recognise the wider social implications and that these implications will have an effect on their very own future and present.

When we advocate for change to the status quo, this is often a crisis you have to face: you usually have benefited in some way from what you seek to change. If you're old enough, you may even have supported a measure that you later disagree with.

Be honest to yourself about the issues you face. Be open to the idea that you may be wrong. Acknowledge that you may be advocating something simply in your own interests, rather than as part of a coherent ethical system. Who knows? You may even choose to occasionally decide that what's more important to mankind or its planet is more important than you. Humans are much more altruistic than the cynicists in us gives them credit for.

I've written before about not being a "typical Conservative." However, I must further vulnerably express that anyone in a similar age and station in their life, i.e. accruing debt, unemployed, and pursuing formal education, would be an idiot or a perfect altruist not to vote for public education and health care. Ironically, it's just naked self-interest, which is how the political system practically functions - socialist, liberal, conservative or fascist.

I've been meaning to confront these contradictions in my philosophy for some time now: marrying my fondness for traditional, eternal values with the modern, selfish creature that I am. I feel trapped in the transition between classical Conservative values, and the wonders of liberal progressivism: by traditional standards I'm a Jezebel, by Western standards I'm practically chaste.

Not being tied to religion, something Alex's latest post ever-so-lightly touched upon, or culture (my ethnic, national, and civil affiliations are all incongruent), leaves me groping in foreign, untreaded territory when it comes to protecting my heritage, or values. For me, it will always be heritage in general and values that are secular, and philosophical, which will always appear hollow to those that have been cultivated in myth for centuries.

Those who reside in a similar vacuum identify more easily with liberalism, and though it's more effort, thinking and deliberating like a true philosopher should, you should eventually come to the conclusion that it's more worthwhile to stand for something rather than nothing. There is such a thing as culture without a nation, and so to, there is such a thing as secular morality. It's possible not to buy into the perpetual stream of constructed bullshit, whilst protecting your vision of the Good, and come out a better person for it in the end.

There's a lot of talk about culture and heritage among readers on this site, but how much action is there behind words? Someone mentioned nationalism, but I think they're missing the point. Why are you waiting for a change in government to do something about your culture? Bureaucrats are not responsible for art, dance, craftwork, clothing or social commitment. They manage your taxes to provide you with services. That's all they can do.

Culture is not something you serve, it's something you produce. It happens when people leave their homes and jobs to be together, freely and openly. That's one reason why socialism is a wasteful political model because it sucks vitality and life out of individual and communal responsibility. Now we're all sitting and "waiting" for a culture to happen. It won't. That's why you need to engage yourself in civil activity. There's tons of it: tree planting, whiskey clubs, summer camps, philosophical circles, food festivals--the only thing stopping you is laziness.

I've done different things in the past. Recently I signed up for voluntary church work. I don't know yet what it'll consist of, but I hope to either work with young people or manage some administrative job at weekends. It strengthens the local church community, I get to know more like-minded people (someone immediately thinks "women," and they're right), and you'll learn valuable lessons your college will never care to mention. With that said, I'll pass the question over to you who believe that a lively culture is important in a society: What is your civil engagement?

Politics today is a fight over symbols. The idea is apparently that whoever "wins" the symbols over to their side, also wins the definition of their meaning. Free speech is such a symbol, and it doesn't mean what you think it means:

More than 10,000 protesters blocked a major neo-Nazi march in the former East German city of Dresden, forming a human chain surrounding the center of the city.

Far-rightists have used the Dresden bombing anniversary to push for recognition of German suffering during World War II in a tone that comes close to Holocaust denial, critics say. Neo-Nazis, including leading members of the far-right National Democratic Party of Germany, refer to the Dresden "bombing Holocaust" and belittle Nazi crimes against humanity.

Others attacked cars and buses in which the right-wingers had traveled to Dresden and set fire to trash bins, blocking the route of the neo-Nazi march. Police ultimately informed the right-wing marchers that authorities could not guarantee their safety and urged them to call off the march.

Mainstream lobby groups may be correct about the intentions of the neo-Nazis. That's really besides the point; they have a constitutional right to hold that demonstration, and any attempt of blocking it to defend free speech is disguised tyranny. Fascism comes in many forms, one of the most trickiest being anti-Fascism. If we were serious about our constitutional rights, we'd let the natural selection of ideas do its work in the public, instead of nannying the process like closet Fascists. Since we're not, some ideas become socially regulated:

Yet pity is also a strangely useful tool, for it reveals a strange global hierarchy. At the bottom are black people, whom everyone pities. At the top are the Chinese, whom no one pities. Alongside them are the English, the one foreign group that Hollywood may officially reduce to unpleasant racist stereotypes. And the cultural censor that allows this actually has a strange Oedipal streak. For the only US ethnic identity which can be perpetually reduced to a stereotype of grasping, greedy, shallow bigots are WASPs. Not far behind them are the hillbillies of the Appalachians, namely, the Ulster-Scots.

The taboos of this cultural hierarchy cause even simple truths to remain unspoken. Jews have been disproportionately responsible for financial crime in the US, yet even to utter this simple truth is to court shrieks of anti-Semitism. In Europe, on the other hand, the only public criticisms of Jews that are not merely allowed, but are actually encouraged, are of Israel, about which "liberals" may utter the most ludicrously untrue and racist libels, and be applauded.

You can say we have free speech -- but we haven't. Example: I can say Americans are loud, boorish, lazy and insensitive morons, and that's fine. If I say the same about Nigerians, I am in jail.

Here's the dilemma: Europe doesn't want to do good, it wants to avoid doing bad. As a result it believes it should regulate speech to make it less oppressive, which ends up meaning waging a war against the taboos found in the cultural hierarchy Meyers talks about. That's problem number one. The second problem can be formulated as a question: If there's a hierarchy of opinions deciding what's allowed and not allowed to say, what defines it culturally? And the answer to that question is liberalism.

While many graduates of American colleges cannot answer basic civics questions, a higher education does make their opinions more liberal on controversial social issues, according to a new report issued on Friday by an academic think tank.

The institute found that people who had attained at least a bachelor's degree were more likely than Americans whose formal education ended with a high-school diploma to take a liberal stance on certain controversial social issues. For example, 39 percent of people whose highest level of education was a bachelor's degree supported same-sex marriage, compared with 25 percent with a high-school diploma. The trend continued with advanced degrees: About 46 percent of people with master's degrees supported same-sex marriage, as did 43 percent of people with Ph.D.'s.

Do American college students become liberal after or before the start of their education? The answer could be argued either way, but here's a fact it doesn't change. These are the institutions where intellectual agendas and cultural trends are formed. It's safe to assume that they exert a huge influence on media, and thus, the crowd. It's why we find tens of thousands of protesters in Dresden, fighting tyranny with tyranny. A war over symbols, but most importantly, a war over definitions of what those symbols should mean to everyone. But the truth is that we don't need such a war, because we've got our constitutions who spell these rights out for us.

Liberal free speech is an oxymoron; it's either liberal and not free, or free and not liberal. As much as many of us dislike neo-Nazis and their garbage movements, we must think in Conservative terms: you don't nanny public opinion, you let it grow like a plant and ensure there's safe space for all branches. Liberals are afraid of public discussion - that's why they invented a hierarchy of taboos. Right-leaning officials are starting to do the same with global warming and terrorism. Honest Conservatives don't buy into either camp. It's a struggle for our basic constitutional rights, for competition between people and ideas, and a public climate where you're protected to disagree with the crowd.

If you ask most women, they will vote for leftist policies every single time, because it is in their nature to avoid conflict and competition. They want peace by co-operation at all costs. If they can let a bureaucracy to do it for them, they'll go for it. Over the years I've observed how young women are rapidly taking over radical leftism and its off-shots: vegetarianism, socialism/anti-capitalism, humanism and multiculturalism.

Jack Donovan over at the Spearhead notes:

If women are generally more collectivist in nature, unless there is some check against collectivism, it seems likely that over time the state will become progressively more collectivist.

That's exactly what is going on in Scandinavia. The dominant political women in Sweden's government each promote their version of welfare collectivism: Mona Sahlin (Social Democrats) wants to make paying taxes "sexy," Nyamko Sabuni (Liberals) wants the government to enforce religious diversity, Maria Wetterstrand (Green Party) calls for cap & trade and tax regulations against climate change, Maud Olofsson (Center Party) proudly celebrates the Pride Festival, Birgitta Ohlsson (Liberals) wants to get rid of all borders and turn feminism into a State doctrine...wait, it already is.

The more women we promote to high political positions in society, the more welfare-ism, socialism and feminism will wreck our cultures. The common denominator in all of these ideologies is the principle of enforced collectivism. This in turn is based on the misguided perception that human individuals are motivated by reason alone. If we all just share our wealth, we'll all be rich. Only a fool could come up with such an idea, knowing that deep down inside individuals are mostly selfish, and governments always tend to be slow, corrupt and intellectually inert.

Leftism has spawned a culture of repressed resentment among women, which have led to them feeling mistreated, weak and powerless. This is what they now express through government policies and programs, combined with a passion to help any group they perceive as equally weak (animals/nature, immigrants, disabled people, children etc. etc.):

13. Many leftists have an intense identification with the problems of groups that have an image of being weak (women), defeated (American Indians), repellent (homosexuals), or otherwise inferior. The leftists themselves feel that these groups are inferior. They would never admit it to themselves that they have such feelings, but it is precisely because they do see these groups as inferior that they identify with their problems. (We do not suggest that women, Indians, etc., ARE inferior; we are only making a point about leftist psychology).

14. Feminists are desperately anxious to prove that women are as strong as capable as men. Clearly they are nagged by a fear that women may NOT be as strong and as capable as men.

Unabomber Manifesto

The Unabomber recognized that people who feel inferior to others will always beg for a system where everyone's needs are taken care of by others. This impulse, which takes abnormally submissive forms among many leftist-leaning women, has become a disease in Europe to the point where men are actively defending this same impulse. Political women are quick to label capitalism, elitism and self-advancement as "greed" and would like to control us all with government programs. They won't stop until we stop them. Thankfully, not all people buy this misguided intention for world socialism:

Friedman is simply stating the obvious: independence is not the same as selfishness, and even if it were, most people are by nature selfish, so we need to construct society with this in mind. We cannot assume, like most women in politics do, that we are rational, compassionate and good deep down inside and will act thereafter if we have a system that can manage it for us. History has a terrible track record for such societies. Rather, greed motivates the welfare fanatics, because all they want is to use your resources to better themselves. If that is not selfishness, what is?

I was taught by my father, through his actions, that a real man takes care of his own problems. I never questioned that philosophy for a moment and we never talk about it. It's a quiet agreement between all men: if you can do it yourself, do it. Don't stand there and whine like a pussy when something goes wrong. This behavior fosters the kind of men that healthy women are looking for, and it's the kind of quality material we need to build a successful society.

Female impulses, if given too much power, pacifies this process and hands it over to bureaucrats. Brilliance and civilization came to us through the genius of excellent men and women who fulfilled their destinies. Any force working against it is a virus and must be rooted out. To all men who are still not caved in by feminism: time to saddle up and take charge again. Refuse to be a part of any victim culture. If you're being discriminated against, you'll have to work harder. If you feel inferior, you have to work yourself stronger. Harden, toughen up and emulate the smartest of assholes around you. We're reclaiming lost domains--ever onward into countless battles!

Unlike many Conservatives of the traditional American fringe, I don't regard Ayn Rand as an ideal. The reason to this is that her "philosophy" is based upon the negative premise that we should only care about ourselves and never have to lay a hand for someone else. If one could call that a philosophy, I guess it's simply selfishness at heart.

One reason to why I and Brett Stevens are critical of both the Left and Right is that they justify negative individualism with defensive morality. The Left says we need to build a welfare State where everyone can take what they need to become equal to their neighbor--a policy that eventually breeds corruption, low self-confidence and collective greed. The Right says we can't trust any of our neighbors, so every time society needs to emphasize the public good over some individual right, it feels discriminated (never mind that it almost uncritically supports a gigantic military complex). In the end it's all about me, me, me.

Randism is a disease of the Right, because although it correctly assumes individual responsibility and self-fulfillment is crucial to a healthy lifestyle, it condemns the psychology that binds people together under shared values and goals. Evolution has shaped us so that altruism and collectivism are part of human culture. It may not immediately benefit the individual, but in the long-term it secures the interest of a tribe, community, society and even civilization. Human greatness would not be possible without the framework in which we all live.

In a world where people only see their own interests, you quickly recognize that society is shared space and cannot function without proper interaction between people. Put simply, we all need to take responsibility for our own lives, but the society in which we live will collapse unless we share common functions that secure the existence of future generations. This is why we have traditions and why religion will always be needed-- and one key reason to why feudal leadership works better long-term than liberal democracy.

When describing your political ambitions, the most common response you get from (leftist) people is this: "So you want lower taxes and a reduced welfare State? Man, that sounds a lot like selfishness to me." The key argument here is clearly that you're altruistic if you donate taxes to a general welfare system that benefits all, while you're selfish if you don't. But at a closer look, this is nonsense.

If you turn the argument around, you might as well say that it's selfish to assume you have a right to someone else's money, especially if you haven't contributed an equal (if any) amount yourself. This is the hidden fallacy in many socialist arguments: it sounds good to take from all and hand everything out equally, but the result always ends up being a large segment of lazy and selfish people who abuse the system to get by without doing their part.

Of course, an additional argument against the socialist idea is that it's not necessarily selfish to prefer to live as independent as possible. The grumpy Korean veteran in Gran Torino isn't selfish--he just prefers to maintain his own lifestyle without the intrusion of others. Still, he saves the life of at least one person, purely out of good heart. Can we assume all Conservatives would? No, but then again, we're not libertarians who assume people share equal intentions. We need leadership, we need government (to some extent), and we need culture and tradition. It's not perfect, but history tells us it beats all socialist and liberal forms of society any day.

The common public response in Europe whenever someone is harmed, is to let the government put in place more laws. Someone got killed in a car accident? More signs and speed limits. Someone was shot at school? More gun laws. Someone hijacked a plane? More security control at air ports. Yet all of these responses share one thing in common: they end up incarcerating mostly obedient citizens while letting most gangsters off the hook.

I was interested – but not at all surprised – to read in The Times last week that cycle lanes actually make cyclists less safe. According to a study by the universities of Leeds and Bolton, cars drive far closer to cyclists where there are cycle lanes, putting them at a much greater risk of being hit. It's a classic example of the law of unintended consequences at work: when motorists sense that cyclists have their own designated lane, they don't go to such trouble to give them space.

This is just the latest indication that government-inspired "road clutter" designed to make us safer on the roads often ends up having the opposite effect. The Dutch are probably the pioneers of this: the town of Drachten famously removed all traffic signals, and found that traffic flowed more smoothly and that accidents were reduced, not least at Laveiplein, a 22,000-vehicle-per-day junction next to a bus terminal.

But the technique has also been applied in London. As the Telegraph reported back in 2006: "Kensington High Street has been decluttered by removing barriers and simplifying road markings. Pedestrian accidents in the affected area have been reduced by more than 40 per cent." More recently, Ealing has followed suit, announcing that traffic lights would be removed from up to seven junctions leaving drivers to fend for themselves.

More laws and regulations, more accidents and corruption. This is what you'd expect; when people feel there's an external force (government, parents, laws) taking care of things, they feel less inclined to take personal responsibility and pay less attention to reality. Of course, this should come as no surprise to many of our readers, who brought up interesting objections to why enforced collectivism rarely works.

Americans disdain European political culture because they correctly identify its psychological behavior: when you don't like something or feel offended, you ban it. You don't figure out the root causes, you don't open up a free debate, you don't dare to admit people are different. You ban it all:

We like banning things. This is what we do. We banned condoms in 1928. We banned books with a frenzy that would have pleased Hitler (some 6,000 titles had been banned by 1956). We banned or mutilated thousands of films. We banned British newsreels in 1953 for showing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth, which was the most watched event in the entire world that year. Africans could watch it. The Irish couldn't.

The priggish, prudish, know-all, sanctimonious instinct of the Irish has reached its acme with the Greens in Government, a vision of hell beyond all telling. Hence, the ban on incandescent light-bulbs, and our forcible conversion to CFLs. This has, grotesquely, coincided with the European mood, and all over the continent, useful lights are going out; and electrical glow-worms are being plugged into sockets, by the palsied light of which we can all go blind.

But the darkness engulfing Europe is not our main worry about the CFLs. These bulbs contain mercury, which is highly toxic. A single bulb could contain enough mercury to do grave damage to a child's long-term health -- and so what is one to do when one drops and breaks a bulb (apart from a second mortgage or some armed robbery, to pay for a replacement bulb)?

Greenism is a perfect example of the socialist-liberalist culture at work:

(1) A problem has been identified: we're wrecking our environment.

(2) A symbolic response is formulated: we need to show we care about the problem (as opposed to solving it), so we create a new cult around the problem (in this care: greenism).

(3) We apply our cult to reality: we exchange ordinary light bulbs for mercury bulbs. "Green," we reason, until we notice these bulbs get toxic when they break and might harm both the environment and our health.

(4) Status quo faces rising opposition: some people who think outside the box become critical of the cult and its methods. What to do? First mock them (how dare you not thinking in terms of our greenist cult?). If that doesn't work, ban them (if you don't adopt our policies, you won't succeed as a political party). Kevin Myers just happens to be one person looking at this mindset with reason instead of emotions: banning evil doesn't seem to work.

Unlike anarchists and some libertarians, we don't believe in a lawless society. We need laws, structures, norms, values and traditions. This is the framework keeping people coerced and united around common goals. But what we as Conservatives realize is that governments simply are pretty useless at enforcing this coercion. We'd rather let people themselves take as much responsibility as possible. You'd be surprised how efficient this method can be, even in chaotic environments:

The White Nationalist movement, for those of you who haven't yet noticed, is a club of desperate socialist goof balls pretending to be anti-leftist. Yet their entire view on State and society reeks of socialism. One of their hallmarks is that they can never get along, so they start up five new parties and websites every other month. Their latest deal is "antikap.nu," a Swedish website that claims it's anti-globalist, but not leftist.

Unsurprisingly, their analysis of the financial crisis in the West becomes a subtle way of blaming it all on Jews and America. Here's how I countered one of their readers:

Alex: Everyone cannot be anti-capitalists, some need to be liberal like you or else capitalism wouldn't exist and thus no anti-capitalists, no struggle, no heroic idealism. In other words we'd be weak couch potatoes without you!

The Social Democrats are for EU/UN/IMF etc., and thus not protectionists.

You exclude the fact that the Social Democrats outright owned large chunks of the private market via the government: http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/4059

You seem to have forgotten that the Swedish crown increased in value in relationship to the dollar during the financial crisis? It is more intelligent now to talk about a recovery of the dollar than to talk about a falling crown, even if both claims naturally are correct in mathematical terms. But your way of expressing yourself is manipulative and evil since today's exchange course is completely normal, historically.

The Swedish crown increased in value in relationship to the dollar, not in regards to its historical value: http://www.riksbank.se/templates/Page.aspx?id=26813

"Our" (not mine, I'm a land owner) economy was built around Ericsson, Volvo and others going to Lehman Brothers once in a quarter to borrow money from those gamblers, and using this money as a sort of "pre-payment on the salary." After the collapse of Lehman Brothers and the pyramid selling scheme of certain other Jews, an important part of the business model of the Swedish companies fell.

The business model didn't work. Why you bring up Jews in all of this remains unclear.

If capitalism was superior to planned economy it's a bit strange that all capitalist nations suddenly become planned economies during world wars? Even USA and England reduced their capitalism and introduced "war economy," i.e. a form of planned economy. Kennedy claimed that the planned economy of Soviet Union most likely was superior to America's capitalism and wanted to take away the capitalist's authority to print people's money. Sure, Soviet Union collapsed when the Trotskyists regained power, but that could equally be explained by looking at their race materialism... That one economy would be "superior" to the other is a hard claim to make. Though one can claim that an honest, easily understandable and transparent economic system minimizes the risk for "bubbles" and "crashes."

Why would increased protectionism during war necessarily mean that a planned economy is superior to market economy? Here you lump Keynesian and Monetarist theory together, and that's intellectually dishonest. There's not just one brand of capitalism.
Race materialism, what?
Capitalism has dragged almost all of Eastern Europe, China, Russia (currently) and South Korea out of poverty and low GDP, I think that speaks for itself. The crisis you talk about is not due to capitalism itself, but that it's been poorly implemented and followed (see above).

Really, that sounds like hocus pocus.. Inflation is the product of an increase in the money supply by those who print money, banks and the stock market: When someone takes a loan the amount of the money in the world increases and the prices then go up, same thing when stocks "increase in value," then people get richer and pay more for their potatoes due to market economic high school math.

Inflation has gone up thanks to a government allowing banks to regulate the economy via interest rates. If you're not a Keynesian, you deem this is wrong, even if you believe in capitalism.

We who are neither liberals nor socialists, but Conservative nationalists, visit www.CORRUPT.org

1. Only confess your sins right before you're about to do something really stupid.

2. You cannot outspit older women, because no one harvests mucus like them.

3. Priests are pussies, most of the time.

4. No pub night with your old buddies is complete without at least one joke about minorities.

5. If you're surrounded by armed gangsters, and you happen to be unarmed, keep slandering them as much as you can to stay cool.

6. Rifle. Every man should own one.

7. You don't join your newly moved in neighbor's BBQ party...unless you're out of beer.

8. Your barber is your shit can and your best friend.

9. The Korean War is not over, the Korean War is not over, the Korean war is not over...

10. Wiggers are trash alright, they just happen to be white.

11. Gook food. Have some now and then, because it's good.

12. The more you bully a boy, the more he'll be inclined to become a man.

13. Your property is your castle. If anyone trespasses, ask them kindly to leave, or else terminate them.

14. Repair at least one thing in the house when at a party.

15. Stuff your garage full of tools and learn to know them one by one as if each one was your favorite lover.

Read a short movie review of Gran Torino here.

Someone commented on Alex's recent post re: conservatism and poses the question: how do you support modern day Conservatism with lower-case-"c" conservatism - meaning, how does Corrupt support some elements of free market ideology while simultaneously advocating that people contribute to and help revive organic culture in their own towns? The two seemingly are at odds, but we like to look at history, learn from it, and propose solutions that would work for people who care about a sustainable future.

Since we have history to fall back on, we realize that, for example, in the European model, talented young folks would leave small towns and make their way into cities so they could indulge in culture, arts, science, etc. In the US, though we started out with cities (colonies) and spread into farmland instead of the other way around, our talented folks have the same tendencies - to migrate to cities where they have more resources with which to realize their full potential. So the commenter is asking, what's the solution to this - we need to keep a mobile labor force as America has to support some of the free market ideology, while simultaenously encouraging most people to stay in the towns in which they grew up - or at least find a place where their values are shared with most other members of the community. For example, if you love sodomy, maybe you can enjoy a community of people who are open about their love for sodomy, and so forth. For those who love math and science, there would be communities undoubtedly built with many labs and universities.

I think Michael Arth may have found a good start to a compromise between the two seemingly conflicting ideas. In his model, you're certainly not forced to stay in one place, but if more of our towns and cities looked like his pedestrian villages and you add the element of people living with others who share their values, people wouldn't need to always be on the go because everything they need would mostly be within walking distance. I understand this would require huge amounts of rebuilding within our existing infrastructure, but it's crumbling anyway, so why not rebuild it properly? A movement toward a better, more sustainable culture will be gradual, and what we propose in part are the first steps toward combining the best elements of our existing society and balancing them out with necessary, functional elements like the free market.

Just when you thought you had a reason to feel depressed about the world, it turned out to be far more promising. Conservatism is now winning ground, even in traditionally socialist nations:

"The last 50 years have shown that private farmers are more socialist than the state. State farms are antisocialist. The only thing they socialized is loss-making," said Oscar Espinosa Chepe, a former state economic adviser who is now a vocal critic of the government.

"There is too much control and bureaucracy that hinders everything," Espinosa Chepe said. "It's impregnated with a 50-year-old operating method that is built on taking orders and is not used to decentralization.

Such quasi-free-market language wasn't heard much in Cuba until recently. But Rául Castro has shown a pragmatic streak on economic matters, trying to improve state efficiency. In July 2008 he surprised many by advocating a shift away from the orthodox socialist concept of equal pay, arguing that those who were more productive should be paid more.

Less bureaucracy and State intervention, more competition, and more incentives to ensure that harder work leads to a greater pay off--that's the private market proving its simplicity and efficiency. Even hardcore socialists like Raul Castro understand this, which is why he's cutting back on government programs and is instead trying to motivate his socialist army of workers to do their part for the national economy.

I bet he'll see clear improvements over time, unlike the Obamaramafied Amerika, which attempts to softly emulate the European model. Naturally, with historical proof in mind, we know that the European socialist model of society is inferior to a deregulated market where individuals are forced to take personal responsibility and work together for their communities. Sweden is an excellent example of how a society can improve - and degrade - depending on whether it chooses the Right or Left path:

Beginning in the 1870s, however, Sweden created the conditions for developing a high-growth, free-market economy with a slowly growing government sector. As a result, Sweden for many years had the world's fastest-growing economy, ultimately producing the third-highest per capita income, almost equaling that in the United States by the late 1960s. Sweden became a rich country before becoming a welfare state.

Sweden began its movement toward a welfare state in the 1960s, when its government sector was about equal to that in the United States. By the late 1980s, government spending grew from 30 percent of gross domestic product to more than 60 percent of GDP.

These policies and outcomes greatly diminished the incentives to work, save and invest. Economic growth slowed to a crawl. Other countries that avoided the excess spending, taxing and regulation of Sweden grew more rapidly, leaving Sweden in the dust. Sweden is still a prosperous country, but far from the top, and its per capita income has fallen to just about 80 percent of that in the United States.

So the short story is that Sweden came out of deep poverty around the late 1800s by embracing Conservative solutions, but entered a decline during the 1960s when the Social Democratic (center-leftist) hegemony took over, and today Sweden has entered a post-welfare phase where welfare reforms are embracing more and more market solutions instead of government take-overs. As a result, we're rapidly taking back what we lost during the 60s.

There is no doubt that a form of sound Conservatism, preferably similar to the one Corrupt advocates, will lead to greater prosperity and positive hope for the future of Europe, but where or who is the voice to carry this message around in the otherwise politically stalled Europe? Here is one prominent figure Alfred and I approve of:

Until recently, Daniel Hannan's political career appeared to be in rude health. After ten years as a Conservative MEP he had become the darling of the party's libertarian right, acquiring a large following among grass-roots Tories. His speech in the European Parliament denouncing Gordon Brown as a "Brezhnev-era apparatchik" was watched by thousands on YouTube, earning him a prominent slot at the Conservatives' spring conference. His passionate Atlanticism and his stylish turn of phrase had made him a staple of America's conservative talk shows.

But after using a succession of US television appearances to attack Britain's National Health Service, Hannan stands accused of undermining David Cameron's modernising mission and of handing Labour cheap ammunition for a spring election campaign. Hannan has made his views on health care clear for some time - in his most recent book, The Plan: Twelve Months to Renew Britain, published last year, he advocates the introduction of a Singapore-style system of personal accounts - but it took the increasingly fractious debate over President Obama's health-care reforms to bring them to public prominence.

Like John Redwood during the mid-1990s - a man Hannan hails as an "Old Testament prophet" - he could become the standard-bearer of the Thatcherite right, those who continue to believe in Conservatism as a transformative project. Hannan's brand of Conservatism, advocating a profound rupture with New Labour, exhilarates those activists privately disquieted by Cameron's more evolutionary approach.

What we have predicted before can, and will, come true:

After the speech, a generic mob of fork-wielding peasants bursts into the chamber and carries Gordon Brown to the nearest guillotine. Daniel Hannan MEP duly receives an important government posting.

And so victory is ours, if we dare to seize it.