The Z Blog: The World State I

One of the things that plagues opposition to the ruling regime is a poverty of language to label what is happening. The bad guys have a million ways to label their enemies, but the good guys are lacking a language to categorize the other side. The paleocons got close when they coined the term managerialism. This is both accurate and simple, but it only describes one aspect of the current system. Managerialism is one result of an ideology that has evolved over the last century.

When people hear the word “Marxism” or “communism” they immediately think of a set of economic arrangements. They may not know much about Marx or Marxism, but they know that it means the end of property and the rule by a party of ideologues. It is a simple and effective label. The same is true of communism or socialism. These words have connotations that make for effective shorthand. Even capitalism, a thing that may not actually exist, carries meaning for people.

We don’t have a label like that for the current political regime. Liberal democracy is probably accurate, but it has positive connotations. Democracy is supposed to be a good thing and liberal government is peaceful and accommodating. There are examples of things that are good separately but horrible together, like fish ice cream, but that is not really the same thing. When people in the public square use the term liberal democracy, they tend to use it in a positive way.

This conundrum is the inspiration for the show. Instead of trying to come up with a clever label for the current political order, maybe the better starting place is to just describe some of the big attributes. After all, the word “Marxism” did not come into use until the thing itself existed in some form. Once we can come up with a description for what we are experiencing, then maybe a label comes into focus. At the minimum, it starts the process of thinking about it beyond platitudes.

Source: The World State I | The Z Blog

Palladium Podcast 70: Samo Burja on Rising Elites

Samo Burja joins Wolf Tivy to discuss his article in Palladium 04 on how rising classes become new elites. Historically, cycles of violence often break out at these moments, and yet elites are surprisingly good at surviving the resulting turnover. Are there better ways of integrating new players into a society’s elite?

Source: Palladium Podcast 70: Samo Burja on Rising Elites

Spengler: US elites’ imperial corruption compares to Opium War

America has no empire in the old sense of the world; when Americans occupy foreign countries they lose money rather than make money. But America’s financial and tech monopolies have the same effect. During the 2000s, Wall Street’s derivatives desks picked off the brightest engineers, and during the 2010s, the tech companies recruited the smartest engineers and computer scientists. America graduates barely 40,000 mechanical engineers each year, not surprising considering that Americans lost interest in manufacturing two decades ago. The tech monopolies offer rewards beyond the imagination of greed and have concentrated American wealth in the hands of the smallest number of people in history. And they feed on a culture of insouciant hedonism that values individual self-expression as a matter of religious dogma while enforcing a vicious conformity upon young people.

Source: US elites’ imperial corruption compares to Opium War – Asia Times

“Because I said so!” Contracts, Mandates, and Natural Law

Source: “Because I said so!” – Apex’s Notes

Woke Capital’s Modern Slaves

The politics of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” include plenty of room for brutality.

Source: Woke Capital’s Modern Slaves – The American Mind

Lex Fridman Podcast Episode 256 Nationalism Debate: Yaron Brook (Ayn Rand Institute) and Yoram Hazony (Edmund Burke Foundation)

The Ezra Klein Show: What Did I Miss? Chris Hayes Fills Me In on Inflation, Covid and the G.O.P.

Nothing like a newborn and paternity leave to leave you feeling a bit out of the loop. So for my first podcast back since October, I wanted to wander through the thickets of where we are politically and how we got here. Because where we are is strange: the Omicron wave and the breakdown of the liberal Covid consensus that preceded it; a hot economy with low unemployment, rising wages and high inflation; a Build Back Better bill for which the eventual compromise seems obvious even as the legislation is stalled; the anniversary of Jan. 6, which comes as both of the Democrats’ major democracy bills are languishing; and a Biden administration that has passed big, popular policies, only to watch its poll numbers fall.

KunstlerCast Episode 353: A Conversation with Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute

Jeffrey A. Tucker is Founder and President of the Brownstone Institute and the author of many thousands of articles in the scholarly and popular press and ten books in 5 languages, most recently Liberty or Lockdown. He is also a columnist at Forbes, founder of the Atlanta Bitcoin Embassy, and Senior Distinguished Fellow of the Austrian Economics Center in Vienna, Austria. He is the editor of The Best of Mises [economist Ludwig von Mises]. He speaks widely on topics of economics, technology, social philosophy, and culture.

Source: KunstlerCast 353 — A Conversation with Jeffrey Tucker of the Brownstone Institute | Kunstler

Michael Shellenberger: How Progressives Ruined American Cities

On December 17, 2021, San Francisco Mayor London Breed declared a state of emergency in the city’s Tenderloin district, which will lead to an increased police presence in the epicenter of the city’s growing homelessness and addiction crisis.

“It is time for the reign of criminals to end,” she said in a press conference. “It comes to an end when we are more aggressive with law enforcement & less tolerant of all the BULLSHIT that has destroyed our city.” It was a sharp turnaround for Breed, who after the murder of George Floyd in 2020 called for “ending the use of police in responding to non-criminal activity.”

Breed was roundly criticized by progressive politicians and groups like the Coalition on Homelessness, who castigated the move as an “expansion of strategies that have been tried and failed” that would contribute to the “instability and poor public health outcomes” of people living on the streets.

Michael Shellenberger, the author of the controversial new book San Fransicko: Why Progressives Ruin Cities, has called Mayor Breed’s new “tough love” approach a “big step in the right direction.” Better known as a pro-nuclear-power environmentalist, Shellenberger appeared on The Reason Interview in July 2020 to discuss his book Apocalypse Never: Why Environmental Alarmism Hurts Us All.

Today, Shellenberger talks with guest host Zach Weissmueller about the homelessness crisis in America’s big cities, which the environmentalist says is actually an addiction-and-mental-health crisis enabled by progressive policies that permit open-air drug scenes on public property, prevent police from enforcing the law, and undermine the creation of a functional mental health system. Zach talks with Shellenberger about his foray into social policy, his critiques of both progressive and libertarian politics, and how he thinks America’s big cities can clean up their streets without grossly violating civil liberties.

Source: Michael Shellenberger: How Progressives Ruined American Cities

Josiah Lippincott – Military Incompetence And Rainbow Wars

I chat to Josiah about his background in the Marine Corps, his effective but scary energy, the disgraceful present situation in the US military, exporting rainbow foreign policy, nation-building, the purpose of generals, women in the military, breastfeeding tents, being a facelord and the highest-ranking dissident in the. armed forces, his increasing power level, the loss in Afghanistan, the Covid military regime, NGOs, and policy without politics. Josiah is a former Marine officer and current student at the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College. He is a 2020 alumnus of the Claremont Institute’s Publius Fellowship.