Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted October 26, 2016 Posted October 26, 2016 Just finished this and felt it was worthwhile to post here. It's almost 2:30am and I'm going to bed. Original Facebook Note posted: here. UPDATE 11/6/16 - Youtube Version available here! What I Learned in School and the Battle for Western Civilization WHAT I LEARNED IN SCHOOL One of the first things I remember learning from first grade was about Thanksgiving. November is right around the corner from the beginning of the school year, and the first theme the teachers get to focus on is the history of the pilgrims, why we celebrate this thing called “Thanksgiving”, and 1st grade art projects involving tracing one's hand to create a turkey. Among these hand-drawn turkeys and dorky Pilgrim cutouts (with their stupid hats, belt buckles, and shoes), we learned about the initial contact between the European settlers and the natives already living on the American continent. You see, we were told, at first the Pilgrims and natives got along and they held this Thanksgiving feast to celebrate their brotherhood. But the Pilgrims had a trick up their black sleeves: they knew the natives were likely to die from the common diseases they had brought from Europe, and so the Pilgrims would trade pox-infested blankets with these natives. The pox killed off the natives and allowed the Pilgrims to settle more easily. Oh, we think we understand, we children in school said, These Pilgrims claimed they came for religious freedom, but what they really wanted was to conquer new lands through biological warfare. Wow. They sound mean. The rest of my schooling seemed to follow this vein. Even though we were made to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance (written by a Christian socialist in the 1890s, if you weren't hip to that juicy bit of info) and stare off into patriotic space when someone was singing about a rocket's red glare, we were told that the US was really about something much different. Americans, you see, really like to talk about “freedom” and “liberty” and “constitution” and “republic”, but what they actually like are things like slavery and Jim Crow laws, killing natives, oppressing women, stealing lands, robbing the poor for the sake of the rich, putting Japanese people in internment camps, and bombing brown people. Additionally, they spend their spare time drinking cheap beer, watching football, and otherwise doing their best to imitate the social role symbolized by Homer Simpson. Even worse, these Americans descended from horrible people from Europe, like the Pilgrims, who spread omni-directionally like a virus to conquer and destroy other cultures simply minding their own businesses, peddling a hate-filled religion called Christianity to convert them from their completely acceptable religious and cultural practices. These white people, particularly the American ones, were just plain nasty when you got right down to it. I heard this all the way into college. I took a political science class in community college where the teacher had three ideas he really wanted to get across: classical liberalism, republicanism, and ascriptive Americanism. He beat these things into our heads throughout the whole quarter. If you weren't unfortunate enough to have to trudge through a political science class, classical liberalism and republicanism were two strains of thought originating from the American Revolution. Classical liberalism emphasized the importance of the individual and republicanism paid more attention to the cohesiveness of the group (think anti-federalist vs. the federalist). Both would be considered conservative by any modern standard (though absolutely revolutionary at the time), but they still remain the bedrock of the ideas behind American society. Ascriptive Americanism was a different animal. My teacher never came out and said it, but the class went a little something like this: the American colonists, who were so over-reactive and pugnacious that they held a war for a tiny tax on documents, really liked to pat themselves on the backs for coming up with fancy ideas like classical liberalism and republicanism, but what they secretly preferred doing was owning slaves and killing Indians. This is referred to as ascriptive Americanism. By the time I got to university, I had to take one of these classes that goes on and on about something called multiculturalism. Now, not only were Americans just lording over the wealth of other impoverished cultures, they were just too darn white. They talk up and down about that all men are created equal or some blather, but they only apply it to white people! We've got people from all over the globe who darn tootin' deserve to be Americans, too, and the original white people won't let them. Wait. Did I say white people? I meant white men. Definitely just the men. By the time I was done with school, my opinion of America, of white people, of Western Civilization, was absolute shit. Colonialist nation-building racist bastards. Fortunately for me, during my life I became excellent at challenging my believes. Turns out everything I learned was wrong. It changed everything. WHAT I LEARNED BY MYSELF: THE LIFE CYCLE OF CIVILIZATIONS After learning some historical perspective (that wasn't the name-and-date memorization boredom marathon known as history class), I saw just what civilizations were, the patterns they went through, and the way humans have organized themselves throughout history. I learned with fascination the life cycles of civilizations, and immediately one thing stood out: Western Civilization was different from all the rest. It was way, way better than all the other ones. No contest. (NOTE: The definition of civilization I'm using here is the one presented in Carroll Quigley's amazing book The Evolution of Civilizations. Get it and read it.) Civilization, and societies for that matter, tend to consist of two groups of people: a handful of rulers and all the slaves that they own. Life is hard, short, and brutal. If you were able to survive past birth and early childhood, and didn't succumb to any number of deadly medical conditions in the world before modern medicine*, there was a very good chance you could be invaded and killed by a neighboring society or barbarians (Mongol hordes, anyone?). Well, maybe if you were lucky you would just be raped and taken off to be a slave. Regardless, the point is that for most humans on the planet, life was rough. *Imagine living in a world where a urinary tract infection, more likely than not, would kill you. Civilizations have a seven-stage life cycle: 1st Cycle: Mixing. Two different cultures meet in one geographical location and begin to mix. 2nd Cycle: Gestation. The two cultures mix thoroughly enough that they form a new culture. If this new culture has a method of saving and reinvesting economic surplus, if moves on to the third cycle. 3rd Cycle: Expansion. The method of economic expansion causes a rapid rise in wealth due to the savings from its economic growth and its reinvestment into society. 4th Cycle: Conflict: Eventually the savings of wealth gets diverted from its reinvestment into society to being spent on luxuries or other unproductive activities, generally split between a small oligarchical group and welfare to the poor. The instrument of acquiring that wealth still remains, creating a drain on the population, but the services it used to pay for vanish. The civilization then begins conquering neighboring nations to pay for the services that the economic expansion used to provide. 5th Cycle: Universal Empire: After the cycle of conflict grows, a single political unit, generally on the periphery of the civilization, will come and conquer the entire civilization in one fell swoop (think of the Romans conquering the Classical/Mediterranean World). This ends the fighting and creates a “golden age”. This term is tongue-in-cheek, as though the fighting has stopped, the original problem of the civilization's economic surplus no longer being reinvested into the general society has not been solved, and the problems the original led to the fourth stage exacerbate. 6th Cycle: Decay: The civilization, no longer able to sustain itself, grows weaker and weaker. This cycle goes on indefinitely until: 7th Cycle: Invasion: The civilization, unable to defend itself is invaded by another civilization or society and is destroyed (think about the barbarians finally sacking Rome in the 5th century). The peripheries of the destroyed civilization can now mix with societies on the fringes to begin the 1st Cycle for a new civilization. To give a quick idea what this looks like in various civilizations throughout history, check out this chart from Quigley's Tragedy and Hope: (From Tragedy and Hope, page 7.) Every civilization has gone through this same life and death cycle. After a new society develops by mixing two or more different societies together to create a new culture (Cycles 1 and 2) that develops a method of economic surplus, savings, and reinvestment, the society explodes into growth (Cycle 3). Eventually, the controlling members of the society become more and more corrupt and deal with economic slumps by going to war within the civilization (Cycle 4). The wars don't actually solve anything, other than making a few key members within the civilization rich and weakening individual societies within that civilization. Eventually after weakening the core of society via this means, a society on the periphery of the civilization, usually one that still has some vigor left in its bones, crashes in and conquers the whole thing (Cycle 5 – see the chart above). While this seems to result in a Golden Age, because the wars within the civilization have been quelled, in reality the core problem hasn't been tended to: economic surplus within the civilization is no longer being reinvested into the general community. General unrest continues and the civilization, now under one ruling political faction, turns to foreign wars to pay its obligations have keep the civilization alive. This further exonerates the problem, as it doesn't solve the core issue of economic reinvestment, it causes more problems within society (wars do that), and it really pisses off the neighbors. Eventually the cohesive strength of the civilization begins to decline (Cycle 6). This is generally accompanied by more foreign wars, massive handouts on welfare, immigration from foreign and often hostile cultures that do not have the values that created the civilization to begin with, debasement of the currency (i.e. inflation), massive unemployment, and reactionary government policies that further exacerbate problems. This continues until the civilization no longer has a heart to fight and is unable to resist when a neighboring society or civilization smashes into it and destroys it (Cycle 7). If you were paying attention, much of the above should sound very familiar to you. This is the first reason why Western Civilization is incredible: it is the only civilization that has not followed this standard life-and-death cycle. It has been three times that Western Civilization, as it mired through the Age of Conflict and was on the verge of Universal Empire, solved the problem of reinvesting economic surplus into the community and restarted the Age of Expansion (Cycle 3). Each growth period of Western Civilization was fueled by a form of capitalism. Profits were sought by increasing the interchange of goods. Each growth period ended by the institution of a form of controls, where profits were sought by restricting the production or interchange of goods instead of encouraging it. To put it more simply, each Age of Expansion was accompanied by the presence of relative freedom which allowed for economic surplus, and each Age of Conflict was accompanied by a removal of that freedom and the installment of controls over trade. Each time the controls of political units began to clamp down on economic productivity, a new form of productivity would be created to circumvent old controls. Carroll Quigley breaks down the dates of the cycles of Western Civilization down: 1. Mixture 350-700 AD (The remains of the Roman world mixed with European Germanic tribes) 2. Gestation 700-970 3a. First Expansion, 970-1270 (“Commerical Capitalism” phase one) 4a. First Conflict, 1270-1440 (“Municipal Mercantilism”) Core Empire: England, 1420 (William the Conquerer) 3b. Second Expansion, 1440-1690 (“Commercial Capitalism” phase two) 4b. Second Conflict, 1690-1815 (“State Mercantilism”) Core Empire: France, 1810 (Napolean) 3c. Third Expansion, 1770-1929 (“Industrial Capitalism” and “Financial Capitalism”) 4c. Third Conflict, 1893-1944 (“Monopoly Capitalism”) Core Empire: Germany, 1942 (Hitler) 3d. Fourth Expansion, 1944-? (From Tragedy and Hope, pages 10-11) (That was as far as Quigley got by the time he wrote his books. It's difficult to impossible to describe current events using historical analysis, and though I will try in the course of this article, my amateur efforts will pale in comparison to the cutting mind of Carroll Quigley.) THE IMPORTANCE AND POWER OF CAPITALISM One very important thing to be understood from this is that Western Civilization has risen to the most powerful social structure that humankind has ever seen through the advent of capitalism in its various forms. The primary goal of capitalism is to have a profit after all expenses are taken into account from a business transaction. This means that after every successful business transaction, there is more net wealth in the society as a whole. Of course, this isn't what I learned in school. In school I learned that capitalism has winners and losers. Someone gains because they've taken something from somebody else. Thus it is important to emphasize that when I refer to capitalism, I refer to peaceful transactions. Obviously robbery, theft, slavery, destruction, and other forms of criminal activity are ways of creating profit, but they do not increase the net wealth of society. When both sides of a transaction engage in peaceful capitalistic activity, both sides gain a profit. In the case of theft, one side loses while the other side wins. The fact that Western Civilization has used capitalism to create more wealth than the world has ever known prior, particularly in the eras of industrial and financial capitalism when wealth exploded, is a testament to the overall net gain of wealth throughout western societies through peaceful capitalistic means. No other civilization has been able to do this, excepting those who have imitated the West in modern times. This is strange, because I learned that America and the Europeans used their capitalistic boots to keep the down-trodden in place. Specifically, I learned that the industrial revolution was an era where the greatest of the greedy capitalists became lords over the general masses, essentially turning them into slave labor to run their factories. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Turns out that was wrong, too. The industrial revolution is quite possibly the era of human history that freed the greatest mass of people in the smallest amount of time. It's fairly simple when you look at why. The Agricultural Revolution proceeded the Industrial Revolution. Before the agricultural revolution (beginning in England around 1725), it took roughly 20 people working in the production of food to feed 21 people. After the agricultural revolution, it took roughly 3 people working in the production of food to feed 21 people. (That simple fact alone should get your historical analysis lobe cranking.) With the sudden loss of the need for people to work in rural areas to produce food, the excessive population moved to cities looking for work. This created horrible and squalid living conditions within cities and the value of labor plunged. As the principles of science were leading to greater and greater technological discoveries (thanks Isaac Newton!!), including the transfer of the usage of human and animal energy to chemical energy (mainly coal), this excessive city population was put to work in factories. The conditions of the factories were horrible, and the workload on the workers must have been unbearable. 12 hour working days, six days a week, handling dangerous machinery with no breaks, often in very poorly lighted conditions—oof. However, the question must be asked: if the conditions in these factories were so atrocious, why didn't these people, who had flocked to the cities looking for work, just go back home? The answer is: The conditions in these factories were literally better than going rural. Humankind was in such squalor that these conditions were an improvement. And the improvements continued. The industrial revolution focused on creating profits by mass production. This was done by creating bigger, more efficient, and more technologically advanced factories. This did two things. First, the increasing complexity of the machinery and the management led to the demand for trained technicians and managers to run these factories. These were generally pulled from the factory workers themselves, as they were the most familiar with how the factories operated. The expertise required for these positions demanded higher pay, so slowly more and more sections of the population began to receive higher and higher wages for more advanced positions. Second, in order to make profits from mass producing goods, someone needs to buy these goods en masse, which means there had to be a mass number of people who could afford to buy them. On one hand, the industrial revolution created the demand of highly-paid technicians and managers. On the other hand, it created the physical wealth that people could afford to improve their standards of living. The result was the middle class. This is the fundamental economic reason why Western Civilization has been the most freeing force in existence. This massive explosion of wealth and demand for highly-trained individuals created the conditions that pulled the mud-caked, slobbering masses into moderate living conditions. The effects of this are still reverberating throughout the world. Chinese, Indian, and Orthodox/Russian Civilization have all been able to start converting their poverty-ridden general populace into a middle class by imitating these capitalistic aspects of the West, and Japanese Civilization has effectively completed the process of becoming a 1st world society by having done so at a much earlier date*. *Japan began adopting Western ideas, beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, by primarily imitating the Prussian model. This led them to becoming a world military power by the early 20th century. After being defeated by the Americans in WWII, Japan adopted the American model and became a world economic power within 20 years. Funny, if I had known that the West's creation of the industrial revolution had the biggest freeing effect on humans in history all around the world, I would have viewed my own culture a little differently as I was going through school. Until this point, I've only focused on economic forces. I overlooked a few golden nuggets in Western history. I'll mention these a little more briefly. THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE All societies and civilizations have been generally ruled by kings, priests, or priest-kings. They come in all varieties and flavors (witch doctors, popes, pharaohs, emperors, chiefs, dukes, khans, caesars, tsars, etc.), but they all have one thing in common: they have a right to rule over you, and this right was divinely acquired. Along the ebb and flow of expansions and conflicts, some people in the West, particularly in the northwestern areas of Germany and the Netherlands, had an interesting idea. The idea was that every man is his own priest; an individual man needs no medium to communicate with the divine. This was the Protestant Reformation that led to personal interpretations of the Bible, causing a schism in Christianity from the Catholic Church. This, as you can imagine, led to some hostility that resulted in horrible religious wars that claimed millions of lives. It took much pain and suffering, but finally the powers of Western Europe decided that it was too dangerous to allow religious factions to control state apparatuses, and that religion was a personal issue not to be forced upon others in civilized society. This idea has been long in forming. Western expansions into more primitive societies would still entail much force and misery. However, it cannot be denied that it is safe to practice one's religion within Western societies, there is no fear of having another religion forced upon you*, and there are no more Christian missionaries forcing their religion upon others in other societies. All that's a lot more than I can say for Islamic Civilization. *The one main exception to this is children. It is still considered generally socially acceptable in the West for a family to force their religion upon their children. THE RE-DISCOVERY OF REASON: THE RENAISSANCE AND THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT The application of the system of reason was developed by Aristotle during Classical Civilization, but it wasn't until the Medieval Scholastics dug his writings back up that it would be able to soak into Western societies during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. It is no coincidence that the Age of Enlightenment lines itself up right before the Industrial Revolution. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE: ISAAC NEWTON Possibly the greatest development by the mind of man was in the form of Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, acting alone and in solitude, thrust the most revolutionary concept onto the world that humanity has ever seen. Isaac Newton showed, unprecedentedly, that the universe was comprehensible using rational principles developed by the human mind which can be described as natural laws. This led to the development of physical science, which is the foundation for the modern world. The technological development of humankind in the 300+ years since the findings of Isaac Newton so far outstrip the entirety of technological development back through the dawning of time that it boggles the mind. From time immemorial to Isaac Newton, we went from hunter-gatherer tribes to wielding primitive firearms and using animal labor. From Isaac Newton to the present, we went from muskets and animal labor to nuclear energy, satellites, supercomputers, and the internet. THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY WORLDWIDE Another one of the lovely things I learned in school about Western history, and particularly the American variety, is just how much we love slaves. My history books and history teachers somehow managed to forget that the Islamic slave trade was far, far worse and incredibly more brutal than the Western slave trade. Or that the majority of the slaves of the Triangle Trade were sent to Latin America. Or that European slave traders bought their African slaves from other Africans who had captured them. The biggest thing that my history classesa forgot to point out about slavery, is that slavery has been a human constant throughout the entirety of human history. All cultures, civilizations, and societies have utilized slavery. This includes Western Civilization—except with one minor deviation. Western Civilization had the philosophical wherewithal to not only end slavery within its own borders, but to go forth into the rest of the world and end it everywhere else. That's right. White people ended chattel slavery worldwide. So much for all that heavy-handed rhetoric I learned in that multiculturalism class I took in college. THE JUST TREATMENT OF WOMEN Western Civilization was also the first place for women to get universal suffrage. Hard to say that about places with Sharia Law and one-child policies that result in the abandonment of female children. THE RULE OF LAW Utilizing the rational principles developed by Aristotle and rediscovered and proliferated during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, the concepts of natural law led to incredible improvements to the concepts of justice. Evidence requirements, the necessity to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, innocent until proven guilty, not being charged for another man's crimes—these can all be pointed back to the developments of Western Civilization. Booya! Compare that to, say, the “judicial” proceedings in communist countries. FREEDOM OF SPEECH When I was 18, my family had an exchange student from Kyrgyzstan. During the year she was staying here, her country experienced a violent government overthrow because the president won another election when no one voted for him. While this was going on, she was constantly talking with her friends and family to keep up to date on current events, and at one point she had me come over to the computer to show me an email she had received from a friend. She opened it and up came a picture of the ex-president of Kyrgyzstan with a red X drawn over his face. Nothing particularly offensive—it was obvious that the person who made the picture did it in Microsoft Paint by making two red lines into an X. When she opened it, she gasped and put her hands over her mouth, then looked over at me and said, “Wow, that's so bad!” I could see, though she was excited, she was also very afraid. I stared back at her in utter incomprehension. In the US, we have TV shows dedicated to making fun of presidents, past, present, and future. I couldn't even fathom that anyone could possibly care about such an uncreative attempt to show dissatisfaction with a politician. Then again, I live in the West where it isn't dangerous to express opposition against politicians. THE REJECTION OF MONARCHY: THE ATTEMPTED DEVELOPMENT OF VOLITIONAL SCIENCE The best for last. The scientific developments from Isaac Newton rocked the world. Newton was the first to recognize the natural laws of the universe and describe them in a rational format. His discoveries led to modern science and the modern world. However, Newton only applied his discoveries to inanimate objects. The actions of inanimate objects can be predicted if enough of the qualities pertaining to that object are known. This does not apply to animate objects, particularly animate objects with access to higher reasoning skills like humans. It was contemporaries of Isaac Newton like John Locke and Baruch Spinoza that began applying the principles developed by Newton to human behavior. This was the beginnings of a rational science towards human volition, which includes the ability to make choices. This is the science of volition, also known as philosophy. Using the principles developed by Isaac Newton, philosophers like Locke and Spinoza began applying the concepts of natural laws to justice and freedom. The culmination of this form of thought was Thomas Paine and the American Revolution, the crowning achievement of Western Civilization to date. Thomas Paine, who was mentioned in passing in my history textbooks in school, was a Newtonian scholar that took the principles of Newton, Locke, and Spinoza and made the first attempt in human history to create a science of volition. Thomas Paine single-handedly provided the philosophical and rational arguments for the American Revolution and propagated the sole instrument which convinced the American colonists to turn from rebellion to revolution with the publishing of his pamphlet Common Sense. Common Sense was the first publicly available written document that questioned the purpose and moral authority of kingship. With lambastment aimed particularly at the King of England, it turned the colonists to the path of freedom overnight. It was Thomas Paine, not Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. From the onset of his writing career, Thomas Paine openly attacked the institutions of slavery in all its forms, demanding that it be ended immediately on the grounds that it is immoral and wrong. This attack on slavery was written both in Common Sense and in the original version of the Declaration of Independence (look up the original version). In the same way, he demanded that kingship be ended immediately, on the grounds that it is immoral and wrong. It was through the works of Thomas Paine that we have the idea that no man should rule above another, that all men are created equal, and morality can be determined by observing natural principles and discerning them with the rational capacities of the human mind. He proposed a new method of social organization that rejected the concept of kingship in any form (i.e. tribal leaders), which was the only attempt to ever do so in human history. Additionally, Thomas Paine was a universalist. In the first page of Common Sense he wrote that “the cause of America is in great measure the cause of mankind”. Paine's goal was the freedom of the humankind and the American Revolution was the first and only actualization of this goal*. Nothing has surpassed the American Revolution in terms of developments of volitional science since. *Paine attempted to recreate the American Revolution in both England and France. He was chased out of England and nearly met the guillotine in France for his efforts. The United States of America, the wealthiest and most free society to have ever existed on earth, was a creation of Thomas Paine. Unfortunately, the successes of Thomas Paine in volitional science pale in comparison to the successes of Isaac Newton in physical science. Paine's works were cut short and his solutions to monarchy did not solve the problem of tribal leaders. His answer to hereditary rule was to allow the people of a nation to choose their own leaders, and through this end achieve freedom by having the ability to fire these leaders via voting. This path failed and what we have now are rulers far more powerful than any of the kings of old. SO WHERE ARE WE AT, NOW? It is beyond the scope of this article to attribute to conspiracy, that these incredible developments of Western Civilization were hidden from me during my years of school so effectively, and that the picture painted before me of my own culture and heritage was one of disgust and disgrace. To have so completely and utterly convinced me that the culture which has liberated the most human beings on earth is the devil incarnate on the world stage, is a feat so great that it is ludicrous to pronounce it accidental. It has been through countless hours of reading books, listening to podcasts, learning the rational methods and philosophies developed by Classical and Western thinkers, and applying these things to my own thinking that I've been able to reconstruct the missing chapters from this story. It is my intent with this article to allow the reader to scratch the surface of the information he most likely missed throughout his life, and to impress upon the reader the importance of understanding and protecting the incredible developments we've inherited from the Western tradition. We find ourselves at a dire crossroads in the life cycle of civilizations. We are on the fourth iteration of the West, and once again we find ourselves in the Age of Conflict. I won't need to convince the reader that the West has not been reinvesting its surplus economic activity back into society, and that it has been using foreign wars to defer the debt and attempt to pay for immediate expenses. The question lay before us: do we allow the conflict to continue and eventually slide into Universal Empire, to be smashed by a neighboring civilization? Or do we pick ourselves up, organize, and invest our way into a new Age of Expansion? The American Experiment of Thomas Paine lay unfinished before us, ready to pick up where he and the other founding fathers left off. We possess the technology today to make this possible. The Internet is the Gutenberg Press of the modern era, and now is the time that we can communicate better ideas unfettered by the restraints of vested interests. Already a conversation has begun that picks up where Thomas Paine left off: how do we improve and make further discoveries into philosophy and volitional science, and thereby create a more advanced and more free human society? The developments are being made and the information is out there. We need to be free to have the conversation in order to apply it. We can still reverse the downward slide of economic doom and cultural suicide, but there are a few basic requirements. Paramount to these requirements is borders. A culture requires a geographical area to survive, and in order to continue Paine's experiment, we are going to need a way to keep cultures hostile to Western traditions at bay. Europe has already swallowed the poison pill of the unrestricted flow of people from hostile cultures. In their specific case, it is cultures from the remains of Islamic Civilization. It is not too late for Europe to turn around, but it's going to take a lot to undo the damage already done. The remaining areas of Western Civilization are: the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Of these four, the United States is the bulwark protecting the rest. If the culture of the United States gets destroyed, then Canada won't be long after, leaving Australia and New Zealand off in the distance—not much more than a memory of past greatness. Currently the borders of United States are crumbling, and the influx of illegal immigrants, particularly from Mexico, has reached numbers in the magnitude of 10% of the population. Yes, roughly 10% of the US population now consists of illegal immigrants. Mexican culture is hostile to the freedoms of Western Civilization. Spain and Portugal, and thereby Latin America, missed the Western Civilization train due to its Muslim rule for 700 years. The Muslim Moors conquered Spain in the 700s and ruled into the late 1400s, leaving a lasting imprint of Islamic culture on the Iberian Peninsula. I mentioned above in the Life Cycle of Civilizations that a large contribution to the decay of a civilization is from massive handouts on welfare and immigration from foreign and often hostile cultures. The Islamic immigrants to Europe are these immigrants sucking off of this welfare, and the Mexican immigrants to the United States are the same. The open border policy of the United States creates a major two-pronged problem: One: Illegal immigrants overwhelming utilize welfare handouts and underwhelming contribute to the tax base that pays for those handouts. This is an undercurrent that is undermining the economic foundation of this country. If the massive flow of illegal immigrants sucking of the teat of the state cannot be curbed soon, there cannot be anything other than economic collapse. Two: Mexican culture, and the cultures of 3rd world countries in general, are hostile to Western culture and largely antithetical to the incredible achievements that I've listed throughout this article. The importation of these immigrants will not turn their 3rd world traditions into 1st world societies, it will turn our 1st world society into a 3rd world hellhole. If the United States is going to continue, then the strength of the borders must be restored to allow Western traditions to continue to flourish and improve. To further develop the American Experiment and the Western Tradition, we need a geographical area where it is safe to do so. YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE THIS POLITICAL, AREN'T YOU? In the developments of volitional science that have taken place since Thomas Paine and have finally had the ability to begin to proliferate into the general populace with the advent of the internet, I have ascribed to something called anarcho-capitalism which, in some forms, represents the continuation of Thomas Paine's American Experiment. Thomas Paine never acted in political office except during two occasions, both of which he failed miserably, and the second of which nearly cost him his life. As an anarchist, I understand that radical change cannot be realized through political action, and that the act of voting itself is immoral because it violates the Non-Aggression Principle (which is to say: voting is the initiation of the use of force). Nevertheless, as a self-determined irrational creature capable of rational thought, I must force myself to differentiate between moral principle and moral action. Moral principles are like the cardinal directions or the North Star; they are guides to help us determine which way we need to go. Moral actions are like the individual decisions needed to be made to make our ship move in the determined direction. Man the oars, adjust the sails, prepare for bad weather, discipline the crew, etc. In the United States, we have come to the most important election in living history. The country is on the highway toward collapse. It can be saved, but it will have to be soon. On one hand we have Hillary Clinton, an individual that has been exposed more times for corruption than a Hollywood mafia boss. In the realm of politicians, this doesn't make her very special. However, we are at a tipping point in this country. The evidence is strong that Hillary will continue the open border policy that is wrecking havoc on this country, and will push for amnesty of the illegal immigrants already here, who will most assuredly vote democrat. As the democratic party has been the prime instigator of the importation of immigrants from the 3rd world since the 1960s, this influx of democratic voters will throw future elections so far to the left that there will be nothing to slow the acceleration of 3rd world immigrants to the US. The two-pronged problem I mentioned above will exacerbate at unprecedented levels, speeding up the collapse of the nation. Simply put: if Hillary Clinton becomes elected, there will be nothing left protecting the culture of the United States, and if the US goes, there is nothing holding back the collapse of Western Civilization. On the other hand, a wild card has been dropped into the republican party. Donald Trump is unique simply by virtue of not being a politician. He has no history of corruption. He hasn't misused public funds, he hasn't declared war, he hasn't thrown anyone in prison, and has spent his life creating actual wealth and employing literally tens of thousands of people. His rhetoric, incredibly, is consistent with his past statements AND his past actions. He is a man who has shown that he can get things done and that he has at least a moderate level of moral integrity. The mainstream media, which through the Wikileaks' release of Hillary Clinton's emails, we've found are completely under the control of Hillary Clinton and the democratic party, and are currently engaged in a mad-eyed, suicidal, unending frenzy to discredit Donald Trump in the eyes of the public at any cost, even at their own legitimacy. Trump is the only independent candidate in history that not only has the personal financial backing to not be beholden to interest groups upon attaining office due to campaign contributions, but he has the charisma and personage to impress the American mindset. The negative reason for voting Trump: because Trump is the only candidate who can stand up to Hillary Clinton, he is literally the only force standing between Western Civilization and its destruction. Hillary Clinton must be stopped and supporting Trump is the only way to do it. The positive reason for voting Trump: the stated policies of Trump, which are consistent with his past words and actions, unlike the standard variety of politicians, are reasonable solutions to the civilization-destroying problems facing the US. Restore the integrity of the borders, limit illegal immigrants' access to welfare and government handouts, negotiate better international trade deals, and lower the tax burden on the American population to stimulate entrepreneurial activities, just to name a few. Solutions like these are what are needed for us to be able to continue the conversation on how to improve society. THE BATTLE FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION It's up to us who understand these concepts and the importance of these Western traditions to do as much as we can to save them in their time of utmost peril. The election of Donald Trump could very well create the conditions that lead us into a new Age of Expansion, and give us the opportunity, via the internet, to continue the revolutionary work of Thomas Paine and serve as an example and a construction zone to develop a more advanced science of volition that can be copied around the rest of the world. We need a safe geographical area in which to do this, and Trump is the only way to possibly secure it. If you have read all the way to the end of this article, I both applaud you and call you out. It is up to you to continue to share this vital information about the importance of our civilization and to do your utmost to support Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton. This includes your individual vote and your efforts to affect the votes of others. This is not the time to be shy and it is not the time to worry about your social stature. It is time to get in people's faces if you have to. The effects of this election will reverberate throughout history, and when you look back at what you could have done, will you be satisfied with what you did? It's not too late. There is still time to get registered to vote. There is still time to change minds. There is still a way to save Western Civilization. Dylan Lawrence Moore 10/26/2016 FURTHER STUDY The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8 Peace Revolution 086: Common Sense for the 21st Century http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2014-11-21T06_02_35-08_00 Peace Revolution 074: Intellectual Self-Defense and how to Validate Knowledge http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2013-07-26T13_27_52-07_00 Peace Revolution 062: The Philosophic Corruption of Reality http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2012-08-12T08_45_48-07_00 Freedomain Radio: The Truth About Slavery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31E1gHowYcA Freedomain Radio: The Truth About the Fall of Rome: Modern Parallels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7rdCYCQ_U Freedomain Radio: The Truth about Immigration and Welfare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u1J6EEhkyM Freedomain Radio: The Truth about Immigration: What They Won't Tell You! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV7JILRugOg School Sucks Project: The American Way Expanded: The Gasoline-Soaked House http://schoolsucksproject.com/134-the-american-way-expanded-1-of-3-the-gasoline-soaked-house/ The Evolution of Civilizations, by Carroll Quigley Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll Quigley 5
Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted November 6, 2016 Author Posted November 6, 2016 Update! Youtube Version now available! 2
GatoVillano Posted December 2, 2017 Posted December 2, 2017 On 26/10/2016 at 5:28 AM, Dylan Lawrence Moore said: Just finished this and felt it was worthwhile to post here. It's almost 2:30am and I'm going to bed. Original Facebook Note posted: here. UPDATE 11/6/16 - Youtube Version available here! What I Learned in School and the Battle for Western Civilization WHAT I LEARNED IN SCHOOL One of the first things I remember learning from first grade was about Thanksgiving. November is right around the corner from the beginning of the school year, and the first theme the teachers get to focus on is the history of the pilgrims, why we celebrate this thing called “Thanksgiving”, and 1st grade art projects involving tracing one's hand to create a turkey. Among these hand-drawn turkeys and dorky Pilgrim cutouts (with their stupid hats, belt buckles, and shoes), we learned about the initial contact between the European settlers and the natives already living on the American continent. You see, we were told, at first the Pilgrims and natives got along and they held this Thanksgiving feast to celebrate their brotherhood. But the Pilgrims had a trick up their black sleeves: they knew the natives were likely to die from the common diseases they had brought from Europe, and so the Pilgrims would trade pox-infested blankets with these natives. The pox killed off the natives and allowed the Pilgrims to settle more easily. Oh, we think we understand, we children in school said, These Pilgrims claimed they came for religious freedom, but what they really wanted was to conquer new lands through biological warfare. Wow. They sound mean. The rest of my schooling seemed to follow this vein. Even though we were made to stand and recite the Pledge of Allegiance (written by a Christian socialist in the 1890s, if you weren't hip to that juicy bit of info) and stare off into patriotic space when someone was singing about a rocket's red glare, we were told that the US was really about something much different. Americans, you see, really like to talk about “freedom” and “liberty” and “constitution” and “republic”, but what they actually like are things like slavery and Jim Crow laws, killing natives, oppressing women, stealing lands, robbing the poor for the sake of the rich, putting Japanese people in internment camps, and bombing brown people. Additionally, they spend their spare time drinking cheap beer, watching football, and otherwise doing their best to imitate the social role symbolized by Homer Simpson. Even worse, these Americans descended from horrible people from Europe, like the Pilgrims, who spread omni-directionally like a virus to conquer and destroy other cultures simply minding their own businesses, peddling a hate-filled religion called Christianity to convert them from their completely acceptable religious and cultural practices. These white people, particularly the American ones, were just plain nasty when you got right down to it. I heard this all the way into college. I took a political science class in community college where the teacher had three ideas he really wanted to get across: classical liberalism, republicanism, and ascriptive Americanism. He beat these things into our heads throughout the whole quarter. If you weren't unfortunate enough to have to trudge through a political science class, classical liberalism and republicanism were two strains of thought originating from the American Revolution. Classical liberalism emphasized the importance of the individual and republicanism paid more attention to the cohesiveness of the group (think anti-federalist vs. the federalist). Both would be considered conservative by any modern standard (though absolutely revolutionary at the time), but they still remain the bedrock of the ideas behind American society. Ascriptive Americanism was a different animal. My teacher never came out and said it, but the class went a little something like this: the American colonists, who were so over-reactive and pugnacious that they held a war for a tiny tax on documents, really liked to pat themselves on the backs for coming up with fancy ideas like classical liberalism and republicanism, but what they secretly preferred doing was owning slaves and killing Indians. This is referred to as ascriptive Americanism. By the time I got to university, I had to take one of these classes that goes on and on about something called multiculturalism. Now, not only were Americans just lording over the wealth of other impoverished cultures, they were just too darn white. They talk up and down about that all men are created equal or some blather, but they only apply it to white people! We've got people from all over the globe who darn tootin' deserve to be Americans, too, and the original white people won't let them. Wait. Did I say white people? I meant white men. Definitely just the men. By the time I was done with school, my opinion of America, of white people, of Western Civilization, was absolute shit. Colonialist nation-building racist bastards. Fortunately for me, during my life I became excellent at challenging my believes. Turns out everything I learned was wrong. It changed everything. WHAT I LEARNED BY MYSELF: THE LIFE CYCLE OF CIVILIZATIONS After learning some historical perspective (that wasn't the name-and-date memorization boredom marathon known as history class), I saw just what civilizations were, the patterns they went through, and the way humans have organized themselves throughout history. I learned with fascination the life cycles of civilizations, and immediately one thing stood out: Western Civilization was different from all the rest. It was way, way better than all the other ones. No contest. (NOTE: The definition of civilization I'm using here is the one presented in Carroll Quigley's amazing book The Evolution of Civilizations. Get it and read it.) Civilization, and societies for that matter, tend to consist of two groups of people: a handful of rulers and all the slaves that they own. Life is hard, short, and brutal. If you were able to survive past birth and early childhood, and didn't succumb to any number of deadly medical conditions in the world before modern medicine*, there was a very good chance you could be invaded and killed by a neighboring society or barbarians (Mongol hordes, anyone?). Well, maybe if you were lucky you would just be raped and taken off to be a slave. Regardless, the point is that for most humans on the planet, life was rough. *Imagine living in a world where a urinary tract infection, more likely than not, would kill you. Civilizations have a seven-stage life cycle: 1st Cycle: Mixing. Two different cultures meet in one geographical location and begin to mix. 2nd Cycle: Gestation. The two cultures mix thoroughly enough that they form a new culture. If this new culture has a method of saving and reinvesting economic surplus, if moves on to the third cycle. 3rd Cycle: Expansion. The method of economic expansion causes a rapid rise in wealth due to the savings from its economic growth and its reinvestment into society. 4th Cycle: Conflict: Eventually the savings of wealth gets diverted from its reinvestment into society to being spent on luxuries or other unproductive activities, generally split between a small oligarchical group and welfare to the poor. The instrument of acquiring that wealth still remains, creating a drain on the population, but the services it used to pay for vanish. The civilization then begins conquering neighboring nations to pay for the services that the economic expansion used to provide. 5th Cycle: Universal Empire: After the cycle of conflict grows, a single political unit, generally on the periphery of the civilization, will come and conquer the entire civilization in one fell swoop (think of the Romans conquering the Classical/Mediterranean World). This ends the fighting and creates a “golden age”. This term is tongue-in-cheek, as though the fighting has stopped, the original problem of the civilization's economic surplus no longer being reinvested into the general society has not been solved, and the problems the original led to the fourth stage exacerbate. 6th Cycle: Decay: The civilization, no longer able to sustain itself, grows weaker and weaker. This cycle goes on indefinitely until: 7th Cycle: Invasion: The civilization, unable to defend itself is invaded by another civilization or society and is destroyed (think about the barbarians finally sacking Rome in the 5th century). The peripheries of the destroyed civilization can now mix with societies on the fringes to begin the 1st Cycle for a new civilization. To give a quick idea what this looks like in various civilizations throughout history, check out this chart from Quigley's Tragedy and Hope: (From Tragedy and Hope, page 7.) Every civilization has gone through this same life and death cycle. After a new society develops by mixing two or more different societies together to create a new culture (Cycles 1 and 2) that develops a method of economic surplus, savings, and reinvestment, the society explodes into growth (Cycle 3). Eventually, the controlling members of the society become more and more corrupt and deal with economic slumps by going to war within the civilization (Cycle 4). The wars don't actually solve anything, other than making a few key members within the civilization rich and weakening individual societies within that civilization. Eventually after weakening the core of society via this means, a society on the periphery of the civilization, usually one that still has some vigor left in its bones, crashes in and conquers the whole thing (Cycle 5 – see the chart above). While this seems to result in a Golden Age, because the wars within the civilization have been quelled, in reality the core problem hasn't been tended to: economic surplus within the civilization is no longer being reinvested into the general community. General unrest continues and the civilization, now under one ruling political faction, turns to foreign wars to pay its obligations have keep the civilization alive. This further exonerates the problem, as it doesn't solve the core issue of economic reinvestment, it causes more problems within society (wars do that), and it really pisses off the neighbors. Eventually the cohesive strength of the civilization begins to decline (Cycle 6). This is generally accompanied by more foreign wars, massive handouts on welfare, immigration from foreign and often hostile cultures that do not have the values that created the civilization to begin with, debasement of the currency (i.e. inflation), massive unemployment, and reactionary government policies that further exacerbate problems. This continues until the civilization no longer has a heart to fight and is unable to resist when a neighboring society or civilization smashes into it and destroys it (Cycle 7). If you were paying attention, much of the above should sound very familiar to you. This is the first reason why Western Civilization is incredible: it is the only civilization that has not followed this standard life-and-death cycle. It has been three times that Western Civilization, as it mired through the Age of Conflict and was on the verge of Universal Empire, solved the problem of reinvesting economic surplus into the community and restarted the Age of Expansion (Cycle 3). Each growth period of Western Civilization was fueled by a form of capitalism. Profits were sought by increasing the interchange of goods. Each growth period ended by the institution of a form of controls, where profits were sought by restricting the production or interchange of goods instead of encouraging it. To put it more simply, each Age of Expansion was accompanied by the presence of relative freedom which allowed for economic surplus, and each Age of Conflict was accompanied by a removal of that freedom and the installment of controls over trade. Each time the controls of political units began to clamp down on economic productivity, a new form of productivity would be created to circumvent old controls. Carroll Quigley breaks down the dates of the cycles of Western Civilization down: 1. Mixture 350-700 AD (The remains of the Roman world mixed with European Germanic tribes) 2. Gestation 700-970 3a. First Expansion, 970-1270 (“Commerical Capitalism” phase one) 4a. First Conflict, 1270-1440 (“Municipal Mercantilism”) Core Empire: England, 1420 (William the Conquerer) 3b. Second Expansion, 1440-1690 (“Commercial Capitalism” phase two) 4b. Second Conflict, 1690-1815 (“State Mercantilism”) Core Empire: France, 1810 (Napolean) 3c. Third Expansion, 1770-1929 (“Industrial Capitalism” and “Financial Capitalism”) 4c. Third Conflict, 1893-1944 (“Monopoly Capitalism”) Core Empire: Germany, 1942 (Hitler) 3d. Fourth Expansion, 1944-? (From Tragedy and Hope, pages 10-11) (That was as far as Quigley got by the time he wrote his books. It's difficult to impossible to describe current events using historical analysis, and though I will try in the course of this article, my amateur efforts will pale in comparison to the cutting mind of Carroll Quigley.) THE IMPORTANCE AND POWER OF CAPITALISM One very important thing to be understood from this is that Western Civilization has risen to the most powerful social structure that humankind has ever seen through the advent of capitalism in its various forms. The primary goal of capitalism is to have a profit after all expenses are taken into account from a business transaction. This means that after every successful business transaction, there is more net wealth in the society as a whole. Of course, this isn't what I learned in school. In school I learned that capitalism has winners and losers. Someone gains because they've taken something from somebody else. Thus it is important to emphasize that when I refer to capitalism, I refer to peaceful transactions. Obviously robbery, theft, slavery, destruction, and other forms of criminal activity are ways of creating profit, but they do not increase the net wealth of society. When both sides of a transaction engage in peaceful capitalistic activity, both sides gain a profit. In the case of theft, one side loses while the other side wins. The fact that Western Civilization has used capitalism to create more wealth than the world has ever known prior, particularly in the eras of industrial and financial capitalism when wealth exploded, is a testament to the overall net gain of wealth throughout western societies through peaceful capitalistic means. No other civilization has been able to do this, excepting those who have imitated the West in modern times. This is strange, because I learned that America and the Europeans used their capitalistic boots to keep the down-trodden in place. Specifically, I learned that the industrial revolution was an era where the greatest of the greedy capitalists became lords over the general masses, essentially turning them into slave labor to run their factories. THE INDUSTRIAL REVOLUTION Turns out that was wrong, too. The industrial revolution is quite possibly the era of human history that freed the greatest mass of people in the smallest amount of time. It's fairly simple when you look at why. The Agricultural Revolution proceeded the Industrial Revolution. Before the agricultural revolution (beginning in England around 1725), it took roughly 20 people working in the production of food to feed 21 people. After the agricultural revolution, it took roughly 3 people working in the production of food to feed 21 people. (That simple fact alone should get your historical analysis lobe cranking.) With the sudden loss of the need for people to work in rural areas to produce food, the excessive population moved to cities looking for work. This created horrible and squalid living conditions within cities and the value of labor plunged. As the principles of science were leading to greater and greater technological discoveries (thanks Isaac Newton!!), including the transfer of the usage of human and animal energy to chemical energy (mainly coal), this excessive city population was put to work in factories. The conditions of the factories were horrible, and the workload on the workers must have been unbearable. 12 hour working days, six days a week, handling dangerous machinery with no breaks, often in very poorly lighted conditions—oof. However, the question must be asked: if the conditions in these factories were so atrocious, why didn't these people, who had flocked to the cities looking for work, just go back home? The answer is: The conditions in these factories were literally better than going rural. Humankind was in such squalor that these conditions were an improvement. And the improvements continued. The industrial revolution focused on creating profits by mass production. This was done by creating bigger, more efficient, and more technologically advanced factories. This did two things. First, the increasing complexity of the machinery and the management led to the demand for trained technicians and managers to run these factories. These were generally pulled from the factory workers themselves, as they were the most familiar with how the factories operated. The expertise required for these positions demanded higher pay, so slowly more and more sections of the population began to receive higher and higher wages for more advanced positions. Second, in order to make profits from mass producing goods, someone needs to buy these goods en masse, which means there had to be a mass number of people who could afford to buy them. On one hand, the industrial revolution created the demand of highly-paid technicians and managers. On the other hand, it created the physical wealth that people could afford to improve their standards of living. The result was the middle class. This is the fundamental economic reason why Western Civilization has been the most freeing force in existence. This massive explosion of wealth and demand for highly-trained individuals created the conditions that pulled the mud-caked, slobbering masses into moderate living conditions. The effects of this are still reverberating throughout the world. Chinese, Indian, and Orthodox/Russian Civilization have all been able to start converting their poverty-ridden general populace into a middle class by imitating these capitalistic aspects of the West, and Japanese Civilization has effectively completed the process of becoming a 1st world society by having done so at a much earlier date*. *Japan began adopting Western ideas, beginning with the Meiji Restoration in 1868, by primarily imitating the Prussian model. This led them to becoming a world military power by the early 20th century. After being defeated by the Americans in WWII, Japan adopted the American model and became a world economic power within 20 years. Funny, if I had known that the West's creation of the industrial revolution had the biggest freeing effect on humans in history all around the world, I would have viewed my own culture a little differently as I was going through school. Until this point, I've only focused on economic forces. I overlooked a few golden nuggets in Western history. I'll mention these a little more briefly. THE SEPARATION OF CHURCH AND STATE All societies and civilizations have been generally ruled by kings, priests, or priest-kings. They come in all varieties and flavors (witch doctors, popes, pharaohs, emperors, chiefs, dukes, khans, caesars, tsars, etc.), but they all have one thing in common: they have a right to rule over you, and this right was divinely acquired. Along the ebb and flow of expansions and conflicts, some people in the West, particularly in the northwestern areas of Germany and the Netherlands, had an interesting idea. The idea was that every man is his own priest; an individual man needs no medium to communicate with the divine. This was the Protestant Reformation that led to personal interpretations of the Bible, causing a schism in Christianity from the Catholic Church. This, as you can imagine, led to some hostility that resulted in horrible religious wars that claimed millions of lives. It took much pain and suffering, but finally the powers of Western Europe decided that it was too dangerous to allow religious factions to control state apparatuses, and that religion was a personal issue not to be forced upon others in civilized society. This idea has been long in forming. Western expansions into more primitive societies would still entail much force and misery. However, it cannot be denied that it is safe to practice one's religion within Western societies, there is no fear of having another religion forced upon you*, and there are no more Christian missionaries forcing their religion upon others in other societies. All that's a lot more than I can say for Islamic Civilization. *The one main exception to this is children. It is still considered generally socially acceptable in the West for a family to force their religion upon their children. THE RE-DISCOVERY OF REASON: THE RENAISSANCE AND THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT The application of the system of reason was developed by Aristotle during Classical Civilization, but it wasn't until the Medieval Scholastics dug his writings back up that it would be able to soak into Western societies during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment. It is no coincidence that the Age of Enlightenment lines itself up right before the Industrial Revolution. THE DEVELOPMENT OF PHYSICAL SCIENCE: ISAAC NEWTON Possibly the greatest development by the mind of man was in the form of Isaac Newton. Isaac Newton, acting alone and in solitude, thrust the most revolutionary concept onto the world that humanity has ever seen. Isaac Newton showed, unprecedentedly, that the universe was comprehensible using rational principles developed by the human mind which can be described as natural laws. This led to the development of physical science, which is the foundation for the modern world. The technological development of humankind in the 300+ years since the findings of Isaac Newton so far outstrip the entirety of technological development back through the dawning of time that it boggles the mind. From time immemorial to Isaac Newton, we went from hunter-gatherer tribes to wielding primitive firearms and using animal labor. From Isaac Newton to the present, we went from muskets and animal labor to nuclear energy, satellites, supercomputers, and the internet. THE ABOLITION OF SLAVERY WORLDWIDE Another one of the lovely things I learned in school about Western history, and particularly the American variety, is just how much we love slaves. My history books and history teachers somehow managed to forget that the Islamic slave trade was far, far worse and incredibly more brutal than the Western slave trade. Or that the majority of the slaves of the Triangle Trade were sent to Latin America. Or that European slave traders bought their African slaves from other Africans who had captured them. The biggest thing that my history classesa forgot to point out about slavery, is that slavery has been a human constant throughout the entirety of human history. All cultures, civilizations, and societies have utilized slavery. This includes Western Civilization—except with one minor deviation. Western Civilization had the philosophical wherewithal to not only end slavery within its own borders, but to go forth into the rest of the world and end it everywhere else. That's right. White people ended chattel slavery worldwide. So much for all that heavy-handed rhetoric I learned in that multiculturalism class I took in college. THE JUST TREATMENT OF WOMEN Western Civilization was also the first place for women to get universal suffrage. Hard to say that about places with Sharia Law and one-child policies that result in the abandonment of female children. THE RULE OF LAW Utilizing the rational principles developed by Aristotle and rediscovered and proliferated during the Renaissance and the Age of Enlightenment, the concepts of natural law led to incredible improvements to the concepts of justice. Evidence requirements, the necessity to prove a crime beyond a reasonable doubt, innocent until proven guilty, not being charged for another man's crimes—these can all be pointed back to the developments of Western Civilization. Booya! Compare that to, say, the “judicial” proceedings in communist countries. FREEDOM OF SPEECH When I was 18, my family had an exchange student from Kyrgyzstan. During the year she was staying here, her country experienced a violent government overthrow because the president won another election when no one voted for him. While this was going on, she was constantly talking with her friends and family to keep up to date on current events, and at one point she had me come over to the computer to show me an email she had received from a friend. She opened it and up came a picture of the ex-president of Kyrgyzstan with a red X drawn over his face. Nothing particularly offensive—it was obvious that the person who made the picture did it in Microsoft Paint by making two red lines into an X. When she opened it, she gasped and put her hands over her mouth, then looked over at me and said, “Wow, that's so bad!” I could see, though she was excited, she was also very afraid. I stared back at her in utter incomprehension. In the US, we have TV shows dedicated to making fun of presidents, past, present, and future. I couldn't even fathom that anyone could possibly care about such an uncreative attempt to show dissatisfaction with a politician. Then again, I live in the West where it isn't dangerous to express opposition against politicians. THE REJECTION OF MONARCHY: THE ATTEMPTED DEVELOPMENT OF VOLITIONAL SCIENCE The best for last. The scientific developments from Isaac Newton rocked the world. Newton was the first to recognize the natural laws of the universe and describe them in a rational format. His discoveries led to modern science and the modern world. However, Newton only applied his discoveries to inanimate objects. The actions of inanimate objects can be predicted if enough of the qualities pertaining to that object are known. This does not apply to animate objects, particularly animate objects with access to higher reasoning skills like humans. It was contemporaries of Isaac Newton like John Locke and Baruch Spinoza that began applying the principles developed by Newton to human behavior. This was the beginnings of a rational science towards human volition, which includes the ability to make choices. This is the science of volition, also known as philosophy. Using the principles developed by Isaac Newton, philosophers like Locke and Spinoza began applying the concepts of natural laws to justice and freedom. The culmination of this form of thought was Thomas Paine and the American Revolution, the crowning achievement of Western Civilization to date. Thomas Paine, who was mentioned in passing in my history textbooks in school, was a Newtonian scholar that took the principles of Newton, Locke, and Spinoza and made the first attempt in human history to create a science of volition. Thomas Paine single-handedly provided the philosophical and rational arguments for the American Revolution and propagated the sole instrument which convinced the American colonists to turn from rebellion to revolution with the publishing of his pamphlet Common Sense. Common Sense was the first publicly available written document that questioned the purpose and moral authority of kingship. With lambastment aimed particularly at the King of England, it turned the colonists to the path of freedom overnight. It was Thomas Paine, not Thomas Jefferson, who wrote the Declaration of Independence. From the onset of his writing career, Thomas Paine openly attacked the institutions of slavery in all its forms, demanding that it be ended immediately on the grounds that it is immoral and wrong. This attack on slavery was written both in Common Sense and in the original version of the Declaration of Independence (look up the original version). In the same way, he demanded that kingship be ended immediately, on the grounds that it is immoral and wrong. It was through the works of Thomas Paine that we have the idea that no man should rule above another, that all men are created equal, and morality can be determined by observing natural principles and discerning them with the rational capacities of the human mind. He proposed a new method of social organization that rejected the concept of kingship in any form (i.e. tribal leaders), which was the only attempt to ever do so in human history. Additionally, Thomas Paine was a universalist. In the first page of Common Sense he wrote that “the cause of America is in great measure the cause of mankind”. Paine's goal was the freedom of the humankind and the American Revolution was the first and only actualization of this goal*. Nothing has surpassed the American Revolution in terms of developments of volitional science since. *Paine attempted to recreate the American Revolution in both England and France. He was chased out of England and nearly met the guillotine in France for his efforts. The United States of America, the wealthiest and most free society to have ever existed on earth, was a creation of Thomas Paine. Unfortunately, the successes of Thomas Paine in volitional science pale in comparison to the successes of Isaac Newton in physical science. Paine's works were cut short and his solutions to monarchy did not solve the problem of tribal leaders. His answer to hereditary rule was to allow the people of a nation to choose their own leaders, and through this end achieve freedom by having the ability to fire these leaders via voting. This path failed and what we have now are rulers far more powerful than any of the kings of old. SO WHERE ARE WE AT, NOW? It is beyond the scope of this article to attribute to conspiracy, that these incredible developments of Western Civilization were hidden from me during my years of school so effectively, and that the picture painted before me of my own culture and heritage was one of disgust and disgrace. To have so completely and utterly convinced me that the culture which has liberated the most human beings on earth is the devil incarnate on the world stage, is a feat so great that it is ludicrous to pronounce it accidental. It has been through countless hours of reading books, listening to podcasts, learning the rational methods and philosophies developed by Classical and Western thinkers, and applying these things to my own thinking that I've been able to reconstruct the missing chapters from this story. It is my intent with this article to allow the reader to scratch the surface of the information he most likely missed throughout his life, and to impress upon the reader the importance of understanding and protecting the incredible developments we've inherited from the Western tradition. We find ourselves at a dire crossroads in the life cycle of civilizations. We are on the fourth iteration of the West, and once again we find ourselves in the Age of Conflict. I won't need to convince the reader that the West has not been reinvesting its surplus economic activity back into society, and that it has been using foreign wars to defer the debt and attempt to pay for immediate expenses. The question lay before us: do we allow the conflict to continue and eventually slide into Universal Empire, to be smashed by a neighboring civilization? Or do we pick ourselves up, organize, and invest our way into a new Age of Expansion? The American Experiment of Thomas Paine lay unfinished before us, ready to pick up where he and the other founding fathers left off. We possess the technology today to make this possible. The Internet is the Gutenberg Press of the modern era, and now is the time that we can communicate better ideas unfettered by the restraints of vested interests. Already a conversation has begun that picks up where Thomas Paine left off: how do we improve and make further discoveries into philosophy and volitional science, and thereby create a more advanced and more free human society? The developments are being made and the information is out there. We need to be free to have the conversation in order to apply it. We can still reverse the downward slide of economic doom and cultural suicide, but there are a few basic requirements. Paramount to these requirements is borders. A culture requires a geographical area to survive, and in order to continue Paine's experiment, we are going to need a way to keep cultures hostile to Western traditions at bay. Europe has already swallowed the poison pill of the unrestricted flow of people from hostile cultures. In their specific case, it is cultures from the remains of Islamic Civilization. It is not too late for Europe to turn around, but it's going to take a lot to undo the damage already done. The remaining areas of Western Civilization are: the US, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. Of these four, the United States is the bulwark protecting the rest. If the culture of the United States gets destroyed, then Canada won't be long after, leaving Australia and New Zealand off in the distance—not much more than a memory of past greatness. Currently the borders of United States are crumbling, and the influx of illegal immigrants, particularly from Mexico, has reached numbers in the magnitude of 10% of the population. Yes, roughly 10% of the US population now consists of illegal immigrants. Mexican culture is hostile to the freedoms of Western Civilization. Spain and Portugal, and thereby Latin America, missed the Western Civilization train due to its Muslim rule for 700 years. The Muslim Moors conquered Spain in the 700s and ruled into the late 1400s, leaving a lasting imprint of Islamic culture on the Iberian Peninsula. I mentioned above in the Life Cycle of Civilizations that a large contribution to the decay of a civilization is from massive handouts on welfare and immigration from foreign and often hostile cultures. The Islamic immigrants to Europe are these immigrants sucking off of this welfare, and the Mexican immigrants to the United States are the same. The open border policy of the United States creates a major two-pronged problem: One: Illegal immigrants overwhelming utilize welfare handouts and underwhelming contribute to the tax base that pays for those handouts. This is an undercurrent that is undermining the economic foundation of this country. If the massive flow of illegal immigrants sucking of the teat of the state cannot be curbed soon, there cannot be anything other than economic collapse. Two: Mexican culture, and the cultures of 3rd world countries in general, are hostile to Western culture and largely antithetical to the incredible achievements that I've listed throughout this article. The importation of these immigrants will not turn their 3rd world traditions into 1st world societies, it will turn our 1st world society into a 3rd world hellhole. If the United States is going to continue, then the strength of the borders must be restored to allow Western traditions to continue to flourish and improve. To further develop the American Experiment and the Western Tradition, we need a geographical area where it is safe to do so. YOU'RE GOING TO MAKE THIS POLITICAL, AREN'T YOU? In the developments of volitional science that have taken place since Thomas Paine and have finally had the ability to begin to proliferate into the general populace with the advent of the internet, I have ascribed to something called anarcho-capitalism which, in some forms, represents the continuation of Thomas Paine's American Experiment. Thomas Paine never acted in political office except during two occasions, both of which he failed miserably, and the second of which nearly cost him his life. As an anarchist, I understand that radical change cannot be realized through political action, and that the act of voting itself is immoral because it violates the Non-Aggression Principle (which is to say: voting is the initiation of the use of force). Nevertheless, as a self-determined irrational creature capable of rational thought, I must force myself to differentiate between moral principle and moral action. Moral principles are like the cardinal directions or the North Star; they are guides to help us determine which way we need to go. Moral actions are like the individual decisions needed to be made to make our ship move in the determined direction. Man the oars, adjust the sails, prepare for bad weather, discipline the crew, etc. In the United States, we have come to the most important election in living history. The country is on the highway toward collapse. It can be saved, but it will have to be soon. On one hand we have Hillary Clinton, an individual that has been exposed more times for corruption than a Hollywood mafia boss. In the realm of politicians, this doesn't make her very special. However, we are at a tipping point in this country. The evidence is strong that Hillary will continue the open border policy that is wrecking havoc on this country, and will push for amnesty of the illegal immigrants already here, who will most assuredly vote democrat. As the democratic party has been the prime instigator of the importation of immigrants from the 3rd world since the 1960s, this influx of democratic voters will throw future elections so far to the left that there will be nothing to slow the acceleration of 3rd world immigrants to the US. The two-pronged problem I mentioned above will exacerbate at unprecedented levels, speeding up the collapse of the nation. Simply put: if Hillary Clinton becomes elected, there will be nothing left protecting the culture of the United States, and if the US goes, there is nothing holding back the collapse of Western Civilization. On the other hand, a wild card has been dropped into the republican party. Donald Trump is unique simply by virtue of not being a politician. He has no history of corruption. He hasn't misused public funds, he hasn't declared war, he hasn't thrown anyone in prison, and has spent his life creating actual wealth and employing literally tens of thousands of people. His rhetoric, incredibly, is consistent with his past statements AND his past actions. He is a man who has shown that he can get things done and that he has at least a moderate level of moral integrity. The mainstream media, which through the Wikileaks' release of Hillary Clinton's emails, we've found are completely under the control of Hillary Clinton and the democratic party, and are currently engaged in a mad-eyed, suicidal, unending frenzy to discredit Donald Trump in the eyes of the public at any cost, even at their own legitimacy. Trump is the only independent candidate in history that not only has the personal financial backing to not be beholden to interest groups upon attaining office due to campaign contributions, but he has the charisma and personage to impress the American mindset. The negative reason for voting Trump: because Trump is the only candidate who can stand up to Hillary Clinton, he is literally the only force standing between Western Civilization and its destruction. Hillary Clinton must be stopped and supporting Trump is the only way to do it. The positive reason for voting Trump: the stated policies of Trump, which are consistent with his past words and actions, unlike the standard variety of politicians, are reasonable solutions to the civilization-destroying problems facing the US. Restore the integrity of the borders, limit illegal immigrants' access to welfare and government handouts, negotiate better international trade deals, and lower the tax burden on the American population to stimulate entrepreneurial activities, just to name a few. Solutions like these are what are needed for us to be able to continue the conversation on how to improve society. THE BATTLE FOR WESTERN CIVILIZATION It's up to us who understand these concepts and the importance of these Western traditions to do as much as we can to save them in their time of utmost peril. The election of Donald Trump could very well create the conditions that lead us into a new Age of Expansion, and give us the opportunity, via the internet, to continue the revolutionary work of Thomas Paine and serve as an example and a construction zone to develop a more advanced science of volition that can be copied around the rest of the world. We need a safe geographical area in which to do this, and Trump is the only way to possibly secure it. If you have read all the way to the end of this article, I both applaud you and call you out. It is up to you to continue to share this vital information about the importance of our civilization and to do your utmost to support Donald Trump to defeat Hillary Clinton. This includes your individual vote and your efforts to affect the votes of others. This is not the time to be shy and it is not the time to worry about your social stature. It is time to get in people's faces if you have to. The effects of this election will reverberate throughout history, and when you look back at what you could have done, will you be satisfied with what you did? It's not too late. There is still time to get registered to vote. There is still time to change minds. There is still a way to save Western Civilization. Dylan Lawrence Moore 10/26/2016 FURTHER STUDY The Ultimate History Lesson: A Weekend with John Taylor Gatto https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YQiW_l848t8 Peace Revolution 086: Common Sense for the 21st Century http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2014-11-21T06_02_35-08_00 Peace Revolution 074: Intellectual Self-Defense and how to Validate Knowledge http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2013-07-26T13_27_52-07_00 Peace Revolution 062: The Philosophic Corruption of Reality http://peacerevolution.podomatic.com/entry/2012-08-12T08_45_48-07_00 Freedomain Radio: The Truth About Slavery https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=31E1gHowYcA Freedomain Radio: The Truth About the Fall of Rome: Modern Parallels https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh7rdCYCQ_U Freedomain Radio: The Truth about Immigration and Welfare https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4u1J6EEhkyM Freedomain Radio: The Truth about Immigration: What They Won't Tell You! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QV7JILRugOg School Sucks Project: The American Way Expanded: The Gasoline-Soaked House http://schoolsucksproject.com/134-the-american-way-expanded-1-of-3-the-gasoline-soaked-house/ The Evolution of Civilizations, by Carroll Quigley Tragedy and Hope, by Carroll Quigley They thought you a lot of lies in school. I'm very sorry. There are 3 lies I find very striking that would like to address: When the Americans gave those blankets to the native Americans, it was prior to the discovery of bacteria. It was also prior to the work of Pasteur and Koch (2 Europeans), who discovered bacteria life and associated it with diseases. So how could American colonists possibly understand bacterial warfare. Secondly. We did not conquer the natives when we arrived in America. The French and the English made colonies. They traded with the natives (a peace and voluntary exchange of goods that is beneficial to both parties). The Brits and the French had a military conflict. The natives tribes had conflicts amongst themselves. The French allied with some tribes and the Brits allied with some tribes and we tried to obtain the territory. It was basically a mirror of the war in Europe. We could also talk about how the natives practiced genocide and slavery LONG before the Europeans came. Once the conflict was over and the Brits won, the natives could do whatever the fuck they wanted. Vision this: the whites occupied a tiny part of america during that time. At any given time, the natives could have went in the wilds and we would have never found them. They could do that even in 2017. Most of Canada is unexplored woodlands. No, lets be honest. The natives stayed next to the whites for our goods, our alcohol and the food we provided them. At this point up to today, they became lazy leeches. And even since they learn how to use white guilt they have been robbing us blind. You need to understand that what happened in america is similar to what happened in India. Those countries were not conquered militarily. For the most part, it was the British companies (who were extremely efficient and offered a better standard of living then the administration of the country) slowly took a bigger and bigger role until it finally ran the country. This is still happening in some parts of the world. Some american companies own huge amounts of land in south america where they farm soy. And the natives are more then happy to work for them. This company ends up building cities, charging rent, providing shops and entertainment. Soon they own the country. It sure beats living in huts made out of shit and dying from the yellow fever. =P Thirdly, I love the definition of capitalism. It is to keep your stuff and honor your contracts. Capitalism isnt the big guy robbing the little guy. It is about a voluntary exchange of goods and services that is beneficial for both parties. Lets say my belly hurts. I go see the doctor. He provides me with his medical service. I'm in better health. He has more money. We are both satisfied with the trade. The doctor did not screw me, he did not steal my money at gun point, he did not use the power of the state to take my money. You need to understand that there are 3 big systems in history: - The monarchy - Capitalism - Marxism In the monarchy system you were judged according to your birth. No matter what you did in your life, you could obtain loans, people owed you respect, and you had dominion over generations and generations of men until the end of days, because you were born from a certain family. The capitalist system was born out of the libertarian enlightenment. No matter who you are, what sex, color, religion or whatever, it did not matter. It was your actions that mattered. This is the beginning of the system of contracts. You are only as good as your word. If you do not honor your contracts or dont pay what you owe, people will not trust you anymore. The Marxist system is a system based on identity. If you were born of a certain class you were considered a perpetual victim and you could do whatever you want without being blamed. And if you were born a certain class, then you were a perpetual oppressor and every wrong against you would be justified. You see this growing in the west all the time. People are entitled to privileges because they are women or black or trans or whatever. And whites are blamed for every problems in the world because they are white. 1
Donnadogsoth Posted December 6, 2017 Posted December 6, 2017 On 12/2/2017 at 9:09 AM, GatoVillano said: You know, there is a Delete key. You don't have to repost Moore's entire essay in order to respond. 1
HasMat Posted December 11, 2017 Posted December 11, 2017 I didn't watch that video, but I did watch another. "Why college sucks". You are awesome. I relate so strongly to your experience at the refinery.
Dylan Lawrence Moore Posted December 12, 2017 Author Posted December 12, 2017 18 hours ago, HasMat said: I didn't watch that video, but I did watch another. "Why college sucks". You are awesome. I relate so strongly to your experience at the refinery. Thanks!
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