The Humility of the Rational Empiricist

[Three]

An article I wrote in November as a follow up to "The Arrogance of the Anti-Empirical Libertarian." I thought I'd share it here given that Trump is now POTUS.



 
A few weeks ago I wrote in my piece “The Arrogance of the Anti-Empirical Libertarian”,
 

"Right now we are in a situation of great emergency not much different from the emergency the British faced in June. There is a fork in the road ahead to which we draw nearer and nearer to everyday. The paths up ahead lead to two separate destinations that couldn’t be further apart from one another.

The path on the left leads to a world of doom. The path on the right leads to a world of possibility.
 

The world of doom is the world we shall live in should Hillary Clinton — one of the most physically ill, mentally unstable, corrupt and wicked politicians of all time — be elected president. Hillary has made it clear that she will do to the United States what Angela Merkel has done to Germany.

This means that Hillary Clinton will gradually transform the United States into a third world country by indiscriminately importing third worlders along with their anti-western cultures. In this world, the real threat of a nuclear war with Russia looms larger than it ever has. In this world, the West will fall.
 

The world of possibility is the world we will live in should Donald Trump — a candidate that is unprecedented in the history of politics —become the next president of the United States. In this world, there is the possibility of preserving the West. In this world, we will be in a situation not much different from the situation of hope the British found themselves in after the EU referendum."

 

 

Well, here we are. This was not a race between two typical politicians. This was not a race between republicans and democrats. This was a race between a nationalist and the crooked globalist media, democrats, and republicans, who all have been demonstrably benefiting from a regime of forced multiculturalism, of aiding and abetting terrorists hostile to Western culture, and of domestic social totalitarianism against freedom of speech.
 

And the nationalist won. We are now in that world of possibility much to the relief of millions who really processed the stakes in what was far from just another ordinary election. This was a winner-take-all election. This was a hard-fought battle for Western civilization. And we earned a hard-fought victory.
 

But the culture war is far from over.
 

In response to my last article, some have mistakenly said that I think Trump will “save the West.” This is an oversimplification of a more nuanced position I’ve argued, which is that given what information has been presented in videos such as the The Truth About World War III | United States vs. Russia, I think we can say with certainty that a Trump presidency will preserve the West *relative to* a Clinton presidency.
 

Does this mean I know for a fact that Donald Trump will be able to achieve every single goal that has been laid out in documents such as “Donald Trump’s Contract with the American Voter?” No, it doesn’t.

As an empiricist I take in as much information as I can before coming to absolute conclusions. I’ve been well aware of the argument that says using violence to solve problems has the opposite result of its stated goal, which was also put forward as a response to my last article. For example, the war on terror, the war on drugs, the war on poverty, government schools — these are all government programs that set out to solve some problem, but in fact only made those problems far worse.
 

This is a pattern which we’ve observed time and time again and it is from these empirical observations that we derived the rule of thumb that says, “the state always achieves the opposite of its intended goal.” And that’s important.
 

This rule of thumb was derived from empiricism.
 

So, while we can’t prove beyond a shadow of a doubt what the next administration will look like anymore than your local news station’s meteorologist can always prove what the weather will be like tomorrow, we can make reasonable predictions —provided variables remain the same— based on these reliable patterns that have been observed time and time again.
 

One of these variables was the fact that Presidents were always already bought and paid for by special interest. So, we knew that the first thing the President would do once in office is reward friends and punish enemies. He would immediately pass legislation to help a few special people under the guise of some larger benevolent goal. This is how Stefan Molyneux predicted what would happen under an Obama administration with impressive precision back in 2008.
 

But now variables have changed. To repeat conclusions such as, “the state achieves the opposite of its intended goal”, regardless of what new data arises is simply negating stuff and calling it thinking, which is anti-empirical. Trump does not fit the mold of the typical politician like Hillary. He reluctantly decided to run for office at the very end of his life. He’s not bought and paid for. Plus, Trump has the courage to attack the media. The fact that these variables have changed should at least give the empiricist pause and generate curiosity.
 

Trump has laid out numerous goals which he will work with congress to achieve. Which one of these goals will he not achieve? For example, Trump wants to appoint a conservative Supreme Court Justice. Will Trump not be able to do this? If he does appoint a conservative Supreme Court Justice will that result in the opposite of its intended goal? Trump also wants to preserve the second amendment. Will he achieve the opposite of this goal? If so, how?
 

Given how Trump is so different, for me the probability that he could achieve more than say your average politician has increased and regardless of whatever he fails to achieve, the outcome of his presidency will be less damaging to the world than what a Hillary presidency would have been. That’s a possibility that I am very much open to. Again, does that mean I know with absolute certainty that Trump will achieve all his goals and save the West?
 

No. And that is the humility of the empiricist. If I truly believed that Donald Trump alone could save the West, then I would have just voted, went home, and relaxed into a complacent life of never having to think or write about geopolitics ever again.
 

Just as Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election was a team effort, moving the needle towards a free society is a team effort and there’s a lot more work to be done.

The media still must be crushed. They will continue to lie as much about Trump while he’s president as they lied about him throughout his campaign. Already, ridiculous race-baiting narratives are being put forward about Trump’s victory, such as that it represents a racist “whitelast.”

This propaganda is not only ridiculous, but can get people seriously injured as can be seen in this recent video that’s surfaced of black mob brutally beating a white Trump supporter. If the media actually reported the facts you wouldn’t be seeing the destructive anti-Trump riots that are occurring in NYC and other places.
 

And don’t think the smear is going to come only from the left. Anti-Trump libertarians and anarcho-capitalists who cried out that Stefan Molyneux had lost his way for meeting society where it is at and covering this election cycle will take any mistake made by a Trump administration as vindication.

If something terrible happens like collateral damage, they will post articles throughout social media proclaiming, “Aha! See this awful thing that’s happened. This is what you voted for you unprincipled Trump supporters!” (And they will say all this without asking “compared to what?” and considering what greater tragedy could have occurred if Clinton was instead in the White House.)
 

We have gained momentum, but we can’t afford to become passive. As the now President-Elect Trump would say,
 

  “your momentum can lull you into a false sense of security because your momentum can vanish quickly if you don’t work to maintain it.”
 

We must keep our momentum rolling. We must continue to work as hard as ever towards bringing philosophy to the world so that one day our descendants will be able to reap all the benefits of a truly free society, such as not having to worry about who the next President will be at all. 

 

[Three]

I appreciate the enthusiasm but:

 

Starts with sarcasm. No curiosity. 1000 word lecturey wall of text filled with negation after negation. No thanks, moving on.  

[RichardY]

Yay, counter-terrorists win! A Bomb has been defused. Next round.....

[Matthew Ed Moran]

The state is the true original sin we are born with. We are born as levers of the state to tax and manipulate - to use as collateral to exploit the next generation. Life in a statist society is like being born into a giant internment camp, where the product of your labor is the ensure the next generation is spoiled with the same curse. There is no escape from this unbegotten guilt except to fight back when capable - strategically and intelligently. Every casualty is the responsibility of everyone who makes this process inefficient - who present themselves as roadblocks to freedom - who feed from the hands of the state while shutting their eyes to the growing devil before them. A libertarian has as much blood on his hands as anyone else, if he or she does not take practical measures to reverse the footprint he or she has accumulated in the boots of the state. Everything you value is only here because people want to exploit the future generations. That is the paradox of being an anarchist in a statist society. You can call yourself one, but unless you tear down the walls more than you reinforce them, then you're not really an anarchist. You're a slave with sympathy for his freedom - a slave like any other. The point of being an anarchist is not to have sympathy for your own freedom, because that is an impossible achievement - it is to have sympathy for the potential freedoms of the following generations. You can only have sympathy for freedom of the future, if you have as little sympathy for your own present freedom as possible. It is the King who has the most sympathy for his own freedom - it is the heretic who speaks truth to power and bears the cost who is the true anarchist.

[Three]

Yep, yep.

 

Ivory Tower idealogical purity/using ideals to negate stuff and call it thinking= irrelevant.

 

Meeting society where it is at and fighting back= relevant.