How To Recognize When Your Society Is Suffering A Dramatic Decline

 

(Alt-Market) When historians and analysts look at the factors surrounding the collapse of a society, they often focus on the larger events and indicators — the moments of infamy. However, I think it’s important to consider the reality that large scale societal decline is built upon a mixture of elements, prominent as well as small. Collapse is a process, not a singular event. It happens over time, not overnight. It is a spectrum of moments and terrible choices, set in motion in most cases by people in positions of power, but helped along by useful idiots among the masses. The decline of a nation or civilization requires the complicity of a host of saboteurs.

So, instead of focusing on the top down approach, which is rather common, let’s start from the foundations of our culture to better understand why there is clear and definable destabilization.

Declining Moral Compass

There is always a conflict between personal gain and personal conscience — this is the nature of being human. But in a stable society, these two things tend to balance out. Not so during societal decline, as personal gain (and even personal comfort and gratification) tends to greatly outweigh the checks and balances of moral principles.

People often mistake the term “morality” to be a religious creation, but this is not what I am necessarily referring to. The concepts of “good” and “evil” are archetypal — that is to say they are psychologically inherent in most human beings from the moment of birth. This is not a matter of faith, but a matter of fact, observed by those in the field of psychology and anthropology over the course of a century of study.  How we relate to these concepts can be affected by our environment and upbringing, but for the most part, our moral compass is psychologically ingrained. It is up to us to either follow it or not follow it.

Watching how people handle this choice is a bit of hobby of mine, and I do take notes. You can learn a lot about the state of your environment by observing what people around you tend to do when faced with the conflict of personal gain versus personal conscience. It is saddening to admit that even though I live in rural America, where you are more likely to find self-reliance and cultural stability, I can still see a faltering nation bleeding through.

I have seen supposedly good people act dishonestly in business agreements. I have seen local institutions scam hardworking citizens. I have seen a court system rife with bias and a “good old boy” attitude of favoritism. I have seen local companies pretend to be benevolent contributors to the community while at the same time running constant frauds and rackets. I have even seen a few people within the liberty movement itself put the movement at risk with their own avarice, gluttony, narcissism and sociopathy.

Again, it is important to make a note of such people and institutions, for as the system continues its downward spiral it is these people that will present the greatest threat to the innocent.

As Carl Jung notes in his book The Undiscovered Self, there is always a contingent of latent sociopaths and psychopaths within any culture; usually about 10% of the population. In normal times, they, at least most of them, are forced into moral acclimation by the rest of the populace. But in times of decline, they seem to leak out of the woodwork like a slimy fungus. During heightened collapse, they no longer have to pretend to be upstanding and they show their true colors.

Most dangerous is when latent sociopaths or full blown sociopaths assume roles of leadership or power during the worst of times. With everyone distracted by their own plight, these people can become a cancer, infecting everything with their narcissistic pursuits and causing destruction in their wake.

Disinterest In Rewarding Conscience

During wider cultural collapse, it can become “fashionable” to see acts of principle as something to be scoffed at or ridiculed or to even see them as threats to the status quo. The concept of “going along to get along” takes precedence over doing what is right even when it is hard; this attitude is not relegated to the less honest people within society.

As a system collapses, a fog of apathy can result. Good people can become passive, scrambling to their individual corner of the world and hoping evil times will simply pass them by. The phrase “I just want to put all this behind me” is spoken regularly; but as we ignore the trespasses of terrible men and women, we also enable them. How? Because by doing nothing we allow them to continue their criminality, and we subject future persons and generations to victimization.

When doing the right thing is treated as laughable or “crazy” by what seems like a majority in the midst of widespread corruption, you are truly in the middle of a great decline.

In Christian circles, the idea of “the remnant” is sometimes spoken of. In Christian terms, this usually represents a minority of true believers surviving a tumultuous and immoral era. I see “the remnant” not so much as a contingent of Christians alone, but as a contingent of people that continue to maintain their principles and conscience when faced with unprecedented adversity. In the worst of times, these people remain stalwart, even if they are ridiculed for it.

Disinterest In Independent Effort

It is said that in this world there are two kinds of people — leaders and followers.  I’m not so sure about that, but I can see why this philosophy is promoted; it helps evil people in power stay in power by encouraging passive acceptance.

I would say that there are in fact two kinds of people in this world — people who want to control others and the people that just want to be left alone. In life sometimes we are both leaders and followers; we just have to be sure that when we lead we lead by example and not by force, and when we follow, we follow someone worth a damn.

In any case, passivity is not a solution to determining our roles in society. In most situations, independent action is required by every person to make the world a better place. Yet, in an era of systemic crisis, it is usually independent effort that is the first thing to go out the window. Millions upon millions of people wait around for someone, anyone, to tell them what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. In this way, society finds itself in stasis, frozen in a position of inaction. Poisonous collectivism wins through mass aggression, but also through mass passivity.

In fact, when individualists do take action they can be admonished for it during times of societal breakdown, even if their actions have the potential to solve a problem. The idea that one man or woman (or a small group of people) could do anything about anything is sneered at as “fantasy” or “delusion.”  But mass movements of citizens working towards a practical goal are rare, and even more rare is when these movements are not controlled or manipulated to benefit the established order. It is not mass movements that change the world for the better, but individual people and small organizations of the dedicated, acting without permission and without administration.

It is these individuals and small groups that, over time and through relentless effort, inspire a majority to do what is necessary and right. It is these people that inspire others to finally take leadership in their own lives.

Individual Self-Isolation

I write often on the plight of the individual and individual rights within society, and I continue to see the factor of the individual as the most important element in any culture. A culture based on protecting and nurturing individualism and voluntarism is the only culture, in my view, that will ever be successful at avoiding full spectrum collapse. That said, the downside to overt individualism is the danger of self isolation. That is to say, when true individuals only concern themselves with their personal circumstances and ignore the circumstances of the rest of the world, they eventually set themselves up to be crushed by that world.

Organization on a voluntary basis is not only healthy but vital in the longevity of a society. The more people turn in on themselves and only care about their own general conditions, the easier it is for evil people to do evil things unnoticed. Also, self isolation in the wake of collapse sets individuals up for failure, as no one is capable of surviving without at least some help from a wider pool of knowledge and talents.

In a system based on corruption, the establishment will encourage self isolation as a means to control the populace. Or, they will offer a false choice, between self isolation versus mindless collectivism. The truth is there is always a middle ground. Voluntary organization and individualism are not mutually exclusive. I call this the “difference between community and collectivism.” A community does not supplant the individual, while a collective requires the complete erasure of individual pursuits and thought.

If you find yourself surrounded by people who refuse any organization, even practical and voluntary organization in the face of instability, then your society may be in the latter stages of a collapse.

Disaster Denial

Even as a crisis or collapse unfolds, if a society actually reels or reacts to it and takes note of the problem, there is hope for that society. If, however, that society willfully ignores the danger and denies it exists when presented with overwhelming evidence, then that society will likely suffer complete disintegration and will probably have to start all over from scratch — hopefully with a set of principles and ideals based on conscience and honor.

The strength of a culture can be measured by its willingness to self reflect. Its survival can be determined by its willingness to accept its flaws when they arise and its willingness to repair the damage done. Self-aware societies are difficult to corrupt or control. Only in denial can people be easily manipulated and enslaved.

If you cannot accept the reality of the abyss, you cannot move to avoid it or prepare yourself to survive the fall. I see this issue as perhaps the single most important element in the fight to save the portions of our society worth saving. Educating people on the blatant facts behind our own national decline can dissolve the wall of denial, and perhaps we will find when disaster strikes that there are far more awake and aware individuals ready to act than we originally thought.

 

 

 

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The post How To Recognize When Your Society Is Suffering A Dramatic Decline appeared first on The Sleuth Journal.

New Austrian Gov"t Promises "Sanctions" Against Migrants Who Don"t Integrate

Authored by Jacob Boejesson via The Daily Caller,

Austria’s incoming conservative government is taking a hard line on immigration by promising “sanctions” against those “refusing to integrate.”

Sebastian Kurz, 31, is set to become the world’s youngest leader after winning the parliamentary election in October with his People’s Party. Kurz will serve as chancellor with support from the populist Freedom Party.

A new platform unveiled Monday calls for faster deportations and a halt to illegal immigration. The main emphasis for migrants will be put on integrating to Austrian society by adopting local values.

Monthly payments to migrants will be cut to 365 euros ($432 USD) with the possibility of earning an “integration bonus” of 155 euros ($184 USD).

“We want to protect our homeland Austria as a liveable place with all its cultural assets,” the new government’s platform reads, according to The Local.

 

“This includes deciding for ourselves who can immigrate and live with us and ending illegal immigration.”

The new government has also proposed reforms that would allow authorities to access migrants’ cell phones to verify their identity and travel routes. Migrants may also be asked to hand over any cash and belongings as they enter the country to help fund their welfare.

An estimated 5,500 people marched against the new government Monday in the capital of Vienna.

Protestors shouted “Nazis out” and “Refugees welcome” in response to the Freedom Party’s role in the new administration. The protests were small compared to the last time the Freedom Party entered government in 2000, when an estimated 150,000 participated in demonstrations.

Scientists Look For A Cure For Politically Undesirable Behavior

Via GEFIRA,

The ‘Free World’ has taken on where the Soviet scientists and psychiatrists left off.

German and American scientists of renowned Universities in Bonn and Lübeck do research on treatment for politically undesirable behaviour like their Soviet colleagues from the infamous Serbsky Central Research Institute in Moscow. In the Soviet Union people who protested the system had to undergo psychiatric treatment.

Vladimir Bukovsky, a world-known dissident survived one and described it.The same will be the fate of the so called Free World’s citizens if they fail to conform to the idea of a multi-cultural society. The powers that be have given a signal, and obliging, complaisant scientists are already busy working on bettering our collective and individual psyche. Apart from homophobia and Islamophobia, xenophobia is another psychiatric condition that needs to undergo therapy...hormonal therapy.

Throughout history, the world has been torn by two opposing factors that face each other with daggers drawn. These are natural biological, and unnatural forces, or reality and dystopia. It is natural for a human being to want to possess things and work as little as possible; to counter it, dystopian socialists, communists or Christian heretics came up with an idea of a society governed by the principle: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.

It was supposed to work. And it failed miserably everywhere it was installed and implemented, from Cuba to East Germany, to the Soviet Union, to North Korea. 

The human being, an evolutionary extension of the animal world, is endowed with certain indelible features at the genetic level. Group loyalty and fear of aliens are among them. Man cannot survive alone. Mankind is not a biologically monolithic, homogeneous family. Rather, it is made up of human groups (clans, tribes, nations, races) that as a result of their long development are moving apart from each other. Biology is the basis on which human communities create culture and ultimately civilization, not the other way round.

Human groups, which have come into being as a result of living separately from each other for ages and so have developed incompatible cultures and religions, compete for resources i.e. for survival. Since man cannot make it through life on his own, he is a part of a group (clan, tribe, nation). In order for the group to function well and safeguard its (and simultaneously its members’ survival success), each group member is equipped with two psychological mechanisms (i) in-group loyalty and (ii) out-group enmity.

Group members collaborate, and support each other even to the point of sacrificing themselves for the whole. That’s the origin of altruism. Defection to another group means weakening one’s own group and strengthening the alien group, which has always been regarded as the gravest mortal sin: treason. (Dante’s hell has Judas Iscariot in its centre, which is the severest punishment for it).Altruism towards members of the out-group is something between in-group loyalty and defection. Its exuberant instances are technically referred to as pathological altruism.

The phenomenon can be compared to the rivalry among soccer teams. The team’s (survival) objective is to win the cup. The prize will be shared by all team members. In order to achieve it, each one of them has to cooperate with the others: no cooperation with members of any other, opposing, team is thinkable. A team’s player may want to sacrifice his personal career for another player from the same team by helping him to score as many goals as possible and thus becoming the team’s star, or by fouling the opposite team’s player and thus risk being sent out of the playground (death), thus enhancing the chances of his team’s win, but the same will not make things easier on the playground for any member of the opposing team. Helping members of the other team means lessening the chances for winning the cup (survival) of one’s own team and, ultimately one’s own chances.

If my well-being and survival depends on that of the group that I am a member of, and, conversely, if my group’s survival is contingent on the cooperation, altruism and self-sacrifice of its members, including me, then in-group loyalty is in high demand whereas out-group (pathological) altruism is detrimental. That’s evolutionary mechanism. That’s game theory. That’s common sense. Everybody knows it. So do social engineers.

Since social engineers have come up with the idea of building new, multi-racial, multi-national, multi-religious, multi-cultural societies, they have encountered the natural barrier: xenophobia, which is another name for in-group loyalty and out-group avoidance. Xenophobia is a biological mechanism imprinted at the genetic level that carries a survival advantage. It tells an individual to create bonds with members of the same group and be on his guard against aliens.To put it in plain language: xenophobia is practised at the very basic personal level each time parents warn their offspring to be wary of strangers: not to open the door to them, not to trust them. So modern social engineers have a problem. They need to overcome this deeply rooted biological barrier.

A sign has been given, most probably followed by substantial grants and other financial incentives, and so scientists got down to work to find a cure for xenophobia. One of the research teams included psychologists and psychiatrists from Bonn, Tulsa, and Lübeck scientific institutions. Urged by the increasing globalization and the mass migration of peoples, as they say, the mentioned scientists, who otherwise dutifully recognize the evolutionary advantage of the in-group loyalty/out-group exclusion, nevertheless set themselves a task of demonstrating whether oxytocin can enforce the acceptance of aliens and reduce xenophobic out-group rejection. To this end they devised experiments in which subjects were asked to donate a certain amount of money to people in need, either compatriots or refugees. Before the experiment the subjects were screened for the level of xenophobia. During the experiment the subjects were either allowed to act on their own, or were exposed to peer pressure or were administered oxytocin intranasally. It turned out that (i) refugee-directed donation among the subjects scoring low on xenophobia were significantly increased by oxytocin, whereas (ii) oxytocin alone was not enough in the case of the subjects scoring high on xenophobia: their out-group avoidance (or parochial, as it is patronizingly named, altruism) could only be overcome by the orchestrated operation of oxytocin and peer pressure.

The conclusions are obvious.

Citizens of host countries must be forced to accept the influx of aliens whether they like it or not. If they do not comply then, in the name of high-flown ideals of universal brotherhood of men, they will be forced either by peer pressure or by oxytocin or by both.

Oxytocin suits this purpose very well as this hormone raises the emotional well-being, it so to say oh-so humane. Like Aldous Huxley’s soma in his book Brave New World. The human being with his biologically-driven likes and dislikes is not to be tolerated, he must be changed. By ideological interaction or by chemistry. He must not be left alone. He must accept what he does not like not merely passively. He must be made to like what he previously disliked.

There was systematic political abuse of psychiatry in the Soviet Union, based on the interpretation of political opposition or dissent as a psychiatric problem. The ‘Free World’ has taken on where the Soviet ‘scientists’ left off.

The Excuse is Immigration, But Federal Checkpoints Violate Everyone’s Rights

Via The Daily Bell

Federal agents set up shop in New Hampshire last week. They ran a Constitutionally-illegal checkpoint, violating the Fourth Amendment rights of countless Americans.

The big reward? They arrested 25 illegal immigrants, seven of them children. More than half of those detained had overstayed visas. That means they came to the U.S. legally in the first place and did not leave when their visa expired.

What could have spurred this callous disregard for the law? Well, a personal anecdote could shed some light on the situation.

A friend of mine from Brazil had a six-month visiting visa to the United States. He would come and stay with his uncle who had permanent residency. The way the rules work, it that my friend could use the visa as often as he wanted to travel to the United States, but couldn’t stay for longer than the six month period.

It was literally completely legal for him to fly to Brazil, spend the night, and fly back to the United States the next day. Then he could stay for another 6 months.

Being a rule follower, he did what the law said and flew back to Brazil where he stayed for about four months. The ticket to get back to the U.S. cost about $1,000. But when he arrived, he was denied entry to the United States. He was sent back to Brazil, and his visa was suspended for five years.

Why did this happen? After all, he followed all the rules. Officials said if he was staying 6 months at a time, he must have been working. Yes, because he stayed within the legal limits of his visa, the federal officials surmised that he must have violated the conditions of his visa.

Perhaps this unpredictability of U.S. Customs creates an incentive to overstay visas. Maybe the $1,000 plane tickets make it tempting to overstay a visa. Because maybe even if you follow the rules, you will arbitrarily be denied anyway, wasting your time, burning your money, and being separated from the rest of your family still in the States. Speaking of family, maybe the fact that many of the detained immigrants have kids in school in the U.S. means it is a ridiculous burden to make them leave every six months.

Yes, they broke the law. They broke complicated and restrictive immigration laws.

But why is it so important to follow immigration laws, while immigration officials completely disregard the Fourth Amendment?

Great job! Agents enforced immigration law by breaking Constitutional law. They stopped every car on I-93, without suspicion or probable cause. Generally, occupants of the vehicles are asked whether or not they are an American citizen.

If they refuse to answer, exercising their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination, that is considered evidence of a crime, and they are detained for further questioning and possible search. Exercising a right is used as evidence of a crime. That is the point we have gotten to in the U.S.A. police state.

Using these illegal stop and search tactics, police found evidence of other crimes as well, unrelated to immigration.

The checkpoint also resulted in the seizure of two pounds of marijuana, as well as smaller amounts of cocaine, mushrooms and hash oil, all of which were seized from U.S. citizens, according to the Woodstock Police Department. In addition to the immigration detentions, 32 arrests were made for a range of infractions.

So there you have it, Americans’ Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights were violated so that federal agents could prosecute victimless crimes. The only true victims in this whole checkpoint situation were all the people stopped by the agents.

Perhaps you aren’t concerned with the illegal immigrants’ treatment. What you should be concerned about is the convenient excuse increased immigration enforcement gives federal agents to trample your rights.

The harder they go after illegal immigrants, the more Americans will be ensnared, and have their rights violated. They will be stopped at checkpoints, subjected to illegal searches, and forced to be a witness against themselves.

This is how the government operates. Whether it is under the guise of a drug war, illegal immigration, or terrorism, their guns are truly only aimed at one target. The American people.

The Myth Of India's Information Technology Industry

Authored by Jayant Bhandari via Acting-Man.com,

A Shift in Perception – Indians in Silicon Valley

When I was studying in the UK in early 90s, I was often asked about cows, elephants and snake-charmers on the roads in India.  A shift in public perception - not in the associated reality - was however starting to happen. India would soon become known for its vibrant IT industry.

Friends and family are helping students taking university exams with cheating. 2.5 million candidates, many of them with PhDs or post-graduates, recently applied for 6,000 of the lowest level job positions (“grade D”) available in West Bengal, which require no more than an early-stage school education. While India produces the largest number of PhDs, engineers, etc. in the world, the educational system is in reality in a shambles and a complete joke. Most of these people are in fact unemployable. [The incredible scene above took place in Bihar and is explained in greater detail here. Relatives of students are scaling the walls of the examination center to pass on cheat sheets to their offspring. Policemen who were supposed to guard examination buildings were often bribed to look the other way. A total of 6 to 7 million people across India were estimated to provide  cheating assistance. [PT]]

 

A similar scene at another examination center in Bihar. In several locations parents and relatives even clashed with police who tried to keep them from scaling the walls (which is actually quite risky). Here is a You-tube video showing a TV report on the “massive family affair” the exam turned into, which is in parts quite funny. You will inter alia notice that students who get caught cheating by their teachers sometimes have to expect the kind of traditional instant punishment that would be frowned upon in politically correct Western societies, but which probably has the advantage of being memorable (here is another video of the collective cheating effort; and here is Mr. Bean taking an exam). [PT]

As more IT graduates from India moved to the US to work, they lobbied to change how India was viewed, not because India had actually changed or because they cared for India, but because from their tribal perspective, this reflected well on them. This process went hand in hand with the emerging trend toward political correctness in the West - people in the West became keen to exaggerate the successes of India and other “emerging markets” to prove their non-racist orientation.

Today, Silicon Valley has quite a visible Indian population and many of its members are very talented and in top positions. This helped change the perception of India. There are a total of one million Indian engineers and scientists in the US.  To put this number into perspective, the population of India increases by more than a million souls every month.

These were the best and the brightest of India, and while their number is not even noise in the grand scheme of things, the exception to the rule began to be seen as the rule. A completely faulty assumption was taking root, namely that India is a land of high-tech people. Neither Indians nor politically correct Westerners challenged this notion.

Indians were hired by Americans based on meritocratic principles, but as more Indians rose to the top, they tended to hire based on tribal affiliations. Again, this tribalism has nothing to do with trying to help their brethren.  Mostly  it is about the comfort tribal people feel working with their own kind, despite harboring concomitant feelings of disdain. An Indian boss finds it easier to get away with abusing his Indian staff.

Apart from visible high-caliber Indians in the IT industry in the US, most of these employees are actually C-level, sweatshop labor, who work for a lot less than what Americans would be prepared to accept. Many of those who did not learn programming in the US are known for writing error-prone code that cannot be maintained. Moreover, they have developed a reputation for being pompous. Americans find it difficult to complain, as they don’t want to risk looking racist.

An outsized number of Indians in the position of recruiters tend to favor Indians, once again not for reasons of empathy, but merely for the comfort they feel in managing expectations. The lottery system associated with H1B visa is riddled with manipulated multiple filings and fake resumes – stories about this abound.

The IT Industry in India

Even within India, the IT industry is not what many people believe it to be. The IT sector accounts for 9.3% of the country’s GDP, or about $150 billion. While the Indian IT industry looks big from an Indian perspective, it is miniscule even in comparison with China, let alone the US.

In total, a mere 3.7 million out of India’s population of 1,350 million people are employed in the IT industry. Again, most of them are working as better-paid sweat-labor, forever ready to jump to a slightly better job offer. Creative, innovative work is almost never sent to India.

As time has passed it has become increasingly difficult for political correctness to suppress the fact that much of the code written by Indian IT programmers is of inferior quality. Indian IT firms are losing business and sadly the one industry that led most of India’s growth over the last three decades is rapidly shedding employees.

An Indian friend who has worked for many years in the IT industry, in and outside of India told me:

“The Indian IT sector, excluding the work that gets done at Microsoft, Google, Intel and few research-based companies, is the biggest joke of the millennium. Service-based companies within India, including well-known Indian names, try to skim clients big-time and operate with meager productivity. It really doesn’t make surprise me when many Indians in IT are losing their jobs because of their irresponsibility and indecent behavior. They treat their offices as their own private place to hang around, chit-chatting with colleagues, talking about their private lives publicly. Managers, mostly incompetent at work have zero-tolerance towards their subordinates, are sexist, and lure their female subordinates.”

Will Indians one day sit back and reflect that their lack of reason, their tribalism and superstitions are the reason for the utter backwardness and wretchedness, which is letting the one small advantage Indians had slip by?

The flaws of Indian coders have made headlines before. The article from which the above exhortation was taken appeared in 2015 after “Snapdeal cheerfully declared that ‘right programmers are rare in India’” and inter alia notes that “India’s education system has failed its citizens”. The problems with many Indian coders are deemed to consist of “rote-learning, lack of research and Gestalt skills and an inability to be innovative even while they possess the talent”. Two years earlier, the Atlantic had already published a “behind the scenes” article on the topic as well, which also blames the Indian education system for the situation and includes a forecast that the amount of coding work outsourced to India is likely to drop – to the chagrin of many newly-minted, but apparently poorly trained Indian programmers. [PT]

Here is a comment by Vidyanshu Pandey, who in the past worked as a coder, in delivery management, as a software architect, and is currently in IT sales and management consulting:

“ The combination of all these factors creates IT services that are cheap, but unsustainable. Wage hikes and inflation will make Indian IT services non-competitive. Moreover, the Chinese have rapidly become quite good in English and programming. The quality of their work is high, they have excellent skills in cyber-security, data-science and AI, and they constantly win the International Programming Olympics, a recognition that has mostly eluded Indians. Chinese coders are also happy to put in long hours, without complaining. Also, I find Filipinos to be very good, as well as the Vietnamese. I see a decline coming in India’s IT industry soon. The easy money of the past several years has encouraged materialism, hedonism and decadence. As IT has spearheaded growth of the middle class, its coming downturn may well herald its decline.”

Quiet Changes

Inside the country, Indians have increased their gold hoarding. There is no way to know how much they are really buying, as a lot of gold comes into the country  through smuggling. Those who can are moving their gold and wealth abroad. They are increasing their purchases of properties outside the country, in the process contributing to property price increases in the US, in London, Thailand, and so forth.

A very large number of Directors of publicly-listed Indian companies are officially residents of Singapore, Hong Kong or Dubai. 30% of the people living in the UAE are from India. Of course, not much of this shows up in statistics.

Every Indian I know would emigrate today if he could. Most want to live under  institutions created by Europeans. Hypocritically, those who cannot emigrate, and particularly those who do manage to do so, vociferously claim that European colonization of the third world was somehow an unmitigated calamity. It wasn’t. Without the British running India, India is rapidly on its way to utter chaos, disintegration and what will likely end up becoming a major humanitarian crisis.

America Is On Its Way To Divorce Court

Authored by Marc Thiessen via PennLive.com,

There is a place for contempt in our public discourse.

We should have contempt for a regime in North Korea that brutalized a young American student named Otto Warmbier. We should have contempt for a regime in Syria that uses poison gas to massacre innocent men, women and children. We should have contempt for Islamic State terrorists who behead Americans, burn people alive in cages and systematically rape Yazidi girls.

But we should not have contempt for each other.

Yet, we do. Our politics today is descending into a bitter spiral of contempt. And we saw the consequences in the attempted assassination of Republican members of Congress on a baseball field in Alexandria, Virginia, last week.

Back when Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, D-Ariz., was shot in 2011, many on the left were quick to blame conservative political rhetoric - falsely it turned out. But the attack on Rep. Steve Scalise, R-La., and his colleagues was politically motivated. The assassin volunteered for Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., called President Trump a "traitor" on social media and, according to witnesses, asked if the players were Republicans before opening fire.

No one is responsible except the would-be assassin. But his actions should serve as a wake-up call that the demonization of our fellow Americans who disagree with us has gone too far. The culture of contempt permeating our politics has now had near-fatal consequences. We need to put on the brakes and learn how to distinguish once again between our opponents and our enemies.

Case in point: A few weeks before the Alexandria shooting, Hillary Clinton gave a commencement speech at Wellesley College where she declared that Trump"s budget is "an attack of unimaginable cruelty on the most vulnerable among us, the youngest, the oldest, the poorest." No, it is not. Using nerve agent on the innocent is "an attack of unimaginable cruelty." Putting a hapless college student into a coma is an "attack of unimaginable cruelty." Reducing the growth of government spending is not.

Think for a moment what Clinton was saying: It"s not simply that Democrats and Republicans have an honest disagreement about how best to help the most vulnerable among us. In Clinton"s telling, Republicans are waging war on the vulnerable. That is toxic.

No doubt, Trump has contributed mightily to our descent into the culture of contempt. (For example, the media is not the "enemy of the American people," Mr. President). But since Trump"s election, the scope and scale of political contempt on the left have reached unprecedented heights. Just a few months ago, when President Barack Obama was in office, it would have been unimaginable for a comedian to proudly pose for a photo holding up the president"s bloody, severed head.

Worst of all, we are in the process of cementing these attitudes in the next generation. On college campuses, students are being taught that it is acceptable to treat with contempt those with different ideas. We saw this phenomenon on display when Charles Murray - a distinguished conservative scholar - was shouted down and assaulted at Middlebury College in a riot that sent a professor to the hospital. Not a single student suffered any real consequences. Similar incidents are taking place on campuses across the country. Young Americans are learning that people they disagree with are not to be listened to respectfully and debated; they are to be silenced and driven out of the public square.

This is not to suggest that there is no role for righteous anger in political discourse. Conservatives felt anger about many of Obama"s policies, and liberals have every right to be angry about Trump"s policies they find objectionable. And they have every right to fight like hell to stop them.

But it wasn"t so long ago that, despite bitter differences over policies, Republicans and Democrats still found ways to work together. President Bill Clinton and Republicans in Congress worked together to pass NAFTA and welfare reform. George W. Bush and congressional Democrats cooperated to pass tax cuts and education reform. Today, that kind of cooperation is unimaginable.

And the reason is simple: When anger transforms into contempt, permanent damage takes place. As American Enterprise Institute President Arthur C. Brooks points out, a marriage can recover from anger. But when couples become contemptuous of each other, they will almost certainly end up in divorce court. That is where our country is headed today.

Liberals need to understand: When they show contempt for Trump, they are expressing contempt for the millions of Americans who voted for him - including millions who twice voted for Obama. These Americans felt that the establishments of both parties were ignoring them and wanted to send Washington a message. The response they are receiving could not be clearer: We have contempt for the man you elected, and we have contempt for all of you who put him into office. They will never forget it.

We need to pull back from this spiral of contempt before it is too late. North Korea is our enemy. Our fellow Americans who disagree with us are not. It"s time we learn the difference - before someone gets killed.

The Over-Criminalization Of American Life

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

The over-criminalization of America has undermined justice, the rule of law and legal egalitarianism.

While the corporate media devotes itself to sports, entertainment, dining out and the latest political kerfuffle, America has become the Over-Criminalization Capital of the World. The proliferation of laws and administrative regulations, federal, state and local, that carry criminal penalties has swollen into the tens of thousands.

The number of incarcerated Americans exceeds 2.3 million, with the majority being non-violent offenders--often for War on Drugs offenses.

Holly Harris has written an important summary of this profoundly destabilizing trend: The Prisoner Dilemma: Ending America"s Incarceration Epidemic (Foreign Affairs, registration required).

The over-criminalization of America is a relatively recent trend. As Harris notes:

It wasn’t always like this. In 1972, for every 100,000 U.S. residents, 161 were incarcerated. By 2015, that rate had more than quadrupled, with nearly 670 out of every 100,000 Americans behind bars.

The over-criminalization of America is rooted in federal laws and regulations, and state and local governments have followed suite. here is Harris"s account:

The burgeoning U.S. prison population reflects a federal criminal code that has spiraled out of control. No one—not even the government itself—has ever been able to specify with any certainty the precise number of federal crimes defined by the 54 sections contained in the 27,000 or so pages of the U.S. Code. In the 1980s, lawyers at the Department of Justice attempted to tabulate the figure “for the express purpose of exposing the idiocy” of the criminal code, as one of them later put it. The best they were able to come up with was an educated guess of 3,000 crimes. Today, the conservative Heritage Foundation estimates that federal laws currently enumerate nearly 5,000 crimes, a number that grows every year.

Overcriminalization extends beyond the law books, partly because regulations are often backed by criminal penalties. That is the case for rules that govern matters as trivial as the sale of grated cheese, the precise composition of chicken Kiev dishes, and the washing of cars at the headquarters of the National Institutes of Health. State laws add tens of thousands more such crimes. Taken together, they push the total number of criminally punishable offenses in the United States into the hundreds of thousands. The long arm of the law reaches into nearly every aspect of American life. The legal scholar Harvey Silverglate has concluded that the typical American commits at least three federal felonies a day, simply by going through his or her normal routine.

Federal policies reward states for building prisons and mandating harsher sentences:

...federal incentives for states that safely decrease their prison populations and reconsider ineffective sentencing regimes...would represent a stark reversal of legislation signed into law by President Bill Clinton in 1994, which did just the opposite, offering federal dollars to states that imposed harsher criminal penalties and built more prisons, which contributed to the explosion of incarceration rates during the past two decades.

How did we become a Gulag Nation of tens of thousands of laws and regulations and mandatory harsh sentences for non-violent crimes--a society imprisoned for administrative crimes that aren"t even tried in our judiciary system? I would suggest two primary sources:

1. The relentless expansion of central-state power over every aspect of life. As I describe in my book Resistance, Revolution, Liberation: A Model for Positive Change, the state has only one ontological imperative: to expand its power and control. There are no equivalent mechanisms for reducing the legal/regulatory burdens imposed by the state; various reforms aimed at reducing the quantity of laws and regulations have not even made a dent in the over-criminalization of America.

The second dynamic is the political reality that the easiest way for politicos to be seen as "doing something" is to pass more laws and regulations criminalizing an additional aspect of life. The state and its elites justify the state"s relentless expansion of power and control by claiming problems can only be solved by centralizing power further and increasing the number and severity of penalties.

Criminalization is the ultimate expansion of the state"s monopoly on coercive violence. As the state expands its power to imprison or punish its citizens for an ever-wider range of often petty infractions, increasingly via a bureaucratic administrative process that strips the citizens of due process, another pernicious dynamic emerges: the informal application and enforcement of formal laws and regulations.

In other words, the laws and regulations are enforced at the discretion of the state"s officials. This is the systemic source of driving while black: a defective tail-light gets an African-American driver pulled over, while drivers of other ethnic origin get a pass.

This is also the source of America"s systemic blind eye on white-collar crimes while the War on Drugs mandates harsh sentences with a cruel vengeance. When there are so many laws and regulations to choose from, government officials have immense discretion over which laws and regulations to enforce.

Prosecutors seeking to increase their body count will use harsh drug laws to force innocents to accept plea bargains, while federal prosecutors don"t even pursue white-collar corporate fraud on a vast scale.

The over-criminalization of America has undermined justice, the rule of law and the bedrock notion that everyone is equal under the law, i.e. legal egalitarianism.

The over-criminalization of America breeds corruption as the wealthy and powerful evade the crushing burden of over-regulation by either buying political favors in our pay-to-play "democracy" (money votes, money wins) or by hiring teams of attorneys, CPAs, etc. to seek loopholes or construct a courtroom defense.

Meanwhile, the peasantry are offered a harsh plea bargain.

The over-criminalization of America is one core reason why the status quo has failed and cannot be reformed. That is the title of one of my short works, Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform, which explains why the ceaseless expansion of centralized power leads to failure and collapse.

81 Percent Of Americans Are ‘Concerned About Declining Moral Behavior In Our Nation’

Could it be possible that Americans are more concerned about declining standards of morality than most of us initially thought? A very surprising new survey conducted by LifeWay Research has discovered that a whopping 81 percent of Americans agree with this statement: “I am concerned about declining moral behavior in our nation.” If you follow my work on a regular basis, you already know that moral decay is a theme that I keep coming back to time after time. To me it is quite obvious that moral behavior is deteriorating all around us, but I had no idea that so many other Americans were deeply concerned about the exact same thing.

Since so many people agree that we are facing a moral crisis, the solution should be very simple right?

Unfortunately it is more complicated than that, because there is very little agreement about what our moral values should actually be. Once upon a time the Bible formed the basis for morality in American society, but today things are entirely different.

In 2017, our notions of “right” and “wrong” are constantly shifting because they are not based on anything permanent. The same LifeWay Research survey that I quoted above also found that among Americans 35 years of age and younger, less than 40 percent believe that “right and wrong do not change”…

A new study from Nashville-based LifeWay Research found a significant generation gap in how Americans view morality.

More than 6 in 10 of those older than 45 say right and wrong do not change. For those 35 and younger, fewer than 4 in 10 make that claim.

Needless to say, these survey results appear to be quite contradictory. How can moral behavior be “declining” if we can’t even know for sure what is right and what is wrong?

The same survey also found that nearly two-thirds of Americans (63 percent) believe that “implementing laws to encourage people to act morally is not effective.”

To me, this doesn’t make any sense at all. The truth is that all laws are based on somebody’s values, and all laws are designed to get people to act in a certain way or to not act in a certain way.

If laws are not effective, why do our politicians constantly pass more of them? The reason why most of us adhere to the speed limit is because we don’t want the punishment of getting a ticket. I don’t even want to imagine what our roads would be like if those speed limit laws did not exist, and so I am quite glad that they are there.

The government is constantly “imposing morality” upon us, but most Americans don’t seem to like that.

And Americans are increasingly rejecting church as a moral authority as well. Sam Eaton is the founder of Recklessly Alive Ministries, and in his most recent article he noted a recent study that discovered that less than 20 percent of all American adults under the age of 30 “believe attending a church is important or worthwhile”…

According to this study (and many others like it) church attendance and impressions of the church are the lowest in recent history, and most drastic among millennials described as 22- to 35-year-olds.

• Only 2 in 10 Americans under 30 believe attending a church is important or worthwhile (an all-time low).


• 59 percent of millennials raised in a church have dropped out.


• 35 percent of millennials have an anti-church stance, believing the church does more harm than good.


• Millennials are the least likely age group of anyone to attend church (by far).

As I sat in our large church’s annual meeting last month, I looked around for anyone in my age bracket. It was a little like a Titanic search party…

The church in America is already in a state of crisis, and numbers like that should be deeply sobering to faith leaders all over the nation.

In article after article I have warned about the exact same thing. We are losing an entire generation of Americans, and yet most churches just continue on with business as usual as if nothing was wrong.

If we keep doing the same things that we have been doing, we are just going to keep getting the same results and church attendance all over America will continue to decline. Here is more from Sam Eaton…

You see, church leaders, our generation just isn’t interested in playing church anymore, and there are real, possible solutions to filling our congregations with young adults. It’s obvious you’re not understanding the gravity of the problem at hand and aren’t nearly as alarmed as you should be about the crossroads we’re at.

You’re complacent, irrelevant and approaching extinction. A smattering of mostly older people, doing mostly the same things they’ve always done, isn’t going to turn to the tide.

Feel free to write to me off as just another angry, selfy-addicted millennial. Believe me, at this point I’m beyond used to being abandoned and ignored.

Perhaps Eaton could have been a bit more gracious in his remarks, but I am telling you that the anger and frustration that you sense in that quote are very real. Whenever I hear from Millennials, the same themes keep coming up over and over again, and it is time for the church to start listening.

Millennials tend to respond positively to authenticity, and they generally aren’t getting it at school, at church or from their government.

Since so many of them lack a solid foundation, a lot of them end up drifting through life without meaning and direction.

So what do we need to do?

We need to get back to the basics, and that means returning to the values and principles that this nation was founded upon. America was founded by strong Christian men and women that believed very strongly in the truths laid out in the Bible.

I have said it before and I will say it again. If we ever want to make America great again, we need to rediscover what made America great in the first place.

In this day and age so many believers are almost ashamed to stand up and say that they are Christians and that they believe that the Bible is the Word of God.

Those that wish to take America away from the values and principles that it was founded upon are very proud of what they believe, and we need to be even prouder of what we believe.

The fate of our country literally hangs in the balance, and so now is definitely not the time to be timid.