This is one of those common sentiments that mistakes human flourishing with access to comfort and cheap calories

Yes, grain is cheaper than ever and air conditioning is wonderful, as are antibiotics. But entirely gone are sovereignty and eudaimonia

That matters🧵👇 This is one of my pet peeves, and you see it everywhere

"If you have refrigeration/ice cream/air travel/whatever" you are "living better than X person you might want to be"

Typically kings and Rockefeller come up

What this misses is that that's far from all humans care about in terms of living well

The GOP must end the Reagan worship if it is to succeed in Making America Great Again

Why? His policies wrecked America in the long term

Yes, he fought the Soviets

But he also caused the illegal immigration crisis and destroyed marriage, and we must rectify those issues 🧵👇 This is a forgotten fact, hushed up because Reagan's pro-junk bonds stance buoyed the financial services industry and the Cold War ended in Soviet self-immolation rather than armageddon

But if you look at how his policies impacted America, "the Gipper," a 4-time FDR voter, was a disaster

This is an interesting question that comes up often

Why don't our billionaires build beautiful things as their Gilded Age counterparts did?

Because egalitarian mass democracy neither inculcates an honor-bound duty of noblesse oblige, nor incentivizes commons protection🧵👇 This is a cycle that often repeats: whereas the old wealth has (if properly taught virtue, as it should be) an understood duty to the commons because of the immense privilege with which it was born, "new men" only rarely grasp that duty

For one, they see their wealth as earned rather than the result of privilege, and so like Morrison in the Flashman series are loathe to part with it when called by duty to do so

But, more than that, they have a point: if self-made, they weren't born with the duties and privilege attendant to the silver spoon, and so don't have the same view of duty to the commons

This is why, as a side note, the House of Lords championed labor law reform that got rid of child labor, limited hours, etc.; duty

The Mandelas are back in the news thanks to his grandson's criminal behavior

So, time to discuss how awful the Mandela family was:

Nelson was a communist terrorist on the terror watchlist and his wife Winnie burned enemies alive in necklacing, a horrific execution method 🧵👇 Nelson Mandela himself is as good a place as any to start

While that stupid "Invictus" movie presented him as a lovable grandpa-type figure looking out for the good of the country, the reality is far different

Namely, Mandela was imprisoned not for being a "dissident," but for blowing up civilians in a bombing campaign

Thus misses the point: civilization there didn’t end when the worst of the gang stuff started, but when the political changes that enabled that horrific government decision to tolerate the gangs occurred

And when was that? 1911, with the Parliament Bill

🧵👇 Below is the history of that bill, and what the main change was for England, namely that the democratic elements were enabled by it, and bureaucrats then began to rule instead of country gentlemen, creating a disastrous feedback loop

https://twitter.com/will_tanner_1/status/1856364509197205807

If you’re on the right, and want to read books that present an invigorating view of a better world, what ought you read?

The best you could read are the novels of Jane Austen, as they show in unfrightening fashion a world of beauty and truth, which are our strengths

🧵👇 First, what is the right?

Since the French Revolution, it has, put simply, been the side of hierarchy and tradition

That has been lost in the US since it was eradicated to a great extent in and by the Late Unpleasantness

But, still, it is what the right is: natural hierarchy and the tradition that supports it as a political force, with the hierarchy component generally leading to the best governance over the long term as the best we’re in charge, and the tradition component keeping heritage intact and preventing radical shifts in direction

What should a republic's elite do? How ought they behave and for what reasons?

Tiberius Gracchus shows us: aristocratic populism, or the blending of aristocratic care for the state's long-term stability+health with a tribune's concern for the common man

I'll explain in my 🧵👇 Such is what Romulus originally intended of his kingdom. As recorded by Plutarch in his life of Romulus, the first patricians were meant to not be rapacious plutocrats, but true aristocrats who cared for their people:

“Romulus thought it the duty of the foremost and most influential citizens to watch over the more lowly with fatherly care and concern, while he taught the multitude not to fear their superiors nor be vexed at their honours, but to exercise goodwill towards them, considering them and addressing them as fathers[.]”

🧵
Remember, it was foreign labor displacing Romans that infuriated Tiberius Gracchus and sparked his political career. As Plutarch records:

“[W]hen Tiberius went through Tuscany to Numantia, and found the country almost depopulated, there being hardly any free husbandmen or shepherds, but for the most part only barbarian, imported slaves, he then first conceived the course of policy which in the sequel proved so fatal to his family. Though it is also most certain that the people themselves chiefly excited his zeal and determination in the prosecution of it, by setting up writings upon the porches, walls, and monuments, calling upon him to reinstate the poor citizens in their former possessions.” And it is not to be forgotten that it is that foreign labor that hollowed out the Republic from within, replacing sturdy yeomen with foreign slaves, and driving the former footsoldiers of the Republic into the inner city slums:

"the rich men of the neighbourhood contrived to get these lands again into their possession, under other people's names, and at last would not stick to claim most of them publicly in their own. The poor, who were thus deprived of their farms, were no longer either ready, as they had formerly been, to serve in war or careful in the education of their children; insomuch that in a short time there were comparatively few freemen remaining in all Italy, which swarmed with workhouses full of foreign-born slaves. These the rich men employed in cultivating their ground of which they dispossessed the citizens.”

He just died so we're supposed to pretend he's a saint, but Carter was instrumental in killing the free, prosperous state of Rhodesia and aiding Mugabe in his takeover of it, then transforming it into hellish Zimbabwe

In fact, after Harold Wilson, Carter's the key villain🧵👇 I've written much about this before, but a quick summary to set the scene:

Carter was elected in '76 and acceded to power in '77. This coincided with the Bush War taking its final, much more intense form, with Soviet and CCP-backed rebels infiltrating from Zambia and Mozambique, which the Portuguese had lost in '75 after the '74 Carnation Revolution

The Rhodesian Front government, still generally supported by most blacks and whites within the country, was fighting for its life against those communist rebels and in desperate need of Western aid to survive. Its survival would have mean a bulwark against the communists in one of the world's key regions.

It needed that aid because the South Africans had generally stopped helping, as they sensed which way the wind was blowing and sought detente in their region with the black communist governments, and thought throwing Rhodesia to the wolves would buy them some time. Meanwhile, the whole world other than South Africa and Israel had gone along with UN sanctions of Rhodesia, cutting it off from needed trade and access to supplies

It's incredible how little reflection went into this "America needs a billion Tiger Moms" post, as it totally misunderstands what sort of spirit made the West great, and is just an attempt to replace what remains of that unique spirit with a slavish one

A short 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/VivekGRamaswamy/status/1872312139945234507

What made the West great, and indeed what made the Occident different from everywhere else, was a very different attitude: individual excellence paired with social charm and grace, and caring deeply about that social aspect of life

So, adventurers, officers, country squires, and all the rest who took over the world on behalf of the Occident over the 18th and 19th century were expected to be well-read, be brave, and be charming; except in rare cases of eccentricity, it wouldn't do to just have one of those virtues

"They do the jobs Americans can't and won't"

The current argument for H-1b expansion is just the illegal immigration argument applied to office work, and is what happened during the Gilded Age, to America's great misfortune

A short 🧵👇 That is incorrect in white-collar work and in the blue-collar work ravaged by decades of mass migration into America.

What is undoubtedly true is that Third World imports can and will work for far less than Americans, and often in far worse conditions...

Well, that and, as @loganclarkhall pointed out, the groups prioritized for H-1b economic migration tend to vote blue (Indians, for example, went for Kamala 70-30)

Why is it that leftists are always so opposed to pedos facing any sort of justice for their abuse of kids? It's not that they're all pedos, which is the usual answer

No, it's Bioleninism, the idea that nature's worst should rule, the dominating ideology of the present 🧵👇 That's not to say many of them aren't pedos, that's certainly the case. But it's not the whole situation, not why it's allowed

Take the case below: some transgender weirdo buying a child through surrogacy so that he can play mom.

Why would the regime allow this shocking, dangerous behavior to happen? It's because they want a loyal class of followers - an army of jannissaries - who will be ruthlessly loyal to this regime because it's the only one that'll allow them to act out their worst and most degenerate impulses.

No other regime would allow this. It's too sick, too weird, too morally wrong. But that's not really the point. Ours doesn't care about morality. It does care about having soldiers in its war on nature.

This is undoubtedly accurate, but I don't see much recognition of why it's the case

Democracy, by its nature, empowers bureaucracy

This is the opposite of rule by gentlemen, and it's what has led us quite quickly to the hell of bureaucratic tyranny

I'll explain in the 🧵👇 It all comes down to incentives, and the fact that there are two basic types of on-the-ground governance, whatever the highest form of government is:

One is local lords, or gentry. This is when the big landowner(s) in a given area, generally a town or county, handles the administration of it. This is generally the traditional form of government, hence the title "count" and unit "county," though barons also filled this role.

The other is bureaucracy of one sort another. This is when appointed government officials have a grant of power to rule over a certain aspect of life in the aforementioned administrative unit. This is the Parks and Rec form of government, where various forms of petty individuals are put in charge to regulate some aspect of life in that area

Do people really not know about primogeniture and entail?

The reason for this is that the Anglosphere continued operating on that concept into the 20th century, even when not legally required: the land was kept intact to keep with the title at each generation

A quick 🧵👇

https://twitter.com/ichthys30/status/1869432566434148710

Generally this was the eldest surviving son, but it could go to a cousin, as happens in Downton Abbey, if that person is the one in line for the title

But the actual legal mechanism by which land was tied together and passed down was somewhat different, as primogeniture as a requirement ended over the 18th and early 19th centuries

Why's he so angry? Because this is a Trump-sparked, quiet reversal of the civilization-obliterating DEI mindset that has been pushing America toward South Africanization

We'll now see if this is a bump on a dark path to bloody South African egalitarianism or a real reversal🧵👇 The degree to which DEI, the polite name for race communism, leads to perdition can't be overstated

And though South Africa's descent is highly relevant, really it's Zimbabwe that best emphasizes the ends of that mindset

It was best reflected when Mugabe said, "The only white man you can trust is a dead white man... our party must continue to strike fear in the heart of the white man, our real enemy... the white man is not indigenous to Africa."

He proceeded to expropriate the white-owned farms and chase the white farmers out of the country. The result of that race communist tyranny was not just horror and murder for the whites, but starvation and hyperinflation for the blacks he claimed to be aiding

Buffett is portrayed as being virtuous for this "I never wanted to found a dynasty" attitude but it's actually quite anti-civilizational, and is the opposite of how the men who built the West thought

The thing is, it's only dynastic thinking that leads to lont-term thinking🧵👇 This is, frankly, the difference between a Lord and a modern CEO:

One cares about what will be happening 6 quarters from now, if he thinks even that far ahead. The other thinks six generations from now, as it is his duty to do so

While Buffett is undoubtedly a longer-term thinker than most of his peer group, he still faces the modern problem of assuming that what is most moral is for things to be (mostly) reset at each generation. He (and many others like him) see inheritance of a vast fortune as wrong because it is "unearned"

So, instead of keeping the fortune intact so that it can be used for great ends, it's wasted away on vague "philanthropy" that does little, in the end, to actually help anyone, at least compared to what could be done with a vast estate

This was somewhat accurate around the early 20th century and is becoming true again, at least for some swathes of people in some jobs

But it was fixed then and could be fixed with similar policies now

Fortunately, it was McKinely who fixed it and Trump wants to emulate him🧵👇 McKinley's main problem, as a governer and then as president, was that labor and capital were at each other's throats, seeing each other as the enemy

Both had fair points

On one hand, labor was underpaid compared to its basic life expenses, though things were better for our industrial laborers than in England

But, on the other, capital noted that stiff competition from abroad via imports meant that higher wages weren't economically feasible. It's profits were generally thin, thanks to imports, so higher wages would sink companies and lead to higher unemployment

And, both sides had valid complaints of violence directed at them; tempers were reaching a boiling point

I get that this is supposed to be a positive image showing American continuity, but really it shows how devastating to the national psyche the Depression and FDR were

A quick 🧵👇 This is observable in attire: three men on the right all have some degree of continuity to them

The colonial era, early republican era, and latter 19th century all were somewhat different, as attire shows, but there was no great breakdown

So breeches turned to trousers, tricorns to top hats, cravats to ties, and so on, but the progression was understandable in response to the changing environment and nature of life; life as a gentleman in Mrs. Astor's New York is different than that of a planter in 1720, so clothing changed

A great challenge for America is that it's become a twisted version of England in the early 20th century

This is best seen in land and elite social life, but is present everywhere; in all cases, we must overcome the change or we'll face the fate of our English cousins🧵👇
First, what was going on with England?

The years that followed the beginning of the Agricultural Depression and preceded WW1 saw immense change of a bad sort

For one, free trade was eating away the country. Its now uneconomic farms were lying fallow, its factories facing unbeatable competition from the much larger markets abroad with industrial innovation and prosperity slowing as a result, and its trade deficit widening dramatically

Similarly problematic was how social changes were going. King Edward famously surrounding himself with various sorts of disreputable characters, from banksters to actresses, rather than the old-blooded Lords. That presaged similar changes, with Churchill taxing away the wealth of those Lords with his People's Budget and Lloyd George destroying their power with his Parliament Bill. Alongside their loss of the prestige and political position of the old families came a change in social mores: gone were the old, Christian values and in was the free-living "fast set" with its rampant infidelity and eyebrow-raising lifestyle.

And, of course, those changes brought with them immense upheaval in the basic life of the land. A great example is foxhunting: whereas in the past the activity was a country sport enjoyed by locals of all stripes, from the sons of small farmers to the local magnate, railroads turned it into something the new elite felt compelled to engage in for reasons of status. So the farmers were screened out, the magnates saw their fields full of new men, and what had been a jovial activity that created bonds between the rural classes became something decidedly otherwise; the new elites lacked concern or care for their inferiors, being ruled by money rather than tradition and noblesse oblige

This is the most imbecilic tax proposal, given what it means for society and tradition

“A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they shall never sit," as the proverb goes

This forces them to cut trees down, and England's decline shows where that goes🧵👇 First off, the obvious problem with this, regardless of tradition, is that it makes it essentially illegal to build anything that matters

All great projects, whether a farm or kingdom, JP Morgan-style bank or SpaceX-style goal to settle Mars, are multi-generational. It takes time to build, decades of investment and work, and so on

All the jobs, all the advancements, all the achievements that come from those multi-generation projects are great things for society but they don't occur in a vacuum. They require that willingness to invest in the future that only really comes when one knows that the future will be their through heirs

Often, those heirs are children, but sometimes, as in the case of the Antonines or later Morgans, they are chosen successors. Regardless, what matters is that it can be passed on so that the future can be thought of and invested in, that once the boy earns his spurs he can be trusted with the kingdom

Is there an antidote to egalitarianism and its ill effects that doesn't require some sort of autocracy?

This is a question I was recently asked, and it's an interesting one

The answer is yes. That antidote is pairing a landed, tradition-minded elite with propertied voting🧵👇 The problem is that egalitarianism, or the idea that 1) all outcomes must be equal and 2) it is the regime's duty to destroy any differences that exist, leads to immense civilizational problems that are as varied as they are caustic

A good example is "disparate impact" prohibition. This is the idea that if any test for employment, schooling, punishment of unruly students, etc. is failed by a certain group (e.g. black women) at a higher rate than others, it's illegal and must be illegal because it's discriminatory, even if no intentional discrimination was involved in the creation of the test. This is why failed candidates for police/fire departments will routinely win millions of dollars for not being able to do push-ups or basic reasoning questions (this happened twice recently), why a woman won millions of dollars from Equinox when fired for failing to show up to work on time dozens of times, and so on

Of course, that sort of thinking and its various step-children (affirmative action for schooling, DEI for hiring, and so on) make it impossible to get anything done. Semiconductors can't be created when employees behave erratically, rockets don't work when the math isn't exactly correct, water can't have just a little bit of cholera in it