NelsonRushton
Doctorate in mathematics from the University of Georgia, specializing in probability theory. Masters in AI from the University of Georgia. 15 years as a computer science professor at Texas Tech. Now I work as a logician for an AI startup. Married with one son. He's an awesome little dude.
I identify as an Evangelical Christian, but many Evangelicals would say that I am a deist mystic, and that I am going to Hell. Spiritually, the difference between me and Jordan Peterson is that I believe in miracles. The difference between me and Thomas Paine (an actual deist mystic) is that I believe the Bible is a message to us from the Holy Spirit -- and the difference between me and Billy Graham is that I think there is noise in the signal.
User ID: 2940
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Any reader can compare what is actually Isaiah with your tripe about Humble forbearance.
Funny, that was going to be my argument, too (except for the word "tripe").
I think Thomas Sowell is hands down the most notable right-leaning political thinker of our lifetime, and Conflict of Visions is Sowell's favorite Sowell book. I hope you'll read it if you haven't.
chapters 13 and 14, not 3 and 4.
OK I see, you are quoting Chapter 13 not Chapter 3. Looks like the Babylonians are in for some Old Testament justice.
This is something I will address at greater length in my next post (note that it was me who first brought up Moses in connection with Genocide), but long story short is this: if we compare Mein Kampf and Isaiah, one is self-righteous, entitled, and enraged, and the other his humble, repentant, and resolved. Jamming on the enemy in itself has nothing to do with identity politics.
There is also an important question of fact here. The moral axiom that connects Judeo-Christian foreign policy , so to speak, from the bronze age to the 20th century is this: like a police officer making an arrest, you are obligated to handle your enemies with the lightest touch you safely can -- but no lighter, and them's the breaks. As a matter of fact, in the bronze age, the lightest touch you can safely use, when bordering a near-peer ruthless belligerent, may be enslavement or genocide (what is your other option? "I guess that war is over; whew; you can all go home now; better luck next time wiping us out and raping our wives and daughters "). But I do not believe Jews per se were threat to Germany at all -- even if Marxism was a threat to Germany (which it was), and Jews were disproportionally Marxist (which they were). The 30,000 Jews who won medals for bravery in WWI were certainly not a threat to Germany -- but many of those very men, and their families, perished in Nazi death camps all the same.
Now how did Hitler think when the shoe was on the other foot, and his own tribe was being a pest and got their asses kicked? If the allied cause was a Jewish conspiracy like Hitler charged, then he should have expected Old Testament justice at Versailles. Austria and Prussia, and their union in the German Empire, had fought bloody wars of aggression against the allies with whom they sought terms at Versailles, and in some cases against their fathers and grandfathers. So by Hitler's own logic, the allies would have been within their rights to push for a final solution to the German Problem while they had the upper hand. But the Versailles treaty, hard as it was on Germany, was not the Holocaust (not the same ballpark, not the same sport) -- and yet what did Hitler say about it? Vae Victus? No. What did we do to deserve this? Not exactly. He said it was an unfair, unjust, absolute abomination. Poor baby.
And that's identity politics: group justice with double standards. It is holding that your people are entitled to prey on others whenever the opportunity presents itself, and whining in self-righteous indignation when the shoe is on the other foot. The Hebrews didn't do that, and neither did the pagans.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Sources?
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
I was hoping you were referring to the dystopian movie Brazil, written by written by Terry Gilliam, Charles McKeown, and Tom Stoppard.
What are the references to? They don't seem to be from the book of Isaiah. For example you have
Every Babylonian who didn't manage to "flee to their native land" (3:14) would be slaughtered, including prisoners (3:15), infants (3:16,18)
But Isaiah 3:14-16 reads
The Lord will enter into judgment with the ancients of his people, and the princes thereof: for ye have eaten up the vineyard; the spoil of the poor is in your houses. What mean ye that ye beat my people to pieces, and grind the faces of the poor? saith the Lord God of hosts. Moreover the Lord saith, Because the daughters of Zion are haughty, and walk with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, walking and mincing as they go, and making a tinkling with their feet: Therefore the Lord will smite with a scab the crown of the head of the daughters of Zion, and the Lord will discover their secret parts. In that day the Lord will take away the bravery of their tinkling ornaments about their feet, and their cauls, and their round tires like the moon,
This is all about God's judgment upon Israel, and in any case doesn't match the themes of fleeing, slaughtering, prisoners, or infants.
Putting part of your post in quotes and googling leads me to this reddit thread: https://old.reddit.com/r/DebateReligion/comments/11a4ttc/isaiahs_prophecy_of_the_destruction_of_babylon_is/
which misquotes Isaiah over and over. Did you check those with the original source (the Bible) before you posted?
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
The holocaust's identity aspects weren't unique to Nazi Germany. Jewish pogroms had already been common in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and weren't seen as especially noteworthy.
Few characteristics outside mathematics and the physical sciences are unique to anything, but the matters of frequency and severity are what set things apart. Can you give some examples of pogroms you think are comparable to the Holocaust in scope and severity?
- It's true that ancient people didn't have the same justifications, but they lacked knowledge of genetics.
I don't think identity politics rests on a quantitative understanding of genetics. Everyone knows what tribes, races, and religions are.
The concept of Nazi Germany as uniquely evil wasn't even really a thing during and shortly after ww2
Can you support this, or any of the claims in the last two paragraphs?
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Sorry, I don't accept "agree to disagree"
lol. What does you not accepting it look like? Whatever it is, knock yourself out.
I think we've reached a terminal point in this thread of the discussion, where we are at what Sowell calls a "conflict of visions". I have read Isaiah in its entirety, and I presume you have as well. There is no more data to collect, but we see the data through the lens of different concepts and different values. The truth is, you aren't going to convince me of your reading of Isaiah through dialectic, and I'm not going to convince you of mine, even if we are both being honest and logical. The denial of that truth is a chief delusion of the so-called "Enlightenment". A sower went out to sow his seed; and as he sowed, some fell by the way side...". That's life.
With respect to "humble laments", sure there are plenty of Roman myths where the god, and by extension the people the god represents, are humbled in some sort of way.
I wish you would have given an example of a source. I'm skeptical of this (that any Roman myth has the tone and general purpose of Isaiah) to begin with, but if it comes without a source on the first stab, I'm doubly skeptical.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Coincidentally, I have also been thinking about communism a lot lately, namely, its impossibility, and how it is treated in public discourse. I guess I'll just add on to your thinking on it. [emphasis added]
Just two cents more on this. The most serpentine Marxists define socialism as the workers owning the means of production, without reference to state force. Alright then, what's stoppin' ya'? Surely someone could get a small business loan from Geroge Soros or somebody to start a small business -- say, a Taco Bell franchise -- that was collectively owned by the workers, and you're off to the races with your socialist experiment. Why no clamor for this from the Socialists? Not a peep?
The reason is that we know, and they know, that the truly employee-owned-and-managed Taco Bell would be almost certain to go out of business, beaten in the market by competitors owned by investors who hold the personnel accountable from the top down. It turns out that managing the means of production is a skill, that it is crucial to the success of any business, and that most cashiers and taco-makers don't have it. So... the only way that business can exist is with heavy handed, forcible intervention in the market -- say, to force all of its competitors into the same model. And then all of their suppliers (because the employee-run business can't afford market prices for stock and equipment), and all of their customers (because otherwise they buy from the lowest bidder to cut costs, which would be a top-down managed company), transitively, until you get guess what? A po-lice state.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
modern Ashkenazi Jews are descended from intermarried Jews and Romans.
Many modern people are descended from the interbreeding of masters and slaves. What I mean is, if only they had incorporated conquered people into their society having the rights of citizens.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Hitler's stated goal was to make the world better for ethnic Germans at no expenses spared for other ethnicities (and with particular vengeance towards some specific ones that he considered their sworn enemies).
Can you point me (or us) to Hitler's statements on this?
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
people ultimately believe that aiming to advance one race at the expense of others is intrinsically evil because they are instilled with this message from early on
I don't think this accurately describes our shared common moral sense. If people in a black church take up a collection to send money to hungry children in Zimbabwe, that they could have sent to even hungrier children in Ukraine, then they are advancing their race at the expense of others and few people have a problem with it, and I wouldn't have a problem with it. On a similar note using religion instead of race, if two people were taking up collections, one to aid persecuted Christians in Pakistan and one to aid persecuted Muslims in China, I would preferentially donate to save-the-Christians, and I think that is OK too, and I think it also accords with common sense (and that the push for "effective altruism" defies common sense).
What is wrong in our moral common sense is not advancing your people at the expense of others; it is advancing your people by violating the negative rights of others. Which is what Hitler (and Lenin and Mao) did, of course.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Then isn't the simpler explanation the years of propaganda they go through in public schools, or all the media portraying him as the ultimate evil, while the ins and outs of communism are mostly glossed over?
I'm surprised this has not been the go-to explanation in the discussion. The clue is not that Hitler is stigmatized, but the pattern of the what Moldbug calls the "cathedral" minimizing and excusing communist atrocities even after they became known. I think this pattern is obvious.
At least with hitler, as long as you weren’t… a jew, a slav, a jehovah’s witness, a political opponent, a homosexual, a cripple… you were sort of safe cravenly heil hitlering your way though the war-torn hellscape
I agree with you that Nazi persecution was more predictable and narrowly targeted than that of the communists, but you left one important group off your list of those who were marked for death by the Nazis: people who would not keep their mouth shut and their tail between their legs. The fact that there were so few of these is a testament to how ironically wrong Hitler was about the alleged greatness of the German Volk. Hitler pointedly lambasts sycophants in Mein Kampf, but he hypocritically demanded it of his vassals and subjects, on pain of death. Hitler reigned over a nation of Spucklecker (spit lickers; his term for sycophants) -- and if they hadn't been, he couldn't have.
I don't think spit-licker is too unkind a term for someone who professes Christianity, and yet silently, passively watches the Nazi persecution of the Jews. I have never done anything so brave as stand up to a murderous tyrannical regime, and so I cannot claim that I would have done anything different than what most Germans did, even most of the ones who recognized Hitler as a ruinous, berserk tyrant. Maybe I would and maybe I wouldn't. What I am saying is that those of us who are (or might be) spit-lickers should recognize those among us those who demonstrably aren't, such as Deitrich Bonhoeffer and Martin Niemöller, as better men than us in the most important way. In the words of Solzhenitsyn,
And as for him who lacks the courage to defend even his own soul, let him not brag of his progressive views, boast of his status as an academician or a recognized artist, a distinguished citizen or general. Let him say to himself plainly: I am cattle, I am a coward, I seek only warmth and to eat my fill.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
given that the deaths caused by Lenin and Mao are not exactly a secret.
Not exactly a secret, but not nearly as embedded in our cultural consciousness as those caused by Hitler. You should try asking 30 young adults who the most prolific mass murderers of the 20th century were. I did that experiment several times in the 90's. Stalin was rarely mentioned, and Mao was never mentioned once. Hitler was always the first name on the collective lips of the class. The situation is probably a little different now, but I would be very surprised if perception has caught up to reality.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
It is universally acknowledged that the Roman pantheon was fluid and integrated the idols of foreigners that came under the hegemony of the Roman people.
If only they integrated the people who worshiped those idols.
Nice thesis statement.
What I would be interested to see is evidence in the sacred texts of other religions, or in the histories of other tribes, of humble laments of the sort found in Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah -- in contrast with the "them's the breaks" tone of the pagan texts, or the "we got stabbed in the back by vermin within and without" tone of Mein Kampf. Of course I haven't read every mythological treatise of every world religion, so maybe you can teach me something.
That's what identity politics is. It's the belief that politics is about using the state to strengthen and benefit one's people.
I actually don't agree with this, and it is a central subject of my next planned post. The belief that politics is about "using the state to strengthen and benefit one's people" is what I would call the pagan view, but in my next post I will argue that Hitler was not a pagan. He doesn't want Germany to expand and flourish because they are his people, and he would not gracefully tolerate the same view from other tribes. Hitler wants Germany to expand, flourish, and conquer because they are the best people, in an absolute sense -- and that their flourishing and conquering at the expense of others is the only course in harmony with the one and only Natural Order.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Thanks. fixed.
I explicitly did not count famine deaths as murders, but counted them separately on top of murders. Note (with emphasis added):
caused the deaths of tens of millions more through ideology-driven malfeasance.
The number of Chinese civilians that were murdered and needlessly starved
Hitler's Identity Politics, Part I
(c) Feb 10, 2025, By J. Nelson Rushton
Note:
This post is an installment of a book I am writing, under the working title They See not, which I am serializing as a series of posts on The Motte. The book is planned to be about the nature and common characteristics of populist tyrannical movements, with special focus on the woke ideology, and about how to combat such movements. The first three posts in the series were:
- Introduction: Past peak Woke? Don't count on it.
- Say then, my friend... Plato on Democracy and Tyranny
- Victim Identity Politics and Wokenesss
The current chapter is entitled Hitler's Identity Politics ,Part I.
Introduction: Cargo-Cult Political Science
No one else is considered the face of modern evil like Hitler. That is peculiar, because Mao Zedong murdered far more people than Hitler did, and caused the deaths of tens of millions more through ideology-driven malfeasance. The number of Chinese civilians that were murdered and needlessly starved under Mao was probably greater than the total number of deaths in World War II and the Holocaust from all causes, on all sides, civilian and military combined [source]. Moreover, Bolshevik revolutionary leader Vladimir Lenin, the man who was Mao's practical model of success, murdered just as many as Hitler, and, unlike Hitler, founded a regime that transformed his country into Mordor for generations.
Yet a statue of Lenin, sans head, stood in the Mandalay Bay Hotel in Las Vegas for years. One stands in Seattle at the corner of 35th St. and Fremont as of this writing, and that one has the head on. It is not unusual to hear people quote the allegedly wise sayings of Mao and Lenin on their merits, even while being aware of their crimes. People say things like, As Mao Zedong said, women hold up half the sky. Joe Biden repeated this quote in 2021 in a commencement address at the US Coast Guard Academy, though he did not mention Mao. It also once happened that Trump unknowingly quoted Adolf Hitler, and you can compare the news coverage of those two events by looking at the results of this google search in terms of news coverage compared to this one.
While I believe that Mao was a man consumed by evil, I also believe that when Mao said women hold up half the sky, he identified an important truth and put it in a memorable and persuasive way. Is it OK to quote Mao on that, on the merits of the saying, in spite of the fact that he killed tens of millions of people? Some think it is and some think it isn't, and I honestly I don't know. But I do know that nobody (outside of a skinhead rally) begins a paragraph with "As Adolf Hitler said, ...". That is even though Hitler was a more cogent writer and speaker than Mao -- and, like Mao, or Lenin, or any other tyrant, some of what Hitler said had merit. Even a blind, evil pig finds an acorn once in a while. I also know that there aren't any statues of Hitler in Las Vegas or Seattle, with or without the head -- and no one would put one up because it would make them a social and economic pariah. So why is Hitler completely demonized, in a way that Lenin and Mao are not?
I submit there is a great deal of cargo-cult science surrounding Hitler. The phrase cargo cult science comes from Richard Feynman's 1974 Caltech commencement address, where he related the following story:
In the South Seas there is a "cargo cult" of people. During the war, they saw airplanes land with lots of good materials, and they want the same thing to happen now. So they've arranged to imitate things like runways, to put fires [like landing lights] along the sides of the runways, to make a wooden hut [like a control tower] for a man to sit in, with two wooden pieces on his head like headphones, and bars of bamboo sticking out like antennas. He's the controller, and they wait for the airplanes to land.
The moral of Feynman's story is that when you look at something to see what makes it tick, the features that matter are not always the ones that meet the eye most easily.
For example, in the broadest strokes, Hitler was a far-right national socialist. Many people hold that since Hitler was "far right", the more right-wing you are, the more like Hitler you must be. And many hold that, since Hitler was a nationalist, the more nationalist you are, the more like Hitler you must be. But, for some reason, vanishingly few people hold that the more socialist you are, the more like Hitler you must be -- even though, if one actually reads the Nazi platform, it has about as much for Bernie Sanders to love as it has for John Birch. But at the end of the day, saying that Hitler was essentially defined by his right-wingism, or his nationalism, or his socialism, just because he was a right wing national socialist, is no more logical per se than saying that what defined him was his distinctive style of moustache. Accepting any of these uncritically, from the nationalism to the socialism to the funny little moustache, is what Feynman would call cargo cult (political) science.
Beyond the question of what made Hitler and his ideology so evil, there is widespread uncritical acceptance of the proposition that Hitler was evil in the first place -- even radioactively evil, in a way that even Lenin, Stalin, and Mao Zedong are not, though the latter were more prolific mass murders. As a kid growing up in America in the 70's and 80's, I naturally accepted that Hitler was evil. It did not have to be explained to me in any detail what made Hitler count as being evil; duh, he started World War II and murdered six million Jews. Of course anyone who launches a war of conquest is pure evil. Like Hitler. Or James K. Polk. No, wait a minute; that can't be right. But of course anyone and orchestrates a genocide is evil. Like Hitler. Or Moses. No, wait a minute; that's not right either. Weights and weights, measures and measures.
Branding Hitler as evil without being able to cogently say why is dangerous for two reasons. First, it makes it more likely that we might be following in his footsteps without realizing it. Second, it increases the risk that our children will reject our assessment of Hitler when they see that we have made up our minds for no good reason -- and that could make them more vulnerable to jumping on the bandwagon if another Hitler comes along, especially a Hitler in sheep's clothing. For both of those reasons, it is important to understand what made Hitler Hitler in deeper than cargo-cult fashion, so that we can better recognize whatever that thing is in other contexts -- most importantly within our own hearts. Or do you believe that, whatever made Hitler Hitler, it can't happen here, or that you have none of it in you?
I will argue that what makes Hitler literally Hitler, first and foremost, was not his nationalism, or his socialism, or his right-wingism, or his wars of aggression, or even his penchant for genocide, but his identity politics. I define identity politics as the embrace of a caste system with different moral standards for different groups, based on demographic characteristics such as race, religion, and ethnicity. Hitler practiced identity politics of two substantively different forms: one form to rationalize his wars of aggression (primarily against Slavs), and another to rationalize his attempted genocide of the Jews. These will be discussed in the following sections.
Pagan Views of the International Order
Not everyone who launches wars of aggression, even copious wars of aggression, is trading in identity politics. Consider, for example, the opening lines of the Anglo Saxon epic Beowulf:
Lo! The Spear-Danes in days gone by
And the kings who ruled them had courage and greatness.
We have heard of those princes’ heroic campaigns.
There was Shield Sheafson, scourge of many tribes,
A wrecker of mead-benches, rampaging among foes.
This terror of the hall-troops had come far.
A foundling to start with, he would flourish later on
As his powers waxed and his worth was proved.
In the end each clan on the outlying coasts
Beyond the whale-road had to yield to him
And begin to pay tribute. That was one good king!
Note that in the Saxon mind, Shield Sheafson was "one good king". Why? Because he drove men in terror, not from their trenches, not from their fortresses, but from their bar stools, where they had presumably been minding their own business before he showed up -- and because he did this far and wide, making war on and subjugating, not one, not two, but every neighboring tribe, and exacting tribute from them like a schoolyard bully on an indefinite basis.
Note also what these lines do not say about Shield. They do not say that he settled some ancient score, or imposed cosmic justice on his tribe's historical exploiters, or even that the clans "beyond the whale road" deserved what they got because they were lesser men than the Danes. Sheafson's greatness lay in his sheer will-to-power and the macht to impose it on others. Moreover, the hero of the passage is not a member of the poet's tribe: Shield was a Dane, while the poet is a Saxon. If Shield Sheafson was a historical person, the author's ancestors may have been among his victims -- and yet the poet esteems Sheafson's mægen (greatness) impartially. Even if Shield was not a historical person, this glimpse into the Saxon mind tells us something important about them: if they glorify a Danish king for his rapacious imperialism, they certainly wouldn't need a moral pretext justify their own kings waging wars of aggression -- such as that targets had it coming because they did it to us first, or even because they were lesser men than us. The greater men they were before we whipped them, the better. Lo!
For a second example of the pagan view of warfare, consider Homer's Iliad. The Iliad tells the story of the beginning of the Trojan War. It is a tale of heroism and excellence on both sides -- but also, as much as anything, a lament for men caught in a bloody struggle whose making was beyond their control. If you had to pin the blame for the catastrophe on a single person it would be the Trojan prince Paris -- but he is more of a self-indulgent simpleton than a villain; his bumbling takes place before the story begins, and is barely deemed worth mentioning by Homer. In Homer, there are no black hats and no white hats, for individuals or for groups. Though the story was written by a Greek poet, and was a national epic of ancient Greece (comparable to a book of their Bible), it could have been written by a Trojan with much the same perspective, even if with far less craft.
Considering Beowulf and the Iliad side by side, we see that whether the story is written by the winners or the losers, there is no need in the pagan mind to cast international conflicts as matters of right and wrong, or of who is entitled to what (in stark contrast, for example, to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian people in modern times). We should be careful not project part of our own worldview onto Homer or the Beowulf poet, and ascribe to them the belief that "might makes right". In fact, they would find that view alien. Their view of international relations is not that might makes right, but that might makes might, and right barely enters into the picture. Lo!
For a third example we will consider the Roman Republic. In 61 BC, in honor of his 45th birthday, a monument was erected to the Roman general Pompey bearing this inscription:
Pompey, the people’s general, has in three years captured fifteen hundred cities, and slain, taken, or reduced to submission twelve million human beings.
There is no indication, in the inscription or anywhere else, that Pompey was seeking vengeance or justice, or that the Goths and Gauls he subjugated, enslaved, and killed were scumbags, or even bad folks.
The Romans did think of barbarians as lesser men than themselves, but they did not feel entitled by a sense of cosmic justice to rule over them on that account. On the contrary, the Romans believed that Heaven as well as Earth existed in a Hobbesian state of nature: an amoral war of all against all, or what we might call the "law of the jungle". While the Romans believed that their own gods favored Roman victory and imperialism, they also believed that foreign gods, just as real as their own, favored their barbarian adversaries in much the same way. Thus before battle, the Romans prayed not only to their own gods, but sometimes to those of their enemies as well. The Roman prayer to the gods of their enemies was known as the evocatio, and a version of this prayer, said during the siege of Carthage, is recorded by the Roman historian Macrobius Theodosius:
I call upon the one in whose protection are the people and community of Carthage,
whether it be a god or a goddess, and upon you above all,
who have undertaken to protect this city and people,
and ask you all for your favour:
may you all desert the people and community of Carthage,
leave their sacred places, temples, and city, and depart from them ...
and come to Rome, to me and my people,
and may our sacred places, temples, city be more acceptable and approved.
The Romans did not share our modern idea of human rights. Human rights, in the modern sense, are rights granted equally to all men by natural law. The Romans had a sophisticated code of due process, but the rights of the accused -- e.g., to stand trial and cross examine witnesses before being deprived of liberty or property -- were in their view not human rights granted to all men by natural law, but Roman rights granted to Romans by the state of Rome! Acts 22 relates the following:
When they tied Paul down to lash him, Paul said to the officer standing there, “Is it legal for you to whip a Roman citizen who hasn’t even been tried?” When the officer heard this, he went to the commander and asked, “What are you doing? This man is a Roman citizen!” So the commander went over and asked Paul, “Tell me, are you a Roman citizen?” “Yes, I certainly am,” Paul replied. “I am, too,” the commander muttered, “and it cost me plenty!” Paul answered, “But I am a citizen by birth!” The soldiers who were about to interrogate Paul quickly withdrew when they heard he was a Roman citizen, and the commander was frightened because he had ordered him bound and whipped. [Acts 22:25-29, NLT]
The passage records that under Roman law, jailing and flogging a Roman citizen without a trial was strictly forbidden, and must have carried a rather grievous penalty -- but jailing and flogging a mere human being without a trial was allowed. Even if this account is not fully historical, it must have been intended to be believable to its contemporaneous audience -- which could only be the case if that was indeed the Roman policy.
In the Roman mind, when Caesar conquered Gaul, he was not violating anyone's "human rights" -- for there were no "human rights" to violate in the first place. Does this mean that the Romans were engaging in identity politics? On the contrary, it means they were not. Identity politics is not merely protecting your own people and exploiting others; it is protecting your own people, and exploiting others, and then wailing and moaning in righteous indignation when the shoe is on the other foot. Identity politics is when Ibram Kendi complains about the Atlantic Slave trade and the exploitation of Native Americans America while turning a blind eye to the vicious enslavement of a million whites by the Barbary Pirates. But hypocritical, self-righteous wailing of this sort was not the Roman way.
Consider, for example, the Roman reaction to the worst defeat in the history of the Republic, in the Battle of Cannae at the hands of Hannibal Barca. Around 60,000 Romans were killed at Cannae in a single day -- far more than the number of Americans killed in the whole of the Korean war. Additionally, between 10,000 and 20,000 Roman soldiers were taken prisoner, and Hannibal sent ten of these to Rome to plead for ransom for the rest. And what was the conversation in Rome over this event? What an affront it was to the Natural Order for Romans to be defeated by barbarians? How Rome had been stabbed in the back by traitors from within and without? How it would never have happened but for the weather? As the Roman historian Livy relates the events, no to all of that. There was resolve to continue fighting, and a somber debate over whether to ransom the hostages. The decision of the senate was to not ransom the hostages, because this would only fill Hannibal's coffers and enable and encourage further aggression. The ten Roman soldiers who had come as a delegation to Rome were sent back to Hannibal under Roman guard -- because they had given their word to return to whatever fate awaited them at the hands of the foreign general. Even the law of the jungle is a law, and fair's fair.
The Hebrew View of the International Order
The ancient Hebrews were not pagans, and their view of tribal conflict was fundamentally different from that of pagans. The Hebrews held (and still hold) that the universe has an immutable and impartial moral compass, that points in the same direction for every man and every group of men -- and that therefore, when two tribes go to war, one must be in the wrong and deserve defeat. But the Hebrews were not fundamentalists; in the scads of wars that show up in their own historical account, half of the time it was the Hebrews that were in the wrong. More than half the time, actually, by my recollection.
As an illustration of the Hebrew view, consider the book of Isaiah. The backdrop is that the Hebrews have been defeated and enslaved by the Assyrians. It is a tale of privation, defeat, and despair. Here are a few snippets from Chapter 9 [KJV translation]:
The Lord shall set up the adversaries of [Syrian king] Rezin against him, and join his [Israel's] enemies together; The Syrians before, and the Philistines behind; and they shall devour Israel with open mouth. For all this his [God's] anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
...The Lord shall have no joy in their [Israel's] young men, neither shall have mercy on their fatherless and widows: for every one is an hypocrite and an evildoer, and every mouth speaketh folly. For all this his [God's] anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
... Through the wrath of the Lord of hosts is the land darkened, and the people shall be as the fuel of the fire: no man shall spare his brother. And he shall snatch on the right hand, and be hungry; and he shall eat on the left hand, and they shall not be satisfied: they shall eat every man the flesh of his own arm: Manasseh, Ephraim; and Ephraim, Manasseh [tribes of Israel]: and they together shall be against Judah [in Hebrew civil war]. For all this his [God's] anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still.
And why is this happening? Chapter 1 explains why, and almost every chapter thereafter reminds us: because the Jews have done wrong.
Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth: for the Lord hath spoken,
I have nourished and brought up children, and they have rebelled against me.
The ox knoweth his owner, and the ass his master's crib:
but Israel doth not know, my people doth not consider.
Ah sinful nation, a people laden with iniquity,
a seed of evildoers, children that are corrupters:
they have forsaken the Lord, they have provoked the Holy One of Israel unto anger,
they are gone away backward.
[Isaiah 1:3-4, KJV]
The conquest and subjugation of the Hebrews by the Assyrians was a historical event, and these verses were written by a Hebrew priest within living memory of it. Moreover, the attitude expressed in the book of Isaiah is not a one-off; it is characteristic of Hebrew culture over long periods. The books of Ezekiel and Jeremiah were written over a hundred years later, under similar circumstances of defeat and enslavement for the Hebrews, this time by the Babylonians. In all three books -- Isaiah, Ezekiel, and Jeremiah -- the Hebrews humbly accept their fate of defeat and cruel exploitation as a penalty for the error of their ways. The book of Daniel, while focusing more on a single individual captive in enemy hands, takes the same tone of humility and forbearance in defeat.
So the Hebrews teach that they are God's chosen people, but they are not chosen to rule the Earth. God does that. The Hebrews are chosen to receive God's law and proclaim it to the world, and in doing that to be held to a higher standard -- being especially blessed when they do right, but also especially cursed when they do wrong. It turns out people of every sort, Hebrew or otherwise, do wrong often enough this is no enviable bargain. As Tevye (Jewish main character in "Fiddler on the Roof") said, I know, I know, we're the chosen people. But once in a while, could You choose someone else?
Now here is a riddle for you: How is the book of Isaiah like Hitler's Mein Kampf? Answer: Both are stories of national desolation and defeat, told poignantly by one of the defeated -- and both blame the Jews. The next chapter will compare Hitler's view of the international order with the pagan view on the one hand, and the Hebrew view on the other, as well as with that of the woke movement.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
I haven't read this book
Good for you.
I hope he would have addressed the obvious objection that this creates a loop.
To understand why he doesn't think this way, you have to realize that in his worldview, the only kind of discrimination that needs to be remedied is discrimination against groups he favors, such as blacks. Discrimination against whites doesn't need to be remedied. So in his mind he is saying, the only remedy to past discrimination against blacks is present discrimination against whites. The only remedy to present discrimination against blacks is future discrimination against whites. No loop there. The discrimination against whites goes on forever, but for him that's not a loop; that's justice.
NelsonRushton
4mo ago
Lol. Not exactly a typo, but a calculation error. it should be 12% less, 44% vs 56%. Fixed now, thanks.
Oh, dang, I missed the Plato discussion.
Never too late.
This is a shame because I think you’re misreading a crucial part of it. Specifically here; the last time I made this argument (to @MaiqTheTrue) is here. In short, I think aging philosophers have been complaining about libertine, shiftless youth for literal millennia, but the predictions rarely come true. Athens was perfectly able to go to war, elect new leaders, corral its livestock, etc. up until they got subjugated by an outside tyrant. Though if you’ve made a case for the decline of virtue in Classical Athens, I’d be interested in seeing it.
Plato was clearly not saying that this (libertine-ness) was happening at the time he wrote The Republic. He was saying that it happens from time to time in various places, and that where it happens it is a symptom of coming tyranny. He had already lived through one such cycle in his 20's, and another one happened in Athens about 75 years after he wrote the Republic. It seemed to happen about every 100 years. Also, I do not accept the argument that the regime of the Thirty Tyrants had nothing to do with the moral fabric of Athens (see below). To elaborate on the words of Col. Jeff Cooper, armed men with moral courage cannot be easily tyrannized, and men with moral courage in the first place cannot easily be disarmed.
Athens was perfectly able to go to war, elect new leaders, corral its livestock, etc. up until they got subjugated by an outside tyrant.
Sometimes it was. Sometimes it wasn't. I'm not sure why you think Classical Athens was such a first world open society. Plato's Apology suggests that most people cooperated with the regime of the thirty tyrants as informers, as if the people of Athens, like Soviet Russia, was open to that sort of government by virtue of its failing values. The trial of Socrates happened in 399; that almost certainly a historical event, retold fairly accurately by Plato (since it is not contradicted by other sources, many of whom mention Socrates and were familiar with Plato's work). The trial related in The Apology not exactly a signal of a functioning democracy; it is a story of literally fatal cancel culture.
More importantly, the argument proves way too much. I could go down your tyrant checklist and fish for ways to make the prophecy fit Donald Trump, a textbook oligarch waving the flag of populism. Would that really be useful?
You could of course fish for that, or for an extended analogy between pinto beans and cardboard (they do kind of taste like cardboard, don't they?), or anything else you want to fish for. The trick is to actually do it -- and compare the two side by side. If you have the time I would be happy to see the results of your analogy with Trump.
This isn’t even your first time playing the lazy DRRR game.
Sorry. No idea what this means.
That makes it kind of pointless to draw your enemies as the soyjak.
Depends on how accurate the drawing is, and what other attempts to draw the same comparison you hold it next to. The details matter, and the control groups matter.
I wanted to discuss Plato because I think that post was a lot more interesting than this one.
Be my guest. I will respond to your replies to it (though they may not have a big audience)
You are not the first person to write an essay about how your opponents are Literally Hitler.
I didn't say anyone was literally Hitler. Please be smarter than this.
The Democrat agenda had thoroughly shifted by the Reagan years, and pretending otherwise is a cheap rhetorical trick.
This is beside the point. My point was that Byrd was forgiven for egregious racism in his distant past.
Also, I think you missed the salient point of the article on Plato. Plato obviously has a low opinion of the "democratic men" of his time, and was probably on the other side from them of the political aisle. Maybe they were right and he was wrong; that's perfectly possible and (note carefully that) I never made a claim about it. The main point is the resemblance between their agenda and that of modern progressives, which I find evidently uncanny.
This is the same org that recently said right wing extremism is the greatest threat to US national security. I never took them seriously as you seem to, but maybe I should have another look.
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