Libertad

On Jews, and the Death of Civilization

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So I’m listening to Andrew Klavan. He said that the reason we are having a population implosion in the West is because the relationship between men and women is out of whack.

That’s when it hit me – why there is so much focus on sexual sin in scripture. It’s one of the primary critiques of “traditional Christian values,” especially Evangelical values: we are obsessed with sex.

Think of this from the perspective of someone who experiences God as directly as he experiences forests and Mountain Dew: it strikes me that God’s deep interest in human sexuality amounts to something really simple: humans are His creation. His life’s work, if you will: we are his passion project, and He wants the project to succeed.

A critical population mass is required in order to sustain an economy. More importantly, a critical population mass is required in order to sustain the population itself – when birth rates decline for more than a generation or two, its almost impossible to turn that around.

All the things we do to sterilize ourselves, from “sexual imperialism” (ie, power- and wealth-based polygamy, which is actually what we are moving toward today… a controversial claim that’s really difficult for most people to accept) to abortion, have led to a stark decline in our population, and the resulting cracks in our economy are already starting to show. With as concerned as we are about global warming and reaching a “point of no return” in terms of global mean temperature, we’ve neglected a much greater, existential threat to human existence: the decline of human existence ITSELF. A weaker economy leads to less access to resources, leading to further population decline, and so on…

Now to my comment about polygamy. Statistics are showing something pretty startling: in our sexually libertine society, we are rapidly approaching and asymptotal trend where 80% of women are going to be voluntarily pairing with about 20% of men. “Advances” (I’ll save the antifeminist sermon for another day) in how we see gender roles have done little to overcome the vast majority of women’s evolutionary instincts: despite what we think, the way we feel in our bodies – and that includes who and what we are instinctively attracted to – hasn’t changed at all. Most women are still primarily interested in men who they perceive as having the ability to “protect and provide,” even if those signals are being transmitted on a subconscious level. Which, in the animal kingdom (and until the last 1500 years or so in the human kingdom) translated directly to competition for resources.

All other things being equal, we are going to end up back in a situation where the “top” 20% or so of men are the only ones engaged in perpetuating the species – and we’re already seeing a trend where the “losers” are leaving the game as more and more young men “check out” to watch porn and play video games. (I’m afraid there could be an apocalypse over this, BTW. You can’t just repress the most powerful biological urge in the universe, in 80% of the population, and not expect things to go horribly wrong. Just look at what sexual repression has done to Muslim communities. As unacceptable as it is to lash out violently in response to sexual frustration, I think there must be a point where enough young men become frustrated enough, that it boils over into a horrifying catastrophe like the one we saw on October 7th, 2023 – in which *sexual* violence figured prominently. I believe that the wealthiest and most powerful men in ancient times started wars specifically in order to deal with this problem – to send the “weaker” men off to vent their rage in mass, mutual die-ins rather than cause trouble at home. And here’s a reminder in case you missed it at the beginning: there is NEVER ANY EXCUSE for mass shooters or other evil individuals to lash out violently against innocent victims in response to their sexual frustration. If you’re seeing yourself in any of this “apocalyptic” language, GET HELP.)

In other words, counter-intuitively, the population size declines *faster* when people are sexually “liberated,” because there are – again, counter-intuitively – many fewer people participating. And the ones who do get to participate often end up voluntarily sterilizing themselves by various means in order to avoid dealing with the usual consequences (pregnancy) of their pleasures.

Of course God (or at the very least, the writers of the Old Testament – some of the most advanced thinkers in human history) had the perspective to see these outcomes several generations in advance. His primary concern in the Old Testament was the preservation of *His* people – and traditional Jewish sexual ethics have stood the test of time for that purpose. In spite of wave after wave of attempted genocides – something without any paralleled in human history – the Jewish population is one of the few distinct culture groups – maybe even the only one – that has managed to survive for many thousands of years.

Maybe if we value the enlightenment and it’s contributions to human flourishing, we should take a lesson or two from those “illiterate, iron-age goat-herders;” or, as we might want to call today’s version of them, “backward, sexually-repressed Bible-thumpers” – before the West sterilizes itself into extinction, along with everything it has ever built.

Oh, and to correct the record: they were shepherds, not goat herders.

And to correct it again: if they were illiterate, how did they manage to produce more written works than any other iron-age civilization?

Nonviolence is Immoral

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So you call yourself non-resistant.

Okay… but do you expect someone else to protect you? If not, then okay. But if you do, then I say you’re just a selfish coward. You think it’s okay for someone else to risk their own safety, but you’re not willing to risk yours.

What if you saw a woman being beaten in the street, right in front of you? Would you do anything to try to stop it? Maybe put yourself between the woman and her abuser? That’s forceful resistance – imposing your will on others. AKA, “governing.”

And you know you have an obligation to do that. Only the most morally destitute person would refuse.

But what if just getting in the way doesn’t help? What if her abuser has a weapon? What if he goes around you, or pushes you out of the way, so that he can continue to hurt her? What if force is the only thing that actually helps? What if the only way to stop him is by using violence?

Do you honestly believe that refusing to use violence, in that situation, would be the right thing to do?

You could say, “In that situation, maybe violence is necessary. But I’m not the right person to do it. It isn’t my job.” Someone should risk their safety to help her – but not you. Which is selfish and cowardly, no matter how you look at it.

And what if it wasn’t a stranger? What if it was your spouse, or your children? You have an instinct and a responsibility to keep them safe. You can’t just ignore that responsibility in the name of “non-resistance.” Choosing not protect yourself is okay… but not protecting your children?

Or let’s say your government has gone overseas to fight a war. Just like you are responsible for the safety of your family, the government is responsible for the safety of all its citizens. But maybe you expect the government to abdicate that responsibility. Maybe you expect them not to protect people who depend on them for their safety. Maybe you’re against all war – against all use of force and all violence. Well, that’s just as immoral.

I saw a group protesting “the war,” chanting, “Ceasefire now!” But all people have a right to defend themselves. If you looked down an alley and saw me fighting for my life, would you demand that I give up my weapons? Because that’s what you’re doing when you march in the streets and call for an end to “the war.” It’s the same as saying you want to take away my right to defend myself – which is immoral. It’s fine for you, if you choose not to defend yourself. But don’t take away my right to do it.

Everyone’s safety is everyone’s responsibility – including yours. And each person has the right to defend himself. You can’t take away my right to defend myself, and you can’t just look the other way while others are being harmed. You can’t “delegate” the use of force to a third party, and be totally unwilling to do it yourself. And you can’t demand that someone else come and take away my right to defend myself, while you smugly claim to be “non-resistant.”

That’s why non-violence, anti-war or anti-government activism, and the refusal to “get your hands dirty” are selfish, cowardly, and immoral.

How to Create An Anonymous, Private, Decentralized Social Network

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  1. The network in my imagination consists of Postal Workers,
    Directories, and Clients.
  2. Bob (a Client), lists the Postal Worker(s) that bring(s) him his
    messages in one or more Directories.
  3. To send Bob a message, Alice (another client) puts it into an
    envelop that only Bob can open. Then she queries the directory to
    find out who Bob’s Postal workers are and puts the FIRST envelop
    into ANOTHER ONE, that only one of Bob’s Postal Workers can open.
    (She can also send copies of the message to more than one of Bob’s
    Postal Workers if she wants to, just to make sure he gets it).
  4. Finally, Alice puts the SECOND envelope into a THIRD envelope,
    that only one of her own Postal Workers can open. (Again, she can
    give copies of her message to more than one Postal Worker if she
    wants to take extra precautions to ensure that the message gets
    delivered).
  5. Alice’ Postal Worker knows who the message is from, but not who
    it’s for. All he knows is which other Postal Worker he’s supposed to
    give it to.
  6. When Bob’s Postal Worker opens his envelope, he doesn’t know who
    the message came from or what’s in it; all he knows is who it’s for.
    This is how Tor works.
  7. When Bob receives Alice’ message, he can check to see whether her
    finger prints are on it. (He can also refuse to accept messages from
    people he isn’t already friends with).
  8. Bob doesn’t need to search the network for social media posts or
    other types of messages from Alice; instead, she just sends all her
    posts directly to one or more of the Postal Workers that work with
    Bob (or with any of her other subscribers).
  9. If there is a particular document Bob wants, he doesn’t need to
    search the network for it; he can just send Alice a request for the
    document, via whatever Postal Workers are in touch with her. Only
    Alice will know what Bob is asking her for, and only Bob gets to see
    the document. No one else even knows that the two of them are
    communicating with each other.
  10. If Alice’ Postal Workers wanted to spy on her, they would have
    to persuade Bob’s postal workers to collaborate with them, and that
    might be difficult to do if Bob was paying them enough money.
  11. If the government wanted to spy on Alice, they would have to
    force Alice’ Postal Workers to spy on her, and they would have to
    know Alice was talking to Bob – something not even her own Postal
    Workers would know – so that they could also force Bob’s Postal
    workers to spy on him.
  12. The likelihood of any one government forcing all the Postal
    Workers in the world to turn over all their envelopes all the time
    is low – and Bob and Alice could still protect against it by
    secretly working with an extra set of Postal Workers that they
    chose not to list in any Directory.
  13. A government could, theoretically, pass a law against operating
    as a Postal Worker. But it would be difficult to enforce, and
    Clients in that country would just start send their messages through
    Postal Workers in other countries.
  14. People could be incentivized to serve as Postal Workers by
    strongly-held beliefs, or by charging a fee. As someone else pointed
    out, “there will always be some Russian server willing to take your
    money in exchange for serving your posts.”
  15. Finally, there could be public review boards where Clients
    could post ratings and reviews of Postal Workers, to help other
    Clients decide who to work with and depend on.

Tyranny of Tyrannies

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Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.

― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology

What are you protesting?

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Imagine a world where there was a group of people who decided which ideas were “correct,” and made an example out of anyone who expressed dissent.

Imagine a world where people were not permitted to organize around a shared set of spiritual beliefs, or to share those beliefs with others.

Imagine a world where you had to surrender yourself as a slave to those who had access to the goods and services necessary for your survival, instead of engaging with them in an equitable, voluntary system of exchange.

Imagine a world where, once you had spent your time – which is your life – to earn money, that money and the things you bought with it could be taken away from you by people who you had no say in appointing.

Imagine living in a world where others could determine your status as a person, based on arbitrary criteria designed specifically to exclude you.

Being American means being willing to give your life to prevent that from happening.

And being against Israel means support for those who are willing to kill and die to ensure it happens to the Jewish people.