Luke Ford

Comments to Steve Sailer:

* I understand the concept of social hierarchy. What I can’t understand is who gets to decide if one can move up, or if the relationships between the layers can be changed, or if a new layer can be added. Who gets to say, “This is it; this is the hierarchy that we need”? Leaving that aside, if we just say that we accept the hierarchy as it currently exists, how does it ever change and who gets to decide if it’s okay to make changes? By example, we had a certain hierarchy in the USA in 1860. Few would say that we should still have that hierarchy today. When did it become okay to change that hierarchy, or should it never have been changed?

* Inequality is a natural outgrowth of liberty, which permits people to realize their differing potentials (for good or for bad). Equality of condition can only be realized by suppressing liberty; the tall flowers are cut off, the nail that sticks up is pounded down till it no longer does.

The much-vaunted “equality of opportunity” is a mirage, for only equal persons can seize opportunities equally – and no two persons are equal in any sense – not physically, not mentally, not morally. This, as another great conservative now unjustly ignored, Mel Bradford, once said, is the truly self-evident proposition.

The only equality that a free society can or should expect to offer is the equal application of its rules. Liberty permits each player of the game of life to bring his unequal talents to the contest, and lets the best man win.

* I think the point is that if you want to create a taboo around certain kinds of political questions, it helps if 500,000 people died in the recent past over that question. For example, I think the Holocaust has resulted in shutting down a broad swath of political questions, and I don’t mean through criminal laws, I mean mostly unconsciously. [Yes, I am sure that some groups have self-consciously used the Holocaust for political ends, but I imagine that these taboos would still be in place if these groups did not even exist.]

If you don’t believe me, try to publish an essay on why Southern Christians were correct that Christianity permits and encourages slavery, or write an essay on why Hitler was a great leader of the same stature as Roosevelt and Churchill and has been unfairly maligned. See what happens.

Why? Is it because no cogent case can be made for these positions (even though many such cogent cases were made during the time that these were open questions)? No, I think it is the power of blood that prevents it.

* Blood & Soil:

My country, ’tis of thee,
Sweet land of liberty,
Of thee I sing;
Land where my fathers died,
Land of the pilgrims’ pride,
From ev’ry mountainside
Let freedom ring!

Our joyful hearts today,
Their grateful tribute pay,
Happy and free,
After our toils and fears,
After our blood and tears,
Strong with our hundred years,
O God, to Thee.

* Conservatives are plugging into Kirk, sometimes unknowingly, when they wax longingly about Tolkien’s depiction of the Hobbits and the Shire- free people, different people, living in their own communities, side-by-side, in peace, making their own industry, being different people and different communities.
The conservative loss of this notion is in part due to a generalized demotion across the political spectrum that’s been applied to the rights of communities to exist, in their own right.
That takes many forms. Undermining freedom of association is one, although the decimation of unions and organized labor is another. Of course – organized labor has a bloody hand in its own decimation but that’s another story.
Trump doesn’t represent the opposite of this. Trump is correctly understood by those with perspective, across the pond, who see him as manifesting ethnonationalist proto-fascism. Fascism is “capitalism in decay” (h/t: Vladimir Lenin) – it is the attempt to use force to impose order when self-organizing methods of preserving order fail, or “decay”.

Conservatives should resist the temptation to turn to fascism, as we’d expect of the hobbits and of Tolkien. Instead: conservatives, in the spirit of Kirk, should organize to reverse the atomizing forces everywhere they are. Fight atomization. Strengthen the ability of communities to cohere and to remain coherent, while also co-existing.

* If we are interested in the real world, there was nothing in the Italian Fascist movement or the German National Socialist movement that related in any way to immigration. Both Mussolini and Hitler encouraged emigration from their countries, and Mussolini was angry when Americans restricted immigration in the 1920′s. If he was alive today, he would be taking the same policy tact that Soros takes on American immigration policy. So if anyone is siding with the positions of the actual fascist movement, it is the open borders crowd.

The actual parallel for Trump would be the Israeli Right, both with respect to immigration restrictions on Muslims, and building a wall. Is it is a fair comparison to say the Israeli Right are Nazi’s or fascists? Whether or not the Israeli Right are your political cup of tea, it is a grotesque distortion to call them Nazi’s.

* Vox magazine not regarded as either right-wing or particularly friendly to Trump. Nonetheless, they sat down to speak with several experts who all concur that Trump is not a fascist.

You note the names four experts who all conclude Trump is definitely not a fascist: Roger Griffin, Mathew Feldman, Robert Paxton, Stanely Paine. You will find that many of these individuals are associated with left wing political movements and hostile to fascism.

It gives one the distinct impression that anyone who says that Trump is a fascist is either ignorant, a liar or certifiably delusional. Perhaps you are simply speaking an “emotional truth” like those who deny that Obama has valid U.S. Citizenship?

I would recommend going back to reading Jonah Goldberg. As you know, he believes all liberals such as Hillary Clinton are fascists, so I am sure based on his exacting scholarship that Trump is a fascist too.

Steve Sailer writes: About a decade ago, a friend of mine who is a big time senior lawyer in an Anglosphere country invited me to attend a series of symposiums and social events he was hosting for two visiting U.S. Supreme Court justices at his world famous golf club. I couldn’t afford to go so far, but when we had lunch at the L.A. County Museum of Art in 2013, he reported that Justice Breyer was a prince of a guest.

He had much more interesting gossip to report about the other Justice.

COMMENTS:

* That’s possibly the worst, vaguest blind item I’ve seen in years. There’s no hint of who the other justice is, and no hint of what the “more interesting gossip” might be. Really, fix that if you want us guessing and salivating.

That said, I’ve noticed for a while now that Supreme Court justices have always been extremely long-lived and extremely long-worked. The shining symbol is Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who was a judge for 50 years, including 30 on the Supreme Court, and was actively working on the Supreme Court until he was 93.

Part of it is that most justices have decided the case long before oral argument due to their own philosophies, so there really isn’t much new thinking going on (all that “hot bench” type quizzing of lawyers is for show, and was largely Scalia-driven). Overall, court cases on appeal (which is what the Supreme Court hears ) don’t require a lot of fast mental agility or quick thinking; the process is built towards slow, laborious deep thought that an older justice can do well.

The privacy, insulation, and resources afforded the justices are very conducive to longevity. A couple of young bright clerks every year do any minor rush/grunt work that is needed (spell checking, citation checking, etc.), but there is no press beating down your door, there really aren’t any huge deadlines, and your job is secure as long as you want it. Marshall and Blackmun’s mental deterioration were never noted until after they died, because the press never could get to them and their clerks could cover the slack.

And summers off. Don’t forget the job gives them from late spring to early fall (first Monday in October) off. That’s a great gig for anyone.

All in all, a Supreme Court Justice’s job is pretty idealized for an older, wiser mentor-type. It’s a call back to some kind of retired-consigliere type position or old, wise man sinecure in other societies, where the old men would be asked large philosophical questions by the leaders, but were not expected to be involved in the day-to-day affairs.

* $214,000 is certainly too little if you want Justices who will have a more traditional family life and raise children.
This maybe partially explains the trend towards childless /homosexuals on the bench (Souter, Sotomayor, Kagan.)
Scalia had a few kids but they went to public schools in Mclean.

* Maybe I’m missing something, but I don’t see anything to get upset about here. They are extremely powerful people, and they (consequently, in part) have nice lives. Of the various potential ways for them to be corrupted, teaching a few silly classes in exchange for a summer in Salzburg sounds pretty innocuous.