NYT: Why Won’t White People Admit Defeat And Go Away Quietly?

00:00 Healthcare worker, 46, tied to a THOUSAND unexplained deaths of elderly patients in Texas
02:00 TRUMP PLANS TO INVOKE INSURRECTION ACT TO BOOT ILLEGAL IMMIGRANTS
05:00 Iran, Saudi Arabia, Syria
11:00 Brexit, Teresa May
15:00 Brazilian minister is mocked for claiming Frozen character Elsa ‘is a lesbian who is turning children gay’
18:00 Beto O’Rourke mocked for posting Facebook Live haircut video
21:00 LAT: Yesterday once more: The feel-good sadness of a Carpenters fan convention
57:00 NYT: Why Won’t White People Admit Defeat And Go Away Quietly?
1:10:00 Neocons & Saudis Demand War With Iran, Trump Says No
1:11:00 The Only Unforgivable Crime In Clown World Is Noticing Things [American Greatness essay]
1:20:00 China Roundup [Incorporates Trump Goes Directly After Huawei, Brett Stephens Cucks Out On Tariffs, Walmart Weathers The Storm]
1:32:00 Racist ‘promposal’ sign will lead to ‘severe consequences’ for Southern California students
1:37:00 Hawley Calls on GOP to Revitalize ‘Great American Middle’ in Maiden Floor Speech
1:40:00 SAT Awards Test-Takers Points For Being Not Smart
1:42:00 UK Military Mobilizes Against Household Utensils
2:05:00 Nipsey Hussle Wasn’t Rich?
2:20:00 Theater Thursday: Croupier (1998)
3:30:00 Interview with a man who had a relationship with an ex-porn star

https://isteve.blogspot.com/2006/05/why-multicultural-societies-are-less.html

https://dailycaller.com/2019/05/16/donald-trump-insurrection-act-illegal-immigration/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7037177/Healthcare-worker-suspected-involved-thousand-deaths-charged-12-murders.html

https://nypost.com/2019/05/16/walmart-announces-record-sales-growth-but-warns-of-higher-prices-due-to-tariffs/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7035493/Brazilian-minister-mocked-claiming-Frozen-character-Elsa-lesbian.html

https://nypost.com/2019/05/14/de-blasio-once-again-disgraced-nyc-with-trump-tower-stunt/

https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/transgender-woman-vagina-made-out-16061951

https://nypost.com/2019/05/15/feds-id-verification-letters-frighten-eateries-hotels-that-hire-immigrants/

https://nypost.com/2019/05/16/chick-fil-a-says-it-has-much-higher-calling-amid-charity-backlash/

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7037271/America-launch-precision-strikes-against-Iran-says-Saudi-state-newspaper.html

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/knife-crime-uk-stabbings-gavin-williamson-military-police-cressida-dick-a8809581.html

https://www.latimes.com/entertainment/music/la-ca-ms-carpenters-karen-50th-anniversary-convention-downey-20190516-story.html

https://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-racist-promposal-social-media-palos-verdes-20190516-story.html

https://nypost.com/2019/05/15/jeff-koons-rabbit-sculpture-goes-for-record-91m/

https://nypost.com/2019/05/15/beto-orourke-mocked-for-posting-facebook-live-haircut-video/

https://nypost.com/2019/05/16/death-row-inmate-forgoes-final-meal-to-feed-the-homeless/

https://nypost.com/2019/05/16/pope-gives-migrant-kids-a-ride-in-his-popemobile-in-vatican-city/

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BuzzFeed: Leaked Records Reveal Tony Robbins Berated Abuse Victims, And Former Followers Accuse Him Of Sexual Advances

I’ve made several posts about Tony Robbins over the years, several of which presaged the recent BuzzFeed expose:

Two former followers who went on to work for Robbins provided BuzzFeed News with signed statements swearing under oath that they felt he had sexually harassed them by repeatedly pursuing them after they made clear they weren’t interested. Two more women who worked as his assistants said Robbins expected them to work alone with him when he was naked in his hotel room or in the shower. And another former employee said she was fired after having a consensual sexual relationship with Robbins. The events described by all five women took place in the 1990s and early 2000s, when Robbins’ fame was skyrocketing and before he married his second wife…

…Interviews and records reveal how Robbins has created a highly sexualized environment in which both men and women have been told to touch themselves intimately and simulate orgasms — but he has repeatedly singled women out of the crowd for more personal attention. One secret recording from 2018 captured him laughing as he told a woman in the audience that he wanted her to “come up onstage and make love to me.” And two former bodyguards told BuzzFeed News they were sent out to trawl audiences for attractive women on Robbins’ behalf. Two women told BuzzFeed News they had witnessed it or experienced it themselves.

…Robbins’ intensive multiday events are often held in rooms kept deliberately cold and run from early in the morning to well past midnight, with few breaks for food and water. Followers are encouraged to run across hot coals. Internal company emails reveal concerns about fans suffering mental breakdowns after days of emotional exhaustion as well as “sleep deprivation and dehydration.” In this intense atmosphere, some audience members became disoriented as the days went by, said Todd Spendley, a former logistics contractor for the organization. “We used to joke about it,” he said. “People started ‘popping like popcorn.’”

…Robbins demanded relentless energy and a willingness to confront your darkest fears. He spoke openly about his use of “taboo language,” humor, and other shock tactics to try to shake fans out of emotional stagnation — often swearing, berating audience members, and talking graphically about sex — and he didn’t censor himself even when addressing his most troubled fans. For some, this led to ecstasy. Others found his events mentally and physically shattering.

King said he soon found that a key part of his job involved responding to calls about participants who had threatened or attempted suicide or needed to be hospitalized after suffering mental breakdowns. At one 1995 Life Mastery event in Hawaii, he said he had to intervene after one participant started biting members of the hotel’s security staff and guests. “I was dealing with crisis and emotional meltdowns from the start,” he told BuzzFeed News.

“Date With Destiny” events could be especially difficult. The six-day program, which currently costs as much as $7,995 per person, left little time for sleep or rest and was packed with soul-searching activities and deeply personal “interventions” in which Robbins selected audience members to publicly unpack their despair.

…Gary King said this was the sort of line he had often heard Robbins use to distract nervous women during fire-walks: “Which one of your breasts is bigger?” And by now, he had reason to believe that Robbins’ intimate interest in his female fans was more than just professional.

King said that Robbins often dispatched him to get the phone numbers of attractive women in the audience, an allegation which Robbins’ lawyers fiercely denied. Though he felt deep down that what he saw wasn’t right, King said his entire world revolved around Robbins, so he tried to bury his discomfort. But as time went on, he said, his concerns grew. “Ultimate power corrupts,” King said. “I watched it like a movie unfolding.”

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LAT: Yesterday once more: The feel-good sadness of a Carpenters fan convention

From the Los Angeles Times:

Downey, about 13 miles south of Los Angeles, officially became a city in 1956. By then a growing aerospace industry had established it as a free-standing suburban enclave. Downey scored big in the pop-culture sweepstakes: It has the oldest surviving McDonalds and is the birthplace of Taco Bell. It was a hot-rod hotbed and home to musicians Dave and Phil Alvin, Metallica’s James Hetfield and Weird Al Yankovic.

But it wasn’t any music from Downey that affected the Carpenters sound; it was the orderliness and control of the place itself. After restrictive covenants were ruled unenforceable, real estate agents found ways to keep homeowners from selling to nonwhites. Then, in the aftermath of the Watts riots of 1965, whites fled many communities bordering Downey, but the city itself remained unchanged and unruffled, in large part because it had its own police and fire departments and school district, and was thus able to fend off integration for some years to come.

Agnes and Harold Carpenter, Karen and Richard’s parents, moved the family from New Haven, Conn. to Downey in 1963, in large part to continue Richard’s musical education. Once there, their kids created a sound out of various playfully high-toned California musics, including Burt Bacharach’s commuter romanticism, the go-kart go of the Beach Boys and the whiz-bang vocalizing of the Hi-Los and the Anita Kerr Singers. The sound and lyrics carried a nostalgic longing for the way things used to be almost from the moment the Carpenters started. Karen and Richard were in their 20s and wishing for it to be yesterday once more.

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The Left Has The Mandate of Heaven

Kyle Rowland writes: The Left has the Mandate of Heaven, and everyone knows it.

That which is held sacred by the left is held sacred by all. If I were to blaspheme, no-one would be shaken. When I declare myself an atheist, barely a whimper emits from devout Christians. When I mention that I do not keep kosher, no outrage issues forth from practicing Jews. The disapproval, to the extent that it exists, is of a dry and perfunctory nature.

On the other hand, were I to attack that which is held sacred by the left, directly — were I to speak with true insensitivity about issues of racial and social justice — everyone would feel the danger. Luke would react first with quiet alarm and then, eventually, speak up to enforce the norms we all must hold sacred.

Those who hate the norms of the left confirm their power all the more. They strain against them in a Sisyphean struggle that ends in exhausted compliance.

Where I receive truly fervent pushback, in this tiny insulated corner where the left’s power is at its nadir, is along the lines approved by the left. It is when I speak against social justice on the axis of ‘the will of the people,’ and for the legitimacy of elites, that truly passionate attacks begin.

Analogies are useful, and I will re-use one of my favorites. Say that there is a town, with a prominent wealthy family. The head of this household is a doctor, who has served the town for many decades.

Say that allegations begin to swirl around this family, centered on the doctor’s medical practice. Just as there are families that are prominent for their success, there are families that are prominent for their failure. Just as some children excel in school and sport, some languish by the sidelines – drinkers, smokers, vandals, troublemakers.

When babies are delivered in the town, the doctor takes them into a small room. Along with his attendants he cleans and dresses the newborn, then returns him to his mother’s arms. The whispers center on this brief moment of separation.

Those born to most families are simply cleaned, dressed, and returned. But for the delinquent mothers, for those families who are cursed by criminality and sloth, the doctor takes a hammer and covers it with five layers of velvet. Tap, tap, tap! At the top of the newborn’s skull. He believes that for the exaltation of the best families, there must be the depraved to contrast with them — and in the bargain, he creates an unending demand for his own services.

Some have heard strange noises coming from the small room – the muffled cries of newborn babies. Some – the whispers continue – have even seen the hammer, as it was hastily moved out of sight when the door opened unexpectedly.
Many do not believe these rumors. They wait expectantly for a response from the beloved doctor and his family. The response is curt, mechanical, unsatisfying. The whispers intensify. The doctor avoids the subject whenever he can, and begins to seclude himself. His own family begins to number among the whisperers. Gradually, even the doctor’s most faithful supporters come to believe he is guilty.

It is clear, at this point, that the doctor is ill-fated. How his doom will befall him is not clear, but he is evidently doomed. Perhaps he will die at the hands of a vengeful parent. Perhaps he will flee to some far-off land. Perhaps the law will finally catch up with him. Perhaps he will simply die in isolation and disgrace.

The family’s wealth remains. The family’s mansion is yet unburnt, and even the business continues to work profitably. It is unclear to the townspeople when and how the doctor will get his comeuppance, but he is regarded with deepening horror and contempt.

Some moral imbecile might say: “Regardless of what the doctor does to a small minority of children, it is clear that on the whole he provides good services, and it is clear that there is great peril in violence. The town could be broken by strife, and many more could be hurt than are alleged to have been hurt so far! Besides, those who have been hurt are precisely those who disregard others.”

The whisperers know, with quiet surety, that they will prevail. People have moral sensibilities to greater or lesser degrees, but all know that the utter depravity of deliberately crippling newborns is intolerable. Some may deny it through motivated reasoning, or sheer cussedness – but eventually, the town will fall into line, as inevitably as the tide rolling in.

The exemplars of western civilization are in the doctors’ position. Everyone knows that they are tainted, evil. That is the tone that dominates any conversation about them. Unlike in the analogy, the allegation is not simple and direct – instead they swirl in multitudes. There are local flavors to the slander. In the United States, it is now taken as a given that the colonizers of this land were vicious genocidal rapist slavers. Ironically one of the most heated arguments I have gotten into here was based on me challenging this narrative.

Open, coherent defenses of the exemplars and ideals of the West must be made, but to do so one must slice through a thorny thicket of presumptions and lies. At the core of the problem is social incentives. There is momentum to condemnation, analogous to a mob’s building rage and motion.

Narratives can be profitably challenged on their own terms. “You are alleging that these families have been physically crippled, when you have no evidence for your claims! Your lies will marginalize these families, will doom their children to eternal fear and distrust!”

“You are alleging that Asians and Jews are at the top of an oppressive hierarchy which unjustly lifts them up! These are precisely the allegations that led to the mass slaughter of European Jewry in the Holocaust!”

Systems of distrust and division can be contrasted with cohesive, successful systems. Attempts to foster communities that revere American greatness and historical figures are ongoing. They have the inherent advantages of a positive vision and ideal. They are not comprehensive attempts to create complete communities that reject the narrative of a tainted, oppressive nation and history, but they are a start. These attempts must be supported and broadened.

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The New Right: A Journey to the Fringe of American Politics By Michael Malice

Here are some excerpts from this new book:

* Yet eugenics is practiced every single day all over the world. It is practiced in its horrific sense, as with selective-gender abortion and the killing of female infants in societies that view male children as more desirable. But it’s also practiced in populations with low genetic diversity (this is not a slur or a euphemism), such as Hasidic Jews. The Hasidic Jewish community, due to inbreeding, has a higher than average rate of genetic diseases such as Tay-Sachs. Yet there’s a workaround. As Tablet magazine reports, “After conducting genetic screening, [an organization called] Dor Yeshorim assigns identification numbers that correspond to its clients’ genetic data. Before or soon after meeting, potential partners exchange ID numbers and dial an automated hotline to check genetic compatibility—a phone call that almost always determines if a relationship will move forward or end.”

As of 2012 approximately 67 percent of infants with Down syndrome have been aborted. Does that mean that inside the breast of every expectant mother beats the heart of a Nazi eugenicist? This subject has become so riddled with taboo and outrage that it has led to some truly odd outcomes. In 2014 Fredrick Brennan authored an opinion piece titled “Why I Support Eugenics.” Brennan was the founder of the message board 8chan (“Twice as good as 4chan!”), and suffers from Osteogenesis imperfecta. As a result of this genetic disease, he has severely stunted growth and is confined to a wheelchair—hence his handle of “Hotwheels.” The common name for Brennan’s condition is “brittle bone disease.”

It is heartbreaking to read his contention that Osteogenesis imperfecta “is one of the most painful conditions in the world” knowing that he’s speaking from firsthand experience. Many know the extreme pain of breaking a bone once or twice in one’s life. Few have to endure that pain over and over, or the stress of living in constant fear about when it will happen again. Brennan suggests offering carriers of extreme genetic diseases like his a cash sum in order to undergo sterilization, arguing that this would save millions in future medical costs alone. Such genetic testing is easily done, and in his view this would be a very humane way to make sure no child has to live a life where they will never know the fun of running around outside due to Osteogenesis imperfecta. “Eugenics is a humanitarian idea,” he concludes, “not a national socialist one.”

So where did Brennan run this piece? A page as far from removed from humanitarianism as possible: the neo-Nazi site Daily Stormer. “I could find no other publication which would publish this article,” Brennan reveals, “and I am far from a neo-Nazi.” For the evangelical left, those who suffer largely exist as mechanisms for others’ salvation, but not as beings with consciences of their own—or more precisely, they are allowed to have their own conscience if and only if it fits into their salvation model. Else, they can be considered as corrupted.

* One of the first “out” gay people, Quentin Crisp (1908–99), agreed. As recounted in The Independent, “In 1997, he told The Times that he would advise parents to abort a foetus if it could be shown to be genetically predetermined to be gay: ‘If it (homosexuality) can be avoided, I think it should be.’” And while there are many parents who genuinely don’t care if their child is gay or straight, there are plenty who, if given the chance in private, would opt for the same preference as O’Donnell or Crisp.

* Gavin was of the impression that Jews invented political correctness. Yet I pointed out that every culture has heresy and taboo. Jesus died for being politically incorrect, for example. Eugene V. Debs was jailed by President Woodrow Wilson for opposing World War I. The writer Paul Graham tackled this issue in an extremely insightful 2004 cultural essay titled “What You Can’t Say.” “In every period,” Graham wrote, “people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise.”5 “Every culture is a culture of fear,” I insisted. “When wasn’t it a culture of fear, in your mind? In the ’50s? In the ’60s? In the ’70s?” “2000–2005 was the least—” “Wait!” I interrupted. “After 9/11 it was not a culture of fear? You’re literally saying this?” “Yup.” At a certain point you realize there is no speaking further to the person. That is when I said to Gavin, “OK.”

* The New Right goal is for the public to view the corporate press in the exact same way as they view Chesterfields: as self-serving merchants of death who have their own agenda that is often malignant but never healthy. Given how often the press loves to beat the drums of war, this is not hyperbole.

The destruction of the press means unmasking their claim to be objective agents of truth. It is to expose them and humiliate them, individually and collectively.

* In 2012, presidential debate moderator Candy Crowley declared that she would interject herself into the debate should she see fit—and she did in fact, forcing the hapless Mitt Romney to fend off both President Obama and the woman who had been selected for a role meant to be impartial. By the 2016 Republican primary debates, the audience was cheering when Ted Cruz berated the moderators over their questions, something which would have seemed insane not too many years prior. Not long after that, nominee Trump pointed directly to the press pool and openly mused about killing them to the crowd’s great applause.

* We all tend to need a boogeyman to point to, a villain who embodies our opponents in one person. This is one of the greatest strengths of the New Right: Yes, there are many prominent personalities within the movement. But all of them are, by and large, expendable to varying degrees. Trump is the consequence, not the goal, and most certainly not the head (pun intended) in any sense.

* A key tactic used by the New Right is forcing the enemy to make difficult choices. Are they going to be held to the principles they espouse, or are they going to be loyal to their own people? When they are in complete control, they can get away with doing both. But if there’s pressure, then they will have to choose. In such a case, some will choose the former while others will choose the latter—and both sides will be upset with the other for making the “wrong” choice. In fact, that is exactly what happened. Some defended Griffin on free-speech grounds. Others felt the need to distance themselves and throw her under the bus. But they did have to choose one or the other. They couldn’t play coy, make a mumbling note of disapproval, and then continue on as if nothing had happened.

* The controversy over transgenderism, bathrooms, and pronoun usage was predicted by Steve Sailer in TakiMag in 2013, over a year before the article that got Gavin fired from Thought Catalog. For Sailer, “the structure of the dominant contemporary mindset means that with the triumph of gay marriage, a need will be felt for a new front in the elite culture war on average people, with ‘transgenderism’ (a catch-all phrase for a variety of complaints) the most likely salient.”

Sailer’s approach here is common to him and emblematic of New Right analysis. Similarly, he has put forth “Sailer’s Law of Female Journalism,” which holds that “[t]h most heartfelt articles by female journalists tend to be demands that social values be overturned in order that, Come the Revolution, the journalist herself will be considered hotter-looking.” Instead of focusing on what a given article says—or in this case a given class of articles—the salient question for Sailer is: What caused this article to be written in the first place? What purpose does it serve? In a New Right context, where objective journalism is either impossible or extremely rare, the tendency is to focus on the writer or publication’s given agenda. There is an idea among moderates of both sides of the aisle that we should focus on ideas and assume that fair-acting people can independently come to different conclusions. While this may hold true in interpersonal relationships, the idea that this holds true when it comes to members of the press is rejected in toto.

* As Milo put it in that same podcast, “In the gay world, some of the most important enriching, and incredibly life-affirming, important, shaping relationships are between younger boys and older men. They can be hugely positive experiences very often for those young boys.” For decades it was not uncommon for older gay men to initiate younger ones into the lifestyle. In fact it was to be expected; a closeted and confused young gay man would need someone to guide him and let him know that he’s not as alone in his proclivities as he might feel. As a consequence, historically, there was a huge cultural perception that homosexuality and pedophilia were virtually identical. When Milo spoke of being taken advantage of as a young man by an older one and enjoying it, he was either (a) the victim of statutory rape and trying to deal with that in his own way or (b) telling the truth and pointing out that male/male standards shouldn’t be expected to be the same as male/female ones. What people heard was: pedophilia is OK.

* Andrew Breitbart saw this analysis as essential, writing, “The left does not win its battles in debate. It doesn’t have to. In the twenty-first century, media is everything. The left wins because it controls the narrative. The narrative is controlled by the media. The left is the media. Narrative is everything.”

* The universities’ explicit goal is to train the next generation’s elites. No one disputes this, though some prefer to use platitudes like “training the leaders of tomorrow.” This is a banal way of obscuring an important point: Are the leaders being trained to be leaders? Or are they being trained to be evangelists? The answer is both, and for the New Right it is the second group that is the enemy.

To call something a conspiracy theory—even an actual conspiracy—is akin to calling it “racist.” It’s a mechanism to dismiss a subject or speaker without having to engage with their ideas. Technically speaking, the Constitutional Convention—a small elite who swore their discussions to secrecy—was a conspiracy.

MND comments:

Malice’s book is OK. He has a decent understanding of The New/Dissident/Alt – Right, and so far has given their views an infinitely more charitable representation than you’d find from any mainstream rag or journalist, but I’m 10 Chapters in and things are starting to fall apart.

His recounting of and subsequent 1 line rebuttals to the main arguments in Buchanan’s “Death of the West”, are paper thin and often non sequiturs; pointing to wrong predictions … but were wrong in so far as they underestimated how bad things would get.

Malice at one point even uses IRAQ as an example (one Buchanan to my knowledge never does) of a Nation that could be said to have “died” recently and says “well it didn’t die for any of the reasons Buchanan is predicting the West will “die” so these are bad predictions!” It’s like one patient dies of a heart condition so you tell another who has cancer he’ll be fine.

At one point he responds to Buchanan’s lamentation of Japanese abysmal birthrates and the degradation of their traditional culture yielding to westernization post WW2 by saying “well they have tentacle porn so they’re still unique in some meaningful way!!”

He basically (so far) hand-waves away the central postulate that “demographics are destiny” and doesn’t even anticipate the 1 hope the dissident right has in the short term; that the coalition of white liberals, jews and various POCs is fragile to the point of breaking before establishing political hegemony.

Grazz comments:

I am honestly quite thankful to see Luke’s responses to Michael’s various commentaries. During the Jared Taylor part of the book he put forth all these post interview rebuttals that I felt were utterly idiotic to the point I was actually getting angry reading them.

This book is trash, the interviews are good but literally all the insights and commentary are pure trash. Combine that with various quotes and what not it felt like he was just trying to extend the length of the book without actually adding any content but where he could actually add content he simply chose not to. He was on the ground for the charlottesville insanity but his commentary on what it was actually like amounts to saying his friend got his hat knocked off…. Dude the police drove a group 1/10th its size into an angry mob and no comments on rooftop snipers, no commentary on how the media was trying to imply a police helicopter crash was a result of the the demonstration, no commentary on how the counter protesters were there illegally. This book is just massively disappointing. Take for example the segment on Jim Goad, he spends pages explaining who he is and his back story but his actual conversation with him amounts to a page worth of dialogue…. What???? It’s like this for everyone. A discussion with jared taylor could be an entire book but Jared’s actual words only make up a page or 2…..

This book isn’t even good for a normie’s guide. It’s also not good for someone in opposition to the right as its not detailed enough. This is just a bad book.

Paul Graham wrote in January of 2004:

Have you ever seen an old photo of yourself and been embarrassed at the way you looked? Did we actually dress like that? We did. And we had no idea how silly we looked. It’s the nature of fashion to be invisible, in the same way the movement of the earth is invisible to all of us riding on it.

What scares me is that there are moral fashions too. They’re just as arbitrary, and just as invisible to most people. But they’re much more dangerous. Fashion is mistaken for good design; moral fashion is mistaken for good. Dressing oddly gets you laughed at. Violating moral fashions can get you fired, ostracized, imprisoned, or even killed.

If you could travel back in a time machine, one thing would be true no matter where you went: you’d have to watch what you said. Opinions we consider harmless could have gotten you in big trouble. I’ve already said at least one thing that would have gotten me in big trouble in most of Europe in the seventeenth century, and did get Galileo in big trouble when he said it—that the earth moves. [1]

It seems to be a constant throughout history: In every period, people believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you would have gotten in terrible trouble for saying otherwise.

Is our time any different? To anyone who has read any amount of history, the answer is almost certainly no. It would be a remarkable coincidence if ours were the first era to get everything just right.

It’s tantalizing to think we believe things that people in the future will find ridiculous. What would someone coming back to visit us in a time machine have to be careful not to say? That’s what I want to study here. But I want to do more than just shock everyone with the heresy du jour. I want to find general recipes for discovering what you can’t say, in any era.

The Conformist Test

Let’s start with a test: Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers?

If the answer is no, you might want to stop and think about that. If everything you believe is something you’re supposed to believe, could that possibly be a coincidence? Odds are it isn’t. Odds are you just think what you’re told.

The other alternative would be that you independently considered every question and came up with the exact same answers that are now considered acceptable. That seems unlikely, because you’d also have to make the same mistakes. Mapmakers deliberately put slight mistakes in their maps so they can tell when someone copies them. If another map has the same mistake, that’s very convincing evidence.

Like every other era in history, our moral map almost certainly contains a few mistakes. And anyone who makes the same mistakes probably didn’t do it by accident. It would be like someone claiming they had independently decided in 1972 that bell-bottom jeans were a good idea.

If you believe everything you’re supposed to now, how can you be sure you wouldn’t also have believed everything you were supposed to if you had grown up among the plantation owners of the pre-Civil War South, or in Germany in the 1930s—or among the Mongols in 1200, for that matter? Odds are you would have.

Back in the era of terms like “well-adjusted,” the idea seemed to be that there was something wrong with you if you thought things you didn’t dare say out loud. This seems backward. Almost certainly, there is something wrong with you if you don’t think things you don’t dare say out loud…

I suspect the biggest source of moral taboos will turn out to be power struggles in which one side only barely has the upper hand. That’s where you’ll find a group powerful enough to enforce taboos, but weak enough to need them…

Although moral fashions tend to arise from different sources than fashions in clothing, the mechanism of their adoption seems much the same. The early adopters will be driven by ambition: self-consciously cool people who want to distinguish themselves from the common herd. As the fashion becomes established they’ll be joined by a second, much larger group, driven by fear. [9] This second group adopt the fashion not because they want to stand out but because they are afraid of standing out.

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