Western Culture

The Laws: Plato’s Sacred Ethnostate, Part 1

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A version of this article will appear as a chapter in an upcoming book on ethnopolitical thought in ancient Greece. Constructive criticisms and comments are therefore most welcome.

Plato’s Republic is one of the most famous books in existence. So long as it has had readers, people have wondered whether the ideal state presented in that work, Callipolis, was meant as a serious political proposal. Or was it only meant as an intellectually-stimulating utopia, or even merely a symbolic analogy for the perfect soul? Personally I am surprised by the confusion; more important in the Republic, or any of Plato’s dialogues, than the specific provisions are the principles underpinning them. From this, we can be quite assured, for instance, that Plato was a fundamentally aristocratic thinker, seeing the recognition of inequality as the foundation of ethics, deeply concerned about ensuring a just hierarchy, good culture, and good breeding.

Furthermore, besides Republic, we have Plato’s longest yet less famous final work, also on politics: the Laws, which describes his “second-best city,” called Magnesia. Here we find our same Plato —the same uncompromising defense of altruism, the same paradoxical “totalitarianism” in service of the community, the same fear and loathing of egalitarianism and “pop culture,” the same meritocratic proto-feminism, the same quest for perfection. Most of what modern liberals find objectionable in the Republic can be found repeated, evidently meant seriously, in the Laws.

Actually, I believe the Laws merely explicitly spells out the implications in a particular concrete example of what one could reasonably infer from the Republic. At the eve of life, Plato apparently wished to cross all his T’s and dot all his I’s. Indeed the work sometimes goes into rather tedious detail, perhaps inevitable for a legal treatise. Furthermore, I would stress again that much of Plato’s authoritarianism was in fact not unique to him, but simply reflected the community-centered ethics and practice of citizenship of the ancient Greek polis. Glenn Morrow, the definitive interpreter of the Laws, writes that it has been “declared, with some exaggeration but with essential insight, that Plato’s Laws is a collection and codification of the whole of Greek law.”[1] This would explain why there is so much overlap between Plato’s Laws and Aristotle’s similarly-encyclopedic Politics (though the latter, as lecture notes, are far easier for a modern to read). It also suggests that the Laws must be read not as a philosopher’s pie-in-the-sky dreaming, but as synthesis of centuries of practical Greek political experience.

In the Republic, Plato is arguably radicalizing Socratic insights on self-discipline, the rule of expertise, and good breeding, and projecting them to the level of a polity. Similarly, in the Laws, Plato is systematizing and occasionally radicalizing many of the underlying assumptions of the practice of ancient Greek politics.[2] Whereas the Republic’s radically utopian aristocratic and eugenic principles can be summarized briefly, in the Laws Plato goes into considerable detail on specific measures to be taken.

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Adaptive Barbarism: Politics and Kinship in the Iliad, Part 1

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The following article will appear as a chapter in an upcoming book on ethnopolitical thought in ancient Greece. Constructive criticisms and comments are therefore most welcome.

We know that every organism and every species is engaged in a ceaseless struggle for survival and reproduction. This is equally true of peoples: throughout history, those with the values and genes necessary to reproduce and triumph in war prospered, the rest have already perished. I believe this basic truth is reflected in what is perhaps the most ancient sacred text to come down to us in the Western tradition: Homer’s Iliad.

If Hesiod’s genealogy of the gods portrays the primordial sex and violence at the origin of the creation, the Iliad recounts the violence of love and war at the dawn of civilization. The poet tells of a terrible war involving sexual competition for the heart of beautiful Helen, and its inevitable tragedies. But the maudlin self-pity and effeminacy of our time is unknown to Homer: if tragedy is inevitable in the human experience, the poet’s role is to give meaning and beauty to the ordeal, and to inspire men to struggle for a glorious destiny.

Homer’s portrayal of “the great leveler, war” is by no means sugar-coated. The killings of over two hundred men are individually described, dying by having their brains splattered, bladders pierced, or innards slopping out. . . . By these and so many other ways, “the swirling dark” falls before the eyes of countless men. The Iliad immortalizes the Greek variant of a wider warrior ethos: that of the Indo-Europeans — traditionally known by the more poetic name, Aryans, which I shall use — who burst forth into Europe some four thousand years ago and conquered the indigenous hunter-gatherers and farmers. The Europeans have, ever since, been profoundly influenced by the genes, languages, and martial way of life of these peoples.

The heroic values of Homer are by our standards extremely harsh, even barbaric.[1] These values however, I will show, are supremely adaptive: values of conquest, community, competition, and kinship. These reflect the spirit of the Bronze Age with its countless forgotten wars between peoples. From an evolutionary point of view, these men embraced a high-risk, high-reward strategy, with winners in battle being rewarded with great wealth, honor, and women. Their boldness and prowess indeed remain imprinted on our very genes: scientists have found that half of Europeans descend from a single Bronze Age king.

The Iliad is also worth reading to understand the ancient Greeks and the values which they lived by to survive in the brutal world of the ancient Mediterranean. Indeed, Homer’s influence over Greek culture was enormous, akin to the Bible in medieval Europe. As Bernard Knox notes, the Greeks believed the Trojan War actually occurred and was central to their national identity:

But though we may have our doubts, the Greeks of historic times who knew and loved Homer’s poem had none. For them history began with a splendid Panhellenic expedition against an Eastern foe, led by kings and including contingents from all the more than one hundred and fifty places listed in the catalogue in Book 2. History began with a war.[2]

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The Roman Variant of Indo-European Social Organization: Militarization, Aristocratic Government, and Openness to Conquered Peoples. Part 2

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Part 1 here.

The Openness of Roman Society: Social Mobility and Incorporating Different Peoples

Indo-European social structure was based on talent and ability.[1] Upward mobility was possible, and I-E groups in Europe tended to have only weak, permeable barriers between conquerors and conquered peoples — barriers that could be breached by the talented. This was also true on Rome. Social mobility was possible for the talented, and downward social mobility always a possibility:

From early times until la serrata del patriziato [the forming of an exclusive patriciate in the late fifth century BC], the Roman aristocracy was socially fluid and receptive to outsiders, including Latins, Sabines, and Etruscans” (163).

Support for this comes from the example of Appius Claudius who came to Rome from Sabine territory in 509 BC and became a member of the patriciate. Another example is L. Fulvius Curvus, from Tusculum, who  became consul 60 years after Rome conquered Tusculum in 381 BC. Indeed, “The consular fasti of the early third century B.C. demonstrate the success of the Roman state in absorbing new elements from outside Rome into its aristocracy” (343). Consulships from 293–280 include 6 new clans, with 2 more by 264 BC; at least five of these were non-Roman in origin, the others Plebeian.

Another indication of openness is that the elites of conquered peoples were often allowed to retain their status:

Like other relatively flexible communities of central Tyrrhenian Italy, Roman society during the late seventh, sixth, and early fifth centuries B.C. is likely to have been open to horizontal social mobility [retaining a similar social status after being conquered by Rome (164)] and even to some degree of vertical social mobility. Consequently, the membership of the early senate is likely to have been characterized by a certain social fluidity. (109)

Thus rather than completely destroying the elites of conquered peoples, they were often absorbed within the Roman system, beginning with partial citizenship and ultimately with full citizenship rights. The result was to bind “the diverse Italian peoples into a single nation” (290). Whereas the Latin states were given complete citizenship, other areas were given citizenship sine suffragio, but they were forced to provide manpower for future wars, allowing Rome to continuously engage in warfare. If a person from these areas moved to Rome, he would receive full citizenship. New tribes were continually created from conquered groups, reaching 31 in 332 BC. Read more

The Roman Variant of Indo-European Social Organization: Militarization, Aristocratic Government, and Openness to Conquered Peoples. Part 1

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A Critical History of Early Rome:  From Prehistory to the First Punic War
Gary Forsythe
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005 

Gary Forsythe, associate professor of history at Texas Tech University, has written a critical history of the early Roman republic — critical in the sense that he casts grave doubts about a considerable amount of the received wisdom of the period. Nevertheless, the picture that remains provides a most welcome portrait of a critically important variant of the Indo-European legacy that is so central to understanding the West. The picture presented is of Rome of the republic as intensely militarized, with a non-despotic aristocratic government. Roman society during this period (509BC–264BC) permitted upward mobility and was open to incorporating recently conquered peoples into the system, with full citizenship rights. This openness continued into the later republic and the empire. 

Indo-European Roots of Roman Civilization: The Military Ethos of Rome

Forsythe is well aware of the Indo-European roots of Roman culture. Essentially, the Mediterranean city-states established by I-E peoples were more settled, organized versions of basic I-E social organization based on mannerbunde. He describes “war bands” as common throughout the Greek, Roman, Celtic, and Germanic world, dedicated to raiding and fighting neighbors (i.e., the mannerbunde) (199). Leadership was based on military ability, followers sworn to fight to the death. In the early republic, aristocratic clans may well have been mannerbunde in the classic sense: the “current view,” which Forsythe is skeptical of, is that the battle of Cremera in 478 BC (a major Roman defeat at the hand of Veii, an Etruscan city, that occurred 30 years after the founding of the republic) was essentially undertaken by an aristocratic clan (the Fabians, who held consulships during the period) prior to the complete takeover by the state in organizing for war (200). In other words, at that time during the early republic, these clans operated with some independence from the Roman state.

Presumably reflecting this mannerbunde organization, patron-client relationships were very typical, with less wealthy people tied via reciprocal obligations to wealthy, powerful individuals. This is likely a holdover from Indo-European culture where war lords and their followers had mutual obligations. Forsythe notes that this mitigated social and economic disparities (216). One could be patron to another but also client to a wealthier individual. “Thus later Roman society was loosely bound together by a vast interlocking network of such relationships (216). Reflecting the non-despotic nature of Roman society (see below), patrons could be “accursed” for injustice against clients and thus either killed or ostracized.

A hallmark of Indo-European culture is that military glory is prized above all else. Thus Forsythe notes that around 311 BC, “Rome was a young and vigorous state headed by ambitious and energetic aristocrats, who were eager to utilize the state’s growing strength to enhance their own personal prestige and to further Rome’s influence and power” (307).

Various data … present the picture of a Roman aristocracy self-conscious of their power and that of the Roman state, ambitious for and reveling in military glory, and eager to advertise and catalogue their achievements for their contemporaries and posterity. … [Among aristocratic families, there was] a strong sense of family pride, tradition, and continuity. (340)

The Roman aristocracy was pervaded by a military ethos, according to which the greatest honor was won by victory in war, either by individual feats of valor or by commanding  successful military operations. This ethos was not only maintained but even fueled by the competitive rivalry which characterized the Roman elite.. … Many of Rome’s Italian allies likewise possessed a well-established military tradition, so that the profitability of successful warfare (slaves and booty) bound the Roman elite, the Roman adult male population, and Rome’s allies together into a common interest in waging wars. The Roman state was therefore configured to pursue an aggressive foreign policy marked by calculated risk taking, opportunism, and military intervention. Consequently during republican times there were few years in which Roman curule magistrates were not leading armies and conducting military operations. (286).

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Rep. Steve King gets shamelessly racist — or not

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Rep. Steve King (R-Iowa) caused a major liberal media meltdown by tweeting positively about anti-Islamic Dutch politician Geert Wilders and repeating his comments in an interview with CNN’s Chris Cuomo, “We Can’t Restore Our Civilization With Somebody Else’s Babies.”

On the face of it, this sounds like a certain type of DNA — the DNA from our babies, not theirs — is a prerequisite for maintaining our civilization and culture. The horrors! Pass the smelling salts.

However, in explaining what he meant in a follow-up interview (where super liberal Cuomo states “[America is]known … as a bastion of diversity and it is an unqualified strength for us”), King makes it clear that he is all about cultural and genetic assimilation — that he opposes setting up of isolated ethnic/religious enclaves that remain isolated from the rest of society even after 2 or 3 generations. Indeed he looks forward to the day when all Americans look the same as a result of intermarriage, presumably some shade of brown, with genetically recessive blondness entirely eradicated. He is opposed to allowing people into the US (or Europe) who hate Western civilization, and he complains that the left is out to destroy Western civilization and “replace it with something entirely different.” He is unabashedly pro-Western civilization (“Western civilization is a superior civilization and we want to share it with everybody”), noting that the spread of Western civilization via the English language has been associated with increased personal freedom and higher standards of living.

Cuomo then presses the point, asking if Muslims, Jews, Christians, Italians, etc. are Americans, and asserting that “they are all equal … We don’t need babies from any one of those groups more than from any other of those groups.” Rep. King then seems to say that, although everyone is equal in the eyes of God and equal in the eyes of the law, not all groups contribute equally to society: “Certain individuals contribute more to society than others, and certain groups of people will do more on the productive side than other groups, that’s just a statistical fact.” Cuomo, being your standard liberal, says that these differences are entirely explained by differences in opportunity, whereas King puts the blame squarely on culture. But in any case, according to King, it has nothing to do with race: “It’s the culture, not the blood … it’s never been about race.” If children from other cultures were adopted into American homes (i.e., assimilated American homes), they would all grow up to be good Americans. Read more

Moralism and Moral Arguments in the War for Western Survival, Part 3

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Part 1
Part 2

Is It Possible to Develop a Specifically Moral Argument for the White Past of Conquest and Slavery?

A second message is that in order to appeal to a wide range of Whites, we have to fashion an underlying moral message or at least have good rejoinders to the moral arguments of others. We already see that to some extent among conservatives who have nothing but scorn for the Alt Right. They emphasize the treatment of women and homosexuals in Muslim countries and refer to “radical Islamic terrorism” — implying that the terrorism has something to do with Islam (while avoiding the idea that jihad is central to Islam.  They will bring up the criminality and lack of labor participation of Middle Eastern and African immigrants. These are effective moral arguments because they argue for immoral, unfair effects on the traditional populations and culture.

But this doesn’t really get at the overriding moral argument that uniquely evil Whites are responsible for the actions of their ancestors in conquering land settled by others, slavery, etc. Of course, these accounts are carefully contextualized to ignore things like morally crusading Whites who uniquely ended slavery after a campaign based on empathy for far-away Africans. Whites ended slavery, passed Civil Rights, have funded endless uplift programs for Blacks, and twice elected a Black president — the liberal tradition so common among Northern Europeans aided and abetted in contemporary times by our hostile Jewish elite.

Also ignored are the characteristics of Whites and non-Whites that feed into current realities (e.g., IQ and personality differences, the Faustian soul of the West, etc.). Apart from the West, I have yet to hear of a movement opposed to slavery or anything else that worked by eliciting empathy. Appeals like this only work with Wersterners. These movements are a Western phenomenon and the media thrives on showing photos of suffering refugees and immigrants; “we need to help them,” never mind the short term and long term costs to our own people.

Pressing the guilt/empathy button doesn’t work in Africa or Asia despite the fact that huge swaths of humanity there (Arabs, Han Chinese, Bantu) have achieved their present territories as the result of the conquests of their ancestors. And slavery persisted in these areas long after it was abolished in the West. And even if these areas were prone to messages of guilt/empathy, you won’t see them there because these societies are not controlled by elites hostile to their traditional peoples and cultures of those areas.

One does not see Chinese people agonizing over the fact that the Han Chinese greatly expanded their territory at the expense of other peoples—a point brought out by Ricardo Duchesne in his groundbreaking The Uniqueness of Western Civilization. Nor does one see the Bantu peoples of Africa worrying about the ethics of displacing other African peoples as they spread far and wide from their homeland in Central Africa, including into South Africa where their treatment at the hands of White South Africans became Exhibit A for White evil during the apartheid era; nor do the Bantu-speaking peoples agonize about the widespread practice of slavery in Africa. Arabs do not apologize about their conquests in the name of Islam or their centuries-old role in slavery and the slave trade.

The lack of contextualization and the continual deluge of messages hostile to the White majority are good indications that the button pushing is an exercise in propaganda emanating from a hostile elite, enabled because of their control over the moral, intellectual, and political high ground. It’s not just emotional buttons that are pushed. Some of these memes are much more purely intellectual — a good example is the “race does not exist” meme, although I suppose many of these terms have emotional overtones as well because they are often linked in such a way that that they plug into the guilt mechanism. This means that they are addressed to  the higher brain centers which are able to exert substantial control over the more primitive (and self-preserving) lower brain centers responsible for things like ethnocentrism. Control of the  media and the academic high ground by the left means that Americans are bombarded by messages that enjoin them to inhibit their natural self-preserving tendencies and indeed, to feel guilt for them. These messages have also filtered down to churches and schools, so, unless they tune in to dissident media on the internet, Whites can spend their entire lives without hearing any contrary messages. It’s hard to overcome that.

Only Whites have been made to feel moral disgust at their own past of conquest and expansion. And only Whites—not all, to be sure, but a significant and important proportion—have felt moral outrage about slavery, to the point of banning it despite its material benefits to the society as a whole and to a great many individuals much more like themselves than the slaves they were freeing.

But this “everyone does it” is not really a moral argument, but rather an argument based on how we understand human nature and genetic self-interest, combined with showing that Whites uniquely developed moral arguments against the very things they were so good at—colonization and slavery. As an evolutionist, I am quite comfortable with these because they have been common throughout human history and again, Whites uniquely ended slavery. But the “anti-racist” answers that Whites have no moral claim to North America, Australia, and New Zealand, and that present-day Whites have “White privilege” as a result of the immoral actions of their ancestors. Of course, such an argument would not apply to Europe where we see the same phenomena of massive non-White immigration presented as a moral imperative.

So be it. Can Europeans make a moral argument to retain the lands they have controlled since the glaciers receded? Is longevity in a certain area a moral argument? I think not. But if it is, it would apply to every other people in one way or another, as Jared Taylor notes in a recent video. We would find that some native American groups displaced others, and we would talk about the Aztec empire and its subject peoples. Even the Hawaiians who came to the pristine islands eventually developed a society dominated by a particular chief that unified the islands at the expense of their close relatives holding power on the various islands but vicious fighting took place long before that between various islands. So then the White people take it over and suddenly we have a moral crisis. It’s what they call “selective prosecution.”

Fundamentally, if we take the ethical perspective that dominates the West today based on fairness and impartiality rooted ultimately in individualism and egalitarianism, we cannot make a specifically moral argument for White conquest. Such a perspective was foreign to the ancients who prized aristocratic values and were profoundly opposed to egalitarianism. In The Genealogy of Morals Nietzsche sketches this alternative morality — the morality of the strong versus the morality of the weak, the ethical world view of our Indo-European ancestors.

There is nothing strange about the fact that lambs bear a grudge towards large birds of prey: but that is no reason to blame the large birds of prey for carrying off the little lambs. And if the lambs say to each other, ‘These birds of prey are evil; and whoever is least like a bird of prey and most like its opposite, a lamb, – is good, isn’t he?’, then there is no reason to raise objections to this setting-up of an ideal beyond the fact that the birds of prey will view it somewhat derisively, and will perhaps say: ‘We don’t bear any grudge at all towards these good lambs, in fact we love them, nothing is tastier than a tender lamb.’ – It is just as absurd to ask strength not to express itself as strength, not to be a desire to overthrow, crush, become master, to be a thirst for enemies, resistance and triumphs, as it is to ask weakness to express itself as strength. (25–26)

The point of the left is to abolish any argument for retaining control of any territory for historically White countries—open borders for Whites and only for Whites. There are a variety of motives: hatred for Whites as ethnic competitors, monetary compensation (the massive infrastructure that incentives anti-White activism), and virtue signaling for many White SJW’s made possible because the control of  the media by the left has created a morally defined community opposed to the legitimate interests of Whites. Forget about ecological arguments—that bringing in 1 million plus immigrants yearly is an ecological disaster, forget about arguments from IQ, welfare dependency, criminality, not to mention the ethnic genetic interests of Whites. Forget about intellectual consistency — these people would be horrified at the thought that Korea or Nigeria ought to have displacement-level immigration. We are asked to ignore the evil effects of the racialization of politics and increasing political violence as non-Whites coalesce in the Democrat Party, the disuniting of society as community ties are destroyed, less willingness to contribute to public goods, etc.  These consequences of the invasion all have clear moral overtones and they support our interests because they have negative impact on people who cannot control the behavior of some of their ancestors.

Was it fair to the traditional White majority to bring in these millions of non-Whites given that the flood gates were opened by the 1965 immigration law presented dishonestly as having no effects on the ethnic balance of the country? Was it fair given that the arguments in favor of ending the bias toward Europe were the result of scientific fraud and developed by Jewish ethnic activists motivated by hatred toward the traditional White populations of the West?

Conclusion

In conclusion, I would love to be able to present a specifically moral argument within the current egalitarian zeitgeist for why it is morally okay for White people to take over North America at the expense of the natives. I can’t do that. Being susceptible to such moral arguments may well be part of our nature. But if so, we have to get over it. I suspect that the people in this room are quite proud of the accomplishments of our ancestors. And as an evolutionist, I have no problem with that.

Moralism and Moral Arguments in the War for Western Survival, Part 1

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Obviously President Obama was a horrific president in pretty much every possible way. His domestic policies in particular have been anathema to the Alt Right — he would, after all, have loved to sign an immigration amnesty/surge bill into law. Nevertheless, couple of things he said in his farewell address made a lot of sense, although he probably wasn’t thinking about the Alt Right when he said them.

Obama said that too often people think of those who oppose them as not merely misguided but malevolent. This is a huge problem for the Alt Right. The very label is typically associated in the media with words like ‘Nazi,’ ‘White supremacist,’ and ‘racist’ — all of which have strong moral connotations after years of browbeating by the media.  These words produce psychological reflexes intended to preclude honest debate or any rational discussion of our ideas. And they have been very effective in doing just that.

During an interview with an NPR reporter, I mentioned that I hoped the phrase “White supremacist” would not be used in whatever eventually gets aired. The interviewer seemed surprised, thinking that “White supremacist” was a perfectly reasonable label to use, and defending his stance by claiming that some Alt Rightists have talked about Europeans as a superior and uniquely talented group. Depending on how an idea like that is phrased and conceptualized, I have no problem with it. We should have pride in the accomplishments of our European ancestors, as tabulated, for example, by Charles Murray.

But our desire to preserve a European identity and culture really has nothing to do with European talents, and I think pretty much everyone on the Alt Right is aware of this. We could be the most average or below average people on the planet but still have a legitimate interest in wanting to preserve our people and culture — and the territories needed for that. None of the people shouting about “White supremacists” would suppose that Africans should be supplanted from African states they control, no matter what their talents or lack thereof, and the same goes for Korea and every other country with a historical ethnic and cultural core. And of course, many of the same people comfortable with condemning “White supremacists” are quite content with Israel being a “Jewish state.”

But being called a White supremacist in today’s political climate has obvious moral implications (happily the phrase did not appear in the NPR interview). Such a person is not only misguided, he or she is malevolent. Such a person is consumed by hatred, anger and fear towards non-Whites, gays, women and the entire victim class pantheon, or so goes the stereotype And that’s the problem. Being cast as evil means you are outside the moral community. There’s no need to talk with you, no need to be fair, or even worry about your safety. You are like an outlaw in Old Norse society  —“a person [who] lost all of his or her civil rights and could be killed on sight without any legal repercussions.”

So the antifa at the November NPI conference felt entitled to beat up a cameraman, throw foul-smelling liquids at attendees, and break into a dinner venue. There have been other assaults, notably of Richard Spencer in January in Washington DC, but also in February at the UC-Berkeley riots. So we often hear “no free speech for fascists,” not only at antifa protests but in university classrooms, designed to shut down errant professors and students. College students showing sympathy for Donald Trump can be hounded into dropping out of school. We find students protesting having White philosophers on the curriculum. No need to discuss their ideas because they are dead White males and ipso facto a component of racial oppression. Read more