The Mask Slips
20 Wednesday Jun 2018
Posted Politics, Progressivism
in20 Wednesday Jun 2018
Posted Politics, Progressivism
in10 Monday Jul 2017
Posted Politics, Progressivism, Whig History
inYou have to go back.
You need to do it soon. Political disagreements are now turning violent. The cold civil war is heating up. You can blame the God-Emperor if you want, but his election is only a symptom of a deeper malaise. So let’s talk about America, what it is and what it is not.
It is not a “melting pot.” Do you even know whence that phrase came? Propaganda.
It is not a proposition nation. Have you heard that term before? Propaganda.
America is more than an “economy.” I’m glad – on an individual basis – that someone may find success and happiness here. But you can’t bring everyone with you, and it is not a job site for the rest of the world.
But what will happen? Crisis? Upheaval? We will survive (without you). So much of our wealth is illusory, and it’s not even that if repatriation is on the table. It become mal-investment on an unbelievable scale.
Stuff may cost more. That’s okay. Housing will be cheaper. Companies will fold due to lack of workers. Jobs will pay more. Maybe more women will stay home with their kids. That’s not a bad thing. It’s the most important thing a woman can do. More moms at home? Good for the family.
And you Boomer fucks will have to realize that your house isn’t worth $900,000 anymore. No, you weren’t savvy investors after all. You just bought and held while you gave out cheap credit to the credit-unworthy, pricing your children out of the markets by importing your slave class. Did we already tell you not to let the door hit you on the way out? Falling home prices? Good for the consumer.
Record numbers of real American men are dropping out of the workforce. Few talk about this. Wages are flat, and we prop ourselves up with debt. Normally I don’t look at the economy as a zero-sum game, but to fix it we may need to pick winners and losers. If we do, I choose my tribe. I don’t mean anything racial by that; blacks are still Americans. But I do mean culture. Heritage America is more important than the globohomo crowd. Charles Murray chronicles this in his book, Coming Apart.
But this grand experiment in Self-Government, what has been rightly called an extension of the Anglo-Saxon project, is much more than idea or a concept. America is my home. It is my birthright. It is not yours.
You have to go back.
22 Tuesday Nov 2016
Posted Freemasonry, Politics, Progressivism
inNeedless to say, we (and likely many Masons outside of San Francisco) are excited about the Ascension of God-Emperor Trump. If you’re wondering about that term, see Milo.
If you have wondered about why some of your brothers are happy when they should be sad, sad when they should be happy, and why they are working themselves into fits over President-elect Trump, this excerpt may be helpful. Remember, many of our brothers need to virtue-signal to feel good about themselves. It helps them cope, because deep down, they know they have sold their birthrights and those of their children…
The below was copied from the comment section at Vox Day’s blog. It is NSFW, and contains a few crude terms. But we don’t shy away from rough-hewn phrases. What are you, a wuss?
Very good primer for understanding the left’s meltdown:from Bixxy Noodles on MPCdotforums
Cognitive dissonance is a major problem in our over-SCALEd society. The information control systems (education-media complex) used by our governing order to manage the people and keep them in line lead directly to the people adopting a lot of conflicting and wrong beliefs in order to adapt to the system and get by. The indoctrination of these conflicting beliefs happens mostly in education, while the purpose of the major media has been to reinforce them via “the narrative” and provide a vehicle for the management of any cognitive dissonance which does arise.
This election has been a case study in this dynamic. The regnant orthodoxy demands that its partisans believe all sort of incompatible and false things: everyone is equal except white males, faggotry is normal and healthy while traditional marriage is rape, debt is money, and way too many other examples to list. Because of the constant, competing cognition these nonsensical and contradictory beliefs generate, the people who hold them are in a nearly constant state of emotional disequilibrium. They are temperamentally brittle, and easily perturbed into emotional outbursts as their cognitive dissonance essentially causes their brains to lock up and blue screen.
The old media narrative control system evolved specifically to mitigate this problem. By dramatically narrowing the Overton Window and ruthlessly deprecating everything outside of it, the amount of contradictory stimulus and information generating dissonance was reduced. They also provided mantras as tools for people to use to insulate themselves from dissonance: extremist!, racist!, conspiracy theory!, dangerous!, insane!, etc.
The advent of the internet undermined and routed around this control and management system, to the point where, in The Current Year, the only people still using the old media are the ones who need it most to manage their dissonance problems.
08 Thursday May 2014
Posted Freemasonry, Grand Lodge of California, Politics, Progressivism
inTags
The Grand Lodge of California seems to be on a mission to assert control of constituent lodges. This has been a slow process, but the trend is inescapable. Doing more and more for lodges, however helpful it may seem, is deleterious to our Lodges, and to the Craft. I am asking you to reject these offers of help. It is setting a harmful precedent. There are potentially many factors in this equation. It may be due to the number of shrinking, dying and consolidating lodges out there. This in turn may explain the reluctance to bring down the hammer on ONOB, since, like many a parish priest before us (and current priests), we are in need of butts in seats.
We are accustomed to Grand Lodge officers telling the tale of how the baby boomers did not join their fathers’ lodges, and that we’re now looking to gen-x and millennials to pick up their grandfathers’ tools. The boomers reticence to join us is likely due to two factors, one utterly American, and one – literally – not. The boomers, so determined to never sell out to the man, are stuck perpetually in rebellion. Not just the fun, pot smoking, Ferris Bueller, youthful rebellion, but the “tear-down-every-last-vestige-of-the-old-order” rebellion. It’s still happening. The other, more insidious, and entirely preventable, factor is described well by none other than Universalist cleric of the Cathedral, Robert Putnam in his now famous work, Bowling Alone. Participation in civil society is down. People trust their neighbors less. They vote less (imagine the pain this causes democracy fetishists).
“What should we do?”
“We will find new Masons.”
“Agreed.”
So where are we to find new Masons? Well, we terminated the old Bracero program in favor of permanent, if undocumented, residency. It worked for agriculture, right? Wait…no? Oh screw you VDH! (kidding sir). Seriously though, why not initiate as many guests as possible? All good men and true, and all that. Again, I should stress to the reader that we are not opposed to initiating new brothers from far off lands, but we do extend the usual warning to brothers who find their lodges inundated by many foreign applicants. But the Grand Lodge’s position is understandable. All we need now are the proper, certified ritual teams for all of the many languages we now hear in California. Why just Spanish and Armenian? How exclusionary!
None of this should cast doubt in the reader’s mind as to our support for sanctioning the recognition of the Grand Lodge of Iran In Exile. While my more reactionary tendencies might be in sympathy (somewhat) with the government’s desire to remove the Western elements from Persian society, I am, and always shall be a liberal (in the true sense of the word). Revoking freedom of association is never right, though it has not existed, in any meaningful form, in our own country for some time now. Still, we will stand on principle.
Back to the original point, the time has come for our constituent lodges to start pushing back on the Grand Lodge whenever it tries to exert some new level of control over our lodges. It is we who created it after all.
If the reader has not yet guessed, your author is a Past Master and member of the Grand Lodge. When I was Sr. Warden, our Inspector announced that in addition to auditing the Lodge’s books, he would need to see the books for the Masonic Hall Association (a separate legal entity) that owns our building. Our Master rolled over despite my objections. Unless I missed it, there is nothing in the code that provides for the Inspector to be granted access to the books of a hall association. I was prepared to have this fight during “my” year (as Master), but we had a new Inspector, and he didn’t even audit the Lodge’s books!
The usual question is, “what’s your deal?” Allow me to explain. The trend of the Grand Lodge taking on the responsibilities of blue lodges should be viewed as a welfare program. “We will do the work that you should be doing.” Doesn’t that describe every program designed to provide assistance to the needy? Isn’t charity or service properly in our hands as citizens? As Masons? How is Grand Lodge’s “assistance” any different? If it takes on the duties that have traditionally, and properly, resided with the members, why hold stated meetings at all? If we cannot muster the brothers to do the work, do we have a viable lodge? My answer would be “no.” if a lodge has reached that point, it is time to consolidate. I would rather have fewer lodges with enough members to do the work, than have the Grand Lodge do our work for us.
So maybe it is time to take on the work that is properly ours. Maybe we should recruit members to be trustees, or manage the investments. Maybe we should hire accountants, if no one in our lodges can do the work.
Take back your lodges my brothers. Consolidate if you can’t bear the load. The Grand Lodge is subservient to you. Refuse to yield any more authority to San Francisco.
27 Sunday Apr 2014
I recently had the chance to hear a Grand Lodge officer chastise a group of brethren about the proper use of the ballot box. For the uninitiated, candidates for Freemasonry must be elected to receive the degrees by the unanimous ballot of the members present. Favorable votes are recorded with a white ball, and unfavorable with a black cube. The (possibly apocryphal) story is that this originated the term “black-balled.” The ballot is, and, so far as I am aware, always has been, secret. Masonic Law provides for secrecy. It is prohibited to discuss the results in open lodge, and unseemly to do so without. If a brother should find himself in such a conversation, he should, at the least, politely excuse himself.
In the course of his mission to visit upon the English language unspeakable violence, our Grand Worshipful Brother unflinchingly stated that there should never appear a black cube in a ballot box, and that the objecting brother should raise the issue with the Master before a vote is taken. Distill this down, and the message to you, dear brother, from the schoolmarms in San Francisco is, “you are not to use the failsafe mechanism provided in the Code.” How astounding! How much more tempting does the button become when you are told not to push it? Is it just my reactance? Surely there is more to the discussion than just this. Just so.
This demand that an objector reveal himself to the Master is usually rationalized as being a courtesy to the Master, since it is he who must needs have the awkward conversation with the applicant after rejection. This sounds reasonable enough, since it is a poor brother who will hoodwink a Master in his own Lodge. But we haven’t yet uncovered all of it.
It is also hinted – but rarely stated – that an unwillingness to raise the objection with the Master suggests we are rejecting the applicant for the wrong reasons. After all, if your motives are pure and Masonic (not xeno-homo-etc-phobic), then why not raise them aloud? The Master is legally obliged to maintain the secrecy of the objector, but Masters are, after all, as human as any others. Still, there is something more than just Masonic etiquette or crimethink at work here.
We touch upon it in our conversations, we walk around it, but we rarely say its name aloud. Let’s be naughty and say it together: exclusion. I know you just cringed a little, but it sort of felt good too, right? After all, we exclude all those non-Masons, and women! Deep, calming breaths…Not that we should exclude lightly. I have seen some “black-balls” of which I strenuously disapproved. But I have also rejected an applicant (along with five concurring brothers). One time I left a meeting, since we cannot abstain. Only once did I talk to the Master, out of courtesy (as it happens, I was wrong about that one; glad he talked sense to me). I was right about the other one though. But I digress…
The ballot has always been secret, and for very good reasons. It is to protect freedom of conscience and freedom of association. Men – real men from years and centuries gone by – valued the freedom to vote their mind, yet men are always seeking to persuade others to their own ends. To impotently insist that all good Masons must seek out the Master to register an objection is, in a word, crap. The brothers know they do not have to, and they won’t unless they are so inclined. To say otherwise is nothing but the same, tired attempt by the Grand Lodge to exert control over constituent lodges. Is “attempt” the right word? Maybe not considering how much control the Grand Lodge has consolidated over our weak and (sometimes) dying lodges.
This Grand perspective on ballot impropriety is yet another example of Masons talking out of both sides of their mouths, but without the painful, burning discharge that accompanies such acute cognitive dissonance in thinking men. We see it all the time, if we open our eyes and ears. Don’t get political, but help your government schools. How often do we hear Masons mouth reassuring words about democracy, yet our own system severely restricts the whims of the mob (even a mob of Grand Lodge members). Since I am skeptical of democracy – and certainly do not equate it with liberty – I rather like our 5/6 threshold (New legislation must be passed by a 5/6 vote, or 84% – if the measure gets 2/3, it carries over the following year and then a simple majority will pass). It should be a long and difficult ordeal to change the law, and it should never be done without due consideration. I would love to see legislatures and polities constrained by such supermajority rules. This would flummox most brothers however. Can you imagine the blank stares if a brother were to propose changing our rules for the legislature and referendums to 5/6? I have digressed again. The point is that Masons in general- and Grand Lodge officials in particular – seem easily seduced by narratives that sound nice (inclusiveness, democracy, equality, fraternité), but which have no basis in reality, or at least are more troublesome when considered fully.
What is it to the Grand Lodge if a group of brothers politely declines to seat a faction of foreigners in their lodge, with all the attendant tribal politics? The racial component is rarely acknowledged in these discussions, but this GL officer at least mentioned it. Kudos to you Worshipful Sir. Imagine a lodge comprised equally of native white dudes and ONOB. What do you get? Two groups; one speaking English, and another speaking Tagalog. Let the brotherly love commence! Seriously though, we’re all Masons. It is an interesting question though, to consider whether or not a large foreign presence increases or decreases the feeling of trust and fraternity. The answer, as usual is not difficult, since many studies now point to decreasing social trust in more vibrant settings. When we seek to become Masons, is it to be around a group of men who are strikingly different from us, or are we seeking the company of like-minded men? I submit that most of us are seeking the latter. The astute reader will observe that Masons of all nations may be like minded (true), yet our own Thomas Jackson has noted that there are many styles of Freemasonry. Vox Day has written on a number of occasions that a small amount of immigration is healthy for society, but beyond a certain percentage (I can’t recall his number) it becomes unhealthy for the host culture. Is not the same true of the Lodge? If you disagree, visit Grand Lodge this year, and witness the brotherly love between the factions.
These are deep questions, and ones which require reflection. We should tread carefully here, for does not Masonry unite men from every walk of life? Indeed it does, and we should aspire to that. Hopefully, brothers will put aside un-Masonic considerations when deciding upon candidates. This is a personal journey, however. It is not for the Grand Lodge to berate the brothers when the code is well understood. Saying that the ballot box should not be used the way it has been and was designed to be used is dishonest. It blurs the meaning of words, and defies classical laws of thought. If the Grand Lodge wishes to remove the secret ballot, there is a mechanism by which they may accomplish that. All you need is 84%!
16 Sunday Mar 2014
Posted Freemasonry, Grand Lodge of California, Politics
inTags
I was introduced to Robert Conquest through the indefatigable John Derbyshire when he wrote of Conquest’s Second Law:
“Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing.”
It may seem that I spend a great deal of thought on matters left and right. There is some truth there, but I feel the need to impress upon the reader that proper perspective is needed when discussing left and right. Others have illustrated the difference far better than I could hope to reproduce:
First, we need to define left and right. In my opinion, obviously a controversial one, the explanation for this mysterious asymmetric dimension is easy: it is political entropy. Right represents peace, order and security; left represents war, anarchy and crime.
In a nutshell:
Left wing – rebelling against the current order
Right wing – preserving order
Now, it would be easy to look at Masonry today and conclude that Masonry is decidedly right-wing, since it is not explicitly revolutionary. Indeed, we are charged to be exemplary in the discharge of our civil duties. We must take care to maintain the peace and good order of society. Yet these charges to be good do not wash our hands of the revolution. If anything they lull us into complacency, diverting our attention while the ship sinks, all the while congratulating ourselves on our civic pride. I think our hesitance to hold our civic leaders to account (and refusing to do so publicly as Masons) makes the lodge just another brick in the wall. For the state itself has now become hostile to the “peace and good order.” Although the Left long ago captured our major civil and civic institutions, all they know is rebellion. The revolution isn’t over, comrade. We haven’t sufficiently leveled the playing field yet; there is still much to do.
And we go along with it. Because we don’t talk politics or religion; ever. No matter how far off the rails our government may go, we stand by it, ready to rededicate buildings. Masonry now finds itself in the unique position of being an (unofficial) organ of the state, whose leftward march continues. Far from being pillars of moral leadership, Masons, like most people, have ceded moral authority to a bureaucracy, one which props up failing and corrupt institutions. We like to stand apart, with our passes and tokens. It’s very black and white; you’re in the club or you’re out. But being the outlier, one would hope that we have something worthwhile to say. If we can’t even muster enough testosterone to sound the alarm when our government is running us straight off the cliff, why should anyone care about our opinions?
What’s the deal?
This has been on my mind since I learned of the plans to have the Grand Lodge “rededicate” the Capitol building. From #20’s FB page:
On June 21, 2014, the Grand Lodge of California will re-enact the laying of the cornerstone at our State Capitol. This ceremony is open to the public and all are welcome to attend.
Washington Lodge #20, along with Tehama Lodge #3 and the other Lodges of Sacramento will take part in this historic event. We look forward to a great occasion and strong participation from the Washington Lodge #20 membership.
Politics have no place in the Lodge, yet here we are.
I would amend this to say partisan politics have no place. Philosophy most certainly has a place, and philosophy (or the lack thereof) informs a man’s politics. Our philosophy, in many ways, is strikingly similar to the classical liberalism of the 18th century. And 18th century liberals would be aghast at our government today (even though it is, in many ways, the logical progression from then to today). From the lessons of Masonry, and the philosophy underlying it, this is what I would expect to be the predominant political thought of Masons:
These are just examples, but can you imagine the impact of this type of discussion?
Why is this necessary?
As I said earlier, our society has continued to drift leftward. Conservatives have slowed it, but it remains. Because Masonry is not explicitly Right wing, we have been swept along. We now have little that distinguishes us from the standard Narrative of any other institution. We are part of the System.
When we have nothing to say about the state of our schools, the depredations of excessive taxation (beyond securing life, liberty and property), the holding up of perverse worldviews or attempts to bring us “on the level” with the most backward and God-forsaken countries in the world, why would anyone seek out our wisdom? Because Dan Brown churned out another 6th grade novel? Or because we seek to transmit wise and serious truths? I hope the transgender bathrooms are completed by the time the Grand Lodge holds its rededication ceremony at the Capitol.
I see Masonry as a beneficial civil institution; at least it has that promise. It has the potential to be a beacon in uncertain times. But it is useless when it becomes the handmaiden of the thieves in Sacramento, bending over backwards to show what good citizens we are. We should be irate. 66,000 masons should stand up and shout, “Bullshit! We want none of this.” Masons, when they speak, should have something substantive to say.
How far we have come since The Morgan Affair, not that murder is a proper Masonic activity by any stretch. Still, it is hard to imagine going from being reviled to the point of good folks creating the Anti-Masonic Party, to rededicating the state Capitol building of California in 150 years’ time.
24 Monday Feb 2014
Posted Freemasonry, Politics, Progressivism
inFreemasonry is old. Really old. The Grand Lodge of England was not created until 1717, and other lodges created it. In that sense, it seems in someways like a throwback, an anachronism from a simpler time. Masonry has, in some ways, escaped the the forces of modernization, but it has not escaped entirely unscathed. This is particularly true with regard to the Progressive Era. Further, I think this is a feature, not a bug. This has lead me to a painful conclusion.
Masonry is a left-wing organization.
Before we fly off the rails, let’s look a bit deeper. I say left-wing in the same sense that the American Revolution (and most other revolutions since) was left-wing. The history of the previous few centuries makes much more sense when looked at as a continuous, leftward march to the present day. Freemasonry, with its teachings of the equality of man, acceptance of all religions, and the universal brotherhood of man, was somewhat antagonistic to the ancien regime. The seeds of early left-wing thought are noticeable, if only we would look. Masons were supporters of public education and Abolition. “Well fine,” you say, “those are good things to support.” Indeed they are. But what if the leftward drift of our institution did not stop there, but continued – or rather continues – to this day?
The schools are actually a perfect example, particularly given the long running, unconditional support of Masons. Public schools in California have become money pits, that we as citizens are obliged to fund irrespective of performance. Masonry is strictly non-political; indeed, it is inappropriate to discuss politics in the lodge. Yet here is a glaring exception to this rule. I asked a brother once why this is so, and he said that in the past, public education was not considered “political.” I took this to mean that, since a “free,” public education was long considered a “right,” that there was no taint of politics associated with our schools. If only it were so! Unfortunately, this is no longer the case, particularly when the private sector must give more and more to maintain a bloated, ineffective bureaucracy. Reality is at odds with the Grand Lodge’s position. Our chosen beneficiary is a government agency. And a powerful one at that. At a time when various interest groups continually lobby for more and more handouts from the treasury, the only answer is to refuse any and all support to public education. It must be treated as any other branch of government. Masons, if we are to maintain our integrity, must sever our tie to public education. It is time to turn our support to private and homeschool groups.
Why does it matter?
Well, first, there is reality vs. fiction. Government is government. Period. We are supposed to stay out of governmental affairs, but it’s okay because children. Nothing to see here. Secondly, there is a belief, held by many, that our current society (by which I mean both civil and civic life) is the apex of human achievement, or that it is as close as we can get. Representative democracy, universal suffrage, free movement of people, equality of all (beyond equal protection of the law), and now transgender bathrooms. Ah progress! This is problematic, because it creates institutional inertia, by which I mean an unwillingness to innovate or even to revoke certain “innovations” that have not panned out so well.
But this goes deeper than just education. This gets into worldview, how someone sees and interprets things around them. Certainly, my voice is the minority, but I see not the apex of human achievement (and its attendant institutional inertia), but rather a desire to make everyone the same, a great leveling of all people. This might be okay if the tendency was to level up, but in too many cases, we will content ourselves to bring great men down to the lowest common denominator. This might seem rather esoteric to the reader who has not delved much into the subject of equality, or leveling. Are there other examples of “leveling down” that we can look to for comparison?
We also see this phenomenon when we look at the subject of free trade. Free trade is popular with everyone. Except unions, and they don’t really grasp the finer details. If they did, they would be forced to admit that unions are all about protecting artificially high wage jobs from market competition. But I digress.
We are told about the wonders of free trade raising the standard of living for all. This is certainly true when we limit our field of vision to those nations which are the beneficiaries of free trade. You know the ones; we used to call them third world countries. Now we call them “developing.” In any case, they tend to be poor, corrupt and recently “liberated” from colonial rule. The real issue with free trade is that its implications are never spelled out for the citizens of first world nations. Real wages, if you did not know, have been stagnant since the 1970s. Remember that economics class you had to take in high school? The part about supply and demand. What do you suppose happens when the supply of labor rises, but demand stays the same? The price falls. What do you suppose happens when high-priced American manufacturers compete with low-priced foreign manufacturers? They outsource, and/or wages must not rise. Now what, do you suppose, will the leveling of living standards look like thanks to free trade? The poorest nations will see the largest gains, and the richest ones will be leveled down. It’s kind of like how you don’t want to buy the most expensive home in the neighborhood, since its value will drop faster than a small house if the market tanks.
So what does all this mean?
Had I been alive in the 18th century, I would most certainly have been a radical. Masonry too was radical at that time – a perfect fit. However, the radicalism of the 18th century continued well into the 19th, 20th and, now, 21st centuries. And my beloved Freemasonry has been swept along with it. Most Worshipful Charles Adams is particularly to blame (he will require his own post). I think “Dad” Land is equally deserving of our scorn – more on them both at another time.
All this is to say that when Masons were first radical, it was appropriate. Today their radicalism – which (regrettably) is better classified as “mainstream,” results in a deplorable promotion of the status quo. A status quo that goes along with every predation of productive citizens by the government. A status quo that holds that every person, educated Westerner or uneducated half-wit from a free trade country is deserving the largesse of this nation. A status quo that keeps Masons’ hands bound when their lodges are hostilely and systematically taken over by foreigners who do not play by the same rules. This must be what democracy looks like.
This is what democracy looks like indeed. Institutional inertia tends to render us passive when confronted with ideas that our grandfathers would have laughed at. Conventional history – Whig History – tends to render silent great minds from our past, when those thinkers were not sufficiently “enlightened.”