Make YOURSELF Great Again

 

Every human life is sacred and precious. Every person and existence is like a precious jewel – something to be celebrated, relished, and treasured. It’s the job of every one of us to accomplish and achieve as much as we can during our invaluable, but painfully limited, lifespans. We need to be as great as possible – manifesting an outstanding education, high character, and noble soul – and to live with as much meaning, purpose, pleasure, and happiness as humanly possible. Every sacred soul needs to continuously expand his horizons, maximize his potential, live out his dreams, and fulfill his destiny. Every indomitable spirit needs to forever rise. This is so, however impoverished your society and tyrannical your government. No matter how poor your family, friends, culture, social milieu, job, and circumstances, you still owe it to yourself to work as hard and smart as you can, and to uplift your sacred self and life to the sky.

Immigration Privileges

 

Proper countries and states are formed when a group of people who own contiguous land get together and voluntarily, unanimously decide to form a government or defensement which will protect their rights, liberties, persons, and properties. The founding fathers of this new country need to formally and officially sign a contract and constitution to this effect.

In theory, such a state could have open borders with no restrictions on visitors and no immigration laws. But in practice, this has never before happened in the history of man, nor is it ever likely to. The people of every country invariably and rightly choose to restrict these two political privileges. They generally restrict or forbid from entering: open enemies, extreme criminals, carriers of deadly diseases, severe lowlifes, lunatics, and often even Communists, Nazis, Moslems, and Satanists. This policy and law is normal, natural, healthy, wise, and morally right.

Thus, when good people establish a new libertarian state, they inform their citizens that they have no right to unilaterally invite in their friends – such as to visit their private property or to work at their private business – if the visitors fall into the above or similar categories. Such citizens do enjoy limitless freedom in themselves, but this does not include the right to violate the country’s visitation and immigration laws. Such laws probably significantly enhance safety and security for all. The only alternative here, for a person to successfully invite in his dubious friends, is to get the defensement to change the policy and laws, based on already agreed-upon principles of law-making.

Otherwise, foreigners are not free to trespass or invade. There is no such individual or civil right. Any temporary visitation or permanent immigration is a matter of political privilege, and thus restricting or forbidding it is not a violation of the invitee's, or would-be visitor's, liberties or rights.

Against Judaism and Christianity

 

The Old Testament was written and edited by Jews mostly during the magnificent Greek Era, and thus contains many elements of sound, excellent, Greek philosophy. The New Testament was written during the magnificent Roman Era, and thus contains many elements of sound, excellent, Roman philosophy.

But the Bible is also suffused with irrationality and supernaturalism. It mostly stands in opposition to reality, this world, Mother Nature, and Natural Law. It rejects individual happiness and human greatness in this world. Jewish and Christian philosophy opposes reason, science, materialism, and “worldliness”. They oppose what Augustine called “The City of Man” in favor of “The City of God”. Ancient monotheists said it was the sacred duty of man not to achieve or be heroic, but rather to be humble, submissive, obedient, and a “slave” to this new “god” thing. These monstrous goals and ideals are why the best and brightest of the Greeks and Romans were so passionate in their desire to defeat the foolish and depraved Jews and Christians.

Greek historian Apion (~20 BC to ~45 AD) noted: “The Jews have chosen a way of life contrary to all humanity.” Roman historian Tacitus (56 to 120 AD) observed: “The practices of the Jews are base and abominable, and owe their persistence to their depravity.”

As for the Jewish offshoots, Tacitus states: “The Christians were convicted [after a terrible fire], not so much for the crime of arson, but of hatred against mankind.” Roman intellectual Celsus [~140 to ~220 AD] criticized the leading thinkers of both Judaism and Christianity saying: “They invite [to their religions] the foolish, the dishonorable, and the stupid.” Moreover: “Their injunctions are like this: ‘Let no-one educated, no-one wise, no-one sensible draw near. For these abilities are thought by us to be evils.’”

It’s very suppressed today, but the fact is the finest intellectuals and philosophers of classical Greece and Rome hated and feared Judaism and Christianity. They saw these bizarre and loathsome belief-systems as alien and inimical to virtue, happiness, and their respective ways of life. What a horror that to this day Western culture still hasn’t decently rejected the disastrous and depraved philosophies of Judaism and Christianity.

New Day Dawning

 

Hopefully, Donald Trump will partially govern like a liberal hero: pro-freedom, pro-capitalism, pro-Enlightenment values, pro-Western Civilization, and hugely pro-American. Hopefully, Trump will emerge as a semi-libertarian. As such...

Job One is cut spending and shrink the government. State power and authority should decline while Individual liberty and responsibility should rise. The five main costs of the federal government are: $1.5 trillion for Social Security, $1.1 trillion for servicing the debt, $1.0 trillion for Medicare, $0.9 trillion for funding the military, and $0.6 trillion for Medicaid. If interest rates are cut from Biden’s 7% in late 2024, to Trump’s 3.5% in late 2019, this should save about $550 billion per year. By getting better deals, lessening waste and fraud, and buying more effective weapons, the military can maybe be cut by about $150 billion. Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid should be reduced by one-third at a minimum, as Americans turn to private charity, and away from today’s communist charity. That almost saves Elon Musk’s two trillion dollars right there!

Job Two is flatten taxes. Everyone should pay 20% of income or 1% of net worth, whichever is greater. There needs to be no exceptions whatsoever. There needs to be zero tax deductions, exemptions, write-offs, shelters, loopholes, and subsidies for both rich and poor.

Job Three is deregulate all business. Production and trade should feature far fewer labor laws, business permits, and professional licenses. Let everybody become a doctor, lawyer, and stock-broker instantly. Without waiting or needing Big Brother’s approval, let everyone open up a business in their house or shop, such as a hotel, restaurant, bar, movie theater, dance hall, hair salon, gym, mechanic, repair shop, clothing store, grocery, pharmacy, casino, sex club, and the like. Private evaluation and accreditation services like Angie’s List and Yelp will replace the current communist ones. Let people work and get rich!

Job Four is deregulate all personal and social behavior. As much as possible, free up drugs, prostitution, and gambling. Let people have fun and be happy!

Job Five is break all diplomatic, cultural, social, and economic relations with slave states. Especially China, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. It's a crime to interact with such savages and monsters. Why morally sanction, financially enrich, and militarily empower our enemies and destroyers?

These five jobs are more than enough for Donald Trump to get started on. In today's hideous welfare state world, even a liberal hero will find them rather challenging.

But hopefully a new day of liberty is dawning! There should be more possibilities for human greatness and happiness coming up! Perhaps soon there will be more Individual pleasure and satisfaction, mixed with social cooperation and harmony, based upon significantly expanded liberalism and political freedom!

The Coming of Trump

 

In many or most respects, the pre-inaugural Donald Trump is acting like a liberal hero. And America and the world are treating him as such. But Trump knows little of true liberalism; and he believes in and advocates it still less.

For 2600 years now life has been a battle between the liberals and the illiberals. The philosophy and culture of liberalism rose under Greece and Rome, but it declined under the Christian Dark Age. Liberalism rose again during the Renaissance and Enlightenment, but retreated during the current welfare statist Dark Age. The world seemingly hit its liberal and civilizational nadir in the 1980s.

Then came the liberal champions Deng Shiao-Ping of China, Mikhail Gorbachev of Russia, Margaret Thatcher of Britain, and Ronald Reagan of America. These four remarkable individuals were both products of the partial return of liberal philosophy and society, and drivers of them. Underlying this minor ascent of man were such liberal intellectuals as Frederich Bastiat, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spenser, Ludwig von Mises, Frederich Hayek, and, especially, Ayn Rand.

Now comes Donald Trump. Evidently he’s read a small amount of Rand, and he even likes and agrees with her somewhat. But Trump is very shallow and weak intellectually. His rather primitive, petty, and vulgar lifestyle reveals and reflects this. Strategically and psychologically, Trump may be “playing chess, while everyone else is playing checkers” but on the deep and important issues, Trump is mostly playing tic-tac-toe.

Yes, Donald Trump has a rather dynamic and heroic persona and character. He’s something of an alpha male leader. And it even seems like he might emerge as something of an iconic, historic, and transformational figure. Let's hope!

But Trump is also a considerable liar and lowlife. And his main philosophy – to the extent that he has one – is immensely amoral and unprincipled. Trump is fundamentally a pragmatist and utilitarian.

Donald Trump largely rejects right-wing religious conservatism and left-wing collectivist progressivism. But that doesn’t make him a straight-wing individualist liberal. He doesn’t even know what that is! Generally, Trump leans to the contrarian, subversive right as he keeps his distance from RINO, establishment, country-club, and swamp Republicans. He's generally somewhat virtuous overall, and has good instincts, and is a political natural. He’s also a nationalist, populist, and patriot. Trump also favors and practices non-ideological deal-making, doing what works, and common sense.

When it comes to issues of philosophy and profound intellectualism, Donald Trump rarely or never stands on principle. This is because he doesn’t know many good principles and isn’t much aware of what’s right. But Trump realizes this about himself -- which is a kind of strength. He stands somewhat above Right and Left, and thus he has the ability to pick out what's best from both and to somewhat transcend them. This allows him to sometimes go moderately go in the pro-realism, pro-reason, pro-individualism, pro-liberty, liberal direction.

Ultimately, Donald Trump from January 2025 to January 2029 -- assuming he actually lives that long – isn’t likely to advance liberal philosophy and civilization in America and the West that far. Not even liberal politics. Under him, freedom will seemingly only rise slightly -- if that.

This is because Trump simply doesn’t believe in getting rid of fascist drug, prostitution, gambling, and early-abortion prohibitions. He doesn’t believe in eliminating fascist labor laws, business permits, and professional licenses. He doesn’t believe in terminating socialist Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, Welfare, Food Stamps, and housing subsidies. He doesn’t believe in privatizing socialist roads, parks, schools, mail, and money. All of this Donald Trump sees as a species of madness. Political liberalism and libertarianism are ideals he fundamentally opposes.

At best, Trump might cut crime a bit, somewhat deregulate the economy, partially free up the energy industries, deport a moderate amount of illegal aliens, and occasionally stand up for America against enemies like China, Russia, Pakistan, North Korea, Iran, and Saudi Arabia. But Trump is a total welfare statist. His foreign policy is one of engaging with and appeasing evil; he doesn’t believe in victory. His domestic policy is one of coercion and regulation; rhetoric aside, he doesn’t believe in freedom. Trump strongly rejects free statism, economic laissez-faire capitalism, social libertarianism, personal liberty, and political liberalism. And he may well spend like a drunken sailor and get us into some pointless wars.

If someone were to walk up to Donald Trump and quietly point out that the purpose of gov’t is to uphold individual rights, establish liberty and justice for all, protect people and property, prevent the initiation of force, and create a socio-economic system of pure freedom...he wouldn’t know what the hell you were talking about. All of this is alien to his notions of gov't.

Still, political leaders adapt. They improvise and adjust themselves to the times, social situations, cultural trends, and changing intellectual beliefs. They tend to comply with what the masses and elites demand of them. Maybe the leading thinkers of America and the West can somewhat force Trump away from Big Brother and in the direction of freedom. By far the best hope for political liberalization on the planet today is Argentina’s Javier Milei. Maybe from afar Trump can observe and learn from him. Or maybe Milei can personally talk to Trump and influence him directly.

Ultimately, it’s up to the intellectual leaders of the Atlas Society, Objective Standards Institute, Ayn Rand Institute, Cato Institute, Reason magazine, and others to get to work and try to intellectually persuade and personally push Donald Trump in the liberal philosophical and political direction. More important than this, liberal thinkers need to continue to try to win the philosophical battles in the intellectual journals, think-tanks, and elite universities. This will eventually touch Trump, and all the political leaders of the world which follow.

Immortality

 

In order to live forever, humans should probably try to learn from at least three relatively well-documented species which show negligible senescence, i.e. little or no biological deterioration with age. These are:

* Hydra (Hydra vulgaris): tiny freshwater animals which show no signs of aging when protected from predators and disease. They maintain their ability to regenerate cells and avoid cellular deterioration through continuous renewal of their stem cells.

* Immortal Jellyfish (Turritopsis dohrnii): saltwater animals which can revert to an earlier life stage when stressed, avoiding death from aging indefinitely via cycling between adult and polyp stages.

* Planarian Flatworms (Planaria tricladida): small underground animals which can regenerate their entire bodies from small pieces and show no signs of aging due to a large population of stem cells called neoblasts.

People should also probably learn why certain closely-related species have such different lifespans. Here are some:

* Calico rockfish (S. dallii) and Halfbanded rockfish (S. semicinctus) appear to only live 15-20 years while Rougheye rockfish (Sebastes aleutianus) live 200 years or more.

* among bivalve ocean creatures, Eastern oysters (Crassostrea virginica) live about 5-10 years and Common mussels (Mytilus edulis) about 20-25, while Hard-shell clams (Arctica islandica) live over 500 years.

Humans probably need to learn the biological secrets of these creatures, such as by studying their genomes, as well as their mechanisms of negligible and reverse senescence. Then we need to apply such knowledge to ourselves.

Two obvious techniques for this are: (1) using the new CRISPR Cas9 technology to rewrite the human genetic code; and (2) using the old method of gene therapy thru viral vectors to do the same. Both techniques can potentially enhance the longevity of individuals via direct genetic manipulation.

The world needs scientific, medical, and healthcare geniuses to work on all this. The word needs new iterations of Leonardo Da Vinci and Albert Einstein to work on the theoretical and intellectual side of this issue; and new iterations of Thomas Edison and Steve Jobs to work on the practical and effective side.

People profoundly need to shun government funding or communist research and development on this subject. People need to strictly avoid having the state "throw money at the problem" and utilizing versions of the Post Office and DMV to try to enhance human longevity. This won’t just be ineffective and useless; it will slow down, stop, or reverse progress by diverting scarce money, knowledge, energy, enthusiasm, and publicity from competent researchers and developers.

To defeat mankind’s worst enemy, the Grim Reaper, there is a desperate need to work on this problem immediately. Many billions of dollars and thousands of scientists and doctors are currently working on this issue, but there needs to be far more.

The Value of Liberalism

 

Liberalism as a personal philosophy can help make you great and happy. It can help make you rich, famous, powerful, and successful. It can let you do great deeds, maximize your potential, realize your dreams, and fulfill your destiny.

Liberalism can give you meaning, purpose, satisfaction, and peace of mind. It can make you honest, brave, strong, and good. It can give you a high character and noble soul. It can make your life rich, full, pleasant, fun, interesting, exciting, exhilarating, marvelous, and magnificent.

Liberalism as a social philosophy can help create cooperation, harmony, peace, brotherhood, alliances, friendship, and love. It can help create a paradise and utopia.

Liberalism is a sweet phenomenon.

But it can also crush the life out of its false, evil, illiberal, intellectual rivals. It can smash to smithereens the enemy philosophies of Third Worldism, Islam, and socialism. It can also beat the living hell out of religious conservatism, collectivist progressivism, and all those who advocate such.

Liberal thinkers are Supermen who fear no evil. Indeed, liberal warriors often walk around looking for dragons to slay and terrible monsters to destroy. However much the semi-formidable commies and muzzies foam at the mouth as they rant and rave – and however maniacal and terrifying they may seem – truly liberal intellectuals and philosophers can verbally and intellectually annihilate them.

So everyone on Earth needs to stop being such pathetic weaklings and miserable failures, and convert to liberalism!

Human Nature

Are human beings fundamentally and essentially Good or Evil? Or is this the wrong way to frame the question? Or is this the wrong question to ask?

At first glance, human evil is obvious enough. Their irrationality and senselessness is massive and undeniable. The way they attack and damage themselves and their fellow man – both currently and historically – is stunning to see and horrific to contemplate.

And yet human babies seem good enough. Infant human beings are evidently innocent and pure. They almost never seem irrational or senseless. And they rarely or never deliberately harm themselves or even their fellow man.

Kittens and puppies also seem morally good – if such a designation can be applied to them. Indeed, when various high-level mammals are born – including predators – it seems almost ludicrous to judge them morally low. They very much seem loyal to their inborn, intrinsic nature. If such lifeforms aren’t naturally virtuous and good, then at worst they seem morally neutral. They are what they are. They are this based on their inherent biology, and to judge them evil seems untrue and unjust.

Maybe humans are the same. Just looking around at people today, and studying human history, there seems to be a lot of evidence for this. Kids start out mostly sweet and wonderful, but as they grow up they manifestly become corrupted and degraded by their irrational, senseless, illiberal culture. Unhealthy and unhappy society seems to drag them low.

When a human child is born, he initially seems to be quite sincere and honest about looking at his world, himself, and his fellow man. He seems fairly bold and brave too. While he looks to grow and improve, he’s filled with an eager curiosity about virtually everything and everyone; and malicious destructiveness about virtually nothing and no-one.

So the best and most accurate conclusion to draw seems to be that human babies are fundamentally and essentially good. They’re rational, sensible, honest, brave, harmless to self and others, and beneficial to both. It’s malevolent and evil Society that makes humans bad. It’s depraved, irrational, illiberal philosophy and culture that corrupts and degrades humanity. This intellectual and spiritual failure warps and wounds their sacred essence. It almost forces them to damage themselves and their fellows. But when an unattacked product of Mother Nature, human beings are evidently fundamentally and essentially good.

Brainwashed

 

Everyone is brainwashed. Our massively stupid and evil culture indoctrinates us all into illiberalism. Our parents, teachers, preachers, news media, social media, art, entertainment, intellectual journals, universities, and think-tanks brainwash us into a high level of illiberal beliefs and behaviors.

The result is a planet of low dumb monkeys. A world of foolish, wicked, warped, perverted, corrupt, malicious, hateful, disgusting, miserable, filthy animals.

Even tho reason, science, and philosophy came into the world 2600 years ago, people still largely think and claim reality is unreal, existence doesn’t exist, facts are unfactual, and the truth is untrue. People say that to be reasonable and live rationally is irrational and immoral.

They argue the universe is a fantasy and illusion. They say it’s fundamentally unreal and non-existent or, at best, unknowable. People claim that appearance and reality conflict often, usually, or always. “God”, however, exists, and can be known. “The lord”, it seems, is real and true.

These low dumb monkeys go on to claim that selfishness, or concern for the self, is evil. It harms the practitioner and destroys society. These loathsome baboons also claim that greed, or the desire and pursuit of values, is evil. Being selfish and greedy, they say, secretly hurts and undermines the individual, just as it openly hurts and wrecks the group. Instead of aggressively embracing the ideals of enlightened selfishness and rational greed – and trying to make ourselves and our lives great – we should be slaves to the deity, which doesn’t exist, or to the collective, which doesn’t exist either.

The depraved repellent macaques of mankind further argue that freedom is slavery and wicked. They say we should reject personal liberty, social libertarianism, and economic capitalism in favor of welfare statism. We need to “serve humanity” by wildly coercing it. This “soft” form of “benevolent dictatorship” is “for their own good” and “for the greater good”.

Thus, today’s worldwide welfare statism. It’s a mild form of personal, social, and economic tyranny which isn’t all that mild. It’s a moderate form of fascism and socialism which isn’t all that moderate. It’s a limited version of Hitler, Stalin, and Mao which isn’t all that limited.

What a nightmare world this is. What a nightmare set of illiberal beliefs we virtually all hold.

But the painful reality is people do believe this stuff. Essentially everyone is brainwashed. However false and evil, people fervently believe and slavishly follow all of it. Ultimately, this is a planet of low dumb monkeys which desperately needs to be put out of its misery.

The Good and The Great

 

It’s rare or unknown today to meet, or even to become aware of, someone who is genuinely educated, insightful, profound, good, or great. Someone who is healthy, strong, confident, light-hearted, fun-filled, serene, joyful, or happy. This failure and misery is because virtually everyone nowadays is so illiberal.

Their philosophy, culture, society, and personal milieu is low, weak, dark, empty, vapid, foolish, corrupt, and depraved. Our post-Enlightenment, post-modern, post-liberal Dark Age is so irrational, ignorant, brainwashed, diseased, absurd, and bizarre that it doesn’t much allow any such solid, fine, accomplished, impressive, magnificent, or heroic person to emerge and thrive. Not even to humbly subsist and precariously survive.

Of course, every philosophy, culture, and society have some contact with reality and truth. Some rationality, understanding, virtue, and excellence. Some liberalism. They’d die without it.

But, nowadays, such persons and societies haven’t much.