The Gaza-Israel War

The moment the sovereign country of Gaza declared war on Israel, on October 7th, 2023, and massacred 1400 innocents, Israel should have declared war back. They should have demanded Gaza immediately lay down its arms, release all hostages, and unconditionally surrender within 24 hours. Lacking that, Israel should have counter-attacked and bombed Gaza, from a safe distance, killing 10,000 soldiers and "innocent civilians" on Day 2; then 20,000 on Day 3; 40,000 on Day 4; 80,000 on Day 5, etc. until Gaza surrendered. Then the territory should have been annexed, all its wealth seized, and any survivors deported. Problem solved and justice done.

God

 

It’s reasonable to believe in god. Just barely. Maybe.

At the least, one can hope. The universe is big and mysterious. Who knows what’s out there?

Ont thing seems clear: Death is a moral abomination. A metaphysical monstrosity. A cosmic flaw and failure.

The inevitable termination of sentient life and consciousness shouldn’t exist. But it does. So maybe “god” can fix that. Maybe some supernatural entity can defeat death and grant good people an afterlife. Maybe even immortality.

But not killers. Not assailants and thieves. And not liars or betrayers either. No-one who significantly destroys life – their own or others – gets to live beyond the norm. This seems to be the divine standard and universal moral law.

Of course, “god” needs to be kept in a box. This creature or concept should be confined to a small space and never let out. It must be carefully restricted and controlled. God should never be allowed to harm real life or real people. These are sacred. God mustn’t touch them.

So a quiet belief and tiny hope that god might exist seems decent and reasonable. Possibly. But nothing beyond that.

Of course, there’s no evidence whatsoever that god exists. Virtually every part of reality we understand, and truth we know, indicates the exact opposite. God seems to exist in the same sense that ghosts, witches, and vampires exist.

And there’s no evidence that god has an impact upon events or people, or changes them in any manner at all. So belief in the power of god on real life and real people is entirely irrational. All the known facts and evidence reject it.

Still, a faint hope that god will emerge out of nowhere and nothing, and grant some of the good people of the Earth a certain amount of afterlife, seems plausible and reasonable. Perhaps.

John Locke's Welfare State

 

John Locke (1632-1704) was not a political pure liberal. He advocated a welfare state – not a free state. He wanted a government and socio-economic system based upon "moderate" coercion – a legal system and society of mild regulation and redistribution. According to Locke, "need" justifies elements of tyranny. Poor people have certain basic wants and thus they have a right to steal. He thinks the ideal political system should reflect this coercion, fascism, criminality, and tyranny.

According to Locke, "God hath not left one man so to the Mercy of another that he may starve him if he please."* If a person lacks food, or otherwise has needs, he has a right to acquire them by robbing his fellows. Government should facilitate this "redistribution" or thievery.

This is because no man may "justly make use of another’s necessity to force him to become his Vassal."* If a poor person is forced to take a job, merely to avoid starvation, Locke says this reduces him to the status of a slave, which is morally wrong. The state should prevent this via regulation, redistribution, coercion, and fascism.

According to Locke, every man has "a Title to so much of another’s Plenty as will keep him from extreme want where he has no means to subsist otherwise."* To deny him this subsistence is tantamount to murder.

The moral truth, says Locke, is every man has "a Right to the Surplusage of [another’s] Goods so that it cannot be justly denied him while his pressing Wants call for it."* Hence a welfare state based upon regulation and redistribution – based upon coercion, fascism, criminality, and tyranny – is superior to a free state.

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* all quotes from Two Treatises of Civil Government, by John Locke, 1690, section 1.42

People of a Twisted Morality

 

A false, evil, self-hating, self-destroying, moral code harms and freezes you. It makes you unable to decently promote and defend yourself, and often leaves you paralyzed. It takes away your self-confidence and your natural inclinations towards self-defense. Adopting a self-hating, self-destroying moral code strips you of a necessary sword and shield, and leaves you helpless before your evil enemies.

Examples of this perversion and horror abound:

* The West today -- via trade and willing surrender -- gives vast wealth, physical technology, and intellectual property to the savage and loathsome Communist and Moslem nations which seek to enslave or destroy us. And the commies and muzzies are getting close to having such abilities.

* Americans and other Westerners let Third World barbarians and enemies invade and "immigrate" in massive and deadly numbers.

* American and Western White people let blacks freely hate them, and call them "systemically racist", even tho the blacks are thus, and not the whites.

* Westerners let the enemy Moslems and Third Worlders "nationalize" their discovered and paid-for oil and natural gas – a brazen and unprecedented theft of trillions.

* Europeans let the enemy Russians have energy domination and blackmail over them.

* Westerners let the Chinese steal practically all of their intellectual property. They do business in virulently anti-Western, pro-tyranny China and willingly transfer almost all of their priceless technological genius to their economic competitors, political enemies, and absolute monsters.

* The West lets evil China infect the whole world with Wu Flu, murdering millions, devastating liberty of activity for years, and destroying trillions in wealth. This is done virtually without condemnation and punishment.

* American Whites let blacks and Hispanics commit crime, go on welfare, pay little in taxes, practice bigotry of all types, degrade the quality of life, and vote for tyranny almost without criticism or deportation.

* American White people let blacks and Hispanics replace them at elite universities virtually without protest. They surrender many or most of the good jobs and promotions to them. They let blacks and Hispanics target them for crime and racist hatred with essentially no moral condemnation or social and political fighting back.

Such self-hatred. Such self-destruction. The brainwashed "good" guys of today seemingly have no honor, pride, self-respect, or self-love. No sense either.

So they deserve to suffer and die. Genuinely good people today positively root for the bad people to hurt the brainwashed and defenseless "good" ones. The proper philosophy and approach here should be: "Kill 'em all – until or unless they wake up to race and gender reality."

In life, self-esteem and proper morality aren't optional. All these self-haters and self-destroyers deserve to be crushed.

Innocent Civilians

 

The whole notion of "innocent civilians" during wartime is bizarre. Every nation on Earth – with the possible exceptions of North Korea and Cuba – allows their citizens to freely leave and emigrate. So if they decide to stay, and live in the country, it's because they want to and voluntarily choose to.

Those who freely elect to reside inside a terrible nation, and live under its tyrannical government, are responsible for the evil actions the government undertakes. Unless a local resident is some sort of social radical and political revolutionary who favors liberty and justice, that person is answerable for, and guilty of, whatever his loathsome, totalitarian government and military do.

If China, Russia, and Iran seek to conquer their neighbors, or enslave the world, then the people of China, Russia, and Iran are fundamentally responsible for these depraved acts. There are essentially no "innocent civilians". Virtually all the adult citizenry is to blame for the horrors of their government and military.

It's the residents and citizens who put the government in power in the first place, and it's the people inside who refuse to replace or overthrow the dictatorship. And if they occasionally, weakly seek to do so, but can't, that's their fault too. It's also the denizens inside who financially, socially, emotionally, and politically support the warring soldiers, as they act in the citizens' name, and perpetrate their monstrosities. Thus the civilians of the nation are responsible and guilty – not innocent. In wartime, it's not just the government officials and soldiers, but the empowering people who deserve to die.

Over the Cliff

 

America and the West are profoundly self-hating and self-destructive. We claim to be liberal in our philosophy and culture. And we even semi-sincerely believe it. But our illiberal enemies know the truth. And, deep down, so do we.

Thus America and the West refuse to decently defend ourselves or defeat our enemies. Even tho we easily can. But Americans and Westerners lack the intellectual, moral, and spiritual self-confidence to try. Absent a reasonable level of self-respect and personal honor, we think we lack the intellectual and moral right to do so.

America and the West say our societies possess and defend objective truth. But the reality is we possess and defend skepticism of reason and religion. We say we back individual rights, liberty, and capitalism. But the fact is we back regulation, coercion, and welfare statism. We say we advocate and practice justice and equality before the law. But the truth is we advocate social justice and affirmative action. We say we champion self-interest and the Holy Individual. Instead, we quietly champion self-sacrifice and suicide.

This is why America and the West refused to nuke, decapitate, conquer, and liberate the Soviet Union, China, Pakistan, and others when we had the chance. This is why since the 1930s, America and the West have allowed Third World animals, Moslem monsters, and communist devils to steal most of our oil, technology, and intellectual property. This is why since the 1960s, Western Civilization has flooded itself with Third World savages and evil foreign enemies. This is why since the 1960s, whites and males have been racist and sexist against themselves in society and government.

When will America and the West stop being so self-hating and self-destructive? When will we reject the moral ideals of sacrifice and suicide? Only when we convert to the philosophy of true liberalism. If we ever do.

Theoretical and Practical Philosophy

 

Life is better if you're a philosophical liberal. Your existence is more fun, pleasurable, interesting, exhilarating, heroic, and magnificent, if you adhere to liberal values. These basically seem to be: the epistemology of reason and science, the metaphysics of material reality and objective truth, the ethics of individualism and self-interest, the politics of liberty and justice, the esthetics of beauty and heroism, and the spirituality of transcendence and triumph.

But this is very theoretical. Practical philosophy is also important – and very different from the above. To be happy, you also evidently have to obtain some sizable amount of solid education, utilitarian knowledge, personal cunning, political freedom, social popularity, economic wealth, and private tranquility. I can't help you much with those!

Francis Bacon and the Skeptics

 

How powerful were the skeptics of human sensation and reason during the late Renaissance? How persuasive and influential were the sophists, paradoxists, deniers, and nihilists as civilization, culture, and quality-of-life were rising radically in Europe after the 1494 French invasion of Italy? Evidently, the skeptics were pretty strong.

Francis Bacon, in the Novum Organum (1620), was eager to speak out against them. He flatly opposed "The doctrine of those who have denied that certainty could be obtained at all" and who claim "that nothing can be known". His own doctrine of science, philosophy, and "the interpretation of nature and the kingdom of man" is "infinitely separated and opposed" to theirs. Bacon notes that these irrational enemies of man, knowledge, progress, and happiness "destroy the authority of the senses and understanding; whereas I proceed to devise and supply helps for the same."

Biological Necessity

 

Whenever I have sex with a girl, it’s like when a normal person has sex with a chimpanzee or farm animal. Whenever I talk to a man, it’s like when a normal person talks to a retard, criminal, or schizophrenic. But because I’ve been biologically engineered to be a social creature, these activities are better than nothing. However, I don’t entirely enjoy them.

Common Sense Hero

 

Thomas Reid (1710-96) is just about as great as they come. Altho virtually unknown today, this liberal philosopher, rebel, and paladin is a powerful enemy of the would-be philosophical destroyers of man: George Berkeley, David Hume, Immanuel Kant, and Friedrich Hegel. On the one hand, Reid only lived long enough to decently study and refute Berkeley and Hume. On the other hand, he was lightly pro-religion. But he still used basic reason and common sense to explicitly and fairly-effectively counter the nihilism and skepticism of Berkeley and Hume; and he used basic reason and common sense to implicitly and fairly-effectively counter the supernaturalism of "god".

Thomas Reid wrote three great books: An Inquiry into the Human Mind: On the Principles of Common Sense (1764), Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785), and Essays on the Active Powers of the Human Mind (1788). He was the most formidable thinker of the late 1700s Scottish Enlightenment. And for a generation or two, he was pretty much the intellectual leader of the world. Reid was a champion of the philosophy of common sense realism. If anyone wonders about the intellectual strength and personal magnificence of the mostly-forgotten Thomas Reid, consider what he wrote in his weakest work, and in just the preface and introduction:

Reid begins by focusing squarely on the five most authoritative and important thinkers of his time: "Des Cartes, Malebranche, Locke, Berkeley, and Hume" who he calls "men of very great penetration and genius." Reid generously allows that "However contrary my notions are to the writers I have mentioned, their speculations have been of great use to me." He acknowledges that his rare dissent from their largely skeptical-of-reason philosophies will "be condemned by many" and yet he still hopes to appeal to "the candid and discerning Few."

Just as Immanuel Kant was famously "awakened from my dogmatic slumber" by David Hume, so was Reid, but to infinitely better effect. At age 29, the formerly pro-Berkeley scholar was shocked and galvanized by Hume’s A Treatise of Human Nature (1739). Reid ominously observed that "the ingenious author of that treatise" has concocted "a system of skepticism which leaves no ground to believe any one thing rather than its contrary."

Altho Thomas Reid heavily condemns irrationalists, skeptics, and sophists like Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel in his Inquiry into the Human Mind, he takes a gentlemanly and magnanimous view of their persons: "I conceive the skeptical writers to be a set of men whose business it is to pick holes in the fabric of knowledge wherever it is weak and faulty; and when these places are properly repaired the whole building will become more firm and solid than it was formerly."

In all his works Reid rejects the ancient hypotheses which began with the Greek skeptics and sophists: "That nothing is perceived but what is in the mind that perceives it: That we do not really perceive things that are external but only certain images and pictures of them imprinted upon the mind, which are called [by Berkeley, Hume, and others] impressions and ideas." He damns that line of reasoning about impressions and ideas which claims people "cannot from their existence infer the existence of any other thing." As for the mental impressions and ideas themselves, Reid notes that "they are such fleeting and transitory beings that they can have no existence at all" under the skepticist intellectual theories. Reid further observes that "upon this hypothesis, the whole universe...vanish[es] at once."

Thomas Reid finds these philosophical claims to be false and evil. He correctly notes that such intellectual irrationality, skepticism, and sophistry "overturn all philosophy...and virtue and common sense." Ultimately, Reid is a ferocious advocate of "common sense and reason".

Reid has enormous respect for Isaac Newton and other scientists of the past century or two. After studying Newton closely he concludes that he "discovered the law of gravitation and the properties of light" using "the maxims of common sense". Alas, "this age [the 1700s]" has generated "a system of skepticism that seems to triumph over all science, and even more over the dictates of common sense."

Taking the high road, as always, Thomas Reid claims "It is genius, and not the want of it, that adulterates philosophy, and fills it with error and false theory." By implication he condemns the Plato-like philosophers of "creative imagination" that don’t deign to involve themselves in the "servile employments [of] the dredges of science." Reid notes that the wild inventions of these philosophers has "coloring and every befitting ornament. The work pleases the eye and wants nothing but solidity and good foundation."

Considering the irrationality, skepticism, and sophistry which dominates his era, Reid admits that "our philosophy concerning the mind and its faculties is but in a very low state." It compares very unfavorably to the hard sciences "of mechanics, astronomy, and optics." When studying enemies of reason like Berkeley and Hume "we are immediately involved in darkness and perplexity" and in danger of falling into "absolute skepticism".

In the opening passages of his Inquiry into the Human Mind, Reid mocks the self-doubt and skepticism-of-reason of Descartes. He notes that "A man that disbelieves his own existence is surely as unfit to be reasoned with as a man that believes he is made of glass." As for his famous "Cogito ergo sum," Reid rejoins "Is it not as good reasoning to say I am sleeping, therefore I am? or I am doing nothing, therefore I am?"

As for those who wonder if their consciousness deceives them, Reid isn’t sure whether "to laugh at or pity the man who doubts its testimony." He helpfully adds that any such philosophical doubter or skeptic should "hope for his cure from physic and good regimen, rather than from metaphysic and logic."

Reid laments that "our philosophy concerning the mind appears to be very fruitful in creating doubts, but very unhappy in resolving them." The relatively liberal, empiricist, materialist, good guys of "Des Cartes, Malebranche, and Locke have all employed their genius and skill to prove the existence of a material world; and with very bad success." Reluctantly, Reid is forced to conclude that "these three great men, with the best good will, had not been able, from all the treasuries of philosophy, to draw one argument that is fit to convince a man that can reason, of the existence of any one thing."

Reid mocks: "Admired philosophy! daughter of light! Parent of wisdom and knowledge." He observes that it's the job of these skepticist philosophers to "dispel the clouds and phantoms which thou hast discovered or created." If they can't or won't do it, then mankind has no choice but to say: "I despise philosophy and renounce its guidance: let my soul dwell with Common Sense."

Nothwithstanding their considerable failures, the gentleman Reid makes an "Apology for these philosophers". Despite "The defects and blemishes of their system we ought rather to honor their memories" and thank them for pointing us in the proper direction. Reid claims the skeptics at least helped us defeat the "scholastic sophistry" which did mankind so much damage prior to the Enlightenment.

And if philosophy (in the late 1700s) has earned "the contempt and ridicule of sensible men" this is because it has engaged in unwarranted fancy and fantasy and has "endeavored to extend [its] jurisdiction beyond its just limits." It needs the solid grounding and noble ideals of baseline reason and common sense.

Because "In the unequal contest betwixt Common Sense and Philosophy the later will always come off both with dishonor and loss...it dies and rots." Reid condemns the skeptical philosophers who have "waged open war with Common Sense and hope to make a complete conquest of it."

Almost the entirety of Thomas Reid’s 1764 book takes dead aim at "the Bishop of Cloyne" [Berkeley] and "the author of the Treatise of Human Nature" [Hume]. But despite Reid’s contempt for the irrationality and nonsensicality of their conclusions, he dolorously notes that "the opinions of the ablest judges [of mankind] seems to be that [Berkeley and Hume] neither have been, nor can be confuted; and that they have proved, by unanswerable arguments, what no man in his senses can believe." If so, what could be more destructive to mankind than this?

Hume especially "leaves nothing in nature but ideas and impressions without any subjects [such as humans] on which they may be impressed." Under the philosophy of Hume "there is neither human nature nor science in the world." Hume is "an author who neither believes in his own existence nor that of his readers."

But David Hume, like virtually all other nihilists and skeptics, does not practice what he preaches -- does not try to live by his explicit philosophy. Hume admits that "it was only in solitude and retirement that he could yield an assent to his own philosophy; Society, like daylight, dispelled the darkness and fogs of skepticism and made [it] yield to the dominion of Common Sense." Reid correctly notes that "Pyrrho the Elean [was] the father of this philosophy."

Near the end of the introduction Reid asks if philosophy itself is as false and evil as the thinkers Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel make it out to be. He observes that "It is a bold philosophy that rejects, without ceremony, principles which irresistibly govern the belief and conduct of all mankind."

Reid’s position is that "If philosophy contradicts itself, befools her votaries, and deprives them of every object worthy to be pursued or enjoyed, let her be sent back to the infernal regions from which she must have had her original." But fortunately for all, Reid argues the problem entirely lies with the irrational and nihilistic philosophers like Berkeley, Hume, Kant, and Hegel. Reid finds philosophy itself to be "an agreeable companion, a faithful counselor, [and] a friend to Common Sense, and to the happiness of mankind."

Despite the false and evil claims of skeptical fundamentalists like Berkeley and Hume, Reid and other "sensible" thinkers are undeterred. They continue to use reason, science, and common sense correctly, and thus to understand that "snow is cold and honey sweet, whatever they [the nihilists] may say to the contrary. He must either be a fool, or want to make a fool of me, that would reason me out of my reason and sense."

Thomas Reid ends by opposing any philosophy that will "naturally and necessarily plunge a man into this abyss of skepticism." He rejects all theories of irrationality, senselessness, nihilism, and skepticism, affirming that "Such philosophy is justly ridiculous, even to those who cannot detect the fallacy of it. It can have no other tendency than to show the acuteness of the sophist, at the expense of disgracing reason and human nature, and making mankind Yahoos."