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Lawyers, Guns
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Picture of chellim1
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The End Of The Age Of Benevolence

Francis Marion

The history of democracy, Marxism and feminism is the history of the snake, which, being hungry for more, stalks its own tail and consumes itself.

Some evenings I sit on the sofa in the family room with my teenage daughter and watch a TV program with her. I leave the choice of the show to her, it matters little to me, and when she finds something she likes she sits next to me, puts her head on my shoulder, and snuggles up for the hour it takes to watch whatever it is she’s chosen.

It’s our time.

Occasionally we’ll sneak in another twenty or thirty minutes to the objection of her mother but I like my time with her so I put up with the raised eyebrows and the, “She’s got school tomorrow,” scoldings. It’s important to me that she knows I love her, that I want to spend time with her and that she feels safe when she is with me. Someday, when she is a grown woman I want her to find a man that will take care of her and protect her like I do. I expect no less from a suitor and neither should she.

There will be women who read this who will object to my stance. They will say, “She doesn’t need a man to feel safe or validated or content,” but I would disagree. When she gets older she’ll need a good man, not just any man, and that’s as true today as much as it was ten years, twenty years, fifty years, one hundred years and even one thousand years ago. And it will become even more so as time goes on.

Indeed, we have reached peak denial in our civilization and whether we like it or not reality is about to make a come back.

The freedom that we have enjoyed in the west and the modern democracies that have sprung forth from our evolving and enlightened philosophies over the past few hundred years are not a given. Granted, they are preferable outcomes given our natural state but politically speaking they are an anomaly in the history of mankind and not the norm.

As such, democracy and the systems, social structures and institutions that have grown up around them are grossly misunderstood by the vast majority of the western world. Most of the people living in the west today have been raised to believe that democracy is a moral system of governance and that it is our gift to the rest of mankind. But democracy is not an inherently moral system nor is it a guarantor of linear, progressive political growth.

At its root democracy is quite simple. It is the exercise of political power by the majority over the minority. It is the power to choose in matters of politics. This, of course, begs the question: to choose what?

Since choices in general (and political ones are no exception) can be either good or bad, in this case, both for the individual and the body politic, then it follows that democracy is neither. It is nothing more than a tool for decision making where the majority holds the power to make decisions that affect everyone, either for better or for worse. Democracy is, therefore, a reflection of the character of the people who exercise it.

Additionally, democracy is also the use of soft force. That is, the minority bends to the will of the majority on political matters and the apparatus of the state is responsible for carrying out its demands. The minority consents, willingly or unwillingly not because violence is present but because, by the state’s presence, it is implied.

More importantly, though, democracy is a luxury that is preceded by benevolence but does not necessarily guarantee its continuance or creation if forgotten.

Societies in a state of internal turmoil, or where competing factions vie for political power, often through the use of overt physical violence, will forgo democracy because the primary component for its exercise, order, is absent.

Democracy in the western world has always followed ‘order’. ‘Order’ is a byproduct of force and, like democracy varies in severity on the scale of good and bad, its moral leanings by and large being dependent on the type of people who impose it from the top down. It can be fatherly and benevolent or it can be violent and oppressive. It is never universally both.

Thus democracy usually occurs where ‘order’ has been established and the apparatus of the state is at least somewhat benevolent.

In a political world ruled by strength, order and benevolence are precursors to suffrage. Without either suffrage would not exist, choices would be limited and brute strength would still be the order of the day.

Whether feminists are willing to admit it or not, brute, physical strength is at the root of all political power, thus feminism came into being because those who held that strength chose to exercise benevolence and reason over strength and subjugation. Their suffrage was dependent first and foremost on the benevolence of those who held political power. And like it or not, those who held political power at the time it was introduced were men.

As time progressed, at least in the West, democracy, and universal suffrage gave way to both physical and intellectual freedom for women. In the West during the twentieth century, its political structure (and the intellectual values it embodied) and the industrial revolution it spawned ushered in a new era for women, giving them choices they had not previously had, by and large, since the beginning of recorded history.

Women were finally free to choose between family, career or both. Rather than playing the role of the weaker, subservient sex women found their place beside men in society as intellectual equals. Physical strength was no longer a factor in the social structure of our civilization. An intellectual meritocracy came to be valued over a system based simply on brute force. This structure was the product of order created from benevolent strength.

But the rise of Marxism and feminism, particularly the rise of third-wave feminism has put ‘order’ at risk.

Without order, an intellectual meritocracy will once again become subservient to strength. It’s a hard pill for women and progressive liberals in general to swallow but it’s a fact.

Marxism and modern feminism work continuously towards a perfect world but ignore reality in the process. They forget an important lesson, born true repeatedly throughout history:

There is no utopia.

The best we can hope for in any civilization is for a society to be built and based on fundamental individual rights and freedoms. If we refuse this then we return to what we were before. This means rule by brute force which means the end of political and legal equality for women and the death of democracy itself.

The irony in the dilemma which the West now faces is that our demise, the continual erosion of a democratic, intellectual meritocracy, is by and large spurred on by the very people that our system was created to protect.

Feminists, both female and male, cry daily for more of the same poison which infects us.

More illegal and unscreened immigration. More tolerance of philosophies which are intolerant themselves. More invitations for an enemy created by a corrupt and immoral government to ignore our borders and live among us.

More cries for moral nihilism, the repression of speech (one of the cornerstones of their own suffrage) and the denial of fundamental biological reality.

More cries for the denial of basic math and the continuance of government-sponsored bread and circuses. More of everything which our civilization cannot sustain. More of everything which rots us from the core.

Subsequently, modern feminists decry the men of their own civilization as misogynists, racists, and intolerant while forgetting it was their own men who recognized that a society built on equal political rights for all was preferable to a society built on spoils taken by the strong.

They forget that it was the men they live among who valued justice over greed and force so much that they shed the old ways and took their place beside their women instead of in front of them. They do all of this while cheering on the invasion of their own countries by foreign men who view them as nothing more than chattel property. In doing so they have unwittingly invited the destruction of their own freedom.

While I sit next to my daughter I wonder what the future will hold for her. I have no desire to see her disenfranchised but the reality is that many of her own kind have chosen a future where reason has been rejected and instead, traded for thirty pieces of silver and whatever makes them feel good. Unfortunately, a world without reason is a world without order which is a world without choice. A world without choice is a world of brute force. And that’s a man’s world.

Ironic.

Benevolence and democracy should have ushered in an era of truth and reason but instead, they ushered in an era of denial and wishful thinking. Thus, democracy’s beginning will also be its end. What came from force will return to it.

http://www.zerohedge.com/news/.../end-age-benevolence



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 23946 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
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Do I dare agree? Nope, too late. Looks like I’ll spend the rest of my life muttering to myself.
Waiting for the crescendo of chaos.
 
Posts: 748 | Location: Western Washington AC | Registered: August 19, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Oh stewardess,
I speak jive.
Picture of 46and2
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Bologna.

Ignorance, of the malicious and benign varieties and many points in between, of the men of the times ultimately spawned Suffrage/Feminism. Not their "benevolence" of finally getting a clue and doing something about it.

Suffrage and Feminism came to be because the men of those times (and many who followed, as well as many who came before) were grotesquely and inexcusably wrong with respect to the value, intelligence, and capabilities of women in general.

That it took so long to figure it out and right those wrongs is shameful, really.

Same issue with slavery.

You're either born knowing both slavery in general and the subjugation of women are wrong, or you aren't. I never needed a school or law to tell me so, it was obvious from day one, and those men back then should have (and likely did) known better.

Calling getting a fucking clue and stopping the absurd subjugation "benevolence" is rich.

It's like calling someone benevolent for not kicking their dog, because kicking dogs was once OK.

Bullshit.

Kicking dogs, and subjugating women, and owing human beings, was always fucked up.

Woopie, they finally figured it out.

(eyeroll)

That said, I wholeheartedly agree that the further erosion of meritocracy is a bad thing.

Smile
 
Posts: 25613 | Registered: March 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lawyers, Guns
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quote:
You're either born knowing both slavery in general and the subjugation of women are wrong, or you aren't. I never needed a school or law to tell me so, it was obvious from day one, and those men back then should have (and likely did) known better.

Are men born in Saudi Arabia and Iran knowing both slavery in general and the subjugation of women are wrong?
What about men born in Africa?



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 23946 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
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Somebody needs to read a lot more history.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Fortified with Sleestak
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As I read the article I kept thinking I'd heard this somewhere before. Oh yeah...here it is.





I have the heart of a lion.......and a lifetime ban from the Toronto Zoo.- Unknown
 
Posts: 5371 | Location: Shenandoah Valley, VA | Registered: November 05, 2010Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Oh stewardess,
I speak jive.
Picture of 46and2
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There is no excuse, ever, for someone having thought either the subjugation of women or slavery was ok, no matter how popular or commonplace it may have been, whether it occurred in Africa or Saudi Arabia or Mississippi, whether in 2017, 1817, 1217, or 517 BCE.

No one gets a pass on that, no one deserves a pass, and every single human throughout history who supported it, engaged in it, kept silent about it, or otherwise - they were wrong about it, and were either stupid, malicious, or ambivalent to a critical fault (about that).

It's no more complicated than that. It was wrong when the dinosaurs roamed the earth, when plantations were built, when the pyramids were built, when the great wall was built, and at every single moment of every single day in between. No one gets a pass, on that.

For various reasons, however, many are hesitant to say so, often afraid to be judged by someone later for something we now think is OK, or to speak poorly of their ancestors or famous figures and so on. But it's bullshit, always has been and always will be.

Even many of our beloved Founding Fathers, men of a great many positive attributes and contributions, including one of my favorite historical figures - Thomas Jefferson, THEY... WERE... WRONG... ABOUT... THIS... and there's no arguing otherwise, no excusing it, ever.

And, again, to call the final end of such things "benevolent" is as crazy as the act itself. No shit, people, welcome to humanity. Glad you finally got a clue about two things so basic, that you shouldn't own people or treat half of humanity as less because they have no penis.

It wasn't benevolent, it was absurd it took so goddamn long, and they ought to have been embarrassed, ashamed, and ought to have worked around the clock to end it sooner, but they didn't, because they were broken - with respect to these specific topics, and that's that.

There's nothing remotely benevolent about letting women vote, for fuck's sake. The very act of having denied them in the first place is the very antithesis of benevolence, and the same is true with slavery. It was never, ever, OK to have denied them in the first place.

That it was popular, legal, or common back then, and still is in some places. makes no difference whatsoever. One either knows how wrong it is or they don't, and if they don't they're fucking broken, at least partially. That much is indisputable, and forever will be.
 
Posts: 25613 | Registered: March 12, 2004Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lawyers, Guns
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46and2,
Your passion and exuberance never ceases to amaze me. Smile

quote:
You're either born knowing both slavery in general and the subjugation of women are wrong, or you aren't.

Well, while it may be true that many people may know something is wrong yet do it anyway because that is the culture. Many of our Founding Fathers wrestled with that issue. Of course, I would submit that most people are born knowing abortion is wrong too.

Nevertheless, take this one statement:
quote:
Whether feminists are willing to admit it or not, brute, physical strength is at the root of all political power

Unfortunately, it has been strength, whether physical or at the barrel of a gun, which has ruled throughout history. I often wish it was morality or reason which has ruled, but it is strength.

At least that should be clear to you.



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 23946 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by chellim1:
46and2,
Your passion and exuberance never ceases to amaze me. Smile

quote:
You're either born knowing both slavery in general and the subjugation of women are wrong, or you aren't.

Well, while it may be true that many people may know something is wrong yet do it anyway because that is the culture. of course, I would submit that most people are born knowing abortion is wrong too.

Nevertheless, take this one statement:
quote:
Whether feminists are willing to admit it or not, brute, physical strength is at the root of all political power

Unfortunately, it has been strength, whether physical or at the barrel of a gun, which has ruled throughout history. I often wish it was morality or reason which has ruled, but it is strength.



The powerful women of history might disagree. There have been many. It can be assumed that there were many more that historians either didn’t hear about or overlooked or ignored.

Let’s not forget, too, that real power is often behind the scenes. My sister had a sign on her refrigerator, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!” More than a few Roman Emperors, and absolute monarchs of all flavors, knew the truth of this modern aphorism.

Morality, as it has been interpreted from time to time, rules the culture. All we say is that our way is right and all who differ, have differed, or will hereafter differ, are wrong.

The only thing new in the world is history you don’t know.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Lawyers, Guns
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Picture of chellim1
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quote:
Let’s not forget, too, that real power is often behind the scenes. My sister had a sign on her refrigerator, “If momma ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy!” More than a few Roman Emperors, and absolute monarchs of all flavors, knew the truth of this modern aphorism.

Very true.

quote:
The powerful women of history might disagree. There have been many.

Of course there have been.
An the powerful women of history had strength. (not necessarily physical but the ability to wield strength through directed power)

The prime point the author is making, I think, is that strength is required before there will be order. Order seems to be breaking down.



"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible."
-- Justice Janice Rogers Brown

"The United States government is the largest criminal enterprise on earth."
-rduckwor
 
Posts: 23946 | Location: St. Louis, MO | Registered: April 03, 2009Reply With QuoteReport This Post
I believe in the
principle of
Due Process
Picture of JALLEN
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by chellim1:


The prime point the author is making, I think, is that strength is required before there will be order. Order seems to be breaking down.


Maybe that is because strength is breaking down. Cruel and unusual and all that. Seldom are rules enforced against someone to the full extent. Who needs to fear retribution?

Maybe the barbarians gradually made inroads into Roman territory as they saw the strength and power which led them to control people and territory was waning. You could get away with it.

Look at all the thousands of things one can get away without real detriment now, from driving alone in the diamond lane, to putting classified material on your own server, to telling Congress to drop dead when it wants documents, or testimony.

There is a certain level of “you can’t make me” in our DNA, of course.

One of the casualties of a “diverse culture” is the impossibility of enforcing standards of conduct, appearance, language, manners, grooming, etc. Ignoring laws doesn’t carry much of a stigma any more. Felons can vote in Virginia, etc.

Even the death penalty is almost impossible to enforce.




Luckily, I have enough willpower to control the driving ambition that rages within me.

When you had the votes, we did things your way. Now, we have the votes and you will be doing things our way. This lesson in political reality from Lyndon B. Johnson

"Some things are apparent. Where government moves in, community retreats, civil society disintegrates and our ability to control our own destiny atrophies. The result is: families under siege; war in the streets; unapologetic expropriation of property; the precipitous decline of the rule of law; the rapid rise of corruption; the loss of civility and the triumph of deceit. The result is a debased, debauched culture which finds moral depravity entertaining and virtue contemptible." - Justice Janice Rogers Brown
 
Posts: 48369 | Location: Texas hill country | Registered: July 04, 2005Reply With QuoteReport This Post
Oh stewardess,
I speak jive.
Picture of 46and2
posted Hide Post
quote:
Originally posted by chellim1:
46and2,
Your passion and exuberance never ceases to amaze me. Smile

quote:
You're either born knowing both slavery in general and the subjugation of women are wrong, or you aren't.

Well, while it may be true that many people may know something is wrong yet do it anyway because that is the culture. Many of our Founding Fathers wrestled with that issue. Of course, I would submit that most people are born knowing abortion is wrong too.

Nevertheless, take this one statement:
quote:
Whether feminists are willing to admit it or not, brute, physical strength is at the root of all political power

Unfortunately, it has been strength, whether physical or at the barrel of a gun, which has ruled throughout history. I often wish it was morality or reason which has ruled, but it is strength.

At least that should be clear to you.

Smile

As to abortion - briefly, please - I'll add that I am fully aware that future humans may in fact judge me similarly harshly for supporting abortion now as I do (what I really support is it being 100% up to the woman, but that's picking nits). And if they do judge me that way, so be it, my corpse and memory will take those lumps in stride. I am not perfect, either, nor a hypocrite, nor do I think I know everything or am right about everything. I am sure I have bad ideas, too, but this isn't one of them.

My main issue with this article is the unbelievable (to me) notion that such a thing can possibly be characterized as benevolent. As though we'd call it benevolent if the left sudden decided to help us roll back bad gun laws that never should have happened, or we'd consider it benevolent if a thief returned previously stolen property. The notion of benevolence implies it was ever, even for a second, OK to begin with, and it was not.

The rest is just ancillary opinions as to how I've come to think so, and verbose because I simply tend to be.

It is, of course, never personal.

Yes, might equals right and brute force have indeed ruled the day in many places, and even I think it might be better to resort to it sometimes, but I have never, not could I ever, think it's OK to subjugate based on sex or own a human being, and find it crazy that anyone ever did. Some folks (not you) try to excuse those behaviors of old, but I do not.

That's all.

Pardon the tangent. Though we disagree here and there I greatly enjoy most of your posts, and Jim's as well. Thanks for your patience and commentary, and contributions over all.
 
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