“‘If somebody screws with you, and you let him get away with it, what lesson are you teaching him?’”

You could be setting an example for him to follow - awing him with your superior character.

“To break its hold over you by invoking a Higher Power.”

That’s good advise. I suffer from the same tendency to be prideful and thus to overreact. This is a good advise, though perhaps embarrassing personal details of others could have been left out. Still, this article teaches a good lesson for the type-A personalities among us, including myself.

“‘If somebody screws with you, and you let him get away with it, what lesson are you teaching him?’

If you dont let them make you angry then they got away with nothing. If you get angry then you taught them one of your weaknesses.

Ennyhooo, enjoyed the article.

A clever piece, Dr. Zmirak. Perhaps you should try your hand at writing a novel, or a play - or at least a screenplay.

But what I fail to understand is, why, with a thickened skin and toughened hide, you are so timid about discussing racial differences (per your recent takimag article on white nationalism)? After all, no one is more deserving of a good rhetorical clip to the jawbone than these abrasive minorities and their unbelievably vicious white/PC allies, who are constantly harassing innocent, mostly non-confrontational whites, falsely accusing our people, manipulating white goodwill to serve selfish ends, and otherwise hardly emulating the Humble Savior Himself. They warrant a good hiding, and that’s what white nationalism gives them - by merely shining the glorious light of empirical truth on their arrogant lies.

What liberals like you (and yes, whatever your religious or cultural views, you are a liberal, in accordance with the best definition, that of Robert Frost) can never understand is that Christianity is NOT a religion of meekness, but rather of humility, not weakness, but justice. That many Christian ‘leaders’ today say otherwise, equating Christianity with non-judgmentalism, “unconditional niceness”, ethnocultural masochism, and an effeminate worldview, is more of a sociobiological commentary on the types of mentalities attracted to the Church today, than a reflection of spiritual truth.

When Christ said turn the other cheek, he was speaking on two levels, the metaphysical and the sociological. WRT the former, he was emphasizing that the most ethical man would apprehend the infinite goodness of God, recognize His complete control of creation, and understand that his own fulfilment would inhere in attempting to follow Christ, that is, to emulate God’s goodness, as opposed to following base, if morally understandable, instincts for justifiable vengeance in cases of wrongs. Christ was setting up an absolute moral standard, one fully consonant with the idea that our temporal existence is not our ‘real’ one, but merely a kind of training ground for it. In the light of eternal joy, does it really matter if the deli shop guy cheated you out of some salami, especially if you’re well fed?

WRT the grittier sociological level, Christ’s turn the other cheek admonition was directed to cases of human conflict wherein there is no clear moral position. Usually these grow out of exaggerated notions of personal honor. “Why’d you deck him? He bumped into me and spilled my beer. / He was eyeing my girlfriend. / He cut me off at the overpass.” Who’s really right? What Christ meant was that one should conduct oneself with moral rectitude, and maturity. He did not mean that we should ignore or minimize injustice, including that directed against ourselves, but that our response should be dispassionate and proportionate, not exaggerated by self-interestedness, anger or pride.

But we are not morally required to be human doormats, either - though that is exactly what whites collectively have become in relation to other races. Of course, we have reached this nadir not out of Christian fidelity, but sheer sybaritic weakness. “Luxury is more ruthless than war,” observed Juvenal. Indeed.

Yo, Leon, you dont get to tell people what they are and are not.

Projecting your opinion on someone is a sorry rationalisation to vent your bias on someone because you feel like a doormat.

Oh, and dont paint me into your doormat world, ok?

As another anti-Christian liberal said in Matthew 5
“You have heard that it was said, ‘You shall love your neighbor and hate your enemy.’But I say to you, love your enemies, and pray for those who persecute you, that you may be children of your heavenly Father, for he makes his sun rise on the bad and the good, and causes rain to fall on the just and the unjust. For if you love those who love you, what recompense will you have? Do not the tax collectors do the same?
And if you greet your brothers only, what is unusual about that? Do not the pagans do the same? So be perfect, just as your heavenly Father is perfect.

And that Paul guy who wrote letters to Romans:
Beloved, do not look for revenge but leave room for the wrath; for it is written, “Vengeance is mine, I will repay, says the Lord.” Rather, “if your enemy is hungry, feed him; if he is thirsty, give him something to drink; for by so doing you will heap burning coals upon his head.”
Do not be conquered by evil but conquer evil with good.

JZ, maybe a book should be written about your time at Yale and other adventures with the sons of the super elite.  This seems to be some of your best material.

What’s the pronunciation of Zmirak?  Zee-marak, zmee-rak?

Very enjoyable article, John.  As a New Englander myself, I especially liked your retort about the high cost of lobsters!

That was funny as hell, Mr. Z. It brought back a few memories. Thank you.

I do know that when another accosts you to try and make you feel guilty, the unanticipated response he gets can not only help defuse the situation but it can refresh and renew the entire atmospherics.

My good buddy, Jim, went to UVM (Univ. of Vermont - “Jew V M,” as it was called back in the day) andhe came back to our little home town all fired-up with indignation about how America had treated the indians and how he couldn’t think about going on in life without doing something to help right the wrongs.

“Jim, we stole it from them fair and square,” was all it took for him to quit his rage and come back down to earth so we could get into his car and he could drive us over to a keg party at the pits so we could drink beer and chase skirts.

To my mind Leon Haller’s comment above was very well expressed and relevant to the overall sequence of Mr. Zmirak’s pieces.  I would also like to compliment the latter on that extremely well-written piece on David Frum.

I think it was Max Beerbohm who observed: “Our Lord and Saviour told us always to turn the other cheek, but He neglected to mention that His Father gave us four.”

Turning the other cheek to the depraved may egg them on.  Especially those for whom violence is genetic, we have an obligation to give them an object lesson of force so that they can find God.

Turning the other cheek to the depraved may egg them on.

Naw, the fates [which many non-believers call Karma] will dispense justice. I dont question these three.

The comments directed to me by “Jerry” and “Jet” above are indicative of very weak minds -typical of racial leftists. While there are ranting fools on the Racial Right, too, in general I have found over many years that race-realists tend to be far more intelligent than any other group on the Right (there are brilliant men of many ideological persuasions, of course, but I’m speaking of collectivities). I wonder why…

But what I fail to understand is, why, with a thickened skin and toughened hide, you are so timid about discussing racial differences....

Your racial ideology is so predominant it makes you blind./
<I>Christianity is NOT a religion of meekness,<?I>

..In the Sermon on the Mount Jesus taught the meek are Blessed and would inherit the earth.

But, what did He know?

Old Atlantic, it depends a lot on the person, situation, action, etc. Most little things should just be forgotten.

Rather than focusing on how one has been wronged, one ought to focus on what’s best for loved ones, the community, nation, etc.

Ideally, a man shouldn’t take pride in how he’s gotten revenge, or should repent when he does. Btw, one argument for the death penalty is that it prevents acts of vengeance. The purp gets the ultimate punishment, and the victims are not tempted. Also of course the purp can no longer do evil…

Mr. Leon Haller,

“Of course, we have reached this nadir not out of Christian fidelity, but sheer sybaritic weakness. “Luxury is more ruthless than war,” observed Juvenal. Indeed.”

I think this conclusion is germane to the discussion we are having under the thread “McCain is even worse than you thought.” Once again, I am forced to compare the intended results of an ideology with the real world actuality of an ideology’s implementation. Few can argue that the doctrine of Christianity provided innumerable advantages to the Western people in their historical development. However, the susceptibility of Christianity to the equalitarian political agenda cannot be denied. Anti-Western forces have repeatedly used the morality of our Christianity against us. For instance, much of the guilt politics that have found so much resonance within the West is because of our Christian faith. Perhaps you are correct that these anti-Western forces have only been able to do this by perverting the true meaning of Christianity to mean something that it is not. This is debatable. But what is no debatable is that Christianity has become a slave morality that is inhibiting our ability to put self-interest in front of the interest of outsiders. I fear there are just far too many tenets of the Christian doctrine that can be used to buttress equalitarian dogma and support global universalism. Again, this was not always the case. There was once a time when Christianity was recognized by Western Man to be a superior faith whose followers were subsequently superior in value to the rest of the world. Because of our superior status, we had no problem putting self interest well in front of the interests of others. One need only recollect the many historical occasions when we conquered primitive people under the auspices of civilizing them with Christianity. Sadly, we not longer believe in the superiority of Christianity because the Christianity of today embraces the equalitarian political agenda. Today, most Christians believe (or at least act like they do) that all the religions of the world are equal. This equalitarian understanding of Christianity by Western man has made Christianity inferior to other religions of the world. For instance, contrast Christianity with Islam, a faith where followers are taught that they are the true bearers of God’s message and all other religions are a sham. In centuries to come, this spiritual sense of superiority will one day result in the actual real world superiority of the Islamic people. Islam might be backwards and primitive in its aversion towards science and innovation, but the Islamic people are superior to the West in one crucial way that guarantees their future dominance—the recognition of the primacy of self interest. Nevertheless, I agree with you that sybaritic weakness is also a major cause of our demise.

Mr. Gavin:

I have imported your last post from the McCain thread, as I fear it might get lost soon, and I thought politeness demands I not ignore such a considered response directed to me.

LH

“Leon,

You are correct that there were many other sources of egalitarian ideology, but I don’t think any of them were anywhere near as influential as the Boas School of Anthropology. And to my knowledge, most of the pivotal figures within the Boas School of Anthropology were affiliated with communist organizations. However, this political association was likely a means driven loyalty to facilitate what you call the growth of cosmopolitan societies in which Jews would be fully accepted as equal citizens. Macdonald does an excellent job demonstrating how Jews have historically abandoned their communist loyalties when these loyalties conflict with Jewish nationalist interests.
So…returning now to our major discussion. In my own investigation of the doomed fate of Western Man, I have been perplexed by the notion that we need a moral justification to survive and prosper. This seems to be an unnatural perception because all forms of life seek to survive and expand. So why then does Western Man alone among the peoples of this world need a moral justification for his own survival? Perhaps the need for this justification has much to do with what Nietzsche called the slave morality of our Christian heritage or maybe it has more to do with sitting on top for too long. Then again, maybe it’s all about demographics. Since we are no longer a growing population, we no longer feel the internal pressures for expansion. But regardless of why, the reality we face is that Western Man does need a moral justification to pursue his self-interest, particularly when that interest conflicts with others. I believe this is a conclusion you too have arrived at with the following statement:
“The crisis of the West, that whites are being demographically displaced, and will ultimately, without exclusivist, clearly demarcated territories, go extinct, taking Western Civilization to the grave as well, cannot be resolved empirically, but only morally.”
This is an interesting assessment that you make, but I must ask, are empiricism and morality really separate issues? This discussion reminds me of something Marx once said: “The philosophers have interpreted the world in many ways. The point however is to change it.” In other words, ideas mean nothing, consequentiality is everything. When we examine the world around us, we should not look at the intention of ideas; instead, we must examine their actual real world consequences. For instance, we can look at communism or Islam and easily argue that these are well intentioned ideologies, but in practice, they have been complete failures. The point is that ideas and morality cannot exist separately from the real world conditions they create. The empirical will always determine the true morality of everything. If this is true and you want to determine a moral justification for the existence, survival and expansion of the West, then you should look at all the real world accomplishments Western civilization has brought to mankind and contrast this with all the many failures of Non-Western people. Clearly the accomplishments of the West justify its existence, survival and expansion.  Clearly we have a manifest destiny to survive and prosper.”

Posted by Mike Gavin on Jul 10, 2008.

Mr. Gavin:

In your two posts above you say a great deal, much of it valuable and needing reiteration across many venues. The issues you raise, and their theorectical implications, are so many, complicated, fundamental, profoundly UNanswered, and even unrecognized as such by most serious conservatives, that I despair of doing them justice in any response I could make here. Indeed, I hardly know how to begin (in part because I have thought and read a lot about these matters, and formulating some kind of answer to them is what I intend to do - but over the course of years: there is no ‘short answer’). Books could, and should, be written on these topics. Moreover, I fear I am reaching the point of diminishing marginal returns. Soon we will have written the equivalent of entire columns, but who will read them besides us?

So, I can do no more than discuss one topic, at the end of a tiring week.

I did not state that Western man, or his civilization, requires a moral justification to exist, at least not per se. He does, however, require a moral justification to take the measures probably necessary to ensure his collective existence in the future- at least, from a Christian perspective. Let’s make this simple, by making it concrete.

1. The West is the product of the European or white race.

2. There is no empirical reason to believe that the West will be perpetuated by nonwhites (let alone by nonwhite immigrants bearing radically different cultures; nb - those are two separate empirical claims). Nonwhite psychological assimilation to white societies is a myth.

3. For any ethnoculture to survive, its constituent members must somehow remain apart or sealed off from substantial out-group penetration. Concretely, and for our case, whites must at least retain their demographic majorities in their own territories (I don’t think whites will survive as the Jews have, as a diasporic people amongst other, demographically larger groups, because we lack the latter’s probably biocultural clannishness). They are, however, in the process of losing those majorities in every historic white country. 

4. For our race (and therefore civilization) to endure, there must be some extensive zone of population (eg, a large part of Europe or North America) exclusively, or nearly so, inhabited by whites (I’m too tired to explain to a sceptic why this must be so).

5. Because of mass immigration-invasion, no such zone still exists. Therefore, the death of the West is ineluctable, without radical change; specifically, the expulsion of nonwhites to recreate such a zone.

That expulsion will probably be very violent, and will at the least involve some level of physical coercion against many persons not guilty of any specific crime (as traditionally understood). It is not the white race per se whose existence must be morally justified; it is, rather, these methods necessary to save our race, which SUPERFICIALLY violate traditional Christian morality, which must be justified (or else simply ignored, as some nonchristian racial nationalists advocate).

I say all this only because I am Christian, and therefore believe that I cannot behave wantonly, but that all my actions must accord with Christian philosophy and morality. If I were an atheist, I would simply reach the same conclusion as Conrad’s Mr. Kurtz: “Exterminate all the brutes!”

The chief intellectual task of any authentic conservatism in our time is to develop a moral justification, in light of Christian metaphysics, for the forcible removal/repatriation of nonwhites from Western soil. The chief political task is to build up a sufficient political (or perhaps revolutionary) movement to effect that removal.

Mr. Gavin, I have enjoyed our exchange, and look forward to others in the future. LH

I’m sympathetic to what’s been said, but this article had nothing to do with immigration, race, etc.

Mr. Leon Haller,

You said: “Soon we will have written the equivalent of entire columns, but who will read them besides us?’

Indeed, Sir. Indeed…..

You said: “There is no empirical reason to believe that the West will be perpetuated by nonwhites (let alone by nonwhite immigrants bearing radically different cultures; nb - those are two separate empirical claims). Nonwhite psychological assimilation to white societies is a myth.

This is a powerful statement that has decisive consequences on how we are to proceed. I particularly like your reference to “psychological” assimilation. One of my chief concerns with the prevalent belief that nonwhites can be culturally assimilated is that there is a psychological, or perhaps more accurately put, biological need to celebrate one’s own ancestral heritage. Perhaps this need is driven by pride or maybe it is more about group evolutionary theory. Regardless, assimilating a people who are psychologically unwilling to abandon their ancestral heritage will continue to plague an assimilation process that is already very much broken. 

Mr. Haller, I have enjoyed our discussion and look forward to future such exchanges.