Category: Politics, Power, and Governance

NO. THE WEST ISN’T ENGAGED IN DIVIDE-AND-CONQUER. IT’S ENGAGED IN PARENTING

THE POSTWAR STRATEGY: SMITH AND HUME

Americans have a very simple post-war strategy: constrain communism from destroying world trade, constrain authoritarianism from destroying world trade, constrain governments to borders, constraint governments to economic construction inside of their borders, so that governments have no possible choice OTHER than developing markets, and human rights.

The purpose of the post-war strategy has been to ensure we do not have another world war that focuses on territorial expansion in lieu of economic productivity, and instead, that governments must focus on the development of rule of law and diverse economies – and that they are punished if they attempt to settle disputes, or gain wealth, by force rather than commercial and cultural development.

This strategy was largely successful. It is the same strategy the west itself has followed: Adam Smith and David Hume’s vision of peace-through-trade brought to its fruition.

THE ERROR OF DEMOCRACY

But along with this error has come the fallacy of Democracy. Democracy without inviolable property rights and rule of law, results in the production of the very communism that the west sought to prevent – only by slower means. Democracy has been the cancer of the west, just as much as it has been a disease that the west has distributed to the rest of the world.

Democracy is and always has been an aristocratic practice, suitable for aristocratic classes, for the selection of investment priorities. The inclusion of non aristocratic classes has been employed largely as a veto provision to prevent parasitism and risk by an overambitious aristocracy.

The west alone – through the systematic application of manorialism and it’s predecessors, the systematic application of the absolute nuclear family, and the systematic expansion of property rights – managed to suppress the reproduction, cost and influence of the lower classes, and encourage the working and middle classes to adopt aristocratic values. The west created a nearly universal aristocracy. Until the era of democracy reversed it. And westerners then spread this era of regression around the world, assuming that the aristocracy of everyone was either possible or desirable.

The western working model of post-war global policy is this: citizens have the right to elect their own leaders, and to form democratic governments. However, if they elect leaders that violate the postwar consensus, then we must punish both the leaders, and the people who chose those leaders. And while western intellectuals and politicians advocate the carrot, they never mention the stick. Hence primitive cultures elect what they understand, not what they must have to construct a diverse economy, rule of law, property rights and an aristocracy of everyone. Instead, they elect their tribal and familial leaders, and elect to reinforce their primitive traditional cultures. Promoting their group’s primitive group evolutionary strategy.

WESTERN SELF IGNORANCE

Westerners cannot grasp that the rest of the world does not share our unique history. And that the rest of the world remains either familial or tribal. And only northern europeans – who just might possess different genetic instincts – are the only people who adopt the suicidal tendency of universalism and high trust that other cultures see as ‘naivety’.

The rest of the world never experienced greek philosophy, roman law, the manorialism of the middle ages, the reformation, the enlightenment refutation of mysticism, and the scientific revolution. And those that did, still fail to grasp (as westerners fail to grasp) that there is nothing physical about the discipline of ‘science’. Instead, ***science is a philosophical value system: the systematic application of truth telling***. Science consists of attempting to tell the truth. And in order to make use of it, one must forgo the comforting illusions that our traditions – and our instincts – counsel us. And truth-telling is a uniquely western value. And a uniquely western skill. For reasons that are likely more than 5000 years old.

So it is not that westerners seek to divide and conquer. It is that the west desires the slow, organized, peaceful maturity of primitive cultures into modern, scientific, wealthy, and peaceful members of the international community, of requiring truth telling, trust, and productivity – the forcible participation in the market by denying all other means of sustenance: deceit, corruption, theft, and conquest. The bible of the west consists of a small number of volumes: Smiths two great works, and Hume’s one great work. Of the two, it is smith that was more correct. Hume was merely running a defensive line against mysticism. (And Propertarianism corrects Hume – as well as Kant.)

BABYSITTING

This act of assisting the world into maturity requires ‘babysitting’. And that is precisely how the west treats the islamic world. As would a babysitter. As a parent. Not as an equal. That would be absurd.

Unfortunately, the economic inequality that allowed the west to afford babysitting is ending however, along with the demographic decline brought about by western democracy and it’s anti-family, high consumption, redistributionist policies. The inter-generational institutions that permit a people to persist, and their genes, norms and institutions to exist, has been destroyed by inter-temporal redistribution and Keynesian credit expansion, rather than Singapore’s forced and redistributive saving.

So the world will fall into a state of change in the next decade or two. And if we make it through that change, it will be the first time in history that such a shift in power has occurred without warfare.

So, expect warfare. We can afford babysitting no longer.

Curt Doolittle

The Propertarian Institute

Kiev, Ukraine.