At this point, I think that most people who read this blog understand that I’m very against political ideologies and think that people who promote them ought to be publicly stoned to death. I believe that a commitment to core principles and truth-seeking ought to suffice.
The lack of a national project is what's killing the West. Through the early 70s, we had one - exploring and colonizing space. Then the boomers lost their nerve, we spent the next five decades paddling around in the shallow end in Low Earth Orbit, and have yet to emerge from those doldrums. Space is dangerous you know. Safety first, children!
Key thing for a national project is that it has to be inspiring and exciting. "We're gonna automate everything" doesn't cut it - there's no glory there. But I don't think that's exactly the West's ersatz national project; it seems that globalists are trying to use DIE/ESG to fill that hole (solar panels everywhere! built by gay mulattoes!) But there's nothing in that of the heroic, therefore no ability to unify; as you pointed out, it's really more of an ideology than a project.
May 30, 2022·edited May 30, 2022Liked by Rurik Skywalker
Another very interesting and intriguing article. Thank you for posting. Colonising and populating Siberia while developing a strong military to defend it from the Chinese, the West and the Africans (the 21st century demographic time bomb) sounds like an excellent national project for Russia and the Russians. I hope Putin reads your blog... ;-)
LOL! Your 3 consequences of Russia adopting an ideology are exactly what has been going on in the contemporary west for the last six years. Instead of having political arguments over which ideology should be favored in an election, western "democracies" would have done better had their politicians put forth specific goals, much like your "projects", that they promised to achieve. If they fail, let someone else try.
But that feature of ideological elections is more of a feature than a bug. If someone's tenure turns out poorly, he/she can always blame the nefariousness of the oppositions as the real problem, instead of focusing on the failure itself.
Hitler in Mein Kampf explicitly recognized that parliamentary democracies encouraged evasion of political responsibility, and his solution was to have the fuhrer as the dictator upon whom all credit or blame would fall. But notice, that strategy did not free Germany of ideology, but only generated one based on loyalty and patriotic extremism, enforced by secret police and all.
I'm afraid my conclusion is that political ideology is ike Voltaire's God. If a society existed free of ideology, it would be forced to invent one. But I think militarism would be a poor choice, since it always tends toward fanatacism.
Land ownership property ownership is key to a functioning society. This idea goes further back than both Stolypin and Jefferson to Byzantium and the themes in which a land owning peasantry also served as subject soldiers to the imperial crown. During the heyday of the theme system the Byzantine military machine in the late 9th, 10th and first quarter of the 11th centuries was unbeatable. After 1025 and the rise of oligarchic power from Constantinople and the collapse of the theme system both before and after the defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 the system collapsed and a feudal structure developed. This with the loss of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks required the use of mercenaries to fill the gaps in the ranks as peasant refused to serve. Why should they? They had no bone in the fight. Only the oligarchs stood to gain from the wars. Both the USA and Russia were and are frontier countries. That expanded over the centuries in the USA westward in Russia eastward. Both nation's used free and indentured workers. Russia freed it's serfs (really salves) in 1861 by fiat of Czar Alexander II (1855-1881), and fiat in the USA 1863 by President Lincoln (1861-1865) both men would meet violent deaths. Both nations began an earnest industrialization. The USA in the 1870's a decade prior to Russia though Russia would catch up by the turn of the century. As such an oligarchy quickly developed in the USA that was able to bribe politicians of both parties and in effect through proxies take over state governments and slowly increase the powers of the federal government. In Russia this industrial oligarchy was kept in check by the imperial crown. As such many of the oligarchs became opponents of the Czarist government. Leading to a polarization that would lead to the Revolution of 1905. The loyalty of the populace, and military crushed the revolution and Stolypin instituted many change including land reform giving more peasant their own land. This was unacceptable to the radicals and he was assassinated in 1911. Both nations were tricked by their corrupt statesman Sazonov in Russia, Wilson in the USA into entering the Great War 1914-1918. The war was a disaster for both nations. The monarchy collapsed, Bolsheviks came to power from both Wall Street oligarchs and the total ruthlessness of the Bolshevik Jews, and in the USA Wilson's policies caused the depression of 1920-1921 (you rarely hear about it) the people voted in Harding his administration corrected the idiocy of Wilson's policies and the country recovered. Coolidge continued the policies hence "the roaring 20's" and "jazz age" would begin. The American oligarchs wanted no part of a prosperous urban middle class, or rural farm communities and they triggered the crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. Nothing's been the same since. Today we're faced with freedom or total servitude. Our rights to property, even to our own bodies is being challenged and threatened. Think WEF AKA World Economic Fleecing "you'll own nothing but you'll be happy". Says the pontificating parasite Klaus Schwab. No you won't "you'll own nothing and be miserable". What's needed is a nationalist state based on property and land ownership a unitary culture and traditions, combined with a strong martial streak think Cossacks in Russia, Samurai in Japan and Cowboys in the USA. "Have Gun-Will Travel" was an American Western TV show (1957-1963) today it should be recast as "Have Gun-Will Remain Free".
This is Nietzsche's solution: a grand task for the next millennium. Colonizing Siberia has the advantage for Russia that no conquering is required, unlike the previous one who tried this.
The problem with a 'national project' from a ruling class perspective is that projects have boundaries and, potentially, as set of completion criterion. Ideologies do not. The post-WWII national project was 'prosperity for all' which, unfortunately, included non-Whites who couldn't cut it. The result was that our elites tried to fix the international embarrassment of 'poverty in America' through the national project of 'welfare'. This, sort of worked, but, the inherent disabilities of non-Whites resulted in 'welfare' being insufficient. Then it was decided that the cause of non-White dysfunctionality was 'oppression' by 'the majority' and that 'civil rights' - an ideological project - was the solution. From that point forward, dispossessing and subjugating ordinary White people became the 'national project' of the American state. And, if you're a White person living in America, you can see how well this project is coming along.
My earliest ambition was to become a spaceman. I read all the comics and sci-fi I could. Later I followed the Cold War space race avidly. America won, yay! Much later I came to realize the Apollo program was a hoax. Kubrick helped NASA convince the world we'd sent men to the Moon.
People can't pass safely thru the Van Allen radiation belts w/o heavy-duty shielding. We didn't stop the space missions because Boomers lost their nerve, but because we never went beyond low earth orbit in the first place. Better to cut our losses and not risk exposure.
I resisted reading and watching videos about the Moon hoax for years, just as I resisted becoming informed about the Holocaust. Childhood dreams and fears die hard.
As an American, I think militarism is one of, if not THE, national project of the United States. Most of our money goes to the defense budget, not schools to train people to further automate society. Increasing the defense budget is the one thing all sides agree is necessary, even so called liberals. No one in society criticizes military service members, on the contrary they are almost worshiped. How many bases do we maintain aboard??? 700+?? Using the military to force others to do as we wish is kinda our thing.
You propose Russian should, as its national project, build a strong military and then use it against its enemies. How would this be different from what the US does right now? Or maybe it would be the same? So you want Russia to be more like the US in this way? Serious questions... :)
You are literally making a post serie to explain how would work this non-ideology. I mean, I'm not complaining, but how all that stuff about the need for a project, the strength, the very idea of Russia is not an ideology by itself? You are just crafting you own spin on the theme and calling it something completely new.
First, an apology about using upper case in a previous comment. I am not a typist and it takes too long to go back and change.
This blog again is somewhat disjointed and there is a strong hint of anti-semitism in the blog, as there was in the discussion of metaphysics of worship, believing vs knowing, with many allusions to Jewish worship of a tyrannical Yahweh who also had a wife (?) As for Sparta and its particular "national project", they may have fought well a few times and helped save Greece from Persia, but in the end their military machine amounted to utter failure. Their community messes for eating was not a great idea and their treatment of the weak and disabled people was nothing to rave about. But there was something heroic about the Spartans, as one anecdote relates the Olyimpic games where an old man entered the stadium seeking a seat and no one offered a seat to him until he came to the Spartan section where all the Spartans rose to offer him their seat. The old man was heard to say, "all Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do what is right". A nice story. The Russians like the Spartans have a similar problem, not enough people. The Spartans failed because they would not change., and were forever living as is they were on top of a volcano about to explode because of their class system. Russia should populate Siberia for their own security and to take a strong position in world politics in addition to their military prowess, but a population of 145 million does not hack it. They need to be much more fertile than they are. In fact the whole West is a dying civilization, the North Americans and Europeans have a death wish judging from their national fertility rates, not even enough for the normal replacement level of 2.1
The lack of a national project is what's killing the West. Through the early 70s, we had one - exploring and colonizing space. Then the boomers lost their nerve, we spent the next five decades paddling around in the shallow end in Low Earth Orbit, and have yet to emerge from those doldrums. Space is dangerous you know. Safety first, children!
Key thing for a national project is that it has to be inspiring and exciting. "We're gonna automate everything" doesn't cut it - there's no glory there. But I don't think that's exactly the West's ersatz national project; it seems that globalists are trying to use DIE/ESG to fill that hole (solar panels everywhere! built by gay mulattoes!) But there's nothing in that of the heroic, therefore no ability to unify; as you pointed out, it's really more of an ideology than a project.
Another very interesting and intriguing article. Thank you for posting. Colonising and populating Siberia while developing a strong military to defend it from the Chinese, the West and the Africans (the 21st century demographic time bomb) sounds like an excellent national project for Russia and the Russians. I hope Putin reads your blog... ;-)
LOL! Your 3 consequences of Russia adopting an ideology are exactly what has been going on in the contemporary west for the last six years. Instead of having political arguments over which ideology should be favored in an election, western "democracies" would have done better had their politicians put forth specific goals, much like your "projects", that they promised to achieve. If they fail, let someone else try.
But that feature of ideological elections is more of a feature than a bug. If someone's tenure turns out poorly, he/she can always blame the nefariousness of the oppositions as the real problem, instead of focusing on the failure itself.
Hitler in Mein Kampf explicitly recognized that parliamentary democracies encouraged evasion of political responsibility, and his solution was to have the fuhrer as the dictator upon whom all credit or blame would fall. But notice, that strategy did not free Germany of ideology, but only generated one based on loyalty and patriotic extremism, enforced by secret police and all.
I'm afraid my conclusion is that political ideology is ike Voltaire's God. If a society existed free of ideology, it would be forced to invent one. But I think militarism would be a poor choice, since it always tends toward fanatacism.
Land ownership property ownership is key to a functioning society. This idea goes further back than both Stolypin and Jefferson to Byzantium and the themes in which a land owning peasantry also served as subject soldiers to the imperial crown. During the heyday of the theme system the Byzantine military machine in the late 9th, 10th and first quarter of the 11th centuries was unbeatable. After 1025 and the rise of oligarchic power from Constantinople and the collapse of the theme system both before and after the defeat at the Battle of Manzikert in 1071 the system collapsed and a feudal structure developed. This with the loss of Anatolia to the Seljuk Turks required the use of mercenaries to fill the gaps in the ranks as peasant refused to serve. Why should they? They had no bone in the fight. Only the oligarchs stood to gain from the wars. Both the USA and Russia were and are frontier countries. That expanded over the centuries in the USA westward in Russia eastward. Both nation's used free and indentured workers. Russia freed it's serfs (really salves) in 1861 by fiat of Czar Alexander II (1855-1881), and fiat in the USA 1863 by President Lincoln (1861-1865) both men would meet violent deaths. Both nations began an earnest industrialization. The USA in the 1870's a decade prior to Russia though Russia would catch up by the turn of the century. As such an oligarchy quickly developed in the USA that was able to bribe politicians of both parties and in effect through proxies take over state governments and slowly increase the powers of the federal government. In Russia this industrial oligarchy was kept in check by the imperial crown. As such many of the oligarchs became opponents of the Czarist government. Leading to a polarization that would lead to the Revolution of 1905. The loyalty of the populace, and military crushed the revolution and Stolypin instituted many change including land reform giving more peasant their own land. This was unacceptable to the radicals and he was assassinated in 1911. Both nations were tricked by their corrupt statesman Sazonov in Russia, Wilson in the USA into entering the Great War 1914-1918. The war was a disaster for both nations. The monarchy collapsed, Bolsheviks came to power from both Wall Street oligarchs and the total ruthlessness of the Bolshevik Jews, and in the USA Wilson's policies caused the depression of 1920-1921 (you rarely hear about it) the people voted in Harding his administration corrected the idiocy of Wilson's policies and the country recovered. Coolidge continued the policies hence "the roaring 20's" and "jazz age" would begin. The American oligarchs wanted no part of a prosperous urban middle class, or rural farm communities and they triggered the crash of 1929 and the depression that followed. Nothing's been the same since. Today we're faced with freedom or total servitude. Our rights to property, even to our own bodies is being challenged and threatened. Think WEF AKA World Economic Fleecing "you'll own nothing but you'll be happy". Says the pontificating parasite Klaus Schwab. No you won't "you'll own nothing and be miserable". What's needed is a nationalist state based on property and land ownership a unitary culture and traditions, combined with a strong martial streak think Cossacks in Russia, Samurai in Japan and Cowboys in the USA. "Have Gun-Will Travel" was an American Western TV show (1957-1963) today it should be recast as "Have Gun-Will Remain Free".
This is Nietzsche's solution: a grand task for the next millennium. Colonizing Siberia has the advantage for Russia that no conquering is required, unlike the previous one who tried this.
The problem with a 'national project' from a ruling class perspective is that projects have boundaries and, potentially, as set of completion criterion. Ideologies do not. The post-WWII national project was 'prosperity for all' which, unfortunately, included non-Whites who couldn't cut it. The result was that our elites tried to fix the international embarrassment of 'poverty in America' through the national project of 'welfare'. This, sort of worked, but, the inherent disabilities of non-Whites resulted in 'welfare' being insufficient. Then it was decided that the cause of non-White dysfunctionality was 'oppression' by 'the majority' and that 'civil rights' - an ideological project - was the solution. From that point forward, dispossessing and subjugating ordinary White people became the 'national project' of the American state. And, if you're a White person living in America, you can see how well this project is coming along.
My earliest ambition was to become a spaceman. I read all the comics and sci-fi I could. Later I followed the Cold War space race avidly. America won, yay! Much later I came to realize the Apollo program was a hoax. Kubrick helped NASA convince the world we'd sent men to the Moon.
People can't pass safely thru the Van Allen radiation belts w/o heavy-duty shielding. We didn't stop the space missions because Boomers lost their nerve, but because we never went beyond low earth orbit in the first place. Better to cut our losses and not risk exposure.
I resisted reading and watching videos about the Moon hoax for years, just as I resisted becoming informed about the Holocaust. Childhood dreams and fears die hard.
As an American, I think militarism is one of, if not THE, national project of the United States. Most of our money goes to the defense budget, not schools to train people to further automate society. Increasing the defense budget is the one thing all sides agree is necessary, even so called liberals. No one in society criticizes military service members, on the contrary they are almost worshiped. How many bases do we maintain aboard??? 700+?? Using the military to force others to do as we wish is kinda our thing.
You propose Russian should, as its national project, build a strong military and then use it against its enemies. How would this be different from what the US does right now? Or maybe it would be the same? So you want Russia to be more like the US in this way? Serious questions... :)
You are literally making a post serie to explain how would work this non-ideology. I mean, I'm not complaining, but how all that stuff about the need for a project, the strength, the very idea of Russia is not an ideology by itself? You are just crafting you own spin on the theme and calling it something completely new.
First, an apology about using upper case in a previous comment. I am not a typist and it takes too long to go back and change.
This blog again is somewhat disjointed and there is a strong hint of anti-semitism in the blog, as there was in the discussion of metaphysics of worship, believing vs knowing, with many allusions to Jewish worship of a tyrannical Yahweh who also had a wife (?) As for Sparta and its particular "national project", they may have fought well a few times and helped save Greece from Persia, but in the end their military machine amounted to utter failure. Their community messes for eating was not a great idea and their treatment of the weak and disabled people was nothing to rave about. But there was something heroic about the Spartans, as one anecdote relates the Olyimpic games where an old man entered the stadium seeking a seat and no one offered a seat to him until he came to the Spartan section where all the Spartans rose to offer him their seat. The old man was heard to say, "all Greeks know what is right, but only the Spartans do what is right". A nice story. The Russians like the Spartans have a similar problem, not enough people. The Spartans failed because they would not change., and were forever living as is they were on top of a volcano about to explode because of their class system. Russia should populate Siberia for their own security and to take a strong position in world politics in addition to their military prowess, but a population of 145 million does not hack it. They need to be much more fertile than they are. In fact the whole West is a dying civilization, the North Americans and Europeans have a death wish judging from their national fertility rates, not even enough for the normal replacement level of 2.1