Why Be Just?

I am a lot more interested in keeping our Western democracies White, than I am interested in theories and the ethical concepts of just one intellectual, personally.

It’s even worse than that, Francois—my last two articles have been based on only one book, which is almost 40 years old!

I’m trying to expand into fields that I’ve never dealt with before in order to deepen and strengthen the philosophical basis for the pro-white movement. Expanding horizons takes time and effort, both on my own part and on that of my readers. So I hope everyone will have patience while I do the spadework I need to do to get to a new place.

You’ve got to admit at least that my last two articles have been a bit different. There are so many bloggers and writers now making the basic racial right arguments about racial differences and leukophobia that you scarcely need more of the same from me. I could easily write exactly like Steve Sailer or Jared Taylor, but wouldn’t that just be a reduplication of efforts? Those two write enough already, God knows!

In the coming months, you will see my mystifying ramblings about Rawls pay off, I guarantee it. The result will be fresh perspective on our movement that will strengthen it.

Interesting articles, although Theory of Justice is a decoration built on top of existing reality (liberal power), trying to rationalize and apologize it. Even the premises are wrong.

David Gauthier’s “Morals by Agreement” is a lot better than Rawls’s “A Theory of Justice.” A clear advantage of Gauthier’s contractarianism is that it is not based on an idealized view of human nature and arbitrary moral assumptions.

Of course, Gauthier’s work has not received as much attention as Rawls because its policy implications are classical liberal, not egalitarian. There are also some interesting similarities between Gauthier’s work and Michael Levin’s defense of the minimal state.

Gauthier has also produced a number critical essays about Rawls.

I’ll check him out, Ritenour. But what do you mean by Rawls’ “arbitrary moral assumptions”?

Rawls’s approach is not just plain old means-end reasoning. Many people do not agree with Rawls’s ideas about rationality and fairness. That is not just because they are being partial. For example, one could object to Rawls’s approach because it is overly rationalistic and ignores how the world really works.

This indicates that his writings have little to offer to people who do not agree with him already. One solution is to propose rules that most, if not all, people will find agreeable. But this leads to a different kind of contractarianism than Rawls advocates.

It also seems to me that Rawls’s project runs into a formidable epistemological roadblock. How can we really know how people would decide under a “veil of ignorance?” Would they choose Rawls’s conception of fairness, some sort of rule utilitarianism, etc.

Can we really say something meaningful about what hypothetical persons would choose in a hypothetical situation?

From a race realist perspective, Rawls’s perspective needs to be “naturalized.” Who are the kind of people who think like Rawls? What would happen in a world where whites follow Rawls’s ideas of fairness and blacks simply ignore them etc.

Some points about Rawls’ theory (based on Jobling’s articles):

• Justice is a public good and it is essential to define with whom and what kind of people you want to create, build and uphold this public good. Justice requires certain amounts of reciprocity, altruism, similarity, good will, identification, common culture and history (“History is never dead. It is not even past.”) etc. between people. The definition and structure of justice is generally given to people by the former generations and the present “elites” work it up to suit their needs. In opposition to this justice is in the end dependent on people’s acceptance, a silent contract, and this includes more than the current democracy. If justice is not appropriate in the eyes of the people, it starts slowly to erode and is maybe substituted in the end with a more suitable justice.

Justice is not fixed on abstract, reductionist and eternal principles, but it is always a living thing connected to the facts on the ground.

• The premises Rawls chooses for his justice are not neutral just because they are abstract and universal. On the contrary, these kind of reductionist universal principles are tools of those, whose underlying goal is universal power. E.g. European international human rights courts are not the expression of the European “elites’” benevolence and good will towards all the people in the world. They are meant to entice the people of the world to become under the jurisdiction and power principles of European “elites”. This is done more easily and durably with methods that induce voluntary acceptance and submission without people seeing the underlying power principles.

• Justice is a derivate of power. State, in principle, can’t do anything illegal. What the state wants to do it will make legal and develops the necessary justifications. State today is primarily a tool of managerial “elites” and global capitalists, so we can see that the present justice and justifications are according with their interests. That said power can’t be opposed from the outside. Nobody is outside power networks. What people do and don’t do, what they think and don’t think are elements of power.

I would recommend first developing a theory of power and then a theory of justice, because this is the order of things.

Books about power (filter away any and all liberalism):

Michel Foucault: Security, Territory and Population; The Birth of Biopolitics (the most important); History of Sexuality (three volumes); Discipline and Punish; Psychiatric Power in this order. Any other books from Foucault, except maybe Madness and Civilization and Archaelogy of Knowledge.

Steven Lukes: Power, a Radical View.

Mitchell Dean: Governmentality, Power and Rule in Modern Society.

Peter L. Berger and Thomas Luckmann: The Social Construction of Reality.

“What would happen in a world where whites follow Rawls’s ideas of fairness and blacks simply ignore them”

Well, I think we all know the answer to that question. We see it all around us, every day.

Ritenour wrote: “For example, one could object to Rawls’s approach because it is overly rationalistic and ignores how the world really works. This indicates that his writings have little to offer to people who do not agree with him already.”

I strongly disagree. I think that Rawls is wrong about a lot of things; for example, he is far too optimistic about man’s capacity for moral behavior. Nevertheless, I find Rawls’ work very valuable because he gives such a profound and deep definition of morality. It was very refreshing to encounter a thinker who takes morality seriously after years of reading writers who think the world is a big amoral racial power struggle.

One of my favorite quotations, by Hegel: “The learner always begins by finding fault, but the scholar sees the positive merit in everything.”

As for the rest of your post, it is one of Rawls’ central claims that one can rationally persuade those who disagree with his philosophy of its validity. So you have to do better than object that people might not agree with Rawls and prove that they would be rational to reject him.

Since we can understand the notion of impartiality, I don’t think it is impossible for us to imagine how impartial people, such as those in the original position, would think.

Utilitarianism is Rawls’ primary foil in TOJ, and he devotes page after page to proving that justice as fairness would be chosen by impartial people. His primary argument is that utilitarianism provides no guarantee of rights. After all, it may be that in some circumstances blatant crimes against humanity like slavery would increase the average happiness of a society, which is the objective of utilitarians. When the Romans threw heretics to lions in the Coliseum, the pleasure of the crowd undoubtedly outweighed the pain of the heretic, so what objection could utilitarians have to this practice?

Rawls argues that the parties in the original position would consider that they themselves might end up as slaves or heretics in the society that they were making rules for and thus would never choose a principles of justice that would allow violations of human rights. That is, the parties would be concerned to ensure that the fate of the worst off was not too bad. That’s the heart of the Rawlsian philosophy, and this way of thinking accounts for our natural revulsion against crimes like slavery much better than utilitarianism does.

Finn,

Sure, the concrete forms that justice takes are changeable, and to this extent, justice is relative. But would you deny that there are basic principles of justice that are unchanging and that all societies have in common? Is it ever considered moral behavior to kill one’s fellow citizens without provocation?

Also, aren’t there principles in the name of which a society can be judged an unjust one? If justice is entirely relative, then it makes no sense to say that the Aztecs, who used to sacrifice war prisoners to the Gods, were behaving unjustly, or that totalitarian regimes are behaving unjustly when they imprison political dissidents. Are you willing to accept that conclusion? If you are, what will you say if someone ever tries to put you in prison for being a political dissident?

Such relativism underlies the philosophies of postmodernist thinkers like Foucault. “There is no justice, only power!” That’s the position of the postmodernists, and also of most of the racial right, by the way.

The thing is though that unless the state exercises its power responsibly, people will revolt or refuse to comply. The responsible exercise of power is called justice. So power implies justice. You can’t have one without the other.

And that means that, no, the state can’t just make anything legal that it wants to. If it makes unjust laws, people will refuse to obey them.

Though people differ from culture to culture, they are more similar than different, including in the way they wish to be governed. So that means that some aspects of justice are eternal.

“What would happen in a world where whites follow Rawls’s ideas of fairness and blacks simply ignore them”

Well, I think we all know the answer to that question. We see it all around us, every day.

You anticipate where I’m going. People are owed justice only if they act justly themselves. If they don’t, we should not be required to respect their rights. That’s a justification for assigning people unequal rights, and there are conditions under which it would be just to assign races unequal rights.

Jobling: “Is it ever considered moral behavior to kill one’s fellow citizens without provocation?”

• No, but this is connected to survival instinct, fears, the need for security, the need for orderly and productive society, etc. Facts on the ground. Since these can’t be taken away from humans, laws against random killing are universal in organized societies.

“If you are, what will you say if someone ever tries to put you in prison for being a political dissident?”

• This is an observation. When the sixties leftists were not in power, they regarded all societal structures and institutions to be uncertain, precarious, relative, transitory, changeable, unjust etc. Now, after the liberal managerial revolution they regard their own power principles as universal, eternal, unchangeable, just, righteous etc. But what they want to destroy, change, transform and replace, like the nation state and ethnic identity replacement with international structures, they deem to be unjust, changeable, transitory etc. This same pattern can be noticed in almost all those who strive to power, e.g. in French and communist revolutionaries and many kinds of democratic oppositions.

At this time Finnish immigration critic and dissident Jussi Halla-aho, Ph.D., is waiting judgement from absurd show trial, because of his “thought crime”.

The “elites” stomp justice at will, using their power. Demand of justice is the shout of underdog and claim of justice is the “elites’” tool.

(Postmodernists): “There is no justice, only power!”

• There maybe justice somewhere, but I want our pro-European justice to be backed and protected with enough power, thank you.

“The thing is though that unless the state exercises its power responsibly, people will revolt or refuse to comply.”

• So it is among other things necessity, not abstract justice principles that create justice. This is proved by the historical genealogy of power too (Foucault).

U.S. “elites” who proclaimed universal justice, dumbed negative externalities of their power and resource grab, i.e. busing, affirmative action and mixed neighborhood problems and dangers, to the shoulders of working and middle class whites, while they themselves lived in lily white upper class neighborhoods, worked in more secure jobs and send their children to lily white private upper class schools. That is the true face underneath the mask of Rawlsian justice.

Addition: With negative externalities I mean here planned and deliberate effects, not the more usual unintended and unplanned effects. If necessary, I will explain the power principles connected with them.

“I think that Rawls is wrong about a lot of things; for example, he is far too optimistic about man’s capacity for moral behavior. Nevertheless, I find Rawls’ work very valuable because he gives such a profound and deep definition of morality. It was very refreshing to encounter a thinker who takes morality seriously after years of reading writers who think the world is a big amoral racial power struggle.”

I do not think it matters whether Rawls gives “a profound and deep definition of morality” but whether he gives a correct account of it. I think it is clear that Rawls’s work is not science. He is not doing any empirical work about the origin and functioning of morality. But he is neither giving an account of it that is self-evident. He is merely saying that if one shares his view on the original position, such and such principles of justice will be chosen.

But as I pointed out, even that has not been the case. Philosophers and economists who are sympathetic to Rawls’s enterprise have drawn different conclusions, ranging from radical egalitarianism to utilitarianism. For example,the economist John Harsanyi has argued that a person in the original position would maximize his expected utility (utilitarianism), rather than choosing minimax. I really do not see how we could resolve these disagreements without empirical research. This is, of course, easier said than done because how does one model the kind of agent that Rawls uses in his work?

“Utilitarianism is Rawls’ primary foil in TOJ, and he devotes page after page to proving that justice as fairness would be chosen by impartial people. His primary argument is that utilitarianism provides no guarantee of rights.”

The way you phrase it, this constitutes circular reasoning. The original position is a tool to derive rights not just to find arguments for already established conclusions (slavery is wrong etc).

As you know, Rawls has been hardly criticized for his arguments against utilitarianism because his own perspective does not take individuals seriously either. Rawls strips individuals of all individual characteristics in his original position. As a consequence, his theory is not a social contract theory but a thought experiment about what a representative agent would choose. Or to put it in a less charitable way, a throwback to pre-Hobbesian rationalist moralizing.

Even looking from Rawls’s own framework, I think that Rawls gives an incomplete account of morality. He captures the impartial aspect but not the restriction on self-interest. In Rawls’s original position the agent chooses clearly in his self-interest.

“this way of thinking accounts for our natural revulsion against crimes like slavery much better than utilitarianism does.”

I am not so sure about this. Slavery has been around for a long time but it it became really controversial when it was established that capitalist economies in which people are self-owners are more efficient in allocating scarce resources. So utilitarian arguments cannot be dismissed that easily.

If your objective is to find a thinker that captures what white liberals think you should look somewhere else. Rawls is rarely invoked in public policy and there is good reason for this. It is impossible to adopt Rawls’s framework and not advocate massive wealth distribution from the United States to the Third World. Liberals may be crazy but they are not so crazy to adopt a philosophy that rips them of most of their wealth.

“People are owed justice only if they act justly themselves. If they don’t, we should not be required to respect their rights.”

That is not a Rawlsian but a Hobbesian perspective. That is why I recommended that you read David Gauthier and his criticisms of Rawls.

I suspect that Rawls would argue that a person who does not have the capacity to act justly is just as unfortunate as a person with little personal skills and wealth. Rawls’s work is deeply informed by a (Calvinist) perspective that merit does not matter. See:

http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17045

Corrections:”… backed up and protected with …/ dumped negative externalities”

There is more to comment, but I conclude this discussion for my part saying that the decision is not between all-out race war and something near Rawls. There are many shades of gray in between, and that is where people and groups live. Ideals are of course needed, but forming policies requires noticing the full range of human and group qualities.

Because of renovation I drop away from discussions, but I will be back later.

Ps. Short comment: In Halla-aho’s trial the prosecutor quoted deliberately two Halla-aho’s sentences without context, and the context would have neutralized the meaning of the sentences, quite apart that there should be normal free speech in Finland. This was known to the court, politicians and the media, but they chose to ignore it. Because of this, I think it is reasonable to say that Halla-aho’s trial was show trial.

Reading all these theories, it makes it clear why White America is gone forever, there is no coming back.

White Americans lived too comfotable for too long, you are so weak, you don’t deserve to survive.

Writing or studying pathetic little books about justice will not help you at all.

How many whites or blacks are reading this book?

How many care? Less than ten or less than one hundred.

ER,

No one cares about justice? That’s tantamount to saying that no one cares about the law or about rights, which is plainly absurd. Think of all the yammering we’ve heard about the rights of Guantanamo Bay detainees alone!

Ritenour,

You raise so many issues in your post, many of them valid ones, that it would take a lot of time to answer them, though Rawlsians do have answers for all of them. What I’ll do now is focus on the central issue as I see it.

Rawls does in fact say that only people who have a capacity for justice deserve to be treated justly (442). He explains elsewhere that the stability of a just society depends on a citizenry that possesses a “normally effective sense of justice” that causes almost all of them to voluntarily respect the duty of justice (see above). The capacity for a sense of justice is the “basis for equality”—it is because virtually all citizens are potentially just beings that they deserve equality of treatment: “Those who can give justice are owed justice.” (446) Rawls’ remarks on this subject follow the logic of reciprocity that I outlined in the article above.

So Rawls is perfectly willing to admit that people without the capacity for justice do not deserve to be treated justly. However, he thinks such people are vanishingly rare. He thinks that virtually everyone inherently has a sense of justice powerful enough for a just society to be stable. Now, in the unjust, non-Rawlsian world in which we currently live, many people act unjustly and many more would do so if they were not afraid of the authorities. However, in Rawls’ view, the low level of morality that currently prevails is due to the fact that the circumstances in which the sense of justice would flower have not been realized. Once people are placed in a just, Rawlsian society, their sense of justice will naturally flower, and they will be good citizens who respect the duty of justice.

Now, I will be arguing that people who are incapable of justice are much more common than Rawls believes. Indeed, since only a minority are even capable of principled moral reasoning, how can they be expected to grasp the logic behind the principles of justice? Also, Rawls’ hypothesis that people will morally improve as society grows more Rawlsian has been disproved. America’s experiment with the welfare state has shown that it rather causes society to morally deteriorate.

Really, only a minority of people have the moral nature necessary for the stability of a just society. The rest have to be cajoled and coerced in various ways to act morally, and it may be necessary to deny some people basic rights. And, if Rawlsians were ethical, I think they would have to admit that these measures are the consequences of Rawls’ principles when they are applied to a world in which the majority of people have a weak capacity for moral behavior. After all, wouldn’t the parties to the Original Position have come up with different rules for society if they had been informed of the natural injustice of man?

In this way, one can make a morally principled argument for all sorts of policies that are normally considered immoral, authoritarian, and illiberal. One can incorporate all of the things that liberals get right into a political philosophy that is radically illiberal.

And this type of argument, I believe, applies to all versions of liberalism, not just Rawls’. So you see why it’s useless to get bogged down in debating the details of different forms of liberalism, as such issues won’t be relevant in my total political philosophy.

“Now, I will be arguing that people who are incapable of justice are much more common than Rawls believes. Indeed, since only a minority are even capable of principled moral reasoning, how can they be expected to grasp the logic behind the principles of justice? Also, Rawls’ hypothesis that people will morally improve as society grows more Rawlsian has been disproved. America’s experiment with the welfare state has shown that it rather causes society to morally deteriorate.”

Yes, this is an interesting perspective and I look forward to reading your thoughts on the matter. I doubt that a Rawlsian (or any kind of liberal) society can defend itself effectively against people who are mainly driven by power and fundamentalism. The erosion of liberties and increasing censorship in modern Western countries is evidence that egalitarian liberalism is self-destructive. I believe it was James Burnham in his “Suicide of the West” who argued that modern liberalism is the philosophy of a culture in decline.

I think it is commendable that you are writing on these topics from a race realist perspective. It is important that race realism is not necessarily linked to Nazism or the obscurantism of thinkers like Evola and Spengler.

It turned out that not much renovation is needed, so here we go.

Jobling: “If justice is entirely relative, then it makes no sense to say that the Aztecs, who used to sacrifice war prisoners to the Gods, were behaving unjustly, …”

• Answers to those are extremely complex and fully covering answer would require a short book at least. I identified central problem to be the following: If the justice is based on compelling facts on the ground, it is in general more enduring, but particular; and if it based on abstractions (Rawls’ justice is an example of that) it is more universal, but more easily denied, challenged, refuted etc., weaker, needs more manipulation and propaganda, and needs more good will or underlying supporting factors. Both require reciprocity. I see the first as the best alternative supplemented with the second.

Personally I would object to the Aztec sacrifying rituals with Christian morality (the first book of Moses: 22), but perhaps something more applicable and practical to the Aztecs (ancient Aztecs were not Christians) would be needed; again combination of particular and universal. In the end this too boils down to power; manipulation, information production, scientific ability, propaganda, diplomacy, trade, interests, military ability, culture, societal organization etc.

“… what will you say if someone ever tries to put you in prison for being a political dissident?”

• I try to avoid it, protest it, use intellectual and persuasive counterarguments and resist. But this is what we must be prepared to face. We already live in totalitarian societies, although their methods are generally soft. Things are changing to the worse.

Am I exaggerating? No. Modern totalitarian regimes use different methods than the old, less violence and force.

In the core of the present Western system is science/ knowledge, production, consumption and all kinds of manipulative techniques, and these allow soft methods.

Almost everything that is universally or particularly in humans or related to them; fears, needs, goals, desires, normalness, deviations, perversions, interests, advocacies, oppositions, free time, work time, status competion, spouse competition, natives, foreigners, men, women, children, pets, hobbies, democratic parties, ngos, places, spaces and environments, etc. etc. is manipulated and assimilated with the assistance of deep scientific and other knowledge to the system commercially, productively and bureaucratically in many ways.

E.g. push and acceptance of gay rights, pedophile rights and other liberal rights happens at the societal level (apart from the needs and interests of gays, pedophiles etc.), because societally accepted gays, pedophiles etc. are commercially, productively and bureaucratically useful. They need restaurants, date services, lawyers, advocacy groups, registration officers, tolerance bureaucrats, marriage services, all kinds of counselings, magazines, tv programs, etc. This is at the core of liberalism, one dimensional reductionist commercialization. E.g. European-Americans don’t have any intrinsic value in this system, they can be replaced by any other commercialized entities, like cheaper labor or immigrants that need more bureaucratic services than European-Americans.

When everything that is in different humans is squeezed around the clock from them, their time, energy, desires, needs, oppositions, dissatisfactions etc. is used up safely, so people feel less need to resists the system and “elites”, despite the fact that the progression of liberalism in the end will destroy them all. Present system is self destructing dump, but it is fairly stable in the short term, satisfies people in many ways and makes the “elites” rich.

ER: “Writing or studying pathetic little books about justice will not help you at all.”

Studying books and writing is exactly what is needed. My opinions may differ from Jobling’s a little bit, but he makes important contributions to European-Americans and other Europeans every time he writes, one way or another.

Ian, you should run your ideas past Philosophy Professor Michael Levin who wrote ‘Why Race Matters’. He may have some useful suggestions.

Ian, who exactly are these elites that you people opine about?

IJ:”So Rawls is perfectly willing to admit that people without the capacity for justice do not deserve to be treated justly. However, he thinks such people are vanishingly rare. He thinks that virtually everyone inherently has a sense of justice powerful enough for a just society to be stable.”

If by justice one means an instinct for reciprocity, then I agree. Reciprocity appears to be one of the anthropological universals. However, only the white Western civilization extends the realm of reciprocity to everyone. Traditional tribal society apply the pronciple of reciprocity internally.

I think we have come to a point where we need to do, not what is just for everybody, but what will ensure that we get back control of our Western democracies.

We may have to do things that will be called unfair, but we must never lose sight of waht our long-term objectives are. And keep in mind what the price of failure would be like!

Besides, people who are professionnal whiners, like Al Sharpton or Jesse Jackson, will always come up with complains, no matter how fair we could be. So let’s concentrate on the things that are essential!

Mass immmigration from the Third World must be stopped!

The wars in Afghanistan and Iraq must be ended by using whatever force is necessary.

Illegals must be deported.

And Barrack Obama should be impeached!

The problem with Rawls’ philosophy of justice parallels that of other Western philosophers who write devoid of empirical understandings to things like genetics or anthropological traits. They address a mythical universal human. Since higher moral reasoning requires intelligent consequential thinking, the variance of intelligence or other ethnic traits such as impulsivity should be part of any theory of ethics. Such a theory might not be intentionally or explicitly ethnic in interests, but given the distribution of IQ, in practical terms it is.

In addition, white philosophers like Rawls, like white folks in general, are too abstract. We might be on firmer ground if we could adopt the more concrete theory of justice known as Care Theory. While Care ethics may be of dubious origin from feminists such as Carol Gilligan, it appears transferable to an ethnic ethics.

Basically Care ethics can be interpreted to say that the interests of unrelated people should be beneath those whom are more concretely related to us. I believe this directs us to make a commitment to care for our extended European family first. Here’s a couple of articles to give a flavor of Care Ethics.

http://www.wku.edu/~jan.garrett/carethry.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ethicsofcare

Factualist has found good elements to pro-European ethics in care theory and it’s social connectedness. It requires filtering out the feminist and leftist universalist contents. It also requires grounding to the philosophy and rights based on communities, tradition and culture, in opposition to abstract universal principles.

The following books expand the care theory and to some extent can be said to deal with community ethics. Fairly large part in the beginning of these books can be previewed in Google books. If the link doesn’t function, use the author name and book name to search in Google books:

Virginia Held; Ethics of Care: Personal, Political and Global:

http://books.google.com/books?id=33OpldPlDgQC&dq=ethics+of+care&printsec=frontcover&source=bl&ots=bY8-fHsDcU&sig=BbTGJgwOu4KTjnf4Z1oy-UPCDQI&hl=fi&ei=4U3SSs-iBcjD-QbJtJyQAw&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CB8Q6AEwBA#v=onepage&q=&f=false

Alasdair McIntyre; Dependent Rational Animals: Why Human Beings Need the Virtues:

http://books.google.com/books?id=TXj3AklQkmUC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Alasdair+McIntyre&hl=fi#v=onepage&q=&f=false

factualist,

You’re advocating a variant of what I have called “racial interests” version of pro-whiteness. You should be aware, though, that there is another potential basis for the pro-white movement: the distinctive superiority of the white race. After all, if the white race is morally superior to other races, then it would be a sin not to preserve it. We would also deserve greater rights than less moral races, according to the logic specified in my last article.

Really, I think the idea of white superiority is the only hope for the pro-white movement. Appealing to ethnic loyalties won’t work because such loyalties are not very strong.

How would you demonstrate “superiority” without being fallacious? “Superiority” (biological or cultural) is a value judgement and not a fact. It commits the is/ought fallacy which is to say, as Hume pointed out, that you can never get an “is” from an “ought” since facts can’t be deduced from value judgements. Just because we think Whites should be considered “superior” doesn’t make it so.

To say European people are inherently “superior” is a value judgement that only an all-knowing deity could pronounce? You can enumerate endless traits and achievements but understand that not anyone will agree with your added valuation of “superiority”.

Certainly whites are more adaptive in certain environments or more achieving based on agreed upon criteria, and this line of reasoning is what led Raymond Cattell to advocate Beyondism as an evolutionary ethics. But evolution is purposeless and value-free.

I envision a world of ethnonational nation-states living in peaceful co-existence without any need to advertise “superiority” which of course makes everyone else “inferior”. Looking around the world today at existent nation-states like Japan or Iceland, they appear strongly cohesive without the need to tout “superiority”? I believe that our unique experience and just preferring our own extended family group is enough justification for a pro-white nationalist movement.

Jobling: “After all, if the white race is morally superior to other races, then it would be a sin not to preserve it.”

• Whatever we are, it is a sin not to preserve our kin, extended family.

“We would also deserve greater rights than less moral races, according to the logic specified in my last article.”

• Equal rights are only surface appearances in liberal society and in liberal power. Their functions are meant to preserve the illusion of equality and thus reduce disturbances and resistance to power; they are commercial rights which protects commercial choosing, flow of people, their capital, trade and production; they are an impossible to reach goal, which is used by the left and bureaucracy to extort more resources and clients (including immigrants); etc.

Unequal rights work on contractual basis. If genuine guestworkers (who leave or are made to leave after explicitly specified time) come to a country with terms they accepted before entering country, including understanding that it is impossible for them to gain citizenship, it is a fair contract. Possible disturbances will cause deportation.

Unequal rights among permanent citizens will cause disturbances, dysfunction and strife.

“Really, I think the idea of white superiority is the only hope for the pro-white movement.”

• Every race and ethnic group believes in it’s own superiority. They just accentuate their own strong points. Superiority is not “the only hope”, it is one factor among many in pro-white movement

“Appealing to ethnic loyalties won’t work because such loyalties are not very strong.”

• Your greatest mistake is neglecting the Genetic Similarity Theory. There are two main reasons to take it seriously.

Ethnocentrism and ethnic loyalty is artificially weakened by the measures and arrangements in individualizing liberal society. Horizontal relationships, cooperation, understanding of white excellence and dependencies among whites is weakened by liberal “elites” and at the same time vertical, extremely unequal, but fairly invisible (They are made to seem like “normality”) relations and dependencies between the state, influential organizations and influential business interests, and loose individuals is strenghtened. Equal rights etc. appearances of white individuals are trampled underneath this. The true power of ethnic loyalties materialize when whites create strong ethnic, social, cultural, cooperation, reciprocity and dependency bonds between them.

Now you are like a researcher that tries to assess the strength of sex drive among humans by studying monks and nuns.

The second reason is that the average potential of ethnocentrism/ ethnic instinct among whites have no reason to stay the same as it is now, in the same way that whatever information we have now, we should strive to gather more and better information.

If we increasingly shake off those minority of whites who have almost no instinctual ethnocentrism; tendency to endogamy and ethnic loyalty, we become more ethnocentric when time passes. The more propensity to ethnocentrism makes us more resistant to liberal propaganda, indoctrination, rewards, punishments, entertainments, dependencies, temptations etc.

factualist,

One of the reasons I’m writing about Rawls is to establish an objective basis for moral evaluation such that one can call one race morally superior to another. Your relativistic refusal to judge is clearly unworkable. The fact is that some types of society are superior to others in that they are more conducive to happiness, and the characteristics that lead to happiness are, consequently, superior to others.

In my view Rawls gives a perfect account of the method for establishing what morality consists in; however, the philosophy he arrives at by using that method is limited because it is based on false assumptions about human nature. Rawls makes a compelling case that moral principles are the principles that impartial people would choose to live by. However, he errs in describing those principles because he assumes that everyone has a strong moral sense. The principles that Rawls equates with the whole of morality only apply among moral people; very different principles are required to deal with people who are immoral. This is what I’m driving at in my last article.

Loyalty to race or ethnic group is quite a weak motive in human behavior. For example, look at this post from Audacious Epigone about strength of ethnic identification in the US. Only a minority of all ethnicities view ethnicity as an important part of their identity. Ethnic loyalty is particularly weak for whites, only 10 percent of whom view ethnicity as important. Consequently, I don’t think any appeal to ethnic loyalty will work as a basis for a pro-white political movement. However, whites do care about their society’s degree of morality, so the way forward consists of convincing them that whites are the only race capable of building the society that they wish to live in. That is, we have to argue for white superiority.

Jobling, in addition to what I said in previous comment, ethnocentric predispositions of whites don’t do what their socially sensitive mouths utter. Read the following article. One part of the study, slurs, imply falsely that that is the content of ethnocentrism/ ethnic instincts, but the study still indicates that most of whites side with people who they see as ethnocentric whites. If they would be neutral toward different ethnicities, they would not side with the slurring white, they would punish him socially, let alone if they would be multiculturally and liberally oriented. There are more studies like this, which indicate that there are large discrepansies between whites’ public statements and their largely subconscious ethnocentrism. If necessary I will collect those in the form of short summaries and put them here on display:

“Racism study finds people indifferent to slurs, overt bias Blatant racism not censured or shunned in study

Sharon Kirkey, Canwest News Service
Published: Thursday, January 08, 2009

John Dovidio

Despite what they think they would do, people are remarkably blase when actually confronted with blatant racism, a new study shows.

Canadian researchers who tested people’s reactions to anti-black comments found a surprisingly high tolerance for racial slurs — including “one of the most offensive words in the English language.”

Not only did people not get as upset as people predicted they would, the slur didn’t influence their willingness to choose a white racist as a partner to solve a word puzzle.

In fact, people preferred the white over the black person who was the target of the slur.

The findings, published this week in the journal Science, suggest that while people think they would be very upset by a racist act, and take action, “they actually respond with indifference.”

“People don’t really punish people who act in racist ways,” says lead author Kerry Kawakami, a psychology professor at York University’s faculty of health in Toronto.

“Racism is still a common experience for many minorities in Canada and North America. There’s a lot of non-conscious negative bias out there, and it comes out in different ways.” Even overt biases are accepted. “They’re not censured or punished.”

The study comes as the United States prepares to inaugurate its first black president in history. Yale University psychologist and co-author John Dovidio, an expert on prejudice, says the election of Barack Obama doesn’t mean an end to racism, or that one person will have “such a transforming influence” on the day-to-day lives of black Americans. “But it creates a foundation on which we can, if we all work together, begin to change things.”

Dr. Dovidio says he was struck by how “dramatically unresponsive” people are when confronted with racism. “It’s not simply that they didn’t respond as negatively as Dr. they said they would. To me, it’s that they didn’t respond negatively at all.”

The study, which included researchers at the University of British Columbia, involved 120 York University students. Volunteers thinking they’re waiting for an experiment to begin are exposed to racism: The experimenter walks into the room and introduces two men — one black, one white — posing as fellow participants. After the experimenter leaves the room, the black man stands up, says, “Oh, I forgot my cellphone,” and gently bumps the white man’s knee as he walks out.

The white man either says nothing, or, “Typical, I hate it when black people do that,” or, in the “extreme slur” condition, “clumsy nigger.”

Other groups didn’t actually experience the event, but they read about it or watched it on a video, and then were asked to predict how they would feel, and which man they would choose as a partner for a later anagram task. The volunteers were multi-racial, but black participants were not included because the researchers wanted to see how people who don’t belong to the target group respond to racial slurs.

People who didn’t experience the racist comments were much more likely to say that they would be upset by the white worker’s slurs, and that they wouldn’t work with him.

But students who actually experienced the event were less upset, scoring significantly lower on a “negative emotional distress” scale.

When no racist slur was made, people didn’t differ in their choice of the white (53%) versus black man as their work partners. When a racist comment was made, people showed a slight preference (63%) for the white man.

“Imagine yourself in that situation,” says Dr. Kawakami, of York University. “Most people would say, I would be so angry and upset being in that situation. Most would say, I would choose the black person, I would avoid this racist guy.

“But when we actually put people in that situation, we find that they’re not upset at all, and that a slight majority prefer the white person.”

It’s possible people might be upset, “and they’re just kind of shutting down, controlling the response,” she says.

Co-author Dovidio says many people don’t encounter blatant racism that much in their lives, and they’re not prepared for when it comes.

But it’s also possible that while people think they’re not prejudiced, at a more unconscious level “they actually have negative associations with blacks,” Dr. Kawakami says.

Finally, studies suggest people perceive a black person’s behaviour much differently than a white person’s, Dr. Kawakami says. A slight transgression — barely a bump on the knee — might seem more aggressive.”

Unless the laws of logic are invalid, I don’t see how pointing out that a factual judgement can’t be deduced from a value judgement (superiority) no matter how many facts are adduced in favor of the valuative conclusion makes my viewpoint “relativistic”? If someone special pleads that is/ought fallacious reasoning is okay for some people, but not others, then a “relativistic” label might apply, but I don’t suggest this?

By the way, there is a logical end run here, however. Say, I believe that White people are superior, then this is a fact, and it’s a subjective fact but a fact nevertheless. Furthermore, it might be considered an intersubjective fact if enough White people shared this viewpoint: intersubjective as a counterpoint to the status of objective facts, the latter of which suggests a fact external to the subject. Whites could readily accede that our assertion is subjective fact even though it isn’t something shared by everyone else. Religious believers do this all the time.

Anyway, I’m not sympathetic to contract theory which might be considered my starting point of Rawls. In the first place, it’s a naive, non-empirically informed position which ignores the de facto assertions of power. It considers morality in a vacuum out of context. Of course if someone enjoys building hypothetical verbal castles then such a mental exercise is okay?

A particularly blatant aspect of the “contract theory” position assumes the intellectual capacity of all individuals to moralize equally. Sometimes I hesitate to discuss IQ and intellectual ability because the controversy and political goals of egalitarian opponents usually engenders more heat than light. And you can never talk someone into accepting your conclusions if they don’t already accept your premises? However, I find that Jean Piaget and his research is held in much respect. Likewise, Lawrence Kohlberg and his stages of moral reasoning build on Piaget are useful as well. Piaget, like Kohlberg worked with typical White children, and both fallaciously projected their findings onto the “universal child”.

The point I would make is that of Piaget’s four stages of cognitive development, the reaching of the fourth stage of formal operations would appear necessary to reach Kohlbergs level three moral reasoning. The fifth stage within level three deals directly with “contract theory” thinking. Notably those people with one standard deviation below average IQ are deficient in formal operations, or abstract thinking sufficient for moral reasoning to participate in any such theory at all!

factualist,

You did say in a previous comment that people would never reach agreement about the definition of superiority, and you used that fact to argue that the concept itself is invalid. That’s classic relativism—there are only diverse perspectives on what superiority is and no one true concept of it. Your talk about “intersubjective facts” is also classic relativism.

You misunderstand Hume and the naturalistic fallacy, or the “is/ought problem.” This is the fallacy of making conclusions about values from facts and vice versa. As the relevant Wikipedia article states:

An example of a naturalistic fallacy in this sense would be to conclude Social Darwinism from the theory of evolution by natural selection, and of the reverse naturalistic fallacy to argue that the immorality of survival of the fittest implies the theory of evolution is false.

If you say that one type of behavior is superior to another or that people who practice superior behavior are superior people, you have not committed the naturalistic fallacy because these statements remain entirely within the realm of values. If the naturalistic fallacy applied here, then it would make any kind of moral reflection impossible, which is plainly not Hume’s intention, as he wrote about morality himself.

Making judgments about the moral superiority and inferiority of persons is as essential to human life as breathing. We make such a judgment every time we put a criminal in jail, or admire someone’s moral courage, or demand sanctions against nations that violate human rights. If such judgments were impossible, life would be impossible. The work of moral philosophy is to clarify the basis for such judgments, and I have argued that Rawls does help us do this, although I certainly do not think he has all the answers.

Also, your criticisms of contract theory sound very much like my own, which you might want to acquaint yourself with before you comment further on my writings.

Finn,

That’s an interesting study. But the fact is that the white populations of Western countries have voted for racial non-discrimination and third-world immigration in free and fair elections, and very few rank race as an important part of their identity in surveys in which they have no motive to lie. In light of those facts, I think it’s impossible to argue, although you no doubt will, that white people are highly ethnocentric. So I don’t think they are likely ever to sympathize with the typical white nationalist line that tells them they should side with their own race because that’s the natural thing to do and every other race does it. Only when we prove that whites are superior to other races will they sympathize with a pro-white movement.

Ian Jobling: “…that white people are highly ethnocentric.”

• Not at all, Ian. Whites are relatively less ethnocentric and relatively more individualistic than most of the other races/ ethnicities. This doesn’t reduce the importance of our ethnocentrism to our continuity and success. It is not enough in itself, but a crucial part.

A metaphor: If you have a fever and your life is relatively weaker than most of the other people’s lives, I doubt you would declare that your life is not important.

We can increase our ethnocentrism by shedding off people who are instinctively liberal.

“But the fact is that the white populations of Western countries have voted for racial non-discrimination and third-world immigration in free and fair elections …”

• Western elections are procedurally fairly fair and free, but elections can’t be separated from their environment, context and non-election times. Elections don’t happen in a vacuum. People are fooled, indoctrinated, infused in propaganda, manipulated, their goals, actions, speech, instincts and thoughts controlled in unnoticeable and noticeable ways, etc.; in so many ways that “free and fair elections” don’t exist.

Even the manipulation of the government of the self (Michel Foucault) alone would prevent free and fair elections.

You might want to read Foucault’s books; Chomsky’s Manufacture of Consent and Propagandamodel articles, Robert B. Cialdini’s Influence, The Psychology of Persuasion; Hewstone et al., Introduction to Social Psychology; Abraham Tesser’s Advanced Social Psychology and Steven Hassan’s Releasing the Bonds (applied to our situation). Filter away any and all leftism.

“… and very few rank race as an important part of their identity in surveys in which they have no motive to lie.”

• They parrot in the surveys what they have mostly unwittingly and through various methods internalized to their conscious actions and utterances.

“… the natural thing to do and every other race does it.

Well, that could be part of the message. But I would use a picture of the cutest and sweetest white little girl, with slightly sad eyes looking to the camera and add a text: “Would you like to help this little girl?”

“Only when we prove that whites are superior to other races will they sympathize with a pro-white movement.”

• Groups often unite around excellence norm (That is one of the reasons “elites” disparage whites so much; in order to destroy the unity of whites), so it is a good thing to advertize our strong qualities. But we need many more components to our activity.

Addition.

I wrote: “They parrot in the surveys what they have mostly unwittingly and through various methods internalized to their conscious actions and utterances.”

White ethnocentrism/ taking the side of whites/ white ethnic instinct materializes mostly in different situations involving emotions, like conflicts between whites and other races; in resource or spouse competition; decisions involving children, schools and living areas; interracial crimes; sports; etc.

“We make such a judgment every time we put a criminal in jail, or admire someone’s moral courage, or demand sanctions against nations that violate human rights.”

Under Rawlsian “original position, do you think policemen protect property or individuals? Are policemen representative of citizens? Can a society operate democratically if its executive branch themselves do not adhere to democratic principals within their organizations? Is it just/fair for a society to maintain the status quo if it benefits society as a whole by breaking the social contract for certain groups of people?

Definitely looking forward to reading more about Rawls.

“If anyone grouses about his lack of social goods, the state can explain to him that he could not have more without impinging on the legitimate expectations of others.”

The thing I find most disturbing about Rawls’ theory is that he assumes that human beings are universally highly rational, intelligent, easily educated and pacified creatures. But like Conan Doyle’s intelligent but evil Professor Moriarty, there is a dark side to human nature that no simple theory of “common sense” common morality and ideals can cause miraculously to vanish. Though Plato teaches that justice is superior in every way to injustice, Rawls has an extremely naive idea of human nature not espoused by the great ancient Greek philosopher.