The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

There is no such thing as liberalism — or progressivism, etc.

There is only conservatism. No other political philosophy actually exists; by the political analogue of Gresham’s Law, conservatism has driven every other idea out of circulation.

There might be, and should be, anti-conservatism; but it does not yet exist. What would it be? In order to answer that question, it is necessary and sufficient to characterize conservatism. Fortunately, this can be done very concisely.

Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect.

There is nothing more or else to it, and there never has been, in any place or time.

For millenia, conservatism had no name, because no other model of polity had ever been proposed. “The king can do no wrong.” In practice, this immunity was always extended to the king’s friends, however fungible a group they might have been. Today, we still have the king’s friends even where there is no king (dictator, etc.). Another way to look at this is that the king is a faction, rather than an individual.

As the core proposition of conservatism is indefensible if stated baldly, it has always been surrounded by an elaborate backwash of pseudophilosophy, amounting over time to millions of pages. All such is axiomatically dishonest and undeserving of serious scrutiny. Today, the accelerating de-education of humanity has reached a point where the market for pseudophilosophy is vanishing; it is, as The Kids Say These Days, tl;dr . All that is left is the core proposition itself — backed up, no longer by misdirection and sophistry, but by violence.

So this tells us what anti-conservatism must be: the proposition that the law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone, and cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

Then the appearance arises that the task is to map “liberalism”, or “progressivism”, or “socialism”, or whateverthefuckkindofstupidnoise-ism, onto the core proposition of anti-conservatism.

No, it a’n’t. The task is to throw all those things on the exact same burn pile as the collected works of all the apologists for conservatism, and start fresh. The core proposition of anti-conservatism requires no supplementation and no exegesis. It is as sufficient as it is necessary. What you see is what you get:

The law cannot protect anyone unless it binds everyone; and it cannot bind anyone unless it protects everyone.

• Frank Wilhoit

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How do people become such pieces of shit?

Chrystia Freeland, author of Plutocrats, says that the present trend towards plutocracy occurs because the rich feel that their interests are shared by society:

You don’t do this in a kind of chortling, smoking your cigar, conspiratorial thinking way. You do it by persuading yourself that what is in your own personal self-interest is in the interests of everybody else. So you persuade yourself that, actually, government services, things like spending on education, which is what created that social mobility in the first place, need to be cut so that the deficit will shrink, so that your tax bill doesn’t go up. And what I really worry about is, there is so much money and so much power at the very top, and the gap between those people at the very top and everybody else is so great, that we are going to see social mobility choked off and society transformed.

40 days should be indefinitely until management changes. As in, those who “kissed the ring” must leave.

“Deeply concerned.” How reassuring.

I still don’t want to think he’s a bad person, but for me, why he is a bad person is because zero “too-big-to-fail” CEOs went to jail during the immediate aftermath of the '08 crisis.

He could’ve nationalized the banks that were underwater. Even temporarily. The DoJ had ample evidence, precedent, and prosecutorial room to make heads roll. He was the one person who had power to do so. “Yes, we can!” became “No, I won’t.”

He’s not the only one in my lifetime to screw the American people, but as a young 25-year-old man, his betrayal stung the most in the wreckage of 2008 into '09. I voted for him. I thought I genuinely liked him.

When it came down to it, he’s actually like all the rest. Socialize the losses; privatize the gains.

Eat the billionaires. Sic semper tyrannis.

Well! My wife is Dutch and she bought me a pair of Dutch HappySocks™ with stripes a few birthdays ago.

I suppose I’m not that much of a pariah after all!

I used to play ice hockey as a preteen/teen, so I’ve worn 'em in that context.

As far as the fem-boy/“girly” ones, I’m just not into it. Any socks above mid-achilles tendon make me itch. I have hairy legs.

Pension funds have invested in stocks and bonds for decades.

I’ve reached the acceptance stage of possibly being a pariah in the community for not wanting to wear the socks.

I’m also a cis-gendered heterosexual married male, so I guess that tracks.

Tradition is anchor of civilization. And civilization is madness.

“Dumb” is the new “smart”.

clearsThroat.sh

STATIC TYPING FTW. FIGHT ME, YOU BITCH-MADE INVERTEBRATES.

They get dopamine hits when their no_u.exe or no_u.dmg start-up applications run.

“slams”

I eat beef (occasionally) due to its excellent flavor, versatility in cuisine, and high complex protein density.

Thanks for the kind compliment, but my title for my response is my opinion. The rest of the text is taken from a Wikipedia article about “Crabs in a Bucket Mentality” and was pasted in a way to support my first statement.

Protesting against a government with ample amounts of 5th generation multi-role fighter aircraft, drones with Hellfire missiles, and plenty of rubes who are giddy at the prospect of shooting the populace they’d supposedly sworn to protect is a fool’s errand.

Wildcat strikes “are de wei”.

Most Many people are complete immature dicks.

Self-evaluation maintenance theory

Tesser’s self-evaluation maintenance theory (SEM) suggests that individuals engage in self-evaluation not only through introspection but also through comparison to others, especially those within their close social circles. When someone close to an individual excels in areas they value, they may feel threatened and act in ways that downplay their achievements. This mechanism can partly explain why individuals may attempt to pull down those who achieve more than themselves as a way to protect their own self-esteem and social standing. Emotions such as envy may be generated when individuals feel threatened during self-evaluation. This can lead to a desire to diminish the well-being of others, particularly when their success highlights the individual’s own failures or inadequacies.

Relative deprivation theory

Relative deprivation theory proposes that feelings of dissatisfaction and injustice arise when people compare their situation unfavorably with others’ situations. This sense of inequality, rooted in subjective perceptions rather than objective measures, can deeply influence social behavior, including the phenomenon of crab mentality. When individuals see their peers achieving success or receiving the recognition they feel is undeserved or unattainable for themselves, it can trigger actions aimed at undermining these peers’ accomplishments. The concept emerged from a study of American soldiers by Stouffer. Soldiers in units with more promotions were paradoxically less satisfied, feeling left out if not promoted themselves, despite better odds of advancement. This reflects how relative deprivation fuels dissatisfaction by comparing one’s situation to others. By “dragging” others down to a similar level, individuals might feel a sense of satisfaction. Thus, crab mentality can be viewed as a response to perceived social inequality, where pulling others down becomes a strategy to cope with feelings of inadequacy or injustice.

Zero-sum bias

Zero-sum bias, where individuals perceive that they can only gain at the expense of others, may contribute to crab mentality. This bias is rooted in a fundamental misunderstanding of success and resource distribution, leading to the incorrect belief that success and resources are limited and one person’s gain is necessarily another’s loss. Such a worldview fosters competitive rather than collaborative social interactions, encouraging behaviors that aim at hindering others’ achievements to protect one’s perceived share of limited resources, like crabs in a bucket. In Daniel V. Meegan’s study, researchers found that students expected lower grades for peers after seeing many high grades already awarded, despite being in a system where high grades are unlimited. This illustrates how people often view success as a limited resource. Thus, when they see their peers successfully “climbing out of the bucket”, they may try to hinder their progress to ensure their own chances of success remain unchanged.

I moved to the Netherlands from the U.S. in July of 2022.

My opinion now? There are morons everywhere. I think more, per capita, back in the U.S. of A.

The world is a circus, but in the U.S., you have front row seats.

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