Maggie's Farm

It makes sense. A hundred thousand years of chieftan leadership just below the mere thousand or three years of here-and-there temporarily ascendant 'classical' liberalism. Inherited aristocracy as the only form of civilization waiting in the wings should modern mobility (income, professional, geographical, intellectual, et al) decide to quit refueling itself. City-states just waiting for the psychological bonds to neighboring city-states to stretch past the breaking point of shared narrative.

Nyquist pegged it beautifully --the existence of the default state that is regrettably not the current state:

http://www.financialsense.com/node/919

(a snip)

One theory of Neanderthal extinction says that modern humans eventually overcame them in an extended war of extermination. Modern humans were lighter, smaller, with the ability to strike and retreat. Modern humans required less food than Neanderthal. Though he was strong, in some ways superior, the Neanderthal could not compete. It is curious that political liberals, who believe in modern doctrines calling for global peace and the welfare state, tend to favor the notion that humans developed through a process of “natural selection” (i.e., Darwinian evolution). They do not consider the political implications of their theory. The extermination of man by man, in prehistoric times, took place without the use of nuclear weapons, with supposed beneficial effects on the gene pool. We know for a fact, from sifting pre-historical human remains, that men hunted and killed one another. They even ate each other using stone implements so that one tribe could “be fruitful and multiply,” while another tribe would perish.

Communism (i.e. Marxism-Leninism) teaches that Stone Age man was a communist, that original sin occurred with the development of agriculture and the division of land into “property” thereby instituting the categories “rich” and “poor.” In a Soviet textbook we read, “Private property and its result, the exploitation of man by man, were unknown to primitive society. The earlier tools of primitive people, especially during their initial social development made for an extremely low productivity of labor. These tools could only be used effectively in collective tasks [like hunting in groups].” Therefore man, in his original state, was a collectivist and won’t return to himself until he returns to collectivism through the process of the “final” revolution – involving the elimination of the bourgeoisie along with the eradication of capitalism.

The term “apex predator” (a.k.a. alpha predator) refers to predators that are not preyed upon by other animals. In the case of mankind, the greatest threat has always come from other humans. The creature that bashed in his neighbor’s head with a stone axe now builds thermonuclear weapons. He devises ideologies that focus hatred against targeted groups (i.e., Jews, capitalists, infidels, etc.). Modern man justifies killing with fine-tuned arguments and elaborate propaganda. He uses science and engineering to refine his homicidal means. “Scientific revolutions are … the most important,” wrote the scientist Gustave Le Bon. “Although they attract but little attention, they often are frought with remote consequences such as are not engendered by political revolutions….”

Modern man has developed nuclear weapons. But even more devastating, he has developed birth control pills and television. He has created tools that have cut the birth rate of the most advanced countries. He has made entertainment the center of modern society’s attention. He has created doctrines of entitlement and freedom, offering food stamps and free medicine for the masses. And now the relationship between the advanced countries and the “developing world” can be described in the words of Louis Veuillot: “When I am the weaker, I ask for my freedom, because that is your principle; but when I am the stronger, I take away your freedom, because that is my principle.” Here is the predator at work, even in the midst of civilization (in the overturning of civilization).

It seems there is a law of history at work. Whenever something good is achieved, a force is formed in diametrical opposition to it. Whenever progress is made, a force emerges that wants to take us back – whether it is Nazis who want to replay the survival game of tribe versus tribe, or Communists who want to return us to our Communist roots as hunter-gatherers. Whenever civilization emerges, the romance of the barbarian wells up to swallow it. The noble savage, the praiseworthy primitive, is set before us as a model. And as we look around at the pathologies produced by our civilization, we wonder whether civilization can survive at all.

(close snip)

yep --it's easy to find a place to start quoting old Nyquist --harder to find a stop point. i think his particular Moses stick is the bass-ackward way we are looking upon our strategic deterrence. The nuclesr weapons --well it's a cursed shame they've proliferated, but throwing away our own power to moot the idea of nuclear attack on ourselves and/or our allies is sure not gonna make us any holier. What it'll do is end our sovereignty, probably not with a bang but with the whimper that comes when you realize you're outgunned, and the other guy is getting ready to open up on you.

Nuclear weapons are what high-tech culture threw off as a way to prevent, not enable, the quick-kill of nations, the pre-nuclear history of which is told around the fall of great cities to fire and sword, and the killing and enslaving of whole cultures.

It's what we call "history".