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You want a Vision Thing? Try television and comedy prior to 1970. Hollywood used to celebrate the American Way.

For hard core reactionary propaganda, see the Brady Bunch Movie. (Works best if one is familiar with the original show.)

https://rulesforreactionaries.substack.com/p/a-kinder-sillier-reactionary-vision

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I saw Trump on Hannity. He's full of shit but he is joyful about it, having fun with it. I half expect him to put a McDonalds crown on and frog march around for the cameras.

I told Yuri I needed to take a cue from his humor. I thought about walking away from this piece and series. I think I will take a break from it for a bit.

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Splendid essay, excellent roadmap for a better American future. The good news is that we don't need a violent revolution to achieve all this. We just need an active, engaged electorate demanding legislative change and a shrinking of Leviathan. Not as fun and dramatic as armed revolution but in the end, economically more intelligent and far more enduring.

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Dec 7, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I am very wary of those who, while opposing the current paradigm, call for a christian state. To me that is just substituting one destruction of the first amendment for another, one tyranny for another. But I guess tyranny is OK to most people as long as it is THEIR tyranny

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I have been wary too, of the way some on the right have dismissed the Constitution, in favor of religion or a king. JMG is fond of saying something like, democracy is a bad way to order civilization - except for all the other ways.

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"A Christian State" is a paradox. "Render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's...." is not nearly as resonant when Caesar is on both sides of that exhortation.

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The Christians overthrew Caesar, and now the atheists are overthrowing the Christians. The new Caesar seems to be perfecting the worst of both.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Speaking for the atheists, we need to be careful that we don't throw the baby out with the bathwater:

My initial source for the 2 items below was from NRO: Cameron Hilditch: https://www.nationalreview.com/2020/08/the-american-misunderstanding-of-natural-rights/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=blog-post&utm_campaign=river&utm_content=more-in&utm_term=second

Larry Siedentop: Inventing the Individual

Tom Holland: Dominion

This other NRO item also includes Niall Ferguson and Douglass Murray in this camp: https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/atheists-against-atheism/

Perhaps the Kohanski book above belongs here, instead, as well.

[i.e., retain those elements of Christian culture that are the core source of our modern ideas of social good, justice, liberty, human dignity, and equality, even if we now scientifically reject the divine, or that aspect of divinity described via Christian scripture.]

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I used the term atheist because in the context it made more sense than Marxist. Obviously not all A's are M's, but all M's are A's. In my experience, Atheists can be just as dogmatic and confrontational as any religious proselytizer. In their Marxist form they can be downright murderous. This being America, I would hope this could be the one place where we could all get along. But that clearly isn't working out like I would hope.

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Well.... Imperial Rome made a lot of missteps and enjoyed a great many self-inflicted wounds before Constantine decided to give this One God Thing a try.... The Marxist hordes have nothing but misery to offer - all their bullshit is doom and gloom. "Let's eat soy and not burgers because if our lives suck a lot, the planet MAY not heat up another degree in a century." Screw that! "God wants you to shoot pigs with high powered rifles, then BBQ them whole on a backyard spit while your hot wife takes a break between birthing babies to treat you right." is a better pitch. Trust me.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Perhaps He would prefer that you get closer to His creation, hunting with a cross bow, or even a stone tipped spear. Life has provided "pre-made" protein, carbs, and fat, so we don't have to generate them out of raw organic chemistry before we have access to the related biochemical constituents.

Someday I need to find a source that can clarify if the original Hebrew said man was to have "dominion" over the animals, or to provide "stewardship" of them. Not a large difference in real practical terms, but an attitude adjustment none the less. Now, many Westerners probably view the Hindu position as being all together too accommodating. [My landlady had to repaint a hallway wall after my roommate and I finished swatting all of the mosquitos we found out there.]

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I love deer hunting. I don't love killing deer. I do it every year. I kill lots of plants too, that I grew. That is what I don't quite understand about Hindus. Death is necessary to life.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I am not a hunter; I don't see the appeal or thrill of killing, especially with high powered weapons; I do appreciate the go to the woods part; and I accept that someone has to go out and cull feral animals and excessive gains in herd size, etc., that impinge on human habitat.

In both of his older books, Life Ascending and The Vital Question, Nick Lane discusses "apoptosis" or programmed cell death, somehow involving the creation of a cell destroying enzyme when a given cell's "time has come". I suppose Hindu's do not have a problem with that level of natural response to life and death - just the human initiated versions?? "Different strokes for different folks".

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A-men

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Perhaps even more than you knew? See:

Joseph Atwill: Caesar's Messiah

James S Valliant & Warren Fahy: Creating Christ: How Roman Emperors Invented Christianity [2018]

Daniel Kohanski: A God of Our Invention: How Religion Shaped the Western World [2022]

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Jan 5Liked by William Hunter Duncan

Regarding your dream I was reminded of this Bible verse from Acts chapter 2. Not sure if these means anything to you, but I think there is usually something to dreams. I’m careful not to put too much stock in them, but I never discount them either.

17“ ‘In the last days, God says,

I will pour out my Spirit on all people.

Your sons and daughters will prophesy,

your young men will see visions,

your old men will dream dreams.

18Even on my servants, both men and women,

I will pour out my Spirit in those days,

and they will prophesy.

19I will show wonders in the heavens above

and signs on the earth below,

blood and fire and billows of smoke.

20The sun will be turned to darkness

and the moon to blood

before the coming of the great and glorious day of the Lord.

21And everyone who calls

on the name of the Lord will be saved.’

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Thanks. I am going to take a look at te KJV and ponder it.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

" the Bill of Rights is a white supremacist document...."

Actually, in many ways that is literally true, but not in a pro-white, anti-black racist sense. Ann Coulter pointed out somewhere that up to around 1820 the US was populated largely by people settling from the Northern European domains/ nations/ countries. They all generally had a similar view of Western Civilization, rule of law, (mostly Protestant) Judeo-Christian culture, etc.

And if you immigrated and accepted and assimilated those ideas, you were accepted, maybe even welcomed for your labor and/or skills. Issues with Catholics and various other ethnic groups did arise (unfortunately), but not to a counter revolutionary scale [CW 1.0 aside].

Then again, the real revolutionary ideas also came from Northern Europe, via Marx and the German paternal administrative state. I have not yet learned WHY Woodrow Wilson and his ideas about a "living constitution" and the need for guiding the machinery of government were not laughed out of the classroom, academic literature, and political sphere upon their appearance. Maybe if Garfield* had not been assassinated? A misreading of the application of science and "machinery" to the complexity of the human psyche (the foibles of which our Founders understood so well)?

*See the CRB here for a laudatory description: https://claremontreviewofbooks.com/radical-american/

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Wilson was like the first technocrat/managerialist president. Heavily influenced by John Dewey and his acolytes, he believed the State needed to control the people, form them in the way of industrialism, which was the antithesis of what America was meant to be, the people controlling what very little government was allowed. There are even some now who think him a great president, when I think he was more like the current crop of Ivy League presidents with their race and gender obsession, and their mockery of constitutional principles.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I am not as deeply educated about that time as I maybe should be.

What caused Dewey to adopt such a mindset?

[Plus I think there are 3 or 4 different Dewey's that we have to keep track of? Brothers, cousins, or whatever. :-) ]

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There has been a fair amount written on substack about the Prussian education model Dewey adopted, and how utterly deleterious that has been to the American project and spirit. See Mathew Crawford, specifically.

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Dec 12, 2023·edited Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I agree with most of your 20 suggestions, but after item 6 I think you started to wander off the reservation with some vague or unrealistic ideas. [I see now that you did describe them as aspirational.] I am also disappointed you did not mention the deficit/debt situation and the need to reform entitlements, etc. Ross Perot highlighted this need back in 1992 and basically nothing has been done since. But since it is deferrable, it is being deferred.

To my mind this is our prime problem, perhaps even greater than the national security issues related to open borders, etc. Certainly the problems with a "something for nothing" attitude will not be foreign to you. Prudent conservative thinking should require/ demand this as a major part of any corrections, whether via nonviolent or violent revolutionary means.

The road to liberty requires that we face reality as we find it; and then accept responsibility for correcting it. You are asserting that a large fraction of our population is able and willing to do that, but we fear they might not find a venue for sufficient joint action before a more revolutionary mode must be exercised.

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I suspect DC has no real expectation or plan to do anything about entitlements, kick that can down the proverbial road. In which case, like many of my generation and younger, I have little expectation those entitlements will be there when I need them. In the hypothetical revolution I am discussing, everything would change, especially our dependence on gov, corp and bank. We would have to start taking care of each other again, to a great degree. So yes, very aspirational, not necessarily optimistic.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I have reservations (or questions) about your views of "dependence" on corp and bank entities. If you mean crony capitalism, regulatory capture, money dominating election cycles, and similar, I probably agree with you. And probably even anti-trust protections are weak sauce. More transparency on lobbying desired, but I fear the only real solution is adequate checks and balances on power and people of good character in power. Solutions based on fixing term limits or similar all have their pros and cons.

I hope your view is not a simplistic "big is bad", as we know many current capabilities and benefits of our society depend on large organizations to achieve them.

If you have a past essay addressing this, can you please provide the citation?

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By dependence, I mean if banks, corps and gov disappeared tomorrow, hypothetically, most of us would be dead before long. Americans before industrialization were of a sturdier stock, as people tend to be anywhere in the world currently where they cannot rely on gov etc for essentials. Of course I do not think it a good idea to get rid of so much centralized power in an instant, which is why I have merely advocated repeatedly in this substack for individuals and families to think about resilience, but also for local production of essentials, particularly food. As for improving the oligopoly we have, I think it is baked into the cake, that the further removed from the people the leadership is, the more insular and pathological that leadership will become.

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People will find a way to create something to use as money, because it is too valuable an invention* to be without for long. Banks offer one way to create (or destroy) money to meet the demands of a growing (or shrinking) economy. This function can be and has been abused, but is very useful when wisely controlled, with the aim of retaining as stable and constant a value per unit as possible. Not easy, but could be done better.

*Money is essentially an idea about an agreement (or an agreement) and nothing more or less than that; regardless of whatever physical or digital commodity is used for exchange and store of value. On a macro scale its quantity must be managed to retain constant value compared to the size of the economy (wealth transfers) that it is supporting. [I am beginning to repeat myself!! :-( ]

The benefits of specialization are also so well recognized that they should not be precluded. The back to the land movements that did not also emphasis keeping in close contact with like minded neighbors will probably fail. None of us can be as self sufficient and resilient as a single family as we can be better off joining in some form of community to share the skills, and the work load [even hunter gatherers did that].

Balancing the scale of the effort to the human values/impact is probably your point. I am recalling those short videos of Chinese workers using some simple piece of machinery to do some simple stupid job over and over. That may be "local" but perhaps suboptimal? Proper allocation of resources might (depending on a variety of issues) merit providing more fully automated equipment, plus transport and distribution. Food might be a special case, but as you go up the productivity and specialization chain, your dependence and interdependence on others increases (machine parts and repairs, market information and status, etc.)

[Hopefully you know all this already :-) ]

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

One of these days I need to re-research the data on ROI for SS recipients by age or generation. I suspect if that data and message got out more widely, it would help turn the tide.

From memory: I think the Silent generation did pretty well, the Boomers are seeing maybe 1 to 3% net gains (after inflation); and the follow on younger groups will see only negative values. Much better if GWB had been able (more willing?) to push harder for his ideas of privatizing SS as personal investments. While I don't like the idea of government mandating anything, it might well be necessary (given human nature) to force people to be taxed and that money put into a private but "regulated" IRA. "Regulated" as in your investment goals/strategy is controlled by age: growth and risk oriented while younger, adjusting to more conservative investments and wealth preservation as you age/near retirement (which might age 75+ by then?). The big investment houses would love this, and you have concerns about them all, but in the final analysis retirement security depends on money obtained from the economy (personal or as taxes).

The concept of SS as "insurance" was always a smoke screen to protect the "dignity" of retirees who (for whatever reason) had failed to save adequately for retirement (a concept only coming to the fore, again based on German administrative governance). But no one, poor or otherwise, was fooled - you had the money or you did not, for just or poor reasons. And yes, we will probably still need a backup bare bones program funded via government for some small % of folks, but (hopefully) without the "dignity" charade.

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The problem with IRAs and the sort is, as people learned in 2008, that money might not be there when you are ready to retire, if the market has tanked.

Something like 50% of boomers have no retirement savings. A friend of mine is in an assisted living facility in Alaska, and he tells me 90+% of the people in that facility have nothing but SS, to the tune of not much more than one thousand, when it is estimated to cost $16,000/mnth to house each of them. I have the feeling "retirement" plans were part and parcel of the destruction of family and community. But that only seems to have bankrupted us economically and spiritually.

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

William, this has all been a great dialog, but I am going to call it quits for today. I don't fully agree with your IRA comments above, but recognize there are subtleties in that whole situation that merit debate and discussion for particulars, etc. Perhaps another day. :-)

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Dec 12, 2023Liked by William Hunter Duncan

I found this to be a verbal gem:

"One of the reasons Republicans lose elections at the Federal Level is their messaging mistakes Joe Biden for Jimmy Carter, like it is 1980: Crime! Immigration! Taxes! Make America Great Again is a bit too much like Reagan’s Morning in America." Better to describe him (or his puppeteers?) as Lenin redux, or more charitably the ghost of Woodrow Wilson reincarnated.

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Biden is almost as geriatric as Carter and I can still see Republicans losing to him. While a great many conservatives have found the sense of humor democrats lost, the Party is moribund, refusing to learn from the support of Trump. Recently, during the 4th debate, the live feed was cut when Megan Kelly, who believes herself to be vaccine harmed, asked Vivek about the jabs. The Republicans in Congress are not interested in the common good.

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