Right Wing Discussion Thread XIV: Join the Friendkorps

[Volkari]

Please don't quote the high school philosopher at me.

If I were to humor you and engage in actualism, my question would become this. What precisely are we to make of the Jewish people's will to power? That term has a wide plethora of connotations and the Jewish nation is itself a complex community stretching back to Avraham Avinu and forward to Olam Haba. Additionally, even supposing that religion is a manifestation of a people's will to power, can we not characterize a wide number of institutions and facets of culture in a similar way? Does cramming them in a single ill-fitting stocking not cramp and chaff the toes a bit?

Yes, those are equally an expression of the people's will to power. It's their self-actualization and what distinguishes them from foreign peoples. I'm not sure I understand the rest of your question.

Never mind the vacuity that comes with such suggestions. The worship of man is a fool's errand.

Not technically accurate. He gave them a set of laws as well. That hardly strikes me as indifference.

You mean the Noahide Laws? Nothing more than spiritual second class status for Judeophiles who can't become Jewish. They still afford the Jewish people a central and exceptional place.

He delivers us into their hands as well, but, yes, G-d is a deity of war among other more important things.

He delivers you into their hands when you doubt your own national divinity, and then he proceeds to utterly destroy those enemies to restore your faith in it.

Not quite. Unless Christians and Muslims and several other faiths comprise a single ethnic group.

I don't consider Christianity and Islam (from a historical point of view) to be legitimate successors to Judaism, they're heresies which contain ideas that are antithetical to the Jewish religion. It would be similar to someone stating that Catholicism doesn't believe in reincarnation, and then citing the Cathars as a counterargument.

A fascist supporting civic nationalism? That's a pleasant surprise at least. Let me ask you this. Does America have a culture? A widely spoken language? A literary canon? A shared identity based on more than mere ideas? You know, shared history, common community, similar traditions, etc.?

The American community is something that has been forged in the crucible of the Idea, that's what distinguishes us from other countries which rely on bloodlines to determine their nature. There is more than just one American culture, just the same as there is more than one German, Anglo, French, or Italian culture. The nation is natural and particular, the state is spiritual and universal.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

How can a nation be God? Nations are fragile things that break apart. God is not. You and I certainly have a very different definition of God.

What constitutes a 'religion' and 'god' is so washy you could totally get away with arguing that any belief in something higher than the self with ritualistic undertones fits the bill. In that sense, the Nation becomes God and the Religion is Nationalism of a sort.

Of course, that doesn't jive with the obvious examples of "religion" but it's a difficult concept.

I concur with this point, tbh. Humans need religion (defined broadly as self-transcendent, ritualistic, and communal behaviors on a societal scale), and I find religious institutions rather beneficial in allowing humans to grasp the nature of the Good, but I take issue with the emphasis on deities and the supernatural (since I'm doubtful of the notion of divine intervention by the Creator). I apologize if I seem incoherent.

[Conserative Morality]

I mean, Lincoln's wife's family owned the second largest slave plantation in Kentucky,

I love this "Sin is in the blood" stuff.

and Lincoln was not against segregation of the races, either.

In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are; for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The political elites in Washington could care less about the slaves, heck they'd probably have let the South keep Slavery if it had never seceded.

Doubtful. The entire reason for the Republican Party's existence was opposition to slavery, for various reasons. In a decade's time the Republican Party went from powerless to the controlling force of the nation. That shit doesn't come about because of lukewarm sentiment towards the institution of slavery.

Slavery was at best a secondary issue for Lincoln, he really only cared about keeping the Union together. The slavery issue was just a casus belli to rally people to the Union cause.

The slavery issue was *the* casus belli for the South. That Lincoln prioritized keeping the Union together means little in the face of that fact, and his own confessed feelings. Lincoln didn't use slavery to rally people to the Union cause - there's a reason the Gettysburg Address didn't come about until after a major victory - because it needed to be made from a position of strength to determine the future of the nation, not because it needed to be used as a crutch to save it.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law.

Not trying to take the Confederate side here, it's good that the United States stayed together. My point is simply to say that the Union cared very little for the enslaved Blacks. The Emancipation Proclamation was useful for international PR, and also for destabilizing the South. The actual slaves themselves were simply an afterthought in Lincoln's mind.

As any reading of the memoirs of major figures of the Civil War shows, there is increasing abolitionary sentiment and a feeling that the freedman was their countrymen the longer the war went on. Exposure often kills prejudice. Slavery was not just an 'afterthought' - Lincoln, after all, was the candidate of *the* anti-slavery party - slavery being the issued that divided and wrecked the Whigs. Lincoln prioritized saving the Union - but there's little doubt where he stood on the issue of slavery.

[El-Amin Caliphate]

You mean the Noahide Laws? Nothing more than spiritual second class status for Judeophiles who can't become Jewish. They still afford the Jewish people a central and exceptional place.

That's not what the Noahide Laws are. To me they are a Blessing from Allah SWT.

He delivers you into their hands when you doubt your own national divinity, and then he proceeds to utterly destroy those enemies to restore your faith in it.

Jews have never believed themselves to be divine.

I don't consider Christianity and Islam (from a historical point of view) to be legitimate successors to Judaism

In the case of Al-Islam, neither do I.

they're heresies

Ok I don't go that far.

[Genivaria]

We are not discussing your specific deity

Allah SWT isn't my specific deity.

we are discussing the concept of a deity. Your original objection to the claim of the American State being a god wasn't "It's not Allah" but that, and I quote, "That doesn't make it a god."

Ok, well it's not a god either. There's too many flaws for America to be a god.

And yet it has fewer flaws than Islam.

[Genivaria]

... he's your generic deity?

No. Allah SWT is not my anything. I belong to Allah SWT, not the other way around.

Gods can be flawed

Then the aren't Allah SWT, they're jinns.

Allah is flawed like any other god.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

Perhaps a state philosophy/civic religion would be the best solution; I find the general principles of humaneness/compassion, self-transcendent ritualistic behavior, loyalty to the state/family, and filial piety found in Confucianism to be a particularly good example of this.

"Confucianism with a Western face", perhaps?

[Washington Resistance Army]

No. Allah SWT is not my anything. I belong to Allah SWT, not the other way around.

Then the aren't Allah SWT, they're jinns.

Allah is flawed like any other god.

One could make an argument that Allah is much more flawed than your average deity tbh

[Conserative Morality]

Perhaps a state philosophy/civic religion would be the best solution; I find the general principles of humaneness/compassion, self-transcendent ritualistic behavior, loyalty to the state/family, and filial piety found in Confucianism to be a particularly good example of this.

"Confucianism with a Western face", perhaps?

>> Confucianism

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

Perhaps a state philosophy/civic religion would be the best solution; I find the general principles of humaneness/compassion, self-transcendent ritualistic behavior, loyalty to the state/family, and filial piety found in Confucianism to be a particularly good example of this.

"Confucianism with a Western face", perhaps?

>> Confucianism

Okay, I admit that I'm rather fond of this meme. Now this is humorous. Unlike StoneToss.

[Conserative Morality]

One could make an argument that Allah is much more flawed than your average deity tbh

I think he's about average, tbh. More legalistic, like the Jewish God used to be perceived before the Third Jewish Revolt, but less inclined towards divine punitive measures. Far less genocide in the Quran.

Not no genocide, mind. But less.

[Valrifell]

Perhaps a state philosophy/civic religion would be the best solution; I find the general principles of humaneness/compassion, self-transcendent ritualistic behavior, loyalty to the state/family, and filial piety found in Confucianism to be a particularly good example of this.

"Confucianism with a Western face", perhaps?

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

[Fahran]

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

Tfw everyone posting in the RWDT is a Jacobin in need of physical removal.

[Valrifell]

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

Tfw everyone posting in the RWDT is a Jacobin in need of physical removal.

The Revolution didn't go far enough. The world would have been better if Napoleon won.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

Tfw everyone posting in the RWDT is a Jacobin in need of physical removal.

I wouldn't describe myself as a Jacobin, though.

[Minzerland II]

Perhaps a state philosophy/civic religion would be the best solution; I find the general principles of humaneness/compassion, self-transcendent ritualistic behavior, loyalty to the state/family, and filial piety found in Confucianism to be a particularly good example of this.

"Confucianism with a Western face", perhaps?

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

God’s providence right here.

[Conserative Morality]

The Revolution didn't go far enough. The world would have been better if Napoleon won.

Saint-Just did literally nothing wrong.

[Volkari]

Perhaps a state philosophy/civic religion would be the best solution; I find the general principles of humaneness/compassion, self-transcendent ritualistic behavior, loyalty to the state/family, and filial piety found in Confucianism to be a particularly good example of this.

"Confucianism with a Western face", perhaps?

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

As fascinating as the various replacement cults were, admirable social experiments that should be replicated, I could never agree to be a member of a Neo-Cult of Reason because Luther was right on one thing.

Reason is a whore.

[Nea Byzantia]

I mean, Lincoln's wife's family owned the second largest slave plantation in Kentucky,

I love this "Sin is in the blood" stuff.

and Lincoln was not against segregation of the races, either.

In reference to you, colored people, let me say God has made you free. Although you have been deprived of your God-given rights by your so-called masters, you are now as free as I am, and if those that claim to be your superiors do not know that you are free, take the sword and bayonet and teach them that you are; for God created all men free, giving to each the same rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

The political elites in Washington could care less about the slaves, heck they'd probably have let the South keep Slavery if it had never seceded.

Doubtful. The entire reason for the Republican Party's existence was opposition to slavery, for various reasons. In a decade's time the Republican Party went from powerless to the controlling force of the nation. That shit doesn't come about because of lukewarm sentiment towards the institution of slavery.

Slavery was at best a secondary issue for Lincoln, he really only cared about keeping the Union together. The slavery issue was just a casus belli to rally people to the Union cause.

The slavery issue was *the* casus belli for the South. That Lincoln prioritized keeping the Union together means little in the face of that fact, and his own confessed feelings. Lincoln didn't use slavery to rally people to the Union cause - there's a reason the Gettysburg Address didn't come about until after a major victory - because it needed to be made from a position of strength to determine the future of the nation, not because it needed to be used as a crutch to save it.

I am naturally anti-slavery. If slavery is not wrong, nothing is wrong. I can not remember when I did not so think, and feel. And yet I have never understood that the Presidency conferred upon me an unrestricted right to act officially upon this judgment and feeling. It was in the oath I took that I would, to the best of my ability, preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution of the United States. I could not take the office without taking the oath. Nor was it my view that I might take an oath to get power, and break the oath in using the power. I understood, too, that in ordinary civil administration this oath even forbade me to practically indulge my primary abstract judgment on the moral question of slavery. I had publicly declared this many times, and in many ways. And I aver that, to this day, I have done no official act in mere deference to my abstract judgment and feeling on slavery. I did understand however, that my oath to preserve the constitution to the best of my ability, imposed upon me the duty of preserving, by every indispensable means, that government — that nation — of which that constitution was the organic law.

Not trying to take the Confederate side here, it's good that the United States stayed together. My point is simply to say that the Union cared very little for the enslaved Blacks. The Emancipation Proclamation was useful for international PR, and also for destabilizing the South. The actual slaves themselves were simply an afterthought in Lincoln's mind.

As any reading of the memoirs of major figures of the Civil War shows, there is increasing abolitionary sentiment and a feeling that the freedman was their countrymen the longer the war went on. Exposure often kills prejudice. Slavery was not just an 'afterthought' - Lincoln, after all, was the candidate of *the* anti-slavery party - slavery being the issued that divided and wrecked the Whigs. Lincoln prioritized saving the Union - but there's little doubt where he stood on the issue of slavery.

Then again, I'm not an American, and it's been some time since I read up on the Civil War. That being said, my main point was simply to say that I don't believe the Union, or Lincoln had purely altruistic motives in freeing the slaves. That they wanted to free the slaves is obvious; otherwise they wouldn't have done it. Perhaps my previous post was poorly worded.

The issue is WHY they wanted to free the slaves, I'm not saying there was no altruism involved, but just as much of it was about quashing the Southern landowning aristocracy who were jockying for power with the Industrialist and financier class in large Northern cities like New York, or Chicago. The industrialists and business interests wanted control of the South's raw materials, and that meant crippling the Southern landowning elites who were dependent on slavery. Freeing the slaves would open up a large pool of cheap labor for the Northern industrialists, and it would weaken the already precarious situation of the Southern elites. Thus the South's secession was a last ditch effort by the Southern elites to cling to their wealth and power. It was all-or-nothing as they saw it, because Lincoln, the anti-slavery candidate had been elected with the backing of the Northern industrialists. Am I missing anything?

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

French Revolutionaries had several proposed replacements for Roman Catholicism. The Cult of Reason was essentially that until Robespierre hijacked it and made it all weird.

God’s providence right here.

Not necessarily; the problem with the Cult of Reason, from what I've read, is that it tried to replace established/entrenched societal institutions too rapidly. A better solution would've been a gradual shift.

[Conserative Morality]

Then again, I'm not an American, and it's been some time since I read up on the Civil War. That being said, my main point was simply to say that I don't believe the Union, or Lincoln had purely altruistic motives in freeing the slaves. That they wanted to free the slaves is obvious; otherwise they wouldn't have done it. Perhaps my previous post was poorly worded.

I agree that their motives weren't purely altruistic. However, to discount genuine idealism as a strong factor in the decision ignores the very real turmoil in the US over the moral issue of slavery, as you can note in the concern in Midwestern and Western states without strong industrialized (or pseudo-aristocratic) elites to guide the discussion.

The issue is WHY they wanted to free the slaves, I'm not saying there was no altruism involved, but just as much of it was about quashing the Southern landowning aristocracy who were jockying for power with the Industrialist and financier class in large Northern cities like New York, or Chicago. The industrialists and business interests wanted control of the South's raw materials, and that meant crippling the Southern landowning elites who were dependent on slavery. Freeing the slaves would open up a large pool of cheap labor for the Northern industrialists, and it would weaken the already precarious situation of the Southern elites. Thus the South's secession was a last ditch effort by the Southern elites to cling to their wealth and power. It was all-or-nothing as they saw it, because Lincoln, the anti-slavery candidate had been elected with the backing of the Northern industrialists. Am I missing anything?

On the contrary, the slave-owning aristocracy and the industrial elites complimented each other quite well. Where they conflicted was on trade policy. The idea of mass emancipation leaving the slaves in America, and more concerningly, leaving them to migrate to other areas of the Union was not the majority position of abolitionists before the Civil War. There was some amount of contention between the two bases of power - but the essential issue was not a struggle of economic elites, but of political movements - one which had revered a 'counter-enlightenment' over the course of the 20s onward, and the other which had embraced an increasingly (if still prejudiced) cosmopolitan and tolerant outlook based on the values the nation was founded upon. Again, this relates to the development of the societies that produced aforementioned elites - but it was not the outcome of the elites; rather, the elites were the natural outcome of these societies. Furthermore, the influence of the slaveholding aristocracy was much stronger in the South than that of the industrialists in the North. Industrialists sometimes controlled cities with corruption and political machines - the slaveholders often controlled the entire state, often contrary to the will of the majority of even their 'fellow' white men.

The Civil War, through the spilling of the blood of martyrs, sanctified the cause of both the Union and abolitionism - the heroic and enthusiastic participation of freedmen from the very start made it a cause of brothers rather than aliens of common humanity. Also see the enthusiasm for Reconstruction and the strong Republican bent of Union veterans.

[Conserative Morality]

The American community is something that has been forged in the crucible of the Idea, that's what distinguishes us from other countries which rely on bloodlines to determine their nature. There is more than just one American culture, just the same as there is more than one German, Anglo, French, or Italian culture. The nation is natural and particular, the state is spiritual and universal.

I think you make too strong a distinction. The State shapes the cultures it takes under its wing. Cultures become more universalist and constructed within the aegis of a common State.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

The American community is something that has been forged in the crucible of the Idea, that's what distinguishes us from other countries which rely on bloodlines to determine their nature. There is more than just one American culture, just the same as there is more than one German, Anglo, French, or Italian culture. The nation is natural and particular, the state is spiritual and universal.

I think you make too strong a distinction. The State shapes the cultures it takes under its wing. Cultures become more universalist and constructed within the aegis of a common State.

Hence why a world state wouldn't necessarily require a clustertruck of disparate and squabbling cultures. The world state could benevolently shape and guide and mold the numerous cultures contained within, and if done properly in accordance to what is Good, a stable and harmonious global culture could emerge in mere decades after unification. Does that make any sense?

[Conserative Morality]

Hence why a world state wouldn't necessarily require a clustertruck of disparate and squabbling cultures. The world state could benevolently shape and guide and mold the numerous cultures contained within, and if done properly in accordance to what is Good, a stable and harmonious global culture could emerge in mere decades after unification. Does that make any sense?

A state is necessarily in large part an expression of the people who compose it. A democratic state doubly so. Expanding swiftly and expecting harmonization between vastly different cultures (unlike the similar ones of the US) rather than imposing a single standard of behavior or enforcing a single culture's dominance over others is a recipe for, well, Balkanization.

[The Supreme Magnificent High Swaglord]

Hence why a world state wouldn't necessarily require a clustertruck of disparate and squabbling cultures. The world state could benevolently shape and guide and mold the numerous cultures contained within, and if done properly in accordance to what is Good, a stable and harmonious global culture could emerge in mere decades after unification. Does that make any sense?

A state is necessarily in large part an expression of the people who compose it. A democratic state doubly so. Expanding swiftly and expecting harmonization between vastly different cultures (unlike the similar ones of the US) rather than imposing a single standard of behavior or enforcing a single culture's dominance over others is a recipe for, well, Balkanization.

Start with a global confederation then. Somewhat like the modern-day UN, but with actual authority to enforce the rule of law and uphold the common weal. Over time, the world would become ready for true unification under the aforementioned federal technocracy. Does that make any sense?