This is a kind of review. But it is more of an argument about ideas that vitally affect the real world.

I am in emphatic agreement with roughly half of what Professor Steven Pinker says in his new book Enlightenment Now: the Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress*, and in vehement disagreement with the rest of it. Like him, I esteem the Enlightenment most highly; profoundly value science; and certainly want progress in everything that makes us happier and better informed, our lives longer, healthier, less painful, and more enjoyable. Like him, I am an atheist. It is chiefly with his ideas on Humanism that I disagree. Which may seem strange since humanism is atheist. And, certainly, on all his criticisms of religion I am in complete accord. More than that: where small “h” humanism is concerned with humane morals – the imperative to treat our fellow human beings and other sentient beings humanely – the great professor and I could sing in harmony.

“The moral alternative to theism,” he writes, “is humanism.”

But Humanism-the-movement holds principles that I not only do not like, but strongly dislike. They are principles of the Left. And  while he is not uncritical of the Left, Professor Pinker upholds those principles. Humanism, wherever it may be found, is a Leftist ideology. And because the Humanist movement is well-established, widespread, its opinions prominently published, and taught (or preached) where scholars gather, atheism is assumed by many to belong to the Left, inseparably, part and parcel of its essential ideology.

Atheism may be indispensable to the Left, but Leftism is not necessary to atheism.

Atheism as such carries no connotations. No political or ethical ideas logically flow from it. It is simply non-belief in the existence of a divine being. Nothing more. A person’s atheism does not itself make him more humane or less humane.

Steven Pinker implies that it does. Although he states that “atheism is not a moral system … just the absence of supernatural belief”, he also declares that “secularism leads to humanism, turning people away from prayer, doctrine, and ecclesiastical authority and toward practical policies that make them and their fellows better off.”

He reasons along these lines:

“Knowledge of the world is derived by observation, experimentation, and rational analysis.”

Not from holy books. Agreed.

“Humans are an integral part of nature, the result of unguided evolutionary change.”

Agreed.

There being no supernatural moral authority, and as human beings have natural needs –

“Ethical values are derived from human need and interest as tested by experience.”

So far, no cause for quarrel. But he elaborates on this last statement to demonstrate that Humanists do this “deriving” well:

“Humanists ground values in human welfare, shaped by human circumstances, interests and concerns and extended to the global ecosystem …”

There it comes, as if it followed logically from scientific knowledge and humane secularism, one of the main obsessions of the Left: concern for the planet, for which, the Left claims, human beings bear responsibility. The words “man-made global warming” silently intrude themselves; as does the “solution” for it – global governance, by those who know what the human race must do; total communism, the highest principle of the Left; its vision of a whole-world Utopia. Though Steven Pinker himself is not a Utopian, he writes a good deal in this book about the virtues of “globalist” politics. He sees globalism as an enlightened, reasonable, science-based, progressive, humanist creed. To “maximize individual happiness”, he remarks, “progressive cultures” work to “develop global community”. He has much praise for international institutions – including, or even led by, the (actually deeply evil) United Nations. He is confident the UN and other international bodies such as the EU, formed after the end of the Second World War, can help keep the world at peace. In fact, there has not been a single year since 1945 when the world has been without a war or wars.

To the globalist view he opposes the populist view. Not wrong when stated thus. But he does not see the populist view as the one held by 63 million Americans who voted Donald Trump into the presidency of the United States because they wanted more jobs, lower taxes, and secure borders; or that of the British majority who voted to withdraw their country from the undemocratic and corrupt European Union. No. He sees populism as a cult of “romantic heroism”, a longing for “greatness embodied in an individual or a nation”.

He is adamantly against the nation-state. He thinks that those who uphold the idea of the nation-state “ludicrously” envision a “global order” that “should consist of ethnically homogeneous and mutually antagonistic nation-states”. Who has ever expressed such an idea? And he puts “multiculturalism” (the failing experiment of enforcing the co-existence of diverse tribes within a nation’s borders) on an equal footing with “multi-ethnicity” (the melting-pot idea that has worked so splendidly for the United States of America).

To him, nationalism is ineluctably authoritarian and fascist. He sees President Trump – who is in fact unswervingly for individual freedom – as a “charismatic leader” of the dictatorial Mussolini mold. The politics of the Right for Professor Pinker are irredeemably dyed in the wool with Nietzschean anti-morality, “superman” aspirations, and genocidal urgings. Libertarianism is tainted with it too. He writes: “ … Ayn Rand’s celebration of selfishness, her deification of the heroic capitalist, and her disdain for the general welfare had Nietzsche written all over them.”

Interestingly – and restoratively to my esteem for him – he also asserts that certain Marxists and certain Leftist movements are equally, or even more, colored with Nietzsche’s inhumanity: “[Nietzsche] was a key influence on … Jean-Paul Sartre, Jacques Derrida, and Michel Foucault, and a godfather to all the intellectual movements of the 20^th century that were hostile to science and objectivity, including Existentialism, Critical Theory, Post-structuralism, Deconstructionism, and Postmodernism.”

Steven Pinker’s humanism, then, is not far to the Left, just “left-of-center”. And most of the humanists I have known (and argued with) would also place themselves on that section of the political spectrum. “[T]he moral and intellectual case for humanism is, I believe, overwhelming …,” he writes.

He concludes (and here he specifically rejects Utopianism):

“We will never have a perfect world. And it would be dangerous to seek one. But there is no limit to the betterments we can attain if we continue to apply knowledge to enhance human flourishing. This heroic story … belongs not to any tribe but to all humanity – to any sentient creature with the power of reason and the urge to persist in its being. For it requires only the convictions that life is better than death, health is better than sickness, abundance is better than want, freedom is better than coercion, happiness is better than suffering, and knowledge is better than superstition and ignorance.”

That is the vision of the Decent Thinking Western Man. He believes that all human beings ultimately want the same things; that the good life is defined for all in the same general terms; that all  would agree to the Golden Rule, which has been “rediscovered in hundreds of moral traditions”.

But are those beliefs true? He himself records that there are many who do not value knowledge above ignorance, reason above superstition, freedom above coercion, even life above death. Which is to say, he writes about Islam (in which there is no Golden Rule). He knows Islam has no trace of “Enlightenment humanism”. He declares it an “illiberal” creed, and observes that “[M]any Western intellectuals – who would be appalled if the repression, misogyny, homophobia, and political violence that are common in the Islamic world were found in their own societies even diluted a hundred fold – have become strange apologists when these practices are carried out in the name of Islam.”

He finds one explanation for the double-standard of these intellectuals in their “admirable desire to prevent prejudice against Muslims”. But when it comes to revulsion against ideologists of repression, misogyny, homophobia, and political violence, is it prejudice or is it judgment? He says also that some of the apologetics are “intended to discredit a destructive (and possibly self-fulfilling) narrative that the world is embroiled in a clash of civilizations”. (Or, as I see it, of civilization against barbarism.) I wonder how anyone can look at the drastically changing demographics of Europe, or at least the Western part of it which will surely be under Islamic rule before the century is out, and not notice the clash.

But he does say that “calling out the antihumanistic features of contemporary Islamic belief is in no way Islamophobic”. Being the decent thinking Western man that he is, he is firmly for critical examination of all ideas.

His optimism shines out of the book. He thinks Islam can be reformed, even that a Muslim Enlightenment is possible. He believes there was an earlier age of Islamic Enlightenment, an “Islamic Golden Age” which could serve as a precedent. Well, if one wants to see bright possibilities, Islam may come to prefer science to the assertions of its prophet. It may become humane in its law and stop oppressing women. It may contribute to human progress. But whatever changes may come to Islam in the future, at present it does not value life above death, freedom above coercion, knowledge above superstition. And there is no good reason to believe it ever will.

Jillian Becker    April 12, 2018

*Enlightenment Now: the Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress by Steven Pinker, Viking, New York 2018. The quotations in the article come from the last chapter, Humanism.

In our town, and almost certainly in your town, and most of the towns (cities) of the United States, tall buildings are springing up at or near railway and bus stations, consisting of hundreds of very small living-units for single occupants. No areas are provided for cars, though there is accommodation for a limited number of bicycles. Occupants are encouraged to use public transport.

The living-units we have seen contain a narrow bunk bed, a small wardrobe and a couple of drawers to hold a few (standard issue) clothes, a desk big enough for a (frequently called-in and replaced) lap-top computer to stand on, a shelf where a very few books or a framed photograph or two might be displayed. And there is a narrow shower-closet, with the usual facilities, where the luxuries of rationed soap and toilet tissue may perhaps be enjoyed in the hours when the water is centrally turned on. We do not know for sure that there are recording devices hidden here and there, but we very reasonably suspect there are.

These buildings are part of the implementation by your local council of Agenda 21.

A video, issued in January 2009, explains what Agenda 21 is:

So families are to be broken up or never formed. That’s why the new living-units are for single people only.

Yes, the single persons will be lonely. That’s a vital part of the plan. 

The British Prime Minister (by what accumulation of errors?) Theresa May is the first political leader to appoint a Minister of Loneliness. Her name (it would of course be a woman) is Tracey Crouch. She is also the Minister of Sports (and “Digital, Culture, and Media”) who knows everything about team work, uniforms, mass transport, rules, penalties … Good choice, Theresa!

So as not to offend the Muslim community – which must never be offended even if its members rape and murder that little daughter of yours who has been taken away to be educated in group-think – males and females will be separated for all communal activities (pretty well the only kind of activities that will be allowed).

But also not to offend the LGBQTetc communities, there will have to be further separation for sports teams, work forces, organized social gatherings … Public toilet facilities, however, will be as open to all-comers as the borders of the late nation-states.

The human race will be relieved of the sin of private ownership. And of the burden of self-support. And of the responsibility of family support.  And of any cause to envy your neighbor.

Oh, brave new low-CO2 world that has such collectives in it!

They really are coming after all of us.

Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh writes at Canada free Press:

I am sure there are many Americans who have no idea nor care what The Draft International Covenant on Environment and Development (DICED) is. They should. The Draft Covenant is the Environmental Constitution of Global Governance.

The first version of the Covenant was presented to the United Nations in 1995 on the occasion of its 50th anniversary. It was hoped that it would become a negotiating document for a global treaty on environmental conservation and sustainable development.

The fourth version of the Covenant, issued on September 22, 2010, was written to control all development tied to the environment, “the highest form of law for all human activity”.

Law for ALL human activity! Think of that. Totalitarianism beyond the wildest dreams even of a Stalin – or Islam.

The Covenant’s 79 articles, described in great detail in 242 pages, take Sustainable Development principles described in Agenda 21 and transform them into global law, which supersedes all constitutions including the U.S. Constitution.

All signatory nations, including the U.S., would become centrally planned, socialist countries in which all decisions would be made within the framework of Sustainable Development.

In collaboration with Earth Charter and Elizabeth Haub Foundation for Environmental Policy and Law from Canada, the Covenant was issued by the International Council on Environmental Law (ICEL) in Bonn, Germany, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) with offices in Gland, Switzerland and Cambridge, UK.

Federal agencies that are members of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) include the U.S. Department[s] of State, Commerce, Agriculture (Forest Service), Interior (Fish and Wildlife, National Park Service), and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). The same agencies are members of the White House Rural Council and the newly established White House Council on Strong Cities, Strong Communities (Executive Order, March 15, 2012).

That is to say under Obama. Of course.

The Draft Covenant is a blueprint “to create an agreed single set of fundamental principles like a ‘code of conduct’ used in many civil law, socialist, and theocratic traditions, which may guide [sic!] States, intergovernmental organizations, and individuals”.

The writers describe the Covenant as a “living document”, a blueprint that will be adopted by all members of the United Nations. They say that global partnership is necessary in order to achieve Sustainable Development, by focusing on “social and economic pillars”.  The writers are very careful to avoid the phrase, “one world government”.  Proper governance is necessary on all levels, “from the local to the global” [they say].

The Covenant underwent four writings, in 1995, 2000, 2004, and 2010, influenced by the Johannesburg World Summit on Sustainable Development, by ideas of development control and social engineering by the United Nations, “leveling the playing field for international trade, and having a common basis of future lawmaking”.

Article 2 describes in detail “respect for all life forms”.

Except the human life form (see Article 33 below).

Article 3 proposes that the entire globe should be under “the protection of international law”. 

Article 5 refers to “equity and justice” [code words for socialism/communism – the author].

Article 16 requires that all member nations must adopt environmental conservation into all national decisions.

Article 19 deals with “Stratospheric Ozone”. “Rex Communis is the customary international law regime applicable to areas beyond national jurisdiction: in particular to the high seas and outer space.”

Article 20 requires that all nations must “mitigate the adverse effects of climate change”. [If we endorse this document, we must fight a non-existent man-made climate change – the author.]

Article 31, “Action to Eradicate Poverty” requires the eradication of poverty by spreading the wealth from developed nations to developing countries.

The perfect recipe for making the entire human race extremely poor. 

Article 32 requires recycling, “consumption and production patterns”.

Article 33, “Demographic policies,” demands that countries calculate “the size of the human population their environment is capable of supporting and to implement measures that prevent the population from exceeding that level”. In the Malthusian model, humans were supposed to run out of food and starve to death. In a similar prediction, this document claims that the out-of control multiplication of humans can endanger the environment.

The assumption is, as the socialist assumption essentially is, that all human beings are alike – or ought to be – like ants, so what does it matter which ones live and which ones are eliminated? 

Article 34 demands the maintenance of an open and non-discriminatory international trading system in which “prices of commodities and raw materials reflect the full direct and indirect social and environmental costs of their extraction, production, transport, marketing, and where appropriate, ultimate disposal.”The capitalist [ie. market] model of supply and demand pricing [the only possible way of establishing prices – ed] does not matter.

This erroneous article of Marxist faith has been the main cause of the downfall of every socialist regime from the USSR to Venezuela.  

Article 37 discusses “Transboundary Environmental Effects and Article 39 directs how “Transboundary Natural Resources” will be conserved, “quantitatively and qualitatively”. [For a future generation more worthy of them than we are? -ed.]  According to the document, “conserve means managing human-induced processes and activities which may be damaging to natural systems in such a way that the essential functions of these systems are maintained”. [?]

Article 41 requires integrated planning systems, irrespective of administrative boundaries within a country, and is based on Paragraph 10.5 of Agenda 21, which seeks to “facilitate allocation of land to the uses that provide the greatest sustainable benefits and to promote the transition to a sustainable and integrated management of land resources“. The impact assessment procedure is developed by the World Bank. …

Writers of the Draft Covenant are approximately 19 U.S. professors of Law, Biology, Natural Resources, Urban Planning, Theology, Environmental Ethics, two General Counsel Representatives from the Environmental Protection Agency, chair of the IUCN Ethics Working Group, two attorneys in private practice in the U.S., a judge from the International Court of Justice, a U.S. High Seas Policy advisor of the IUCN Global Marine Programme, foreign dignitaries, ambassadors, and 13 members of the UN Secretariat, including the Chairman, Dr. Wolfgang E. Burhenne.

Since this Draft Covenant has a Preamble and 79 articles, it is obviously intended to be a “world constitution for global governance”, an onerous way to control population growth, re-distribute wealth, force social and “economic equity and justice”, economic control, consumption control, land and water use control, and re-settlement control as a form of social engineering.

Article 20 is of particular interest because it forces the signatories to DICED “to mitigate the adverse effects of climate change”. When President Trump withdrew the U.S. from the Paris Climate Accord, “climatologists” from Hollywood, and millennials brainwashed by their professors that CO2 is going to destroy the planet and kill us all, took to microphones and podiums to express their displeasure with such a “criminal” decision.

It did not matter that the President explained … that this accord was nothing else than an economic scheme to steal and redistribute wealth from the United States to the third world … President Trump explained how many millions of American jobs would be lost …

How did man become the main perpetrator of climate change? How did we become so powerful that we can change climate with our very existence, but, if we pay carbon taxes to the third world, we correct our guilt of existing, of breathing, and we turn climate into a favorable proposition for all – no hurricanes, no tornadoes, no droughts, no hail, no torrential rains, no earthquakes, no tsunamis, nothing but serene climate year after year? 

The Club of Rome, the premier environmental think-tank, consultant to the United Nations and the alleged writer of U.N. Agenda 21’s 40 chapters, explained:

The common enemy of humanity is man. In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill. All these dangers are caused by human intervention, and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy is humanity itself.

… Christine Stewart, former Canadian Minister of the Environment … said:

No matter if the science of global warming is all phony… climate change provides the greatest opportunity to bring about social justice and equality in the world.

Timothy Wirth, President of the U.N. Foundation, said:

We’ve got to ride this global warming issue. Even if the theory of global warming is wrong, we will be doing the right thing in terms of economic and environmental policy.

The sad thing is that many mayors around the country have decided to disobey President Trump’s decision on the Paris Climate Accord and reported publicly that they will continue their membership even though such a move is illegal under our Constitution. …

These dissenting mayors have not pledged their allegiance to the U.S. Constitution but to the Global Covenant of Mayors, one of the arms of implementation around the globe of U.N. Agenda 21, now morphed into Agenda 2030. Using grants from our own government, the Compact of Mayors and the European Union’s Covenant of Mayors have influenced initiatives at the local, city, and state governments, forcing their globalist agenda called “visioning” on the hapless population who are now forced to accept decisions made by mayors and boards of supervisors that are robbing them of freedom of movement, of their property rights, of the use of their cars, of farming, in the name of “transitioning to a low emission and climate resilient economy”, a pie in the sky goal.

The real goal is to transform and redistribute the wealth of developed countries and to arrest their development by eventually curbing completely the use of fossil fuels and turning them into a more primitive society dependent on unreliable solar and wind power.

Such a global society would have no borders, no sovereignty, no suburbia, no private property, no cars, and would be controlled by the United Nations umbrella of octopus NGOs.

… Dr. Ottmar Endenhofer, International Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Co-Chair of Working Group 3, stated:

We [UN-IPCC] redistribute de facto the world’s wealth by climate policy… One has to free oneself from the illusion that international climate policy is environmental policy. This has almost nothing to do with environmental policy anymore…

President Trump can save us from this appalling threat of world communist government – if he is allowed to serve his term, best of all his two terms, in office.

But the totalitarian Left is fighting hard to bring him down. It is prepared to use violence. It is using violence. So will only war now save humanity from a terrible Last Age – and then extinction?

The United Nations Agenda 2030 of Sustainable Development is not going away and its goals are relatively close to completion, now to include the forced flood of international migrants around the globe and the obliteration of national borders and sovereignty.

This is from Canada Free Press, by Dr. Ileana Johnson Paugh (with the order of some paragraphs changed):

In case you were wondering about the planned invasion of Europe and other developed nations, including the United States, wonder no more. Today, the International Organization for Migration (IOM), a United Nations Migration Agency funded partially and generously with your taxpayer dollars for 65 years, is holding an International Dialogue on Migration in New York, with the theme, “Strengthening International Cooperation on and Governance of Migration towards the Adoption of a Global Compact for Safe, Orderly, and Regular Migration in 2018.”

As listed by IOM, the conference will be addressed by representatives of “governments, civil society, academia, and the private sector”. Among the speakers are:

• Amina J. Mohammed, U.N. Deputy Secretary General
• Peter Thomson, President of the U.N. General Assembly
• Louise Arbour, Secretary General ‚Äòs Special Representative for International Migration†
• Ahmed Hussein, Refugees and Citizenship of Canada
• Permanent Representatives of Switzerland and Mexico

I highlighted [emphasized] the words “regular, governance, Global Compact” to illustrate that this vaunted meeting of third world tin pot dictatorships aims to establish and control the global no-borders policy through an on-going flood of migrants to the west, destroying sovereignty and diluting nationality and citizenship. It is not about protecting migrants temporarily from tribal wars and conflict, it is about resettlement of huge populations and forcing multiculturalism on those countries that resist and wish to maintain their “borders, language, and culture”. 

There are millions of refugees around the world who are fleeing conflict in their nations and they must be helped in order to return them safely when the conflict is over. But the European invasion of mostly military age men from the Middle East contains only about 10 percent Syrians who are fleeing the seven-year civil war in Syria, the rest are economic opportunists on a “Hijrah” conquest in the senescent Europe, fast replaced by a fertile Muslim population.

U.N. plans to govern migration through a global compact, a sort of constitution for the rights of everyone to move across national borders unimpeded in another step towards spreading the wealth of a globalist commonwealth ruled by the few billionaire elites and their well-funded “civil society” lapdogs.

They are not shy or hiding the fact that their conference and efforts are part of U.N.‘s Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development, the very Agenda the MSM keeps telling us does not exist and those reporting on it are conspiracy theorists:

“It is an opportunity for States and all relevant migration actors to frame the core objectives for the global compact, and ground it in the existing normative structures and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.”

Seeing this global migration as a human right, the IOM Director General William Lacy Swing said in opening remarks today, “The Global Compact presents a historical opportunity to achieve a world in which migrants move as a matter of genuine choice rather than a necessity; a world of opportunity to migrate through safe, orderly, and regular channels; and a world in which migration is well governed and is able to act as a positive force for individuals, societies, and the States.”

If you want to keep your country and borders safe from unvetted invasion, you want to limit the number of economic refugees and illegals flooding your country, causing violence, rapes, and murders, too bad; the United Nations will override your President who has promised a check on unvetted refugees and a wall on the southern border. The almighty United Nations bureaucrats from New York will override him and the American people’s wishes.

The “needs, capacities, and contributions of migrants” will supersede your national needs because their safety, dignity, and human rights are more important than yours.

The four core elements of this compact, as presented by Ambassador Swing are:

1. Protecting the rights of migrants
2. Facilitating safe, orderly, and regular migration¬†
3. Reducing the incidence and impacts of forced and irregular migration
4. Addressing mobility consequences of natural and human-induced disasters

Louise Arbour, the Secretary General’s Special Representative for International Migration, pointed out, “It is up to all of us to embrace human mobility, and recognize that good migration governance requires a commitment to genuine cooperation. People in transit and destination countries should not be made to look at migrants as burdens, or even worse as threats to themselves or their way of life.”

Arbour said, “Instead, we need collectively to strengthen the narrative — one which has the virtue of truth — that recognizes human mobility and diversity as a contribution to evolving societies and strong economies.”

The U.N. bureaucrats are not explaining why the male refugees cannot stay in their own countries, fight their tribal wars, end them with a lasting peace, and make their societies evolve and economies strong?

I am not sure on what virtual reality realm Louise Arbour’s version of truth resides, but the lying narrative keeps pushing diversity as a contributing factor of society and strong economies when in reality these migrants become wards of welfare as soon as they enter any country they plan to occupy and they never intend to work. Diversity and multiculturalism in Europe have proven to be utter failures; society has devolved into basket cases of areas that the police avoid at all costs.

Perhaps Louise Arbour should pay close attention to the mayhem and violence caused by Angela Merkel’s flood of “rapefugees” in Europe who have destroyed cities and entire areas, raping, threatening, destroying property, harming the local population, and altering their way of life forever, while politicians and the mainstream media are ignoring reality and covering up the often savage violence.

Islam is an advancing enemy of the West, conquering by a combination of infiltration, colonization, terrorist mass murder, and proliferation through breeding and proselytizing. The United Nations is assisting it, chiefly by encouraging and facilitating mass migration from the Islamic Middle East, North Africa, and Far East into Europe, North America,and Australia.

The United Nations is acting as if it were a world government – which its moving spirits have long intended it to be and worked for it to become.

Along with its client Islam, it is the most dangerous institution in the world.

The United Nations must be destroyed!

Since America has two parties competing for power, and since one of them has become a socialist party, it is necessary to think what it will mean if socialism becomes the dominant ideology in the world’s most powerful nation.

The great free-market economist Milton Friedman recommended that his students read an essay by the Russian writer Igor Shafarevich titled Socialism in our Past and Future. In Soviet Russia it was impossible to publish it. An English translation was published in the West in a collection edited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn under the title From Under the Rubble.*

The point of the essay is that socialism (or communism – in the USSR the terms were used interchangeably) is a destroyer of mankind; an ideology whose global implementation must necessarily bring about the total annihilation of the human race.

He writes:

[T]he economic and social demands of socialism are the means for the attainment of its basic aim, the destruction of individuality. … Such a revolution would amount to the destruction of Man … And not just an abstract destruction of the concept, but a real one too. [Emphasis in all instances in the original.]

That warning may seem at first sight to be too far-fetched. But it is surely true that the individual person is supremely important. He (I use the masculine to stand for both men and women as is the convention of our language) must be free to pursue his own ends, among them to have and support and defend a family. (Shafarevich includes the individual’s need for religion. Those who need it should not of course be deprived of it.)

Because “socialism aims at the destruction of those aspects of life which form the true basis of human existence”, “radical changes” to the needs of the individual, implemented on a global scale, will bring a “universal result, the withering away of all mankind, and its death.”

It seems that all the socialist parties of the world are now internationalist, or “globalist”. If America became a socialist country the effect would be the triumph of globalism, the ultimate realization of which is world socialist government. If Shafarevich is right – and we think he very well may be – that will bring about the end of the human race.

Fortunately, the Democratic Party – the socialist party of America – has become so silly in what it says (anti-white, anti-male, anti-rule of law, anti-America, anti-science, anti-nature), and so violent in what it does (politically motivated riots), that at least in the foreseeable future it has little chance of winning power.

*From Under the Rubble edited by Alexander Solzhenitsyn, Little, Brown and Company, New York, 1975.

Steve Bannon’s world view is ferreted out by Reuters, looking for evidence to support its prejudice against the Trump administration.

Reuters – always to be taken with suspicion – reports from secondary sources. The result is full of admitted uncertainty, but plainly shows every intention of making Mr. Bannon look threatening:

In the week before U.S. Vice President Mike Pence visited Brussels and pledged America’s “steadfast and enduring” commitment to the European Union, White House chief strategist Steve Bannon met with a German diplomat and delivered a different message, according to people familiar with the talks.

Bannon, these people said, signaled to Germany’s ambassador to Washington that he viewed the EU as a flawed construct and favored conducting relations with Europe on a bilateral basis. …

We take the same view.

A White House official who checked with Bannon in response to a Reuters query confirmed the meeting had taken place but said the account provided to Reuters was inaccurate. “They only spoke for about three minutes and it was just a quick hello,” the official said.

The sources described a longer meeting in which Bannon took the time to spell out his world view. They said his message was similar to the one he delivered to a Vatican conference back in 2014 when he was running the right-wing website Breitbart News.

In those remarks, delivered via Skype, Bannon spoke favorably about European populist movements and described a yearning for nationalism by people who “don’t believe in this kind of pan-European Union”. 

Western Europe, he said at the time, was built on a foundation of “strong nationalist movements”, adding: “I think it’s what can see us forward”.

The encounter unsettled people in the German government, in part because some officials had been holding out hope that Bannon might temper his views once in government and offer a more nuanced message on Europe in private.

One source briefed on the meeting said it had confirmed the view that Germany and its European partners must prepare for a policy of “hostility towards the EU”.

We hope there will be no friendliness towards the corrupt and undemocratic EU, with its political philosophy of globalism and ultimate socialist world-government.

A second source expressed concern, based on his contacts with the administration, that there was no appreciation for the EU’s role in ensuring peace and prosperity in post-war Europe.

It is a fondly nursed illusion of the EU and its hooray-chorus that it has “ensured peace in post-war Europe”. Peace has been assured by NATO, funded mostly by the United States. Only some of the states locked into the EU have prospered. All members might well have prospered more if they had not entered the eurozone.

“There appears to be no understanding in the White House that an unravelling of the EU would have grave consequences,” the source said.

We would like to think the understanding in the White House is that an unravelling of the EU would be a boon and a relief for Europeans, and a victory for the popular revolutionary movements against the corrupt globalist EU leadership.

The White House said there was no transcript of the conversation. The sources who had been briefed on it described it as polite and stressed there was no evidence Trump was prepared to go beyond his rhetorical attacks on the EU – he has repeatedly praised Britain’s decision to leave – and take concrete steps to destabilize the bloc.

But anxiety over the White House stance led French Foreign Minister Jean-Marc Ayrault and Wolfgang Ischinger, chairman of the Munich Security Conference, to issue unusual calls last week for Pence to affirm during his visit to Europe that the U.S. was not aiming to break up the EU.

Pence obliged on Monday in Brussels, pledging strong ties between the United States and the EU, and making clear his message was shared by the president.

“President Trump and I look forward to working together with you and the European Union to deepen our political and economic partnership,” he said.

But the message did not end the concerns in European capitals.

If that is true, it is good news!

“We are worried and we should be worried,” Thomas Matussek, senior adviser at Flint Global and a former German ambassador to the Britain and the United Nations, told Reuters.

“No one knows anything at the moment about what sort of decisions will be coming out of Washington. But it is clear that the man on top and the people closest to him feel that it’s the nation state that creates identity and not what they see as an amorphous group of countries like the EU.”

Right!

With elections looming in the Netherlands, France and Germany this year, European officials said they hoped Pence, Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson could convince Trump to work constructively with the EU.

The worst-case scenario from Europe’s point of view was described by Ischinger in an article published last week, entitled “How Europe should deal with Trump”.

He said that if the U.S. administration actively supported right-wing populists in the looming election campaigns it would trigger a “major transatlantic crisis”.

We would like to see what that looks like.

We hope the U.S. administration does support the populist movements in Europe, and that the populist nationalist candidates win their elections. If they do – if populist nationalist candidates come to power in a number of EU countries – there will be no “major transatlantic crisis”.  There will be peace and harmony between those governments and the U.S. government.

There will also be sound reason to expect the survival and prosperity of the Western world.

US according to THEM:

Racist, sexist, xenophobic, Islamophobic, misogynistic, colonialist, imperialist, manmade-global-warming-denying, anti-abortion, privileged far-right nationalist white supremacists.

US according to US:

We the People, freedom-loving, color-blind, rule-of-law patriots.

THEM according to THEM:

Vulnerable, unequal, oppressed, rights-deprived, anti-fascist, compassionate, redistributionist, anti-racist, anti-sexist, climate-controlling, recycling, anti-America, anti-Israel, anti-white, anti-patriarchy, anti-gun, pro-Palestinian, pro-Islam, pro-abortion, pro-LGBTQetc, pro-black, pro-brown, pro-open-borders, globalist democratic socialists.

THEM according to US:

Elite-dominated, privileged, anti-freedom, fascist, uncompassionate, redistributionist, race-obsessed, sex-obsessed, feminist, global-warming-scamming, anti-America, anti-Semitic, anti-gun, anti-white, anti-education, pro-Palestinian, pro-Islam, pro-abortion, unpatriotic, undemocratic globalist socialists.

We wrote yesterday that a century of Leftism is coming to an end. (See the post immediately below, End of an atrocious era). The death throes can be seen in France, where the Socialist Party is about to lose power.

This is from PowerLine, by Paul Mirengoff:

The French Socialist party held its primary [on January 22] in the race to succeed Francois Hollande as the party’s standard bearer. Hollande’s presidency has been such a disaster that he declined to stand for re-election.

Former education minister Benoit Hamon came in first with around 36 percent of the vote. He will face former prime minister Manuel Valls, who captured around 31 percent of the vote.

Hamon is a left-winger. He represents what the BBC calls “the angry, radical wing of the Socialist party.” Apparently, his central policy idea is a guaranteed minimum income.

Valls is a centrist by French Socialist standards, anyway. As prime minister, he tried to implement a somewhat pro-business agenda. He also declared that France is at war with radical Islam and stated that if Jews flee France in large numbers, “France will no longer be France” and “the French Republic will be judged a failure.”

Unfortunately, Hamon has a very clear edge in the run-off. The third-place finisher, left-winger Arnaud Montebourg, is backing him. Combined, Hamon and Montebourg received more than 50 percent of the primary vote.

Valls has characterized the run-off as a choice “between an assured defeat [in the general election] and possible victory”. He’s right, I think, that defeat is assured if Hamon is the Socialist candidate. But it is probably a reach to say that victory is possible under Valls.

The big question is whether the Socialist candidate can finish second in the general election and thus make the runoff against against Francois Fillon, the closest thing to a Reagan-Thatcher conservative, at least when it comes to economic policy, ever nominated by a major party in France. Standing in the way is Marine Le Pen of the National Front party, a right-wing ultra-nationalist outfit. As far as I can tell, most observers expect that it will be Fillon vs. Le Pen in the runoff.

The bigger story here may be the collapse, at least for now, of socialist parties throughout Europe.

So Mirengoff cautiously allows for a resurrection of Socialism. We concede that its specter may haunt the world for ages yet, but we do not foresee it reigning again.

He quotes an article by Alissa Rubin in the New York Times:

The collapse of the establishment left in France is hardly a unique phenomenon. Across Europe, far-right populist parties are gaining strength, including in France, while the mainstream left, which played a central role in building modern Europe, is in crisis.

From Italy to Poland to Britain and beyond, voters are deserting center-left parties, as leftist politicians struggle to remain relevant in a moment when politics is inflamed by anti-immigrant, anti-European Union anger. …

In Italy, constituencies that used to routinely back the center-left Democratic Party are turning to the new anti-establishment Five Star Movement, which is Euroskeptic and anti-globalization …

Rubin quotes a professorial view:

“Wherever you look in Europe the Socialists are not doing well, with the exception of Portugal,” said Philippe Marlière, a professor of French and European politics at University College London. …

And Mirengoff comments, “Europe is in a state of tremendous flux and possibly a state of crisis.”

It is definitely in a state of crisis. At this critical moment in their history, Europeans have to choose between letting the socialist parties (a category that includes the parties calling themselves “conservative”) continue in power, which means the preservation of the European Union and the Islamization of the continent; or saving their nation states, their identity, their culture, their law, their heritage, their traditions, their liberty – in short, their civilization – by supporting the populist parties indiscriminately labeled “far-right” by the establishment and the media.

The outlook is brightening for the populist parties since Donald Trump won the US presidency. His success has invigorated them. Chances are they will soon win power in France, the Netherlands, Germany, Italy … and eventually even in Portugal.

End of the Marxist Left. 100 years. 1917-2017.

We date the century of Marxism from the Russian Revolution in 1917 to the success of the American counter-revolution in 2017, because we see Donald Trump’s election to the presidency of the United States – the most powerful position in the world – as the coup de grâce for the atrocious era.

The idea that people should be organized by governments and that the collective is more important than the individual has proved in practice to be a bad one. The experiment took the lives of hundreds of millions of individuals.

The Marxist Left has failed. The ideology that energized it is discredited. There will be no new Communist states.

Those who still believe that their lives should be ordered and sustained by government – regardless of the high price that must be paid by the loss of their freedom – are sure to find the change hard to accept.

However, Donald Trump’s movement is spreading. It has inspired and encouraged new political parties in Europe, and they are gaining strength. They want a “Europe of nations and liberty”.

     A meeting of the leaders of populist European parties

The parties still in power see that a change is happening, fear it, but do not understand it. They had a vision of a united states of Europe – which they tried to implement through the creation of the disastrous European Union – and ultimately a united states of the world. They wanted to abolish nations. They wanted a mingling of peoples. They invited the Third World, in particular Muslims, to come to Europe.

And all round them rebellious voices, growing ever louder, are demanding a return to nationhood, to secure borders, to self-determination, to individual freedom – to resisting the encroachment of Islam.

It seems that just one European politician in power “gets it”:

Breitbart reports:

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier says U.S. President Donald Trump’s election marks the end of an era, and Berlin will move quickly to secure “close and trusting trans-Atlantic cooperation based on common values” with the new administration. Steinmeier wrote in Bild newspaper on Sunday that “with the election of Donald Trump, the old world of the 20th century is finally over” and “how the world of tomorrow will look is not settled.” He says with any power change there are “uncertainties, doubts and question marks”, but a lot more is at stake “in these times of a new global disorder”.  Steinmeier says he will promote free trade and joint efforts against extremism with Washington. He added he’s certain Germany will “find interlocutors in Washington who know big countries also need partners”.

He will go to President Trump. He will speak of partnership and trade. But what he will really be seeking is enlightenment. And unless he is truly willing to yield power to the people, he will hear nothing for his comfort.

The “Women’s March”, organized to protest against Donald Trump’s rise to power, is glaring proof that the Left no longer knows what it is for.

Most of the marchers could only name what they were against: “Trump”.

Who funded the march? Some 50 of the participating groups are funded by the subversive George Soros.

Only one of the organizers of the American march knew exactly what she wanted.

The Gatestone Institute says of her:

Linda Sarsour [is] a self-described ‘Brooklyn-born Palestinian-American-Muslim racial justice and civil rights activist’, who serves as “the Executive Director of the Arab American Association of New York, co-founder of Muslims for Ferguson, and a member of Justice League NYC”,  her march bio relates.

She is working for the establishment of Sharia law in America. She tweeted:

Her following carried this banner:

And wore hijabs made out of the American flag:

But as yet Islam is not a serious threat to America itself. The Islamic State needs to be destroyed, and President Trump has declared his intention to crush it.

In Europe, the rulers of the old order will be overthrown and replaced. Europe will return to being a continent of nation states. Then the new leaders must deal with Islam, the enemy the Left let in.

As the Marxist Left was the terror of the last century, Islam will be the terror of the 21st. century. It is a barbarism that must be opposed and defeated by Western civilization – now recovering its strength and self-confidence.

The World Economic Forum meets this month, 17-20 January, in the Swiss Alpine city of Davos, “the highest city in Europe”.

At Fox News, Peter Schweizer exposes the nasty facts about the World Economic Forum – the dirt on Davos:

Later this month hundreds of private jets are expected to descend on a small town in the canton of Graubünden, Switzerland, for a few brief days.

They will be carrying the elite of the elite, who will be attending the World Economic Forum (WEF).

Held in the beautiful Alpine mountain resort of Davos-Klosters, attendance [at it] is strictly by invitation only. Basic membership in the WEF costs $50,000. A premium membership can set you back $500,000. But in recent years the WEF has enjoyed another source of income. Since 2013, the Obama administration has been sending foreign assistance dollars to the WEF through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). According to government records, the tab to taxpayers thus far is $26 million.

Davos attendees include a global elite, including heads of state, business titans, and celebrities. There are cocktail parties sponsored by multinational corporations and dinners catered by world-class chefs and served by bartenders performing magic tricks.

Celebrities like Leo DiCaprio and Bono mingle with current heads of state and tech billionaires from around the world. Attendance is so tight for the 2017 event the WEF is considering housing staff in “temporary containers” to make room for guests.

This is without a doubt the most connected non-profit on the planet.

The organization boasts that it “provides a platform for the world’s 1,000 leading companies to shape a better future’.

The globalist missionary zeal of the organization combined with its luxurious parties has earned it – the Davos meeting – the nickname “Burning Man for Billionaires.”

Not surprisingly, the WEF is also flush with cash. According to the non-profit’s 2015-2016 annual report, the organization took in $223 million (current exchange rate) in revenue, most of it from membership dues and partnership fees.

Despite the obvious wealth of the WEF and its members, USAID has given “assistance” to the WEF in the form of tens of millions of dollars of taxpayer money.

Since 2013, USAID has given the World Economic Forum $26,091,370 under its Foreign Assistance to Programs Overseas initiative, which comprises nearly two-thirds of all grant and other funding WEF took in over that time period.

So why is USAID, which is supposed to focus on disaster relief and poverty relief, subsidizing such an organization?

According to the federal government’s spending website usaspending.gov, it’s unclear. The money came in sizable grants of $9.5 million in 2013, $11.1 million in 2015, and $5.7 million in 2016.

The taxpayer money began to flow the same year USAID administrators began attending the luxurious confab. USAID administrators Rajiv Shah (2011-15) or Gayle Smith (2016) have attended every Davos meeting since 2011.

In 2013, USAID changed its mission statement to make its prime goals to “end extreme poverty and promote resilient, democratic societies”.  Well, Switzerland is a “resilient democratic society”. They got that part right.

According to government contract reports, it’s unclear if taxpayer funds were taken by the WEF and sent to Africa or Asia, but it doesn’t seem so.

The “principal place of performance” of these grants was Switzerland, with the “recipient” city of Cologny, where the WEF has its headquarters. Not surprisingly, a search of online real estate records reveals the town has a substantial luxury real estate market.

A USAID official, when asked to comment, said this:

The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) works with public and private partners to advance America’s security and prosperity by promoting resilient, democratic societies and ending extreme poverty. USAID has awarded grants to the World Economic Forum (WEF), including an innovative public-private partnership to spur economic growth and reduce poverty by reducing the time and costs to trade in developing countries. USAID remains committed to stringently vetting, tracking and evaluating the results of awarded grants, to include those disbursed to the WEF, and to its public and private sector partners.

How the global elite choose to spend their time is their business, but U.S. taxpayers should not be subsidizing their social lives.

The 47^th annual World Economic Forum convenes on January 17^th and the theme is “responsive and responsible leadership”.

In keeping with that idea, the responsible thing for the incoming Trump administration to do would be to halt grants and funding of this elite organization with taxpayer dollars.

Victoria Friedman writes at Breitbart:

The political and business elite, who attend the annual World Economic Forum (WEF) meeting in Davos, are beginning to admit their push for globalization and open borders contributed to the worldwide populist backlash and the rejection of the mass integration project.

Harvard professor and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund Kenneth Rogoff told Bloomberg that following WEF 2016 he “started to grow concerned” then-candidate Donald J. Trump would become the next president of the U.S. because his fellow frequent attendees of the gathering in the Swiss town of Davos were certain that Mr. Trump would not win. “A joke I’ve told 1,000 people in the months since leaving Davos is that the conventional wisdom of Davos is always wrong,” said the former IMF chief who is scheduled to attend Davos again this year along with some 3,000 other members of the political, business, media, and academic elite.

“No matter how improbable, the event most likely to happen is the opposite of whatever the Davos consensus is,” he added.

Davos also failed to predict the rise of populism in Europe, Italy’s rejection of constitutional change that led to the resignation of Prime Minister Mattheo Renzi, or the UK voting to leave the European Union (EU) which Forbes described as the “populist revolt against Davos Man”.

“Davos Man” was coined by political scientist Samuel P. Huntington who described “these transnationals” as “[having] little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations”.

One of the eight Oxford University academics set to attend the meeting, Ngaire Woods, dean of the Blavatnik School of Government, said, “There has to be some humility. For 30 years the elite have said, ‘We’re managing globalization, and we’re making it work for everyone’.”

“They cannot just keep repeating that,” added the frequent Davos visitor.

However, WEF founder Klaus Shwab has alleged that globalization was an “easy scapegoat” for world angst, and argued that populism wasn’t the answer, saying, “We cannot just have populist solutions”.

Good grief, no! Imagine a world in which people make their own choices instead of being forced to do what their betters know is best for them!

With populism high on the agenda at Davos, one of the sessions will include a panel of psychologists offering thoughts on “cultivating appropriate emotions in a time of nationalist populism”.

It’s not enough that we must act as they wish; we must also think and even feel according to their superior understanding of what is “appropriate”.   

Managing Director of the IMF Christine Lagarde, who was found guilty in December of criminal negligence in an arbitration case over the misappropriation of funds, expressed that she wanted to rehabilitate the appearance of globalism. She said she wanted a “move toward globalization that has a different face, and which is not excluding people along the way”.

“Globalism” – aka their rule from the commanding heights – must somehow be made to look nicer. 

Lagarde will be headlining a session at Davos entitled: “Squeezed and Angry: How to Fix the Middle Class Crisis” along with hedge fund billionaire Ray Dalio.  Days before the EU referendum vote, the French lawyer belittled Brexit voters by implying they were small-minded, called for a “united Europe”, and launched a report claiming a ‘Leave’ vote would lead to half a million job losses.

It didn’t – quite the opposite. But then, as Professor Rogoff said, the wisdom of Davos is always wrong. 

Also anticipated to attend the exclusive conclave is billionaire open borders activist and founder of the Open Society Foundations George Soros, who admitted involvement in Europe’s Migrant Crisis and called national borders “an obstacle” [to world communist government] …

George Soros has bought himself the power to spread despair and death on at least three continents. The fact that he attends the Davos SUMMIT is enough all on its own to condemn the World Economic Forum and all its works.  

The arrogance of this new royalty, the risen Left which marched through the institutions of the West and reached this snow-capped peak, is typified by the reaction of the European  Trade Commissioner Cecilia Malmström who, when asked a question by a poverty campaigner regarding the unpopular Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) deal between America and the EU, which was opposed by millions of Europeans, responded,“I do not take my mandate from the European people”.

Many of these kings and queens were Communists in their youth (and would still say they are “on the Left”). They “identified” with the “masses”. Their aim was to overthrow the ruling class and establish a “dictatorship of the proletariat” – represented of course by them, the intelligentsia, bourgeois intellectuals hungry for power. They got power. They are using it to destroy nation-states, to abolish borders, to pour the Third World into the First World, to make themselves rich at the expense of the powerless – to rule the globe.

The British and American electorates woke up to what was happening to them and saved themselves; the British by voting to leave the Union of Socialist European Republics aka the EU, the Americans by voting against the Left and for Donald Trump, champion of the people. Now dozens of rebel populist movements in Europe are clamoring for the chance to do the same.

The New Royals of Davos hope to destroy them by calling them “neo-Nazi” movements.

Because the rebels are patriots, the New Royals call them “xenophobes”. Because they do now want the savage Third World to flood their countries and impose nasty primitive alien ways on them, the New Royals call them”racists”. Because they do not want to be conquered by Islam they are called “Islamophobes” – fear of terrorism and sharia cruelty being deemed an “inappropriate emotion”.

From Davos go out the bat-winged minions of the earthly devils to implement their evil schemes. They must be stopped.

Power to the People!