Sebastian Junger's View of Tribes

Sebastian Junger, whose breakthrough book was The Perfect Storm, is a guy from privileged Boston. And by the time he got out of college in 1986 he wanted an adventure. So he hitchhiked out West.

On the way, just outside of Gillette, Wyoming, he met a marginal guy who was worried Junger didn't have enough food, and gave him the contents of his lunchbox. He treated Junger "like a member of his tribe." So Junger wrote a book about Tribe: On Homecoming and Belonging.

This book is about why that sentiment is such a rare and precious thing in modern society... It's about what we can learn from tribal societies about loyalty and belonging and the eternal human quest for meaning.

And, most importantly,

It's about why -- for many people -- war feels better than peace and hardship can turn out to he a great blessing and disasters are remembered more fondly than weddings or tropical vacations.

What people don't like is "not feeling necessary." And these days there are a ton of people that feel they are not necessary. And are alone, and depressed and so on.

Here's something to puzzle over. When the whites first came to North America they started to experience a real problem.

[A] surprising number of [white] Americans -- mostly men -- wound up joining Indian society rather than staying in their towns... And the opposite almost never happened: Indians almost never ran away to join white society.

Maybe that's because Indians "lived communally in mobile or semi-permanent encampments that were more or less run by consensus and broadly egalitarian... Anyone who didn't like it was free to move somewhere else."

I was glad to read this because it confirms what I had read from C.R. Hallpike, that hunter-gatherers lived in "bands" and when men got into a row with the other men they would leave and join another band. (Yeah: I'm glad you asked. Whatabout the women? I bet they were being named and shamed and shunned by the other women just like today!)

But, of course, when it came to a fight, the whites rolled up the Indians, starting in 1763 when the Swiss Henri Bouquet rolled up the tribal army assembled by Ottawa chief Pontiac.

Maybe that's the definitive thing about modern man and agricultural man vs. the hunter-gatherers; we industrialist and agriculturalists always beat them in battle. Except at Little Big Horn.

But, I thought, after reading 170 pages of the glories of the North American Indians and our dysfunctional society. Whatabout slaves? Aha! Wouldn't you know, from an internet search:

Indigenous American slavery, rooted in warfare and diplomacy, was flexible, often offering its victims escape through adoption or intermarriage, and it was divorced from racial ideology, deeming all foreigners—men, women, and children, of whatever color or nation—potential slaves.

The Native Americans even got into the plantation slavery business with West African slaves!

In the Southeast, an elite class of Indians began to hold African Americans in transgenerational slavery and, by 1800, developed plantations that rivaled those of their white neighbors.

No kidding! But probably, in their Noble Savage innocence, this "elite class of Indians" had no idea about plantation slavery until a racist sexist homophobe white supremacist suggested it.

But aside from this embarrassment -- not covered in his book -- Junger praises the social nature of hunter-gatherer life.

They would have experienced high levels of accidental injuries and deaths. They would have countered domineering behavior by senior males by forming coalitions within the group. They would have been utterly intoleratnt of hoarding or selfishness. They would have occasionally endured episodes of hunger, violence, and hardship. They would have practiced extremely close and involved childcare. And they would have done almost everything in the company of others.

Yes. And they also experienced, according to scholars, 500 violent deaths per 100,000 per year against our 5 per 100,000 per year.

But now, after the agricultural revolution and the industrial revolution, we have property. And alienation.

The accumulation of personal property allowed people to make more and more individualistic choices about their lives, and those choices unavoidably diminished group efforts toward a common good. And as society modernized, people found themselves able to live independently from any communal group. A person living in a modern city or a suburb can, for the first time in history, go through an entire day -- or an entire life -- mostly encountering complete strangers. They can be surrounded by others and yet feel deeply, dangerously alone.

Speak for yourself, lefty. I'd say that the industrial revolution birthed a whole universe of communal inventions, from the workplace to mutual-aid societies.

But then along came lefties. They taught workers to hate their bosses. They drafted children into government schools. They replaced the pro-social mutual aid societies with administrative dominations like "social" insurance and government pension plans. And they subjugated the financial system to finance their wars and then their entitlement programs.

Hey! Suppose the men were all "going through the chairs" at the local Masonic lodge or the Elks club. Suppose the women were all involved in home-schooling and cooperative child care with their neighbors. Suppose the care of the poor was delegated to billionaires and millionaires and their charitably-minded wives -- or else! Hey, if that had been allowed to happen everyone would be as happy as clams, living pro-social, meaningful lives.

And that says nothing about the way that employers these days consciously attempt to create the illusion of community in the workplace. And says nothing about the way that the market economy pretty well forces everyone to practice the notion of trusting everyone that demonstrates trustworthiness, or getting along with anyone that demonstrates they will get along with you.

No. I'd say that the reason that people are miserable these days is lefties. Because lefties have harvested all the pro-social roles and said: all social activity is to be controlled and directed by us lefties with wonderful government programs. All you plebs and deplorables have to do is show up to get your benefit. We lefties and liberals and mandarins will do all the thinking and the deciding. Isn't this new world wonderful! (Better say yes, or you will be canceled.)

OK. That's just for a start. More tomorrow.

Suppose Trump Starts Filling 60,000 Seat Stadiums Next Fall

When President Trump fills a 20,000 seat stadium, as he did recently in Texas, there is always a disagreement about the number of folks outside watching on the big screen. Was it 5,000 or 20,000? And are all the attendees working-class white racists, or what?

Well, obviously there has been a bit of srategery going on at Trump HQ, because today there's a piece on RedState discussing Brad Parscale's post-rally tweets.

In the matter of Trump's Friday rally in Mississippi:

Data from Friday’s Mississippi rally:

✅ 16,432 voters identified
✅ 24% voted once or less in last 4 elections (12% in zero)
✅ 27% Democrat
✅ 20% Black
More winning numbers that will help secure #FourMoreYears for @realDonaldTrump!
Continue to outperform 2016.
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) November 4, 2019

So. There were 6,000 folks outside the stadium. A lot of them non-voters, Democrats, Black. Who knew?

Or the tally from the recent Dallas rally:

Incredible data from last night’s Dallas rally:

✅ 53,985 voters identified
✅ 12% have not voted in the last 4 elections
✅ 21.4% Democrat
✅ 11% Latino
These are winning numbers that will help win #FourMoreYears for @realDonaldTrump!
We continue to outperform 2016.
— Brad Parscale (@parscale) October 18, 2019

The thing about rallies is that they are a male thing, a calling of the clan, brought together by the clan leader.

See, what President Trump has been doing all this time is re-establishing the United States as a clan. It is a rebirth of nationalism or, as I like to say, fake tribalism. Put it another way. Humans are groupish. We are social animals, that come together because of the benefits of social ties, which include, of course, protection from dangers, natural and unnatural. And also because we feel good when we are in a group of like-minded humans.

Now, in the last few decades our liberal friends have been establishing groupishness on a different basis. For themselves, they experience themselves as a global elite. So their groupishness is supra-national. For their clients -- the folks I call "little darlings" of the elite -- they encourage race and gender identity, what you might call sub-national groupishness.

Personally, I think that the groupishness encouraged by our educated -- and, may I say, mandarin -- elite is vile and reactionary. I think that the establishment of the nation state as a dominant form of human groupishness is a stunning human achievement. Of course, it has its drawbacks, in that it encourages nation states to quarrel as nation states, and so, when nation state leaders are dumb or something, that could lead to war. But what do you want? Quarrels among princely states? Or between empires? We ain't gonna get global governance, not until the Trisolarians invade from Alpha Centauri.

What Trump has done is revive nationalist groupishness, allowing people to experience him as our great tribal leader who cares about people like you and me. Of course, it's all fake, as is all politics. President Trump doesn't really care about you and me; no more did President Obama or President Bush. But a political leader needs to be good at igniting a feeling of groupishness.

For instance: Sen. Elizabeth Warrn (D-MA). I do not think she is very good at getting people to feel groupish. Her campaign is a campaign of "my plan is..." Very good, if you are a plannish sort of person, as your educated mandarin elitist is, because every plan requires the enlistment of another regiment of mandarins to go out into America and direct traffic.

But Sen. Warren is often described as a "schoolmarm." Implicit in that description is that she does not lift any hearts. She seems to be an "eat your veggies" kind of person. She does not say that America is the greatest country in the world and the American people are the greatest people in the world. Sen. Warren is not the sort of person that you would think could fill stadiums with cheering fans.

So here is what I am wondering. I am wondering what kind of stadiums President Trump will be filling next Fall. And I'll bet that Brad Parscale is wondering that too. Should we be aiming for your average 60,000 seat football stadium? Or should he be aiming for the 100,000 seat class, like the LA Coliseum and the Rose Bowl?

I don't know. I'll leave that sort of decision to the professionals. But what I think is that half the game in politics is the enthusiasm level. Because enthusiasm is catching. Clearly, right now, when President Trump brings his roadshow into town right before an election it raises the turnout. So I dare say that come next October he and his team will be scheduling rallies in states that could go either way, and could go his way with the help of a little push on the enthusiasm front.

And it sure ain't gonna hurt if he is filling 60,000 seat stadiums with a big overflow crowd in the parking lot outside.

Will Medicare For All and Green New Deal Sell?

It is my belief that all political endeavors must adhere to one of two notions.

First is the notion of Loot and Plunder, more politely known as Free Stuff. Vote for me, and I will reward you with loot and plunder taken from...

Well, that is the question. Who are the evil knaves and beasts that deserve to be stripped of their ill-gotten gains to feather the nest of the good guys like you and me? In the old days the bad guys were the village next door. By the time of the Greeks of the Iliad, we were looting and plundering Lyrnessus and its darling princesses on the way to Troy. By the time of Hitler, we are talking about acquiring Lebensraum in the east to the Germans would feel comfortable growing their own food, because it was all the Jews' fault. With lefties we are talking about rightfully looting the bourgeoisie of their ill-gotten gains to give the proletarians what is rightfully theirs.

So Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-MA) and her Medicare For All is just the latest in this ancient human tradition. We will all get universal health care and the middle class will have no tax increase. Instead the health care will be paid for by the rich and the insurance companies.

Yep, if you believe that, I gotta bridge to sell you.

But here is the dirty little secret about progressive politics. It was enunciated years ago by Irving Kristol, neoconservative Jewish intellectual extraordinaire and father of the present NeverTrunp Bill Kristol. Kristol the Elder said that the secret of progressive politics is that, in order to help the poor, you have to deal in the middle class.

Thus, Social Security. The idea was to help the poor in their old age. But to pass it the Democrats had to deal in the middle class. And today I'll bet that the program mostly benefits the middle class. with a little nod to the poor in giving relatively higher pensions to people with low wages and a limited working life.

Same thing with Education For All. Sounds like a great idea. But where are the school districts that perform well? Right, in wealthy suburbs. And where are the school districts that perform badly? Exactly in minority inner cities.

Now the problem with Medicare For All is the same problem that faced Obamacare, and before it, HillaryCare. The middle class already has health insurance and the middle class likes its health insurance. And it's a strange thing, but the middle class isn't all that keen on paying a ton more in taxes or premiums to pay for the uninsured.

Back in the Nineties, in the Age of HillaryCare, I already knew about Kristol's Law. So it didn't surprise me in the summer of 1994 when the local PBS newsreaders marveled in disbelief at the failure of HillaryCare. It was, they admitted, because the middle class, the Harry and Louise of the insurance company commercials, already had health insurance and didn't want to pay more.

Enter Obamacare in 2009 with the cunning Jonathan Gruber doing the policy analyst work. Obama and Gruber -- and presumably the rest of the deep state -- had learned the lesson of HillaryCare so they first squared the insurance companies and then promised that "if you like your doctor / health insurance you can keep you doctor / health insurance." And you will save $2,500 a year. All lies, but necessary lies if they hoped to pass the program. Now that Obamacare is passed Republicans are afraid to terminate it because all the people getting Obamacare subsidies, every one of them, will go out and vote for Democrats, do not pass Go.

This is Chantrill's Law. Government programs cannot work because you cannot reform them.

So now we are offered Medicare For All. Naturally, Sen. Warren has enlisted one of Gruber’s Obamacare accomplices to cobble together a document to make the math on Medicare For All come out --without a middle class tax increase. Of course she has. The only question is whether she call sell it, and whether she can cobble together enough lies, like the lies of Obamacare, in order to pass it in Congress.

But Warren is sailing in a square-rigged ship against a pretty stiff wind. Because the middle class already has health insurance, thinks it already costs quite enough, and is not willing to risk it all on a promise that only the rich will pay.

The other political strategy you can try if you want to Do Something is embedded in my maxim, that "the only warrant for government power is existential peril." This is when the tribal leader rallies the men with the threat that the Mongols are already at the door. Every man must come out and fight, or we will all be killed! This was normal in the good old days, when, e.g., the Vikings would kill all the men in their raids and then sell the women into slavery.

In religion this expresses itself in various prophetic cults and their end-of-the-world scenarios. Currently, with considerable cunning, our global elite is selling the idea of end-of-the-world global warming, perhaps 2 degrees Celsius by the end of the century. The notion was put together by Maurice Strong, who "served as the first executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme."

Let me ask you. Suppose you wanted the UN to head up a global environmental program with considerable global powers, as a first step towards beneficial and wise global governance? What would you do? Exactly. You would propose an existential peril, amounting to the End of the World, Unless We Act Now.

But, of course, ordinary humans are a bit reluctant to give up everything in order to enlist in the army of some UN bureaucrat, or indeed in anyone's army. You have to really amp up the fear and paint a frightful picture of rising sea levels and dying coral reefs and dead baby seals and extinct polar bears in order to sell the people on your prophecy.

So the question with the Green New Deal, to basically stop all normal life for the next decade in order to completely transform the economy away from fossil fuels to renewable resources, is whether you can make the sale. Obviously it isn't that hard to persuade empty-headed young women who know nothing, like AOC and Greta Thunberg. And many of the liberal women here in Seattle are at this very moment contentedly driving around in electric cars knowing that they are saving he planet. But can the prophets persuade the ordinary man and woman with job and house and family to give it all up: "Will you join in our crusade? / Who will be strong and stand with me?"

In general, it seems, people are quite happy to help save the planet. Unless it is going to cost them money. So, the only way forward is to form a religious movement and stoke it with prophecy. That's the way that humans band together to fight an existential peril.

In 2020, it seems that Democrats are pushin both political strategies, the Loot and Plunder strategy and the End of the World Unless We Act Now strategy.

The only question is the old one enunciated by Harry Percy about summoning spirits from the vasty deep. "But will they come when you do call for them?"

Liberal Crimes of History: The Women

When another age dawns, and the heroes of the present age have been tossed to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and all that, to be reviled forever as fiends and monsters, the bill of indictment about how the left betrayed women will look something like this:

They led women into the wilderness of victim feminism instead of sensibly adapting the male-created public square to suit a more feminine sensibility.

Were women the helpless victims of the patriarchy in times gone by? My guess is: probably not. But women certainly occupied a separate world from men, and women relied on men to keep them safe. In hunter-gatherer and horticultural society it seems that the men did nothing except hunt and fight and herd the livestock, and the women did everything else. In agricultural society the men did the plowing and the herding, and the womrn did mostly everything else. In industrial society the men go to work and do Honey Dos and the women do pretty well everything else. Maybe there is something more than patriarchal oppression going on here. But what? You tell me.

In today's world one of the salient facts is that well-born women have a yen to live in the public square, to establish status by working outside the home in bureaucracies and rising to supervisory positions. And since work these days tends to include a lot of jobs much less physical than plowing and fighting and mining and well-drilling, and blacksmithing, and fabricating, women see the opportunity to sally forth from the domestic sphere to partake in the public square. Why should men have all the fun?

This has created a culture clash, because the public square, created by men for men, has a male culture that expects its participants to be creators, fighters, and destroyers. Women, on the other hand, are learners, carers, and teachers, so as they come into the public square they want to adapt it to their culture. Men deal with defaulters differently, either with death or with exile. Women deal with defaulters using naming, shaming, and ostracism. How do we adapt a public square to the needs of both men and women?

The left sees everything as a political question, a civil war by other means, and so feminist activists of a lefty persuasion have liked to characterize the movement of women into the public square as a fight of helpless women victims of the patriarchy finally coming out into the light after millennia in the dark imprisonment of patriarchal oppression.

But why should work for wages be such a glorious goal for women? For men, it is a yoke we have to bear: to put bread on the table, to attract a mate, to compete for the glittering prizes. Maybe it is just as well that men have to work, because idle men seem to resort to wine, women, and gambling, as the idle upper-class young men do in Trollope.

If you ask me, people down the ages, men and women, only worked when they had to, and almost invariably, except for the richest kind, they had to. Women worked dawn to dusk on cleaning, food preparation, weaving and sewing, child care, and on a whole rainbow of social interactions with the community of women in the village or other community. What about men? In the old days they did nothing except hunt and fight. In the enslavement of the agricultural age they began to plow and to manage farms. In the city they went out to work for wages.

But, of course, there is more to life than working to put bread on the table. That other side of life is the fight for status, and both men and women play this game: only they do it differently. For men it used to be the actual fight for advancement in the male hierarchy. But now it is the fight for the selective college, the prestige job, the glittering career, the top dog as CEO or president. But what about for women? How do they play the hierarchy game?

Yes, how do women play the hierarchy game? I have my ideas, but I admit that I really know almost nothing about it. Whatabout the mother in Trollope's Lady Anna? She's a middle-class girl that marries an earl, but the earl pretty soon tells her that he's already married. So she spends the rest of her life trying to prove that she really is the Countess Lovel and get her daughter, Lady Anna, to make a suitable marriage. That, I suspect, gives us a real insight into the way that women play the status game. Today, upscale women are bribing college officials to get their kids into fancy colleges. So nothing has changed. Why do modern women want corporate careers? Because it gives them status; because you are nobody in the educated class unless you have a status job.

So the left has told women to liberate themselves and get out into the labor force and earn as much as men. Wait! It is unjust that women as a whole learn less than men! It is monstrous that women earn less than men because they are less inclined to bid for for money! Well, of course. Politics is division, and so anyone in politics is looking for a way to divide Us and Them.

And don't get me started on sex. Oh yeah. Women are supposed to be free to be themselves, to enter into sex without the traditional stigma of an "easy" woman. And women should have control over their own bodies. And women should be able to dissolve abusive marriages. Just between you and me -- and don't tell anyone I said that -- I think that all this -- the sexual revolution -- has been a disaster for women and that the whole #MeToo culture and microagressions and safe spaces is an inchoate rebellion by women against the modern liberated sex revolution.

And the left is who has put women in this box. The personal is the political: that's what they say. But I say that reducing human life to the political is a Great Reaction against the modern discovery that we probably need less force -- less government -- and less division -- less politics -- and overall less meddling in other peoples' affairs to make the modern world go round. The problem is that women getting themselves out of the box the left has put them in is going to be a process of trial and error, as is everything in this world. The undoing of a mistake is much harder than getting into it.

But when women have emerged from the hell of lefty idiocy, they must face the future as Scarlett O'Hara had to: "Where shall I go? What shall I do?" It is, frankly, a challenge. Freedom is like that. And the truth is that most of us don't really want that. We want to be told what to do and them complain about it.

Liberal Crimes of History: The Workers

When another age dawns, and the heroes of the present age have been tossed to bottomless perdition, there to dwell in adamantine chains and all that, to be reviled forever as fiends and monsters, the bill of indictment about how the left betrayed the workers will look something like this:

They led the working class into the wilderness of welfare state dependency instead of into middle class responsibility.

Why did they do this? In part because of the Marxist doctrine that the way to understand the 19th century was as a class conflict, a war to the death between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, because what else could it be? And the Fabian and Progressive idea that, while class warfare was a bridge too far, the working class certainly needed a wise and educated elite to guide it into proper channels.

If there is a clue to what is wrong with these two notions, it must be that -- well I'll be blowed -- the Marxist doctrine amounts to the dictatorship of the Marxists who will lead the proletarians in the war to the knife against the bourgeoisie, and the Fabian/Progressive doctrine that amounts to the oligarchy of the educated elite that will advise and administer the wise programs that will benefit the workers and soften the hard edges of a laissez-faire economy that only asks "will it pay?"

Let us be clear about this. In the Marxian outcome, the Marxist dictators run everything; they obliterate private property and any right to disagree with the rulers, and the kill millions of people and they impoverish the rest. Marxism is slavery.

In the Fabian/Progressive outcome, the economy gets rigidified with money-losing state enterprises and the workers get reduced into modern day serfs that the educated elite regards as "deplorables," really not quite out of the top drawer.

The fundamental error of the Marxists is that the bourgeoisie had it in for the proletarians. No they didn't. The fundamental error of the Fabians and the Progressives is that capitalists are economic robots and the that workers are helpless: thus both need supervision. Oh, the capitalists got pretty mad if the workers decided to strike to keep their wages up in a depression. But the normal bourgeois capitalist just pays his workers the market rate -- and not because he is a moral exemplar or moral degenerate, but because paying his workers more is risky on the profits front, and paying them less makes it difficult to find good workers.

And the fundamental warrant for the good faith of the bourgeoisie is that it did not have a problem with giving the workers the vote. Did the bourgeoisie rise up in fury during the campaigns to extend the vote from the middle class to the workers? It did not.

But the Big Thing is this. The bourgeoisie does not believe in political power. On the contrary, it believes in the limitation of political power. That's because the basic philosophy of the middle class is live and let live, trust and reciprocity. Again, there is no moral wonder in this. In middle-class life you quickly find out that trust and reciprocity is the way to prosper. Of course, the capitalists also know that there is money to be made in catering to the power-driven chaps in the political class: money in return for contracts, subsidies, privileges.

The big problem for the workers, in the aftermath of their adoption by the Marxists and the Fabian/Progressives, is that once they have been enlisted in the political army of the left it is almost impossible to leave. This is the way of all armies: once you have joined the colors your leaders will lead you hither and thither in their various wars, threatening you with frightful penalties if you "desert." But when you are no longer useful to them, they will demobilize you and expect you to pick up the pieces, or, if things go badly in their power project, they will just abandon you along the route of march.

The fact is that if you want to thrive in the cities of the industrial economy you need to become a citizen -- for that is what bourgeois means -- and you need to learn the ways of the city, its culture and its moral code. It's not exactly a walk in the park, but millions have done it.

But if you enlist in the Marxist movement or go along with the Fabians and the Progressives you won't learn the skills and the culture you need to be a responsible citizen that can wive and thrive successfully in the city. And that is a crime against humanity.

The point is that if the Marxists and the Fabians and the Progressives has never been, then the workers and the capitalists and all the folks in between would have wived and thrived and everyone would have lived happily ever after. Because the market economy rewards people that do that.

Instead, the Marxists came along and divided us, and the Fabians and the Progressives came along and dominated us. And the world is a worse place because of it.

The Left's Dilemma: It Can't Undo Its Mistakes

How do we understand today's left? I stumbled into a piece about that yesterday that suggested that

contemporary Left-wing politics “is better understood as less of a political movement and more as a form of identity or enjoyable past time”. It has become more a “consumption activity” than a way to improve people’s lives[.]

Or, if you like,

Left-wing politics has become “a matter of shallow appearances, or fatuous self-righteousness… a politics in which the beautiful and wellborn tell the unwashed and the beaten-down and the funny-looking how they ought to behave”. 

But why, I thought to myself?

And so I came up with an answer. First, look at this chart of government spending in the US:

And look at this chart of public spending in the UK.

Notice something? Exactly. Spending on government programs ramped up in the first half of the 20th century, but for the last half century spending has been pretty steady, at about 35 percent of GDP in the US and 40 percent of GDP in the UK.

In other words, we probably aren't going to see any more increase in government spending in our two countries. Despite all the Sturm und Drang it seems that government spending has hit its natural limit. I don't pretend to know why, but it sure looks like some natural limit has been reached.

In other words, if you are a leftie, and presumably want to help the less fortunate, the oppressed and the marginalized, you are facing a bit of a problem. There doesn't seem to be any room for more spending on the less fortunate, the oppressed and the marginalized.

Let's look at the four great heads of modern government spending.

First of all there is government pensions, at 6.7 percent in the US and 7.8 percent in the UK. The problem is that a big chunk of that goes to the middle class, especially middle-class government workers. Don't think you are going to be able to take much money away from middle-class government workers and give it to the poor. The recent teacher strike in the City of Chicago, a city already in dire financial straits, should tell you all you need to know. You can't take monies away from the current beneficiaries, deserving or not. They will tear the place down.

What the left should have done, back in the day, was legislate a mandatory savings program for all workers through private sector financial institutions -- e.g. Fidelity and Vanguard -- and leak some monies out of something, somewhere, to take care of the poor. That way it wouldn't take 6-7 percent of GDP, but we would still have a national pension program that looked after itself. But it's too late for that, because if you try to mess with Social Security you will have the wrath of tens of millions of ordinary American retirees on your head.

Then there is government health care, at 7.8 percent in the US and 7.8 percent in the UK. In the UK it provides basic care for everyone, but anyone that is anyone has private insurance because the service at the NHS is pretty poor. In the US we have the fabulously expensive Medicare for seniors supplemented by Medicais for the poor. But what about the people just above the Medicaid threshold? That was the problem with Obamacare, trying to square the circle between Medicare, Medicaid, corporate health plans and individual health plans. If you want to take care of the people in between you practically have to destroy the existing system in order to save it. That's why President Obama had to lie about Obamacare, promising that "if you like your doctor you can keep your doctor" and predicting that the average person would save $2,500 a year in premiums. Not. So as soon as the next Democrat tries to square the circle again they will find huge opposition from people that don't want their existing arrangements messed with, in particular women on Medicare.

What the left should have done, back in the day, was legislate a mandatory health insurance plan, which tried to make health care into a Walmart for Health, and leak monies from somewhere to look after the poor. The idea would be to make sure that routine medical care was no more of an expense than the cost of maintaining a car, but that when you get to the big stuff, just like liability and collision insurance for cars, ordinary Americans don't get wiped out. And you'd have a mandatory program to get people to save for end-of-life medical expenses, something like life insurance. That way it wouldn't take 8 percent of GDP, but we would still have a national health insurance program and a senior health program that basically looked after itself. But it's too late for that, because if you try to mess with Medicare you will have the wrath of tens of millions of ordinary American retirees on your head.

Then there is government education, at 5.3 percent GDP in the US and 4.2 percent GDP in the UK. It seems to me that the current system works pretty well for the upper middle class, who seems to glide through and get to selective colleges. But whatabout the ordinary middle class that really just want to get decent skills for a decent job? And whatabout minority kids from families with little interest in literacy and numeracy? Whatabout kids that trustingly go to college and pile up student debt on some useless degree that doesn't get them a job? Just try reforming education: you run into a brick wall with the tenured college professors and the tenured and unionized K-12 teachers. And so the system is slowly degenerating into a system that does very little education but provides a lot of jobs for Democratic voters.

What the left should have done, back in the day, was legislate a comprehensive apprenticeship and training program mandating employers to provide jobs and education for teenagers starting, say, at age 12. That way the employers would be educating and training young people to qualify for the positions that the employer needed to fill right now, or expected to need to fill in the future. I'd say that employers have a much better idea of the kind of employee they need than government education bureaucrats. And younger kids? I'd recommend home-school, run by the neighborhood women, augmented by governemnt grants for areas with low literacy. But it's too late for that, because if you mess with the college professors and administrators and the union teachers you will be thrown out of office.

Finally, there is government welfare, at 2.1 percent of GDP in the US and 5.7 percent of GDP in the UK (wow, that different!). Obviously these programs have not been too good for the poor as they discourage marriage and discourage getting a job. Thus we have, as reported by Charles Murray in Coming Apart, that for whites only, at the bottom 35 percent the men don't work much and the women don't marry much. I'd say that's a problem, but if you were to make a significant change, by encouraging work and marriage, you would encounter a storm of protest from every lefty in the land and every bureaucrat servicing the poor and every recipient of welfare benefits. Who needs it?

What the left should have done, back in the day, was legislate mandatory membership in some mutual aid society of the kind that flourished in the 19th century. They were run by ordinary people and they naturally responded to the needs of the ordinary people they served. They were doing fine until the left legislated government welfare and put their nations through spine-rattling wars and Great Depresssions. But it's a bit late for that because all the old mutual-aid societies have withered on the vine in the last century, and if you ask a lefty they have no idea that the 19th century mutual-aid societies even existed!

Now, I get it. The purpose of government programs isn't really to provide working systems for pensions, health care, education, and welfare. The purpose of government programs is to win elections by promising loot.

But my feeling is that we have reached the limit of promising loot. That's why the level of government spending in both the US and UK has been pretty level for the past half century. You promise more loot to Group X and Group Y notices that they are going to have to pay for Group X's loot. Sorry Charlie.

So the net result is that we can't go forward and reform the welfare state because a lot of people would have their benefits reduced or at least endangered by any reform. And they will stop any attempt at reform.

So of course our lefty politics has degenerated into "a matter of shallow appearances, or fatuous self-righteousness… a politics in which the beautiful and wellborn tell the unwashed and the beaten-down and the funny-looking how they ought to behave." The lefties had their chance and they blew it; now they are reduced to posturing.

And now there is just about nothing we can do until the whole system comes crashing down.

Why the Jews Take the Cake on Nationalism

Here I was, sailing along unconcernedly as a seagull, when all of a sudden a Jewish acquaintance woke me up.

She alerted me to the fact that the modern Hebrew spoken in the nation of Israel is a made-up language. I had never thought of that before.

Modern Hebrew, says La Wik, was put together by a guy called Eliezer Ben‑Yehuda starting in about 1881 when he immigrated to Palestine. Ben-Yehuda was born in Russia and went to study at the Sorbonne in Paris in 1877 where he met a Jew from Palestine and managed to communicate using biblical Hebrew. La Wik:

It was this use of Hebrew in a spoken form that convinced him that the revival of Hebrew as the language of a nation was feasible.

So Ben-Yehuda went to work on Modern Hebrew, "using 8,000 words from the Bible and 20,000 words from rabbinical commentaries" and inventing other words. My Jewish acquaintance says he also updated the verbs and stuff.

Ben-Yehuda regarded Hebrew and Zionism as symbiotic: "The Hebrew language can live only if we revive the nation and return it to the fatherland," he wrote.

And then along came Theodor Herzl, of Pest, Hungary, who created Zionism the movement with his 1896 book, Der Judenstaat (The Jewish State). But Zionism must have been a thing by 1876, when George Eliot published her Daniel Deronda. So, Herzl's Zionism was mashed together with Ben-Yehuda's Modern Hebrew to create the cultural foundation of the national State of Israel, the national home of the Jews.

This confirms my theory of nationalism, that it is, along with all political notions, a fake tribalim to create a national myth around the notion of the Jews as a nation. So today in the state of Israel we have all the conditions that help create a viable nation state.

We have a common language. In most nations the national language was imposed on the rest of the nation by the chaps that created the nation. For instance, French is the language of the folks in the Île de France. Italian is the language of the people of Tuscany.

We have a common religion. It goes without saying that the more the people in a nation are united by a common religion, or common church, the better. But the people on the outside looking in, as Muslims in Israel or Catholics in a Protestant country, religion forms a basis for uniting against the nation.

We have a common "race" or ethnicity, or tribe. As I have said, all such identities are "fake." It is really an attempt to recreate the original tribe of the kindred, people related by blood, and imprint it on a larger grouping. Are the Jews of the Diaspora, the Ashkenazi Jews and the Sephardic Jews, members of a nation? They are if they believe it to be so. And it helps if they share the same religion and the same language.

We have a common history. Well, history is written by the victors, making up a sacred history to justify their political ascendancy. Or, if you like, history is the lie agreed upon. Every tribe needs its sacred myth; every dynasty needs to establish the divine heritage of its kings; every nation needs to show that it was favored by God.

We have a victorious war. Nothing unites humans, especially human men, as the brotherhood of warriors. And the state of Israel had to establish itself in war in 1948 and afterwards.

What is astonishing to me, after my realization of the made-up nature of Modern Hebrew, is the remarkable achievement of the Jews in making up the nation of Israel not in the traditional way of slow accumulation, by slow feudal transitions and petty conquests, accidents of palace politics, and assimilations of neighboring princedoms. We have the invention and the creation of the nation and the state of Israel out of whole cloth in the modern manner, by some guy writing a book and another guy inventing a language, and a modern publicity campaign inviting all Jews to come to Palestine. It is an amazing achievement. La Wik says Zionism was a response to antisemitism and also to the Jewish Enlightenment. But I'll bet that the real driving force was that the emergence of Nations out of the dynastic regimes of Europe inspired the Jews that were rising fast once Jews got to participate directly in the modern economies of Europe to say: Hey, this national idea is really cool. Why can't we Jews have our own nation?

Why not, indeed. And, I'd say that probably nobody but the Jews could have pulled it off.

The point is that it proves the immense power of nationalism as a way of uniting humans into a political community. The ingredients are language, religion, ethnic origin, and a war of liberation. All of these are unifying forces and the more the merrier.

The problem is, of course, that when some new political tendency arises in an existing nation it is going to want to unite people and divide people across different axes than the people of the current nation were originally unified. That is why our current ruling class wants to unify people through identity politics and through their supranational globalism. It's because they can't win, can't create a majority for their governing agenda of rule by the educated class, unless they knock over the current statue of America the Nation with another political idea. President Trump is countering this strategy of the educated ruling class with his Make America Great Again meme, which is a clear effort to unite Americans of all kinds around the American National Idea (whatever it is). He may succeed, or he may not.

Meanwhile, the Jews in Israel have really achieved the impossible, creating a nation out of whole cloth with its own language, own religion, own sacred history, and its own glorious victory.

It doesn't get any better than that.