Sunday 31 December 2017

The Right is "Protestant", the Left is "Catholic"

First off I should point out that I am using these terms as descriptive ones, not as religious ones. Of course there are both Rightist and Leftists in both the Catholic and Protestant faiths. I hope to make a larger point here. A point about politics, not about religion.

When you look at the history of Protestantism you find that disagreements lead to new churches. Sometimes that meant a new church, at other times a new Denomination. Those on the Right, myself included, are very much like this. We talk about community but we find it hard to get along with others. We have gotten into the habit of criticizing and of being truth seekers. We may not be correct right now but we are on the road to truth and those who try to lead us onto false paths we reject, angrily. Because so much of this truth seeking is done alone, we tend to rely on ourselves more than  maybe we should.

When you look at the history of Catholicism you find that disagreements are dealt with in house. There have been very big divisions within the Catholic Church but they still try to maintain the idea that the church is Catholic, which means Universal. On the Left of politics you tend to see this, they fight and hate each other for often quite small disagreements. But they also unite in the face of opposition. I don't want to put too fine a point on it. This isn't gospel, it is instead trying to show something that is often hidden. The Left appears united but isn't. It is however convinced that it has truth on it's side right now. Mostly because it allows others to do it's thinking for it.

If the Right is to move forward we need to take a page out of the Catholic Church and keep our disagreements in house. And that our enemies are outside, not inside. To put it another way don't shoot right.

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Tuesday 26 December 2017

From Tradition to Liberalism

Once the Western world was traditional, now it is Liberal, how did it change? That is obviously a big question, but I think there were two periods that created big changes. Changes that were not obvious at the time but which grew into the Liberalism that we know today. The first was the Reformation, which allowed the idea of secularism to creep in, and secondly the Industrial Revolution. It is the second change that I am going to concentrate on here.

It wasn't until the 1820's that people started talking about the changes that had been going on for a century or more in England. Before that time the changes had been small and local, by the 1820's neither of those things were true. The wars against France from 1792-1815 had hidden much of the change as people thought they were things that were more to do with the war. When the wars ended people started to notice that these things were no longer temporary, instead they were becoming a permanent fixture of life in England.

During the wars men had moved great distances to serve in the army, navy or merchant navy. Often their families moved with them. For a short time these things wouldn't have had much impact, but the wars lasted for nearly 25 years. In Britain the wars were a time of great prosperity, ironically aided by Napoleon trying to cut the European markets off to British trade. What it instead did was to create two economies, a European economy controlled by France and a world economy controlled by Britain. The Royal Navy and Britains merchant fleet controlled world trade, so anything that Europe wanted from outside of Europe had to be supplied by Britain. A Britain that Napoleon had banned from trading with Europe, so all those goods had to be smuggled into Europe. And because everything was so scarce, it was all at top prices.

In Britain it was the exact opposite, it was the only market in Europe open to trade from the rest of the world. So it meant that prices were good and goods plentiful. Trade from Europe was of course affected, so Britain tried to build as much as it could of it's own goods. Things that once came from Europe were now build in Britain, which lead to a rise in the size and numbers of factories. It also meant that when the wars ended Britain was in an excellent position to take advantage of it's newfound economic power.

It also accelerated the importance of trade over landownership. Owning land was always the traditional way to create wealth, but land has a great disadvantage, there is only so much of it. It self controls how many people can become rich. Trade however has no such limit, certainly it is not unlimited, but at least in theory it can be portrayed as such. The wars from 1792-1815 put trade front and centre in British life. It wasn't some fringe activity as it had once been, now it was of prime importance to national survival. After 1815 the lessons learnt were not forgotten. Britain was a trading nation and any limits put upon trade were bad. Trade needed to be unrestricted. Therefore Britain became the first free trade nation. It also became the first nation to support the free movement of people, within Britain at least.

The factory owners needed workers and they resented anything that restricted their access to those workers. At that time Guilds still existed and so did Feudal restrictions. People were not free as we would understand it, they often had obligations that restricted how they could use their labour. The reason for this was that if a mans labour was used in one place he could not use it in another, in other words he could not be in two place at once. So a farm labourer working in a factory was not doing farm labour. But if crops aren't sowed at the correct time or they are not harvested at the correct time then the food that people need to eat doesn't exist. This created a conflict between the often middle class factory owners and the often Aristocratic landowners.

There was also a conflict with the guilds, men were bonded to their profession. It protected all of those who worked in that profession as it restricted the amount of people in that profession. The factory owners hated the guilds for two reasons, firstly it restricted the amount of workers they could employ and secondly it created competition. Over time they sort to destroy both of these restrictions and they did destroy them.

But while these conflicts were going on there was also an increase in population. So the conflicts were rarely a case of life and death to either people or businesses, instead they became ideological conflicts. More workers meant more competition for jobs, so people moved to get those jobs and this thing that most people thought was temporary became permanent. It removed people from their traditional life and forced them to adapt to a new way of life. A life controlled not by nature but by the clock.

The factory owners wanted the power of the feudal Lords, but most did not want the responding responsibilities that came with that. Some were very good bosses, providing housing and good wages. Others were not go good and all they cared about was profit. Sadly the people who worked in their factories were only important as workers and not as people. Most of these people came from the countryside and in those places, often very poor places, they had a social structure that they existed within. In the cities or towns they now worked in those social structures and the support network that existed had to be recreated. But it was in reality not reconstructed, instead it was a new creation. Indeed in time the factory worker and the farm labourer became rivals, with seemingly little in common.

Tradition which existed in the countryside was made an enemy of the city. Land was replaced with trade. Men controlled their own labour, they had no loyalty to anyone but themselves. Money replaced loyalty. They lost contact with the land and with the cycle of nature. Guilds that once protected workers were dissolved. Liberalism wanted no restrictions put upon trade and no restrictions put upon who it could hire. Liberalism won.

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Friday 22 December 2017

Liberalism is a Christian Heresy

All Political Philosophies are Western philosophies. Non come from any other Civilization, they are all Western.

Communism, Nazism, Socialism, Fascism and of course Liberalism.

Thats not a complete list, but you get the idea, all came from Western Civilization, all invented by White men. Even the only political philosophy to expressly focus on women, Feminism, was invented by White men. Why should this be so concentrated?

The answer is that while Christianity has been popular amongst many different peoples, it was the European peoples who took Christianity as their exclusive religion. Meaning that while Christianity existed in other parts of the world, it was never the only religion around. In Europe it was, it had no rivals. Certainly Judaism existed but it was not a rival. In the Islamic world there existed large populations that were not Muslim. In 600AD Egypt was Christian, today it is still 10% Christian, sometime between then and now it went from close to 100% to 10%. In Europe nothing like that existed at all.

So intellectual conflict was between Christians, not between thinkers of different religions. In time that helped lead to the Reformation and the creation of the Protestant faiths. Here comes something even stranger, not only are all of the Political Philosophies Christian but they are all Protestant. Non of them originate in Catholic countries, not even France, although they are influenced by Catholic thinkers.

The reason they are Protestant is because of the idea of personal salvation, that each person has a personal relationship with God. The Catholic Church said that that was too much to put on peoples shoulders, they needed help because if they didn't have that help people would fail. Priests helped by performing complex rituals, monks and nuns with constant prayers, Bishops and Popes to administrate it all and Saints to intercede on behalf of people. Protestants did not accept those claims at all. They argued that Christians should have guidelines on what to do and the best guide was the Bible, not men.

For many these ideas were liberating, for many these ideas were terrifying. Just you and God, the creator of the Universe, having a chat. But taken to it's logical conclusion, why have any Churches, or in fact any religious authority? If man is free to make his own choices in life without being told what to do by the Catholic Church, why should he be unfree? Why should he pay taxes, or be conscripted or serve his feudal Lord or King? He should only serve himself and God. After all now that he has a personal relationship with God, God should tell him directly what he should serve and if not then he shouldn't.

Some did take things to there logical conclusion and it normally ended in violence, but not always. Examples of groups who took on many of these ideas are the Quakers and the Amish. Now you will have noticed that most Protestant groups are not like them, thats because they rejected the logical conclusion and put in place exceptions. They did not want to go that far, as most who did did not survive. But those ideas have never gone away.

Within the Protestant faiths when a religious difference came about, people would start their own church. Sometimes within the same faith, but increasingly as time went on they would form their own church. Particularly within the English speaking world. This fed into that idea that in this world you were on your own, that you could not trust others to do your thinking for you. You could not rely on others to look after you either, success was about you and your abilities and talents. And success showed how favoured you were by God, because God wouldn't let just anyone succeed.

The old ways could not be trusted, new ideas and techniques were valued, the old ways were either Catholic or Feudal. Reject the old and focus on the new. Reject the traditional hierarchy and be prepared to find new ways of doing things. They came to favour money over land and freedom over obligations. They served God first, then themselves and any other authority was third.

Some of you may point out that this does not describe the Church of England for example, but actually it does. While it was hierarchical and much more traditional and conservative than other Protestant faiths. It still included many of these ideas within it, non of the Protestant faiths escaped from them.

Over time ideas that were totally Christian came to separate from Christianity and take on a life of their own in the secular world. That separation was due to Protestantism. Ideas such the idea that we are all equal before God, left religion and took on a life of their own. Now we are told that all people are equal, with God no were to be seen. We are told that trade and money are all important, that we are in effect economic men. That comes from the idea that we are all in this world alone with only God and we know that we are blessed by God if we become successful, now God has been removed. 
On and on it goes, with Christian ideas being secularized, God is removed and denied. But the strange thing is that this isn't just Liberalism, in fact all of the Political Philosophies also come from Protestantism. Every single one is a Christian heresy!

No exceptions, they all start as Christian ideas, then they separated and then they were corrupted. The origin often denied by both supporters and enemies as being far too embarrassing. But these ideas didn't come from out of the air, they came from the Bible, like all Christian heresies.

I recently read the line "Heresy was born of the itch for something new.", I wrote about this when I wrote about novelty. Once these ideas left Christianity and then denied there origin they became heresies. Because they set themselves up as rivals to Christianity. For so long they operated within Christianity that they seemed like they were not rivals, but not everyone accepted that. Now the great question is, will Christianity survive these heresies?

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Sunday 17 December 2017

Breaking up the Corporations

Today far too much of the economy is made up of large companies, many of them household names. These large companies are known as Corporations. To create an economy that is friendly to the type of society we wish for, we need to dismantle these corporations and in their place promote local business.

Corporations are a vital part of Liberal economics, to which I would add that I am not a Liberal and I have no loyalty to their economic ideas. I would further add that Conservative have their own economic ideas. Ideas that put the emphases on local and small business., instead of large Corporations. But if we want Corporations to be dismantled then how should we do it?

We must first put in place some ground rules:
the aim is not to destroy but to create,
the aim is to dismantle Corporations in a rational manner over time,
the aim is to support local people and communities through local businesses

There are three ways of breaking up the Corporations.

Franchise
A franchise is where by a company recruits sub-contractors to work for it's core business, but on a day to day bases to operate on their own as if they were a private business. Franchises get differing levels of support depending upon the company, generally things like training, contacts and such like. This is a good way to break up the Corporations while still using market principles. It gives an opportunity to local people to get an established business from an established brand. It also means that customers aren't inconvenienced, that the new owners have a chance to learn about the business on the job and for the Corporation to ease out of it's commitment over time.

After a certain period of time, I propose roughly a decade, the franchise arrangement can end and these firms can become independent businesses.

Multiple Locations
The second way is to tax via locations, most retail Corporations, along with many other types of Corporations operate from multiple locations. So we tax the number of locations a Corporation operates from, increasing the amount each year.

Year 1, 0% tax rate
Year 2, Second and subsequent locations taxed at 10% of all earnings
Year 3, Third and subsequent locations taxed at 20% of all earnings
Year 4, Fourth and subsequent locations taxed  at 30% of all earnings
Year 5, Fifth and subsequent locations taxed at 40% of all earnings
Year 6, Sixth and subsequent locations taxed at 50% of all earnings
Year 7, Seventh and subsequent locations taxed at 60% of all earnings
Year 8, Eighth and subsequent locations taxed at 70% of all earnings
Year 9, Ninth and subsequent locations taxed at 80% of all earnings
Year 10, Tenth and subsequent locations taxed at 90% of all earnings
Year 11, Tenth and subsequent locations taxed at 100% of all earnings

As you can see it starts off quite reasonable and over the course of a decade becomes progressively more unreasonable. The aim is not to collect the taxes but to encourage the Corporation to dismantle with it's own rational plan before the Government takes everything. Franchises would not be subject to the multiple location tax.

Single Locations
Some Corporations operate from a single location, sometimes amazingly large locations. In the case of manufacturing companies it may not be good to dismantle such Corporations that operate from a single location. However nearly all Corporations in the service industry could be dismantled.

Year 1, 0% tax rate
Year 2, minimum of 10% tax from that single location
Year 3, minimum of 20% tax rate from that single location
Year 4, minimum of 30% tax rate from that single location
Year 5, minimum of 40% tax rate from that single location
Year 6, minimum of 50% tax rate from that single location
Year 7, minimum of 60% tax rate from that single location
Year 8, minimum of 70% tax rate from that single location
Year 9, minimum of 80% tax rate from that single location
Year 10, minimum of 90% tax rate from that single location
Year 11, minimum of 100% tax rate from that single location

A company that had been reduced to one location by either the Franchise or the Multiple Location schemes would not be dismantled further. The aim would be, as with the Multiple Location tax,  not to collect the taxes but to encourage the Corporation to dismantle with it's own rational plan before the Government takes everything.

Conclusion
Corporations lead and encourage people away from their true loyalty's, away from Tradition, Country and Family. They lead people away from the local economy and insist that they must live in a larger economy. Money becomes more important than anything else, because making money is the goal of all companies. But for the rootless Corporations it does not go back into supporting a peoples traditional customs and ways. Nor does it support their country and it ends by making people value money over family. Non of these things are desirable or worth keeping. By dismantling the Corporations we can increase business ownership, we can increase local economies and we can support our own objectives, all without destroying any of the principles of the free market.

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Monday 11 December 2017

The Fifty-Seventh Month

I had good news and bad news from the blog this month. Lets start with the bad news and work upwards. In November I only had 2,652 visitors, which is low, my worst month since June. On the upside, My American visitors are back over 1000, which they briefly dipped under. My Australian numbers have been back over 400 for most of the month, which gives me hope and my British visitors are over 200. It's nice but not unusual for a country to get over 100 but it's rare to get over that 200 point.

My worst day in the past month was the 21st November when I had only 36 visitors. My best day was only four days later on the 25th November when I had 284 visitors. My average was 105 visitors a day.

November-December
EntryPageviews
United States
1482
Australia
466
United Kingdom
223
France
121
Canada
73
Brazil
71
Ukraine
61
Ireland
53
Spain
35
Russia
34


October-November
EntryPageviews
United States
950
Australia
388
Russia
371
United Kingdom
125
Spain
112
Canada
86
Finland
56
Ireland
54
Brazil
49
France
49

The United States is up by over 500, Australia is up, the United Kingdom is nearly double and France is more than double. Brazil is also up.

Ireland is basically the same.

Canada, Spain and Russia are down.

The Ukraine is back in to the top 10.

Finland is out of the top 10.

I have also received visitors from the following countries: Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Norway, Sweden, Finland, Austria, Italy, Portugal, Poland, Romania, Lebanon, Oman, U.A.E., Bahrain, Kuwait, India, Bangladesh, China, Hong Kong, South Korea, Vietnam, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Philippines, Indonesia, Egypt, Sudan, Ghana, Kenya, South Africa, New Zealand, Chile,  Argentina.

Merry Christmas and I hope you visit again soon.
Mark Moncrieff

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Saturday 9 December 2017

Know Your Place

When I was growing up I heard people say "know your place!", but like any number of things I heard growing up I have not heard the phrase for many years. Indeed as we are now always told about how equal we are, it really is counter to the revolution. Which is sad as the phrase had a point, more than one in fact.

This pretend equality is a burden that we all share. Everyone is our equal, the victim is no better than the criminal, for that is what equality means. But if everyone is equal then everyone is equally disposable. We are all interchangeable, we have no security in our jobs, in our relationships, we are treated as completely interchangeable. The truth is that people don't tell us to know our place because we no longer have a place. Once, not that long ago people did know their place, they really had a place they belonged to.

That is why Traditional Conservatives believe in social classes, we want people to have a place in life, to have some practical meaning in their life. But when no one has a place then what holds us together?

Liberalism says ideals keep us together, but only if we all accept the same ideals. Even then I seems that people are missing out on an important area of life. Nothing is permanent except the knowledge that nothing is secure. Because we have lost our place we are insecure and apprehensive. We become braggarts were every small success is trumpeted as the greatest that there has ever been. We seek to make a new place to belong, if we cannot belong because nothing is permanent then we need to create some security right here and now. In which we seek to gain comfort from our loss, but of course it is merely a substitute for the real thing. We want to belong, we want to know our place, we want to be important, we want to be needed.

When our ancestors lived in their small village they knew where they belonged, they knew their place within that community. They knew their importance and whether they were needed. But most of that has been lost to us. When people do not know their place they invent a place, they invent meaning and they try to make that important. But it's not, it is entirely artificial and people know that. They know that it has no real meaning, but what options do they have left to them?

So many social and mental health issues come down to people today not knowing their place. There is nothing to bind them to reality, because so often they are left to find their own way in the world. People are not equipped to do that, we need guidance, we need help and most importantly we need to know what direction we are heading in.

In the past people received these things and most people believed that your family was the direction you headed in. You married and had children, you created with your spouse, the future. But today if you tell people that you want to marry and start a family you are looked at as strange. Sure most people also want the same thing, but to actually say so out loud!

Most people know that in the current year that isn't really allowed, not forbidden but also not allowed. It's all about career and money now days, but that only provides part of the answer. You are not a complete person, but a damaged person, a person that doesn't know their place is of valuable. Such a person resents those who do have a place. Liberalism doesn't need to pass laws to destroy society they can allow that resentment to grow, on both sides, and then step in to solve the problem that they created.

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Monday 4 December 2017

November Was a Bad Month

Here I am in early December still trying to make sense of last month, it was really bad. A month that makes you wonder how far we need to fall before things turn. A month in which I wondered what happened to my countrymen. A month in which I have lost a lot of respect.

Homosexual Marriage
I've already written about that in Australia and the end of common sense and in democracy is dying, because to be honest they are both related. I was always against a vote as I simply did not know how it would go, although being a Traditional Conservative I was pessimistic. The only hope we had was for the Parliament to remain distracted and uncertain of how the Australian people really felt. Instead it went to a vote and it was very successful, 79.5% voted, 62% said yes, that means that 48% of all Australian voters voted yes to letting homosexuals marry. It also means that only 30% voted against it. Which confirms what I have thought for a while, that there is a hardcore 20% of the electorate who are what the media call far-right. Conservative, Patriotic, who reject the media and most of the basic tenets of Liberalism.

Euthanasia
Last week the Victorian state Government passed by 1 vote a Law that made euthanasia legal. From mid 2019 people who a doctors has said has less than 6 months to live can legally commit suicide with the help of the medical profession. Now most people in Australia support this, I also once did. I might still if I didn't understand the nature of Liberalism. That this is always the first step not the last. All of the so called safeguards can and will be subverted. Death on demand is the goal and if things continue as they have been then they will achieve that. From this point on the people who are most in need of protection will be without it. Who is more vulnerable than someone who is dying? Now they will have to deal with medical personal and family encouraging them to die. Dying is hard, including for those who are not dying. Why suffer they will suggest? Why prolong your (and our) agony? Why do I have to spend money on someone when they are going to die anyway? Why do I have to wait for my inheritance?

Why should someone have to suffer these things in addition to dying?  

Prince Harry's Engagement.
Prince Harry, currently fifth in line to the Throne, with the birth of Prince Williams third child he will become sixth in line. So the chance that he will become King is practically zero, but thats not the point. He is still a British Prince and he wants to marry an actress!!!

An actress!

An actress who is older than him at 36, is divorced and is mixed race. So if they do have children, Prince Harry who is probably the most famous red head in the world, will be unable to have red headed children. Or in fact children who look like him. But as she is 36 that might already be out of the picture. In every sense it sends out a bad message.

This is not a royal wedding, this is a celebrity wedding. And I do not see a happy couple, what I see is a train wreck happening in slow motion right before our eyes. I will not be celebrating or encouraging it, I find it all very sad and disappointing.

So I have lost a lot of respect for my countrymen, for democracy and for Prince Harry.....November was a bad month!

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