Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Whatifalthist" channel.

  1. "Even if we had a baby boom now, it wouldn't offset the decline" Depends on the size of the baby boom. See: Johann Sebastian Bach, trying to single-handedly replace the population of Saxony after the Thirty Year's War.
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  2. "Conspiracy theories let you ignore the truth" No. Conspiracy theories are what happens when The Narrative(TM) is so clearly riddled with errors and falsehoods, that people cast around desperately for alternative explanations.
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  3. "Americans pay no attention to other countries" Someone did a hilarious man-on-the-street in Australia where they presented a blank map of the United States and challenged Aussies to fill in the names of each state, without looking at their phones.
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  4. You fundamentally misunderstand evolution if you believe that it's about competition. As Peter Thiel says, "Competition is for losers." The fact is, the finches of the Galapagos did not thrive because they changed to be able to better beat up other finches, they thrived because they changed to find new niches and new opportunities. ALL of the finches, provided they found what something they could uniquely excel at, could find enough food to eat. Inter-country competition in Europe in the 20th century, in the name of "Evolution!", did nothing but push Europe over the brink of ruin. Please re-consider your entire thesis, it does not reflect constructive reality.
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  5.  @rgama1173  The interesting part of Darwin's book, is that he doesn't prove the "necessity of strength" at all. Which of the 18 kinds of Galapagos finches was stronger than the other 17 and wiped them out in the "struggle for life"? The question contradicts itself. If the way of the world was for the strongest to wipe out the rest, there would only be one type of Galapagos finch. What Darwin's evidence demonstrates, is Peter Thiel's maxim "competition is for losers". The lesson from Darwin' evidence, is that winners find a new niche to prosper in, and there is more than one winner.
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  6.  @MexicanOREOz  Chastisement may lead him to talk less and listen more -- his ideas here could benefit from that.
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  7. So who are the intellectuals driving this debate? I'm curious what's up in this little corner of the Internet.
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  8.  @HenryThree  So he's equating himself with Peterson and not, say, people we've never heard of in his circle of friends? Yeah... I think he's getting a little bit bigheaded here. What shall we do to razz him back down to size? ;)
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  9.  @_Dovar_  They remove disorders when they are subjected to political pressure to do so. It's been that way for 50 years.
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  10. Technological advancement has topped off in the last few decades. Compare the inventions of the 50-60 year period after the Transcontinental Railroad, to the 50-60 year period after the Apollo program. Most of the inventions we enjoy today were invented before the Apollo program. The late 19th - early 20th century, on the other hand, saw radio, telephone, movies, automobiles, airplanes...
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  11. Islam has never been able to get its s**t together except to form authoritarian clustershows. It might be a failure mode for some parts of Europe, but if so, we will see new Eugene of Savoy or Charles Martel characters arise.
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  12. Rudyard: "People need to stop stressing about what they can't change and concentrate on what they can" Rudyard: "All these mass-produced homes, which I will not abide by" To make the houses cheaply enough for masses to afford, they need to be standardized to some degree. What we can do, is personalize the landscaping out front (which is a great way to get some fresh air and connect with growing things) and the decorations inside (which reflect your gods.)
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  13. "Why was the Korean War seen as a good war while the Vietnam was was seen as evil?" Because we won the Korean War, to some degree. If we'd won in Vietnam, that would now be seen as "a good war" too.
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  14. If you're wondering why we do things like ship all our (industrial) jobs to China, please look up "World Systems Theory". Peter Zeihan (who I think you've read, or at least listened to) describes this in his books. Also, offhand, when he discusses the future of the Global Order, he says that "we don't even have a theory as to what happens after The Order collapses" - implying that our elites don't have the imagination to come up with anything else. I'm personally convinced that World Systems Theory (which relies on some countries to be cheap labor) will naturally fade away as the supply of cheap labor dries up as standards of living rise worldwide. Still, preserving dignified life for the working class of "creative economy" "core countries", while preserving our strategic supply chains, seems like a public policy no-brainer.
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  15. "Name a single Boomer accomplishment that rises to the level of their ancestors" The average age of an engineer on the Apollo Program in 1969, was 28. But I can't really think of any others. It was the Greatest Generation that ended the Cold War. The invention of the PC, maybe?
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  16. @NotRexButCaesar "Luckily we are saved by faith, not good doctrine. I applaud the goodness of that doctrine of yours. =)
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  17. "Currently we're dominated by the college-educated bureaucrat, a class that has become lazy and dumb" Mostly because we were simultaneously pursuing a vast expansion of certifications, through institutions that were politically captured by counterproductive ideas of how to integrate minorities (which, if done well instead, is a good idea) and women (which future generations, capable of sustainable birthrates, may not see as such a good idea). We're currently in the middle of the best entrepreneur of this generation, Elon Musk, cleaning out the bureaucracy. If he's as successful getting the useless activists out of USG as he was getting them out of Twitter / X, I think we'll be in better shape.
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  18. I'd call into question the idea that religion has caused anything like 47 million deaths -- at most, Civil Wars Involving Religion could arguably include the Tai Ping rebellion, but that dynasty was falling anyway. And if you point to the Thirty Years' War, I have to ask you: would a lack of religious difference have made the Hapsburgs any less ambitious?
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  19. "The rational and Enlightened Mutalizim" Who would torture and murder devout Mu slim scholars for being "too religious". Yes, Is lam has had its "Reformation" and "Enlightenment". No, it didn't go well, because as usual, secular rulers are ambitious, and religion makes a convenient scapegoat for basically a the ist violence. Dude, you KNOW what these countries are like. You would NOT like a Turkish empire. If they could get their s**t together and keep the Eastern and Western Christians from uniting, they could cause a lot of trouble, but there is no way that their increased power is desirable. At all.
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  20. "We don't pay much attention to history today" Wait until histories have been widely enough forgotten, that history becomes novelty again. People are pretty impressed with Biblical concepts _as long as you don't tell them they're from the Bible_.
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  21. "I don't mean to sound like someone who says we should never have fun" Forgetting how to have fun accomplishing something or having an adventure -- instead only having "fun" partying -- is among the worst things ever to happen to America.
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  22. "60% of the students from the top 20 universities come from top 1% families" - How expensive are these universities? - How does this correlate with graduation rate? - How does this correlate with major area of study? - How does this correlate to % of students overall? - How do the both the graduates and dropouts of these universities perform financially? - How well do students from poorer families going to less expensive universities perform financially compared to legacy students at expensive universities? and that's just the start. There are a LOT of cross-tabs you're eliding here, that we need to know to see how strong your argument is.
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  23. "People think of radical Is lam as an ancient thing" It is. It has its roots in the devout reaction to "al Minha", which is what your "enlightened" and "secularized" Mutalizim did when they got power (see another of my comments on the subject.) A the is ts and secularization are not the "enlightened" force you seem to think they are. See also: International Socialism (Marxism), and National Socialism.
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  24. "Our idea that the underdog is good stems from Marxism" Only insofar as Marxism is a Christian heresy.
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  25. We used to have about half the population dedicated to mental health. This was the other significant part of women's role in society, and went along with their primary role of keeping babies alive. Communities formed to provide respite for women exhausted from child care, and these communities looked after one another when terrible things happened (like, babies were lost.) You know how most marriages that experience the loss of a child, now end? It didn't used to be that way. Women used to bring communities together to help people through such griefs. Now? Babies just don't die like they used to (and thank God they don't), and every young person has become an itinerant, atomized individual looking only for their own career. The scaffolding that used to hold our civilization up has been dismantled because we thought that it was no longer necessary. Turns out, it was holding up more than we expected.
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  26. "If God can change natural law on a whim, there's no point in studying it" Unless He only does so very, very rarely.
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  27. "China is just Han society with nomads coming in to conquer once in a while" Europe is just Roman society with nomads coming in to conquer once in a while. Yes, the Germans were "just nomads."
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  28.  @ihatejpmorgan  New York City is a zombie, having been critically injured about the time that Google took over basically all media. Books, advertising, music, TV (YouTube), all that money is flowing through Silicon Valley now, with some branching off to Amazon in Seattle. The collapse of Europe will only accelerate the slide into irrelevance of the old East Coast Establishment.
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  29. Our inability to be complacent about our own failings even when our enemies have serious internal problems, is part of our resilience.
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  30.  @Kaiserboo1871  If Zeihan's riparian supremacy theories are correct, the Midwest should be in charge of North America. The fact that it isn't, shows a great weakness in his theory. Why should the Hudson and Sacramento river systems be outperforming the Mississippi?
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  31. "China had no religious wars" Aside from the Taiping rebellion, the Yellow Turban rebellion, and arguably all of Communism. Also, Marco Polo talks about a) heavy Christian influence in the court of the Khan, and b) frequent plots to g*no*id* Christians and Muslims. After Marco Polo's time, we see little or no influence of either of those religions in Chinese government. What are we to make of that?
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  32. The United States is running into trouble now, because we are being run into the ground by our top-heavy bureaucracy which sees no limits on its power.
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  33. "The reason no one's made a wargame of the 1600s is it would just be a bunch of sieges" Fun fact: Vauban-style fortresses were subject to "reduction" which would take a predictable amount of time to destroy them based on their array of bastions, etc. So, you could easily make a wargame of this period -- but it would, ironically, be an idle game.
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  34. Paul Vanderklay refers to it as a "paper pope".
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  35. Why do you get the idea that "a traditional woman's role" does not involve economically-mediated labor? You can find this in the Old Testament of the Bible, in the 31st chapter of Proverbs: 10 Who can find a virtuous woman? for her price is far above rubies. 11 The heart of her husband doth safely trust in her, so that he shall have no need of spoil. 12 She will do him good and not evil all the days of her life. 13 She seeketh wool, and flax, and worketh willingly with her hands. 14 She is like the merchants' ships; she bringeth her food from afar. 15 She riseth also while it is yet night, and giveth meat to her household, and a portion to her maidens. 16 She considereth a field, and buyeth it: with the fruit of her hands she planteth a vineyard. 17 She girdeth her loins with strength, and strengtheneth her arms. 18 She perceiveth that her merchandise is good: her candle goeth not out by night. 19 She layeth her hands to the spindle, and her hands hold the distaff. 20 She stretcheth out her hand to the poor; yea, she reacheth forth her hands to the needy. 21 She is not afraid of the snow for her household: for all her household are clothed with scarlet. 22 She maketh herself coverings of tapestry; her clothing is silk and purple. 23 Her husband is known in the gates, when he sitteth among the elders of the land. 24 She maketh fine linen, and selleth it; and delivereth girdles unto the merchant. 25 Strength and honour are her clothing; and she shall rejoice in time to come. 26 She openeth her mouth with wisdom; and in her tongue is the law of kindness. 27 She looketh well to the ways of her household, and eateth not the bread of idleness. 28 Her children arise up, and call her blessed; her husband also, and he praiseth her. 29 Many daughters have done virtuously, but thou excellest them all. 30 Favour is deceitful, and beauty is vain: but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised. 31 Give her of the fruit of her hands; and let her own works praise her in the gates.
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  36. "The continent-spanning railroads are the best example of state cooperation" Um, no. Arguably the only thing the state did was declare the railroads had the rights to land, that they could build on or sell. Not exactly a small thing to be sure, but unless you count the US Cavalry clearing the natives off of the land (which was somewhat incidental), the railroads were almost entirely a capitalist enterprise.
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  37. Wait a minute, the north end of Burma and the east side of PNG are Protestant??
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  38. "They were arrogant and started wars with the three greatest powers on the planet" To be fair, last time around they beat the Russians easily but couldn't quite beat the combined French and British, and were only hosed when the Americans came in. If they concluded beating the French and British easily meant that beating the Russians would be a walk in the park, they had a non-zero amount of evidence for that conclusion.
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  39.  @AuthorDamonAlan  The entire "mental illness epidemic" is purely a function of lack of mothers in the home. Kids need one-on-one attention -- eye contact, with someone who loves them -- to avoid developing autistic traits. Same with excessive anxiety. Moms who take their kids to the park to play in the grass / sand / dirt, also keep their kids from developing allergies. Moms who show their kids that they are loved, and show their kids that their fathers are loved and respected, are the best defense against boys getting obsessed with the likes of Andrew Tate.
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  40. Californians are Portuguese? That's insane. Sorry, no, aside from a couple of Lopes and Sousas, California is about as mixed as you can get.
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  41. "He promises his followers he will fix everything now" - "He lacks all sense of honor, gravitas, or duty" -- Just stop. You're one for five here, at best. Trump's White House had a whiteboard with all his campaign promises on it -- embassy to Jerusalem, out of Kyoto Protocol, building the wall, etc -- and he had a better record of honorably attending to those duties than any other president of my lifetime. He fought to keep Rust Belt jobs in America too, and if he didn't completely succeed, it's not for lack of trying. If it hadn't been for his listening to schmucks like Fauci about Covid, he'd have sailed to a second term. Your one point -- whether he has "gravitas" -- depends on whether you think a president is allowed to joke, or not. The fact that the targets of his jokes didn't decide to clean up their act when they got their well-deserved roasting, justifies his contempt for them.
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  42. "Wages stagnated and have never recovered" Except during Trump's presidency. Seriously, look into it. Forget the Trump Derangement for a bit, and look at his actual record.
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  43. The IPCC in 2003 admitted that global climate predictions were absolute bunk, because computer models based on chaos (hundreds, or thousands, of convection cells) were too sensitive to small errors that their long-term forecasts were useless. So quit whining about CO2. The only way we have of knowing whether it might be a problem, calculating the additional absorption of Earth's blackbody radiation by a higher partial pressure of CO2, indicates that temperatures will only rise hundredths of a degree at most. Blame Boomers for a whatever else you like, you're on to something there. It just pains me to see an otherwise excellent analysis you perpetuate such a bogus issue.
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  44. The most beneficial thing you can do for the climate is do a deep dive on the effectiveness of climate models, realize that they're absolutely chaotic and are as useless at long-term predictions as weather models, and stop panicking about how the sun-monster is going to kill us all. Oh, and stop pumping the atmosphere full of real toxins, of which CO2 is not one.
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  45. Why would housing become less affordable, long-term, if populations are shrinking?
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  46. You should do a deeper dive into the capabilities of the type of mathematical modeling the "climate" folks use to justify their radical conclusions. The fact is, they rely on the predictions of mathematical models that simply do not have the ability to make accurate predictions. This is why all of their past predictions (such as in 1990, when they claimed by 2020 average temperatures would have risen 15 degrees C, see BBC's "After the Warming" with the otherwise excellent James Burke) have been so hilariously wrong. Please note that the core of these models are written in archaic computer languages such as FORTRAN or Ada -- not that there's anything wrong with those languages, but it demonstrates that they have not seen major updates since their disastrous early predictions.
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  47.  @Subtlenimbus  You think resources are limited? Get out of cities. Get away from anywhere with light pollution. Wait for a clear night, and LOOK UP.
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  48. "I worry that a leftist social-engineering technocracy will seize power in America" Yup. We're in another Cold War, this time instead of answering the question "What is the best political-economic structure to optimize the production and distribution of the fruits of the Industrial Revolution?" (answer: the market-economic limited welfare state, thank you and good night) we are dealing with the question "What is the best way to harness expertise spawned in the Information Revolution, in the service of a free people?" I recommend the expert class has their powers limited by the old anti-tyrannical formulation, "to encourage, to be consulted, and to warn". Your thoughts?
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  49. "Of all the powers a century ago only the US is still around, and we're the most religious." Dwight Eisenhower, the guy who fought Fascism during the war and Communism after it, and put "under God" into the pledge, has one of the wisest Farewell Addresses in history. It's mostly remembered now for its warning against the "military-industrial complex", but it also warns against the "scientific-technological elite". "The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system-ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society."
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  50. Modern America is based on the fact that the ideas of Frederick Jackson Turner and Alfred Thayer Mahan were victims of their own success.
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  51. Mormons are, strictly speaking, a revival of a heretical sect that the Council of Nicaea was convened to dispose of. Ask someone in the 2nd century "Is someone a Christian if they believe [what Mormons believe]" they'll say "That depends on who you ask". Ask someone from the 5th century onward "is someone a Christian if they believe [what the Mormons believe]" they'll say "No."
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  52. If "Christian fascists" are so organized and effective, why have Christians been losing so much ground in the culture war for as long as I've been alive? I think that once Christians get organized and effective, the takeover of all of our institutions will be entirely peaceful.
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  53. "Pure Darwinism says we should breed as much as possible -- it's possible to do that, but it's not what makes us happy" The vast majority of people are deeply regretful -- in ways that cause acute misery -- if they do not have children. Evolution is important enough that we should be skeptical of protests to the contrary.
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  54.  @nathan_408  Ronald Reagan, born 1911 Margaret Thatcher, born 1925 George H W Bush, born 1924 Richard Nixon, born 1913 Henry Kissinger, born 1923 George Kennan, 1904 Pope John Paul II, born 1920 I like Peter Robinson (of "tear down this wall" fame) as much as the next Conservative who's ever heard of him, and I'm grateful for all the young soldiers who lost their lives, but they were standing amongst elder statesmen of the highest water. The Boomers who grew into power, were just not the same caliber. If they'd had their way (and they are having their way all too often, today) the communists would have won.
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  55. It's only "bad" by the lights of this culture, which can't sustain its birthrate. This culture's values will be irrelevant, within a couple of decades. When women are expected to stay at home to raise their kids until at least age 5, and only to work part-time outside the home after, (and the variety of gainful employment available without leaving the house will climb back up to pre-cotton-mill levels) it's not going to be seen as oppression at all. Just like we're judging the past by our own value set, ("women were oppressed then" rather than "women were giving their all to try to keep babies alive, and keep people from collapsing mentally because half of babies died anyway") the future is going to judge women-at-home from its own value set. 2125 is going to look far more like 1925 than 2025 -- and not the ridiculous "flapper" minority either, who will be just as critiqued in 2125 as they were in 1925.
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  56. China is basically the United States rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise, if China had been settled entirely by immigrants coming down the Silk Road and up from Vietnam. The central plain draining a major river (drains east in China, drains south in America), the independent minded coastal cities separated by major mountainous terrain (in the south for China, in the west for America), and a connection to the rest of the world's trade network (northwest for China, northeast for America). As our level of ethnic mixing increases -- people moving for jobs, especially among the college-educated -- we're splitting into three countries: Atlantica, Pacifica, and the Midwest (which includes every county that can't see an ocean, plus much of the Old South, minus major urban colonies of Atlantica and Pacifica.) According to Zeihan's geopolitical theories, the rivers of the Midwest should make it the dominant power on the continent, but it isn't, calling into question his thesis of riparian determinism. Atlantica and Pacifica are the "coastal elites", which have an uneasy alliance based on their interests in global trade, common interests of large blocs of money, and desire for bureaucratic / clerical dominance. The Atlantica elites (with their legacy power bases in Washington DC and New York) have recently been supplanted by tech billionaire elites from Pacifica, as we've seen with the installation of Kamala Harris as Vice President despite having no qualifications, and their pushing the empty suit Gavin Newsom as a replacement for the old Atlantican champion Joe Biden.
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  57.  @oitubeman1019  Something like a third of all Germans were killed during the war. JS Bach (the composer) helped fix this by having like 20 children.
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  58. Paul Vanderklay refers to the Constitution as a "paper pope".
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  59. "For the first time in history you could decouple s*x from pregnancy" Nonsense. Any culture that knew how to make sausages knew how to make prophylactics, and that goes back millennia. The discovery of vulcanization (which allowed us to use more-effective latex) occurred in the early 19th century -- just before the Victorian Era. Sorry, but the physical effects of "the pill" are not terribly significant. The dire effects of family collapse -- now expanded into population collapse -- are likely to drive us to a new Victorian Era, as government turn to the basics of what keeps populations stable.
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  60. "We didn't even have a word for gravity until the 17th century" What? The concepts "gravity" and "levity" are Aristotelian, referring to the tendency of some things to be heavy and fall, and for some things to be charged with "levity" and go upwards.
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  61. "When something happens in Western Civilization, New York either created it, or is on top of it." This is no longer true. Every aspect of media -- advertising, publishing, journalism, news, TV -- has been taken from New York by Silicon Valley / the Internet, in the form of Google, Facebook, Amazon, Netflix, etc. Note that "Mad Men" is a historical period piece.
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  62. "Once Rome fell it couldn't be put together again, although Justinian tried" Arguably, he and Belisarius made sure it was too wrecked to function. If he had taken another approach, he might have succeeded.
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  63. "All things create their opposite" Any definition has an inverse. This isn't really "created" so much as discovered.
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  64. "Americans pay no attention to other countries" Have you ever heard the saying, "God invented war to teach Americans geography"?
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  65. "We don't demand tribute from our neighbors or randomly annex them" Who's here after Trump's comments about "Canada the 51st state", "We should buy Greenland", and we're in the middle of the Great Tariff Uncertainty?
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  66. Christian love: to will the good of the other. - St. Thomas Aquinas
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  67. What do you make of the fact that most women, worldwide, are on artificial hormones that fool their body into thinking that it's already pregnant? How about the fact that these chemicals do not break down quickly, have gotten into the water supply, and are adversely affecting men as well?
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  68. "They were all around at the same time as China" That's like saying they were all around at the same time as Britain, or at the same time as Europe. China is a geographical description, and to some limited extent a cultural one. Just because from time to time different imperial houses arise that can claim to give orders to far-flung peoples, doesn't mean the is any more continuity there. In fact, the fatality rate of Chinese civil wars arguably means there's less continuity.
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  69. "Science is humility personified" Er, except that it leads to Hilbertian hubris: "We must know. We will know!"
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  70. "Imagine if we have to restart our civilization" Imagine restarting our civilization without easily accessible fossil fuels. We're best off not letting things collapse in the first place.
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  71. "No one could have predicted the Naxi movement in 1900" A movement that leveraged the Kaiser's pan-German nationalist propaganda and educational system, an aggressive rump of Prussian militarism, and the mass mobilization of the working class? Eh, someone might have come up with that. They'd have been as shocked by the collapse of the old Imperial houses as anyone else, though.
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  72. "It would be hard to oppress g*y people who are well-liked today" Er, how much of that is simply suppression of criticism under Wokism? I suspect that once word gets out about how handsy g*y men tend to be when in positions of power (like tech investors), but especially power over children -- teachers, doctors, etc -- we're going to see the backlash against the entire rainbow agenda, not simply the most extreme.
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  73. "Mercury was equated with Thoth, and the Norse equivalent was Odin" Interesting to note, that when Jung tried to describe what was happening in Germany in the 1930s and early 40s, he said it was like Wotan wandering in the world again. He has an essay on that you might find interesting.
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  74. Monuments and place-names play a bigger role than we might thing, in keeping those historical connections alive.
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  75. "Sadly, a world where women are more oppressed, wage growth would improve markedly" I'm not sure giving women the option to be at home with their kids to age 5 counts as "more oppressed", especially when you think about how that would basically end the mental illness epidemic.
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  76. The number for Christianity in Iran is probably closer to 10-15% -- a single evangelical Christian ministry is reaching 10 million+ people in that country.
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  77. "Last year, Ethiopia had as many babies born as all of the EU combined. What kind of world does that create?" Oddly enough, a Lutheran one. See: religion in Ethiopia.
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  78. "It sounds like the Eucharist was a psychedelic" Or it's something Christians did INSTEAD of psychedelics.
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  79. "All of these companies that rule the world are based out Ecotopia except Netflix" Which is on the border of Ecotopia I guess, being at the south end of Silicon Valley in Los Gatos?
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