I was watching some YouTube videos made by people who rescue and refurbish old computers from the junkyard and return them to function. Basically, they take an old Core2Duo computer, fix some tiny thing that was wrong and turn it into a, well, Geekbench 3000 slug, so that one doesn’t have to buy a new i5 or i7 machine that would fly and work great, but instead extend the life cycle of an old, obsolete machine that will continue working below modern standards and annoy people for another 5 years.

Which made me think about analogies. You see, the leftist Western ideology, as formulated after WW2, wants to make us believe that all humans share the same hardware, all you need is install the right operating system of leftism and human rights, basically the right fundamental ideology, and run the right software, basically indoctrination, education and political correctness, and you get a good, emancipated human being. Then, if something doesn’t work, you blame pre-existing societal conditions, basically the software that interferes with the leftist ideological perfection, but you never actually consider the possibility that your premises might be faulty, that some types of hardware might be actually inferior and unfit for purpose (in translation, that some people might be simply to stupid to function in a modern environment, like trying to install Windows 10 on a Pentium IV computer; it might limp along, but it will work like shit).

Since the modern OS defines “good” as “opposite from Hitler”, let’s see how Hitler viewed those things. First of all, he didn’t see people as individuals, just as we don’t see computers as individuals. He would see humans as specific cases of some hardware type running a certain ideology and intellectual content. His rationale for getting rid of inferior races would be that they can’t function on the level that modern civilization demands, they basically can’t run the current OS and modern software, and keeping such obsolete or faulty hardware in function just drains the resources from the rest of humanity, it doesn’t actually add anything useful and takes resources away from the places where they could be desperately needed. Essentially, by killing a retarded child you free up resources that can be used for assisting 10 talented children; a computer analogy would be that by throwing away an old Core2Duo machine you allow yourself the option to actually put resources into buying a new i7 beast that will raise your overall functionality and productivity by a level that more than simply justifies the expense, so that getting rid of the old bucket actually isn’t a loss, it’s a gain. Keeping something shitty alive actually isn’t a net positive.

Also, there’s a matter of ideology. If some people’s heads are filled with an ideology that makes them want to kill you, you can either attempt to dissuade them, which is ineffective and costly, or you can simply kill them and produce new bodies with a non-hostile and useful OS to take the empty space. A computer analogy would be that you can take a box that runs Windows XP, and you can either install Windows 10 on it and thus refurbish it to work in a modern environment, or you can concede that it isn’t worth the trouble and simply throw it away and buy a new box that runs a modern OS quickly. Essentially, the concept would be that trying to teach inferior nations how to work on a German level isn’t worth the effort; it’s better to simply kill them all and expand the already high-functioning Germans to fill the empty space.

So, what we have here is akin to one of those philosophy seminar questions, such as “should we eat babies?”. If you react emotionally, you’re obviously too stupid to be there in the first place. If there’s something wrong with it, there should be a coherent rational response. In the case of eating babies, the rational response is that you don’t want to become a baby-eating monster, regardless of the fact that there is often an excess of babies and lack of food and the babies are nutritious. You don’t do certain things because the very choice of some options opens ethical floodgates that can destroy the connective tissue of human society. Growing decerebrated fetuses in order to harvest them for organs can make all the intellectual sense in the world, but it is such an ethically monstrous act, it opens the society to increasing horrors if practiced. Essentially, if you dehumanize other beings, if you lower the threshold of outrage over certain acts, it normalizes evil and society turns into a horror show.

This is an easy argument to make, but it’s faulty. In fact, evolution functions exactly along the lines of eliminating sub-par animals so that they don’t consume resources and contribute inferior genes to the gene pool. If you have wolves that have speed and strength sufficient for killing a sick or malformed deer, but can’t harm an average or superior deer, this will actually cleanse the deer gene pool and improve their population, primarily by freeing up the resources that would otherwise be wasted on something that either wouldn’t get the chance to reproduce at all due to sexual selection, or would reproduce with inferior offspring, or would be a nuisance in other ways. So, Hitler’s essential evolutionary argument is correct. His problem was that he had no faith in the power of free market of labor, goods and resources, among other things because his precious Germans were losing in the free market to Jews, who are arguably better. So, instead of letting the free market place resources in the hands of winners and let the losers wither away, he decided to replace that process with ideology and arbitrary assessments of superiority and inferiority. The result, of course, was a disaster and injustice of enormous proportions. I don’t, however, see a problem with the basic concept. Let people compete. Make just rules. The winners will accumulate most resources, and losers will starve. That’s actually perfectly fine and is recommended by Jesus – give more to those who already have the most, take away from those who are incompetent. That’s how you introduce healthy criteria of virtue into a society, instead of breeding whiners and victims who all demand someone to intervene in their favor in order to “redress social injustices”. The only social injustice takes place when you take resources from the successful ones in order to feed the unsuccessful ones. It’s like killing healthy deer in order to help the lame and sickly ones.

But our society went the other way – it decided that by existing, you have rights, and if reality doesn’t match that expectation, you call it injustice and whine until someone, either society or the state, punishes someone for success and compensates for your failure. This is not all that different from Hitler’s position – since his Germans can’t compete with the Jews on equal and fair terms, he will change terms and use the Germans’ advantage in physical power in order to simply kill the Jews and thus clear out the space for Germans. So, the problem with Hitler wasn’t that his philosophy and practice were pro-evolutionary and social-Darwinist, it’s the exact opposite: he didn’t have faith in social Darwinism because his chosen subset of mankind didn’t fare all that great in those conditions, so he decided to be a socialist and “redress injustices”.

A consistent believer in evolution would never adopt social interventionism. He would have faith that better will prevail, regardless of what he thought “better” to be. In order for better to prevail, it suffices to not rescue obsolete trash from the garbage heap and attempt to refurbish it, and not to play Robin Hood by taking from the haves and giving to the have-nots. Rather, buy that which is great, and avoid buying trash.

That works for humans, too. Give to those who inspire you. Don’t give to beggars who try to guilt you into giving them resources. Don’t feel guilty if worthless people are poor. Feel guilty if worthy people are poor, because that means that you didn’t support that which you deem worthy.

Your social responsibility is simply to support that which you deem worthy and great. Applied throughout society, that will make humans who are of no value to anyone fall to the garbage heap and die, all by themselves, without any need for some Hitler to act like an artificial evolutionary agent and kill them. Don’t feed that which is worthless, and it will die. Feed that which is worthy, and it will grow. Don’t have sex with something that is pitiful, and don’t feed that which is pitiful. As a result, you have instant eugenics of the best kind, without needing to resort to horrors in order to artificially implement something against the natural order.

So what is the conclusion about Hitler? What’s the problem with him? Basically, his problem is that he was a nationalist and a socialist. Because he was a nationalist, he tried to assure supremacy of his nation, against evolutionary free-market criteria. Because he was a socialist, he believed in state intervention with the goal of “redressing injustices”. The combination of those two was a nightmare of the worst kind. The problem wasn’t the eugenics, nor the concept of survival of the fittest, nor the concept of superior and inferior races. The problem was in the enforcement of arbitrary criteria. If you believe in evolution and survival of the fittest, laissez-faire. Hands off and let the successful ones succeed, and the unsuccessful ones fail. If your gardening demands weeding, it means you’re growing the wrong plants. Try growing nettles instead of spinach.

I’ve been watching videos with Americans discussing guns. You know the drill: they want to be armed in order to protect their life and liberty, blah blah.

My question is: what is your opponent going to use to shoot back?

Let’s imagine several scenarios where a gun might be useful.

The first scenario is home defense against a burglar. Someone breaks into your house, is possibly armed, will possibly take your family hostage or harm them in some other way. Maybe it’s a personal enemy who decided to take revenge, maybe it’s a drug addict trying to steal your things in order to sell them. In this scenario, a gun is very useful. You’re not a victim, you can fight back and since you’re fighting from your known territory, the chances are you’ll win. In this scenario, the advantages of having a gun are so compelling, it should actually be obligatory to own a gun, and of course keep it locked in a safe so that your children can’t shoot themselves by accident or stupidity. The pros of owning a gun and being trained and prepared to use it for home defense so heavily outweigh the cons, it’s not even an argument.

The second scenario is personal defense in a public space. You carry a gun on your person in the street, at work or in a bar. If you’re attacked, you are not limited to your physical strength, and for women and weaker men this is a difference between being humiliated and beaten up in every physical confrontation, and being able to preserve your dignity. This is a strong reason for always carrying a firearm. However, if we imagine a realistic scenario, you’re not the only one who will carry a gun. If carrying a gun becomes the norm, it will be like the Wild West, where everyone wore a revolver like they wore pants. Altercations were very likely to turn deadly, and the fact that they were armed didn’t necessarily make people more careful, and they in fact got drunk quite frequently. So the problem is, you’re imagining a situation where you’re facing an arrogant bully, and if you have a gun, you can prevent him from assaulting you. The problem is, in a gun-friendly society a bully will always carry a gun, and a bully will practice with a gun the most. So you will basically only have normalized the escalation of violence, where you won’t have a fistfight against a stronger bully, you’ll have gunfight against a better marksman with a faster draw. In both situations you will be humiliated, but if a situation includes firearms, you’ll also be killed. Also, since the possible confrontation isn’t taking place inside your home against an invader, but in open territory, your actions will be scrutinized by a court of law even if you win. If the situation wasn’t clear, you may end up in jail. So realistically, the cons actually outweigh the pros, which is probably why American society migrated away from the Wild West model. However, there’s one situation where it’s good to be armed, and that’s a terrorist attack, of the “active shooter” variety, where you have one or multiple shooters who are indiscriminately killing civilians. If everyone is armed, this will completely discourage this form of terrorism, because it will look like an attempt of robbing a doughnut shop filled with cops. Not the brightest idea. However, have in mind that drawing a gun in an active shooter scenario makes you the prime target for the terrorists, if you’re the only one with the gun. That’s where my original question comes into play: what is your opponent going to use to shoot back? The San Bernardino shooters used AR-15 rifles and 9mm pistols. The Paris attackers used AK-47 assault rifles, hand grenades and suicide vests. Realistically, you’re going to have a pistol with you. It’s better than not having anything if you know what you’re doing and you’re lucky enough not to be killed before you can do anything or while attempting to draw the weapon, but you are still likely to be killed. If everybody is armed, your odds improve, but in that situation the terrorists are more likely to simply use the element of surprise and detonate a bomb. The better armed the target, the more likely the terrorists are to use stronger force. The worse protected the target, the more likely the terrorists are to deploy an improvised attack with light firearms or even knives. So basically, being armed and careful will help, but it will not solve the problem, because then you won’t have an active shooter problem, you’ll have a suicide bomber problem.

The third scenario is a temporary collapse of civilization due to some disaster, like hurricane Katrina, where the city infrastructure collapses, help doesn’t come quickly enough, and there’s massive looting and unrest. All the looters can be assumed to carry a handgun. Yes, if you don’t have a weapon, you potentially have a problem. However, if you do have a weapon, you will be very likely to become a looter yourself, or be mistaken for one, and killed. Also, your main problem isn’t looting, it’s having access to clean water and food, maybe medications. When you think of survival gear, think of water purification tools, not guns. The most likely thing to get you killed is diarrhea from drinking impure water, or infection from cutting yourself on something nasty and not having access to antibiotics. Here, again, the important question is what are you actually fighting? It’s lack of infrastructure, lack of essential resources, poor hygiene and looters. It might be more important to think about ways of bartering for things you need to survive than to think of survival in terms of repelling physical threats, although it’s useful to have a weapon.

The fourth scenario is one of the commonly mentioned ones, and it’s civil war against tyrannical government. Americans like to imagine it as a scenario from their war of independence, where some tyrannical force will take over, and some George Washington will assemble the freedom-loving gun owners who will start a guerrilla war against them and eventually prevail, because freedom supposedly always prevails. However, let me illustrate my point with some images.

This is Vukovar after its fall, in 1991. The Serbs are parading the streets of the fallen city, singing about their leader needing to send some salad because there’ll be meat, they’ll slaughter the Croats. All men of fighting age were either immediately shot or transported to concentration camps in Serbia where they were tortured, killed or exchanged for Serbs. The freedom loving men took up arms against the evil force, and they lost.

This is Grozny, Chechnya, 1995. The country was taken over by separatists who declared independence from Russia. The Russians were in a difficult situation, realizing that if they allow the Chechens to secede, their country might disintegrate. The Russians decided to win at all cost and, with a lot of help from pro-Russian Chechen forces, they won.

In American civil war, the South declared independence and tried to secede from the Union. After more than a million casualties and a country destroyed, the South surrendered.

If a civil war breaks out after totalitarian government takeover, there will be two realistic scenarios. Either you will be part of a small band of “terrorists” who will have little or no resources at their disposal and little or no support in the apathetic population, or you will be a part of a massive rebellion that will include a serious part of the armed forces, police and the national guard. In first case, you’re dealing with a Ruby Ridge or Waco scenario. You’ll be killed, regardless of how many guns you have. In the second case, you’re dealing with the American civil war scenario. You may win or lose, but having a gun of your own is of limited importance because if a wing of the military is on your side, you’ll be recruited into the armed forces of the rebels and you’ll be issued a rifle and other military equipment.

However, if you think you’ll be dealing with a George Washington kind of rebellion, that’s out of the question, that’s completely unrealistic. If a tyrannical government is in charge, the first thing they’ll do is create propaganda according to which owning guns is dangerous, and owning guns that are useful for military purposes is criminal, something only terrorists have a need for. They will have lists of guns and their owners, and they will send a SWAT team to your house to confiscate your weapons. You will be alone, facing an overwhelming force, and unless you run to the forest in time and become a fugitive from the law, you will be either disarmed or killed for resisting the law. The law will be what the fascists in power decide to make it. Nobody will ask you. The general population will obey the law, as always. They obeyed the Nazis in Germany not because they loved them, but because that’s was the law and that was the government. Most Americans will do the same.

I’ll tell you what the Yugoslav government did in Croatia as part of the preparation for Serbian takeover. They confiscated the weapons of the territorial defense, the guns that were supposed to be at the disposal of the people in case of war. Essentially, Croatia was disarmed. Then they began the process of the political takeover where all the power would be centralized in Serbia and dissent wouldn’t be tolerated. Nevertheless, Slovenia and Croatia declared independence and one of the first things we did was to capture the army barracks on our territory, with the little small arms that we had. We also bought weapons on the international black market. Essentially, we had to act like terrorists because the Serbs had complete control of the military. The police forces, however, changed sides, as well as some important military officers of Croatian nationality. We had to build an army almost from scratch; in the meantime, the enemy had everything from tanks to airplanes and warships. We were disarmed, but we had the advantage of every person being able to handle weapons, in Yugoslavia it was taught in schools as part of the normal curriculum, so the entire male population was able to fight as soon as they were issued a weapon. The fact that we were disarmed was a problem, but only initially. Very quickly, that problem was overcome and we crushed the Serbs militarily. So basically, it’s better to allow yourself to be disarmed initially, then bide your time, organize with a few friends, steal weapons so that they can’t be traced to you and form or join opposition forces. The initial attack at your freedom will succeed; your enemy will know what he’s doing and you won’t. He will come at you with overwhelming force. If you resist, you will lose. However, being armed isn’t the same as being prepared. If you’re prepared, you can allow yourself to be disarmed and still retain initiative and strike back later, when opportunity presents itself. Getting yourself killed in the initial power grab doesn’t help anyone but your enemy, so essentially, all those AR-15s that you Americans have at home because you’re “prepared”, be prepared to give them up, without a fight, peacefully. However, also be prepared to lay a siege on a police station later, steal the weapons and organize an armed resistance cell. That’s what civil war looks like, and forget being seen as a hero. You’ll be seen as a home-grown Bin Laden, and the general population will hate you. If this dissent manages to get support from a significant wing of the military, you have a chance.

So basically, that’s my take on owning guns with a purpose of being prepared. It sometimes helps, that’s true, but it’s perfectly useless against being dominated by a tyrannical government, because any such government will know perfectly well how to pull your fangs out. Again, ask yourself what will come for you. If it’s a burglar, no problem. If it’s a heavily armed SWAT team or a platoon of regular soldiers, what will your AR-15 accomplish beside making you a legitimate target and your death perfectly justifiable?