Distinguishing Murder from Manslaughter and Insanity 

What is known is that a mother who repeatedly sought help, who by all accounts loved her children, ended up killing them and then tried to end her own life. Postpartum mental health crisis can put women into full psychosis, where they do not understand reality. They might think they are saving their children, or that something is inside them, or that someone is impersonating them. The stress of trauma, isolation, and the medications themselves can push a person over the edge of simple depression into full psychosis. This is not the same as ordinary depression or PTSD, though those likewise can be accelerated in the same manner. It is described like a dream-state in which the reality of the dream is unexplainable in waking life. People in that state can plan and carry out something horrible without grasping what they are doing because paranoia itself makes a person secretive but they have no motive. 

Male killings of children that draw heavy media attention are usually planned, cold, and calculating with a desire to get away with the murders… not a loving mother seeking help with a worsening condition that is dismissed and improperly treated. There are also cases of women doing this but they do not simply plan, but also disguise and conceal their actions showing their motive. Susan Smith exemplified this monstrous behavior, not only killing her children but planning it out to conceal the matter. There are also male examples of psychosis-driven filicide, such as Matthew Schleier, who was institutionalized after killing his son because that is what is done with those that commit such a crime while insane. The distinction matters, and so far no father who killed his children in a psychosis has gotten major media attention at this level.

Distinguishing intent in murder from insanity or unintentional killing is as old as civilization, likely older. The rest of the first world deals with this phenomenon differently… only the United States turns it into a massive shit-show that I find frankly embarrassing and shameful. The traditional distinction is not that killing ceases to matter when the killer is insane. It is that moral and legal responsibility depend partly upon the condition of the mind that performed the act. Pretty much all ancient legal systems recognized this, including Christian philosophers and pagan legal codes. The first clear formulation of insanity as a legal defense appears in Rome… the madman is punished enough for the crime by being mad.

On the Judgment of Solomon and the Labors of Heracles

A simple way to understand culpability beyond endless psychoanalysis is the Solomon test. Even in madness, a mother who killed her own loved and cherished children would not want to live once regaining sanity. Her suicide attempt is beyond what anyone trying to plan and get away with a murder would carry out. In this manner, proper medication now and a very public trial are crueler than leaving her in a suicidal state with a knife. Information on her mental state after the killings has not been released, though witnesses describing her as a mother and her own diaries do not paint the picture of a cold-blooded killer. There are only a handful of motives for a mother to kill her own child if it is not insanity. The distinguishing factor is guilt to an extreme extent that follows after the madness passes and a lack of attempt to conceal the crime because there is no motive other than the madness. True cold blooded murder stems from calculating, intentional motivation which sets them aside even from crimes of passion in their degree of severity.

Mythology explains guilt after horrific familicide while insane. Heracles was driven mad by Hera and killed his own wife and children. When he regained sanity, his guilt drove him to seek extreme absolution. The Pythia directed him to cleanse his soul through labors, which paved the way for him to eventually gain immortality. King Athamas and Queen Ino were likewise driven mad by Hera. The king, in his madness, killed their first son. The queen committed an extended suicide with their second son by leaping into the ocean, and thus they both became sea divinities. Her self sacrifice was proof of equal sacrifice for the act. 

Unintentionally killing those you love is a pain few survive… what distinguishes them is the guilt that reaches levels of extreme atonement or death because they did not intend to murder. In this they stand apart from the cold and monstrous, for they cannot live comfortably with their actions, which to them become a living nightmare unthinkable in a sound state. What is sacred in horrible tragedy is that it represents an extreme culmination of micro tragedies of the times, that result in a sacrifice that can catalyze meaningful change or action either to correct the culture or dissolve it. Their divine madness and sacrifice is not reducible to the act of killing and suicide, but that they represent a sacrifice for cumulative error in their society that everyone can empathize with to some small way… and herein lies the difference between the truely ancient worldview and that of the mirror images of liberals and conservatives (puritans) who either want to excuse and save or vilify in isolation a tragic event instead of understanding it as a catalyst for meaningful action. What this tragedy mythologically represents is the attack on motherhood itself, not that mothers hate their children but that the conditions of society have become such that every foundation that fosters healthy motherhood is being dismantled.

The act of killing her children does not make her a hero, and it does not make her husband at fault. Those championing the mother as faultless or casting the father as the real villain are missing a huge part of the picture. Those demonizing the mother as if she intentionally did this and holds all responsibility as an isolated individual in the same manner as intentional murder are not conserving anything except individualism that ignores what atomization has done to families. After what she did, if it was done out of psychosis and delusion, the pain would be so great she would want to be put out of her misery. It is all around just a horrifying story. I will not join either camp of championing or demonizing the mother or the father. Rest in peace to the children.

Media Driven Narratives Vs Organic Internet Outrage

The case has become extremely emotionally charged and shows the internet’s ability to accelerate a mob mentality. Some cases do this organically while others are highlighted and driven by the media. The focus of this one is clearly driven by the media and agitators, yet there are also enough social-media influencers to drive it to epic proportions on their own. There is something strange about the way people morally prostrate themselves, soaking up the play-by-play as if this is a gotcha game instead of a horrible tragedy. The mediatization of this is beyond callous, it is also a form of censorship and goes hand in hand with hiding other cases by focusing attention on this one to such an extreme extent.

The outletting of frustration with two-tier justice and medical oligopoly control hides a real problem, but the back-and-forth reactivity is feeding a battle between the sexes instead of addressing the underlying issues. Mental health care is absolutely horrible for many real Americans who need it most, especially mothers and warriors. Postpartum conditions (and her case seems to be postpartum psychosis not simple depression, partly pushed by the medications themselves) are treated horribly and not given priority or distinct treatment. Post-traumatic disorders in men returning to civilian life are likewise treated poorly. Those stresses, horrible conditions, and the pharmaceutical mismanagement that follows can lead straight into psychosis. 

That aside, there is something wrong in how reactive people have become… it is an extension of the same sensationalism the media uses to gain views. No one looks into the complexity of the case compared to other circumstances, they just post. Many conservatives have become mirror images of the feminists they claim to oppose: so reactive and ready to throw blame that they do not research what they discuss. PTSD is not the same as psychosis. We can empathize and still refuse to call the act excusable. There is a puritanical simplicity in the framing that does not do justice to the severity of this tragedy. People in delusional psychosis can plan something horrible and still not realize what they are doing, thus is the nature of paranoia.

Republican rage is justifiable with coddled liberals throwing fits over pronouns that over-medicalize their existence when what they really lack is meaningful hardship. There are also many cases of atomized, isolated suffering and trauma that get lumped in with the rest and cannot be “un-medicalized” unless we have foundational shifts in our culture and civilization. Hard-drug users now share the same emergency rooms and care facilities as mothers with serious postpartum complications, adding further trauma, less adequate care, and depleting resources. 

Repeat offenders walk with a slap on the wrist like the cases of Guzman in Nebraska and others like Decarlos Brown… the media does not highlight them but directs the pent-up frustration at this case. Conservative influencers, shallow in their ability to reason or consider other perspectives, jump at the chance to showcase their morality the same way liberals do at the proxy of a mother in a real tragedy. Instead this frenzy is an outlet without teeth, hijacking energies that should be directed at sending other races away to make room to fix our own problems at home. Guzman and Brown never should have been let out repeatedly, taken up our resources to deal with Americans, or been unleashed on those in distress in the same settings and instead returned to enrich her native lands. Decerlos Brown should have been squatting outside of a dung hut. 

We do not see the cases that actually need addressing, which is the way media circuses and censoring works. This one gets the pent-up frustration going taking the place of other cases, and the media knows when a pressure valve is needed that can make both sides absurd. The result is a deepening divide between the sexes instead of any understanding. Conservative puritanical influencers and their feminist mirror images fling shit at each other in one massive outpouring of frustration catalyzed by what the media chooses to highlight. These people are led around by the nose and speak before they think. Controversy is lucrative, so they can become enriched by anything inflammatory. No one actually cares about fixing the state of things, just outletting frustration when the media highlights it.

Conspiracy Theories Show a Major Flaw in Our Justice System

Investigations where more than one party is injured or where very few people could be accountable are not what people think or see on TV. Investigators do not go into it with an open mind or as if anything is possible. They are regular people, and many guilty parties get off on charges because of mishandled investigations. Even the best of investigations are linear, looking at a suspect with tunnel vision instead of accounting for variation or looking to map what actually happened.

Courts are much more complex than most realize. There are tons of aspects dictated by the judge in private before the trial even starts. A defense is not trying to prove reality, a prosecution does not investigate impartially or honestly but tries to prove guilt and win. The defense will go with the best defense within the parameters of what the judge allows, so if that is accepting terms of guilt even to attempt an insanity plea then that is in the best interest of the client and they will do so. The extent that a judge is closed or open to various arguments is not known to the public but can be inferred that some are far more harsh or narrow than others.

This does not by any means mean that the paranoia around the case is true. It does not do the case, society, or the father a service that investigation is not done to uncover the full truth of a crime, even purposefully investigating him to have proof that he did not. Every i should be dotted and every t crossed because there are also cases of framing. This way in the rare occasion of that or abuse of powers etc it is found, and in the case of an emotionally charged public spectacle they can definitively say that they looked into all potential suspects and fully ruled him out with proof.

This would require more manpower or less overtaxed systems than we have. We have a crisis of incompetence and an unnatural excess of dependency from foreigners brought in creating chaos and upholding the world that we are so overstretched that we cannot actually offer proper investigation and attention to every crime. This is the price paid for multicultural society and excessively long supply chains, in addition to horrible conditions when seeking help from every form of the commons from mental health, emergency rooms, social services etc.

Man and Woman as Reflections of Each Other

Men are reactive, and often rightly so. White men are systematically discriminated against in their own lands. Two-income households first destroyed the home and now many are left out even of that. Their frustration is understandable. Women experience their own set of issues in the current dynamic, especially mothers. Men see the worst of women online and apply it to every disagreement. They see women receiving preference in corporate jobs and conclude that women have it easy across the board. The isolated suffering of men is paralleled by the less visible suffering of women. By our nature we are hidden even in plain sight. Spengler’s Universal Law of Gender Parity states: “At all times and in all places, the men and women of every culture deserve each other’. Both sexes suffer in tandem even when only the visible financial unfairness is measured, which is a very shallow vantage of reality.

Women who want to become mothers cannot find mates who can support that on average, because young men are blocked from the high-status work they are suited for and thus their ability to provide. Couples who do form are under heavy financial and time constraints which result in stress and greater isolation than ever as extended family networks disappear. Women become more dependent on their husbands for emotional support; men become more dependent on women for financial contribution. Neither is at fault for the arrangement, yet it is extremely taxing when children are young. Women return to regular duties or to work almost immediately. Many on the right scorn any complaint and tell them to toughen up (while still claiming to want soft, receptive women). Atomization of the family unit is not a matter of toughness. A woman’s innate nature is connective, hidden, bonding, and foundational. 

Expecting mothers in the postpartum period to toughen up so they can hand off their baby to a stranger to watch, pay for it, work long hours detached from their family, then come home to chaos with hormonal madness in their body trying to regulate and no sleep is a modern distortion. Even in the best circumstances, this is highly unnatural and harmful to the soul. At least when people fought the elements to survive, there was bonding and purpose. Women wore their babies while they worked among extended family. The stresses of modern American life are unnatural… they destroy bonds and meaning. Clancy’s diaries are not the words of a cold-blooded, child-hating killer. They are the words of a woman stressed that she does not have the time to bond with her children and heal after having three in such a short time period. That “mom guilt” is exactly what many mothers living in this arrangement empathize with.

Postpartum Confinement Period for Spiritual Holism

In all traditional cultures, women had a confinement period after giving birth. It was usually forty to sixty days of rest, nourishing food, and increased bonding between mother and child. It culminated with rituals that concluded and purified them of the hardships of birth. These steps were necessary for emotional, physiological, and spiritual health in both mother and child and for the bond between them. This is why postpartum mental-health collapse is so rampant now: the stress, lack of proper nutrition, rest, and bonding amount to a form of torture that creates physiological and psychological effects. Child after child, it accumulates. On top of that are unnatural effects of long supply chains with contaminated food, endocrine disruptors, heavy metals, mycotoxins, and the horrors of modern pharmaceutical concoctions and the conditions under which they are given with no accountability. It combines a million different ways into a recipe for disaster.

Traditional practices of postpartum confinement hold more wisdom than the simple motions of rituals, but the rituals mark the underlying spiritual processes of reciprocated sacrifice directed at future generations of the mother and her family. These practices are a form of integrative healing that bonds the baby to the mother, the mother to her support system, and allows the father to be among men during this period instead of a stressed-out, isolated family unit. The physical acts are a foil for the spiritual. Our lack of holistic care is itself a symptom of a sick, atomized, lost society. The same loss of healing traditions appears in how warriors are discarded and mistreated when they return to civilian life. These two groups held in high esteem in heroic cultures now bear the brunt of the modern world in complementary ways. What happens overtly to men happens covertly and more insidiously to women, and instead of complementary sacrifice directed at future generations, they are fighting each other online over the most extreme version and end-stage of this dynamic, which is what great tragedy is… an extreme form of the cumulative hardships of a culture in a specific time that highlights its greatest losses. People relate to and learn from tragedy because small aspects apply to so many, just not in their full extreme form that overwhelms the group subconscious. 

Confinement periods are the foundation of a culture that nurtures the birth of two people, the mother and the child. Bonds are not the only aspect of a society, but they are its foundation that all excellence first grows from and surpasses. When they are missing, everything falls out of alignment and chaos follows. The degree of imbalance in our society is harmful and will keep producing unnatural, meaningless forms of suffering. We are obsessed with individual responsibility while refusing to look at the structure that creates the conditions. We can have empathy for the family and even for the mother, to the extent that it forces reflection on those conditions… rather than another frenzy of mass emotional release from people who already carry frustration with mental health on either side of the issue. The desire to condemn an act that was not morally chosen of sound mind in moral indignation is itself a type of madness people are caught in. Intention and willful murder have been distinguished from acts done in insanity for as long as there has been civilization. 

Grief in tragedy is the greatest teacher that can sharpen our reasoning faculties. If we only double down on “individual responsibility” without examining the structure of the society that produced this, the depth of such a tragedy as a mother going insane and killing her loved and wanted children is lost on us. Medicalization and the conditions of treatment can only cover symptoms for so long and do not get to the root of the issue. Medicalization cannot be removed if we do not first return to our foundational wisdom to grow from. 

People say the medical professionals are also at fault even if they will only face civil liability, not criminal, just like the international oligopolies that break apart and poison the commons and atomize people. That observation is still not deep enough especially when it is being used to engage in this frenzied sensationalizing… a swarm frenzy of righteous indignation towards those in power and their proxy’s upholding those conditions would be much more honorable and worth the chaos. This cannot happen when there are pressure valves of sensationalized bickering. We can no longer transmute tragedy into wisdom through meaningful reflection, only polarization. Our society as a whole has become mad… addicted to vapid spectacle in a nightmare of detachment, and we have to live in it.

Furiosus satis ipso furore punitur.

She had received a positive trisomy screening several weeks earlier. False positives are common; I had one with my first son and knew the stress it caused. I had reassured her that further testing would clear things up and show that nothing was wrong. Unfortunately, my friend was not as lucky as I was. Her test was not a false positive as I soon found out.

Her first baby was a healthy, energetic boy with her father’s hazel eyes, his father’s dimpled smile, and her mischievous, silly personality. Watching him grow from a stout, curious toddler into an exuberant young child had been the most joyful and rewarding experience of her life. Her husband sacrificed so she could stay home. They did not have much, but made it work by living simply, thrifting, and her making nearly everything from scratch while patiently raising their boy. Their marriage grew stronger through their mutual sacrifice, made meaningful by sharing their son’s development.

Parenting had been so fulfilling that they wanted another child, another unique combination of their family lines as a living legacy. They were experiencing the same devotion and sacrifice their own parents and grandparents had shown them, now with deeper appreciation from the vantage of parents. It was devastating when they struggled to conceive again for so many years. They had dreamed of children close in age who could play together, grow up together, and support each other through life.

Then this pregnancy finally came, and they were over the moon. I still remember her dancing around the house with the positive test when we were visiting. She was so excited, and started planning a special dinner to surprise her husband. Their son was ecstatic. He wore his “Big Brother” shirt everywhere, showing everyone with a dimpled smile. He hoped for a little brother to be his best friend, but said he’d be happy with a sister too.

I held my friend as she grieved the devastating news. Ask yourself, what was she grieving?

Children as the Embodiment of Creative Potential

The loss of a young child is the hardest thing a parent can go through. It forces them to face the end of their most precious creation and the terrifying lack of control over outcomes. Even harder is the child with an extreme and permanent disability, where the future potential is forever gone yet the child still lives. This extends the grieving process without the finality of death. The family is confronted daily with that lost potential, like a wound that never heals.

Why are crimes against children the most grievous? It is more than just their innocence. Children represent creative potential. They carry the continuation of a living legacy and the possibility of future creation, experience, and contribution. When harm comes to a child, it’s not just a life that’s stolen. It’s the theft of unrealized possibilities, generations of sacrifice, and creative potential that would have entered the world.

This is why equating pets with children feels off to many. A pet is a forever-dependent companion, but a child embodies directional growth by moving from dependence toward full actualization. Meaningful life has a flow: those at or near full capacity bear responsibility for those whose capacities are still unfolding or waning. That flow creates bonds, meaning, and continuity.

My friend’s grief extended beyond the immediate diagnosis or the disruption to ease of her life, since she was already willing to sacrifice hedonism to rear children. She was grieving the loss of the creative potential of her unborn child… the loss of an unfolding future in which mutual sacrifice, development, and fulfillment would be shared within the family. People have to convince themselves that a child with Down syndrome represents no real loss, much as they convince themselves they hold no preferences for their own group or kind.

Abortion and the Eternal Nature of the Soul

Religious beliefs differ on abortion and the soul. When I had my false positive for Down syndrome in my first pregnancy, I lived in a strict red state. Genetic counseling shocked me as the counselor’s values felt worlds apart from my own. Her first reassurance was that someone would adopt and cherish the child if  I did not want them.

I have believed in reincarnation since childhood, even before I knew the term. I recounted past lives unprompted and unwelcome. I have always felt souls wanting to be born and knew my children before they physically existed. I sensed each pregnancy before a missed cycle because I felt their soul’s presence in my body. After a devastating miscarriage, that soul waited. I got pregnant again quickly and knew it was the same child waiting to be my first son.

For the counselor to assume my child should be born in a body with a chromosomal mistake that forever hindered their potential was insulting. Trapping his soul in that state was horrible enough, and then giving my flesh and blood away to someone that convinced themselves they wanted another’s Down Syndrome child was more than I could handle. 

My child was seen as some interchangeable being that needed to be born for the sake of its body, even without its ability to fully express its creative potential. This is an emphasis on the body and not on the soul. That is a life sentence entombing the soul of my child in a body that had a mistake in its forming that in a natural state does not live long.

I do not want to force Christians to abort children with Down Syndrome as I know that mismatched spiritual beliefs to government policy is devastating. But forcing me to carry one against my beliefs is also horrifying. I would have traveled out of state if it had not been a false positive. Pregnancy is a real sacrifice as I could die in labor or face severe complications. Birthing creates a bond, making adoption even harder. Those risks are worth it for the children I have, but mandating it for extreme deformity or trisomy is not worth the sacrifice. 

I would have mourned the pregnancy like the miscarriage, but it would have been a sacrifice on my part having to bear the weight of that decision so the soul of my child could return in a capable body, unlike a later death tangled in karma. This is not reckless disregard for life or seeing a fetus as a mere clump of cells. 

There are good societal reasons to limit elective abortion which creates a vacuum of spiritual belief and harms the sanctity of motherhood. However, this does not apply the same to the extreme of preventing early termination for chromosomal abnormalities when it is taken seriously and done for the good of the soul of the child, the integrative whole of the family, and by extension the society they are a part of.

Modern Technology Harms Life By Emphasizing Extension Over Vitality

Modern medical technology allows earlier and more accurate detection of severe conditions, enabling decisions before birth and deep bonding occur. Such choices should be grieved and treated with moral weight, not as casual convenience. For many families, and in ancient cultures like Sparta, these decisions were about the direction of sacrifice and what a family and culture truly values.

Yet the same technology also extends lives far beyond natural limits. This creates drawn-out suffering. Families devote decades of time, energy, and focus to a child who remains largely static. Siblings witness parental resources flowing one-way, learning that value lies more in caretaking than in cycles of growth and actualization.

This brings up some hard questions… At what point does extending life end up extending and spreading suffering instead? Everything is connected but the costs are simply displaced in a less visible manner. Valuing all life in their natural state is not the same as forcing ourselves to stretch that loss out over much longer time in artificial conditions.

When sacrifice becomes endless and one-way toward total incapacity, our priorities shift. We start to view all children as inconvenient sacrifices instead of meaningful ones and disdain the duties of life instead of finding fulfillment in them. Their development from helplessness to full actualization brings the sacrifice to fruition and carries a people forward. This makes them far more than a financial investment, they are a cultural legacy.

Effect on Family Dynamics and Potentiality

There is also a practical aspect to consider. Incentives do not boost fertility in decadent times because the money gained does not outweigh the sacrifice that parenting requires. The drive to create comes from spiritual vitality, but limited resources and excessive stress reduce fertility even for those who want more children. Our bodies even terminate pregnancies under extreme stress, and responsible parents will not have more if they lack the time and energy.

A child with Down syndrome takes significant energy, care, and focus away from existing and future children. The ongoing cost of provisioning a child who will always need extreme time and investment will strain the whole family. Other children bear that burden without the balance of growth or actualization that brings fulfillment. This adds stress, reduces healthy family dynamics, and increases the chance of less actualization and more tragedy. Drug addiction does not exist in a vacuum but comes from dysfunction within the family.

Even with unlimited resources, it is dehumanizing to pretend the wealthy are unaffected. Elon Musk would not be materially hindered by only having children with Down syndrome, but would he be the same man? His passion and fulfillment seem tied to legacy, as he went on a crusade against liberalism after losing a son to trans propaganda. That cost him nothing economically, but the stolen potential of his son drove him to great action.

Rearing children is always a form of meaningful sacrifice, even for the wealthy. The direction and what form of sacrifice matters. It is not only time and energy that are at stake, but also the family’s broader sense of balance, fulfillment and direction of drive, relational dynamics, and values that shape their future.

Disability Compared to No Creative Capacity

You could say people receive tragic news every day. A healthy child might be struck by illness or accident, forcing the family to care for them or mourn lost potential. Even with permanent disabilities, many retain faculties to build a meaningful life. Grieving some lost potentials while focusing on others is part of the formation of meaning, and can even sharpen some potentials that never would have existed.

“Even the disabled or afflicted can be eugenic if they crawl towards the sun with a knife between their teeth.” -Jonathan Bowden

This quote captures how someone can lose some physical or mental capacity but still exert their will and creativity upon the world. 

A brilliant woman with brain damage from a tragic accident can still be a loving mother fostering potential through the creation of children. A man without legs can pour effort into music or physics. A man with trauma-induced mental illness can contribute to philosophy for generations. A blind woman can write beautiful poetry or birth a brilliant artist. Disability does not erase creative capacity and sometimes partial loss of some faculties creates focused ability. Dostoevsky, Proust, and Edgar Allan Poe all turned hard lives into profound insight and influence.

In contrast, someone with Down syndrome, even milder cases but especially extreme cases, can be pleasant but has no real potential to exert will on the world. They remain in a static state without the ability to create in every fundamental way. They also take away from the ability to support other’s creative potential and actualization. Nietzsche did not live up to his own vision, but he saw beyond his suffering and eventual madness and exerted creative will on the world. He inspired the most brilliant minds of the 20th century as the catalyst for the German Conservative Revolution. He was many things, but static was not one of them.

“The lame rides a horse, the handless is herdsman,
The deaf in battle is bold;
The blind man is better than one that is burned,
No good can come of a corpse.” -Havamal

At face value, this quote says that life is better than death. The deeper meaning is that the living will can drive creative capacity through, even when the body is hindered in some capacity. A soul can find a unique way to express itself even in a limited body. But trapping a soul for an entire life in a body without any ability to express itself, is harmful to that soul and to the collective unconscious of the family and people it belongs to.

Progenic Hierarchy and Care for the Elderly

The disabled are not disposable, and neither does this reasoning limit caring for the elderly. I spent much of my junior year of high school caring for my grandmother as she died of cancer. It was not an abstract duty but a meaningful full circle since she had helped raise me. She taught me Progenic Hierarchy by living it. I did not see it as a burden as many see sacrifice, even in a positive way. I simply wanted more time with her.

Would her life have felt complete without seeing the family’s potential continue? My family could care for her at home because we lacked static dependents draining our time and energy. Her decades of sacrifice helped her progeny to be successful enough to have spare time to care for her in turn, and the drive to do so when most displace this unpleasantness onto others. Even my aunt helped with my infant cousin, and my grandmother lit up at his coos because he embodied a continuation of the family’s creative capacity and gave meaning to her life’s work sacrificing for her family.

Caregiving comes and goes in phases throughout life, but it should not be the central purpose or the direction of all sacrifice. There is always a cost somewhere. When we make life extension the main focus, new life and potential end up getting sacrificed in other ways. How many boomers today have sacrificed for the actualization of young white men who are the most marginalized group in their own lands (yes there are some but they are the exception to the rule)? How many would willingly send young men off to die in war? The direction of sacrifice in this age is not balanced.

In a war, it is young men who step up heroically to protect the potential of their culture. They are far more willing and able to do that when society is geared towards bonds and their actualization… so they have children of their own to defend rather than a society full of increasing dysfunction. Their sacrifice would be deeply venerated and serve future generations in a natural and balanced culture, but not in one focused on extending all life for its own sake.

We live in a culture that goes to extreme lengths to extend the lives of the elderly and those with severe chromosomal conditions, while overlooking the potential of young men and still expecting them to carry the heaviest burdens. The more we pour endless caretaking into those without real potential, the more we hinder the ones who actually have it. That underlying shift in values is likely why there is growing resentment toward those with trisomy. Even though I find that distasteful, I can understand the underlying discontent with what we are collectively sacrificing toward and at what cost.

Actualization of Strong Men and Bonded Foundations to Oppose Globalization

Excessive caregiving in isolation weakens foundations against external threats, elites, or primitives. A society without strong, capable men and bonded foundations is easy prey. Reducing heroism to caretaking of the dysfunctional ignores that the sacrifice of birth and the creative aspects of a people are balanced with and protected by the great sacrifice of strong men contending with real enemies.

Self-sacrifice is beautiful because it is chosen, cyclical, forward-moving, and brings fulfillment and meaning. Artificially extending the old or incapacitated imbalances life as much as ending it for productivity. Neither prioritizes actualization. Love for children, provisioning them, and helping them build a fulfilling future is already hard. We need sacrifice balanced with bonds, joy, and legacy.

We protect the raw potential of infancy, bond through its actualization into adults, and find meaning when they contribute to their people. Diminishing that potential leads to meaninglessness, addiction, and escapism. Loss of potential is grievous; self-sacrifice for meaningful causes matters more because of fully realized potential.

Life is not a binary of self-sacrifice or hedonism. It is the right ordering and direction of sacrifice as the cost of forming meaning. Joyful, creative, heartbreaking, and rigorous experiences balance each other. Terminating a pregnancy for Down Syndome should be done with grave consideration for future generations. The harm of extending a life without potential must be weighed against the integrative impact on the family and culture as a part of a whole body. It is not because imperfect people are disposable, but because creative potential gives purpose and direction to sacrifice in life.

I explore this dynamic in greater detail in The Lost Heroic Age, Part Four.

Trade also facilitated the rise of a world currency and global financial system, concentrating power in international corporations and requiring a military-industrial complex to sustain it. While many label the West “capitalist,” true capitalism does not exist. Instead, we see varying degrees of state-directed economies where extracted funds of the commons are funneled into social welfare, military spending, and corporate subsidies. All White nations are hemorrhaging resources to sustain long supply chains and mass migration to the benefit internationalist interests. Trade deals dismantlde local foundations rather than strengthening them.

Once these long supply chains and unbalanced trade relationships between far divergent groups are dismantled, healthier trade can be built in moderation between similar peoples. Shared capabilities and living standards prevent disparities from being leveraged to undercut labor. Specialization can still occur, but basic needs of food, shelter, essential production must remain locally grounded. This keeps inflation on necessities lower than general inflation and shields communities from the artificial pressure to inflate GDP, which is the opposite of what we currently have in the West and Europe.

Long supply chains are antithetical to autonomy because identity grows from rooted locality that is destroyed for cheaper foreign labor markets. Decadence and mercantilism thrive on global interconnected trade. No nation or empire can be truly sovereign while operating within this framework. The real opposition is not theoretical economic models, which now converge globally, but localized supply chains. False GDP inflates basic needs to mechanize and subjugate populations under bureaucratic managerialism, fueled by excess exports.

This export excess is only a temporary fix between global competitors that undercuts their own foundations to vie for global power. It enables interference in other nations’ sovereignty while leveling hierarchy between peoples, just as internal hierarchies are flattened in multicultural states. Recent wars expose this weakness. The only long-term solution is localization wherever possible. Trade should be limited primarily to raw materials unavailable domestically until a confederation of the Global North can form.

The globalist premise posits false egalitarianism with the third and developing world, and its opposition likewise seeks their leveling or stalemate in weapons, international affairs, and access to material excess. This is why opposition to globalism remains trapped in the liberal moral binary frame of White victimizer and brown victim, or where initiators are condemned and responders sanctified. However, initiating aggression is excused when it is passive-aggressive or non-White (eg color revolutions or primitive proxies). This is simply an egalitarian pacification of strength, as if aggression is the root of all evil. This is why liberals and primitives are hypocritically excused because of disparity of means, while agency for their dysfunction is placed on Whites. Value is placed on reaction over proactive action, destroying all that is healthy and beautiful. 

The war in Ukraine highlights this moral framework.  It is inseparable from the globalist bureaucratic apparatus that European politicians are embedded in through the military-industrial complex, while blaming the place of their dependency. Every European is as much a part of this system as Americans, just at a different rate of progression. This reflects globalist morality: the belief that external blame and claiming victimhood somehow grants exoneration. Only action does. Europeans possess stronger foundations than the far West to confront or replace their own politicians and governments. Instead of blaming us for conditions they are unwilling to address, they should view Americans as canaries in the coal mine.

Ending the war in Ukraine would enable greater localization of resources in Europe. The limited oil Europe depends on from the Middle East stems directly from this conflict. Ukraine should have been forced to negotiate at the onset, but destroying Russia proved more important to politicians than Ukrainian lives. They ignored the reasons Russia invaded because of the simplistic globalist moral framework of inherently blaming initiators of overt action. War is not inherently evil, decadent complacency is. War is meant to redress grievances, not just shame the overt aggressor when there was long provocation. Russia represents the only meaningful opposition to the bureaucratic apparatus. This is even seen in their exercising restraint with extreme weapons in contrast to Europe and globalists’ willingness to fight to the last Ukrainian man.

European positions in Ukraine mirror the North’s attrition strategy against the Confederacy in the American Civil War: victory came only through the near-limitless expenditure of economic and “human” capital against the South. The South outperformed them in individual battles, but had limited people to sacrifice compared to the North’s willingness to bring in mercenaries and slaves. Globalists view people as mere human capital and care little about meaningful sacrifice. This mentality dominates Europe’s ruling classes. Their readiness to import Africans as replacement “human capital” for Ukrainians reveals that they seek to “win” is an economic zone at the cost of its people… the epitome of a state detached from and consuming its own constituency. This underlies all politicians' calls to continue or accelerate the conflict.  

The expanded third and developing world serve as human capital to the globalist apparatus, which drains the life force of Whites to sustain its unnatural supply chains and migrations. This is parasitical by nature. The notion that we must uplift, improve conditions for, or bear responsibility toward the third world is harmful, and how the system expanded globally in the first place. We are responsible for destroying the bureaucratic apparatus of globalism, not for adopting its worldview and burdens. The enemies of the West seek to replace one bureaucratic apparatus (like the petrodollar) with another equally flawed. A true opposition from the West must avoid saving the petrodollar or ceding to circular opposition within the same paradigm.

All global trade networks depend on the protections of the military-industrial complex, replacing that with another will devolve into the same issues in a new form. Global trade networks inherently require enforcement, and toppling the current one will create a vacuum. Every European ally that decries America still trades, produces exports, and imports goods within this system. Thwarting this demands more than victim frameworks and externalization. This is a harsh truth to face.

Ending this system requires far more than complaint and short-term rejection. It demands more than rejecting military protections or NATO in favor of local military autonomy, though that is not even the minimum. Localization of basic needs is essential, including energy and food production. This necessitates shifting economies away from bureaucratic control and global price setting. This foundation could lead to trade networks between the Global North itself, leaving the third and developing worlds to revert to a minimal balance with nature.

The idea that the third and developing world will somehow circumvent this is foolish. China inflates its GDP by funding exports at a loss to secure international oligopoly investment while claiming opposition to the system it depends upon. It could not sustain extensive trade networks unless the Global North was still entrapped within it, which is one of many reasons to gain better relations with Russia. The same pattern holds for the artificial first-world states in the Gulf, or other supposed civilizational poles like India, which rely on weak markets like call centers for oligopoly mercantilism and form intermittent alliances for short-term, opportunistic gains. 

If they attempted to replay supply chains among themselves without the global north they would implode. Arabs, despite vast oil wealth, cannot effectively run the military technologies they purchase without contracting the First World. Similarly, they require external construction to build their infrastructure of gaudy veneer covering shanty town foundations. China depends on Gulf oil and international oligopoly production; India’s economy would collapse without their service industry for internationalism. The only power the global south has stems from trade routes within intricate, complicated systems they could not independently uphold, which is why they are inseparable from the globalist framework. 

Trading within the Global North, repatriating raw material development, and emphasizing local self-sufficiency is required to oppose globalism. This would strengthen local, national, and civilizational identities. It would cut out intermediary global managerialism and third and developing world chaotic enmeshment.  Ending excessive supply chains is essential to end the bureaucratic apparatus of globalism, which allows for simplicity in law for complexity in living systems to naturally emerge. Localization fosters complex, rhizomic structures with strong foundations that civilizations stand upon. From this, vitality forms natural hierarchy instead of mechanical resource extraction. True environmentalism extends from localization, as long supply chains greatly increase energy use. 

A confederation of the Global North would only be possible by seeding this new foundation and in some manner, facilitating the fall of the old global system by repatriating what is outsourced. The Global North encompasses the only true poles possible; the rest will implode under their own decadence and dysfunction once we stop upholding them. What is unnaturally expanded will implode, and attempting to prevent this is against creation and life itself. This system feeds on our vital force and drains the life out of future generations. Inaction carries generational costs, so the short-term costs of bringing development home and ending international oligopolies are less than the long-term consequences of this global trading system. 

The only true way to oppose both globalism and is to reject false opposition in favor of a paradigm shift. This means moving beyond the petrodollar, ending the bureaucratic apparatus of internationalism, and establishing an entirely new system with an emphasis on prioritizing the localization of basic needs over GDP. A true shift, not ricocheting opposition, defines the difference between a foundational system to grow from and an extractive system that destroys its own constituency.  

While parrhesia centers around the vertical hierarchy of spirit, isegoria extends into the horizontal structure of the polis. Isegoria was the right of male citizens to speak in the assembly or public agora, to participate in governance and the commons. Isegoria did not go beyond this procedural provision; it did not declare all speech as equal, nor did it carry protection from risk.

These Athenian principles are quite distinct from the Enlightenment conception of free speech. I believe that current speech prohibitions are rooted in placing religious establishments above rulership which collapsed the interplay between the vertical and horizontal axes of cultural genesis. This eventually led to the removal of risk from speech, which undermined the essential social function of speech. We must distinguish between Athenian and Enlightenment laws concerning speech to draw out this foundational flaw.

What the Enlightenment later called “free speech” was not a continuation of Athenian forms, but a distortion of them. In Athenian society, public speech had entailed risk, bonds within hierarchy, authentic culture, and spiritual actualization. The enlightenment removed speech from this embodied context and then resurrected it as a universal legal abstraction. Where parrhesia had concerned the courage of the speaker and isegoria the accountability of participation, the Enlightenment free speech produced legal protection from cultural consequence. This shift did not merely expand discourse; it altered its nature.

Parrhesia is not rhetoric. It boldly speaks truth from the center of one’s being. Parrhesia is frank and dangerous speech… to speak it creates real risk. Though inferior by material status or superficial circumstance to those addressed, the orator must be the spiritual superior of his listeners to be effective. Parrhesia employs truth for the sake of social correction or the redress of grievance… not for personal gain, but for the betterment of society, and the living ethnos to which the speaker and listeners belong.

The speaker, aware that he risks punishment, exile, or death, thereby reveals the depth of his conviction. Parrhesia is not granted or egalitarian in nature even when it speaks against authority, but earned through virtue, courage, and the essence of its truth.

If a speaker challenges authority, they may be spared if what they say comes from a place of virtue; but if they are not spared and suffer the consequences, then their punishment elevates their words. Should they face persecution or death, they become a martyr to their people, and their message gains force precisely because of their fortitude. If, however, the speech is hollow or the speaker’s character fails to resonate, then their punishment evokes no sympathy and their words die with them. Risk of consequence distinguished quality from impulsivity.

We can see the perfect illustration of parrhesia between the Athenian lawgiver Solon and Croesus, king of Lydia. When hosted by one of the wealthiest and most powerful kings in the ancient world, Solon did not flatter. He spoke boldly, denouncing the king’s excessive riches and his hubris as a false form of happiness. Solon famously declared to him that “no man is happy until he is dead,” a statement that directly challenged the king’s self-conception, while also daring Croesus to prove Solon right by killing him. Solon’s wit thwarted the potential consequence since enacting it would affirm his statement and prove Solon’s strength of will, ensuring his happiness by making his reputation all the more immortal.

Solon’s virtue and daring speech were inseparable from the meaning of this exchange. His speech was not protected by law or custom. Had Croesus chosen to execute him, Solon’s words would have gained even more authority. It is risk that reveals the preeminence of spirit over fortune. This preeminence, which finds its expression through parrhesia, cannot assert itself where speech is legally protected from cultural consequence.

The contrast between these men is revealing: Solon, superior in virtue but inferior in station, and Croesus, powerful yet enslaved to material fortune. If anyone could freely speak against a king without risk, the act would require no virtue. Without risk, speech lacks the power to bring about correction; without correction, the horizontal ordering of society becomes uncoupled from the vertical ordering of spirit within a culture. Both hierarchies become disconnected from the truth and ultimately collapse. 

Croesus spared Solon, but he did not take his wisdom to heart until he stood at the edge of death. Having led Lydia into a disastrous war against Persia, he was captured by Cyrus, who ordered him burned alive. As the flames rose, Croesus cried out, “Solon!” Only then did he understand that happiness cannot be measured by insatiable material excess. 

The most famous historical example of isegoria and parrhesia leading to considerable consequences was the execution of Socrates. This event could be misused to make the case for legally protecting free speech, but this misses the inherent power and beauty of true free speech. It is precisely because Socrates faced death that we know the depth of his conviction. Had his speech been without consequence, his philosophy would not have echoed across millennia or catalyzed such vast vertical change into the horizontal dimension of his culture. 

Ernst Jünger articulated the truth that a person is only as free as they are willing to die. The courageous and willful heart of Socrates refused to live any less than genuinely and chose to die free rather than flee like a coward. He earned the happiness that Solon had articulated to King Croesus through his immortalization. Socrates was the wisest man not simply for knowing the limits of knowledge, but because he understood the necessity of sacrifice over diminishing his soul.

It was not Socrates’ words that endured, but his willingness to suffer death over losing his culture and his authentic contribution to it. His martyrdom revealed the strength of his heart and the integrity of his soul, inspiring precisely because it was in line with his way of living to that point. His strength only emboldened his pupils, which immortalized the ideas they had created together. He was living proof that learning is a bonding process, and because he was heavily embedded in his own culture, his speech and person resonated. 

Ancient Greek culture was shaped by two hierarchies operating simultaneously with dynamic tension between them. The horizontal hierarchy orders roles, traditions, customs, religious cults, and shared norms which can stagnate without its perpendicular dimension. The vertical hierarchy orders virtue, courage, rulership, and spiritual authority, but it inherently requires risk. Speech, when properly oriented, mediates between these dimensions: preserving continuity in a living chain of context while allowing necessary correction and growth.

Among the Greek city-states, Athens stood out for its culture of open discourse. By contrast, the Middle Ages were largely shaped by the domination of the Catholic church in both worldly and spiritual affairs; parrhesia as a cultural norm did not exist because the horizontal axis of religion ruthlessly prevented challenges to its worldview, suppressing the vertical dimension. It is only with the Reformation that parrhesia reasserted itself. The protestant churches inaugurated by Martin Luther, King Henry, and others broke the Catholic church’s chokehold on public discourse. The newly won religious freedom, however, coincided with Protestantism splintering into its various branches. This might be thought of as a desire for the localization of religious function that had prevailed in ancient Greece. 

The Reformation had emancipated rulers from their subordination to the Catholic church. Under the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, it was up to these rulers to choose a religious creed for themselves and their subjects. For centuries, speech and localized organic religion had been suppressed as the vertical and horizontal dimensions merged and stagnated; social hierarchies had hardened, and imbalances accumulated. Redress of grievances had been delayed too long. The Enlightenment responded with overcorrection. By attempting to relieve the suppression of speech, it further deprived speech of its genuine power, negating spiritual authority by abolishing risk for all instead of just Catholic authority, and granting legal equality.

This new imbalance proved as destructive as the one it replaced. Speech without risk lacks direction and meaning. Detached from both the people and the center that gives it coherence, speech turns from an expression of a culture’s living spirit into an abstraction protected by a mechanized state.

Speech must have direction; it must align the life of the culture itself towards its pole, its living north star. Like the Earth’s axis, this center shifts slowly over time, but correction must always be oriented vertically toward it, in addition to horizontally encircling that center like a spiral. Horizontal norms preserve continuity but risk becoming stagnant; vertical challenges demand courage to bring balance with reciprocal risk. Both are necessary.

Directionless speech is egalitarian in the worst sense: it levels the highest to the lowest, rather than allowing the best to elevate others. When cultural consequences of speech are prevented by legal protection, it becomes ineffective as a means of cultural correction. It can no longer defend what must be preserved or challenge what has grown stagnant; it degenerates into the mechanization of living processes. This results in no protection of cultural identity and no spiritual correction, only inversion: the base revolting against the best, even preventing the best from merely surviving.

It is no accident that legal protection of speech gives rise to selective censorship. Once speech loses its orientation toward the center of a people, its directionless nature catabolizes its population. Speech that aims to defend the living culture is then suppressed by the state abstracted from its people. Anti-cultures form and break bonds that connect the past to the future. The state itself becomes a lifeless simulacrum.

We cannot repair this by simply reverting to the norms of the Enlightenment with its desire to legally prevent cultural correction or the Catholic Church’s suffocation of competition and daring speech. Legal protection of free speech prevents the formation of meaning, because it removes risk from the root of true freedom; it replaces lived truth with procedural neutrality. Socrates’ example shows us the distinction between living objective vantages and lifeless detached objectivity. The Socratic method demanded personal consistency, depth of belief, and self-knowledge; it used dialogue to reveal a living center.  Mechanical objectivity removes the person’s objective vantage in living reality. By trying to remove themselves to find truth, they actually remove themselves from their own center and essence of truth. Truth then becomes reduced to static screenshots decontextualized from living processes… soulless, sterile, and degenerative.

When the risk of cultural consequences is removed from speech, meaning is lost because risk is the foundation of true freedom and organic identity. Speech becomes cheap, hot air, unmoored from the speaker’s relationship to their people and to their own vantage of truth in a reality that is alive. 

The effects of cheap and unmoored speech on our society are plain to see. Speech that devalues the cultural and moral identity of a people is not correction but annihilation and ethnocide. When state authority fails to distinguish truth-speaking from speech that undermines the foundation of a people, the state itself becomes a hollow void and antithetical to life.

Law must once again serve the people, not merely as abstract, deracinated populations, but as a cultural and spiritual body. To recover vitality, we must assert parrhesia in the face of censorship: bold, virtuous speech oriented toward our own lode star, spoken in defiance of the material void and with full awareness of inherent risk. Truth spoken courageously is an act of love, meant to correct error and foster growth. By speaking in this manner, we assert the depth of our convictions and our spiritual essence.

Going from a very bonded state, where men were able to be men together, needed each other, and overcame hardship together, to a state of isolated misery and scorn is a huge shock. It is no wonder that combat veterans (who are predominantly male and White) have the highest rates, by percentage, of suicide, drug addiction, and homelessness. This is a microcosm of what awaits our men in general and can be treated together. There is very literally an army in the gutter, and while everyone wants to bicker over religion, the army is out there wasting away.

A couple of years ago, I wrote about using 501(d) and 501(c) organizations to create intentional communities in this article. The point of this is to no longer feed into the system, but instead to feed off the system in order to grow a new one out of it. I currently see many arguing over urban versus ruralism, as if this only has to be done rurally. In the article, I give different examples of how it can be used in both rural and urban settings. The form of living rurally is only one expression of an underlying strategy: pulling resources out of a system stacked against us in order to start the foundations of a new system from within, utilizing the same loopholes that NGOs use. It can be done with scientific and technological innovation. It can be done rurally. It also can be used to give a potential future to our men.

What is mind-boggling to me is that I have seen a lot of conflict over religion and the call to unite under Christianity because of its past fruits. The call to unity, while simultaneously constantly fracturing and arguing over division, is funny to watch. But that aside, where are the fruits of Christianity now? Those with the most charity funds and infrastructure to save our men and the army in the gutter (they already have 501 organizations) have not done so. Surely not all of them can be saved, but even if a small percent can, we are still talking about tens of thousands of men. It can also grow to encompass a place for men and brotherhood that is open to those before they go homeless or fall into addiction. What is a reactive measure can become a proactive one through the fruits of what it creates by saving some.

What we need are boot camps in the middle of nowhere to get these men back on their feet. Groups of people should organize to find them, weed out the ones who will not get clean or want to change their circumstances (not just for those with substance abuse issues but depression, homlessness, or general hoplessness), bring them there, and then put them through detox or a weeding out location. After that, they should go straight into boot camp as a second phase, following the removal of those incapable of being saved. Have them farm and produce other things needed for themselves, and grow from there. The details can be worked out but this is the general idea. Once it is going these palace can be open to other men who are at risk of homelessness or who simply have no hope for the future. Many young men today would benefit from a place like this, not just those in extreme circumstances. They need the feeling of brotherhood, of overcoming together, and of being a part of their own salvation. They need purpose and action instead of words and arguments.

It is not only the government and NGOs that are focused on other races for charity. Charity should start in the home and move outward from the center. If you cannot uplift your own brother, then arguing with another brother does not create unity simply by regaining the forms of some remnants of past unification. It is right-wing to justify the Crusades instead of calling for another Crusade. Now, merely affirming the past is seen as a win, without carrying that legacy into the future. With all of the resources that Christians accumulate, where are they going?

Mormons are building infrastructure in the third and developing world because all souls are equal. Catholics, when not spending money on the extravagant decadence of their places of worship, are sending it to expand the third and developing world. Guess where most Protestant aid and charity are going… the same places. They are worried about the unborn, who are disproportionately from the third and developing world (though I do disagree with most access to abortion), while our men are destroyed and discarded. Christianity has the infrastructure to save them, the complexity of systems already utilizing 501(d) and 501(c) organizations, but they acquire wealth (in contrast with the virtues of humility they expect of their warriors) and transfer more money to expanding and saving those who cannot exist without being externally propped up, at the expense of White men.

Both sexes of a culture fall in tandem, as Spengler’s universal law of sex parity articulates. Since the male leads and a positive pole increases, it will attract the negative pole more strongly. Circumventing the loss of the male half will save the future. Everyone focuses on what is happening to the female half, and it is impotent to define, but many young women who want to become mothers and wives cannot because our men are being destroyed by purposely taking away their ability to provide—not just financially—but their very identity, with no places or future for White men. Men need other men, sacrifice, and overcoming, and this is the literal Frodo’s quest of brotherhood, and no one is recognizing it.

This could be the ultimate male space: restart sacrifice to regain real duty, not its abstraction, and form a rite of passage in itself by bringing young men and boys into these places to volunteer with them. There are endless possibilities for how such a place could grow and be used—from farming, sciences, survival skills, to recreating the gymnasium and palaestra. The very first phase is detox; the second, bonding boot camp back to health (this could also be a place to send young desperate men who need a future and do not want to join the current military); the third, farming and building; and from there, the possibilities are endless. These men could go to Mars!

I want to see the impressive unity and charity of Christians that will save Western civilization. Will they continue to fund the same places their supposed enemies are funding, or will they help raise an army from the gutter?

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