Cesar Montemayor

Mexican. Classic Liberal with a bit of Libertarian. Pro Capitalism and Pro Nuclear Energy. Here to learn.

[Michael Shellenberger @shellenberger]

Friends — Sometimes you have to take a step back and see the bigger picture. That’s what I tried to do today in my keynote speech to the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship, the third gathering of a remarkable group of civilization-positive people. I hope you enjoy it. — Michael

I have flown here from California to talk about saving Western civilization, which I am aware is a little like taking fire safety advice from a man whose house keeps burning down. These observations are based on research that my co-author Alex Gutentag and I conducted over the last three years.

Our remarkable civilization rests on several pillars, including law and order, national borders, meritocracy, equal justice, the protection of children, industrialization, free speech, and a widespread faith in its capacity to deliver a positive future.

I am not here to predict that these pillars will fall. I am here to report that the demolition crew has been hired, paid in full, and asked to submit a diversity statement.

Decriminalization, depolicing, and the enabling of illegal camping, shoplifting, open-air drug dealing, and use undermine public safety.

In San Francisco, authorities amputated the rotted feet of a mentally ill “homeless” woman — and then put her right back on the street. In the name of compassion.

Mass migration hurts working-class citizens, increases crime, and creates victims.

Biden’s open borders policy resulted in child trafficking and death, including of minors falling from rooftops while working.

DEI policies and other forms of racial and sexual discrimination subvert meritocracy and undermine public safety.

British police handcuffed and let 18-year-old Henry Nowak bleed to death because they believed the lie told by the murderer’s accomplice that Nowak was a racist and thus, by extension, the perpetrator.

Los Angeles politicians defunded and mismanaged the fire department and failed to keep the crucial water reservoir full because they were focused like a laser on DEI, resulting in catastrophic and utterly avoidable fires.

Trans surgeries on minors transgress historic protections of children like Fox Varian. Surgeons removed her breasts when she was 16 after trans-influenced communicators convinced her she was actually a boy.

Climate activists raise energy prices, deindustrialize rich nations, and work to stop poor nations from building natural-gas-fueled fertilizer factories.

Our schools, universities, and legacy media add insult to injury by programming children to believe they are stained by slavery, colonialism, and genocide.

And now governments around the world are seeking to deny them alternative sources of information that might contradict the establishment’s degrading narrative while simultaneously imposing digital IDs on the rest of us.

Many believe that these attacks on our civilization stem from ignorance, excessive empathy, or good intentions gone wrong. Indeed, the vast majority of people do not want to scrap the pillars of Western civilization. And many of them are motivated by compassion and concern for the most vulnerable members of our society.

But the intellectual pioneers who framed anti-civilizational policies as necessary for remedying entrenched and historical injustices do, in fact, want to destroy Western civilization as we know it, and replace it with something they believe will be more just. They believe that inequality and suffering stem from our social organization in general and from capitalism, industrialization, meritocracy, equal justice, and gender roles in particular.

They are, knowingly and unknowingly, heirs to Jean-Jacques Rousseau, who said society corrupted innocent children while abandoning all five of his children to orphanages. They believe they can, both through their policies and the transformation of language and thought, radically reorganize society in ways that dramatically reduce, if not eliminate, inequality and suffering.

Their complaint is not that the system is malfunctioning but rather that it’s functioning normally.

And a close reading of these anti-civilization intellectuals reveals that they are motivated not by empathy and love of humanity but rather by its opposite: the creation, projection, and hatred of cartoon villains onto others. Rousseau was the first in a long line of reformers who claim to love humanity but who hate humans. They believe the defenders of civilization are as evil as the system they defend and demand that they be silenced and removed from universities, social media platforms, and polite society. They view law and order, national borders, and meritocracy as strategies for villains to oppress victims. And they view reality not as evidence against their radical project but rather as evidence that their project has been insufficiently radical.

There are economic reasons for this. Our societies are directed by a professional managerial class whose claim to authority stems from its alleged expertise. They have sought and continue to seek to control practically every aspect of human life, from the productive sectors of the economy to popular culture to language itself. They benefit from an expansion of the state and of parastatal entities like NGOs, and thus need to maintain the fantasy that Western civilization creates victims and that, if only they had more power, they could reorganize it in ways that would finally allow for universal freedom, prosperity, and sustainability.

In other words, we are the first civilization wealthy enough to fund a tenured class whose full-time job is to explain why it should never have existed.

But what most drives the anti-civilization discourse and movement is ....

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[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@macariomx @zriboua Estamos viviendo Tiempos Interesantes, Maestro….

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@heather_berlin @DrDanSiegel @michaelpollan @AlisonGopnik Well done, Doctor…congrats !!!

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@Hoang_HQ The guns from Navarone ?

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@megynkelly @theallinpod @Jason We Mexicans do that. Fine tequila is usually best enjoyed very cold, no ice, no mixing. Nothing but the cold tequila. Enjoy !

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@c_valenzuelab @wolfejosh Very good taste in literature, Mr Wolfe…😏

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@heather_berlin Both….🤔

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@rocknrollofall Yessongs should also be considered…

[Glenn Greenwald @ggreenwald]

It's so easy to sit in European capitals or nice US TV studios and cheer war in Ukraine all to derive a feeling of purpose and self-esteem, because those being sent to die are not them but Ukrainians violently dragged off the street and sent as cannon fodder on the front lines:

[Irish Jewish Voice @Irishchutzpah]

Flood all Social Media with their images.
Ariel, Shiri and Kfir Bibas 💔

[Human Progress @HumanProgress]

The Atari 2600 was introduced in 1977 and cost $199.

With U.S. unskilled wages at $3.15 per hour, the time price was around 63 hours of work.

In 2023, earning $16.50 an hour, an unskilled worker could have picked up an Xbox Series X for just over 30 hours of work.
https://t.co/fYH4jbfqVO

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@pmarca Wages crash to “pennies” but debt still in “dollars” ? Owners of Net Financial Assets would be the big winners. A radical rethink of financial assets / liabilities is imperative, beyond the “tax the robots” concept….

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@AllAmerican202 You keep batting 1,000 😏😁

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@elonmusk @AliciaAlarcon Apocalyptic….

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@ianbremmer Terrible idea. It would simply create a thriving black market, without any “quality” controls….😵‍💫

[Konstantin Kisin @KonstantinKisin]

My opening speech from the Holberg Debate in Bergen, Norway about the West's decline and what we can do to prevent it. As usual, I didn't hold back :)

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@DefNotDarth @TheFP @bariweiss @NellieBowles @nytimes @washingtonpost @WSJ Amazing the difference a great product and a lean operation does to a business…😁
Congrats to BW and her TFP team…😁

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@pmarca Flying cars ? Teleportation ?

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@FutureJurvetson @TrungTPhan Specially if both are residents of a high tax state like California…😏

[Cesar Montemayor @CesarMty59]

@TRHLofficial Another example of a person that, although very talented and successful in their field, would be better off “staying in their lane” , instead of wasting their time virtue signaling and telling others what to think and do..🤔