Mom yelled at me for getting something to eat.

 As the year draws to a close, we at the Gold Institute continue to pause and reflect on our significant accomplishments of 2023. This year has been marked by our deep involvement in various influential activities and initiatives.

In the wake of the Covid pandemic's ongoing impact, we find ourselves facing challenges from aggressive, autocratic powers and international Islamist terrorism. Despite the West's cohesive stance on issues like Ukraine, complexities arise as some allies maintain nuanced ties with Russia and Iran. These situations highlight the critical need for our sustained efforts in fostering resilience, optimism, and pride in the West’s contributions to humanity. It is imperative to defend the West, our allies, and our values against both internal and external threats across multiple fronts.

Our challenges are both domestic and international. The emergence of "Wokeism" has evolved into an attack on Western history, values, and achievements. The agitational Left, spurred by misinformation from foreign adversaries, is creating divisions and undermining confidence in our democratic institutions, particularly among the youth. The Gold Institute for International Strategy is committed to defending Western ideals through a variety of channels, including articles, television broadcasts, seminars, and discussions.

In the Middle East, our fellows have been instrumental in transforming existing and new media outlets into highly accurate sources, thereby significantly expanding their readership and viewership.

Politically, the strategic alliances established by our esteemed legislative fellows are key in upholding conservative values worldwide. Our events in the U.S., Europe, and the Middle East showcase our capability to create meaningful connections with conservative entities globally. Academically, the Institute plays vital advisory roles with leading universities in the Middle East and Europe, enhancing collaboration and fostering academic partnerships.

Our work with Chinese dissidents, aiming to expose and counter Xi Jinping's and the CCP's global ambitions, reflects our dedication to opposing autocratic regimes. Our advocacy in the European Parliament for a shift in the European Institutions' approach towards China has been impactful. The EU’s recognition of the threat posed by China, as evident in the EU-China relations report, affirms our persistent efforts to address the challenges of the largest communist dictatorship.

Reflecting on these achievements, we acknowledge that our mission is ongoing. The support from individuals like yourself is crucial in addressing these pressing matters. Looking ahead to 2024, we aim to amplify our impact, forge new collaborations, and continue safeguarding the values fundamental to our societies.

We kindly ask for your continued support. Your contributions are vital to our research, education, and initiatives aimed at protecting the West and highlighting its positive global influence.

© 2023 Eli M. Gold
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Washington, DC 20001

Two cheers for high modernism, the virtues and limits of high modernism Victim based identity politics, irony, pastiche, and cynical humor are played out MR. RAVEN DEC 31 Arguably the high water mark of American culture was between 1925 to 1965, this time period produced writers such as Hemingway, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Gore Vidal, William Faulkner, etc. Also in this time period we saw triumph over the Nazis in WWII, the invention of the computer, the initiation of the space race, and the telecommunications revolution. It was a time period of immense culture achievement which we live in the shadows of today. Today we tweak and refine the inventions of the high modernist period but nothing really new has been brought to the table in almost 60 years, a time period almost 20 years longer than the high modernist time period itself. What was it that allowed such great achievements to flourish? To get to the root of this we must dig into the high modernist culture to see what values and standards it promoted that nourished excellence. One of the main values of high modernism was a very sharp distinction between our public lives and our private lives. In our public lives we were to strive for seriousness of purpose, universal secular values, and trying to be objective and neutral in dealing with people and to avoid rash emotional outbursts. This is opposite to the values promoted by postmodern identity based ideologies like feminism that posit “the personal is political,” and that emotion driven subjective “lived experience,” and ethnic and sexual identity trumps merit and other virtues. The public personae of the high modernist was based on individual character and the refined and highly educated expression of reason and unique intellectual insights, not what identity group one belonged to. Ones identity like ethnicity, religion, sex and sexual orientation were rightly seen as belonging to the private sphere of ones life, not the public sphere. While our identity in the private sphere is not unimportant, in fact it may be the most important thing in our sphere of intimate relations like friends and family, the high modernists correctly saw bringing these emotionally fraught identities into our public behavior would be wholly destructive of the harmonious social order that makes complex high culture possible. Having said that our intimate and personal lives are important, even sacred, I make an argument for the importance of private life over public life in the linked essay below, so this is an important caveat to keep in mind when I am praising high modernism. Are you sure you want to win the political  game? MR. RAVEN · SEP 10 Another value highly esteemed in high modernism compared to postmodernism is the value of individual character and individual excellence.  In the high modernist culture you were valued for what you produced and what innovations you created. This is in stark contrast to postmodernist, fascist, and communist ideologies in which your value comes from what group you belong to. It does not take much reflection to see how rewarding excellence will lead to better outcomes than rewarding all comers mediocre and great alike based on what group you belong to. Further it was expected that your status would be challenged by continuous vigorous debates from up and comers trying to knock you off your throne which was a hierarchy predicated on continuously demonstrated excellence. Again we see the contrast to non modernist ideologies like woke, Communism, and fascism that quash debate that might put a favored group in a bad light. All of this sounds refreshing compared to postmodernism, but is it anything different than classical liberalism?  I would argue it is because classical liberalism treated the market as an idol to be worshiped, where as there is much more dissent from market worship that you start to see even in proto-modernists like Nietzsche who saw the market as a leveling down to the level of the herd. High modernism is general is more elitist in a good way than classical liberalism, and that keeps a high modernist society from degenerating into a circus that caters to lowest common denominator base desires which can easily happen in a society based on classical liberalism. This regression of society to de-civilizing base desires is also seen in culturally relativist post modern societies that offer no foundational value to not engaging in addiction, and exhibitionist deviance. In fact I think it’s arguable postmodern decadence is simply the end game of the classical liberal “open society” in which unlimited personal autonomy is the only sacrosanct value. The moral exhaustion and sickness of postmodern society that valorizes deviance, transgression, pastiche, irony, and flattening of hierarchies is becoming increasingly obvious to many people. Having said this is there anything to be salvaged from the postmodern and pre-modern worldviews? Yes I think there are several things worth saving that run counter to the high modernist worldview. One would be vernacular local culture such as local forms of architecture, clothing food, religious belief, etc. These are very humanizing in our personal and family life, and one flaw of high modernism was a bland and brutalist architecture that prioritized function and large scale over comfortable pleasing to the eye living spaces that are in harmony with the local environment. The environment in fact was downplayed altogether in modernism and this alienation from our natural environment and promotion of urban living by the high modernists was bad for our psyches in my opinion. I also think that seeing high modernism as being most healthy for the west is a healthy perspective and in the coming multi-polar world we ought not try to impose high modernism on non-western cultures where people may not want to live in the bounds of the modernist paradigm. One way to try to square the circle of the conflicting demands of high modernism v.s. anti-modern world views is seeing the rigor and formality of high modernism as being most appropriate for our public personae at work, at educational institutions, when make a public presentation of our art or insights, etc, and seeing anti-modern views as being more appropriate to our personal and family life, where subjectivity, cultural history, and strong emotions are more appropriate. High modernity is a mode of thought that was rejected with too much haste, and ought to be re-evaluated as part of a life well lived if we want to stay the decadence and tribal based authoritarianism that is rapidly consuming western society. If you would like to help a poor wilderness modernist keep his virtual ink wells full, you can support me with a direct subscription here, or 3 other ways. On Ko-Fi which is nice because they currently aren’t charging any fees At Buy Me A Coffee with an individual donation, or a 2 dollar a month membership. Buy Me A Coffee I also take PayPal raven200@gmail.com