Nov 28 2023

Will the Left Stop With Pogroms, or Will They Go All the Way to a Final Solution?

This didn’t suddenly crop up. The hate the Left has for Jews, whether National Socialist, Socialist, or Communist, has been around for a very long time.

I wrote about it in 2005, early in my blogging career.

The resistance to acknowledging the Left‘s hatred is one of those things that makes me doubt the fabled high intelligence of the Jewish people. I mean, you would pretty much have to be low IQ to still support the Left, given the speed with which they are throwing the Jews under the bus.

Some of it is probably normal human disinclination to uproot your life for a threat. Look at all the people who wait until the last moments to start packing for a well announced weather evacuation. Or, all the folks who only think about getting food and other supplies once the shelves are picked nearly clean.

Think about the low esteem that Preppers have in many people’s eyes. And, yet, year after year, weather and other interruptions to the normal movement of food and fuel happen across the country. Too often, people will not plan for emergencies, and are thereby reduced to begging for food and water.

In pre-WWII Germany, many Jews had become completely assimilated into the culture. Many weren’t practicing Jews. Often, they had married out of their historical faith, and were indistinguishable from other Germans.

Until some Leftist ideologues decided to make it THEIR business to identify, isolate, and destroy anyone with even a slight connection to the Jewish faith, however remote.

It may be already too late to push back. I hope not. But it is PAST the time when Jews need to act, to be prepared to get in the faces of their opponents.

Meekly trying to stay in the shadows didn’t work very well for previous generations.

Nov 28 2023

The Judicial Abuses Continue

This one is related to President Trump’s legal advisor, John Eastman. He is overwhelmed with debt, out of work, and in danger of being disbarred.

Hell, even murderers who were caught on video committing their crimes are entitled to lawyers! This was a fair opinion, from a Constitutional scholar, and no action should have been taken against him.

He has a legal defense fund – donate here. Consider telling your family and friends that they should redirect any money they had planned to use for gifts for you, and instead make a contribution. If that isn’t possible, skip a treat for yourself, and open your wallet.

We really should not leave Legal Dissidents without recourse. There are many who are being targeted with penury, all for choosing to exercise their Constitutional Rights.

Nov 28 2023

Naming What They’re Doing… And Why

     Pascal sent me a link to the following brief speech by Laura Aboli, about whom I previously knew nothing. I think we have a new heroine – and I hope to hear more from her.

     Perhaps Rand was prescient about this as well:

     “There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they’re afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that’s all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns—just somebody naming the exact nature of what you’re doing?”

     At any rate, we can hope.

Nov 28 2023

“That Can’t Be!”

Dave: Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.
Dad: Well, now you know.

[From Breaking Away.]

     Have you become more skeptical as you’ve aged, or less?

     There’s an awful lot of utter nonsense being purveyed by the extended media, these days. By “extended,” I mean to subsume all providers of information, not just the ones we fondly call the “legacy media.” Often a single false assertion will come from many sources concurrently, which tends to reassure those who encounter it…until the rug is yanked out from under them. It’s not always possible to dismiss a falsehood when it’s being emitted by a great many mouths. The problem worsens when a number of those sources have acquired a reputation for reliability.

     Everyone is wrong from time to time. In previous eras, people learned how to detect mistakes, how to respond to them, and what to expect from the mistaken one. We also learned the proper attitude toward those who refused to admit their errors. That particular bundle of skills is no longer as common as it was. Given the legion of “experts” the media routinely parade before us, it’s understandable that the general level of skepticism should be on the rise.

     One consequence of today’s barrages of misinformation is the conversion of skepticism into something much graver. One who has become widely and reflexively skeptical – that is, he’s been conditioned to doubt anything he’s told, regardless of the source – will often embrace cynicism: the presumption of low motives in everyone other than himself and a few close friends. Upon encountering an institution or individual with a proposition, his default expectation is that the proposition is dubious and the proposer is a fraud. “What snake oil are you trying to sell me?” is his reaction, whether or not it’s spoken.

     But cynicism is nearly always a mistake in and of itself. The great majority of men are good, in the conventional understanding of that word. Their incorrect assertions are honest mistakes rather than attempts to deceive. While there are exceptional individuals wholly encysted by liars and thieves, such that honesty is vanishingly rare around them, for most of us cynicism is a negative thing.

     Yet cynicism is swelling among us. We, the posterity of men who built a magnificent society founded on the default assumption that those around them are trustworthy, are steadily embracing the opposite attitude. It may even be the majority position today. And that is a terrible thing.

***

     Hub: “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.”

     [From Secondhand Lions]

     The dismissal of that credo is commonplace today. The cynicism expressed by the previous quote is, if not yet unanimous, coming to dominance. It’s consciously prevalent in certain situations. One such is women’s assumptions about men who approach them in social situations. Another is the cynicism we tend to feel toward solicitors from organizations that want money…which is just about every organization on Earth.

     I won’t deceive you: I’m afflicted by that second attitude. Cold callers always get a cold shoulder from me. I don’t know anyone who reacts differently. But now and then it’s a mistake. Hence, a brief vignette.

     Not long ago, I was positively impressed by an email news organ’s mention of an unusual charity. It’s a Christian listening / counseling service called The Hope Line. Its counselors man a bank of phones and take calls from people who are depressed, disheartened, or otherwise unhappy. The caller is encouraged to speak his mind and heart, and the Hope Line counselor attempts to help with Christian encouragement and advice. (It’s not quite a “suicide help line,” though I’m sure it’s functioned that way from time to time.) Inasmuch as hope is one of the three theological virtues, that a Christian charity exists to dispense it to those who need it is more than merely appropriate.

     To shorten this somewhat, upon learning of The Hope Line, I sent a modest donation and a few words of praise for their mission. Shortly thereafter I got an email thanking me, which I expected; it’s customary for charities to do that much. What I didn’t expect came a few weeks later.

     My domestic phone rang. As my answering machine had recently gone to its reward, I answered it. The caller was a young woman from The Hope Line, and identified herself as such. What came next is the point of this tale: I reflexively assumed she was calling to solicit a further donation and I said so.

     But that wasn’t the reason for her call. She was calling simply to repeat the thanks expressed in the aforementioned email, and to ask if there was anything she or her fellows could do for me.

     I was stunned. (Pleasantly so; I didn’t need CPR.) Not many cold callers are calling to ask what they can do for you, though many posture that way. The young lady and I had a long and exceedingly pleasant conversation that covered all manner of things. The experience left me smiling the whole day long. But it also seeded me with a dark thought.

     My cynicism about cold callers, while justified more often than not, had erred in that particular case. I started to wonder how often it might have been erroneous in the past, especially during the period when I used my answering machine to buffer all incoming calls and disdained to answer or reply to the great majority of them. Perhaps the percentages would favor cynicism more often than not, but the assumption that a cold caller merely wants money had been incorrect that once. Therefore, it could have been incorrect on other occasions.

     Cynicism – about anything – suggests a deficit of hope.

***

     “There’s only one way to improve society. Present it with a single improved unit: yourself.” – Albert Jay Nock.

     I’ve written more than once about our loss of trust in one another. Even if the contrary assumption is more likely to be correct, it’s still a sign of something foreboding. We’ve lost faith in one another, which is a short step from losing faith in ourselves.

     The assumption of trustworthiness is founded on a deeper assumption: specifically, that nearly all of us adhere to a common ethical code. In America, that code was the Ten Commandments of the Book of Exodus. When we assumed that we all held to that code, we trusted one another. How could someone who sincerely believes that “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness” possibly misuse us in common social or commercial interplay?

     Pervasive skepticism and consequent dour cynicism, brought on by the barrages of falsehoods and propaganda, sneaked in under that code and undermined it. It’s near to nullifying it.

     There is no Last Graf but this: do as Albert Jay Nock has advised us. Be better: less cynical, less manipulative, and less defensive. Sometimes a fraudster will get through; that’s to be expected. But to “pre-classify” others as fraudsters, even if it protects us, costs us dearly in other ways. The cost has begun to loom larger than the benefit.

     Be well.

Nov 27 2023

Quote Of The Day

     The state of our country can be defined by this simple fact: Someone can be convicted of murder and sentenced to jail even though the “murdered” man’s death certificate states he died of a drug overdose. — David DeGerolamo

Nov 27 2023

Notes On Extremistry

     Yes, that’s a coinage. It’s in the vein of chemistry, which is the study of how chemicals behave. There’s also palmistry, which is the study of palm trees. (What’s that? Palmistry has nothing to do with palm trees? Well, never mind then.) However, the comparison isn’t all that close. What I mean to tag with extremistry is propaganda in which some opponent of How Things Are Currently Done is delegitimized by being called an “extremist.”

     You can style any proposition “extreme” simply by asserting that it’s so. Of course, the label wouldn’t fit well unless there are significant divergences between what’s proposed and current practices. Nevertheless, the label is used even in cases where the divergences are modest, or where the proposition is to revert to an earlier set of norms.

     Remember Pim Fortuyn? I do. His political opponents labeled him an “extremist” for daring to assert that uncontrolled immigration to the Netherlands was on the verge of ruining that country. It might have been what got him assassinated.

     Remember Anwar Sadat? I do. His political opponents labeled him an “extremist” for daring to negotiate a peace between Egypt and Israel. That definitely got him assassinated.

     Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni is being called an extremist, too. Why? Because she defends traditional, Catholic Italy and wants to stop its invasion by North African migrants. Those migrants are ruining Italy.

     Barry Goldwater was called an extremist for daring to assert that the Constitution of the United States was being violated by the very federal government it defined. Thankfully, he lived to a ripe old age. But Ronald Reagan was called an extremist, too. He barely survived an assassination attempt. And for some years now, the “extremist” label has been slathered over Donald Trump.

     Today Argentina is in the news. Its people, who’ve suffered under massively corrupt government and disastrous levels of inflation, have just chosen a certain Javier Milei to be their next president. Milei has said and written some things that have gotten him labeled an extremist. Mostly, he’s said that what’s going on must change, and change dramatically at that. If I were Milei, I’d be very careful going through doors and such.

     In all cases, the extremist label is shorthand for another proposition: “This man is dangerous and must be stopped by any means necessary.” But dangerous to whom? Dangerous for what reasons? Those questions are deflected, at least while the cameras are rolling. Later on, in the comfort and privacy of their conference rooms, those who feel endangered are rather more candid.

     “Extremist” has the same rhetorical application as “far-right:” the intent is to frighten the gullible and unreflective – which is most of Mankind, in case you were in any doubt – away from the person so labeled. In point of fact, those who hold the levers of power, who currently sit around mahogany conference tables plotting out How Things Must Be, are the terrified ones. They fear the loss of their power, prestige, and pelf. They cannot permit even the smallest crack in their protections. Even one such could admit light enough to bring their edifice crashing down.

     That is their definition of extremist: “One who could threaten our positions.”

     And that’s all that extremist and extremism mean.

***

     I hope Larry Niven and the ghost of Jerry Pournelle won’t mind the following lengthy excerpt from their novel Inferno. It’s a scene in which protagonist Allen Carpentier is being introduced to some of the features of Hell:

     A towering oil-fueled power plant of spidery framework and miles of pipes and valves poured power into a cable thick as my waist. Transmission towers took the cable downhill.
     I peered along its length, but the murk defeated me. How did they use electricity in Hell? But outside the power plant was an athletic man chained to a wheelless bicycle set in concrete in front of the exhaust pipe of the generator. Black smoke poured around him, almost hiding him from view.
     As we watched he began pedaling furiously. The hum of the gears rose to a high pitch—and the generator inside died. There was a moment of quiet. The man pedaled with sure strokes, faster and faster, his feet nearly invisible, his head tucked down as if against a wind. We gathered around, each wondering how long he could keep it up.
     He began to tire. The blur of his feet slowed. The motors inside coughed, and black smoke poured out. He choked and turned his head away, and saw us.
     “Don’t answer if you’d rather not,” I said, “but what whim of fate put you here?”‘
     “I don’t know!” he howled. “I was president of the largest and most effective environmental protection organization in the country! I fought this!” He braced himself and pedaled again. The hum rose, and the generator died.
     Billy was completely lost. He looked to Benito, but our guide only shrugged. Benito accepted everything. I knew better. This couldn’t be justice, not even Big Juju’s exaggerated justice. This was monstrous.
     Corbett had to be guessing when he suddenly asked, “You opposed thermonuclear power plants?”
     The guy stopped dead, staring as if Corbett were a ghost. The dynamo lurched into action and surrounded him with thick blue smoke.
     “That’s it, isn’t it?” Corbett said gently. “You stopped the nuclear generators. I was just a kid during the power blackouts. We had to go to school in the dark because the whole country went on daylight saving time to save power.”
     “But they weren’t safe!” He coughed. “They weren’t safe!”
     “How did you know that?” Benito asked.
     “We had scientists in our organization. They proved it.”
     We turned away. Now I knew. I could quit looking for justice in Hell. There was only macabre humor. Why should that man be in the inner circles of Hell? At worst he belonged far above, with the bridge destroyers of the second ledge. Or in Heaven. He hadn’t created this bleak landscape.
     I couldn’t stand it. I went back. Benito shrugged and motioned to the others.
     Within the cloud of blue smoke his face was slack with exhaustion. “It wasn’t just the problem of where to bury the waste products,” he told me. “There was radioactive gas going into the air.” He spoke as if continuing a conversation. I must have been his only audience in years, or decades.
     “You got a rotten deal,” I said. “I wish I could do something.”
     He smiled bravely. “What else is new?” And he started to pedal.
     I glared at the nothing sky, hating Big Juju. Carpentier declares war. When I looked down, Benito was fumbling through saddlebags attached to the stationary bicycle.
     The man cried, “What are you doing?”
     Benito took out papers. The man snatched at them, but Benito backed away. He read, “Dear Jon, I could understand your opposition to us last year. There was some doubt about the process, and you expressed fears all of us felt. But now you know better. I have no witnesses, but you told me you understood Dr. Pittman’s demonstration. In God’s name, Jon, why do you continue? I ask you as your sister, as a fellow scientist, as a human being: why?”
     He began pedaling again, ignoring us.
     “You knew?” I demanded. He pedaled faster, his head bent.
     I leaned down and put my face close to his.
     “You knew?” I screamed.
     “Fuck off.”
     Big Juju wins again. Too much, but appropriate. As we walked away, Jon screamed after us, “I’d have been nothing if I gave up the movement! Nothing! Don’t you understand? I had to stay as president!”

     No doubt the environmentalist executive thought his sister an “extremist.” As the saying goes, what she had proposed threatened his well-filled rice bowl.

***

     If you’re a regular Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, you’re already aware of my love affair with the English language. It’s the most powerful tool for communication that’s ever been devised, and it continues to be extended and refined by you, its users. But there’s no such thing as a tool with built-in values. Tools are value-neutral. They can be put to good uses or to evil ones.

     They who intend evil will do evil, and they’ll use the most powerful tools available to do so. That explains a great part of public discourse in our time.

     The misuse of our language fills me with fury. That it’s gone on so long that today it’s everywhere and all-pervading only makes it orders of magnitude worse. If I have a consciously chosen mission – and as it happens, I have several – it’s to combat the perversion of the English language that’s making an incomprehensible hash of discourse in our time.

     George Orwell said it brilliantly:

     [O]ne ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

     Let’s start by banning the words extremist and extremism from our lexicon and closing our ears to those who use them. Ask them rather, “What do you really mean by that? Either be clear and specific, or shut the BLEEP! up.”

     The Dictator Verborum to the World Wide Web has spoken ex cathedra. Go forth under the banner of the One True Faith:

     “Say what you mean, mean what you say.” – “Bob Cody,” played by Chris Cooper in Interstate 60

Nov 26 2023

The Third Decree

     [A very short story for you today. It has been said – by me, among others – that if you must have a government, the ideal would be a monarch absolutely committed to justice. For the only legitimate use of force against others is to effect the maintenance or restoration of justice. That’s why the Left has made a point of perverting the term justice by grafting all those irrelevant modifiers to it. But where would we find a man whose commitment to justice is absolute and perfect? – FWP]

***

     “Scribe!”
     Though he spoke softly, such was the king’s majesty that the word rang throughout his realm. Its innate command would have summoned his designated recorder from anywhere, no matter how distant. The scribe sped to the king’s audience room and prostrated himself before the throne.
     “Sire?”
     “Are you prepared to record an issuance?”
     “Always, my liege. What is your will?”
     The king rose. “A decree,” he said. “Perhaps it will put to rest the squabbling that has disturbed the peace of Our realm.”
     The scribe nodded. “I await your words, Sire.”
     The king assumed the posture in which he announced his will, paused briefly, and began.
     “Let it be proclaimed to all,” he said, “that We are troubled by the disharmony among Our people. There is no possible excuse for it. We wish it to end at once. We have twice articulated the prescriptions and proscriptions required for general peace and flourishing. They are immutable and perfect. Yet they are widely dismissed, always for absurd reasons. Thus is progress disrupted and its substance squandered in futile strife.
     “But it has occurred to Us that it is possible that some of Our people have not heard those prescriptions and proscriptions. Furthermore, it is possible that not all those who have heard them are aware that We are their source. And so We have decided on a third proclamation thereof, which is to be Our last word to you.
     “You shall do no murder, nor any other harm to an innocent.
     “You shall not commit adultery, nor break any other word you have sworn.
     “You shall not steal the rightful property of another, whether through force or fraud.
     “You shall not give false testimony against another.
     “You shall not covet your neighbor’s wife or his goods.
     “You shall honor and protect those who gave you life.
     “You shall do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”
     The king’s demeanor became supremely commanding. The scribe, who had been inscribing his decree meticulously upon a parchment of sheepskin, gazed up at him in awe.
     “These,” the king said, “are the laws. There are no others. Be ever mindful of them…and be vigilant against those who claim otherwise, whether to add to or subtract from Our word. For We are growing weary of you, and Our day of reckoning, when all accounts shall be settled, draws ever nearer. We make this decree for the third and last time, on the twenty-sixth day in Our year of two thousand twenty-three.”
     The king resumed his throne, relaxed, and emitted a thunderous sigh. With a gesture he imprinted the scribe’s parchment with his seal. “Print enough copies that everyone will get one.”
     “As you command, Sire,” The scribe rose from his knees, checked his work carefully, and faced his liege. “Do you think they will all hear it this time?”
     “It is to be hoped,” said the king. “Yet We are prepared to be disappointed, for they are a fractious bunch. Those who hear don’t always obey.” He shook his head. “We are growing mortally weary of their crap.”
     “Mortally, Sire?”
     “Mortally for them, at least. But We gave them free will, and We have chosen not to retract nor to diminish it. The consequences will be what they will be. We will not diminish those, either.”
     “Of course, Sire.” The scribe bowed and turned to do as he had been commanded, but paused. “Sire?”
     “Yes, Our good and faithful scribe?”
     “This pluralism…”
     The king frowned. “On Earth or in Our realm?”
     “Your practice of speaking of yourself in plurals, Sire.”
     “Ah. What of it?”
     “It seems to have…caught on beneath the veil of Time. Others have adopted it as their own idiom.”
     The king nodded. “We are aware, of course. It is an affectation among those who fancy themselves chosen by Us to rule others. It gives them no warrant for their presumptions. They will learn that in due course.”
     “Of course, Sire.” The scribe pondered. “Yet surely they can see that it makes no sense.”
     “They could…but they must choose to see. Which among them are three Persons and yet one as well? Is not such a feat infinitely beyond them? Perhaps some of them will learn better before they must stand before Us.” The king smiled grimly. “They should hope so. Now be about Our business.”
     “As you command, Sire.” The recording angel bowed once more and made away to do his king’s bidding.

==<O>==

     Copyright © 2023 Francis W. Porretto. All rights reserved worldwide.

***

     [For the feast of Christ the King, of course! – FWP]

Nov 25 2023

“Diversity” Advocates

     American “diversity” advocates, henceforth to be styled Diversitoids, have a propensity for living in the “whitest” parts of the country. As it happens, they’re usually surrounded by other Diversitoids…that is, other white Diversitoids. But diversity! We can’t get enough of it…or so they say. If that’s so, then what explains their chosen neighborhoods?

     If you have a few minutes, the following video from American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor, is both thought-provoking and entertaining.

     Taylor employs the Diversitoids’ campaign against Judd Blevins, an Oklahoman, largely as an introduction to a provocative proposition: specifically, whatever fraction of white Americans expresses willingness to live in a white ethnostate should be conceded a proportional tract of the U.S. for that purpose. But the Diversitoids would never agree to a separation into a white ethnostate and a “diverse” nation. Given white Diversitoids’ choices of neighborhoods to live in, I find the notion to be spot-on.

     And before you ask: yes, all other considerations to the side for the moment, I would certainly prefer to live in a white ethnostate. Would I uproot my family and relocate to Maine, or North Dakota, or the Pacific Northwest to do so? Not at the moment…but ask me again in a year’s time.

Nov 25 2023

No Americans Were Released

     John Hinderaker comments pithily:

     On October 7, Gaza murdered 31 Americans and is believed to have kidnapped 13 more, including a three-year-old child. Yesterday an initial exchange of hostages for prisoners was carried out. Ten Thais and one Filipino were let go, but no Americans were released….

     […]

     If our president were not a senile, half-witted fool, he would have told Hamas long ago that if all Americans were not freed within 12 hours, Gaza would be reduced to rubble. Not to mention that Gaza would never get another nickel of American money.

     We shouldn’t have expected any Americans to be released. Nor should we expect any to be released in the near future. They’re bargaining chips: victims of kidnap-at-ransom.

     The masters of HAMAS are, at base, extortionists. They use violence, kidnapping, and threats to extort money and forbearance from others: principally from Israel, but after that, from the United States. The U.S. has funded HAMAS rather profligately with “aid” payments for some years now. HAMAS wants more – as much more as the lives and health of those hostages will buy.

     HAMAS fancies itself a State. Remember what Lysander Spooner said about States:

     All political power, as it is called, rests practically upon this matter of money. Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a “government;” because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will. It is with government, as Cæsar said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually supported each other; that with money he could hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money.

     Hinderaker’s prescription is the right one: threaten to reduce HAMAS’s stronghold in Gaza to flinders and cinders, and announce that America’s checkbook has been closed to them. Does anyone doubt that Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump would have hesitated to issue that ultimatum? Does anyone doubt that the Usurper Regime will kowtow to HAMAS’s demands? After a feeble gesture at face-saving, perhaps?

     It’s time to resurrect the doctrine of peace through superior firepower. Not for Israel’s sake, but for ours.

Nov 25 2023

Perhaps You’ve Wondered

     Why are there so many total nutcases infesting our world? How can there be so many terrorists, so many mass murderers, so many loonies gluing themselves to stuff to “protest” fossil fuels, or “cisgender heteronormativity,” or whatever? Omitting the ones driven by Islam, that is.

     A short while ago, it occurred to me that a classic science-fiction novel has a possible explanation for us:

     One of his men told me dryly: “It’s a matter of population, Courtenay. Have you ever heard of Albert Fish?”
     “No.”
     “He was a phenomenon of the dawn; the earliest days of the Age of Reason—1920 or thereabouts. Albert Fish stuck needles into himself, burned himself with alcohol-saturated wads of cotton, flogged himself—he liked it. He would have liked brainburning, I’ll wager. It would have been twenty delightful subjective years of being flayed, suffocated, choked, and nauseated. It would have been Albert Fish’s dream come true.
     “There was only one Albert Fish in his day. Pressures and strains of a very high order are required to produce an Albert Fish. It would be unreasonable to expect more than one to be produced out of the small and scattered population of the period—less than three billion. With our vastly larger current population there are many Albert Fishes wandering around. You only have to find them. Our matchless research facilities here at Taunton have unearthed several. They turn up at hospitals, sometimes in very grotesque shape. They are eager would-be killers; they want the delights of punishment. A man like you says we can’t hire killers because they’d be afraid of being punished. But Mr. Taunton, now, says we can hire a killer if we find one who likes being punished. And the best part of it all is, the ones who like to get hurt are the ones who just love hurting others. Hurting, for instance—you.”

     In case you’re wondering, Albert Fish was a real person, one of the first well-documented sadomasochists. He really did torture himself…and others.

     In the above-cited novel, the villain (Taunton) wanted a willing killer / torturer who actually sought to be tortured himself. Today’s villains want willing killers, destroyers, and disruptors of all kinds who seek personal validation through their “causes,” no matter the cost to themselves. There are enough humans alive today that the subgroup of thoroughly evil and / or seriously mentally ill persons who fit that description – and there are a minuscule percentage of them in any population – is sufficient for the villains to recruit what they need.

     Why, yes: I do think about such things over my morning coffee. Don’t you?

Nov 24 2023

Open Tabs

Amongst the various open ta bs that I currently have on my browser are two various recipes for chaurice (the Creole version of Chorizo), the Syracuse Casing Company website, Banana Ink stickers, various school websites for my return to the classroom, and then these two articles that have given me a bit of indigestion after Thanksgiving.

The Army tries to get back Soldiers kicked out over the Jab mandate.

Army recruiters are contacting troops who were involuntarily separated from the military due to the vaccine mandate, informing them that they can now apply to rejoin.

Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin mandated two years ago that all service members under Pentagon authority receive COVID vaccinations, an order which was reversed at the beginning of this year only after thousands were forced out of their positions and denied their constitutional right to apply for religious accommodations. The invitation to reconsider service in the Army comes as the military endures severe recruitment shortfalls.

Yeah, that ship has probably sailed, and it ain’t coming back. You want to know the primary emotion felt by the Soldiers, Sailors, Airmen and Marines who got kicked out because they didn’t want to take an experimental shot that was illegally mandated?

ANGER.

You might get back a few who think “Well, two more years and I got my retirement.”. But the vast majority of the troops who were kicked out have lost any faith in the military. And rightly so, with “leadership” like Lloyd “fuck the troops” Austin and Mark “did you imply my gender” Milley ensuring that the military is woke, lame and gay. And the new CJCS is an even worse woke piece of crap.

There’s no accountability in the military at the top levels. It’s all just one big pathetic clown show, begging for more clowns.

The Department of Defense (DOD) is requesting approximately $114 million to finance its latest round of diversity initiatives.

Oh, they want more money for drag queens and left-handed lesbian albino midget Eskimos in the Infantry, even though they can’t be bothered to actually account for the money that they do get now. SIX FAILED AUDITS. SIX. If I couldn’t account for my budget down to the penny I got my ass handed to me by the money people at the unit. But if you’re a general I guess you can just wave your hand and make the problem disappear, right before you ask for MILLIONS more dollars. The proper response, if we had politicians with any balls or backbone, would be “Fuck off with that bullshit and if you can’t show me where all your money is being spent then the firing begins tomorrow and continues until every dipshit with a star on their shoulder is removed and replaced.”

I’ve got plenty more articles about how the military is circling the toilet bowl and going down, but I can only scream so much in one day. At least I don’t have to go shopping today. Blah. Black Friday can also fuck right the hell off. For the life of me I don’t see how it’s good to have a day full of being thankful for what you have, and then follow it up with a day where people get trampled at Wal-Mart trying to get a deal on a TV. Or a dress. It hurts my soul to have a day focused on being grateful followed by a day of greed and gimme-gimme-gimme.

I’m going to go walk my dogs and say my rosary and remember what I’m thankful for.

Nov 24 2023

Thanksgiving Afterthoughts

     It’s right there in the name of the holiday: Thanksgiving Day is a day for giving thanks. But to give implies that there’s someone to receive. To whom shall our thanks be offered?

     Would anyone like a hint? Our supposedly Catholic president appears to need one:

     Since the first Thanksgiving on Plymouth Rock and its subsequent establishment as a day of thanks on Oct. 3, 1789, the recipient of that thanks on behalf of the United States of America has always been God.

     But in keeping with the destruction of everything good and virtuous in this nation, this year, God has been removed as the recipient of thanks on Thanksgiving.

     On Wednesday, President Biden released his Thanksgiving proclamation for 2023.

     For the first time in American history, the proclamation completely omitted any reference to God or faith.

     Some are shocked. I’m not. Biden’s Catholicism is insincere. That’s been clear since he entered politics. His ingressive senility makes little difference. But the Dementia-Patient-In-Chief is not the focus of my thoughts today.

***

     The evangelical atheists will be swarming for the next few weeks. The Christmas season brings them out of their warrens to berate the rest of us into accepting their faith. Apparently the idea of a celebration founded on the birth of the Son of God in human flesh is just too much for them.

     I could go into an extended rant about why the birth of Jesus of Nazareth was a big deal, entirely worth celebrating, but I’ll spare you. Suffice it to say that His travels, miracles, and teachings transformed the world. Should our species be permitted to continue for a few centuries more (a proposition that’s begun to look dubious) His words will continue to travel, penetrate, and exalt the minds and hearts of men. And that really pisses off the militant atheists.

     You want proof? There’s plenty. The exploding revival of Christian belief nationwide should suffice. A fair amount of that is in reaction to the Left’s infiltration of the churches. The reaction has been a firmer binding among the faithful to the Redeemer’s teachings. Laymen are surging out of the pews to shape up their clergy! They will not stand for a secularized, politicized church.

     Then there’s the strange, or perhaps not strange at all, case of Reverorum ib Malacht. That’s a “black metal” band from Poland which once made blasphemy the thematic core of its music. The band’s members studied the Catholic faith closely, that they might blaspheme it better…and converted one and all to Catholicism. Imagine that.

     It seems that any man who lives the Christian faith, and who’s willing to talk humbly about what he believes, can be an effective promulgator thereof. It’s not his Aquinas-like reasoning or his eloquence that does the job. It’s the power of the Gospels: Christ’s teachings themselves.

     And what is the heart of those teachings?

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

     The Christian faith, which is founded on the secret to happiness and good will toward others, has a power that can break all resistance. Ask the members of Reverorum ib Malacht.

***

     The antithesis of gratitude isn’t ingratitude but resentment. The forces that seek to destroy our nation and doom our world spread resentment over everyone and everything, like rancid peanut butter. They encourage us to think we’re owed and unfairly burdened…that anyone who’s done well must have victimized others of lesser attainments. Here! In the land where opportunity is everywhere and only coercive interference can prevent us from capitalizing on it!

     The success they’ve had among Americans is frightening. The implications for their effectiveness among others who really have been sorely tried are terrifying. And the foundation of their successes lies in turning us away from God.

     Still, one must acknowledge their cleverness. There have been many religions throughout recorded history. Each has had its own conception of God or gods. And so verbally nimble evangelists such as Stephen Roberts say things such as this:

     “I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.”

     But a logically minded person will respond even more penetratingly:

     “Those other conceptions of God fail under rational examination. That doesn’t mean that there is no God. What matters isn’t the profusion of creeds, but the strength or weakness of the evidence for each of them.”

     Compare that to the fulminations of Richard Dawkins:

     Science, after all, is an empirical endeavor that traffics in probabilities. The probability of God, Dawkins says, while not zero, is vanishingly small. He is confident that no Flying Spaghetti Monster exists. Why should the notion of some deity that we inherited from the Bronze Age get more respectful treatment?

     Dawkins has been talking this way for years, and his best comebacks are decades old. For instance, the Flying Spaghetti Monster is a variant of the tiny orbiting teapot used by Bertrand Russell for similar rhetorical duty back in 1952. Dawkins is perfectly aware that atheism is an ancient doctrine and that little of what he has to say is likely to change the terms of this stereotyped debate. But he continues to go at it. His true interlocutors are not the Christians he confronts directly but the wavering nonbelievers or quasi believers among his listeners – people like me, potential New Atheists who might be inspired by his example.

     But science is not “an empirical endeavor that traffics in probabilities.” It’s founded on a rigorous technique for observation, inference, and the testing of hypotheses. And so a genuine logician would respond:

     There is no way to determine “the probability that God exists.” That would require:

  • The attribution of a specific, spatiotemporally based definition to God;
  • Deductions from that definition about what circumstances “should” evoke a manifestation of God;
  • A tally of observed manifestations of God and failures to observe such manifestations.

     But you have to understand induction, inference, and deduction – the bones of the scientific method – to understand that…and these are apparently things of which Richard Dawkins is ignorant.

***

     I could go on, and sometimes I do. But there’s no need. The point has been made. An open mind concerns itself with logic and evidence, not contemptuous dismissals that evade such things.

     But there is this as well: Sometimes, some of what persuades a man to accept that God exists is internal, and thus not demonstrable. Yet such private experiences are important phenomena. They’re no less real than love or desire; they’re just not usable in argument. That leads us to another question:

Has any atheist had a private experience of
No God?
What was it like, pray tell?
Who opened the heavens to say:
I do not exist — ?

     Don’t hold your breath awaiting an answer.

     Once God is admitted, gratitude – and thanksgiving – must follow.

     May He bless and keep you all.

Nov 24 2023

For My Fellow Firearms Enthusiasts

     CheapAmmo.Com is once again offering …cheap ammo!

     Jack Neal emailed me with some of the sales that will go live on Friday morning:

The deals will go live on Friday morning at 9 a.m. (Eastern Time), similar to what we did last year.

We’ll have the following ready to ship. In most cases, there is a limit of one case per customer.

223 ammo – $375 per case (Fiocchi, 55 grain) with free shipping.
9mm Luger training ammo – $190 per case (Magtech, 115 grain) with free shipping.
Fiocchi 380 ACP ammo – $230 per case with free shipping.
Bulk 45 ACP Ammo – Sellier & Bellot 230 Grain FMJ with free shipping.

As you know, we tend to sell out of the more popular calibers by early afternoon. I’m hopeful the 45 ACP might last most of the day but as word spreads, there’s typically no way of knowing how quickly it’ll catch fire!

     Fellow gun nuts: Beat the Black Friday rush! Make it a point to surf on over there as early as possible Friday morning.

Nov 23 2023

A Double-Edged Gift

     [This piece is an old favorite. It first appeared at The Palace of Reason on November 27, 2003. It expresses the meaning I find in the Thanksgiving celebration better than anything I’ve written since then. Twenty years later, it still rings true for me. Make of it what you will. — FWP]

***

     Thanksgiving Day, alternately known here at the Fortress of Crankitude as the Feast of St. Gluttony, has finally arrived. Across America, three- and four-person families will open their doors to company, prepare quantities of food sufficient to provision the USS Theodore Roosevelt for a three month deployment, eat about five percent of it, and spend the remainder of the day bellyaching, in several senses of the word.

  • There will be much jockeying for position at the dinner table, as if proximity to the string beans and fried onions, the pearl onions in cream, or the sweet potato casserole carried a proportional obligation to eat them.
  • There will be much cranberry sauce, most of it from Ocean Spray Corporation and bearing the trademark raised double rings fore and aft. The juveniles in the company will fight over who gets those.
  • There will be many ejaculations of “I’m stuffed fuller than that turkey” and “I couldn’t eat another bite.”
  • There will be much washing-up.
  • There will be extensive packaging of leftovers and cries of frustration over the dimensions of the refrigerator. These will be accompanied by sincere exhortations to the guests to “take a little home for later, we don’t need it all. Really!”
  • There will be football, which the menfolk will use to escape the washing-up and packaging of leftovers.
  • There will be visits from relatives whose tenuous connection to the host family is all but lost in the mists of time.
  • There will be more football, which, together with the feeling of having swallowed a tire, will dampen the traditional post-prandial displays of hostility between the aforementioned tenuously connected relatives.
  • There will be the blessed moment when all the guests go home and the hosts can cease to be hosts, a role at which most of us are terrible anyway.
  • Interspersed with all that, there will be some pro forma expressions of gratitude for this or that, whose cliche fraction will average about 83.33%, because most of us are no better at appreciating our blessings than we are at being hosts. Still, it’s important to make the effort, at least once a year.

     Thanksgiving Day is bittersweet for many, because they lack some of the above ingredients for a full-featured holiday revel. Some don’t have families. Others don’t have much fondness for turkey or the Dallas Cowboys. Still others can’t quite figure out how to get the cranberry sauce out of the can without destroying the charming double rings. For your Curmudgeon, Thanksgiving Day is a remembrance of a day he faced death for no good reason at all.

***

     Once upon a time, your Curmudgeon had a relative with wealth, who shall henceforth be called Aunt Lil. Aunt Lil had three things in great measure: money, caustic opinions, and a steely resistance to unpleasant facts. Inasmuch as the rest of the family was less than pecunious, and hoped to share in the proceeds from Aunt Lil’s much-anticipated passing to the next world, we were all unctuously deferential toward her, and far more forbearing of her less agreeable side than we ought to have been.

     When your Curmudgeon was a fuzz-chinned sprat in his middle teenage years, a promising looking apprentice adult but little more, there came a Thanksgiving when Aunt Lil decided that she, rather than your Curmudgeon’s nuclear family, would host the day’s feast. She announced this decision with the imperiousness of a Roman Caesar. She accompanied the announcement with the astonishing addendum that she, and no one else, would prepare the food.

     Aunt Lil could not cook.

     Your Curmudgeon, even though of tender years, was already an accomplished cook, having been tutored in the art by a father whose life work was in food. One of Dad’s most prized possessions was a cookbook he’d been given by the head chef at the Hunter’s Lodge in Westchester: 832 recipes for potatoes. Dad pored over that tome as if it were the Rosetta Stone. Perhaps, to him, it was; he never did manage to get “au gratin” right. Anyway, Dad had passed his knowledge and skills along to your Curmudgeon, who’d found that he enjoyed their exercise — and never more so than when the stakes were high.

     Being of tender years, your Curmudgeon dared to suggest to Aunt Lil that she accept his assistance with the Thanksgiving repast. The suggestion was dismissed with prejudice. There was a grimace of horror from Dad, who feared that your Curmudgeon would continue by Mentioning The Unmentionable: that Aunt Lil was barely competent to pour milk over cold cereal. But even in his tenderer years, your Curmudgeon wasn’t that indiscreet.

     On the appointed day, we dutifully presented ourselves at Aunt Lil’s magnificent apartment in the Bronx — yes, there was a time when people of means lived in the Bronx, and it may come again — and submitted ourselves to her culinary ministrations. True to her word, she’d done it all herself, from the appetizers to the pies. And no, it wasn’t as bad as we’d feared.

     It was worse. Much, much worse.

     Aunt Lil had somehow formed the fixed idea that you could roast a turkey in an hour, independent of its size. Since there are very few three-pound turkeys around at Thanksgiving, and none that could feed a roster of twenty-eight people, this was, if you’ll pardon the expression, a recipe for calamity. And calamity duly ensued, for every one of the invitees ate of that ruddy pink turkey and smiled while he did it.

     All became ill. Seven wound up in the hospital that evening with severe food poisoning. Your Curmudgeon was one. (Aunt Lil was not. Subsequent familial debate has not settled whether Aunt Lil ate of her own creation. No one was ever willing to state unambiguously that he saw her do so.)

     As your Curmudgeon writhed in the unique agony of an empty digestive tract that strained to empty itself still further in complete disregard for facts or logic, he pondered the train of decisions that had brought him and six of his relatives to that sorry state. He contemplated all the things he’d wanted to do with his life, that now seemed destined to remain undone. He thought about the mess he called his “priorities,” and what he might have done about them had he known that his time on Earth was to be so short.

     To cut to the credits, all who were afflicted lived. Your Curmudgeon would face death again several times: from extreme illness, from a fall off a cliff face, and from the lunatic rage of a crazy woman he’d unwisely invited to share his home. But his first confrontation with the Destroyer of Delights and Sunderer of Societies was the most important one, for the lesson it bore is one he’s never forgotten.

     Time is the ultimate gift.

***

     Time is the medium within which we temporally bound creatures must work. Time is the dimension within which we plan, and execute our plans, and reap the rewards or the lessons they generate. But time is not ours to command.

     In his masterpiece The Screwtape Letters — and really, how often has that much wisdom been compressed into that few pages? — C. S. Lewis’s devil-protagonist declaims on the folly of asserting the ownership of time, in particular the time of one’s life:

You must therefore zealously guard in his mind the curious assumption “My time is my own.” Let him have the feeling that he starts each day as the lawful possessor of twenty-four hours. Let him feel as a grievous tax that portion of this property which he has to make over to his employers, and as a generous donation that further portion which he allows to religious duties. But what he must never be permitted to doubt is that the total from which these deductions have been made was, in some mysterious sense, his own personal birthright.

     You have here a delicate task. The assumption which you want him to go on making is so absurd that, if once it is questioned, even we cannot find a shred of argument in its defence. The man can neither make, nor retain, one moment of time; it all comes to him by pure gift; he might as well regard the sun and the moon as his chattels.

     This is the forward edge on the sword of time, the somber face of the ticking clock, that two-handed engine which will one day strike, and strike no more. We cannot bottle time. We are forbidden by the laws of the universe to know how much time we’ll have. Though memory suggests otherwise, the only instant we can be sure of is now — and it slips from our grasp before we can even finish pronouncing its name.

     When a man elects to take a risk to his life, as we all do innumerable times each day, he risks the retraction of the gift of time all at once. That’s not an argument for taking no risks; it’s a reminder that the hoped-for returns from a risk ought to be measured carefully against the possible price for pursuing them.

     Twenty-seven people sat down to Aunt Lil’s table and ate of her visibly dangerous, nearly lethal turkey because they didn’t want to offend a woman worth millions of dollars. None of us really liked her personally, but we surely loved our dream of inheriting some fraction of her wealth.

     Was that a worthy end, to incur so great a risk? Even if no one else did, your Curmudgeon and his Dad knew what the risk would be. What was our excuse?

     Aunt Lil died intestate, by the way.

***

     Your Curmudgeon is growing old. The sense of time running out has been weighing heavily upon him lately. He’s been reviewing his goals, especially the ones that seem to be moving out of reach, and straining to make some sense of the things to which he’s given his life. It’s not a uniformly pleasant enterprise. It involves confronting a lot of utter folly and wondering how he could have been so stupid, as he was at Aunt Lil’s dinner table three decades and more ago.

     But it also involves appreciating how many opportunities he’s had, how every pain visited upon him carried with it a lesson that would enlarge his understanding and prove valuable later in his life, and how even his worst failures were occasions for a great deal of hope and joy. This is the rearward edge on the sword of time: the ability to look backward over one’s life and say, despite any and all regrets, “an ill favoured thing, but mine own,” and therefore precious.

     And so, on this Thanksgiving Day in the year of Our Lord 2003, your Curmudgeon will give thanks simply for having lived. For having survived to laugh at his own stupidity. For having learned how much there is to know that he will never know. For having loved, often unwisely but never unwillingly, and having been loved in return. For all the failures, all the pain, all the triumphs and all the joys. These things are inextricably bound in the thread of time, whether Clotho spins it coarse or fine, whether Lachesis weaves it loose or dense, whether Atropos lets it run luxuriantly long or hacks it cruelly short. It was all pure gift, as is whatever portion remains to come.

     Like any other sort of thread, this gift is what one makes of it.

Francis W. Porretto
Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web
Mount Sinai, New York
November 27, 2003

Nov 22 2023

A Little Pre-Thanksgiving Silliness

     I’m no longer allowed, for the sake of my health, to eat my way into a coma. That makes the annual Thanksgiving Day dinner a bittersweet event: all those goodies, and I’m allowed perhaps a tablespoonful of each! But I have my memories of Thanksgiving feasts in bygone years. They must suffice.

     But one recent development strikes me as highly relevant to Thanksgiving Day: the recliner. They’re not all that new in and of themselves, but their inclusion in all kinds of rooms and all manner of other furniture is fairly recent. And there’s nothing like kicking back in your favorite recliner after a satisfying meal, especially if the more annoying family members have vacated the premises and your home team is playing the Lions or the Cowboys.

     I was reflecting on the great importance of our five recliners – two in the living room; two in the downstairs rec room; one in my office – to life here at the Fortress of Crankitude when it occurred to me that there surely must be enough other “recliner fans” out there for a dedicated publication. I mean, why not? There are publications for far less relaxing activities and pastimes. So I set to work:

     What do you think, Gentle Reader? Would it “play in Peoria?”

Nov 22 2023

Parasitism, Freedom, And The State

     There aren’t many mornings, in these waning days of my life, that I find myself heartened and energized by something a relatively conventional columnist writes in a relatively conventional media organ. This is one.

     Apparently, the election of Javier Milei to the presidency of Argentina has made possible the public exploration of ideas that would previously have been treated as unspeakable. Today at The Epoch Times, columnist Jeffrey A. Tucker treats with one such idea respectfully, even approvingly: anarcho-capitalism.

     Tucker provides an excellent, high-level description of this revolutionary idea, largely by emphasizing what it is not:

     Central to the idea is that society does not require an entrenched entity of legalized compulsion and coercion called the state in order to enjoy the enforcement of property rights, contracts, defense, and commercial society generally. The fusing of the terms anarchism and capitalism is not a plan for the social order but rather a prediction of what would happen in a civilized community in the absence of the state.

     Private property in a free-enterprise economic order is a concept with which Americans are already familiar. So is the proposition that individuals are capable enough to solve their own problems, and to assist others in solving their problems when those others require a little help. Both notions have been under furious attack for centuries. The reason “should” be “obvious:” They leave no role or room for political parasites.

     Politicians, whether empowered or aspiring, purely hate the idea that we can get along just fine – better, in fact – without their “assistance.” As Isabel Paterson wrote in The God of the Machine, politicians are a breed that strives to live through others. Their self-concept demands that others “need” them. Without those needy others, they have no reason for existence. In short, they are parasites that seek to breed other parasites to provide a justification for their “public service.”

     Give that a few moments to percolate while I refill my mug.

***

     A few years ago, a “public intellectual” of some repute addressed a gathering of his fellows in a fashion they found disturbing:

     “Gentlemen, you see that in the anarchy in which we live, society manages much as before. Take care, if our disputes last too long, that the people do not come to think that they can very easily do without us.”

     The speaker’s name was Benjamin Franklin. His audience was the Constitutional Convention that defined the federal government of the American republic. Few in that assembly were pleased by his words. They had the ring of truth.

     Of course, America in 1787 was not much like the America of today. “Things have changed,” as we’re told ceaselessly by would-be power-wielders. But the suggestion that the differences justify the existence of a massively intrusive and parasitical order that seeks to rule over every detail of our existences is not something that anyone should accept with a shrug. That we need far fewer such intrusions and far less such parasitism is the most popular proposition of our time.

     “But do we need any such entity as the State?” is a question that most react to with a flip rejection. “You’re talking anarchy!” comes the rebuke. The false cosmetics that have been troweled onto anarchism have kept it from being considered seriously for many decades. Anarchism as a concept has been successfully mis-equated with chaos.

     Yet here, in the most concise statement with which I’m familiar, is the heart of the anarchist premise:

     The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime. – Max Stirner

     Or, if you prefer your political analysis with a little curry, we have this:

     The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence. – Mohandas “Mahatma” Gandhi

     And it would seem, from Jeffrey Tucker’s column and other, less direct treatments of the idea, that the hour is upon us for re-examining the moral and ethical bases of that peculiar institution we call the State. Those bases are not solid.

***

     I hadn’t bothered to familiarize myself with Javier Milei before his recent election. All I know about him is that he’s styled himself an anarcho-capitalist, and that he sought and has won the presidency of Argentina. Those two details might seem contradictory. That’s because they are. A man who seeks public office is acting against the anarchist principle. All the same, if Milei is philosophically an anarcho-capitalist, it will show in his policies and decisions as Argentina’s president. He bears watching.

     Please give Jeffrey Tucker’s column a look. (If you need access, email me and I’ll enable it for you.) You’ll find it stimulating, if nothing else. From there you can go on to explore the greatest science-fiction trilogy ever written. You can ask yourself – hopefully sincerely – “Would I thrive in the social order of Hope?” And if your answer is no, perhaps you’ll ask yourself “What would I have to change about myself to be able to say yes?”

     Enjoy your Thanksgiving.

Nov 21 2023

Why Don’t We Have Soccer Riots?

     Well, there are at least two reasons:

  1. There aren’t that many fanatic soccer fans in the United States;
  2. So we have Black Friday instead.

     “But why,” I hear you ask, “don’t the British have Black Friday?” The C.S.O. maintains that most of their energies are dispersed in soccer riots. (The rest go to murder mysteries.) Another possible explanation is that the British don’t have enough money to go commercially crazy the way Americans do:

2021 GDP 2021 Population 2021 Product per capita
United Kingdom
 $3.13 trillion 67.33 million $48,487
United States
 $23.32 trillion 331.9 million $70,262

     The third possibility is that the British lack sufficient closet space for all that junk, the “self storage” facility being less common Across the Water. Fourth and finally, they could just be saner than we are, though that would leave us in need of an explanation for the soccer riots.

     Whatever the case, it seems our cousins in the U.K. don’t have an after-Thanksgiving retail frenzy. Of course, they don’t celebrate Thanksgiving either, but that’s a mere detail.

     But wait a moment: America has four wildly popular nationwide professional sporting phenomena, whereas Britain has only soccer and cricket. With twice as many “big time” pro sports and the associated marketing, shouldn’t Americans’ rowdiness be dissipated more effectively than that of the British? This is a research question. (A British friend has counseled me not to discount rugby as a relief valve; he claims it has the highest body count of any pro sport played anywhere. Must make the murder mysteries seem pale by comparison.)

     Our favorite Graybeard has rung in on the madness:

     Black Friday was supposedly called that because it was the day where businesses turned their annual ledgers from red ink to black ink, but in the last few years it seems to have morphed into something else. It has been reported for years that the big deals aren’t necessarily really deals at all (2014 study), or that some companies raise their prices in the weeks (months?) before the day so that what would have been a normal, small discount from MSRP suddenly seems like a deal. It’s being reported (2016) that more and more people are carrying their smartphone into the stores to price check things, compare price and availability at other stores, or get coupons. I confess: I’ve done it and not just this time of year.

     Once there started to be a perception that good deals came on Black Friday, it was only a matter of time until it became just another way of saying “BIG SALE!” But shoppers like to think they’re getting big deals, and there are stores that put one or two items on a massive discount to get some people to line up the night before. Maybe they can get some buzz on the news. Of course, now that stores are opening on Thanksgiving itself, Friday seems like it loses some drawing power. Regardless, every year there’s some incident where people get violent (2016) over something stupid.

     Well, anyway. We’re three days from “official” Black Friday. It’s a time for great nervousness here on Long Island; the increment of traffic does unspeakable things to our roads. The accident figures are frightening, too. So the C.S.O. and I make a point of staying home. It’s an expedient I can heartily recommend. On the other hand, if you simply must get out and about – to take the pulse of the nation, as it were – for my money Becker and Fagen’s prescription remains serviceable:

     Unlikely to cost you a lot, too.

Nov 21 2023

Chinese Bio-Terrorism?

Maybe. But, as the CDC refused to test samples of material labeled “Ebola”, we may never officially know.

Meanwhile, the Left and their allies in the Media are still screaming “Russia, Russia, Russia” and “Insurrection”. According to them, that is a MUCH greater threat.

I would like them to think about the threat that keeping Biden in office presents. Or, worse, installing that idiot Kamala Harris in the chief spot to replace the diminishing Biden.

Nov 20 2023

For Those A Great Distance From Their Loves

     A little something from the great Tom Rush:

     To those who have their loves close by: Be grateful.

Nov 20 2023

Bring back tarring and feathering

Via the Epoch times, in an article about how the IRS is planning on fining you for “underpayment of taxes” (as if the Byzantine tax code of the FUSA actually lets you figure out what you’re getting skinned for) comes this little blurb that made me see red once again.

The federal government made direct payments to individuals totaling $931 billion to help with COVID-19. However, it was challenging for the IRS and Treasury to get payments to some people.

Nine hundred and thirty-one BILLION dollars, you say? But the 2020 “stimulus” bill was TWO TRILLION DOLLARS. If the fed.gov gave away NINE HUNDRED AND THIRTY-ONE BILLION DOLLARS, then where in the hell is the rest of it? The ONE TRILLION, SIXTY-NINE BILLION DOLLARS?

In ancient Rome, before the empire fell, the Roman senate and royalty spent their time looting the treasury for their own personal benefit. How much of that $1,069,000,000,000 is sitting in the bank account of US politicians?

Rome also had puppet emperors as well, much like Drooling Joe the Chinese Hand Puppet.

Buy more ammo, folks. The train is off the rails but still going at a high rate of speed and when it finally hits something the effect is going to be horrific.

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