Nov 11 2023

The Poles Of Human Life

     Now and then I feel the hand of destiny. Or fate. Or God. On rare occasions a man can feel it poking him. Penning the first words of my next novel – working title Ex Nihilo — seems to be the occasion.

     Contrary to what the predestinationists believe, we have free will and are commanded to make good use of it. Human freedom would be meaningless without it. But that doesn’t mean that we never get a nudge from the Creator.

     A momentous and portentous thing happened one hundred five years ago today. Perhaps you’ve read about it. (You certainly didn’t witness it.) Representatives of the Empire and the Anglo-American-French alliance converged in a railway car in Rethondes, in France’s Compiegne forest to conclude an armistice. At 5:00 AM they signed the document formalizing that armistice, which would end the continent-spanning fighting. At 11:00 AM the fighting stopped. World War I was “over.”

     Except that it wasn’t.

     Germany would pay heavily for the war. The negotiations at Versailles Palace imposed conditions upon the defeated Germans that barely stopped short of evisceration. The German representatives at Versailles made plain that they were signing under duress. The duress was utterly unconcealed; the blockade of German ports was still in force until July of 1919, when the Treaty of Versailles was signed and its initial requirements for the demilitarization of Germany were in process.

     Marshal Ferdinand Foch, supreme commander of the Anglo-American-French forces, commented angrily that what Versailles had achieved was merely “an armistice for twenty years.” He was off by a few weeks: it was September 1, 1939 when the Second Round, better known to most as World War II, began with Germany’s invasion of Poland.

     Though no one realized it at the time, the Great War had given birth to a Culture of Death.

***

     I’ve written before about the inception of warmaking against civilians by Germany. It horrified the Belgians, against whom it was essayed, and the British and French, who were treaty-sworn to protect Belgium. They thought the agreements from the Treaties of Westphalia and the Congress of Vienna had put an end to such atrocities. It hardened anti-German sentiment throughout those nations, such that there arose a supra-national will to punish Germany so harshly that it could never repeat such a crime.

     No, that didn’t work either. Though there are no living veterans of World War I, we still have a few from World War II, and they’ll tell you straight out. Man’s inhumanity to Man remains alive and well. Indeed, some days it seems to be the only thing that’s truly thriving.

     We are a fallen species. We must not deceive ourselves about that. The Culture of Death rampaging among us should be evidence enough for anyone. But even were war somehow to be made impossible – and how, in this world of States all of which are voracious for ever more power, could we manage that? – the Culture of Death would find adherents. Some would be motivated by a false religion; others by insanity; still others by personal greed.

     But the supreme, counter-intuitive irony is that the most insidious tentacle of the Culture of Death is about the desire to abolish death itself…by abolishing life.

***

     Some Gentle Readers think I cite C. S. Lewis to excess. Well, maybe. But in no other writer have I encountered both the purity of vision and the literary skill to make true horrors – the sort that are really possible – real to the reader. His pinnacle achievement lies in two works, one fiction and one non-fiction.

     The non-fiction piece is his extended essay The Abolition of Man. At the time Lewis wrote it, it received only modest recognition. Yet it is a triumph of foresight. We can see Lewis’s fearful predictions coming true all around us.

     The fiction work is the third volume of Lewis’s “Space Trilogy:” That Hideous Strength. It horrified Lewis’s great friend John Ronald Reuel Tolkien, who called it “that hideous book.” Yet it is unsurpassed as a fictional depiction of horrors of the sort that:

  1. Could really happen;
  2. Are emerging around us as we speak.

     Here is where Lewis introduces us to a “scientific” Culture of Death:

     “Why have you done that, Professor?” said a Mr. Winter who sat opposite. “I shouldn’t have thought they did much harm at that distance from the house. I’m rather fond of trees myself.”
     “Oh, yes, yes,” replied Filostrato. “The pretty trees, the garden trees. But not the savages. I put the rose in my garden, but not the brier. The forest tree is a weed. But I tell you I have seen the civilized tree in Persia. It was a French attaché who had it because he was in a place where trees do not grow. It was made of metal. A poor, crude thing. But how if it were perfected? Light, made of aluminum. So natural, it would even deceive.”
     “It would hardly be the same as a real tree,” said Winter.
     “But consider the advantages! You get tired of him in one place: two workmen carry him somewhere else: wherever you please. It never dies. No leaves to fall, no twigs, no birds building nests, no muck and mess.”
     “I suppose one or two, as curiosities, might be rather amusing.”
     “Why one or two? At present, I allow, we must have forests, for the atmosphere. Presently we find a chemical substitute. And then, why any natural trees? I foresee nothing but the art tree all over the earth. In fact, we clean the planet.”
     “Do you mean,” put in a man called Gould, “that we are to have no vegetation at all?”
     “Exactly. You shave your face: even, in the English fashion, you shave him every day. One day we shave the planet.”
     “I wonder what the birds will make of it?”
     “I would not have any birds either. On the art tree I would have the art birds all singing when you press a switch inside the house. When you are tired of the singing you switch them off. Consider again the improvement. No feathers dropped about, no nests, no eggs, no dirt.”
     “It sounds,” said Mark, “like abolishing pretty well all organic life.”
     “And why not? It is simple hygiene. Listen, my friends. If you pick up some rotten thing and find this organic life crawling over it, do you not say, ‘Oh, the horrid thing. It is alive,’ and then drop it?”

     Filostrato’s vision of the elimination of the organic extends to Man himself:

     “What are you driving at, Professor?” said Gould. “After all we are organisms ourselves.”
     “I grant it. That is the point. In us organic life has produced Mind. It has done its work. After that we want no more of it. We do not want the world any longer furred over with organic life, like what you call the blue mold—all sprouting and budding and breeding and decaying. We must get rid of it. By little and little, of course. Slowly we learn how. Learn to make our brains live with less and less body: learn to build our bodies directly with chemicals, no longer have to stuff them full of dead brutes and weeds. Learn how to reproduce ourselves without copulation.”

     The severance of the human mind from the organic, ever-growing-and-decaying world is the core of the vision. Decide for yourself whether you’d like it.

***

     Today The Catholic Thing brings us a monitory essay from Julian Kwasniewski, in which he contrasts “the way of hygiene” to “the way of the hearth:”

     [T]he hearth represents, more than anything else, the united family and the warmth that radiates from it. Hygiene (to my mind) represents the modern manipulation of life, which does not truly allow it to flourish. It is at war with “loved life” yet mimics it, never truly creating it. For modernity, life is an enemy: everything from bacteria to men and women are sterilized.
     The way of hygiene – what St. John Paul II called the “culture of death” – seeks the release of man from nature. For Lewis’ Filostrato, its goal is to “bring out of that cocoon of organic life which sheltered the babyhood of mind the New Man, the man who will not die, the artificial man, free from Nature. Nature is the ladder we have climbed up by, now we kick her away.”
     Which becomes clearer when we look through the farmhouse door and realize that this comforting view will never exist if we take the sterilized road of “hygiene.”

     Kwasniewski appears to share with Tolkien and Lewis an idealized vision of “the simple life,” which in reality was never so simple. Yet he has a point. Our advances in the understanding of the body, and how it can be kept in a condition of health and vitality, have been great. They’ve improved billions of lives and will continue to do so. But the continuation of life at any cost must not become a racial obsession, for that way lies death of a more horrifying sort: the willingness to sacrifice anything and everything, including one another, even including our humanity, to the indefinite perpetuation of our temporal consciousnesses.

     Perhaps that’s a literal impossibility. Yet people are striving toward it even today.

***

     There must exist a middle ground between the acceptance of squalid, unceasingly painful and impoverished life and an aversion to death so all-consuming that it eclipses all other values. It must be found. Neither pole is endurable. Just as we are made to fight for life and to seek health and comfort therein, we are also made to desire rest, an end to striving and a final release from all care. We must find a middle way.

     But where is it?

     [For a complement to this piece, see my essay Demographics and the Medicalization of Human Existence.]

Nov 11 2023

This Is The Era Of Graphics And Videos

     When Lysander Spooner wrote this:

     The government does not, indeed, waylay a man in a lonely place, spring upon him from the road side, and, holding a pistol to his head, proceed to rifle his pockets. But the robbery is none the less a robbery on that account; and it is far more dastardly and shameful.
     The highwayman takes solely upon himself the responsibility, danger, and crime of his own act. He does not pretend that he has any rightful claim to your money, or that he intends to use it for your own benefit. He does not pretend to be anything but a robber. He has not acquired impudence enough to profess to be merely a “protector,” and that he takes men’s money against their will, merely to enable him to “protect” those infatuated travellers, who feel perfectly able to protect themselves, or do not appreciate his peculiar system of protection. He is too sensible a man to make such professions as these. Furthermore, having taken your money, he leaves you, as you wish him to do. He does not persist in following you on the road, against your will; assuming to be your rightful “sovereign,” on account of the “protection” he affords you. He does not keep “protecting” you, by commanding you to bow down and serve him; by requiring you to do this, and forbidding you to do that; by robbing you of more money as often as he finds it for his interest or pleasure to do so; and by branding you as a rebel, a traitor, and an enemy to your country, and shooting you down without mercy, if you dispute his authority, or resist his demands. He is too much of a gentleman to be guilty of such impostures, and insults, and villanies as these. In short, he does not, in addition to robbing you, attempt to make you either his dupe or his slave.

     …he did not have the Internet, the PNG graphical format, or Adobe Photoshop at his command:

     Ahh, progress!

Nov 10 2023

The Biennial Serving Of Kool-Aid

DON’T VOTE: It Only Encourages them! – from a West Coast shopping bag

     I’m in a dour (dire?) mood this morning. Part of it arises from a taxing, difficult chore I’ve been straining to put off, the day for which has arrived and cannot be hired out, delegated, or otherwise shoved aside. But a larger part of it stems from the ongoing willingness of millions – many of them smart enough to know better – to believe that politics can solve problems. That has probably never been true to any degree.

     But electoral politics – the chivvying of “the people” to the polls every two years – is an important, even critical ritual. It reinforces the notion that “we have a voice” in who will run “our government,” and therefore in how it will be run.

     Allow me a citation that the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch have probably seen before:

[W]e are told that there is no need to fear the concentration of power in government so long as that power is checked by the electoral process. We are urged to believe that so long as we can express our disagreement in words, we have our full rights to disagree. Now both freedom of speech and the electoral process are important to liberty, but alone they are only the desiccated remains of liberty. However vigorously we may argue against foreign aid, our substance is still drained away in never-to-be-repaid loans. Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own. To vent one’s spleen against the graduated income tax may be healthy for the psyche, but one must still yield up his freedom of choice as to how his money will be spent when he pays it to the government. The voice of electors in government is not even proportioned to the tax contribution of individuals; thus, those who contribute more lose rather than gain by the “democratic process.” A majority of voters may decide that property cannot be used in such and such ways, but the liberty of the individual is diminished just as much as in that regard as if a dictator had decreed it. Those who believe in the redistribution of wealth should be free to redistribute their own, but they are undoubtedly limiting the freedom of others when they vote to redistribute theirs.

     [Clarence Carson, The American Tradition]

     Among the things Dr. Carson did not say was this:


To prevent a true revolt against the status quo,
“The people” must believe that they “have a choice.”

     However, in writing that “Quite often, there is not even a candidate to vote for who holds views remotely like my own,” he implied it as strongly as is possible without coming right out and saying it. A graphic I like is of immense relevance here:

     The candidates who are presented to us are carefully selected by county, state, and national committees, all of which are firmly under the control of the political Establishment. And what was it Orwell said about establishments?

The aim of the High is to remain where they are.

     Half a minute while I fetch more coffee.

***

     John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute puts it incisively:

     The Establishment—the shadow government and its corporate partners that really run the show, pull the strings and dictate the policies, no matter who occupies the Oval Office—are not going to allow anyone to take office who will unravel their power structures. Those who have attempted to do so in the past have been effectively put out of commission.

     They slipped once in recent memory. By dint of fantastic efforts (and the inability of Establishment Republicans to believe that he could do it) Donald Trump got through the barriers and won the presidency. Once inaugurated, he tried his best. He was opposed at every turn by his own party — and its kingmakers are straining to deny him another term in office. It’s quite possible that those kingmakers are part of the effort to immure him in prison for the rest of his life.

     But the illusion of choice must be maintained. Should that ever fall, there would be no reason for any American to continue to pay taxes, obey the laws, kowtow to officials whether elected, appointed, or hired, and generally support “the system.” So the Establishment – the explicitly political part of which is coming to be known as The Uniparty — works to maintain the illusion that because America holds regular elections, “we” can change things at any time through the vote.

***

     As the years pass I become ever more impressed by the insight of the late Philip K. Dick. Some of his stories display real penetration into what is as opposed to what we like to believe. One of them, “Faith Of Our Fathers,” was a 1968 Hugo Award finalist for Best Novelette. It follows Tung Chien, a functionary in a Chinese Communist government who is given a dose of an antipsychotic – stelazine – and suddenly sees things he’s not supposed to see. In a way, it was a precursor to John Carpenter’s movie They Live, though the politics were completely different.

     The stelazine allows him to see the Party’s Supreme Leader as he – it – really is:

     It was terrible; it blasted him with its awareness. As it moved it drained the life from each person in turn; it ate the people who had assembled, passed on, ate again, ate more with an endless appetite. It hated; he felt its hate. It loathed; he felt its loathing for everyone present — in fact he shared its loathing. All at once he and everyone else in the big villa were each a twisted slug, and over the fallen slug carcasses the creature savored, lingered, but all the time coming directly toward him — or was that an illusion? If this is a hallucination, Chien thought, it is the worst I have ever had; if it is not, then it is evil reality; it’s an evil thing that kills and injures. He saw the trail of stepped-on, mashed men and women remnants behind it; he saw them trying to reassemble, to operate their crippled bodies; he heard them attempting speech.

     But as horrifying as this revelation is, there’s more to come…and come it does:

     “You founded the Party?” he asked.
     “I founded everything. I founded the anti-Party and the Party that isn’t a Party, and those who are for it and those who are against, those that you call Yankee Imperialists, those in the camp of reaction, and so on endlessly. I founded it all. As if they were blades of grass.”

     Dick’s tale is a true nightmare, the exact opposite of the Beatific Vision. Dick, who was fascinated lifelong with questions of reality and what might lie beyond it, had glimpsed something that completely inverts the Christian postulate that Man is the shaper of his own destiny.

     But wait: there’s more! For in that nightmare vision lies the truth about all who 1) attain power over us, and 2) are determined to maintain it: To be sure of power in perpetuity, they must become their own opposition, or at least suborn and control it.

     And the surest way to secure their grip on that prize is to create and maintain an illusion of choice.

***

     There’s a swiftly vanishing chance that Donald Trump will escape the clutches of the “justice system,” gain the GOP’s presidential nomination, and win a second term as president. Should that happen, I would expect a replay of his first term: his own party methodically undermining and thwarting the overwhelming majority of his initiatives. And it won’t matter a dented copper groat how many of us voted for him.

     Our biennial election cycle is not the Kool-Aid of Jim Jones. It won’t kill us…probably not, at least. But it does strive to numb us, to anesthetize our critical faculty. For if a sufficient number of us were fully aware of what’s been done to us – what’s still being done, every hour of every day – we would rebel against it as surely as the Sun rises in the East.

     That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Have a nice day.

Nov 10 2023

Horse sense

I was over at Ace of Spades when I saw this graphic:

horse sight.jpg

Horses have incredible vision. They can almost see in 360 degrees. But that comes at a price. Their vison at that field is almost two-dimensional. So they can have an incredible field of vision, but it’s rather flat.

So young Dave, living in the country, loved riding horses. Actually I still do. There is something about the smell of a horse that makes you complete, and if you haven’t experienced it you just won’t understand what I mean. I rode all over the valley I lived in as a kid, and when other teenagers were driving tractors and four-wheelers to their friend’s homes I was riding a horse.

So one day a couple of friends and I who owned horses decided that we were going to go for a ride. And we did, and it was a glorious summer day, full of sunshine and laughter and great trails that the horses loved to canter down and around. And so it went, until we came up to a part in the trail where water had washed out a small ditch. Maybe six inches across. There was nothing to be alarmed about. A horse would easily walk across it.

However, let’s get back to that two-dimensional vision. Yes, they can see all around, but they don’t have any depth perception. So a horse can see all around it, but when my horse (Star, half Arabian and half Quarter Horse, former barrel racer*) saw that six inch ditch, her two-dimensional vison didn’t see a small little wash. She saw a chasm that she needed to leap across, because obviously it was a gaping crack in the earth and she couldn’t just trot across it.

I was not prepared for this. In fact, I was enjoying the ride and thought that a small little wash in the trail didn’t even warrant mention.

So the horse, who’s two-dimensional vision has informed it that it needs to leap across this canyon like Evil Knievel over the Snake River, leaps.

Which launches me forward. I fly up, I fly forward, and I come down.

Smack dab on the saddle horn.

I managed to get Star to stop before I slid off the saddle like a sack of potatoes.

When I was able to move again, I gingerly got back in the saddle and walked Star home. And I never again used a saddle. I used something called a bareback pad, which is essentially a saddle blanket with no stirrups and a strap to hold it on the horse. And that’s how I rode for another four years before I graduated high school and left the homestead.

Ah, memories

*= Star was the first horse I learned to ride, and nobody had informed me that she used to be a barrel racer. So at one point I was cantering her down the road, and she decided that she wanted to go home. She turned. Anyone who hasn’t seen barrel racing, go look it up. Those horses cut so sharp a turn that if you’re not clamped on like a barnacle you’re going to fly off. I was not prepared at all for Star to turn around, and I flew off and made a ten-point landing; two points for each bounce. As I was laying in the road spitting out gravel, Star just stood there and looked at me as if I was a moron who couldn’t sit on a horse. I walked her home that day.

Nov 09 2023

Muslims’ Concept Of “Tolerance”

     Presented without comment:

Nov 09 2023

“Keeping The Receipts”

     Chaya Raichik, the worthy proprietor of the popular Twitter account “Libs of TikTok,” has demonstrated that she knows the importance of “keeping the receipts:”

     It all started with USA Today “journalist” Will Carless and his article trying to tie Raichik and her tweets to threats supposedly made to people and organizations whose derangement Libs of TikTok has highlighted on social media. Carless asserts his publication “confirmed dozens of bomb threats, death threats and other harassment” that can be traced directly to Libs of TikTok posts starting in February of 2022.

     And where did Carless go to get such confirmations? Media Matters of America, of course. That bastion of truthfulness. Media Matters exists as a welfare scheme for liberal writers who failed to succeed in any other profession. Hillary Clinton co-founded MMA, so that’s all you really need to know.

     Back to Chaya and the hit piece. She actually agreed to be interviewed by Carless for his piece, and, smart girl that she is, recorded their call in order to have the “receipts” when he and USA Today inevitably tried to skew her words and use them against her. The hit piece hit the internet last week and in print form on Monday.

     Emphasis mine. This is absolutely mandatory when one is confronted by a “journalist” today. They have no ethical code. They have no personal scruples. They’re out for “eyeballs,” and they’ll do anything to draw them in. This is what followed:

     Smart girl indeed!

***

     My lumber-room of a memory has cooperated this morning. As a result I’m able to provide yet another instance of a smart fellow who “kept the receipts.” That smart guy was a Congressman who found himself at seriously cross purposes with…drum roll, please…Mike Wallace and 60 Minutes.

     Shortened version, for those who don’t have the time or inclination to read the whole story: The year was 1993. A “researcher” was shooting cats in the head as part of his entirely unoriginal “research” into battlefield brain injuries, on the taxpayers’ dime. Congressman Bob Livingston of Louisiana wanted the “research” suspended so it could be peer-reviewed. 60 Minutes did a hit piece on Livingston, a generally pro-military Congressman whom Mike Wallace tried to portray as indifferent to soldiers’ lives. In doing so, Wallace lied blatantly to his audience: he said that Livingston had refused to be interviewed to defend his position.

     But Livingston had agreed to be interviewed, if his statements were broadcast live or unedited. He said exactly that, directly to Wallace. He’d recorded the call in which he said so. He played that recording for the president of CBS News. This is what followed:

     Wallace said, on air, that he had repeatedly offered Livingston a chance to discuss the situation, but that Livingston refused.

     Not, mind you, that Livingston had offered to be interviewed live or unedited, but instead as if Livingston had totally ducked all questions. The next day, Livingston called Wallace and chewed him out. Again, my tape was running, again secretly.

     […]

     THIS TIME, we called the president of CBS News. Bob played our audiotape for him. And then played it again. There was Wallace apologizing and admitting to having been “dishonest” and “stupid.” And yet the show had run again, without correction. It was clear we had a slam-dunk legal case if we wanted to press it.

     The CBS president was irate at his own team. He made that clear. The tape did the trick. Apparently the news president then came down hard on Wallace. Really hard. Wallace soon called back. His voice was shaky. “Well, um, you know something? You’re a better man than I am, Congressman.” He promised to go on the air and apologize to the entire country. Then, after more of what can only be described as groveling, Wallace said this:

     “You can get this on your tape recorder—I wish you told me you had a tape recorder going; that would have been the gentlemanly thing to do, the first time….”

     Livingston interrupted, lowering the boom: “It would have been, but then I didn’t think that I was necessarily dealing with a gentleman.”

     Wallace: “Well, in any case…”

     Livingston: “And frankly, you’ve proven me right.”

     Bingo. You could almost hear the phone line sizzle. Wallace had no answer. There was no good answer. Livingston was correct.

     “I wish you told me you had a tape recorder going.” That was all Wallace had to say for himself. He was aggrieved that Livingston “kept the receipts!”

     Verbum sat sapienti, Gentle Reader.

Nov 08 2023

I Really Don’t Like To End A Day This Way

     …but events have me boiling with rage yet again. What events, you ask? Why, these events:

     Can you believe it? Leftists are furious with this YouTuber – apparently a man who does a lot of philanthropy – for “reinforcing the stereotype that Africa is dependent on handouts.” Great God in heaven! Africa IS dependent on handouts! The continent is a cesspool of violence, corruption, and squalor! Billions of dollars in foreign aid, much of it from American taxpayers, flows into Africa each year…but conditions never change. Why is that, pray tell? Anyone? Bueller?

     But this is the Left’s new reflexive response to someone Leftists regard as “not one of us” who lends a hand to people who appear to need it: Denigrate him. Question his motives. Pour contempt on his efforts. Ask him what else he’s willing to do at his own expense.

     Villainous scum. Remember that phrase. It will recur.

***

     Do you remember this episode of a few years ago?

     MAGA fan Scott Presler was tired of all the constant bickering in the media about Baltimore’s numerous problems, so he personally decided to do something about it. Rather than simply complain or join the online chorus, he has organized a massive trash clean up of the city set to take place in the near future. Presler just wants to help out in any way that he can.

     “I’m so tired of people saying, ‘We should do this, we should do that’….I was just like, ‘I’ve had, it. I’m going to go to Baltimore, even if it’s just me on a street corner picking up trash,'” he told The Epoch Times.

     On Saturday, July 28, the activist told his online following that anybody who wanted to come to help clean up Baltimore was welcome. He encouraged Trump supporters to wear Trump gear but told The Epoch Times that anybody can participate when the event takes place.

     “I just want the citizens of Baltimore to see [that] we do care. We do give a darn. And at the end of the day, we’re all American and if ya’ll are struggling in Baltimore and you guys need help, then we’re going to be there for you,” he said.

     Presler isn’t all talk and no action; he followed through. Over 170 volunteers descended on one of the worst districts in West Baltimore, attacked the trash and filth with energy, and cleaned it out. And what followed that effort? Why, this, of course!

     Look, we appreciate anyone who is willing to roll up their sleeves to help Baltimore. More than 170 people came from all over the country and cleaned up nearly 12 tons of trash, according to Mr. Presler’s Twitter feed. He doesn’t post any photos of the totality of the trash, so we’ll have to take his word for it….

     Whatever he says his motives were, Mr. Presler’s presence in Baltimore reinforces the tired image of our failing urban cores. That the poor people in this dilapidated city can’t take care of their own neighborhoods and all the public officials around them have failed as well. The bureaucratic, all-talk Democrats strike again. If a crowd of volunteers could clean up 12 tons of trash in 12 hours, how incompetent and helpless must Baltimoreans be if they can’t manage it in decades, right?…

     The silver lining in all of this is that the residents of West Baltimore did get a much needed cleaning up. That is something that they deserve. Streets and alleyways free of trash go a long way in improving the psyche of a neighborhood and its residents. Not to mention deterring crime. Mr. Presler says that people around the country are planning similar clean up events in their own communities. A loud round of applause for that as well. Spiffier neighborhoods are good for everyone.

     We also hope Mr. Presler keeps his promise to return to Baltimore once a month. It would definitely give his motives more credibility. It might also give him better perspective about the city’s problems than any single visit can provide. Maybe it could even lead him and his followers to advocate for federal housing, health care, transportation, education, criminal justice, civil rights and anti-poverty policies aimed at urban communities.

     In the meantime, we’ll see how clean the neighborhood still is when he returns in September.

     At the time, I called the editors of the Baltimore Sun villainous scum. They were…and probably still are. But what I didn’t realize was that they were simply “outriders,” blazing a new rhetorical trail by which the Left would dispense its vitriol on anyone to the Right who might act when they merely complain.

     Villainous scum indeed. And the Left has bred more like them.

***

     I’m just barely holding my temper in check right now. I’ve got this urge to settle the hash of the moral imbeciles at Yahoo and elsewhere who’ve pissed on “Mr. Beast’s” generosity toward those Kenyan villagers. But another message is of greater import.

     Stop the aid.
     Stop all of it, at once.
     No more airline service to Africa.
     No more technology transfers, either.
     Let Africa and other aid sinkholes fend for themselves.
     Perhaps the Leftist scum who’ve poured contempt upon Mr. Beast’s efforts will step up…though I shan’t hold my breath while I wait to see.

     You and I have been paying for good works to benefit others. The envy we’ve received in return should have persuaded us by now of the futility of such expenditures.

     Mr. Beast can spend his own money, if he likes. But for me: no more aid. No more charity. If the savages of Africa dislike being thought of as welfare clients – though in fairness, that attitude seems to be concentrated mainly among African politicians – then let them fend for themselves. Perhaps they’ll repent.

     Have a nice evening.

Nov 08 2023

Have A Little Afternoon Music

     …for lovers in the afternoon of life:

     Dan Fogelberg wrote it; Glass Hammer raised it to glory.

Nov 08 2023

Not Schadenfreude

We all know that San Fransicko is a festering shithole of disease and filth. More proof keeps coming out every day.

The viral TikTok video posted by freqmeek shows a scene in the dangerous Tenderloin district far worse than most people comprehend. “The anxiety we experience just traveling to work daily in the Tenderloin in San Francisco, California is unbelievable,” freqmeek writes in the caption. “This is overwhelming and mentally draining… not to mention the dangers of the unpredictable environment.”

Let me just be blunt, and say something that many of you have probably already said: THIS IS WHAT THEY VOTED FOR.

Oh, your city is over-run with drug addicts shitting on the street? THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR.

Oh, your city is over-run with crime? THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR.

Oh, your city streets are covered with human feces? THIS IS WHAT YOU VOTED FOR.

And more than just that, more than the fact that this is the end result of the choices that you have made over and over and over, any attempt to point out that the policies and the people you voted for might not be the best choice were met with cries of “RACISM” or “(insert pet cause here)PHOBIA” or “BIGOT” or “FASCIST”.

Sane America has been telling San Fransicko for a very long time that shitting all over yourself and hitting yourself in the head with a hammer is not the best way to run a city. The response has been sneering insults from a group of ideologues who are still in control of the city. You want pity from me? Start to clean up your own shit. Start showing me that you understand HOW the city of San Fransicko went from a nice city to a festering boil covered in shit. Because YOU VOTED FOR THIS, which means the situation in which you find yourself is entirely of your own making. I’m not going to clean up anything for you until I’m sure that you won’t shit all over yourself again while calling me a haternazibigot. That’s assuming that you would even allow a white Christian man to come into your city and clean up anything, much less listen to his advice or follow his suggestions on how not to be a festering boil.

“Oh but DAAAAVE…. you’re supposed to be CHRISTIAN! How can you be so full of HATRED for your fellow man”? It’s not hatred. Let me introduce you to the Book of Matthew, chapter ten, verses 13-15.

13 And if that house be worthy, your peace shall come upon it; but if it be not worthy, your peace shall return to you. 14 And whosoever shall not receive you, nor hear your words: going forth out of that house or city shake off the dust from your feet. 15 Amen I say to you, it shall be more tolerable for the land of Sodom and Gomorrha in the day of judgment, than for that city.

How appropriate to add in the reference to Sodom and Gomorrha.

We can pray for people. We can mourn their loss. But that doesn’t mean we have to enable their behavior, nor support their choices when their choices are detrimental. If a family member of mine got hooked on crack, I would do my best to help them. I would get them treatment. I would find counselors who could help. I’d support them if I had the means.

But I wouldn’t allow them to do drugs in my home. In fact, while they were under the influence, they wouldn’t be allowed in my home. Anyone who’s worked with hard-core addicts will know why. I wouldn’t just hand them money either. I’d get them access to services to make sure they were fed or clothed, but I wouldn’t give them a single cent of real money. One of my good friends had a step-daughter who was addicted to meth. Fortunately, she overcame that addiction, but while she was an addict she would beg her mother for money to buy shampoo. Her mother wisely refrained from giving her money, but instead would go out and buy a bottle of shampoo for her daughter. What she didn’t know is that her daughter would then go out and try to sell that bottle of shampoo in order to get more money for drugs. Addicts care about one thing and one thing only: Satisfying their addiction.

San Fransicko is likewise addicted. They’re addicted to drugs, obviously. But they’re also addicted to the shallow, hollow moral preening ideology that allowed the drug users to run the city. They’re addicted to the political heroin of virtue signaling that allows the criminals to commit crimes right in front of the police without any consequences. They’re addicted to their own hubris and egos that tell them they are just that much smarter, and better looking, and superior to those sister-humping gun-toting bible-thumping Jesus freaks in flyover country and that they don’t need to listen to ANYTHING coming from in-between I-5 and I-95. For a liberal to wake up and realize that the white, conservative CHRISTIAN culture is the solution would require them to hit rock bottom so hard that they don’t even bounce. Especially in a city known for its revulsion of Christianity, run by communists and members of the Cult of the Almighty Orgasm.

They voted for this. And until they hit rock bottom and cry out not just for relief but for penance and then absolution, then they can continue to rot. We have limited energy. We cannot afford to waste it on a population of mentally ill narcissists. Triage in war means identifying who you can help, and who is not going to make it. As far as I can tell, San Fransicko ain’t gonna make it. Save your energy for those who you can still help, and give San Fransicko your prayers.

Nov 08 2023

Note The Contrast

     There’s an old story that when the ruling powers of some Eastern nation had…pardon my Belgian…royally fucked up, such that immediate corrective action was required, the potentate would send a trusted emissary to consult the chief monk of a Buddhist monastery. According to the story as I remember it, the chief monk would simply tell the royal emissary:

“You follow the Way.”

     …and send him back to his liege lord.

     A somewhat reconstituted version of that wisdom is evident from the following ad:

     Note the distribution of races and sexes. It’s practically all white men. Almost no Negroes, and absolutely no women…or drag queens, or “puppies,” or other cosplayers. But then, which race, and which sex thereof, populated the American Army in its more successful campaigns?

     When the need is great, “they” will always call upon the white men – and usually, the white Christian men. ‘Twas ever thus, and ever thus shall it be.

     Draw the moral.

Nov 08 2023

A New Book Promotion Scam

     They’re as regular as the rising of the Sun…and that’s roughly the time of day at which they arrive in my Inbox:

Dear Francis Porretto,

     Our platform reaches over 300,000 book lovers and we are currently offering only 10 slots for featured book promotions for next week. This is a fantastic opportunity to get your book in front of a wider audience and drive sales.

     Don’t miss out on this opportunity – visit our website for more information or submit your book directly through this link: https://booksbuzzer.com/

     Thank you for your time and consideration. We are excited to work with you.

     Best regards,

Thank You
Booksbuzzer

     As if the arrival time – 6:04 AM – didn’t already give the game away, a glance at the website makes plain that these “book promoters” are not native English-language speakers.

     Writing colleagues: Keep your guards up.

Nov 08 2023

A Brilliant Insight

     No, not one of mine. Courtesy of Mike Miles:

     Let that sink in for just a moment.

Nov 07 2023

The Portents Look Good…

     …for this recently wedded Tennessee couple:

     LEBANON, Tenn. (WZTV) — A Middle Tennessee couple exchanged vows on a lovely, family farm two days before Halloween.
     Then they had their reception with a side of hashbrowns.
     Eli Holbrook and Mary Cate Hedge met during high school in 2016. The Wilson County natives later reconnected after Eli joined the Marines – they would talk on the phone daily while he finished up his tour.
     When Eli returned to Tennessee from Japan, his first stateside meal was at Waffle House.
     Fast forward a few years, and the happy couple celebrated their engagement. While planning their wedding, Mary Cate felt she was getting more attention than the groom. She decided to surprise Eli with a wedding reception at his favorite restaurant.
     And that’s eggs-actly what they did.
     The Lebanon couple spent the evening of Oct. 29 celebrating their new life as a married couple at the Waffle House on S. Cumberland Street.

     A bride who’s sincerely concerned about her groom’s enjoyment of the festivities! She’s the exact opposite of a “bridezilla.” Take good care of her Eli, and may you have many happy years together.

Nov 07 2023

The Sea

     Now and then we get a clear statement of verifiable facts from some figure known as a “public intellectual.” Depending on the tenor of the time and the attitude of the ruling elite, that statement might be honored, dishonored, suppressed, or ignored. Those who take note of the patterns involved will reach their own conclusions, while those who listen with half an ear because their personal concerns are more pressing might mutter “Yeah, yeah” and not give it any further thought. But it won’t change the facts.

     I know little about British writer and commentator Douglas Murray. However, in this video, he makes flatly factual statements that are impossible to refute. Ace summarizes his central points in two sentences:

     1, [Hamas-supporting Muslims in Britain] do not belong here, they do not contribute to life here, they are threatening law-abiding people and making their lives worse, and I want them gone.
     2, If the government does not execute the will of the people on this issue, the people will begin implementing the policy, and it will be messy and brutal.

     Another Englishman, Sir Harold Bowden, has told us:

     Facts that are not frankly faced have a habit of stabbing us in the back.

     And once again, we have the immortal wisdom of Ralph Waldo Emerson:

     If the government is cruel, the governor’s life is not safe. If you tax too high, the revenue will yield nothing. If you make the criminal code sanguinary, juries will fail to convict. If the law is too mild, private vengeance comes in.

     It doesn’t matter how anyone “feels” about it. But the tale doesn’t end there.

***

     “The people are the sea in which the revolutionary fish swims.” – Mao Tse-tung

     Among the most painful phenomena of our time is the way in which immigrants to supposedly free nations have exploited the tolerance of those nations to victimize them. Muslims in particular are guilty of this…yet governments here and in Europe have let it go on. Indeed, they’ve collaborated in it by twisting the law to enforce accommodations to those immigrants. And on what grounds? Why, these: “The troublemakers are a minority. The majority are peaceful.”

     Cue Brigitte Gabriel:

     Let’s take 10% — the lowest of the estimates of Muslim radicalism – as the number with which to work. There are 1.3 million Muslims in London alone. What should decent Londoners expect from 130,000 radical Muslims turned loose among them? Especially given the attitude of British law enforcement toward them and their actions.

     There are between 3 and 4 million Muslims in the United States. Move the decimal point yourself.

     But the “tolerant” reply that “We can’t deport the whole sea because a few drops of it are poisonous!” nearly always carries the day. That “the sea” makes possible the villainies of those “few drops,” whether actively by providing materiel and funds, or passively by concealing them among the greater number, goes unaddressed.

     O my people! O my city!

***

     I could go on about this, but there’s no point. Nominally free countries that permit Muslim immigration are poisoning themselves. The events of the previous five decades make that statement irrefutable. Yet the importation of this horrific, Seventh-Century cult continues without interruption, as if America, Britain, and Europe actually need its “contributions.” There is only one possible conclusion: The governments of the West are actively hostile to their own people. Immigration by Muslims, whose pseudo-religion commands them to subjugate the rest of us, is being used as a weapon against us by the very governments charged with protecting us, our lands, and our rights.

     But private citizens here and in Europe are awakening. If “their” governments don’t reverse course pretty BLEEP!ing quick, those private citizens will undertake the job with their own hands and their own tools…and it will be “messy and brutal.”

     Have a nice day.

Nov 06 2023

Little Men

Up the airy mountain,
Down the rushy glen,
We daren’t go a-hunting
For fear of little men…

William Allingham, “The Fairies”

     Allingham’s poem isn’t about anything contemporary…or real. But those first four lines spoke to me a few minutes ago. Little men are a problem of immense significance today. And they show their actual faces about as often as Allingham’s fairies.

***

     I suppose I should mention what brought this to mind:

     Republican Rep. Anna Paulina Luna of Florida confirmed a report that newly elected House Speaker Mike Johnson is fast-tracking the release of the security footage from the Jan. 6 rioting at the U.S. Capitol.
     “I can confirm that this is true and something is in the works,” said Luna on social media Friday.
     “We’re going to be releasing more and making it more available to the public,” she added in a second post.
     Luna was referring to a statement from Blaze News investigative journalist Steve Baker, who said he was working with the speaker’s office for the release.
     Baker said it was up to Johnson whether he would release all of the 40,000 hours of footage or part of it.
     Blaze Media editor in chief Matthew Peterson said in a statement that he could not confirm a report from activist Ryan Fournier claiming all of the footage would be released to Blaze News.

     Stipulate all the following, purely for the sake of argument:

  • That Congresswoman Luna’s statements are accurate and sincere;
  • That Speaker Mike Johnson does intend the release of the footage;
  • That there are no Congressional or legal barriers Johnson must surmount to do so.

     What about the little men? That is, the hirelings: the people who actually have the footage under their direct supervision and control? How shall we account for them and their participation? Do we have any sense for whether they would obey a direct order from Speaker Johnson to provide the footage to Blaze Media, or anyone else? What pressures might be brought to bear on them not to do so – and from what sources of pressure?

     If you’re able, recall the final scene from Raiders of the Lost Ark: when the functionary in the enormous government warehouse wheels the crated Ark of the Covenant into the bowels of that warehouse to be lost to prying eyes. If you’re not able, it’s below:

     Consider him the iconic “little man.” Only he knows where the Ark has been put…and he might not remember it a day or two hence. Indeed, he might choose not to remember it.

***

     There’s been a lot of angry talk about the federal bureaucracies and their usurpation of powers the Constitution never even imagined. In John Conroe’s novel Forced Ascent, he gives the following line to a federal “fixer,” who seeks to exculpate her administration from having deliberately fired several sorts of weapons, including a space-based laser, at the protagonist:

     “You have to understand that it’s a huge government with thousands of moving parts. There are over three thousand agencies, departments and private companies all working on defense and homeland security. It isn’t as clear cut as you might think.”

     I submit that “thousands of moving parts” is a radical understatement. There are several million such “parts,” each of them a little man who must function as ordered for the people at the top to have their orders obeyed.

     But there is no way to ensure that all those little men will do so. And many of them have agendas of their own.

***

     Once again, I find that I must repeat this citation:

[United States Senator from Oklahoma David L.] Boren, formerly a state legislator and governor, went to Washington expecting to make some changes. “What impressed me most is the great power of the bureaucracy compared to that of elected officials. All the talk about growing control by the bureaucracy is not exaggerated. The shift in power is very real…. There is almost a contempt for elected officials.”…

Senator Boren found, to his surprise, that a Senator has great difficulty even getting phone calls returned by the “permanent” employees, much less getting responsive answers to his questions.

The voters can’t “throw the rascals out” anymore, because the main rascals are not elected but appointed….

Regulatory bureaucrats have extra power because they can outlast the elected officials. “Often,” Boren explains, “I’ve said to a bureaucrat, ‘You know this is not the president’s policy.’

’True, Senator, but we were here before he came, and we’ll be here after he leaves. We’re not in sympathy with his policy. We’ll study the matter until he leaves.’”

[From Armington and Ellis, MORE: The Rediscovery of American Common Sense.]

     They can do it, Gentle Reader. The little men can do as they please, under laws and regulations that were sculpted to protect them from meaningful retribution. If a functionary in the chain of functionaries who would have to comply with a “release the footage” order should decide that it should not happen, then it won’t. The footage will be lost, corrupted, mislabeled, destroyed, what have you.

     So while I’m willing to give Congresswoman Luna and Speaker Johnson the benefit of the doubt as to their intentions, I refuse to get my hopes up before the last stanza of this poem is read.

     Have a nice day.

Nov 05 2023

The Escapist Imperative

     Not long ago, I encountered a gentleman who ran an unusual business: he positioned himself as a writer’s “pre-agent.” That is, he assisted aspiring writers in persuading an actual literary agent to represent them. (I have no idea what percent of his customers actually acquired representation, but he didn’t do badly…for himself.) As you might expect, he was also an aspiring writer. We exchanged a number of thoughts about the writer’s life and trade.

     One of his emphases was that the typical reader wants to “escape:” that is, he wants the fiction he reads to remove him from mundane concerns and show him something with which he’s unfamiliar. As a writer of science fiction and fantasy, I was aware of that impetus. I was also aware of how it raises the bar on what every writer of fiction must get from his reader for a satisfactory acquaintance: the “willing suspension of disbelief.”

     If your reader can’t set aside the constraints of “real life” sufficiently to buy into your story, its strangeness will be continuously jarring to him. He’ll keep asking himself, though perhaps only subconsciously, “How could this be?” and “How could that happen?” He won’t get much enjoyment out of it.

     Oddly, that willing suspension of disbelief – henceforward, WSD to save a few milligrams of finger tissue – becomes easier to achieve the further from “real life” the story’s setting diverges. A tale set in a distant galaxy a few million years from now tends to be easier for the reader to enjoy than one just a few years in the future. Similarly, most readers find medieval or “high” fantasies easier on their WSD than “urban” fantasies that feature vampires, werewolves, et cetera. Writers in the SF and fantasy genres are generally aware of this. Many strive to exploit it.

     But the inverse is also true – and it presents a stimulating challenge. “Near-future” science fiction set on Earth, with only one or two scientific or technological differences from contemporary reality, must be very carefully drawn to earn the reader’s WSD. Isacc Asimov engaged this challenge in his collection of stories Earth Is Room Enough. Some of the stories therein are among his very best.

     I’ve found that I really like writing “near future / on (or near) Earth” SF. Not many writers do it well today. Perhaps the Star Wars movies have blunted appetites for that kind of tale. And I must admit, the challenge of writing it is considerable, as I discovered in crafting the books of the Futanari Saga.

     Mackey Chandler’s April series starts off as a near-future / near-Earth tale, and gradually “reaches out” to realms further away in time and space. Chandler’s background in technology and the “space sciences” surely helped to make it believable. Another writer who surmounted the challenges is Ben Bova, in his Kinsman tales. And who could forget John Brunner’s Stand On Zanzibar, or the great John Wyndham’s magnum opus Re-Birth?

     To young SF writers who seek “new worlds to conquer,” I suggest: Why not try this one? Make one or two scientific / technological changes and see what happens. Can you make it believable to yourself? That’s the all-important first step. Then try it on a few “alpha readers.” You might be surprised at how difficult it is to persuade them – always through the words and deeds of your characters, never through auctorial intervention! – to grant you their WSD; to allow that “This could really be; these things could really happen.”

     Give it a try. Soon, please. I need something fresh to read!

Nov 04 2023

Get It While You Can

     Americans are used to a condition of abundance. Not Marxist “abundance,” which prophesizes a world in which everything is so copiously available that there’s no need for prices and commerce. Rather, Americans are used to free-market abundance: a condition in which the availability of goods at affordable prices can be relied upon, because there is no forcible interference with production, distribution, or sale. If you have the desire and the means, the goods are there to be purchased…and “the means” tend not to break the bank.

     That condition is being seriously abraded just now. Quite a number of things are getting to be either scarce in the marketplace, or too expensive for those of us with modest means to afford them. Two specific categories of goods are at the top of my thoughts just now:

  • Popular ammunition;
  • Precious metals.

     First, the feds have been putting the squeeze on supplies of the most popular of all ammunition types: the .223 Remington / 5.56 NATO rifle round. Shipments of that type are dwindling, and prices for it are rising. The most popular rifle in America, the AR-15, is the feds’ target. The anti-gunners who currently control Washington hate that rifle with a red passion and have been campaigning against it for decades. While they haven’t succeeded in outlawing it, the alternative of making it useless by limiting the availability of its ammo has always been available, as its round is also used by America’s armed forces. So the expedient of having the Pentagon buy it up is now in play.

     Second, we have this, via the beloved Andrea Shea King:

     The prices of gold and silver are near their historic highs just now. They’ll get higher as time passes. The reason, of course, is inflation. The men who run banks are as aware of it as you and I. Unlike those of us who have to stand on our toes to keep a nostril above water, they have capital to deploy. So they’re buying up as much gold as their reserves will allow. Smaller players are stocking up on silver, which is nearly as universally negotiable.

     World “above ground” gold supplies, if assembled into a single mass, would make a cube not quite 20 feet on a side. It’s being mined, of course, but mining operations are lagging behind world demand: a common condition in times of rapid inflation.

     The history of inflationary government spending is not a pleasant one. As a government gets deeper in debt, it tends to print ever more currency. But the debts escalate two ways: in the principal amount owed, and in the interest rate charged for repeated borrowing. That forces the debtor government to accelerate its borrowing, and therefore its currency-and-credit creation, in a classic positive-feedback cycle.

     Positive feedback always leads to a runaway.

     As the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are an intelligent bunch, I trust I need say no more. Stragglers and head-scratchers: Please refer to the title of this piece.

Nov 03 2023

And now to shave

So just a little side note, I haven’t shaved since the day after my father’s funeral. At this point I have a goodly amount of facial hair and I was enjoying it, but today that comes to an end.

There are multiple agencies that work with veterans here in the hinterlands where I live. Vets tend to move to areas where they feel welcome and familiar, and a whole lot of vets move to the Idaho panhandle when they ETS. You can almost tell what they’re like when the pick a place to live. Closer to Kootenai County, and you get more entrepreneurial mindsets. A lot of breweries/distilleries in Kootenai County are owned by vets, who spent a year in Iraq talking about what kind of beer they wanted when they got back to civilization, and then made that beer themselves. Once you get into Bonner County and Boundary County, you get the people who just go into the mountains and tell everyone else to leave them alone. It’s an interesting mix of people.

And of course, one thing that everyone has in common is the fact that at some point, life on this earth is going to end. The living WWII vet is fleetingly rare these days, as they would have to be over 100 years old. Korean War vets are also fleetingly rare, and the Viet Nam vet is getting to be rare. We think of people in terms of our own experience. My father was a Viet Nam vet, and so when I think of other Viet Nam vets, my brain thinks that they can’t really be that old because that would make ME old and I’m still like 25 or something, right?

Dad died at 83. Next week we’ll be burying one of his friends who was in his 70’s, a man who’s service included a Bronze Star, several Purple Hearts and a medical retirement in less than three years. A lot of these vets didn’t get a thank you when they came home. Thanking veterans for their service really started after September 11th, and it started because the Viet Nam vets were determined to ensure that the military members who were fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan did not get treated as horribly as the Viet Nam vets were treated. Those who remember the election run of John “fuck your buddies” Kerry in 2004 might not understand just what a shift in thinking his run caused. For the first time in decades, Viet Nam vets were talking about their experiences and how people like John the traitor Kerry screwed them over when they got home from war. The outrage over John Kerry and his lies about the military broke a dam of emotion in those vets, and allowed them to finally speak about how they had been treated by the hippies and the Democrat Party backstabbing commies. I know that for my father it was cathartic.

One of the things that the community here does is to try to show appreciation to the vets when they can, to let them know that they’re appreciated. There’s a hospice group here that does their best to make sure that when a vet enters their services, they are given a show of appreciation. And sometimes that’s on short notice, because this is a hospice service after all, and they have one of the hardest jobs in health care, caring for someone at the end of their life and at the same time caring for the family members who are watching their loved one die, and everyone knows this is the end. The vet is given a plaque and a couple of letters written by local school kids, and offered a chance to talk about his service. Sometimes it’s funny stories, sometimes it’s just happy memories. Sometimes it’s tearful, especially when the family is there. But the hospice service always tries to find people who can present these items to the vet, and what this hospice service really looks for is other vets. Just for the visual alone, having someone able to wear the uniform presenting the plaque to the vet hits harder than if it’s a guy in a normal shirt and tie. Vets in the American Legion have their own uniform. Lots of veteran organization have their own uniform, as a lot of the vets can’t quite fit in to their old service uniforms after decades of normal life outside the military.

Retirees are authorized to wear the service uniform that they wore when they were still serving. The hospice service loves having people in full kit doing the presenting, because it not only shows respect to the veteran but it also hits the family pretty hard. Many families don’t have any real experience with the military because they met the veteran after they served so when a dress uniform walks in, their eyes get wide. But if you wear the uniform, you still have to be within regulation, and Army regulation states that you can’t have a beard. Or a handlebar mustache, although a CW5 might be able to get away with it.

So anyways, I’ll be shaving today for the first time in months. I’ll see if I can keep the mustache looking decent. If it looks ugly, it’ll come off as well. Gotta be in regulation to be in uniform. AR 670-1 and all that.

Nov 03 2023

The Biggest Picture

     The exchanges of rhetoric over the IDF invasion of Gaza have already breached the ludicrousness threshold and are rocketing toward utter insanity. The tweet embedded here lays the matter out plainly. And as I said immediately below that, wars of extermination have no rules.

     No amount of hand-wringing will change the fundamentals here. Hamas isn’t interested in land, or treaties, or a recognized state. Hamas wants Israel annihilated. Indeed, Hamas, in keeping with its Islamic basis, wants every Jew on Earth dead. That’s a core tenet of Islamic teaching, whether you like it or not.

     A people that faces that sort of enemy must make war against that enemy in full awareness of its enemy’s intentions. It cannot extend any mercy at all. Indeed, it would be folly for Israel to take prisoners. Hamas, which intends the annihilation of Israel, must itself be annihilated. Combatants and noncombatant supporters alike must be put to the sword, else it will rise again.

     Is that likely to provoke a wider war? Yes, it is. Hezbollah, another organization whose aim is to destroy Israel, is already mobilizing to support Hamas. Should it enter the contest, it too must be destroyed. What else are the Jews of Israel to do with enemies that seek their nation’s destruction and are willing to pursue that aim by any and every expedient means?

     Iran is supposedly behind Hezbollah. Stipulate it for the sake of argument. While for Israel to face Iran in open battle might seem suicidal, Israel possesses a nuclear capability, which Iran lacks – for now. If Iranian hostility toward Israel should erupt into actual warfare, Israel would surely use its nukes. They’re for exactly such an eventuality.

     The point is national survival. There are no bigger pictures.

***

     Let no one forget that Hamas initiated the current hostilities by breaking through Israel’s security fencing and slaughtering 1400 Israelis: mostly civilians, largely women and children. It then called for a “cease-fire.” Why? Because its masters realized that they had finally provoked Israel into the only sensible response: a war frankly aimed at Hamas’s extermination. That they hadn’t realized that before their invasion might puzzle sensible people, but the fact remains. If they were counting on Israel being restrained by “international opinion,” they counted badly.

     Let no one be ignorant of this: the Usurper Regime has no interest in supporting Israel. Its partisans in Congress will fight to the death to prevent American war materiel from being sent to Israel. As for money, the Democrats have already tipped their hand by insisting that such aid be legislatively tied to further funding for Ukraine. Can there be any doubt about their priorities?

     Let no one deflect the conversation to “humanitarian” considerations. That’s a thin veil behind which hide a determination to keep Israel from doing what it must for its own people” i.e., exterminating Hamas. The Islamic states that surround Israel won’t even accept Gazan refugees; why should we? Indeed, why should we imagine that Hamas entertained any “humanitarian” considerations when it slaughtered hundreds of Israeli civilians?

     In a war of extermination, “humanitarian” considerations are conspicuous by their absence…as is only logical.

***

     The most succinct summation of the matter was recently provided by Kurt Schlichter:

     The world’s true nature is that good is forever pitted against evil.
     That has never changed. What happened over the last 70 years or so was an interregnum of peace in the West, created by violence against barbarians and facilitated by people willfully looking away from the butchery still continuing at the fringes of the map. The West managed to build a civilization that was – for the first time in history since perhaps the Pax Romana – generally internally peaceful. And the West convinced itself that this was normal.
     But it was not normal. It was an anomaly, a glorious one, but an anomaly nonetheless. The world is not a peaceful place, and it never was, and it never will be. Despite the best efforts of the arrogant left, human nature has not changed. Human nature is vicious and cruel. Rousseau’s noble savage nonsense, which we are still dealing with today in the form of eager sophomores in Che t-shirts slobbering over Hamas psychopaths – is a giant fraud. Savages are not distinguished by their nobility. Their savagery distinguishes them. And we need to find the moral strength to do what is necessary to defeat them.

     The stark truth of the above is now being acted out in the Middle East. The Israelis want only to live in peace in their historic homeland. Hamas, Hezbollah, and the Islamic states of the region want Israel to be destroyed. Anyone who has a problem distinguishing the good guys from the bad guys in this matter is either a moral imbecile or a conscious supporter of evil. The good guys must do exactly as they are doing.

     Yes, this is a moral contest. It has never been anything else. Feel free to call it a religious war; that’s amply supported by the Hamas Charter:

     The Islamic Resistance Movement believes that the land of Palestine is an Islamic Waqf consecrated for future Moslem generations until Judgement Day. It, or any part of it, should not be squandered: it, or any part of it, should not be given up. Neither a single Arab country nor all Arab countries, neither any king or president, nor all the kings and presidents, neither any organization nor all of them, be they Palestinian or Arab, possess the right to do that. Palestine is an Islamic Waqf land consecrated for Moslem generations until Judgement Day. This being so, who could claim to have the right to represent Moslem generations till Judgement Day? (Article 11)

     […]

     Initiatives, and so-called peaceful solutions and international conferences, are in contradiction to the principles of the Islamic Resistance Movement. Abusing any part of Palestine is abuse directed against part of religion. Nationalism of the Islamic Resistance Movement is part of its religion. Its members have been fed on that. For the sake of hoisting the banner of Allah over their homeland they fight. “Allah will be prominent, but most people do not know.”

     Now and then the call goes out for the convening of an international conference to look for ways of solving the (Palestinian) question. Some accept, others reject the idea, for this or other reason, with one stipulation or more for consent to convening the conference and participating in it. Knowing the parties constituting the conference, their past and present attitudes towards Moslem problems, the Islamic Resistance Movement does not consider these conferences capable of realising the demands, restoring the rights or doing justice to the oppressed. These conferences are only ways of setting the infidels in the land of the Moslems as arbitraters. When did the infidels do justice to the believers? (Article 13)

     […]

     The day that enemies usurp part of Moslem land, Jihad becomes the individual duty of every Moslem. In face of the Jews’ usurpation of Palestine, it is compulsory that the banner of Jihad be raised. To do this requires the diffusion of Islamic consciousness among the masses, both on the regional, Arab and Islamic levels. It is necessary to instill the spirit of Jihad in the heart of the nation so that they would confront the enemies and join the ranks of the fighters. (Article 15)

     […]

     The Islamic Resistance Movement, being based on the common coordinated and interdependent conceptions of the laws of the universe, and flowing in the stream of destiny in confronting and fighting the enemies in defence of the Moslems and Islamic civilization and sacred sites, the first among which is the Aqsa Mosque, urges the Arab and Islamic peoples, their governments, popular and official groupings, to fear Allah where their view of the Islamic Resistance Movement and their dealings with it are concerned. They should back and support it, as Allah wants them to, extending to it more and more funds till Allah’s purpose is achieved when ranks will close up, fighters join other fighters and masses everywhere in the Islamic world will come forward in response to the call of duty while loudly proclaiming: Hail to Jihad. Their cry will reach the heavens and will go on being resounded until liberation is achieved, the invaders vanquished and Allah’s victory comes about. (Article 33)

     Questions, anyone?

***

     When a large group of people are animated by a religious conviction to seek the extermination of another large group of people, war becomes inevitable. That war may have terrible, world-girdling consequences. But Israel is only doing what it must…what it ought to have done decades ago. It’s what we would do were we attacked by a similarly animated enemy.

     Pray.

     Never go to a religious war without your religion. – Tom Kratman

Nov 02 2023

Pray For Whom Or What?

     It’s All Souls’ Day, the day we the living are supposed to pray for our beloved dead who might be in Purgatory enduring a last purification before finally reaching Heaven. (See also this piece.) I’ve got a fair number of beloved dead to pray for, but just now my attention is on another sufferer that’s undergoing a different kind of Purgatory…if Purgatory it be.

     You see, I’ve just stumbled upon a graphic that’s moved me to tears:

     It echoes a sentiment you might have seen here before this:

     The rising of the “men who simply wanted to be left alone” hasn’t happened yet. Why not? When will it happen? Will it happen? Shake the Magic 8-Ball:

     But wait: is this thing likely to be right? I’ve thrown away the packaging, so I can’t say whether there’s a disclaimer in the small print.

     And as I ponder this rather significant question, I find myself thinking that I’ve seen a sign or two that point in the opposite direction.

***

     Prepping and preppers, terms that were once associated with a fringe minority – you know, the sort of dude that feared a plague of giant mutant cockroaches, an imminent world-ending asteroid strike, or the Angry Return of Pulius Feistersnap (read Jack Vance for these critical historical references) – have entered the mainstream of our discourse. In recent years they’ve acquired respectability. Documentaries have been filmed about prepping. Sizable firms have arisen to solicit “preppers’” patronage. The money involved is considerable, but beneath all the effort and expenditures lies a current of foreboding.

     The foreboding isn’t about an implausible threat, but about one that’s burgeoning before our eyes. Consider:

  • Blatantly stolen elections;
  • Governance by bureaucrats;
  • Massive federal overspending;
  • Opening of the southern border;
  • The effeminization of the military;
  • Suppression of oil and gas production;
  • Fake pandemics and poisonous vaccines;
  • Police-state repression of disfavored opinions;
  • Renewed efforts to disarm the civilian populace.

     It makes quite a list, and none of it is pleasant. It points in a direction no decent American could approve. It’s hard to believe, in the face of the assembled evidence, that it’s not a concerted effort to destroy this country, being effectuated by the very people supposedly charged with protecting it.

     And for some time now, “we” have put our trust in God and the predicted rise of the men who only want to be left alone. Trusting in God is fine and praiseworthy, but as has recently been observed, He’s not going to look kindly upon you if you only “lean on your shovel and pray for a hole.” He’s equally unlikely to do the digging.

     I know quite a few men who only want to be left alone. They’ve been topping up their pantries and their ammo supplies, as have I…but not because they plan to march against the tides of evil.

***

     When matters appear to be darkening irresistibly, there are two directions in which the man who only wants to be left alone can move. Yes, he can “take the musket down from the mantel” and join his fellows for a counteroffensive. But he can also “dig in:” select a redoubt, provision it for a stretch of chaos, and hope to ride it out until the darkness lifts. Up to now, the latter has been the dominant course of action among men who only want to be left alone. Poetic eloquence about their potential power and fury has not galvanized them.

     Would I like it to be otherwise? Yes…and no. Yes, because the descent of the United States into all-out anarcho-tyranny is a terrible thing to witness, much less to live through. But no, because I’m old and infirm. I and those I love are unlikely to survive a civil war. Any Public Choice economist will tell you: personal interests will trump more generalized, more abstract ones ninety-nine times in a hundred.

     There is no purely political solution. The barons of the Uniparty are agreed on how things shall be. I’ve been saying that for a while now. So if we except a rising of the men who want to be left alone, the prospects are bleak.

     But will they rise? Enough of them, and sufficiently motivated and supplied to do what we want done?

***

     Are you one of the men who only want to be left alone? Try this: Every day or so, sample your thinking and record it, with the date. Do that for a couple of weeks. Then go back and count the number of times you were eager to don your battle armor, join your fellows, and deal with the miscreants who are ruining the greatest nation in all of history. Compare that tally to the number of times you thought it best just to look out for yourself and your own. In effect, you’re using your own thought processes as a simulation of those who feel as you do.

     I’m praying for you, my friend. For you, and all those who, like the two of us, see the storm clouds massing above us. But I no longer think a rising of the righteous is all that likely.

     Worse, my Magic 8-Ball seems to have shorted out. Is there a warranty on this thing?

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