Jun 06 2023

“I Must Lose Myself in Action…

…lest I wither in despair” Alfred Lord Tennyson

Tennyson had a difficult and mostly unhappy life. It was only after being informed by doctors that his recurrent trances were no epilepsy, but an ‘aura’ that preceded attacks of gout, that he was able to marry and have children. (Epilepsy and mental illnesses ran throughout his family).

I’m a product of an old-fashioned education, who was exposed to Tennyson, Shakespeare, and other Dead White Men. And, I’m very grateful for that opportunity.

Back in the day (a phrase repeated by many of the elders of the Black communities my students lived in), teachers regularly assigned poetry that was considered to be important to the cultural history:

  • The Charge of the Light Brigade
  • The Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner
  • Shakespeare’s Sonnets
  • American poets – Emma Lazarus, Robert Frost, Carl Sandburg, and others

We were expected to memorize lines of poetry, and be able to recite them aloud.

As a result, lines will rise up from those long-buried memories, making a connection between current events and lessons from the past.

What poetry will our grandchildren remember?

Yo, B—-, S— dis N—– C—!

What we allow to fill our children’s heads will determine their future. THAT is a major reason why I continue writing and fighting to wrest America from its headline rush into savagery.

Most of us do not live in monasteries, nor in isolated cabins. We are right in the thick of a culture that is rapidly, and deliberately, being destroyed. Perhaps we should create USBs that can be preloaded with the electronic equivalent of graded readers. Age-appropriate literature, poetry, and essays, both for cultural knowledge, and moral and civic instruction. Pass them on to families needing alternatives to Woke literature.

What books or works would you recommend (and, identify the age level that you think appropriate – Early childhood, 8-12, 13-15, 16+)? Put the lists in the comments, I will start a recommended group of lists, and, eventually, set up a downloadable set of zip files.

Jun 06 2023

The Imperative Question

     Toward the end of Atlas Shrugged, Hank Rearden has a final meeting with the “looter elite” in which they propose a “Steel Unification Plan.” That “plan” is plainly just as vampiric as every other that emerged from the looter-ruled economy described in the novel. Yet the elite are solidly behind it…which causes Rearden to ask them – and himself – the question:

     “Well, let me see,” said Rearden. “Orren Boyle’s Associated Steel owns 60 open-hearth furnaces, one-third of them standing idle and the rest producing an average of 300 tons of steel per furnace per day. I own 20 open-hearth furnaces, working at capacity, producing 750 tons of Rearden Metal per furnace per day. So we own 80 ‘pooled’ furnaces with a ‘pooled’ output of 27,000 tons, which makes an average of 337.5 tons per furnace. Each day of the year, I producing 15,000 tons, will be paid for 6,750 tons. Boyle, producing 12,000 tons, will be paid for 20,250 tons. Never mind the other members of the pool, they won’t change the scale, except to bring the average still lower, most of them doing worse than Boyle, none of them producing as much as I. Now how long do you expect me to last under your Plan?”
     There was no answer, then Lawson cried suddenly, blindly, righteously, “In time of national peril, it is your duty to serve, suffer and work for the salvation of the country!”
     “I don’t see why pumping my earnings into Orren Boyle’s pocket is going to save the country.”
     “You have to make certain sacrifices to the public welfare!”
     “I don’t see why Orren Boyle is more ‘the public’ than I am.”
     “Oh, it’s not a question of Mr. Boyle at all! It’s much wider than any one person. It’s a matter of preserving the country’s natural resources—such as factories—and saving the whole of the nation’s industrial plant. We cannot permit the ruin of an establishment as vast as Mr. Boyle’s. The country needs it.”
     “I think,” said Rearden slowly, “that the country needs me much more than it needs Orren Boyle.”
     “But of course!” cried Lawson with startled enthusiasm. “The country needs you, Mr. Rearden! You do realize that, don’t you?”
     But Lawson’s avid pleasure at the familiar formula of self-immolation, vanished abruptly at the sound of Rearden’s voice, a cold, trader’s voice answering: “I do.”
     “It’s not Boyle alone who’s involved,” said Holloway pleadingly. “The country’s economy would not be able to stand a major dislocation at the present moment. There are thousands of Boyle’s workers, suppliers and customers. What would happen to them if Associated Steel went bankrupt?”
     “What will happen to the thousands of my workers, suppliers and customers when I go bankrupt?”
     “You, Mr. Rearden?” said Holloway incredulously. “But you’re the richest, safest and strongest industrialist in the country at this moment!”
     “What about the moment after next?”
     “Uh?”
     “How long do you expect me to be able to produce at a loss?”
     “Oh, Mr. Rearden, I have complete faith in you!”
     “To hell with your faith! How do you expect me to do it?”
     “You’ll manage!”
     “How?”
     There was no answer.

     Of course the looters would not answer. The answer was plain: they hoped to feed on Rearden’s success, that they might remain alive a little longer at his expense. But they would never say so. That would give the game away.

     The game is always the same:

We’ll get what we want at your expense.

     In Rand’s novel, the focus is economic. Money is generally part of the “what we want.” In our place and time, the rest of it – possibly the larger part – is power.

     Whenever you see a blatant asymmetry in treatment between the “elite” and the common folk, it’s imperative to ask “What’s your angle?” If the elitist on the spot declines to answer, or provides an answer that’s plainly irrational, you can take it as written that the large-font sentence above is the truth of the matter. Money, power, celebrity, sex, what have you: he’ll get it at your expense.

***

     That might seem like “previous work:” subject matter whose mastery is prerequisite to any attempt to analyze political machinations. Yet that imperative question isn’t asked nearly often enough to pierce the veils around the agenda of the power elite. We have to change that.

     Just yesterday, the mayor of New York City gave us a case for practice:

     What’s his angle, Gentle Reader? What sort of gain – for himself, his administration, his party, or his ideology – does Adams seek from this proposal? Never mind that typical city-dwellers are compressed more straitly than would permit them to have a “spare room.” Adams has targeted private residences. What does he seek?

     Remember Glenn Beck’s powerful observation: “First they nudge, then they shove, then they shoot.”

     Can you imagine a state of affairs in which this sort of domiciling of illegal aliens – criminals, by the law of the land – in private residences might be made mandatory? Can you imagine such “temporary housing” being proclaimed a right? Can you imagine the imposition being justified as “a matter of national security” or “in the interest of public order?” I can.

     Adams has literally invited the illegals to New York. Perhaps he got more of them than he expected. No matter; he can still make use of them. He can use them to enhance his powers and undermine New Yorkers’ rights under the Third, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the Constitution.

     Adams can’t gain, other than temporarily, from such a move – but his party can, especially its extreme left wing. The attack on private property rights has been in progress for some time. Adams’s measure could be the holing that puts those rights into the grave…especially if it’s taken up and emulated by other blue-city mayors.

***

     The above is merely the most recent outrage that “should” have prompted the question. As far as I know, no one has confronted Adams with any version of it. Reporters wouldn’t even consider it. Can you imagine a mainstream media reporter asking Adams, “What if enough New Yorkers don’t volunteer their ‘spare rooms?’ Would you propose that it be mandatory?” I can’t.

     Politicians lie. (That is “previous work.”) Indeed, they hardly ever do anything else. But forcing them to confront “What’s your angle?” and thereby lie to the public in an obviously indefensible manner, could help to put the skids under them. A few of them, at least.

     Of course, it’s not a complete solution. For that, we need gallows.

Jun 05 2023

Check Check One Two

Well, hello there all you fine folks!

As you can see, Mr. Porretto was struck by some malady that caused him to invite me to post here on his blog. Say a prayer for the poor man, as well as buy one or two of his books so he can afford to heal himself of whatever it is that caused this. As I’m currently blogging on a Goolag-hosted site, I jumped at the chance. I plan on shuttering my Goolag site at the end of the month.

As for who I am, well, I recently retired from the US Army and moved to a patch of woods in northern Idaho. I won’t tell you exactly where, but if you stumble across a sign on a tree that reads “Trespassers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again” you’re probably walking through my sector sketch.. I teach motorcycle riding and safety to new riders. Sometimes I even get paid to do that. I cook. I homebrew. I enjoy cigars and whiskey. I drink more coffee than is healthy for an average sized family. I’m married, although we’ll see how long she puts up with me in retirement.

I’ve been kicking around the blog-o-sphere for a couple of decades, and I figure I’ll kick around for a couple more. Of course, that might depend on the Mrs. coming to the conclusion that putting up with me is worth more than the life insurance. Time will tell.

Jun 05 2023

The Trope That Never Expires

     …is racism. Supposedly, American society is so pervaded by racism and the attendant maltreatment of Negroes that their physical health is being degraded:

     Health disparities are the topic under scrutiny in today’s episode of Everything Is RacistTM. According to an investigative series by the Associated Press, black people are the biggest victims of these disparities from birth to death. Black Americans are more likely to have asthma, Alzheimer’s, high mortality rates among pregnant moms and young babies, poor teen mental health, and high blood pressure. And it’s all the fault of the oppressive white institutions, if the AP is to be believed.

     Remarkable. And of course, the AP being a reputable news outlet, we simply must take it on faith that racism is the reason. After all, isn’t racism the reason Sudan hasn’t yet put a man on the Moon? But the possibility that it’s black racism against non-blacks is not considered.

     Yea verily, even black children are afflicted:

     According to the AP, “More than 12% of Black kids nationwide suffer from the disease, compared with 5.5% of white children.” The article grudgingly admits that genetics are against some of these kids. It also conveniently neglects to say what percentage of these children are genetically predisposed to this condition.

     The article blames asthma cases in black children on social/environmental factors. In other words, these kids — just like many whites — live in polluted inner cities and moldy rental houses, and/or suffer from a lack of access to healthcare. The supposed inequity is that blacks are trapped in a poor socioeconomic cycle because “racist” institutions are against them. Racism, in this case, seems to be a filler excuse for not changing circumstances to better the lives of their children.

     Interesting! But ponder for a moment the single biggest cause of death among black teenagers: homicide. Moreover, in the overwhelming majority of those killings, no non-black is involved. So racism is absent from at least one “health disparity”…unless black kids are killing one another out of their racism against themselves. As for the less…terminal effects, how many of them are genetic in origin, as was the terrible plague of alcoholism among American Indians during the colonial era? And how many could be ameliorated by the diversion of family resources to better health care and improved living environments?

     Do I detect a bit of “special pleading” in these articles? Just possibly: the author of the cited articles is the Associated Press’s “national investigative race writer” Kat Stafford:

     Sorry Miss Stafford: your Race Card has been rejected as “credit limit exceeded.” Do you have another?

Jun 05 2023

A Quirky and Thought Provoking Essay

Here.

Jun 05 2023

Disingenuous Or Merely Sarcastic?

     John Hinderaker, one of Web commentary’s brightest lights, penned this:

     For reasons I can’t explain, the Left, including the Democratic Party, has made sex change operations on minors its signature issue. It has become a litmus test: in order to be considered progressive, one must now advocate the mutilation of children’s genitals. If there is a Democratic Party politician who dissents from this orthodoxy, I am not aware of it.

     I contend that there’s little mystery here. The Democrats’ political coalition is beginning to show cracks. Negroes are departing. Immigrants are departing. Even women, long the most reliable Democrat voters, are departing. Therefore, they must look for votes in other places – and what could be more promising than the most underrepresented of all “interest groups:” the the pedophiles and the death cults?

     You’ve already read this morning about the impending war on food. Do you need more convincing that the war is of wider scope than that?

Jun 05 2023

Expect To Miss A Few Meals

     …if this atrocity gains force:

     Democrat President Joe Biden’s administration signed a global agreement with twelve other nations, including Argentina, Australia, Brazil, Chile, and Spain, to crack down on farming to “save the planet” from “climate change.”

     If it’s like the plan implemented throughout the Western World, it will crush American farmers.

     As the World Bank warns of famines, they plan to restrict farmers over methane gas emissions. The UN and World Economic Forum also warn of famines.

     So we’re going to starve Mankind to… “save the planet?” George Carlin, where are you when we need you?

     Do you think John Kerry expects to go hungry?

     “We can’t get to net zero; we don’t get this job done unless agriculture is front and center as part of the solution,” Kerry, Biden’s climate czar, said at the AIM for Climate summit in Washington.

     “Food systems themselves contribute a significant amount of emissions just in the way in which we do the things we’ve been doing,” Kerry asserted.

     “With a growing population on the planet – we just crossed the threshold of eight billion fellow citizens around the world – emissions from the food system alone are projected to cause another half a degree of warming by mid-century.”

     How many times must it be said?

Jun 05 2023

Perhaps Things Are Turning Around

     One hopeful sign of a rising consciousness of what’s really going on – the sign that the public’s eyes are turning from the distraction to what the prestidigitator is actually doing – is when “respectable” sources begin to cop to it:

     Christianity Today published a curious piece by Paul Miller on Thursday calling for everyone to forgive each other for our supposed “pandemic sins.”

     He doesn’t exactly say who sinned, just that “We got things wrong,” and “Some officials made mistakes in the early days.” Things happened. Mistakes were made. It’s time to move on. Miller’s argument is basically a warmed-over, lightly Christianized version of the essay Brown University economics professor Emily Oster wrote for The Atlantic last November, which argued for a “pandemic amnesty” on account of how “uncertain” and “complicated” things were in the face of a once-in-a-century pandemic like Covid. The ruling class did its best, OK?

     Gee! Where have I heard about this before? Surely some clever bloke has commented on it.

     Actually, as of today, two have done so:

     Yes, this IS exactly how they think—worse, it’s who they are, way down deep inside. They cannot change, and they will not stop. They will never, EVER stop. They will have to BE stopped….

     Yes, they will most certainly do it again, whenever it suits them to. Why on Earth wouldn’t they? This is who they are, it’s what they do. It’s going to be lather, rinse, repeat from here on in, until enough of us figure that out and decide at long last to put a fucking stop to it.

     Indeed. There’s no point in expecting actual contrition from people who feel no guilt. Neither can we expect to be made whole. It’s time for retribution — punishment. There is exactly one source from which that punishment can come – and it isn’t the ballot box.

Jun 05 2023

When Smart People Say Foolish Things

     Folly, the late Barbara Tuchman has told us, is “knowing better but doing worse.” The power of wishful thinking is so great that even demonstrably highly intelligent people can fall into this zone. I say this with a certain authority.

     Today, we have an example from a generally smart commentator:

     The GOP works for us, and it would solve a bunch of the morale problems that its ineptitude has created by understanding the nature of that relationship.

     No, Kurt. That’s not the way it is. That’s the way you want it. As regards the major political parties, Pournelle’s Iron Law kicked in quite some time ago. They’re in business for themselves, and themselves alone. By now, someone as smart as you should have realized that.

     The indispensable Sundance at The Last Refuge addressed this quite recently:

     If you peel the core of any issue involving conflict with the Republican Party, you will find money at the center of it. Current Democrat politicians focus on advancing an ideological agenda; they swing for the fences in an effort to maximize control and power. Current Republican politicians are focused, to the detriment of all other facets, on their personal wealth.

     When you introduce a newly elected ‘conservative‘ to the DC world of republicanism, it is like sending a new guy/gal into the room to talk policy, only to be met with every face around the table staring back quizzically and dismissively while replying, “We don’t do that here – we are talking about money.”

     Once you reset the Schoolhouse Rocks mindset and accept this is the truth of the thing, then everything else that puzzled you about Republican politics reconciles.

     Ballot harvesting doesn’t generate money, so why do it? We can make just as much money in the minority railing against ‘them’, so why be focused on a majority? Donald Trump is threatening the financial position of our benefactors, so we hate him. These are the simple truths of modern Republicans.

     If you want the comparable demonstration for Democrats, just look at what their policies have done to their critical voting blocs. Who do you suppose has benefited from all that carnage, squalor, and despair? Not Negroes. Not recent immigrants, legal or otherwise. And most certainly not American women.

     Once more, with feeling: Politics is not the answer. Politics is the problem. Get off the Mishnory road before it’s too late!

Jun 04 2023

Love And Suffering

     With today, Trinity Sunday, the liturgical year continues into “ordinary time.” That’s a misleading title for this period. It’s intended to mean that we’re beyond the special season of Easter and have not yet entered the special season of Advent. Yet any part of the year in which believers practice the Christian faith is far from routine, mundane, or boring. The faith itself raises it above such mediocrity.

     For me, the mystery of the Divine Trinity is the most inscrutable of the tenets of Christianity. Human reason cannot penetrate it. Viewed in human terms, it’s plainly impossible for three persons simultaneously to be one of something else. And before you ask: no, God is not a committee.

     But there is more than one mystery to the Trinity. The “how,” as baffling as it is, is no more opaque than the “why.” Why “should” the Supreme Being be tripartite? Was it for the reason C. S. Lewis proposed: so that love would find expression in His very nature? That sounds good, certainly…but then we confront this: the mission of the Son to become mortal, then to suffer terribly and die as part of the Divine Plan for our Redemption. Can a Father who is love itself wish suffering upon His Son?

     To say the least, this is not easily answered, if at all.

***

     All any human being can say with confidence about suffering is this:

  • We don’t like it;
  • Sometimes it’s unavoidable.

     The Problem of Pain and the Problem of Evil have been the critical stumbling blocks to the acceptance of Christianity for centuries. The Problem of Evil reduces to one Divine decision: the granting to men of free will in a temporal environment. The Problem of Pain is stiffer, for it involves suffering that might be wholly undeserved by human standards. The only explanation I can imagine is this: No matter how He might have written the laws for our universe, time itself would make suffering possible…and sometimes inevitable.

     But when we contemplate suffering decreed by God the Father to be suffered by His Divine Son, the matter becomes much harder to explain.

***

     I’ll pause here to say it baldly: I don’t have an answer for this aspect of the Trinitarian Mystery. What I know about suffering derives from experience in this temporal universe, where it’s simply something one can’t always avoid. We put a great deal of our effort into the avoidance and minimization of suffering. Yet with all our powers and knowledge, we can’t avert it in every instance. Neither can we always reduce it in magnitude.

     It is our lot as mortal creatures to face certain inevitabilities. One of those is death. “To every man upon this earth, Death cometh soon or late,” said Macaulay’s Horatius, and it is so. And ironic though it may be, it’s those of us who resist that fate most successfully who are likely to suffer worst at the end.

     Shakespeare’s Hamlet pondered whether death might not be “a consummation devoutly to be wished.” Some do yearn for it, especially those whose suffering is already great. But to him who faces a period of great[er] suffering as the inescapable antecedent, death will look far less “to be wished.” While it was the possibility of suffering after death that gave the Prince of Denmark pause, most of us must face the suffering of the body first.

     Such a time of excruciating trial was what the Son of God faced as the conclusion to His mission of Redemption.

***

     There’s not much more to be said about Jesus’s Father-decreed Passion of mortality, suffering, and death, except this: in all our world, only He knew with perfect knowledge that His suffering would end and be no more. Yes, in becoming mortal He was required to endure “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to.” (Damn, that Shakespeare guy could turn a phrase!) He would also undergo the most torturous death that era knew how to inflict. But He knew both the purpose of His suffering and the consequences for Mankind – and He accepted both as His Father’s will.

     On occasion, we will know the reasons for our suffering, however much we dislike the experience. If it seems too difficult to bear, remember that a Son who knew both His Father’s will and His Father’s love bore it with love of His own.

***

     Some essays are harder to write than others. I was just barely able to begin this one. I hope my labors have been to your profit.

     Preach Christ, always. And May God bless and keep you all.

Jun 03 2023

The Low-Trust Society: A Case Study

     I snagged the graphic below from Ace of Spades HQ. The story it tells, though four and a half years old, is an important one. It’s easy merely to allow yourself to be appalled and then pass on to other things. In today’s sociopolitical environment, that’s no longer wise. Anyone could be caught in the toils of something greatly similar.

     Please read the story in its entirety. You may have to download the graphic and magnify it for ease of reading. Then return here and follow along with me as I unpack it, step by step, and invite my Gentle Readers to confront the questions it raises.

***

     First, the behavior of the would-be baby-snatcher. According to the narrator she was “brimming with nonchalant confidence.” Yet she was about to commit a heinous crime which was once punishable by death and is still regarded as worthy of life imprisonment. That’s a penalty that would deter the overwhelming majority of us.

     Why was she so confident? Was it a veneer and nothing more? Stipulate that it wasn’t; what would have given her such a degree of confidence that there would be no penalty for her theft – indeed, that she would get away with it cleanly?

     Note here that the baby’s immediate guardian was a man and the baby-snatcher was a woman. This will also factor into subsequent developments.

***

     Second, the father’s stunned incredulity at the baby-snatcher’s brass. If the narrator’s description of his reaction is accurate, he could not accept that the snatch was really happening for a vital few seconds. He sat stunned long enough for her to get baby and carrier some distance away, which might have played into the reaction of the bystanders.

     Why was Dad so utterly stunned? Did he still believe, perhaps subconsciously, in the high-trust / low-crime civilization of seven decades ago? If not, would he have reacted differently or more promptly?

     This goes to the degree of situational awareness prevalent among law-abiding Americans.

***

     Third, the baby-snatcher’s defensive tactic upon the father’s (eventual) reaction. It was apparently immediate to the point of being reflexive. There are only two possible explanations:

  1. She was completely insane and truly believed the child was hers;
  2. She’d planned it in advance, as with the snatch itself.

     Explanation #1 doesn’t hold water. Her actions throughout were too calm and too calculated to make it plausible. Might she have counted on her sex to give her a tactical edge big enough to get away with the baby?

     If I’m correct, this indicates that the story is unlikely to be unique…or, if it is, to remain unique.

***

     Fourth, the reactions of the bystanders who intervened in the baby-snatcher’s favor. Given the bare bones of the situation and a typically unobservant crowd in the parking lot, perhaps their conclusion was defensible: i.e., that it was the man, not the woman, who was the criminal. That would be consistent with prevailing attitudes toward men in public places when children are nearby.

     This question isn’t asked nearly often enough: Have Americans become prejudiced against men and fatherhood? The family courts certainly are. Prompt reactions such as the one the father suffered in the story above testify in support.

     Consider the implications with regard to American men’s willingness to marry and become fathers.

***

     Fifth, the immediate reactions of the police on the scene. Their attitude was defensive of the actions and intentions of the baby-snatcher…who, by that time, had escaped completely, unimpeded by anyone. I find the police’s behavior the least comprehensible thing about the tale. Certainly it’s the least praiseworthy. Perhaps that’s my lingering desire to believe that most police are good people sincerely dedicated to “protecting and serving” the public.

     It’s widely observed today that police are reluctant to intervene in a violent incident, regardless of its nature. Yet in the aftermath, with father and mother both present and testifying, what accounts for their protracted attempt to exonerate the baby-snatcher? Surely by then the facts of the matter were clear. Were they worried about lawsuits? Interrogation by higher-ups? Perhaps an unfriendly inquiry from a political source?

     In any such situation, there’s a possibility that the police on the scene will make a mistake. They’re human, after all. But their fear of the possible consequences “should” not keep them from acting according to the law and the observable circumstances.

***

     All the above relies, of course, on the narrative in the graphic being an accurate one. If there are any among my Gentle Readers who know differently and can substantiate their claim, please step forward.

     While it is true that father and mother retained their baby, it’s insufficient to say that “all’s well that ends well.” That is not the case…or perhaps I should say that it “shouldn’t” be. But then, we “shouldn’t” have squandered the high-trust society that would once have made all the events above unthinkable from the very first.

     I urge you, Gentle Reader, to pass this one around. If I may once again use that dispreferred word, it “should” be widely known. It would have great impact if it were.

Jun 02 2023

Sociopolitical Impossibilities

     Many years ago, a wise man named Rev. William J. H. Boetcker wrote these lines:

You cannot bring prosperity by discouraging thrift.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot help the poor man by destroying the rich.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further brotherhood of men by inciting class hatred.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.

     I’m sure you’ve seen them before, or at least items selected from them. The good sense they express is so clear – and so irrefutable – that I can’t imagine anyone daring to differ with them. Yet the courses they deplore – i.e., the “cannots” – are in operation throughout this nation as we speak.

     How did this come to pass? Mostly through the operation of envy, greed, and their principal offspring, hatred.

     Hatred is an emotion our nature equips us to feel. Therefore it must have some function; there must be some condition or aspect of existence that is properly addressed by hating it. Yet Christ Himself has told us that other people are not proper targets for hatred:

     Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy. But I say unto you, Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you, and pray for them which despitefully use you, and persecute you; That ye may be the children of your Father which is in heaven: for he maketh his sun to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on the just and on the unjust. [Matthew 5:43-45]

     To hate is to wish harm upon the hated person or thing. It “should” be “obvious” that one man cannot reconcile himself with another if there is hatred between them. If peace exists between them, it’s superficial and cosmetic: the peace of the “demilitarized zone.” Should either side discover that it has achieved a significant advantage over the other, hostilities will commence at once.

     A society riven by hatred cannot achieve an enduring state of peace and social harmony.

***

     This is on my mind today because of a premonition. The torrent of hatreds that the Left, in its various expressions, has aimed at the Right are having an effect that was predictable from the start: normal, decent Americans have realized that the Left means to do us and our country great harm. Though the hatred comes in several sub-varieties:

  • The deluded hate the sane;
  • The childless hate the parents;
  • The atheists hate the believers;
  • The Negroes hate the Caucasians;
  • The urbanites hate the non-urbanites;
  • Sexual deviants hate the sexually normal;
  • The welfare recipients hate the self-sufficient;
  • Those of non-European heritage hate those of European heritage;

     …it has the same import – and the same impact — in all cases: there’s a wish to harm, even destroy involved. Some of it has been actualized: e.g., the race riots of the previous four years. Some of it simmers just below the threshold of open violence.

     That hatred immovably blocks the possibility of social harmony.

     Is any of the hatred remediable? We can’t know that before it’s been remedied. However, the history of Western man suggests that the best remedy for hatred is the overwhelming defeat of those who hate. Consciousness of this is rising among normal Americans.

     My premonition is that within a year or two, the mushrooming reaction of normal Americans against those who hate us will eventuate in the defeat of the Left. But if it’s a purely political victory – i.e., achieved through the ballot box – it will leave the hatreds in place. Indeed, it might make them more absolute and virulent than ever.

     If that should prove to be the case, there will be no sincere reconciliation, only a cosmetic peace.

***

     The old “diplomat’s definition” of peace is “A state of tension that falls short of open armed conflict.” It’s the best state achievable between parties that hate one another. While the hatred persists, nothing better is possible. This is a fundamental reality that cannot be wished away.

     But we may expect those on the Left, after their defeat, to call for “healing,” “forgiveness,” and perhaps even “brotherhood.” In other words, “Please forget that we hate you and intend to destroy you as soon as the odds favor us.”

     There have already been some indications that such appeals will arise. Remember this column? That was a straw tossed to the wind. If the totalitarians of the COVID-19 “pandemic” could induce us to let them off the hook for their campaign against individual freedom, then surely anything would be possible. The Left’s calls for “healing,” “forgiveness,” and “brotherhood” could lull us back into placidity and inattention. They could plan further strikes safe from retribution.

     Do not be lulled. Remember their hatreds, for they will still be alive and in effect. Remember their many efforts to cultivate and intensify them. Until they have been expunged – and we cannot know whether it’s even possible – there can be no true peace. Certainly there can be no “brotherhood.”

Jun 01 2023

Assorted

     Welcome to June, the traditional month for weddings – the heterosexual kind – and devotion to the Sacred Heart of Jesus. It’s also a fine month for having the roof ripped off one’s house and replaced by…well, by something I’ve been assured will make a much better roof. And of course, every month is a good month to remind my Gentle Readers that politics is not the answer.

     L. Neil Smith, noted science fiction writer, once exhorted his audience to ask any politician they might corner in public, “How do you stand on Bill of Rights enforcement?” I have no idea how well that worked out. For my part, I avoid politicians; their disease may be contagious. But the notion of concentrating freedom lovers’ forces on a single line of attack is a good one. Ask Anheuser-Busch and Target.

***

     Yesterday, it was reported that a small group of Republican legislators had publicly opposed the “compromise” debt ceiling / appropriations bill:

     Rep. Carlos Gimenez (R-FL, Miami-Dade), Rep. Nick Langworthy (R-NY), Rep. Anthony D’Esposito (R-NY), Rep. Chuck Edwards (R-NC), Rep. Mike Lawler (R-(NY), Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY), Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH), Rep. Warren Davidson (R-OH), Rep. Elise Stefanik (R-NY), Rep. Laurel Lee (R-FL), Rep. Ken Calvert (R-CA), Rep. David Valadao (R-CA), Rep. Greg Murphy (R-NC), Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are just some of the Republican congressmen who have been outspoken in their support of the deal.

     My reaction to learning this was “Oh, so they got permission, did they?”

     The indispensable Sundance comments dourly, but with dead-center-bull’s-eye accuracy:

     If you peel the core of any issue involving conflict with the Republican Party, you will find money at the center of it. Current Democrat politicians focus on advancing an ideological agenda; they swing for the fences in an effort to maximize control and power. Current Republican politicians are focused, to the detriment of all other facets, on their personal wealth.

     When you introduce a newly elected ‘conservative‘ to the DC world of republicanism, it is like sending a new guy/gal into the room to talk policy, only to be met with every face around the table staring back quizzically and dismissively while replying, “We don’t do that here – we are talking about money.”

     Once you reset the Schoolhouse Rocks mindset and accept this is the truth of the thing, then everything else that puzzled you about Republican politics reconciles.

     Ballot harvesting doesn’t generate money, so why do it? We can make just as much money in the minority railing against ‘them’, so why be focused on a majority? Donald Trump is threatening the financial position of our benefactors, so we hate him. These are the simple truths of modern Republicans.

     I could not have put it better. Once a particular course of action has been blessed by the GOP’s Inner Party, that course becomes inexorable. To preserve the fiction that “We’re the party that fights for your rights,” token opposition will be permitted…as long as it doesn’t endanger the flow of dollars into the party’s coffers. Don’t expect anything more.

***

     A fellow whose name I’ve managed to lose once commented that when criminals are permitted to use violence freely while law-abiding citizens are penalized for defending themselves and their property, the criminals have become an arm of the State. This is the case today. Owing to the jury system, there are occasional exceptions, such as George Zimmerman and Kyle Rittenhouse. But never fear: your rulers are working to remove that obstacle to their plans as we speak.

     In any event, stories such as this one are commonplace today:

     BALTIMORE (WBFF) — Two pro-life supporters were attacked outside a Planned Parenthood clinic in Baltimore on Friday morning, police said.

The attack happened just before 10:30 a.m. at the clinic along North Howard Street, according to police. The two victims are both men, 73 and 80 years old.

     When police arrived, several witnesses told officers that two people had been assaulted, and the more severely injured man was inside a local business….

     Police said they were able to see security camera video of the attack. The video shows the suspect charging Crosby and knocking him into a flower pot, according to police. The second victim rushed in to help Crosby, but was shoved to the ground.

     Officers said the suspect then continued to punch and kick Crosby.

     This has become commonplace. Legal action against the assailants in such cases seldom comes to anything. Interpret according to your preferences.

***

     Public outrage over the increasingly aggressive tactics of the Perverts Unanimous community has found some new voices – a pair of professional baseball players:

     MLB pitcher Trevor Williams, a devout Catholic, called for a boycott of the Los Angeles Dodgers Tuesday after the organization decided to re-invite a blasphemous group of “drag queens” to its Pride Night event this June.

     “To invite and honor a group that makes a blatant and deeply offensive mockery of my religion, and the religion of over 4 million people in LA county alone, undermines the values of respect and inclusivity that should be upheld by any organization,” said Williams, a starting pitcher for the Washington Nationals, in a statement posted on social media Tuesday.

     Williams argued that Major League Baseball games are a “place where people from all walks of life should feel welcomed” and urged the Dodgers to “reconsider” their association with the anti-Catholic group….

     The Dodgers’ star pitcher Clayton Kershaw has also expressed disappointment in his team’s decision to honor the group of anti-Catholic cross-dressers.

     Williams and Kershaw have exhibited unusual courage in standing forth this way. A Toronto Blue Jays pitcher, Anthony Bass, has been disciplined by his team and forced to apologize publicly for opposing the obscene and blasphemous “Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence” and the Dodgers’ inclusion of them in their “Pride Night” celebration.

     Time was, sports offered a refuge from the madness rampant in the larger world. No longer.

***

     Here’s something to scare you right out of your socks: a federal proposal to address loneliness:

     U.S. Surgeon General Vivek Murthy recently released an advisory titled “Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation.” It warns that social isolation is a major public health problem. The 81-page document presents six government-directed “pillars” of action to address the health hazards of social isolation.

     On the surface, these six directives may look innocuous, but they present a clear and present danger to the autonomy of our private lives and relationships. The project is potentially so massive in scope that it’s not an overstatement to say it threatens to regulate our freedom of association in ways we never could have imagined.

     Please read it all.

     Government-engineered social inclusion! Gee, how well did that work out for the Cambodians under the Khmer Rouge? What about the Tanzanians under Julius Nyerere?

     TANU believes that everybody who loves his nation has a duty to serve it by co-operating with his fellows in building the country for the benefit of all the people of Tanzania. In order to maintain our independence and our people’s freedom we ought to be self-reliant in every possible way and avoid depending upon other countries for assistance. If every individual is self-reliant ten-house cell will be self-reliant; if all the cells are self-reliant the whole ward will be self-reliant; and if the wards are self-reliant the District will be self-reliant. If the Districts arc self-reliant, then the Region is self-reliant, and if the Regions are self-reliant, then the whole nation is self-reliant and this is our aim.

     TANU recognizes the urgency and importance of good leadership. But we have not yet produced systematic training for our leaders; it is necessary that TANU Headquarters should now prepare a programme of training for all leaders – from the national level to the ten-house cell level – so that every one of them understands our political and economic policies. Leaders must set a good example to the rest of the people in their lives and in all their activities. [source]

     The “ten-house cell” was a mechanism for enforcing absolute compliance in word and deed on all Tanzanians. To do that, you had to bring them together regularly. Anyone found to have deviated from the TANU line was shouted into submission by the rest of the gathering. No excuses for absence were accepted.

     But of course it would be different here, wouldn’t it, Citizen Bacillus? The federal government really cares about us. After all, the proposal is coming from the Surgeon-General, so it must be about our health. Something to do with it, anyway.

     Anyone who can swallow that after the COVID-19 atrocity is beyond my power to help.

***

     That’s all for the morning, Gentle Reader. Shortly there will be workmen buzzing about this place like a swarm of angry hornets, though I’m not sure hornets would do as much damage. Anyway, have a good First of June – to anyone getting married today, congratulations! – and perhaps you can stand one more reminder:

We don’t need governments.
We don’t need politics.
We need Christ.

May 31 2023

Miracles And Faith

     A few days ago, I mentioned two “candidate miracles” that recently occurred on this continent. One was a case of Miraculous Multiplication; the other was the incorrupt body of a deceased nun. As I’m already a Catholic and serious about it, these don’t “prove” anything to me, though they say that God continues to work in wondrous ways when He deems it appropriate.

     This morning, PJ Media’s Lincoln Brown has some thoughts on miracles and their relation to faith. It’s worth reading in its entirety, but the haymaker is this vignette from his seminary years:

     Years ago, a tiny Chicago parish had either a statue or picture of the Virgin Mary. It either moved or shed a tear. I don’t remember which. But the word got out that a miracle had occurred at this church, and people began arriving by the thousands. There were long lines and congested traffic and the church was going broke from hiring around-the-clock security to handle the crowds. As expected, a TV news crew showed up and the reporter asked the priest, “Father, does this qualify as a miracle?” The priest looked at the long line of people outside of the church. He looked back at the reporter and said, “The real miracle is faith.”

     I could not have put it better.

***

     There are a lot of people mincing about, straining to persuade you that faith is a con job. Any faith; by their lights, you must reject all of them. Oddly, these persons, who tend to deem themselves smarter than us believers, can’t distinguish among faiths. Neither can they accept that their own atheism is itself a faith, for it posits beliefs about the supernatural that can neither be proved not disproved: the distinguishing characteristic of a faith. Their attack is composed largely – in some cases, exclusively – on bad things some persons have done in the name of some faith. Never mind whether the faith in question promotes such things, or would excuse them.

     The late Marshall Fritz, a remarkable and highly effective exponent of libertarian convictions, was also a devout Christian. Among the things he placed at the foundation of his politics was a cleavage question that can be used to separate good beliefs from bad ones:

“Is it based on wholesome principles?”

     That’s a key question about any proposition. “Would accepting this proposition lead me down an evil path?” Another, of course, is “Would accepting this proposition cost me anything? If so, what?”

     It does cost something to accept a Christian faith:

  • We must acknowledge that we are not supreme over ourselves.
  • We must accept that we owe a debt of gratitude to God;
  • We must accept certain limitations on our behavior.

     But Christ Himself made it plain that God asks very little of us:

     Come unto me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light. [Matthew 11:28-30]

     And also:

     And, behold, one came and said unto him, Good Master, what good thing shall I do, that I may have eternal life?
     And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
     He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [Matthew 19:16-19]

     Not a lot to ask in return for an eternal life in the bliss of heaven, is it? But more to the point, the commandments He enunciated – Christianity’s principles – are entirely wholesome.

     So much for the militant atheists and their claims that faith leads to evil.

***

     All the same, there’s the unverifiable / unfalsifiable obstacle to get past. There’s no way to prove Christianity, as if it were a mathematical proposition. There’s evidence, but it’s all of the sort that can be dismissed if you’re sufficiently skeptical and determined. That’s true even of recent Church-accepted miracles. So miracles cannot serve as a trustworthy foundation for faith.

     He who sincerely embraces Christianity must commit to it personally, rather than because he’s been compelled to accept it. Some do so because they find the evidence persuasive, as did Lee Strobel. Others do so because people they admire have done so. Others receive a personal jolt that they cannot bring themselves to dismiss.

     So why miracles?

     We can’t be sure. They do tell us something. Some of them, such as Fatima, are so well attested that efforts to dismiss them are too strained to credit. Those speak of a flexibility in natural laws that mortals cannot exploit. Others have an “iffy” quality: they work unpredictably, as at Lourdes. Perhaps such a miracle tells us that we must walk part of the road to faith on our own. Still others are beyond my power to interpret.

     At the conclusion of a long and laborious life elucidating the teachings of the Church for general comprehension, Saint Thomas Aquinas said something that – to him, at least – seemed to obviate everything else he had said and written: To one who has faith, no explanation is necessary. To one without faith, no explanation is possible.

     Perhaps, as the priest quoted in the first segment said, faith is the miracle: the one that precedes all others, and makes them visible and believable. For we are surrounded by the miraculous, utterly immersed in it. What is more miraculous than human existence – indeed, than Creation itself?

     May God bless and keep you all!

May 30 2023

Memorial Day 2023

     For many years, I was reflexively patriotic in the naïve sense. I would immediately jump down the collar of anyone who chose to denigrate these United States or its military involvements. I had my reasons, of course; don’t we all? But many of them don’t look so good to me these days.

     Today is an occasion for a related reflection. Millions of men, and a smaller number of women, have gone to war at the direction of the United States federal government. The overwhelming majority of them believed in the cause for which they fought. A great many of them died while rendering that service.

     Memorial Day, and Veterans’ Day on November 11, are when we formally acknowledge their service and sacrifices. It is entirely appropriate that we do so. But it’s also an appropriate time to reflect on the motivations and decisions of the men who sent them to war.

     What is the purpose of war? One of the best known and best loved pro-military novels ever written set out the general rationale in a single sentence:

     The purpose of war is to support your government’s decisions by force.

     It cannot be made clearer than that. But though the statement is clear and impossible to refute, it compels the honest man to ask other questions. The most troubling of them goes to the motivations of the men who send our servicemen forth to fight, bleed, and die.

***

     The U.S. has gone to war many times. Despite the relative youth of our nation, we’ve been at war a whole lot. Some of the motivations behind those wars have been whitewashed out of the histories. In a couple of other cases, they’ve come to light more promptly, to the embarrassment of the decision makers. The servicemen dispatched to do battle and the citizenry exhorted to support the war effort have seldom been told candidly about the full range of those motivations.

     The War of 1812 was animated in part by a desire to extend the northern and western boundaries of the U.S. The Mexican-American War was fought for that reason among others. The Civil War was fought in part over slavery, but also over import tariffs that heavily favored the industrialized Northern states at the expense of the agrarian South. There are many conflicting theses over what got us into the Spanish-American War, though it appears that one significant driver was the “yellow journalism” of the Hearst newspapers. We entered World War I over a telegram. We entered World War II for reasons so murky and complex that arguments rage over them even today. As for Korea, Vietnam, and our more recent wars, my Gentle Readers are invited to do their own research.

     But in each case our servicemen were told that they were “defending freedom.”

     I shan’t defend the governments of the nations against whom our forces fought. They were as dubiously motivated as ours. The point is that the decisions made to dispatch armed forces were not wholly animated (if at all) by the defense of freedom, or of the United States, or of the American national interest however conceived. From this vantage point – and it may be no more accurate than that of an Andaman Islands savage – it seems that those considerations were seldom dominant.

     Nevertheless, our servicemen went forth. Many never returned home. It is right and fitting that we honor them, but it would be wrong to believe that the causes for which they were sent to do battle were necessarily what they – and we – have been told.

***

     Many years ago, I wrote in a novel:

     “We have talked,” he said, “about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we’ve had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don’t overpay for what you seek.”
     She kept silent and listened.
     “What if you can’t, Christine? What if your objective can’t be bought at an acceptable price?”
     She pressed her lips together, then said, “You abandon it.”
     He smirked. “It’s hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general’s desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own.”
     He straightened up. “Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn’t control all those conditions. If he did, he’d never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he’s compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not.”
     “What conditions can do that to you?”
     His mouth quirked. “Yes, what conditions indeed?”
     Oops. Here we go again. “Weather could do it.”
     “How?”
     “By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion.”
     “Good. Another.”
     “Economics. Once the economy of your country’s been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you’re running out of resources.”
     “Excellent. One more.”
     She thought hard. “Superior generalship on the other side?”
     He clucked in disapproval. “Does the opponent ever want you to fight?”
     “No, sorry. Let me think.”
     He waited.
     Conditions. Conditions you can’t control. Conditions that…control you.
     “Politics. The political leadership won’t accept retreat or surrender until you’ve been so badly mangled that it’s obvious even to an idiot.”
     The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.
     “It’s the general’s worst nightmare,” he whispered. “Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry’s charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads — to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.
     “It hasn’t been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills.”

     Servicemen from the lowliest private to the highest-ranking general are in thrall to the politicians who send them forth. They don’t get to question their orders. They certainly don’t get to say, “Sorry, dude. Not my circus, not my monkeys. I’m staying home.” Those that resist their orders are not well treated nor well remembered.

***

     My point here is not Smedley Butler’s blanket condemnation “war is a racket.” Some wars must be fought, whether or not they succeed:

     We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. Chains are worse than bayonets. – Douglas Jerrold

     And of course, there is no dishonor involved in going forth at your commanders’ decree. You signed up; you trained; you awaited the call. When it comes, you must go. To go is the fulfillment of the oath you took. It’s the only honorable thing to do.

     But that does not sanctify the decisions of the men who send you forth.

     Honor the soldier, but be ever ready to call the politician to account.

May 29 2023

Evil Policies Part 2: Underlying Motivations

     The previous piece on this subject evoked some unusually revealing responses. As I remain unwilling to condemn anyone by name, I’ll say only that some of my Gentle Readers aren’t very Gentle after all. They expressed a willingness to countenance deliberate harm to innocents for the sake of a good tactic. That’s not on, here at Liberty’s Torch. I feel neither embarrassment nor reluctance about rebuking persons of such inclinations.

     Neither am I reluctant to suggest to them that they pray over it. For those who disbelieve in the efficacy of prayer, perhaps a candid examination of conscience will serve. For others who disbelieve in the human conscience or its function…what the hell are you doing here?

     Perhaps it’s time to start a second pot of coffee. You too, Gentle Reader.

***

     Unattractive notions are good indicators of the proper course. — Steven Brust

     A great part of the cultural revolution that took place in the Sixties and Seventies was a subtle but effective campaign to numb the individual conscience. One of the ethical mainstays of Western Civilization, seldom celebrated as such but critical nevertheless, is an old homily: “Let your conscience be your guide.” A man’s conscience is his direct connection to God’s will. If he pays attention to it, it will steer him away from actions that cross-cut the moral order the Creator has built into the universe.

     The antithesis to “Let your conscience be your guide” needs to be explicitly identified. Few have dared to undertake this daunting task, for it involves – as do many necessary things – telling people something they don’t want to hear. As I have no regard for what anyone says to or about me at this time, I’ll take up the cross.

     When a man allows himself to be guided by his conscience, he:

  1. Eschews actions that would get him things he wants;
  2. Embraces actions that will cost him, whether materially or emotionally.

     …specifically for the sake of placating his conscience. The apposite phrases “so I can sleep at night” and “so I can live with myself” are particularly revealing. The key here is the demotion of his personal desires in favor of an untroubling conscience. In the usual case, the courses not taken would involve harming others or betraying an important moral-ethical standard. He to whom all that matters is getting what he wants – or averting what he doesn’t want – would embrace such a course, as long as he believes he can get away with it. If he succeeds in shouting down his conscience, all else will follow.

     His motto is likely to be that the end justifies the means. “The end” is his personal gratification; “the means” is whatever he must do to have it.

     All the other rationales for doing something immoral or unethical are mere dollops of anesthetic for the conscience:

  • “I really need this.”
  • “Where’s the harm?”
  • “No one has to know.”
  • “Everyone else is doing it.”

     And so forth.

***

     I’d like to spend a few moments on that terribly abused word need. Quite a lot of the abuse of the word stems from the desire to excuse something we know to be wrong. There are very few true needs, even from a purely material view. I contend that our survival needs are so well supplied that there’s essentially no chance that an American will be involuntarily unable to access any of them. Indeed, our abundance has created a situation that greatly alarms compulsive do-gooders and professional cause-floggers: a shortage of genuine needs. I wrote about this, half-humorously, long ago at the late but fondly remembered Palace of Reason:

     A Curmudgeonly acquaintance, who shall henceforth be called Sarah, can be found in the local supermarket every evening between seven and eight o’clock. Yes, she’s married. No, she doesn’t have a huge family that requires an hour’s grocery shopping every evening. She spends her time there because she enjoys it.

     Sarah’s not insane, nor is she unique. A substantial number of Americans shop for pleasure. If the supermarket seems an odd venue for this pastime, well, different strokes and all that.

     But Sarah’s not shopping in the conventional sense. She’s looking for trouble.

     No, no! She’s not looking to start a fight over the price of eggs. She’s looking for trouble so she can help to fix it. Since she’s a gifted shopper, with a remarkable ability to squeeze $10 of purchases out of a $5 bill, she looks for people having shopping trouble: women who can’t fill their larders adequately on their household budgets.

     Sarah’s really good at this, and the folks she helps purely love her. However, at our last conversation, Sarah observed that fewer and fewer people seem to need her assistance. She mused about whether she ought to spend her evenings in a less affluent area.

     Another Curmudgeonly acquaintance, a retired gentleman whom we’ll call Ray, has the charming habit of driving his truck around Long Island’s major roads, looking for motorists with mechanical problems. When he finds one, he stops and offers to fix the misbehaving automobile right then and there, for free. Such is Ray’s prowess with cars that he has yet to fail to deliver.

     But Ray, too, is longing for richer trouble pickings. Long Islanders’ cars don’t break down nearly as often as they once did. Worse, most motorists have cell phones now, and they don’t hesitate to use them. Ray’s been talking about moving upstate, to Sullivan or Delaware County, where the average vehicle is older and more likely to fail.

     This past decade, local churches have reported a strong upswing in volunteers for charity work. Charity kitchens often have more willing workers than they have clients to feed. Our hospitals are blessed with a goodly number of volunteers to keep company with the afflicted: reading to them, talking to them, or performing less savory chores that will not be described further here.

     A lot of Americans are out there looking for trouble — and finding that there’s less of it to go around.

     But perhaps we should stay on the main track.

     When you say to yourself that “I need” this or that, how honest are you being with yourself? Is it truly a matter of your personal survival? Are you ready to wound your conscience – to inflict harm on innocent others or to default on a clear moral obligation – to get it?

***

     My last observation for today is about the rationale that’s most recently surfaced among people who claim that all they want is just the restoration of the Republic as the Founding Fathers intended it to be. These persons call themselves patriots. They have a good claim to the title. However, their ethics are failing them. Here’s the giveaway: “There’s a war on.”

     Oh? Really? Where’s the front? Who’s your enemy? Are you able to identify enemy forces by established indicators, or is it a matter of an inchoate, uncaptained “resistance” that fires on your troops from tenement windows? How will you know when the war is over? And who will you accept as your enemy’s chief representative, properly authorized to negotiate the peace treaty with you?

     Not even war can justify deliberately bring harm to noncombatants. Yet “there’s a war on” is being employed as a rationale for doing so. Besides, war is a horror inflicted upon Mankind by governments. It’s a collectivist atrocity, not something an individual can justly claim.

     “There’s a war on” is just another way of saying that in your view, “the end justifies the means.” Both formulations are vile.

***

     My intent in writing for the Web, as I’ve been doing since roughly 1996, is normally to persuade. Often, I seek to introduce new thinking – even new ways of thinking, depending on the subject – into exchanges that seem to go nowhere. That’s not my mission today.

     Today it’s about one of the oldest ideas Mankind has ever entertained.

     There’s what’s right, and there’s what’s wrong. You’re equipped to tell them apart. If you’re contemplating doing something you know to be wrong – something you might well have condemned when someone else did it in another context – what is your conscience telling you?

     Have a particularly disturbing snippet from the novel that’s proving to be the narration of our time:

     ‘You will understand that I must start by asking you certain questions. In general terms, what are you prepared to do?’
     ‘Anything that we are capable of,’ said Winston.
     O’Brien had turned himself a little in his chair so that he was facing Winston. He almost ignored Julia, seeming to take it for granted that Winston could speak for her. For a moment the lids flitted down over his eyes. He began asking his questions in a low, expressionless voice, as though this were a routine, a sort of catechism, most of whose answers were known to him already.
     ‘You are prepared to give your lives?’
     ‘Yes.’
     ‘You are prepared to commit murder?’
     ‘Yes.’
     ‘To commit acts of sabotage which may cause the death of hundreds of innocent people?’
     ‘Yes.’
     ‘To betray your country to foreign powers?’
     ‘Yes.’
     ‘You are prepared to cheat, to forge, to blackmail, to corrupt the minds of children, to distribute habit-forming drugs, to encourage prostitution, to disseminate venereal diseases — to do anything which is likely to cause demoralization and weaken the power of the Party?’
     ‘Yes.’
     ‘If, for example, it would somehow serve our interests to throw sulphuric acid in a child’s face — are you prepared to do that?’
     ‘Yes.’

     That was the exchange, unrecognized as such until much later in his travails, in which Winston gave O’Brien what the Inner Party member needed to break him: the complete cession of all moral limits, in the name of defeating the Party. He who embraces evil, regardless of the merits of his cause, has not advanced that cause; he has only damned himself.

     Have a nice day.

May 28 2023

Gifts

     Not long ago, I encountered the following passage in a secular novel:

     “Things should make sense. If they don’t, there’s no point to anything. It wouldn’t even be worth trying to figure things out any better. Why would our universe make sense with rules that make things like this ship work among other universes that are chaotic and useless?”

     There’s a lot of insight in there. Without the fundamental premise that given enough effort and penetration, “things” will “make sense” to us – i.e., that the phenomena of reality will conform to laws that we can deduce and, in some cases, exploit for our betterment – human enterprise would be pointless. Yet it is a premise – a statement of faith in a property of reality that can never be definitively proved.

     Without that faith, what could we possibly achieve? But without another kind of faith, what point would there be in achieving anything?

     That other kind of faith is faith in God and His benevolence.

***

     Today is Pentecost Sunday 2023, the date on which we commemorate the descent of the Holy Spirit upon the Blessed Virgin and the eleven remaining Apostles. It’s often called the birthday of the Church, for it was only after the Paraclete illuminated the understandings of the Apostles that they became both insightful enough to understand Christ’s teachings and courageous enough to preach them to the multitudes.

     The Church speaks of seven gifts of the Holy Spirit:

  1. Wisdom,
  2. Understanding,
  3. Counsel,
  4. Fortitude,
  5. Knowledge,
  6. Piety,
  7. Fear of the Lord.

     These qualities must interlock with a Christian’s faith to enable him to preach it to others, whether by word or by deed. A Christian allegiance that lacks them will tend to be more cosmetic than real: professed in superficialities rather than lived day by day. Only when the Apostles had been granted them were they ready, willing, and able to undertake their Christ-given mission:

     Go ye therefore, and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and, lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. [Matthew 28:19-20]

     Consider: the resurrected Christ had been with the Apostles, and had appeared to perhaps five hundred others [Cf. First Epistle to the Corinthians 15:6]. Yet the Apostles’ faith that He was what He said He was, and that His preachments embodied God’s will for Man, was still unequal to the task He had set them. They needed the gifts of the Holy Spirit to strengthen their faith, harmonize it with what He had taught them, and to fortify them for the trials ahead. Compared to the impact of those gifts, the “gift of tongues,” which enabled them to speak to diverse crowds each of whose individual members would hear them in his own language, was a mere convenience.

***

     There’s a “mystery figure” in the Pentecost miracle: Saint Paul, the foremost preacher and traveler of the early Church, whose writings make up a great part of the New Testament. He was not among the original Apostles in the “upper room” on the day of the Pentecost. Yet surely he too received the gifts of the Holy Spirit, probably as part of his “road to Damascus” enlightenment. What else could have assured him of the reality of Christ’s plaintive cry to him (“Saul, Saul! Why dost thou persecute me?”)? What else could have energized and sustained him throughout his travels?

     The gifts of the Holy Spirit are anyone’s for the asking. They require only sincerity and humility enough to ask…and to receive. And they are indispensable to anyone who desires to preach Christ and His Gospels, even if only by honoring them with his own life.

     For the great open secret of the gifts is this: They make our faith make sense. Indeed, without them, what would the point be of anything?

     May God bless and keep you all.

May 27 2023

When We Need A Miracle…

     …God, who always knows what we need, will provide one:

     The small rural Missouri town of Gower has become an unexpected pilgrimage destination after a nun’s exhumed body showed no visible signs of decomposition — four years after her burial.

     Hundreds of people have been flocking to the town 40 miles north of Kansas City to marvel at the well-preserved body of Sister Wilhelmina Lancaster, with many calling it a “miracle in Missouri.”

     Lancaster, when she was 70, founded the Benedictine Sisters of Mary, Queen of the Apostles.

     She died in May 2019 at 95, according to the Catholic News Agency.

     Last Thursday, Benedictine nuns dug up their foundress’ coffin to move it to beneath the altar in the convent’s chapel, which is customary.

     “We were told by cemetery personnel to expect just bones in the conditions, as Sister Wilhelmina was buried without embalming and in a simple wood coffin,” one nun told Newsweek….

     When the sisters fully opened the coffin, they were astonished to discover Lancaster’s body with almost no signs of decay.

     He has specially blessed the remains of other saints to remain incorrupt, but not many – and not, to my knowledge, any who served Him in North America.

     This is the second possible miracle reported to have taken place recently on our continent. A possible case of Miraculous Multiplication was reported a few days earlier by a church in Connecticut:

     The Archdiocese of Hartford investigated the claims at St. Thomas Catholic Church in Thomaston and is sending the results to the Holy See in Rome, the Hartford Courant reported last week.

     The reported miracle occurred at a March 5 Mass, when a parishioner assisting with Communion reported that there was a shortage of hosts — wafers used during the ritual to symbolize the body of Jesus Christ — only to then find there were plenty.

     “God has duplicated himself in the ciborium,” said the Rev. Joseph Crowley, who oversees the congregation, referring to the type of container used to hold the hosts. “It’s really, really cool when God does these things, and it’s really, really cool when we realize what he’s done.”

     If there were ever a time when men of good will were desperate for signs that not all hope is lost, this is one such.

     Be not afraid. And pray.

May 27 2023

Why Government Should Lose the Power to Make Law Affecting Constitutional Rights

Here – this applies to a STATE law, but ALL levels of government – local, agency, bureau, state AND federal – need to stop this practice.

If you don’t want the Constitution to stop your petty little rules/laws, there is a standard, encoded procedure to change it.

May 27 2023

Evil Policies

     I have something to say that a lot of people, possibly including you, Gentle Reader, are not going to like. You could be one of them, so make sure you’re securely seated and your seat belt is fastened.

     The end does not justify the means.

     That’s it, friends. Just seven words. Easy to read, easy to understand…but apparently supremely difficult to adhere to. Notice that I didn’t boldface, italicize, or super-size them. Either you get it or you don’t.

     Yes, we have enemies. Yes, some of them mean us great harm, possibly even terminal harm. Yes, we must defeat them…but that does not sanctify doing harm to noncombatants.

     One of the central advances of the Treaties of Westphalia, the agreements that heralded the modern era, was the codification of the principal law of war. That law, like the moral-ethical principle I summarized in seven little words, is equally simply stated:

     Combat is for combatants, no one else.

     All of what we called (until recently) civilization is expressed in that statement. “Thou shalt not murder” is just another way of putting it. That supposedly civilized nations have cast that stricture aside since 1914 neither refutes it nor nullifies it.

     You might be wondering why this is on my mind this morning. Just yesterday, a Gabber suggested something immoral in the cause of fighting the transgender madness. She suggested going to a Target store, filling a cart with merchandise…and leaving it there for the store help to deal with. It disturbed me, so I reproved her. Her response was that “we’re at war,” implying that deliberately extending the campaign to people who have nothing to do with it is quite all right.

     Is it all right, Gentle Reader? Is it morally acceptable to impose extra labor on people who are just trying to earn a living, for the sake of a cause? People who had nothing to do with Target’s “Pride” policy? People who might have to work longer hours, making them late for other obligations? Possibly for no extra pay?

     I don’t think so. I think it’s the tip of a very dangerous iceberg. That ‘berg could sink our otherwise morally praiseworthy ship.

     For those younger than I, and for contemporaries whose memories of the late Sixties are hazy, the tactic described above was introduced by Leftist organizers during the “Cesar Chavez / United Farm Workers” controversy. Activists – many of them teenagers – would do exactly as that Gabber suggested at supermarkets that had not aligned with UFW positions on “workers’ rights.” They made extra work, often quite a lot of it, for stock boys and check-out clerks at hundreds of supermarkets. It did nothing for the UFW’s cause, but it did burden thousands of innocent supermarket workers and impede thousands of uninvolved shoppers.

     It was wrong then, and it’s wrong now.

     I can’t help but quote Ralph Waldo Emerson once more:

     You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong. Justice is not postponed… Every secret is told, every crime is punished, every virtue rewarded, every wrong redressed, in silence and certainty.

     You don’t want to be on the wrong end of that law of the universe.

     And now, back to our previously scheduled Curmudgeonry.

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