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.
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.
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.
Among the critical open secrets of America’s commercial culture is this: High corporate executives are obsessed with their public images. They don’t just want to “make money,” as if operating profitable organizations that provide oodles of jobs while making things people want were somehow trivially dismissible. They want to Leave Their Footprints In The Sands Of Time. The longer they hold their high positions, the more the ephemerality of commercial achievement weighs on their minds.
This makes corporate executives easy marks for the species of predatory beast called the Good Cause. Such beasts roam the American landscape. Their diet is executive egos. They lure their prey with the promise of a benevolent image for cooperating…and the dissemination of outright slanders for declining.
The original rationale for the publicly traded corporation was that it would earn profits using invested capital and distribute those profits as dividends to its stockholders. In other words, it labors for the stockholders’ profit. Why else, really, would anyone buy into a corporate venture? Stock price appreciation is merely an alternate form for corporate profits: the form it takes when profits are reinvested in search of still greater profits.
This model is utterly contradicted by corporate charity and charitable involvement. The money that goes to such things belongs to the stockholders. No executive has a moral license to give it away, regardless of the Good Cause on which he proposes to lavish it. If he spends it on anything not connected to company productivity, he is stealing it from the stockholders.
Not wanting to be seen as bigoted, corporations started becoming very active in supporting organizations involved in “good” causes, especially those that affect women and identity groups. Thus, battling AIDS and breast cancer became workplace priorities. Don’t misunderstand, these are worthwhile causes, but once the barn door was opened, corporate America could not say “No” to any “worthy” cause. And since the far left gets to determine what is worthy and good, we now have major corporations promoting cross-dressing in the office and compelling certain disfavored employee demographics to submit to dehumanizing struggle sessions.
The left’s march through the institutions involved so much more than this topic of course, but when corporate America forfeited the right to say “No” to good causes, it opened the door to having to say “Yes” to every left wing pathology.
This is dead on target. Major executives and corporate directors are learning it the hard way. The cause promoters are twisting arms with the threat of major defamation campaigns and boycotts. And what are the CEOs to say? “We don’t do corporate charity” — ? When virtually every Fortune 5000 company has an internal United Way campaign?
It should never have begun. Putting it to death will take more clarity and more courage than contemporary executives possess. When William E. Simon wrote the following:
As is so often the case in our society, when the liberals orchestrate a nationwide uproar over good versus evil, all those defined as evil suffer an acute loss of nerve. Businessmen and bankers, who seem to value respectability more than their lives, are incapable of tolerating this moral abuse. Invariably they collapse psychologically. And whatever they may think and say in private, in public they either go mute or stumble frantically over their own feet as they rush to join the moral bandwagon. – William E. Simon, A Time For Truth
…he was describing the very process used to extort American businessmen and their firms, often not for causes that the great majority would approve and endorse, but for the very worst: the corruptors and destroyers of all that is right and good. And businessmen must be held accountable for permitting it.
Let Buck Throckmorton have the closing:
Charity and compassion begin at home. Leave it out of the workplace.
I’m in the throes of Problem #2 at the moment. So here goes nothing…or everything, depending on your perspective.
***
Banks usually don’t have a great deal of cash on hand. A branch VP will try to dissuade you from making a “large” cash withdrawal. Among other things, it renders them less able to service others who want cash. But these days, a new reason is making news:
This is ominous, to say the least. Why should a depositor have to establish that he has a good reason for wanting his own property back?
Of course, NatWest frames this policy as “protection” for the depositor. How else could it justify it? Nevertheless, other, less laudable reasons seem more likely, especially given the Usurper Regime’s drive to eliminate cash altogether. Beware.
***
The nation is still smarting from the effects of the “Pandemic lockdowns.” It’s been three years since they were first imposed, and quite a lot of information has come to light since then, little of it favorable to the lockdowns. Of course, we were urged to passively accept the decrees of the “experts” because…well, because they’re “experts!” In this regard, Professor of Microbiology and Immunology Steve Templeton has some revelations for us:
Experts are generally terrible at forecasting, as demonstrated by psychologist and author Philip Tetlock in his 2005 book Expert Political Judgement. In Tetlock’s study, when 284 experts were asked to make 27,451 predictions in areas relevant to their expertise, the results were a total bust. When pitted against “dilettantes, dart-throwing chimps, and assorted extrapolation algorithms,” experts did not consistently perform better than any of them. They were no more accurate at forecasting than the average person. However, there were some people who proved better at forecasting, yet these were not what one would traditionally label as “experts.” Instead, more accurate forecasters tended to be more well-rounded, less ideological, and more willing to challenge their own assumptions. In contrast, experts just assumed they knew everything, and were wrong as much as right.
These days, “experts” trade largely on their credentials: degrees, published papers, prestigious public positions, and the like. So even they realize that relying on their record as forecasters is unwise. It’s something to keep in mind for when the next round of scare talk begins.
***
Robert Spencer first entered the public eye with his work on Islam and jihad. In recent months, he’s spoken on a wider number of subjects, with equal incisiveness. Here’s one of great interest to me personally:
The Daily Signal reported Sunday that the FBI “appears, at least briefly, to have joined the Southern Poverty Law Center’s attempt to demonize Roman Catholics who follow the church’s teachings on marriage and who celebrate the Latin Mass.” One of those Catholics, Michael J. Matt, editor of a newspaper called The Remnant and producer of Remnant TV, noted that his organization, which is not remotely connected with violence or terrorism, was listed on a “leaked FBI memo,” along with other Catholic groups that he pointed out were “defunct.”
Matt declared that this was an example the “FBI phoning it in,” as its list of “radical-traditional Catholic hate groups” came from a 2007 list compiled by the SPLC’s Heidi Beirich and Rhonda Brownstein. Matt asked incredulously: “They took Heidi Beirich and Rhonda Brownstein’s word for it, from 2007?!” He added: “There has been an explosion of traditional Catholic groups since Pope Benedict XVI brought back the Latin Mass. None of the new groups who are in positions of real influence are targeted in the memo.” That’s good, but the fact that the FBI is working with the SPLC and targeting law-abiding citizens because it disapproves of their religious beliefs is disquieting enough.
The Southern Poverty Law Center bears one of the most Orwellian names among American organizations. In fact, it’s been responsible for the promotion of hatred and violence, but has seldom been held to account. The FBI, which has recently displayed an eagerness to deflect attention from genuine public menaces and onto decent Americans, seems not to care.
The Biden administration is doling out taxpayer money through an anti-terrorism grant initiative to a university program that has explicitly lumped the Republican Party, as well as Christian and conservative groups, into the same category as Nazis, according to documents shared exclusively with Fox News Digital.
The Media Research Center, a conservative watchdog group, obtained documents through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests showing a Department of Homeland Security (DHS) program meant to fight terrorism is funding a group whose work has explicitly targeted the American political right. The MRC outlined its findings in a report,arguing what the group found warrants criminal prosecution.
“This terrorism task force is engaged in an active effort to demonize and eliminate Christian, conservative, and Republican organizations using federal taxpayer dollars,” said Brent Bozell, founder and president of the Media Research Center. “What we have uncovered calls for criminal prosecution.The American people need to know those who are abusing their positions in the federal government will be held accountable for their criminal behavior.”
I can’t see how this could be innocent on the part of the DHS. It dovetails too well with other reports of Usurper Regime hostility toward Christianity. And of course we’ve had Dementia Sufferer In Chief, Joseph R. Biden, tell us that Republicans are the next best thing to fascists, too, haven’t we?
Any number of other commentators have said, occasionally in so many words, that “It’s about to get spicy.” But it hasn’t…yet. What will it take?
Growing human babies from scratch in a lab could be possible in just five years thanks to a new breakthrough.
Researchers in Japan are on the cusp of being able to create human eggs and sperm in the lab from scratch, which would then develop in an artificial womb.
Professor Katsuhiko Hayashi, a Japanese scientist at Kyushu University who has already figured out the process in mice, believes he is just five years away from replicating the results in humans.
But there are ethical concerns, as it means women of any age could have babies. Parents may also want to design their offspring to have certain traits using gene editing tools, giving way to the notion of an assumed perfect child.
That this is happening in Japan, the Western nation with the lowest birthrate of all, was almost to be expected. If regular humans don’t want to reproduce, “science” will do it for them. But what sort of children will “science” produce? Who will raise the babies? What values will be instilled in them?
I wrote about something parallel to this proposed atrocity in Innocents: human cloning. The following snippet is from that novel:
“[T]hink about it. Let’s say they were to clone me—produce a baby version of me. That baby would have no parents or other relatives. The people who produced him would have no reason to care for him, or about him, and only they would know he existed. He would be a product for sale. Why would anyone make that product? Why would anyone want that product? Apart from pure altruism?…. “The only reason to clone someone, other than the motives Fountain’s creators had, would be to replace him,” he said. “Or parts of him. And that means either murder, or enslavement, or cannibalism by surgeon. It’s evil no matter how you slice it.” “That’s if clones were granted the status and rights of people born the…regular way,” Juliette said. “What if they weren’t?” Sokoloff gestured at Fountain. Six pairs of eyes swung toward her. She remained still and silent. “That’s worse, isn’t it?” he said. Trish slid over next to Fountain and took her hand. “A lot worse,” she said. “Yeah,” Juliette said.
The production of babies in laboratories is just as evil as cloning. The “product,” nominally a human being, would be property. Camouflaging this with the flip assertion that loving parents would await such babies is absolutely deceitful. If that were true, Japanese couples would be producing them in the time-honored fashion!
The logic above applies to any babies that would come into the world through the machinations of “science,” regardless of any and all considerations.
***
I’d say that’s enough for the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. Try not to think about it too much. Enjoy your barbecues. And do please offer a prayer for the souls of those who have fallen in battle in the service of our country. Have a nice day.
…my decision to leave Blogger has been justified. Specifically, the Grundies at Blogger have gotten around to Liberty’s Torch V1.0 and are slapping “Sensitive Content” warnings on a lot of the pieces there. So far:
…have all been labeled sensitive. As the most recent of them was posted in 2016, I can’t imagine what they’re afraid of.
I hope that I’ll continue to have access to the old site for the near term, but nothing is guaranteed once the censors get to it. If there are any essays for which you want permanent copies, I’d advise you to download them before they have a chance to be “disappeared.”
I do like that word bastion. A form of it, Bastian, is also a man’s name, and a most complimentary one at that. A bastion is a stronghold, a difficult-to-assail redoubt that stands athwart the enemy’s campaign. The enemy must be sure to reduce such strongholds completely before continuing on with an invasion, for there is nothing quite as perilous to an invading force as to have one on its flank or in its rear.
Just as a nation that possesses several well-placed military bastions is thereby insured against a surprise attack, a nation that possesses adequate cultural bastions can be fairly relaxed about the security of its way of life. Forces that seek to corrupt the culture of such a nation must first reduce those strongholds. As “politics is downstream from culture” (Andrew Breitbart), a campaign against the nation must undermine those cultural bastions first.
Until recently, the United States had several cultural bastions:
Its Christian ethics;
Its emphasis on family;
Its bourgeois commercial culture;
Predominantly trustworthy news media;
Social norms that emphasize privacy and autonomy.
Such things don’t spring from the ground like toadstools; they must be built over many decades. Those who plot our downfall set to work on them more than century ago. Only these past few years have the consequences become blatantly visible.
I’m sure no regular reader of Liberty’s Torch needs an enumeration. The news media, one of the first of the bastions to be subverted, report on the outcroppings daily. Nearly always, their slant is intended to suggest that rampant violence, incivility, perversion, cruelty, and duplicity are in the natural order of things, and should not stir one to outrage. There’s quite a lot of “there oughta be a law” in there, too.
When a nation’s bastions have been reduced, what does it have left with which to rally its people to its defense?
We should have taken note of what was being done to us a lot sooner.
***
Today, it takes a lot of fortitude to say “I will not give in; I will soldier on.” Not many Americans have that much courage or endurance. We know what we’ve lost. We lament it bitterly, but we can’t find in ourselves the spiritual resources required to fight back. Worse, we find the prospects for further losses near to unstoppable. We seem to be surrounded by evil.
I’m there too. I write; I talk to acquaintances; I counsel young people who seek a new perspective. Yet I’m ever more at a loss when someone asks me “What can we do?” Many things that I once deemed reliable countermeasures have vanished or have been corrupted in their turn.
I refuse to say “Give up; they’ve got us by the short’n’curlies.” I’ve tried to fortify my own little family and holdings as best I can, but that’s about the only measure I can recommend to others…and even that is not without cringing. Against an opponent with the resources of the anti-American Left, hunkering down and resolving to wait it out is not a winning strategy. We can’t hope for the restoration of what we’ve lost without mounting an offensive.
There are some signs that give hope. The Bud Light and Target developments suggest that “woke capitalism” has finally hit the stops. Burgeoning outrage against such things as the promotion of transgenderism to schoolchildren and the teaching of Critical Race Theory is another indicator of massing resistance. And of course, the swelling willingness of Americans to oppose the various “pride movements” is critical. But all of these things must be restored to a foundation in Christian ethics and a family-centered culture, and those are the very rocks the Left has attacked most determinedly.
If I were plotting a strategy for the reformation of our culture, I’d emphasize the churches and the education of our young. Both have been subverted. Education in particular has been corrupted so completely that nothing can be done with the existing institutions except to shut them down. But the churches are little better. “Tolerance uber alles” now ranks alongside the Gospels. Indeed, I once heard a Catholic priest refer to the Ten Commandments as “interesting suggestions.”
We need our bastions to be built back to their former strength. We need them if we’re ever to throw back the death cults and the totalitarians they serve. But as I said earlier, those bastions were established and fortified over many decades. We might not have time enough to restore them.
Well, at least these services aren’t mandatory yet. But stay tuned. And now that I’ve depressed all my Gentle Readers, it’s time for prayer and a spot of breakfast. Have a nice day.
A Dollar General store in California could be on the hook for a substantial sum of money after an employee appears to have flouted the state’s monopoly on violence by going after an accused shoplifter on her own – and hitting him with her car.
By now, some 9 days from my fall, I’m generally not in that much actual pain. Easily fatigued, certainly. Sore, absolutely.
But mostly just REALLY uncomfortable. Enough to make it difficult to sleep for more than a couple of hours at a time. Not really able to concentrate on anything worthwhile. Playing online solitaire. Reading the most lightweight books. Complaining. Getting itches in unreachable locations.
My poor daughter is giving up her vacation to help me cope with this. She’s practically a Living Saint (I would have given me a what-for a long time ago). But she is helping out with personal care, laundry, meals, and, yes, patiently listening to my complaints.
I have a follow up appointment tomorrow at 8:15. She will be seeing a doctor that day for her own medical issues. I’m hoping we both get good reports.
No charges for Chicago teens who killed 70-yr-old with stolen KIA, mayor fires police chief who asked questions
Police in the village of Robbins, which is southwest of Chicago, announced that no charges have been filed against three teenagers who stole a Kia in February and then crashed it into 70-year-old Donald Carter’s car, killing him.
Carter’s family has been outraged that no charges have been forthcoming against the teenagers.
Robbins Mayor Darren Bryant fired Police Chief David Sheppard in April following the incident after the chief repeatedly questioned behavior coming from the mayor’s office, according to The Southland Journal.
According to the Chicago Tribune, Sheppard said he believed that his questioning of directions he received from Bryant in the handling of Carter’s vehicle factored into his dismissal. Sheppard said the vehicle was taken to a large building where public works vehicles and road salt are stored to keep it enclosed because state police had not yet processed it for evidence in the crash investigation.
There’s no mention of the race of those three teenage killers, but I think any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch can guess them accurately. It happened in Illinois, not far from Chicago, after all.
With all due respect to the late Frank Herbert, fear is an innate capability of the human animal. It’s not always purely negative; it’s often protective. In the latter instances, it might be best to respect and heed it. Of course, what it protects is the only valid measure of whether to face it…or fight it.
Some things do not deserve protection. Illusions are among them. So are the purveyors of illusions, regardless of their motives for doing so.
Another thing that doesn’t deserve protection is your aversion to disapproval. There are innumerable persons who’ll sneer at you, exclude you, and possibly slander you to others for the heinous crime of disagreeing with them. Many who would qualify as adults by the usual measures quail at such disapproval. They fear it as if it were something that could actually wound them.
Journalists are chosen for their gullibility, obsequiousness, lack of all scruples, ability to lie, and the quality of possessing no memory for past misstatements and having no compunction to self-contradict themselves with great regularity while beaming perfect sincerity. They are bad people.
Never trust anything a Regime journalist says, whether he calls himself progressive, woke, or conservative.
Please read the whole thing. Briggs cuts through the fog of equivocations, tu quoque defenses, and mistaken attributions of expertise and motives with a white-hot scalpel. I couldn’t improve on his prose if I were to spend the rest of the week at it.
WTF, over? How does anyone’s “choice,” regardless of the subject at issue, “deserve” anything? Yes, we should respect freedom of choice itself. But the actual choices others make deserve nothing, except perhaps tolerance – and in some cases not even that.
Yet many fear what would happen were they not to approve, openly and explicitly, the choices of others. Indeed, there’s been a huge campaign to elicit and intensify such fears, even when some of the “choices” involve actual crimes against others.
There’s a gag-trope that’s been making the rounds for quite a while now:
The questionable grammar aside, it’s a sentiment with which I feel some sympathy. But it doesn’t address the root of the thing, which is our fear of others’ disapproval. Those who are determined to use you will make use of that fear to the greatest possible extent.
Friends fear their friends’ disapproval.
Husbands fear their wives’ disapproval.
Children fear their parents’ disapproval.
Employees fear their employers’ disapproval.
Homeowners fear their neighbors’ disapproval.
And far too many of us fear pollsters’ disapproval.
Which of those fears do you share, Gentle Reader? Do you think they’re protecting you from anything genuinely fearsome?
Address each of those common fears and ask yourself: Why shouldn’t they fear my disapproval? Why should I be on the “receiving end?” It’s a mind-opener.
The most egregious cases pertain to purveyed illusions. There are a lot of them in circulation today. If someone is trying to get you to accept and possibly parrot an illusion, he’s either deluded or evil. There are no other explanations. And never mind that such persons are likely to claim that you’re either stupid or evil; that’s just a reassertion of their disapproval of you in stronger terms.
Ironically, the best protection against being manipulated by the fear of others’ disapproval is another fear, one that few people ponder these days: the fear of losing your self-respect. For one who is manipulable in that fashion and is aware of it cannot respect himself. And here we encounter yet another irony: to protect ourselves from that awareness, we contrive illusions of our own:
“I have to fit in.”
“Got to stay on his good side.”
“It’s the way things are these days.”
“The nail that sticks up gets hammered down.”
“I wouldn’t want to create the wrong impression.”
…et cetera ad nauseam infinitam. But one who respects himself doesn’t make excuses for being bullied – and that is what manipulations through the fear of disapproval really are.
He made, in his inexperience, the classic mistake: he tried to explain. Life had not yet taught him how futile that approach is, with men and women alike. He did not know that the only respect-compelling attitude toward any accusation, true or false, is “Take me or leave me as I am, and be damned!” – Frank Yerby, An Odor of Sanctity
If there are any left-liberal moonbats in your orbit, you’re bound to have a conversation with them, sooner or later, about “diversity.” There’s no way around it. They worship the word though they shudder and shy away from the reality. But even as they put their homes on the trading block in an effort to escape your “diversifying” neighborhood, they’ll do their earnest best to persuade you to embrace it.
Some years ago, the paramour of a good friend counseled me exactly that way. In an attempt to probe her convictions on the subject a bit more deeply than was customary at that time, I asked her, in roughly these words: So if my neighborhood were “turning black,” I should stay here even so? She replied that it would be morally obligatory for me to do so.
Which makes it “morally obligatory” that you be prepared for a sally such as this:
Left-Liberal Moonbat: We can all get along if we just try harder!
To which the rejoinder I favor would be:
FWP: No, we can’t. It’s been established empirically.
…followed by working the pump on your 12-gauge and ambling away.
Other leftist claims, such as “Socialism would work if the right people were in charge,” should be met similarly. It’s smart policy to “save your breath.” After all, you have no idea how many more you’ll draw.
No surgery yet. I have an appointment with a shoulder specialist on Thursday. Pain level: worst at night, in the early morning hours. Bearable otherwise.
My wonderful daughter, the sister, gave me assistance with my first shower in a week. That did a lot to improve my wellbeing, and probably make it more bearable to be around me.
Assuming a normal recovery, I should be good to be on my own in another week or so. By that time, my husband should have had time to finish all details with the house sale, and drive back.
In Robert C. Townsend’s invaluable book of business advice Further Up The Organization, he proposes that every company institute a unique executive position: VP in Charge of Killing Things:
It’s about eleven times as easy to start something as it is to stop something. But ideas are good for a limited time—not forever….
General Foods, the AFL-CIO, the Department of Defense, and the Ford Foundation should make it a practice to wipe out their worst product, service, or activity every so often. And I don’t mean cutting it back or remodeling it–I mean right between the eyes.
The enemy hates us, and it is dead serious about converting its hatred into policy. From legalizing crime to weaponizing the government against us, from disenfranchising us at the ballot box to disarming us in our homes, to gagging us on social media and leveraging the regime media to hide the truth and amplify the lies, this is a cold war where we become serfs if we don’t win. It’s not the time for Team Use Your Inside Voice. The enemy holds every major institution; if you are worried about collateral damage to the institutions that seek to enslave us – or worse – then you don’t have the stones to flatten them and their current occupants. And that’s what we need to do.
Here’s the test – if you think we should not dismantle the FBI because the problem is a few bad apples, you are impotent and unfit to lead. Get back in the rear with the camp followers and help with the cooking – we need a guy who will pick up his saber, yell “Follow me!” and charge.
Who was it that said that the nearest approach to eternal life observable among us is a temporary government program? Yes, the FBI needs to be put down like the rabid dog it’s come to be. It was originally instituted for two tasks, neither of which was legitimate or sincere: preventing counterfeiting and enforcing Prohibition. Today its principal function seems to be terrorizing pro-lifers and the angry parents of school-age kids. Why let such an agency continue? It’s neither necessary nor desirable nor Constitutionally licit.
Schlichter has the right of it, though I would go further: How about dropping a ten megaton city-buster on the Washington Monument, plus half-megaton warheads on the capitals of the fifty states? Imagine the savings! Imagine the serenity! Imagine being able to concentrate on our proper business without having to worry about politics!
Of course there would be a downside: our “news media” would have to find something of actual importance to prattle about. So what? Eggs and omelets, baby.
(What’s that? You want to know how to cope with your annoying neighbor? That’s a job for neighborhood nuclear superiority! Stop complaining. Get equipped.)
Finally, a thought from a thinker of some years ago:
Anti-gun activists in Tennessee have been harassing legislators and Second Amendment supporters. That’s part of the Left’s playbook, of course…but have a gawk at this little tidbit:
On May 16, 2023, WTN 99.7 FM’s Brian Wilson delved into the revelations from a secretly recorded training session held by gun control advocates in preparation for the upcoming special session in Tennessee.
This special session, called by Governor Bill Lee, aims to pass more red-flag laws and gun control measures within the state.
Wilson reviews snippets from the approximately two-hour training session, which shed light on the tactics and strategies employed by these freedom-hating advocates and their affiliation with Planned Parenthood….
During the training, one notable aspect that emerged was the discussion surrounding the presence of armed anti-gun activists among the advocates’ ranks!?
The trainers revealed that they had established groups in Nashville composed of individuals whom they “trust.” The recording reveals these individuals are not only “trained” but also “armed,” serving as a security force for the gun banners during protests and other events. [Emphasis added by FWP]
“Armed anti-gun activists?” How much more hypocritical could these aspiring totalitarians get?
A college woman received a zero grade score on an assignment for using the term “biological women.”
“I got a zero on my project proposal in class because I used the term biological women, which is apparently not allowed anymore,” the college girl explains in the viral video.
The girl’s professor “even said it was a good project proposal, but I got a zero because I used this term that’s exclusionary and not allowed anymore.”
Her project centered around transgenders competing in women’s sports, yet she wasn’t allowed to say – biological women.
They really are using 1984 as a playbook. Are we being cast as proles? Or as unpersons?
The C.S.O. and I usually watch British murder mysteries and police procedurals in the evening. (We subscribe to Acorn and BritBox.) By and large, they’re exactly what they’re billed to be. However, the more recent ones have been displaying a certain “tilt,” in particular toward the two features the Left has been touting most heavily: “multiculturalism” and climate alarmism. Nearly every series we’ve viewed for some time now has included:
Interracial couples;
Homosexual protagonists and couples;
Muslims in positions of responsibility for public order;
Windmills.
It’s irritating. It makes me want to turn off the Idiot Box and just listen to the C.S.O.’s rather impressive snore. But the worst aspect of it is the endless parade of those bloody windmills. I can’t remember the last segment of anything that didn’t include windmills, usually some detective driving through a large field of them. Which makes the following tweet a real blood pressure elevator:
Climate Scam: Scotland’s wind turbines have been secretly using diesel generators. 🤡 pic.twitter.com/NMAvjeONMx
— Dr. Anastasia Maria Loupis (@DrLoupis) May 22, 2023
Could it possibly get any more in-your-face? Strike that; don’t tell me. I’ve decided that I don’t really want to know.
It does happen, you know. It’s certainly happened to me. Today, it’s happened to Roger Kimball:
The business of Washington is to make government bigger—forever. That is not what the people, who pay for it, want.
Well, it’s certainly not what I want. If you’re a regular Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, it’s surely not what you want. But “the people” is a vast and incoherent aggregate. Sad to say, for every identifiable agency in the Executive Branch of the federal government, there exists:
A group that works for it;
Vendors that sell to it;
A portion of “the people” – beneficiaries and ideological supporters – who’d like to see it grow;
A portion of “the people” – hard-pressed taxpayers and ideological opponents – who’d like to see it end.
Three of those four groups are opposed to the diminution of that agency. Indeed, they’d very much like to see it grow to the skies. Politically, they have always outweighed the fourth group, and probably always will.
The first three communities enumerated above are usually not perfectly disjoint sets. But they exhibit remarkable cohesion around their shared interests. That’s the basis for the Public Choice dynamic that over-empowers interest groups with short, coherent agendas. Politicians know this, which is why when they “shop for votes,” they try their damnedest to “buy wholesale.” With our money, of course.
Politicians cannot and do not attempt to please “the people.” They know the folly of that approach. They strive to appeal to a coalition of identifiable interest groups or interest-centered demographics. We hear about such things now and then, for instance when an aspirant to the presidency speaks at a convention held by some sizable union. The candidate most adept at assembling such a coalition usually prevails.
“The people” is not an interest group. Politicians may give it lip service, but when they troll for votes it could not be further from their thoughts.
Some Americans do ardently yearn for smaller, more frugal government. Perhaps that even describes the great majority of us. Yet if you ask any one voter whether he’d be willing to sacrifice his particular deduction, subsidy, or subvention, you’re likely to freeze him solid. He’ll hem, haw, and stammer. The prospect will threaten his well-being much too directly.
Ask a dairy farmer whether he’d willingly sacrifice dairy subsidies.
Ask a teacher whether he’d willingly sacrifice federal “aid to education.”
Ask a researcher whether he’d willingly sacrifice his federal research grant.
Ask a “senior citizen” whether he’d willingly sacrifice Social Security or Medicare.
Ask a union member whether he’d willingly sacrifice the Norris-Laguardia, the Wagner-Taft-Hartley, or the Davis-Bacon Act.
Ask a homeowner –there are a great many of us – whether he’d willingly sacrifice the deductibility of the interest on his mortgage.
That’s how Washington became what it is today. “The people” had nothing to do with it. Nor will they unite around a vision of frugal government without first considering the hazard to their particular giveaway. It’s not a pleasant conclusion, but the facts will support no other.
The Romans knew the process: Divide ut impera! “Divide to rule!” It works just as well today as it did in the time of the Caesars, and the politicians know it.
On August 16, 1819, some 60,000 hungry, unarmed workers, with their wives and children, converged on St. Peter’s Field in Manchester to peacefully demand economic and political reform. Barely 11 percent of Britain’s people had the right to vote at the time. Factory conditions in the early years of the Industrial Revolution were abysmal. Meager pay, widespread unemployment, and child labor savaged family life. The poor sank more deeply into poverty. The rich got richer on profits from a system structured to benefit England’s ruling class.
The response of authorities that day was instructive. Cavalry and bayonet-wielding infantry charged into the protesters. They killed 18 and wounded up to 700. Despite public outrage at the slaughter, the government followed up with a national crackdown on dissent. This involved police raids, mass arrests, harsh anti-sedition laws, and jail sentences. It took decades for the British reform movement to recover and succeed.
Men determined to rule absolutely do things like that. They eventually provide a rationale – usually something like “public order was at stake” or “there’s a war on” – but the central point is the maintenance of their power.
Maier’s column is focused on the thesis that “Enlightenment-inspired liberal society” has failed, and must be replaced by a “common-good conservatism.” This is an evasion of the central point, which, ironically, Maier makes early in his column:
Every society has an elite leadership class, no matter how well disguised. That includes democracies. It thus includes our own.
Yes, there will always be an “elite” of some sort. The inequality of human ability guarantees that in a free society, some will be smarter, richer, more accomplished, and more admired than others…but that does not justify allowing them power over others. The infamies Maier deplores arise from political power, not from the existence of an “elite.” There is no conception of the “common good” that is immune from such corruption.
A society that tolerates the existence of such power will always come to grief. See the previous piece if you haven’t already. This Baseline Essay is also highly relevant.
Joe Biden’s government is now planning for the Ukraine conflict to last years – “perhaps decades” – with no clear victor, according to insider claims.
POLITICO – a German-owned outlet the “intelligence community” often uses to plant information – spoke to a number of current and former officials “granted anonymity to describe sensitive issues” who believe Ukraine could become a frozen conflict.
“We are planning for the long term, whether it looks frozen or thawed,” said a source the report described as a “U.S. official familiar with the Biden administration’s discussions on Ukraine.”
[Cited at Ace of Spades HQ. The article itself is behind a paywall.]
If you think I’ve been citing 1984 too often, have a look at the following, which Orwell inserted into the book: a composition that was purported to be the manifesto of the Emmanuel Goldstein-led opposition to The Party, but was in fact a product of The Party itself:
The essential act of war is destruction, not necessarily of human lives, but of the products of human labour. War is a way of shattering to pieces, or pouring into the stratosphere, or sinking in the depths of the sea, materials which might otherwise be used to make the masses too comfortable, and hence, in the long run, too intelligent. Even when weapons of war are not actually destroyed, their manufacture is still a convenient way of expending labour power without producing anything that can be consumed. A Floating Fortress, for example, has locked up in it the labour that would build several hundred cargo-ships. Ultimately it is scrapped as obsolete, never having brought any material benefit to anybody, and with further enormous labours another Floating Fortress is built. In principle the war effort is always so planned as to eat up any surplus that might exist after meeting the bare needs of the population. In practice the needs of the population are always underestimated, with the result that there is a chronic shortage of half the necessities of life; but this is looked on as an advantage. It is deliberate policy to keep even the favoured groups somewhere near the brink of hardship, because a general state of scarcity increases the importance of small privileges and thus magnifies the distinction between one group and another. By the standards of the early twentieth century, even a member of the Inner Party lives an austere, laborious kind of life. Nevertheless, the few luxuries that he does enjoy his large, well-appointed flat, the better texture of his clothes, the better quality of his food and drink and tobacco, his two or three servants, his private motor-car or helicopter—set him in a different world from a member of the Outer Party, and the members of the Outer Party have a similar advantage in comparison with the submerged masses whom we call ’the proles’. The social atmosphere is that of a besieged city, where the possession of a lump of horseflesh makes the difference between wealth and poverty. And at the same time the consciousness of being at war, and therefore in danger, makes the handing-over of all power to a small caste seem the natural, unavoidable condition of survival.
Did you skip over the passages from the book when you first made your acquaintance with Orwell’s masterpiece? You shouldn’t have.
It may not be the case that the “Inner Party” that currently rules these United States “lives an austere, laborious kind of life,” but the rest of Orwell’s analysis holds together brilliantly. Yet even our political elite will soon be maintained “near the brink of hardship,” for the drive for unbounded and absolute power eschews all other considerations. Present trends continuing, men who lust for unbounded and absolute power will ultimately displace the sybarites that currently reign, by virtue of their superior ruthlessness:
But when a society establishes criminals-by-right and looters-by-law—men who use force to seize the wealth of disarmed victims—then money becomes its creators’ avenger. Such looters believe it safe to rob defenseless men, once they’ve passed a law to disarm them. But their loot becomes the magnet for other looters, who get it from them as they got it. Then the race goes, not to the ablest at production, but to those most ruthless at brutality. When force is the standard, the murderer wins over the pickpocket. And then that society vanishes, in a spread of ruins and slaughter.
Rand may not have envisioned the transition from a dominant “looter class” to a supreme “murderer class,” but her very own logic presages exactly that. Should we live to see such days – and I pray that we won’t – remember that you read it here first.
(I don't endorse any of these sites. I list them to marvel at how many people and organizations want to run a "news site," but have no idea what that entails. -- FWP)
