…this day’s posts are just chock filled with Dissident Goodness!
Don’t miss the BBC “Feminist Talent”, and the non-woke newswomen’s reaction to the video!
Feb 08 2024
Evil, Decrees, And Authority
If there’s a more misunderstood sociopolitical concept than authority, I’m not aware of it. Most people can’t even answer the key questions: “Are there varieties of authority? If so, what are they? How do they differ?”
For today, let’s omit the uses of the word authority to denote high expertise in some subject. Let’s concentrate on the kinds of authority that pertain to the power to give binding orders. Even in that circumscribed realm, there are varieties and gradations of importance. Rather than treat this in my customary waltz-around-the-barn style, I’ll defy all precedent and tackle it around the waist.
Authority comes in these flavors:
- Positional;
- Practical;
- Primary.
Positional authority is the sort that exists in hierarchies for a particular purpose. A bottom-tier worker in a typical company must acknowledge and respond to the authority of his superiors in the company’s managerial hierarchy; their positions in that hierarchy are specifically for that purpose, among others. However, note that outside the company and its legitimate operations, they have no authority over that worker. So their authority is not only positional but situational.
Practical authority belongs to the guy who possesses the power to coerce you by virtue of his command of a preponderance of force. He may be a villain, but within the he / you context, he can visit unacceptable consequences upon you for not obeying him. That’s the authority of an armed robber…or a government agent. But it depends upon that preponderance-of-force relation; should that change, the authority would change in accordance with it.
Primary authority is the sort possessed by him to whom has been given the role of “he who makes the rules of the game.” If you choose to play the game, you must abide by the rules as the primary authority has decreed them. He who violates the rules will be penalized or expelled. Of course, that authority pertains only to the game and those who play it.
But what if “the game” is human life?
In that “game,” the “rules” can only be what constitutes acceptable conduct by human beings. But acceptable meaning what? What are the “rules” of this “game?” One cannot “quit” this “game” except by suicide. What does it mean to “win” at human life? What is the “payoff” for winning?
Theists and atheists part company on some of those questions. Yet they are the keys to the whole concept of evil. Whatever your base convictions, you must face them squarely.
Theists and atheists face different challenges in this matter of the rules of human life. For the theist, who is (usually) an adherent of some recognized religion, the key question is “How do we know what God really wants of us? Can we trust the proclamations of our clerics?” For the atheist, the key question is “How can we know the rules in the absence of a Supreme Rule-Maker? As confident as we might someday be in our deductions of them, how can we achieve consensus on them?”
The question “What is evil?” is like that. No man’s decrees, standing apart from the clearly expressed will of the primary authority, can have any authority of their own. But the primary authority – I speak as a theist, a Catholic Christian – speaks to us today through natural law, one’s personal conscience, and nothing else. The atheist, who cannot recur to a primary authority, must get by on arguments of a more abstract kind.
Humans can debate. Humans can coerce. Humans cannot decree, as if they were the Supreme Rule-Maker themselves, that “these are the rules.” For no man can enforce those rules after “the game” has been “played.” Either we will stand in judgment before a Primary Authority, or…what?
I’m not going to speculate about the “what.”
“Some men think the earth is round, others think it flat. It is a matter capable of question. But if it is flat, will the King’s command make it round? And if it is round, will the King’s command flatten it?” – Sir Thomas More to a trio of interrogators, in A Man For All Seasons
Finally, theists who adhere to a recognized religion face the role of the intermediary authority: i.e., the ordained cleric. This has been a source of contention for centuries. The contentions have several facets. The most important of them is this one: What if a cleric is wrong about what God wants of us?
This is a discussion that deserves its own essay. And so:
More anon.
Feb 08 2024
Evil: The Relevance Of Decrees
The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch have a spread of opinions and convictions about God, the supernatural, and religion. That’s to the good: it makes for a variegated background for subjects such as this one. One of the critical issues that arise from that spread is this one, which I’ll touch on briefly for now and return to – hopefully – later in the day for fuller treatment.
In truth, we’ve covered a lot of ground already. Intent seems to be the core requirement for evil, whether or not evil deeds result. However, among our Gentle Readers are some who have cited certain authorities, who have issued prescriptions and proscriptions that aren’t entirely in accord. That raises this highly contentious question:
Can an authority legitimately decree that some action is evil and thus make it so? Inversely, can an authority legitimately decree that some action is not evil and thus make it so? If this is ever possible, what qualifications must that authority possess? If he lacks any of those qualifications, could his decrees still be relevant to evil, and if so how?
There you go, Gentle Readers. Chew it over and we’ll get back on the topic a bit later. One last thing: This tongue-in-cheek tale is highly relevant to the topic. Think about it.
Feb 07 2024
Evil: A Little Something To Lighten The Mood
[“Heavy” topics can be usefully leavened with humor, if the humorous material is relevant. Herewith, a piece I wrote back in 2010, about a distant culture with a…peculiar view of criminal self-indulgence. — FWP]
Those boys over at NASA have not been idle. Oh, no, sir. In fact, very recently telemetry and images returned from a highly classified interstellar probe, launched way before we hoi polloi even knew there was such a thing as NASA. Those data have the agency agog; its leading lights fear that if they were released to the general public, it might mean the end — of everything.
Around Epsilon Eridani is a solar system much like our own. The third planet out is an Earthlike world with an oxygen atmosphere, a flora and fauna much like our own, and a remarkably humaniform race of scientific and technological sophistication comparable to our own. However, they’re far ahead of us in certain sociological respects.
These people have internalized the Golden Rule to a degree we Terrestrials have never approached. They genuinely believe in allowing every man to do as he pleases, as long as he harms no other person. They have no wars. Their law codes are slender, mainly prescribing the penalties for what any Earthling would recognize as a crime against one’s fellow man.
Well, except for one thing. Their corpus juris makes it a high felony, punishable by a lengthy imprisonment, to make, consume, or distribute, whether for compensation or for free, even the smallest quantity of marshmallows.
The Eridanians are so determined to wipe out the scourge of marshmallow crime in their society that the key ingredients for making marshmallows — gelatin, sugar, salt, and vanilla — are heavily restricted, available only to specially licensed medical practitioners and never dispensed except with a prescription countersigned by the local chief of police. The secondary consequences are, of course, severe, especially among bakers, bartenders, and women with soft fingernails, but Eridanian society is resolved upon the elimination of this scourge…or so its leading lights tell us.
Despite the draconian provisions of this law, Epsilon Eridani III suffers an enormous marshmallow underground, through which flows many billions of dollars’ worth of traffic per year. It’s estimated that perhaps 10% of the public frequents the black market, both for “finished product” and for the ingredients for “home brewing.” Every year, families are ripped asunder when one spouse walks in on the other in a marshmallow-induced fit, or when a mother, innocently seeking only to check the cleanliness of her teenager’s underwear, disturbs a mound of never-worn exercise garb and discovers a cache of gelatin powder. The police of every locale are easily corrupted by the immense profits to be made in protecting traffic in marshmallows and their fixings. Cross-border traffic in sugar has been particularly hard to quell. The prisons themselves are hotbeds of marshmallow abuse, inmates and wardens “partying down” together and everyone up to the wardens in on the gravy.
Nor does the marshmallow plague begin and end with the consumption of the vice. Eridanian “literature” is rife with marshmallow content, both allusive and explicit. Take for example this passage from a recent “Victorian romance:”
She beckoned him to the door of her chamber and threw it wide to reveal an enormous mound of marshmallows. Big ones suitable for campfires! Little ones made for hot chocolate! Red, green, gold, even blue! Without hesitation he plunged into the mass, headfirst and mouth wide open. For a long interval she heard nothing but the sounds of gobbling and swallowing, until at last his head poked out of the ruined mountain of sweets.
“I love you,” he whispered. “Come to me.”
The administration is understandably reluctant to allow this news to come to light. Earth’s own smugglers, ever alert for new possibilities of profit, would be too likely to enter the space-exploration game.
However dedicated to their anti-marshmallow crusade the Eridanians may be, their efforts appear nowhere near to success. Just last month, a leading candidate for president was spotted at lunch with his closest advisors, eating sandwiches from which a viscous beige effluent was seen to drip. Later analysis of the leftovers revealed the goop to be 85% peanut butter and 15% Fluff®.
Your Curmudgeon’s sources have assured him that America is in no danger from this albatross around the neck of Eridanian society; our demographics alone are proof against it. Yet only last week, he surprised his Salvadoran housekeeper humming Guantanamera while stirring a pot of boiling gelatin, pausing now and again to add a spoonful of mashed avocado and a slice of jalapeno pepper. Given the severity of the asset-forfeiture laws, rather than discharge her on the instant he’s sworn her to secrecy and double-layered the claymore ring around the Fortress. We await further developments. Beware!
Feb 07 2024
Evil As An Abstract Category
Yesterday, I posted a snippet of my fiction as a stimulator to a discussion I hope to pursue today. The scene therein is one that has never been commonplace, neither among adults or children. (Include teenagers in either category, as you prefer.) Yet what could be more important? Assuming, that is, that evil is “real” in some sense beyond our opinions.
There’s a certain amount of irony in this: the young usually have a better grasp of evil than their elders. At the very least, they concede its reality, whereas the trend among adults is to wave the subject aside, or to flatly deny that “evil” is somehow distinct from other unpleasantnesses. That has sometimes led me to wonder whether justice, in this world at least, would be better served if anyone over the age of twelve – other than the defendant, of course – were forcibly excluded from it, but that’s a conjecture for another day.
Is evil real? That is: can we state with assurance that there are some phenomena that are demonstrably evil, whereas other phenomena are not? A phenomenologist would pause here to tell you that states of consciousness, including our intentions, must be postulated as real for the discussion to proceed. But then, if intentions were other than real, we would we not be men… and we are, aren’t we?
To grapple meaningfully with this question, we must also posit that “reality is real:” i.e., that there are entities and phenomena outside our consciousness, such that our perceptions, decisions, and opinions of them have no material bearing on what they are. Now, there are some lumps in this, including the old holism versus reductionism debate. However, that debate has not ended and probably never will. For our purposes – and whose purposes matter more? – we must take “reality is real” and “reality has parts” as postulates. Men, and their decisions and actions, are some of those parts.
Now comes the question that precedes all attempts to define: what constitutes a valid and practical definition?
There are two ways to “define,” though one is of more use than the other. But before we get to that, we must recognize that definition is about grouping things into categories. No one allowed out of the house without a minder would ask you to “define Milwaukee.” It’s a nonsensical undertaking; Milwaukee is simply there, self-demonstrating, on the shore of Lake Michigan in southeastern Wisconsin. The name it bears is essentially arbitrary, assigned by long-ago cartographers and perpetuated by politicians avid for tax revenues. By contrast, to define city, apart from any particular city, is an attempt to put things into a category, though there might well be differences of opinion on what belongs in it.
Categories, of course, are abstractions: mental artifacts we use in reasoning and making decisions. Perhaps the category of city isn’t one that most of us have a lot of use for. That’s not the case with the category of evil.
In treating evil as a category, we can take two approaches:
- Extensive: We can say “These things and only these things, which are specifically named here, are in the category to be called evil.” (This is sometimes called definition by enumeration or tabulation.)
- Intensive: We can say “To be evil, a thing must possess certain qualities. Anything that does not possess one or more of the specified qualities is not evil.”
An intensive definition of evil is the sort we seek. No one would dare to say that “all evil things already exist and are known.” Imagine saying that before the rise of Pol Pot, for instance.
A commenter to the previous piece proposed this two-part approach:
- Evil is the deliberate, freewill choice to inflict harm on others for one’s own benefit…or worse, for the pleasure of seeing those others suffer.
- Evil is also the deliberate, freewill choice to take action towards one’s own benefit at the expense of others’ well-being.
The key word in both parts of Carol’s definition is choice. A choice is a consciously made decision that has action in mind. In this formulation, whether the action ever occurs, and the results of the action if so, are irrelevant.
Carol’s proposal has merit, but it’s incomplete. She includes benefit sought from the evil deed as a part of the formula. This omits crimes of envy, which often bring no benefit to the envious one. Sometimes they even cause him harm! His whole intention is to see the target of his envy suffer loss. The “I know it when I see it” crowd would not be satisfied. Neither would I, as among the great stories are several in which the villain is punished (in part) by seeing his envious intention thwarted. (Hey, I’m a storyteller. We’re like that.)
Lurking behind this phenomenon is the possibility that evil resides in the intention and nowhere else. Part of me finds this attractive owing to the consideration above. But part of me is unsatisfied for a practical reason: No one can determine another person’s intentions with total confidence. Indeed, that’s one of the perennial problems of justice, as we want to refrain from punishing people who do things that cause harm but “didn’t mean it.” (We may demand restitution – we certainly should – but we don’t consider them villains even if “he should have known better.” Some people plainly don’t.)
At this point, the mathematician in me wants to throw two words at my Gentle Readers: necessary and sufficient.
Aristotle’s approach to definition is much like that of the mathematician formulating a theorem, except for the difference in terminology: in the Aristotelian scheme, a definition must have:
- a genus
- and a differentia.
The genus specifies a category of things to which all things in the category being defined must belong, though other things may be in the genus as well. The differentia specifies a property that all the things in the category being defined must have, but the other things in the genus do not. (A mathematician would be muttering about “sets and subsets.”) So our concluding question for today – we’ll be back to this, I promise – is:
If so, can we state evil’s differentia completely?
More anon.
Feb 06 2024
A Snippet For Discussion Purposes
The following is a segment from my novel-in-progress, working title Ex Nihilo (yeah, yeah, again with the Latin):
“Father,” Sarah Lydell said, “why is there evil?”
It was the question toward which Father Raymond Altomare, pastor of Onteora Parish, had been building for five weeks. The group of seniors from Foxwood High included the most thoughtful of the teenagers he’d been tasked with introducing to the Catholic faith. Though their parents were more involved than average in their educations, they had refrained from engaging their kids’ questions about deeper things.
Ray didn’t mind. It was his job, after all.
“I’m going to do something terrible to you, Sarah.” Ray grinned. “I’m going to answer your question with a question of my own. Are you ready?”
The girl nodded anxiously. Ray panned the other teens seated around the rectory’s kitchen table, priming them for the impact of what was to come.
“What is evil?”
No one spoke.
“Can anyone say what it is? Categorically, I mean.” Ray panned the group again. “We can usually recognize an evil deed when it’s in front of us. I’m sure any of you could give me a dozen examples. But what’s the common element? What ties them all together?”
Confusion was evident on the teens’ faces. Michael Markham turned to Bea Beckham, who shrugged and mimed ignorance. Donna Norris, the senior class’s outstanding beauty, appeared more upset than confused. Her eyes were pinched in dismay. Bob Oliver, the class president and front-runner for valedictorian, sat shaking his head. Sarah Lydell merely peered at Ray in dismay.
“We have to be able to say why a thing is evil if we’re going to condemn it as such, right? We can’t just say ‘I know it when I see it,’ because somebody else might come along and say, ‘Well, I don’t see it, so explain it to me.’ What would we do then?”
“That’s part of the problem, isn’t it, Father?” Bob Oliver said. “There’s no agreement on it.”
“Mmm…not quite, Bob,” Ray said. “Let’s say there are a bunch of different ideas about it. But it’s obviously a big part of the Church’s mission to define evil and teach people what they need to know to steer away from it. So we have to wrestle with what it is and what it isn’t. And young people like you are at an ideal time of life to think about it.”
Ray sat back and sipped at his coffee. “We’re not going to answer the question today. It’s too big, and as I said, there are some different ideas about it that deserve some thought.” He glanced at the wall clock. “What I’d like you to do for our next meeting is to put together two lists. On one list, put examples of widely agreed evils from history. We’ll talk about the commonalities among those things, and why they happened when they did. On the other list, put examples of things that were done to oppose the evils on the first list. We’ll talk about why those things were not evil…and in a couple of cases, why they were just as bad as the evils they were supposed to fight. Think you can come up with half a dozen things for each list?”
Donna and Bob nodded. The others sat silent.
“Okay then. Join me in a quick prayer?” Ray folded his hands and bowed his head. The teens did the same.
“Heavenly Father,” Ray intoned, “be always with us as we strive to pursue truth and expose falsehood. These young folks are the future of our kind. Help them to grow in insight, wisdom, and love according to your will. Through Christ our Lord, Amen.”
“Amen,” the teens chorused. Ray rose, and the teens did the same. “Till Wednesday next. Does anyone need a ride home?”
Bob Oliver raised a hand. “I’ve got it, Father.” He gathered the others by eye. “See you next week.”
Ray showed the group to the door and bade them farewell. Presently he was alone in his study, with a fresh mug of coffee and a legal pad.
This is the tough part. This is where we really engage with the Faith. If I can get this across, I’ll consider myself a catechist.
His mind filled with memories of Fountain.
She and I never got to this point. She was so sweet natured and pure of heart that the idea of introducing her to deliberate evil was inherently repugnant. Even though she’d known evil at close range…closer than anyone has known it since the era of slavery.
Fountain didn’t need to be taught how to recognize evil. She’d had firsthand experience of it. But it’s my job to bring these kids to grips with it, and to teach them how to deny it a place in their hearts. Hopefully, anyway.
Ray’s one brushing contact with absolute evil, evil that had embodied itself in a human form, lurked at the back of his thoughts. As always, he forced it away.
Buck up, Altomare. This is part of why you wanted to become a priest, remember? Getting past the rote repetition and grappling with the fundamentals. Getting in deep.
Ray shook himself and set down notes from which to guide the discussion to come.
This has been on my mind for decades. The Church has a hard time with evil as an intensively-definable category of events. So do a lot of laymen. Early in Thomas Harris’s blockbuster novel The Silence of the Lambs, his uber-villain, Dr. Hannibal Lecter, asks young FBI agent Clarice Starling if she can say that he is evil. She responds in a poignantly innocent fashion:
“I think you’ve been destructive. For me it’s the same thing.”
Lecter, a huge intellect who apparently lacks all moral constraint, replies perfectly:
“Evil’s just destructive? Then storms are evil, if it’s that simple. And we have fire, and then there’s hail. Underwriters lump it all under ‘Acts of God.’”
Ponder it. I’ll be back later.
Feb 06 2024
Who Needs A Ministry Of Truth?
We have the mainstream media!
Reid declares that “people have this mismemory of the Trump era” but claims that no wall (even part of one) was ever contracted. pic.twitter.com/RfxqEoAmw0
— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) February 5, 2024
Herein lies the danger of “media pigeonholing” oneself. He who confines his news-consumption to particular streams that accord with left-wing preferences and prejudices might never hear anything to call Joy Reid’s claims into question. He might embrace those claims despite the objective evidence.
The shattering of the media monoculture by broadband Internet access and broadening in cablecasting and satellite-casting is one of the few genuine advances of recent years. Take advantage of it. Don’t limit yourself to channels or publications that comport with what you already believe. And above all, Don’t trust any of them. Insist on multiple confirmations of every assertion of fact, from a spread of primary sources. Unless you’ve seen it personally, with your own Mark One Eyeballs, you must never rely on a single primary source about any event. There is no other way to avoid being deceived.
Feb 05 2024
The Infuriators
Viktor Orban.
Giorgia Meloni.
Geert Wilders.
Javier Milei.
And now, Nayib Bukele:
El Salvadorian President Nayib Bukele has won a landslide victory in the country’s presidential election, earning him a historic second term and underscoring his status as one of the world’s most popular political leaders.
Posting on the X platform, Bukele announced that he had won the election with over 85 percent of the vote.
“According to our numbers, we have won the presidential election with more than 85% of the votes and a minimum of 58 of 60 deputies in the Assembly,” he wrote. “This is a record in the entire history of the democratic world… God bless El Salvador.”
I knew nothing about Bukele until this very morning. But his electoral success, given the deplorable conditions in El Salvador before he was first elected, comes as no surprise:
Over the course of his first term, he implemented a hardline security strategy that saw the arrest of around one percent of its population, many of whom were members of the MS-13 and 18th Street gangs. This has led murder and crime rates to plummet.
The country that gave us MS-13 is now safer than these United States? Hard to believe, isn’t it? But apparently Bukele’s sweep through the gangs has yielded enormous results in securing the country. He appears to have discovered a hitherto unknown principle of public safety: If the criminals are locked up, the crime rate will go down.
It seems Bukele’s successes weren’t confined to re-establishing law and order:
Bukele didn’t only solve crime, he also built a thriving economy. He switched El Salvador’s currency to the dollar and bitcoin, encouraging international investment and tech business. Google announced a partnership last year, bringing jobs to the thriving Latin American country.
Infrastructure was another critical component of the Bukele agenda. New roads, highways, and a hydroelectric dam created clean energy for the people as the country worked itself out of poverty. Now, many tourists find El Salvador’s “Surf City” a rival to travel in the nicer areas of Costa Rica or Mexico.
Public safety plus public prosperity? Who is this guy, some unsung genius only now coming to light? A fusion of the souls of George Washington and Milton Friedman?
Now, when you arrest over 76,000 people, there are bound to be some innocents in the harvest. What will become of them is an unanswered question. And surely, some Salvadorans have profited more than others; economic boom times are like that. But the voters of El Salvador appear pleased with the results. An 85% fraction of the vote speaks for itself.
But that’s not what has me writing about Bukele and El Salvador this morning:
In the United States, however, the mainstream media took to calling Bukele a “dictator.” Much as we’ve seen with how they treat President Trump, news outlets began calling Bukele running for re-election a “threat to democracy.”
This message was amplified this week by Rep. Ilhan Omar, who put in a resolution for the U.S. to intervene in El Salvador’s elections.
I led Members of Congress in sending a letter to @SecBlinken urging action on threats to democracy in El Salvador.
The State Dept must review its relationship with El Salvador and defend democratic values. The Salvadoran people deserve free and fair elections without fear of…
— Rep. Ilhan Omar (@Ilhan) January 31, 2024
As a rule of thumb, if Ilhan Omar is against it, I’m very likely to be for it. As for the American media, they tried the “dictator” schtick with Viktor Orban, with Giorgia Meloni, and again with Javier Milei. It got them nowhere. Even a real dictator who posts Bukele’s level of results in public safety and prosperity is likely to be immensely popular.
As usual, it’s the pattern that matters. The Left, which controls the mainstream media, is opposed to freedom, true public security, and general prosperity. Politicians who deliver those things are a threat to its core agenda: control. The Left can do nothing with a free, safe, prosperous people who are happy with the leadership that secured those things for them.
The popular figures I’ve cited here are major threats to the Leftist / globalist program…just as was President Donald Trump. As a result they’ve become targets for defamation. The media and the most prominent figures on the Left will do whatever they can think of to besmirch their reputations. Outright lies about them, both political and personal, are “on the table.”
Bukele, Orban, et alii have scored varying degrees of success. But any success at all at peeling back the chaos, impoverishment, and control the Left has layered onto such countries will drive them rhetorically bananas – and no jokes about “banana republics,” please! The Left admits to no permanent setbacks; their tactics from here on deserve close attention.
Keep an eye on El Salvador. Stay tuned.
Feb 05 2024
The Proposed Border “Fix”
The reason – the ONLY reason this is being put forth now – is because even the dip$hit idiots in Washington can see that there is a good chance that Trump will be the next President. This is meant to lock him out of options for dealing with the border.
I think Trump is going to have to take the Andrew Jackson approach to governance – “The Supreme Court has ruled – let THEM enforce their decision.” Frankly, there probably is no other way to handle it, as the Supes have FAR overstepped their boundaries for FAR too long.
If such a state develops, I’m good with that. It’s a lot better than the alternative, which would be to give up.
Feb 05 2024
Oh to dream
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This isn’t a long post. It’s late, I’ve been doing schoolwork, and I found something that made me nod and think “Yes, that is what the world needs.”
But it’s still a true statement that every politician, either federal, state or local, who locked down their population because of something with a 99.97% survival rate, is a tyrant who either needs to apologize, or be sentenced to do a jig in mid-air. Call me extreme if you wish. I still drive past businesses who were open four years ago, but suffered death due to the lockdowns. I still know families who haven’t recovered. Children who couldn’t go to their parent’s funerals. Families not allowed to gather for important moments. Children left behind in schooling. The amount of pain and suffering caused by these mindless petty tyrants is unfathomable. And they haven’t ONCE apologized for it. Not. Fucking. Once. Because they’re not sorry.
If they feel no sense of sorrow for their sins, I’m not obliged to forgive them.
Feb 04 2024
Sunday Miscellany – 2/4/2024
It’s been a killer couple of weeks.
My husband took a tumble down the front stairs on January 23 – put his foot on an icy spot, and his left leg folded under him. He tore his quad, necessitating a trip to the ER (which sent him home after x-rays), and – after a follow-up visit to the orthopedic guy – was sent to the ER again, this time to be admitted to the hospital.
They did an MRI, decided to do surgery, and, by Friday, he was groggy, but repaired. He stayed until Tuesday, when he was discharged to a skilled nursing facility for rehab.
The first couple of days were tough, both mentally and physically. Unfortunately, such places also have a lot of old people, who are NOT going to be leaving. It was hard for him, as he had never thought of himself as old. But, after some PT, and some work – on his part, and that of the nursing staff – he is beginning to be able to stand with support of a walker, move from bed to wheelchair, and then to bathroom, and maneuver himself to a seated position with his legs dangling.
Small progress, but important. He is improving at an accelerating pace.
Now, if he would just stop complaining about the food…
It’s meant that I am the only one at home. I have to tend to the dog’s needs, maintain the house, drive back and forth for visits with him, pay the bills, and prepare for the roof replacement this Tuesday. Good timing!
The up side of the work, is, first, we will have no more leaks when it rains. And, second, by replacing the metal roof with a shingle one, I will be able to get my radio equipment back in operation. I’m really looking forward to that.
The accident could have been worse. He is expected to make a full recovery. It does seem, though, that every time we start to have our life settle down, another crisis hits.
Feb 04 2024
A Unique Variety Of Solitude
It’s not that long ago that I wrote:
“The worst” is the noise. The perpetual din. The endless screaming, wailing, moaning, hectoring, begging, and cursing. The ceaseless demands from politicians. The carping from the unsatisfied. The orations of the world-savers. The unending gimme gimme gimme of those who want something they can’t get for themselves and will never realize that no amount of free stuff will make them happy. And of course, the “media” of all varieties, every one of which insists that we must all stay right-up-to-the-minute on What’s Happening Now. Yes, including the bloody Internet.
The great need of our time is silence. We’re starved for it. The din is making us crazy. We’re unable to cope with its relentlessness. And the greatest of all ironies is that in nearly every case, we collaborate in our own deprivation.
I felt it again, at maximum intensity, as I rose and prepared to confront the day.
A couple of “of course” statements for you:
If your world is not silent, you are under pressure to speak – to join the din.
If you comply, you forfeit the possibility of interior silence.
Prayer requires interior silence.
You already knew all that, didn’t you? Some don’t. Some would be surprised by it. Some, in their surprise, would become indignant. Ironically, the most common indignant reaction is “Don’t you think I know that?” Feel free to chuckle.
God will not join our conversations with others. He won’t even speak to us if we’re muttering to ourselves. He insists on our absolute, uncompromised attention. The Creator of all things considers His will important enough that it not be asked to compete with any other signal. The requirement for silence follows naturally. But silence is becoming an ever more elusive quality.
If you’ve been having trouble praying, or have suspected that your prayers are mere rote exercises with no true significance, a deficit of silence might be the explanation.
It was once the custom for a Catholic family to establish an oratory — a small room for prayer and spiritual meditation – somewhere in its home. By custom, one using the oratory was not to be disturbed for anything non-urgent. (“Urgent” in this application does not mean “you’re about to miss your favorite show.”) Oratories are less common today for various reasons, including the diminished size of family homes. Yet they were a significant practice, in that they recognized that one of the keys to achieving silence is solitude.
When we’re with others, we tend to fill the air with sound. It might be conversation, or music, or the sort of sound generated by other activities. Whatever the case, it eliminates all possibility of silence. While it’s not always possible to achieve silence after the others have departed, solitude is a necessary precondition.
If you want to talk to God, and to have some possibility that He will participate in the conversation, you should be alone. Perhaps that isn’t always the case. Perhaps you can attain that quality of silence if those around you will cooperate. The Adoration of the Blessed Sacrament, which is supposed to be a silent observation, might be a valuable exception. Yet I’ve seen the world’s din intrude on that practice on several occasions, usually through a cell phone.
If you want to pray, for best results – a phrase I cringe to have written – get yourself away from others.
Why this subject today? I’m not sure. It seemed important. I’ve often protested the storm of noise around me. It’s been much easier to attain silence these past nine years: i.e., since I retired from wage labor. I pity those who, immersed in the din, have little opportunity to experience true solitude and true silence.
But there is this as well: the din can be addictive. One soaked in it for a sufficient time can come to feel that he “needs” it, though the reason isn’t always comprehensible. Perhaps it reinforces his awareness that he’s not dead yet. Perhaps he fears to be alone with his thoughts. Or perhaps – shudder — he fears to be alone with God.
These are even more pitiable than those for whom silence is impossible owing to their necessities and surroundings.
There’s no Last Graf but this: If you’re feeling beleaguered and beset, silence might be what you need. Try it; it’s a lot cheaper than Xanax. (Also, it doesn’t require a prescription.) Find yourself a place where you can shut out the din. Don’t bring anything with you that could intrude on the silence. When you have succeeded in nullifying the clamor of the world, try this: Become internally silent. Don’t contemplate any of your needs or plans. Don’t allow anyone else’s voice in your head. Sit, or kneel, and allow all of it to drain away, just for a little while.
Perhaps God will speak to you. If He does, you’ll know; trust me on that. And as the Psalmist exhorts us, “If today you hear His voice, harden not your heart.” For He is Love, and “he who dwelleth in love dwelleth in God, and God in him.”
May God bless and keep you all.
Feb 04 2024
Property And Security
First, I found this at Moonbattery:
…and then I was reminded of this bit of insight, courtesy of WRSA:
What if the Federal Government grossly violated the Constitution? Could states withdraw from the Union? Lincoln said no. The Union was “indissoluble” unless all the states agreed to dissolve it. As a practical matter, the Civil War settled that. The United States, plural, were really a single enormous state, as witness the new habit of speaking of “it” rather than “them.”
So the people are bound to obey the government even when the rulers betray their oath to uphold the Constitution. The door to escape is barred. Lincoln in effect claimed that it is not our rights but the state that is “unalienable.” And he made it stick by force of arms. No transgression of the Constitution can impair the Union’s inherited legitimacy. Once established on specific and limited terms, the U.S. Government is forever, even if it refuses to abide by those terms.
As [philosopher Hans Hermann] Hoppe argues, this is the flaw in thinking the state can be controlled by a constitution. Once granted, state power naturally becomes absolute. Obedience is a one-way street. Notionally, “We the People” create a government and specify the powers it is allowed to exercise over us; our rulers swear before God that they will respect the limits we impose on them; but when they trample down those limits, our duty to obey them remains.
The original American Revolution was a war in defense of the colonists’ property rights. Keep that firmly in mind. Gouverneur Morris, one of the Framers of the Constitution, said quite baldly that “Men don’t unite for life or liberty. They unite for the protection of property.” And the State, whatever form it takes or guise it wears, must violate property rights in order to exist at all.
So: If Archbishop Sheen is correct about the indispensability of property rights to freedom (I say he is), and Joseph Sobran is correct that once conceded authority, the State cannot be restrained no matter by what method (I agree with him, too), then the question of the hour becomes:
Or in the absence of government:
i.e., in a state of anarchy?
Just one of those thoughts.
Feb 03 2024
Simple Contexts, Simple Logic
It doesn’t take long for the observant student of economics to realize that the whole field is about incentives, disincentives, and human decision-making within their grip. There’s the Law of Supply and Demand, the Law of Diminishing Marginal Value, and Coase’s Theorem. All else is about particular cases and exceptions that, largely, prove not to be exceptions at all.
Those laws are so comprehensive that to make a name in economics as an original scholar takes some damned hard thought. Indeed, their universality led the late, great Ludwig von Mises to propose an uber-law, the axiom of human action:
Praxeology rests on the fundamental axiom that individual human beings act, that is, on the primordial fact that individuals engage in conscious actions toward chosen goals. This concept of action contrasts to purely reflexive, or knee-jerk, behavior, which is not directed toward goals. The praxeological method spins out by verbal deduction the logical implications of that primordial fact. In short, praxeological economics is the structure of logical implications of the fact that individuals act. This structure is built on the fundamental axiom of action, and has a few subsidiary axioms, such as that individuals vary and that human beings regard leisure as a valuable good. Any skeptic about deducing from such a simple base an entire system of economics, I refer to Mises’s Human Action. Furthermore, since praxeology begins with a true axiom, A, all the propositions that can be deduced from this axiom must also be true. For if A implies B, and A is true, then B must also be true.
That axiom has been making “professional” economists weep and swear for several decades. For the sphere of the “professional” economist is not economics per se, but what’s usually called political economy:
Political economy is the study of production and trade and their relations with law, custom and government; and with the distribution of national income and wealth.
The 800-pound gorilla in the room, which endlessly meddles with the incentives and disincentives that pertain to human decisions, is the State. What the State forces upon its subjects will naturally alter the context in which they pursue their desires. Inversely, what the State permits its favored ones to get away with will also alter that context – sometimes fatally.
For example, we have a corporation, Walgreens, which has been so badly beset by legally protected shoplifting that it’s been closing outlets where such theft is rampant. Theft has been rampant in Roxbury, Massachusetts, a majority-black district of Boston. As of today, there are no Walgreens open in Roxbury, Massachusetts, and “Squad” member Ayanna Pressley is furious about it:
Democratic Rep. Ayanna Pressley has condemned Walgreens for ‘racial and economic discrimination’ after closing a pharmacy in Boston.
Pressley, a member of the ultra-progressive ‘Squad’, said the chain was ‘abandoning’ low-income communities with the most recent closing in Roxbury on Wednesday.
Walgreens announced the closure of several stores nationwide due to what the company has described as ‘rampant theft’ in some areas.
Pressley said this decision targets areas with significant minority populations, calling for the company to reconsider their decision instead.
In a speech addressing the house, she said: ‘This closure is a part of a larger trend of abandoning low-income communities like the previous closures in Mattapan and Hyde Park, both in the Massachusetts 7th.
Yet the economics of the Roxbury context is particularly straightforward: rampant shoplifting is not penalized in Roxbury. A store, the local presence of a commercial concern, cannot tolerate unlimited losses to shoplifters, no matter what their race or ethnicity. Corporate management will not permit it. For the sake of completeness, neither would a family-owned business.
But Roxbury is majority-black. So Ayanna Pressley shouts “racism,” and gets a respectful hearing from the ignorant, the diehard “progressives,” and the black race-hustlers who are always on the lookout for a new cudgel to wield.
The great tragedy here is not ignorance, for that can be remedied. Indeed, take any “progressive,” and subject him to a simple test case:
“Imagine along with me for a moment. Let’s say you’re the owner of a general store in a particular district. Let’s say further that in that district, the cops refuse to arrest shoplifters and the courts refuse to try and convict them. As a result, the rate of shoplifting has gotten so high that your store loses money every day. The losses are about to drive you out of business. What would you do?”
In a couple of short, simple sentences, you’ve eliminated the ignorance factor. You’ve reduced the situation to a personal one with clear incentives and disincentives. But what would that “progressive” reply to your hypothetical question?
If he’s a relatively polite progressive – yes, there are some – he’d probably say “I don’t bother with hypothetical scenarios. We’ve got to deal with the real world case before us. After all, there are people hurting.” If he’s other than polite, he’d do what Ayanna Pressley did: he’d call you a racist, insensitive to the “special needs” of “minority communities.”
Such deliberate dismissal of the facts is common on the Left. Leftists don’t accept the laws of economics – or any other observable patterns that militate against their preferences. Their minds are impervious to the power of incentives and disincentives. For example, a young acquaintance once admonished me that if my house were to start losing value because of an influx of black families to my neighborhood, with the crime and disorder that usually follows them, it would be my “moral duty” to remain in it. If you haven’t faced such abuse, you’re either very young or have led a remarkably sheltered life.
But the laws of economics are as inviolable, long term, as the laws of physics. They will not change as long as human beings behave according to Von Mises’s axiom of action. And no amount of tutelage in such things will change “progressives’” minds…short of finding themselves on the receiving end, that is.
Until the polities of Boston and Massachusetts once more prosecute all theft, including shoplifting, with the full enforcement power of the law, conditions will remain as they are: i.e., no Walgreens in Roxbury. The incentives and disincentives determine that inexorably. It simply won’t matter that the residents would greatly prefer it to be otherwise. Neither will the color of their skins.
Have a nice day.
Feb 03 2024
Groundhog Day Backlash?
Seventy-two years now, and I still fail to understand how things become a big deal in our public discourse.
“What’s the old bat talking about now?” I hear you mumble. For the first time in many a moon, I find that I must disagree with a Liberty’s Torch Co-Conspirator. Apparently, our beloved Ragin’ Dave has a problem with that most inoffensive of our popular observances, Groundhog Day. And so I find that I must rise to its defense.
Groundhog Day isn’t “made up.” It’s actually a combination of an old British farmers’ tradition with the Catholic holiday of Candlemas, on which we commemorate Mary’s presentation of the newborn Christ Child to the priests in the temple at Jerusalem:
And when the days of her purification according to the law of Moses were accomplished, they brought him to Jerusalem, to present him to the Lord;
(As it is written in the law of the Lord, Every male that openeth the womb shall be called holy to the Lord;)
And to offer a sacrifice according to that which is said in the law of the Lord, A pair of turtledoves, or two young pigeons.
And, behold, there was a man in Jerusalem, whose name was Simeon; and the same man was just and devout, waiting for the consolation of Israel: and the Holy Ghost was upon him. And it was revealed unto him by the Holy Ghost, that he should not see death, before he had seen the Lord’s Christ. And he came by the Spirit into the temple: and when the parents brought in the child Jesus, to do for him after the custom of the law, Then took he him up in his arms, and blessed God, and said, Lord, now lettest thou thy servant depart in peace, according to thy word: For mine eyes have seen thy salvation, Which thou hast prepared before the face of all people; A light to lighten the Gentiles, and the glory of thy people Israel.
And Joseph and his mother marvelled at those things which were spoken of him.
And Simeon blessed them, and said unto Mary his mother, Behold, this child is set for the fall and rising again of many in Israel; and for a sign which shall be spoken against;
(Yea, a sword shall pierce through thy own soul also,) that the thoughts of many hearts may be revealed.[Luke 2:22-35]
Also, British farmers used ground-dwelling rodents as meteorologists long before we started doing so here. There’s even a bit of verse about it:
Badger peeps out on Candlemas Day,
and if he finds snow, he walks away.
But if the sun is shining down,
Badger returns to his hole in the ground.
So let’s be fair, now. “Holiday” is the wrong designation for this observance. Scrooge didn’t give Bob Cratchit a day off for Groundhog Day. No one gives presents or sends cards for Groundhog Day. No one does any marketing for Groundhog Day. People don’t rush out to buy groundhogs for their toddlers to play with (and a good thing, too). Public service messages don’t even exhort you to “be nice to your local groundhog.” I mean, yes, there’s a movie, but its relationship to the annual occasion is slight. So I wouldn’t call Groundhog Day a particularly intrusive “holiday.”
Remember, a few years back, when the Giant Greeting Card companies tried to promote Grandmothers’ and Grandfathers’ Days? It was vital to stand foursquare against that, but Groundhog Day? I think we can tolerate this one. Though I must admit that I’m not looking forward to the lowering of flags and the national day of mourning we’ll be told to observe when Punxsutawney Phil goes to his reward.
Feb 02 2024
Phooey on your modern made up holidays
I like ground hog! I’d even try groundhog if I could, but they’re a bit further East than I am.
Feb 02 2024
It’s amazing what happens when you enforce the law
Texas shows how it’s done
.It shouldn’t be a shock that when you enforce the laws and shut down the border, illegal criminals stop coming through. And we all know this, even the National Socialist Democrat Worker’s Party, who is now being stymied in their goal of flooding the country through mass illegal entry. Of course, we now have anywhere from thirty to fifty million illegal aliens in this country, many of whom are military aged males from countries other than Mexico. Can’t wait to see what happens when THEY decide to act.
So now the criminals are being diverted through New Mexico, Arizona and California. But that means they have to go through multiple cartel territories. They can’t just use one cartel. So the cartel up against the Texas border loses money, we will probably see cartel in-fighting, and the states with Democrat governors get exactly what they voted for. Well, not Arizona. If anyone thinks that Katie Hobbs was legitimately elected, I have some oceanfront property right next door to Phoenix that I can sell you. It’s cheap. Cash up front, no returns.
The Democrat party talking heads have been avoiding this news story like the plague, as it shows that the Biden administration has been deliberately flooding this country with criminals, rapists, drug mules, child sex traffickers and other assorted scumbags. Oh, I don’t give a shit about the “Oh, most of those people just want a better life!” Yeah, I bet they do, and they want me to pay for it. How many immigrant families are on government aid? My question is, why are ANY of them on government aid? When my great grandparents got here, if they were going on government aid they were DENIED ENTRY. The government back then knew that people cannot come to this country and start sucking off the resources that the native population has paid into, as that would remove those resources from the people WHO ACTUALLY PAID FOR THEM.
You come here and want Uncle Sugar to take care of you? Fuck you, get out. Oh, you squirted out a crotch goblin and now you want your bennies? Fuck you, get out. You come here and break the law? Fuck you, get out, unless your crime caused harm or death to and American citizen in which case you should be publicly hung, and then your corpse buried in an un-marked grave. Broadcast the executions to Univision. Let them try to show how horrible a nation we are. Sure, fine, call me horrible if you want to. “OH MY GOD DAVE, HOW COULD YOU BE SO MEAN?”
Ask the mother of the five year old girl murdered by a drunk driving illegal alien if I’m being mean.
If we actually punished these criminals, more American citizens would be alive.
And more again.
And again.
Tell me, how many American lives have to be lost before we as a people tell the virtue-signaling pro-criminal crowd to fuck off? How much further must our lives sink before we start expelling not only the illegal aliens, but those who enable them?
Call me cruel and heartless if you wish, but if I had my way, nobody would have to look into the eyes of a grieving mother and tell them that the person who murdered their babies wasn’t even supposed to be in this country.
That doesn’t even get into the human trafficking being done by the cartels, to include CHILD SEX SLAVERY. Yes, if you’re for open borders, you’re for child sex slavery, and I’ll scream it to the heavens every chance I get. Every single open borders advocate is advocating for underage girls, teenage girls, to be raped, repeatedly, multiple times a day, either beaten into submission or drugged into submission, over and over and over again. And in my book, that makes you evil.
Bravo, Texas, for showing how it’s done. Shame on everyone else who allowed this crap to continue. There is a clear line between good and evil here. It’s not a murky grey area. This isn’t a hard choice, unless you’re trying to aid and abet the cartels, enable child sex slavery, overwhelm our social systems, and destroy the country as we know it. And to those who are actually trying to do that, I hope your death is violent, painful and drawn out.
Feb 02 2024
Admirable Sentiment Du Jour
The great leftist pronoun obsession is rooted in the idea that everyone has the right to vomit their feelings and preferences all about the place, but that others shouldn’t be allowed to offend them if they find them irritating. I don’t want to be a complete jerk, but I’m growing fonder of offending people as this attitude picks up steam. – Stephen Kruiser
Wild applause from your racist, sexist, ableist, lookist, homophobic, Islamophobic, grammar Nazi of a Curmudgeon Emeritus: Bravo! Get yours today!
Feb 02 2024
What Has Been Said And Heard Cannot Be Unheard
Apparently, media company iHeart Media, previously known as Clear Channel, has been erecting some “controversial billboards.” There have been a couple of stories about this already, particularly concerning billboards that proclaim that “voter fraud is a felony” – which it is. I’m a bit baffled that merely proclaiming what’s written into the black-letter law should be controversial, but our Gentle Readers know I’m an out-of-touch old dinosaur. However, the billboard I recently glimpsed is not one of those:
Controversial? That’s a prescription that’s been well verified, supported by a great deal of research. He who finishes high school, gets and keeps a job, gets married – before producing any kids, thank you very much – and stays married will, in the absence of addiction problems, escape poverty. That is: he and his spouse will become self-supporting, no longer dependent on government largesse. Charles Murray wrote about it four decades ago in Losing Ground, which is hardly a treatise reserved to the attention of professional scholars.
So the prescription itself can’t reasonably be called controversial. But that black woman’s face next to it…could that be the focus of the controversy?
That’s where I’m placing my bet.
Blacks in these United States receive government handouts disproportionately to their numbers. The disproportion is closely tied to the rate of black illegitimacy, which hovers around 70% and has done so for several decades. Black children from female-headed single-parent homes are also closely tied to other social pathologies, such as drug use, crime rates, and incarceration rates. Male black offspring of such homes have a probability of spending time in prison that approaches 100%.
Some say it’s “culture.” Others focus on the incentives. Our Gentle Readers know my opinion. But that billboard…
No one actually likes to be criticized. No one actually wants to be told that his choices are the reason for his condition in life. And no one actually wants to have a face representative of his “people” staring at him from a plainly critical billboard. So I suppose the controversy stands explained.
But the message it purveys is correct: factually accurate. And American blacks are the demographic that could most benefit from it.
Note that I said could rather than would. But possibility does not dictate eventuality. There’s that old saw about “none so blind as those that will not see,” and all the rest of it. Decade after decade of indoctrination into the cult of victimism and consequent entitlement have done their work well.
Worse, as I must have written a hundred times by now, success breeds emulators. Those emulators need not be of the same skin color as those they seek to emulate.
Perhaps that’s a side issue. My principal reason for setting my fingers to the keys is that billboard. Controversial? I suppose it depends on your tastes in breakfast cereal. But it remains accurate – and the people who most need to accept its wisdom, American blacks, are staunchly resistant to its message.
The bronze-sheathed doors of the Directorate gave with a crash that no one heard. People pressed and trampled toward them to get to shelter, out from under the metal rain. They pushed by hundreds into the high halls of marble, some cowering down to hide in the first refuge they saw, others pushing on to find a way through the building and out the back, others staying to wreck what they could until the soldiers came. When they came, marching in their neat black coats up the steps among dead and dying men and women, they found on the high, grey, polished wall of the great foyer a word written at the height of a man’s eyes, in broad smears of blood: DOWN
They shot the dead man who lay nearest the word, and later on when the Directorate was restored to order the word was washed off the wall with water, soap, and rags, but it remained; it had been spoken; it had meaning.[Ursula LeGuin, The Dispossessed]
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