Dec 03 2023
Apologies, Gentle Readers. I’m a bit under the weather today, and lack the energy for my usual ranting and raving. However, the comments to this piece have cheered me greatly. If you haven’t read them, I recommend that you do so. After that, perhaps you might revisit this Baseline Essay, which is very much in keeping with the spirit of that piece and those comments.
Enjoy your First Sunday of Advent in this Year of Our Lord 2023. Back tomorrow, I hope.
Dec 02 2023
Dec 02 2023
Scientific American, which dates to 1845 and touts itself as “the oldest continuously published magazine in the United States,” recently ran an article arguing that scientists should prioritize “reality” over scientific “rigor.” What would make a publication with a name like this one set empirical evidence at odds with reality? Masks, of course.
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard professor of the history of science, argued that by “prioritizing scientific rigor” in its mask studies, the Cochrane Library may have “misled the public,” such that “the average person could be confused” about the efficacy of masks. Oreskes criticized Cochrane for its “standard . . . methodological procedures,” as Cochrane bases its “findings on randomized controlled trials, often called the ‘gold standard’ of scientific evidence.” Since RCTs haven’t shown that masks work, she writes, “[i]t’s time those standard procedures were changed.”
This…person has just made the Left’s epistemological premise explicit. For the benefit of the less philosophically inclined, here it is, in large font:
Harvard must have some strange criteria for awarding high faculty posts.
Concerning Scientific American, I stopped reading it when the Left colonized and conquered it in the late Seventies. It’s no longer a reliable journal for any purpose I can think of. But then, how many publications of any description remain reliable reporters of verifiable facts?
Dec 02 2023
Perhaps this will trigger a general re-evaluation of the bilge poured forth by the racialist hucksters:
It’s hard to believe it has been nearly five years since the Jussie Smollett hate hoax happened. It’s even harder to believe that despite overwhelming evidence of his guilt, Smollett has only spent 6 days in jail since then. But today an appeals court upheld his conviction so he may finally be finishing out the rest of his sentence.
An appeals court on Friday upheld the disorderly conduct convictions of actor Jussie Smollett, who was accused of staging a racist, homophobic attack against himself in 2019 and then lying about it to Chicago police.
Smollett, who appeared in the TV show “Empire,” challenged the role of a special prosecutor, jury selection, evidence and many other aspects of the case. But all were turned aside in a 2-1 opinion from the Illinois Appellate Court…
A jury convicted Smollett in 2021 on five felony counts of disorderly conduct, a charge that can be filed in Illinois when a person lies to police.The sentencing back in March of 2022 was quite a scene. Smollett’s lawyers once again tried to claim he deserved a new trial but the judge denied their motion. Finally Judge Linn really uncorked what a lot of people had been feeling, straight to Smollett’s face. “[The] hypocrisy is just astounding,” Linn said. He went on to call Smollett, “profoundly arrogant and selfish and narcissistic.”
In Illinois, no less. I’d have given it poor odds, but there it is. I wonder what sort of pressures Judge Linn had to withstand to uphold that verdict.
Is the “blacks are oppressed” grift coming to an end? Are American Negroes, the most racist demographic in the Western Hemisphere, who’ve been soaked in victimism and hatred of whites since the Sixties, ready to accept that it’s at an end? And what about the Left, which has made racism and victimism the core of its political posture in these United States? Unclear. But we can hope.
Dec 02 2023
I just saw this graphic over at Mike Miles’s place:
But Congress, which is 95% recidivists and 50% millionaires, would balk at both propositions. For one thing, the swollen Defense Department appropriations are a fertile source of pork for their constituents. For another, it’s a safe bet that a lot of them are in on the grift. How else does one get to be a millionaire while laboring on salary?
Don’t expect the people who benefit most richly from an abuse to do anything to remedy it.
Dec 01 2023
There are many in the right who feel we’re not making progress. Given that the political milieu hasn’t budged since the inauguration of the Usurper-in-Chief, I can understand the feeling. But in point of fact, we’re advancing “upstream,” in the battle over the culture:
“Entertain first, not messages,” Iger said at something called the New York Times’ DealBook Summit. He added that “positive messages for the world” are great but shouldn’t be forced on the public or used as the story’s primary job.
Iger claimed (falsely) that Disney’s propagandizing got worse after he left the CEO position and handed the reigns to Bob Chapek in early 2020. The board booted Chapek in 2022 and put Iger back in charge. Iger is contracted through 2026.
Iger also said Disney produces too many sequels. Going forward, the sequel must work as a standalone movie before it will be greenlit.
I’ll believe this change will happen when I see it, but even if Iger’s lying (and I think he is), it is still a total surrender. It might only be a rhetorical surrender, but it proves Iger understands the necessity of sending the message to tens of millions of normal people that he wants another chance. We screwed up. We know we screwed up. We’re sorry. Come back, Baby. Please, please come back.
We know what happens when Baby comes back. She gets slapped again.
There are things in there that clash with the opening admission: in particular, Iger’s pitiful attempt at self-exculpation, and commentator John Nolte’s cynicism about what’s really to come from Disney. But in point of fact, it’s Iger’s admission that he’d sold out Disney’s storytelling heritage for (as another wag put it long ago) “a pot of message” that matters most.
Entertainment must entertain. You’d think it’s obvious. Well, there we go again, imagining that what’s obvious to sane and rational persons of ordinary attainments must also be obvious to the captains of industry. But it is not so. Plain truths recognized by Us the Hoi Polloi are never respected by persons with swollen egos…and the egos of the CEOs of the world are as monstrous as they come.
In a sense, it’s just one more episode in the Schumpeterian march of “creative destruction.” They who fail must give way to others who might do better. The failure of contemporary entertainment is open for all to see. Why else would independent creators, who have been disdained by the entertainment industry’s gatekeepers, be beating those Established Ones in volume of sales and aggregate revenues?
It’s a heartening thing. I’ll bet the soul of Andrew Breitbart is chuckling over it, too.
The cultural battle is more important than the explicitly political one. The culture war is essentially over whether truth is a matter of opinion. Not even majority opinion, mind you. The noisy minority of “woke” activists has endeavored to force its lunacies on the rest of us by sheer volume of venomous shrillness. And yes, for a while it looked bad. But the worm has turned; normal people able to see the world as it is have risen up on their hind legs. Ask Anheuser-Busch and Target.
Of course, we must remain alert and aware. The Left’s cultural forces are wounded, lessened, but they have not yet surrendered. I doubt they have the moral clarity to recognize defeat and admit to their errors. For better or worse, this is war to the knife: we must insist on unconditional surrender and a cultural Nuremburg tribunal in the aftermath.
I suppose this is a longwinded way of merely saying We’re winning. Keep the pressure up. Yet that’s all I have to say. Patronize only those media and those entertainers who never spit upon your values nor insist that black is really white. The goal line might be only mistily visible, but we’re advancing toward it nevertheless. Don’t be one of those who, as they glimpsed victory, sat to rest, and while resting, died.
Have a nice day.
Dec 01 2023
Some thematic music:
As the dust settles, see our dreams,
all coming true
it depends on you,
If our times, they are troubled times,
show us the way,
tell us what to do.As our faith, maybe aimless blind,
hope our ideals and
our thoughts are yours
And believing the promises,
please make your claims
really so sincere.Be our guide, our light and our way of life
and let the world see the way we lead our way.
Hopes, dreams, hopes dreaming that all our
sorrows gone.In your hands, holding everyone’s
future and fate
It is all in you,
Make us strong build our unity,
all men as one
it is all in you.Be our guide, our light and our way of life
and let the world see the way we lead our way.
Hopes, dreams, dreaming that all our sorrows
gone forever.
If you aren’t acquainted with Gentle Giant, it was an early prog-rock group – for an exposition about prog-rock, consult this invaluable guide — that produced quite a lot of impressive music. The above is a track from its concept album The Power And The Glory. It’s an excellent example of G.G. at its adventurous best.
The central concept of The Power And The Glory is the rise of a tyrant. Initially wildly popular, borne upon the adulation of the crowd, he comes into essentially complete and unopposed power. However, as his schemes are seen to fail – drum roll, please – he defends them with religious fervor. Ultimately, he refuses to relinquish power.
The pattern is as old as history. It’s powered by a dream: the dream of a painless, effortless solution to all that ails us, that comes to be personified in a single individual. But dreams are ephemeral. We awaken from them to a world with inviolable natural laws. Those laws are indifferent to our dreams.
There is no mortal who can fulfill our dreams. Beware the “cult of personality.” Insist on specific proposals, objective evidence, and verifiable results. Better still: Insist upon being left alone to work on your own dreams.
Just a reminder.
Dec 01 2023
It cannot be said too often: Leftism, whether it goes by “liberalism,” “progressivism,” “socialism,” or outright “communism,” is a religious faith. As with most faiths, believers regard apostates as the worst of evils:
The reasons are several, but paramount among them is this one: the Leftist regards his faith as a badge of intellectual and moral superiority. Anyone who voluntarily removes that badge has implicitly rejected that premise of superiority. Those who still wear it cannot escape that implication. It’s a thrust at their self-image they cannot endure.
Never underestimate the power of courtesy toward those with whom you disagree.
Nov 30 2023
peace n: A state of tension falling short of armed conflict. [Definition proposed by the late Keith Laumer in his Retief tales]
Among the political fantasies of our era, the notion that one can negotiate an enduring peace with an enemy ideologically committed to one’s destruction ranks very high, possibly supreme. Yet that fantasy utterly dominates the minds of the statesmen of the First World. Even in this country, exceptions are few. The success of Ronald Reagan at defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War seems not to have taught the international bien-pensants anything.
But why should one people be ideologically committed to the destruction of another? Sometimes, it’s beyond any rational man’s powers to explain it. Hatred on that order isn’t always rationally based. In such cases it isn’t rationally comprehensible.
What President Reagan understood, in contrast to others who’ve risen to the captaincy of nations, is that the best guarantee of peace comes from a combination of two things: a lack of aggressive inclinations, plus a military capable of inflicting unacceptable consequences on aggression-minded others. He didn’t really mind international tension, for he knew that it’s a survivable, manageable condition. He did dislike military aggression, flying lead, and corpses. That informed his approach to international relations. It made the tasks of his Secretaries of State simpler than they would otherwise have been.
There have been few professional diplomats who could boast successes comparable to those of Ronald Reagan.
A much-lauded diplomat passed away yesterday at 100 years of age: Dr. Henry Kissinger. Kissinger was among the most influential thinkers on international relations of the century past. Yet in his years as America’s top diplomat he achieved very little. His famous attempt to broker peace between North and South Vietnam was a tragic failure. Yet for a while it appeared the diplomatic achievement of the Twentieth Century. It failed because neither Kissinger nor anyone else highly placed in the American foreign-policy apparatus grasped the firmness of North Vietnam’s commitment to the destruction of South Vietnam.
No doubt the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch can name another people ideologically committed to another’s destruction. Diplomacy won’t do anything to dampen their ardor, either, no matter how capable the diplomat.
There is no kind of peace which may be purchased on the bargain counter. – Carey McWilliams
Peace, whether as conventionally understood or as Keith Laumer half-humorously defined it, is not a package on a shelf at some retail establishment. As fantasy writer Jo Walton put it, it’s “an active and complex thing.” If not maintained, it will deteriorate with frightening speed. Maintenance requires the willingness of men to stand ready to fight. The English learned that from the years of the Danegeld.
Among the worst aspects of America’s posture as a “world policeman” has been our diplomats’ reflexive attempts to purchase peace. Stripped of all decoration, it amounts to a contemporary version of the Danegeld. It was plainly displayed in the Clinton Administration’s attempt to buy off the North Korean regime’s determined advance toward nuclear weapons. The American negotiators offered the North Koreans two light-water reactors plus a guarantee of many thousands of tons of fuel oil every year…for a promise that the Pyongyang regime would no longer seek to join the “nuclear club.” We know how that worked out.
One nation cannot purchase an enduring peace from another. Its statesmen can offer to pay tribute in exchange for military forbearance, as the Saxon English paid the Danish Vikings. Historically such an arrangement has never lasted. Moreover, it involves a loss of sovereignty, and a sense of humiliation among the people so burdened. For a third party to step between two nations and say, in effect, “We’ll pay both of you not to fight one another” is even worse. Yet that has been America’s foreign-policy practice for many years.
Whoever thinks over earnestly and objectively this question of a general disarmament, and considers it in its remotest contingencies, must come to the conviction that it is a question which cannot be solved so long as men are men, and States are States. – Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg
We love peace, but not peace at any price. There is a peace more destructive of the manhood of living man, than war is destructive of his body. Chains are worse than bayonets. – Douglas Jerrold
I never met Dr. Kissinger. I know him only through his writings and his public involvements. His thinking was intellectually impressive, yet when his theses were put to the test, they failed. A stable peace is not something that can be achieved through diplomacy. It will always require the willingness and capability to fight. The failure of the Paris Accords between North Vietnam, South Vietnam, and the U.S. illustrate that tragically.
Only one attitude – “If you dare to strike us, we will make you wish you hadn’t” – can found a peace that lasts for any significant interval. Worse, even that posture cannot guarantee peace between two peoples, if one is committed to the other’s destruction. That will remain among the central truths of Mankind until Mankind is no more. But don’t expect a diplomat to accept it.
Nov 29 2023
My entire life I’ve heard of Henry Kissinger, the USA’s most famous diplomat, yada yada umptifratz.
Can someone older and wiser than myself point me to one of his successes? Something in his repertoire that warrants all the accolades he’s been given? ANYTHING that shows he’s actually done some good in this world?
I’m not saying it doesn’t exist. I’m saying that I don’t know about it.
Nov 29 2023
The following fragments of conversations with union members are taken from Robert C. Townsend’s classic Further Up The Organization:
Production Worker: “In a big union shop, management is the enemy – is something to overcome, or somehow get around. That’s the game everybody plays.”
Machinist: “The minute you put on a blue hat [i.e., become a foreman], you’re automatically a son of a bitch.”
Overheard in a bar: “Foreman asked me how long it would take to fix that electrode rack. Told him two weeks. Said ‘Why ask me? I’m only a millwright.’ Sure snowed that bastard. Coulda fixed it in a coupla hours. That sure felt good.”
Welder: “All I have to do is burn one rod a day and they can’t fire me.”
Electrician: “I remember how we used to get ready for the foreman to come in with his work assignments for the day. We had a regular plan for fucking him over by the time he walked in. As he was describing a job to an electrician, you could almost see the guy chuckling as if to say ‘That’ll never get wired right.’”
The union mentality — i.e., that management is somehow the enemy to workers – comes through clearly. Unions encourage their members to think that. If you agree with that posture, thanks for stopping by and enjoy the rest of your day. This essay is not for you.
All others: read on.
Albert Shanker, at one time the president of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), stoutly maintained that his job was to represent the interests of the union and its members. Someone asked him, “What about the children?” to which he replied, “When school children start paying union dues, that‘s when I’ll start representing the interests of school children.” Suffice it to say that that did not endear him to the parents of school-age children…but then, they didn’t pay AFT dues either.
Which brings us to two recent stories about teachers’ unions:
Teachers’ unions are just as pernicious as any others. Their objective, always and everywhere, is to get more money and benefits for the union members regardless of any other considerations. If that means shortchanging their minor charges’ educations, so be it. Examples abound; the two cited here are merely the most recent.
The connection to the blossoming movements for educational alternatives – homeschooling, private or religious schooling, educational “pods,” and so on – could hardly be clearer. As the cost of public education rises and its “product” – properly educated graduates – declines in quality, other approaches to getting the desired “product” will gain favor. The teachers don’t like that, of course. The hierarchies of teachers’ unions like it even less.
Yet historically, rapacious unions faced with declining memberships and dwindling ability to persuade workers to unionize have not changed their behavior. I can’t explain it from general principles, and as I’ve never been a union member, I have no other relevant perspective to offer. As a result, union dominance of America’s workforce has dropped to a low not seen since the Nineteenth Century. The sole bright spot they enjoy is in government and government-managed institutions…such as the public schools.
The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch hardly need it explained in detail why unions for government workers are faring well while unions for private-sector workers are shrinking fast. The important detail to note is that neither governments nor government workers can be held accountable for their misfeasances, their malfeasances, or their nonfeasances. And of course, it’s taxpayers who foot the bills.
I’ve heard others say, at times past, that unions are “necessary” to prevent “the exploitation of the workers.” That’s a socialist idea, an implicit rejection of the idea that market competition protects the interests of managements and workers both. Yet it commands a lot of concurrences. Others have merely said that unions “were necessary at one time.” But that too implies that there are conditions in which managements would not be constrained by competitive forces.
Finality in such arguments is elusive, just as it is between competing schools of economics. But of one thing we may be sure: whatever benefit teachers may derive from their unions, a significant part of the cost is imposed upon vulnerable, impressionable children…sometimes with the teachers’ prior knowledge and willing collaboration.
And it will continue to be so.
Nov 28 2023
I wrote about it in 2005, early in my blogging career.
The resistance to acknowledging the Left‘s hatred is one of those things that makes me doubt the fabled high intelligence of the Jewish people. I mean, you would pretty much have to be low IQ to still support the Left, given the speed with which they are throwing the Jews under the bus.
Some of it is probably normal human disinclination to uproot your life for a threat. Look at all the people who wait until the last moments to start packing for a well announced weather evacuation. Or, all the folks who only think about getting food and other supplies once the shelves are picked nearly clean.
Think about the low esteem that Preppers have in many people’s eyes. And, yet, year after year, weather and other interruptions to the normal movement of food and fuel happen across the country. Too often, people will not plan for emergencies, and are thereby reduced to begging for food and water.
In pre-WWII Germany, many Jews had become completely assimilated into the culture. Many weren’t practicing Jews. Often, they had married out of their historical faith, and were indistinguishable from other Germans.
Until some Leftist ideologues decided to make it THEIR business to identify, isolate, and destroy anyone with even a slight connection to the Jewish faith, however remote.
It may be already too late to push back. I hope not. But it is PAST the time when Jews need to act, to be prepared to get in the faces of their opponents.
Meekly trying to stay in the shadows didn’t work very well for previous generations.
Nov 28 2023
Hell, even murderers who were caught on video committing their crimes are entitled to lawyers! This was a fair opinion, from a Constitutional scholar, and no action should have been taken against him.
He has a legal defense fund – donate here. Consider telling your family and friends that they should redirect any money they had planned to use for gifts for you, and instead make a contribution. If that isn’t possible, skip a treat for yourself, and open your wallet.
We really should not leave Legal Dissidents without recourse. There are many who are being targeted with penury, all for choosing to exercise their Constitutional Rights.
Nov 28 2023
Pascal sent me a link to the following brief speech by Laura Aboli, about whom I previously knew nothing. I think we have a new heroine – and I hope to hear more from her.
Perhaps Rand was prescient about this as well:
“There was a time when men were afraid that somebody would reveal some secret of theirs that was unknown to their fellows. Nowadays, they’re afraid that somebody will name what everybody knows. Have you practical people ever thought that that’s all it would take to blast your whole, big, complex structure, with all your laws and guns—just somebody naming the exact nature of what you’re doing?”
At any rate, we can hope.
Nov 28 2023
Dave: Everybody cheats. I just didn’t know.
Dad: Well, now you know.[From Breaking Away.]
Have you become more skeptical as you’ve aged, or less?
There’s an awful lot of utter nonsense being purveyed by the extended media, these days. By “extended,” I mean to subsume all providers of information, not just the ones we fondly call the “legacy media.” Often a single false assertion will come from many sources concurrently, which tends to reassure those who encounter it…until the rug is yanked out from under them. It’s not always possible to dismiss a falsehood when it’s being emitted by a great many mouths. The problem worsens when a number of those sources have acquired a reputation for reliability.
Everyone is wrong from time to time. In previous eras, people learned how to detect mistakes, how to respond to them, and what to expect from the mistaken one. We also learned the proper attitude toward those who refused to admit their errors. That particular bundle of skills is no longer as common as it was. Given the legion of “experts” the media routinely parade before us, it’s understandable that the general level of skepticism should be on the rise.
One consequence of today’s barrages of misinformation is the conversion of skepticism into something much graver. One who has become widely and reflexively skeptical – that is, he’s been conditioned to doubt anything he’s told, regardless of the source – will often embrace cynicism: the presumption of low motives in everyone other than himself and a few close friends. Upon encountering an institution or individual with a proposition, his default expectation is that the proposition is dubious and the proposer is a fraud. “What snake oil are you trying to sell me?” is his reaction, whether or not it’s spoken.
But cynicism is nearly always a mistake in and of itself. The great majority of men are good, in the conventional understanding of that word. Their incorrect assertions are honest mistakes rather than attempts to deceive. While there are exceptional individuals wholly encysted by liars and thieves, such that honesty is vanishingly rare around them, for most of us cynicism is a negative thing.
Yet cynicism is swelling among us. We, the posterity of men who built a magnificent society founded on the default assumption that those around them are trustworthy, are steadily embracing the opposite attitude. It may even be the majority position today. And that is a terrible thing.
Hub: “Sometimes the things that may or may not be true are the things a man needs to believe in the most. That people are basically good; that honor, courage, and virtue mean everything; that power and money, money and power mean nothing; that good always triumphs over evil; and I want you to remember this, that love… true love never dies. You remember that, boy. You remember that. Doesn’t matter if it’s true or not. You see, a man should believe in those things, because those are the things worth believing in.”
[From Secondhand Lions]
The dismissal of that credo is commonplace today. The cynicism expressed by the previous quote is, if not yet unanimous, coming to dominance. It’s consciously prevalent in certain situations. One such is women’s assumptions about men who approach them in social situations. Another is the cynicism we tend to feel toward solicitors from organizations that want money…which is just about every organization on Earth.
I won’t deceive you: I’m afflicted by that second attitude. Cold callers always get a cold shoulder from me. I don’t know anyone who reacts differently. But now and then it’s a mistake. Hence, a brief vignette.
Not long ago, I was positively impressed by an email news organ’s mention of an unusual charity. It’s a Christian listening / counseling service called The Hope Line. Its counselors man a bank of phones and take calls from people who are depressed, disheartened, or otherwise unhappy. The caller is encouraged to speak his mind and heart, and the Hope Line counselor attempts to help with Christian encouragement and advice. (It’s not quite a “suicide help line,” though I’m sure it’s functioned that way from time to time.) Inasmuch as hope is one of the three theological virtues, that a Christian charity exists to dispense it to those who need it is more than merely appropriate.
To shorten this somewhat, upon learning of The Hope Line, I sent a modest donation and a few words of praise for their mission. Shortly thereafter I got an email thanking me, which I expected; it’s customary for charities to do that much. What I didn’t expect came a few weeks later.
My domestic phone rang. As my answering machine had recently gone to its reward, I answered it. The caller was a young woman from The Hope Line, and identified herself as such. What came next is the point of this tale: I reflexively assumed she was calling to solicit a further donation and I said so.
But that wasn’t the reason for her call. She was calling simply to repeat the thanks expressed in the aforementioned email, and to ask if there was anything she or her fellows could do for me.
I was stunned. (Pleasantly so; I didn’t need CPR.) Not many cold callers are calling to ask what they can do for you, though many posture that way. The young lady and I had a long and exceedingly pleasant conversation that covered all manner of things. The experience left me smiling the whole day long. But it also seeded me with a dark thought.
My cynicism about cold callers, while justified more often than not, had erred in that particular case. I started to wonder how often it might have been erroneous in the past, especially during the period when I used my answering machine to buffer all incoming calls and disdained to answer or reply to the great majority of them. Perhaps the percentages would favor cynicism more often than not, but the assumption that a cold caller merely wants money had been incorrect that once. Therefore, it could have been incorrect on other occasions.
Cynicism – about anything – suggests a deficit of hope.
“There’s only one way to improve society. Present it with a single improved unit: yourself.” – Albert Jay Nock.
I’ve written more than once about our loss of trust in one another. Even if the contrary assumption is more likely to be correct, it’s still a sign of something foreboding. We’ve lost faith in one another, which is a short step from losing faith in ourselves.
The assumption of trustworthiness is founded on a deeper assumption: specifically, that nearly all of us adhere to a common ethical code. In America, that code was the Ten Commandments of the Book of Exodus. When we assumed that we all held to that code, we trusted one another. How could someone who sincerely believes that “Thou shalt not steal” and “Thou shalt not bear false witness” possibly misuse us in common social or commercial interplay?
Pervasive skepticism and consequent dour cynicism, brought on by the barrages of falsehoods and propaganda, sneaked in under that code and undermined it. It’s near to nullifying it.
There is no Last Graf but this: do as Albert Jay Nock has advised us. Be better: less cynical, less manipulative, and less defensive. Sometimes a fraudster will get through; that’s to be expected. But to “pre-classify” others as fraudsters, even if it protects us, costs us dearly in other ways. The cost has begun to loom larger than the benefit.
Be well.
Nov 27 2023
The state of our country can be defined by this simple fact: Someone can be convicted of murder and sentenced to jail even though the “murdered” man’s death certificate states he died of a drug overdose. — David DeGerolamo
Nov 27 2023
Yes, that’s a coinage. It’s in the vein of chemistry, which is the study of how chemicals behave. There’s also palmistry, which is the study of palm trees. (What’s that? Palmistry has nothing to do with palm trees? Well, never mind then.) However, the comparison isn’t all that close. What I mean to tag with extremistry is propaganda in which some opponent of How Things Are Currently Done is delegitimized by being called an “extremist.”
You can style any proposition “extreme” simply by asserting that it’s so. Of course, the label wouldn’t fit well unless there are significant divergences between what’s proposed and current practices. Nevertheless, the label is used even in cases where the divergences are modest, or where the proposition is to revert to an earlier set of norms.
Remember Pim Fortuyn? I do. His political opponents labeled him an “extremist” for daring to assert that uncontrolled immigration to the Netherlands was on the verge of ruining that country. It might have been what got him assassinated.
Remember Anwar Sadat? I do. His political opponents labeled him an “extremist” for daring to negotiate a peace between Egypt and Israel. That definitely got him assassinated.
Italy’s prime minister Giorgia Meloni is being called an extremist, too. Why? Because she defends traditional, Catholic Italy and wants to stop its invasion by North African migrants. Those migrants are ruining Italy.
Barry Goldwater was called an extremist for daring to assert that the Constitution of the United States was being violated by the very federal government it defined. Thankfully, he lived to a ripe old age. But Ronald Reagan was called an extremist, too. He barely survived an assassination attempt. And for some years now, the “extremist” label has been slathered over Donald Trump.
Today Argentina is in the news. Its people, who’ve suffered under massively corrupt government and disastrous levels of inflation, have just chosen a certain Javier Milei to be their next president. Milei has said and written some things that have gotten him labeled an extremist. Mostly, he’s said that what’s going on must change, and change dramatically at that. If I were Milei, I’d be very careful going through doors and such.
In all cases, the extremist label is shorthand for another proposition: “This man is dangerous and must be stopped by any means necessary.” But dangerous to whom? Dangerous for what reasons? Those questions are deflected, at least while the cameras are rolling. Later on, in the comfort and privacy of their conference rooms, those who feel endangered are rather more candid.
“Extremist” has the same rhetorical application as “far-right:” the intent is to frighten the gullible and unreflective – which is most of Mankind, in case you were in any doubt – away from the person so labeled. In point of fact, those who hold the levers of power, who currently sit around mahogany conference tables plotting out How Things Must Be, are the terrified ones. They fear the loss of their power, prestige, and pelf. They cannot permit even the smallest crack in their protections. Even one such could admit light enough to bring their edifice crashing down.
That is their definition of extremist: “One who could threaten our positions.”
And that’s all that extremist and extremism mean.
I hope Larry Niven and the ghost of Jerry Pournelle won’t mind the following lengthy excerpt from their novel Inferno. It’s a scene in which protagonist Allen Carpentier is being introduced to some of the features of Hell:
A towering oil-fueled power plant of spidery framework and miles of pipes and valves poured power into a cable thick as my waist. Transmission towers took the cable downhill.
I peered along its length, but the murk defeated me. How did they use electricity in Hell? But outside the power plant was an athletic man chained to a wheelless bicycle set in concrete in front of the exhaust pipe of the generator. Black smoke poured around him, almost hiding him from view.
As we watched he began pedaling furiously. The hum of the gears rose to a high pitch—and the generator inside died. There was a moment of quiet. The man pedaled with sure strokes, faster and faster, his feet nearly invisible, his head tucked down as if against a wind. We gathered around, each wondering how long he could keep it up.
He began to tire. The blur of his feet slowed. The motors inside coughed, and black smoke poured out. He choked and turned his head away, and saw us.
“Don’t answer if you’d rather not,” I said, “but what whim of fate put you here?”‘
“I don’t know!” he howled. “I was president of the largest and most effective environmental protection organization in the country! I fought this!” He braced himself and pedaled again. The hum rose, and the generator died.
Billy was completely lost. He looked to Benito, but our guide only shrugged. Benito accepted everything. I knew better. This couldn’t be justice, not even Big Juju’s exaggerated justice. This was monstrous.
Corbett had to be guessing when he suddenly asked, “You opposed thermonuclear power plants?”
The guy stopped dead, staring as if Corbett were a ghost. The dynamo lurched into action and surrounded him with thick blue smoke.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” Corbett said gently. “You stopped the nuclear generators. I was just a kid during the power blackouts. We had to go to school in the dark because the whole country went on daylight saving time to save power.”
“But they weren’t safe!” He coughed. “They weren’t safe!”
“How did you know that?” Benito asked.
“We had scientists in our organization. They proved it.”
We turned away. Now I knew. I could quit looking for justice in Hell. There was only macabre humor. Why should that man be in the inner circles of Hell? At worst he belonged far above, with the bridge destroyers of the second ledge. Or in Heaven. He hadn’t created this bleak landscape.
I couldn’t stand it. I went back. Benito shrugged and motioned to the others.
Within the cloud of blue smoke his face was slack with exhaustion. “It wasn’t just the problem of where to bury the waste products,” he told me. “There was radioactive gas going into the air.” He spoke as if continuing a conversation. I must have been his only audience in years, or decades.
“You got a rotten deal,” I said. “I wish I could do something.”
He smiled bravely. “What else is new?” And he started to pedal.
I glared at the nothing sky, hating Big Juju. Carpentier declares war. When I looked down, Benito was fumbling through saddlebags attached to the stationary bicycle.
The man cried, “What are you doing?”
Benito took out papers. The man snatched at them, but Benito backed away. He read, “Dear Jon, I could understand your opposition to us last year. There was some doubt about the process, and you expressed fears all of us felt. But now you know better. I have no witnesses, but you told me you understood Dr. Pittman’s demonstration. In God’s name, Jon, why do you continue? I ask you as your sister, as a fellow scientist, as a human being: why?”
He began pedaling again, ignoring us.
“You knew?” I demanded. He pedaled faster, his head bent.
I leaned down and put my face close to his.
“You knew?” I screamed.
“Fuck off.”
Big Juju wins again. Too much, but appropriate. As we walked away, Jon screamed after us, “I’d have been nothing if I gave up the movement! Nothing! Don’t you understand? I had to stay as president!”
No doubt the environmentalist executive thought his sister an “extremist.” As the saying goes, what she had proposed threatened his well-filled rice bowl.
If you’re a regular Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch, you’re already aware of my love affair with the English language. It’s the most powerful tool for communication that’s ever been devised, and it continues to be extended and refined by you, its users. But there’s no such thing as a tool with built-in values. Tools are value-neutral. They can be put to good uses or to evil ones.
They who intend evil will do evil, and they’ll use the most powerful tools available to do so. That explains a great part of public discourse in our time.
The misuse of our language fills me with fury. That it’s gone on so long that today it’s everywhere and all-pervading only makes it orders of magnitude worse. If I have a consciously chosen mission – and as it happens, I have several – it’s to combat the perversion of the English language that’s making an incomprehensible hash of discourse in our time.
George Orwell said it brilliantly:
[O]ne ought to recognise that the present political chaos is connected with the decay of language, and that one can probably bring about some improvement by starting at the verbal end. If you simplify your English, you are freed from the worst follies of orthodoxy. You cannot speak any of the necessary dialects, and when you make a stupid remark its stupidity will be obvious, even to yourself. Political language — and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists — is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.
Let’s start by banning the words extremist and extremism from our lexicon and closing our ears to those who use them. Ask them rather, “What do you really mean by that? Either be clear and specific, or shut the BLEEP! up.”
The Dictator Verborum to the World Wide Web has spoken ex cathedra. Go forth under the banner of the One True Faith:
“Say what you mean, mean what you say.” – “Bob Cody,” played by Chris Cooper in Interstate 60
Nov 25 2023
American “diversity” advocates, henceforth to be styled Diversitoids, have a propensity for living in the “whitest” parts of the country. As it happens, they’re usually surrounded by other Diversitoids…that is, other white Diversitoids. But diversity! We can’t get enough of it…or so they say. If that’s so, then what explains their chosen neighborhoods?
If you have a few minutes, the following video from American Renaissance’s Jared Taylor, is both thought-provoking and entertaining.
Taylor employs the Diversitoids’ campaign against Judd Blevins, an Oklahoman, largely as an introduction to a provocative proposition: specifically, whatever fraction of white Americans expresses willingness to live in a white ethnostate should be conceded a proportional tract of the U.S. for that purpose. But the Diversitoids would never agree to a separation into a white ethnostate and a “diverse” nation. Given white Diversitoids’ choices of neighborhoods to live in, I find the notion to be spot-on.
And before you ask: yes, all other considerations to the side for the moment, I would certainly prefer to live in a white ethnostate. Would I uproot my family and relocate to Maine, or North Dakota, or the Pacific Northwest to do so? Not at the moment…but ask me again in a year’s time.
Nov 25 2023
John Hinderaker comments pithily:
On October 7, Gaza murdered 31 Americans and is believed to have kidnapped 13 more, including a three-year-old child. Yesterday an initial exchange of hostages for prisoners was carried out. Ten Thais and one Filipino were let go, but no Americans were released….
[…]
If our president were not a senile, half-witted fool, he would have told Hamas long ago that if all Americans were not freed within 12 hours, Gaza would be reduced to rubble. Not to mention that Gaza would never get another nickel of American money.
We shouldn’t have expected any Americans to be released. Nor should we expect any to be released in the near future. They’re bargaining chips: victims of kidnap-at-ransom.
The masters of HAMAS are, at base, extortionists. They use violence, kidnapping, and threats to extort money and forbearance from others: principally from Israel, but after that, from the United States. The U.S. has funded HAMAS rather profligately with “aid” payments for some years now. HAMAS wants more – as much more as the lives and health of those hostages will buy.
HAMAS fancies itself a State. Remember what Lysander Spooner said about States:
All political power, as it is called, rests practically upon this matter of money. Any number of scoundrels, having money enough to start with, can establish themselves as a “government;” because, with money, they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort more money; and also compel general obedience to their will. It is with government, as Cæsar said it was in war, that money and soldiers mutually supported each other; that with money he could hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. So these villains, who call themselves governments, well understand that their power rests primarily upon money. With money they can hire soldiers, and with soldiers extort money. And, when their authority is denied, the first use they always make of money, is to hire soldiers to kill or subdue all who refuse them more money.
Hinderaker’s prescription is the right one: threaten to reduce HAMAS’s stronghold in Gaza to flinders and cinders, and announce that America’s checkbook has been closed to them. Does anyone doubt that Ronald Reagan or Donald Trump would have hesitated to issue that ultimatum? Does anyone doubt that the Usurper Regime will kowtow to HAMAS’s demands? After a feeble gesture at face-saving, perhaps?
It’s time to resurrect the doctrine of peace through superior firepower. Not for Israel’s sake, but for ours.
