Apr 23 2025

Politicians Tend To Emulate Their Colleagues

     American politicians tend to emulate the worst ideas of their Continental partners in crime. (Among the reasons so many of them dislike Donald Trump is that he does the opposite.) This is particularly true when it comes to taxation.

     Up north in Canada, the government taxes virtually everything – and as hard as they can. Like our statist thugs governments, they never have “enough money.” Just now, they’re entertaining the idea of taxing Canadian homeowners’ home equity:

     If you own a home, particularly if it’s paid off, congratulations. You’re about to become the government’s next target.
     For years, Liberal governments have hunted for new revenue sources. First, it was high-income earners. Then it was small businesses. Then it was emissions, and now, they’ve found the motherlode: Home equity.
     The combined equity in Canadian homes — what people actually own after mortgages — is worth trillions. That’s not a typo. Trillions. This wealth wasn’t handed out. It wasn’t generated by government programs. It was built by Canadians who worked overtime, cut spending, and took risks to buy property and maintain it.
     When politicians see numbers that big, they don’t think about personal sacrifice. They see opportunity. They see a pot of money they didn’t earn but can tap, spin, and reframe as a “solution” to national problems. Especially now, with new programs promised and no fiscal discipline in sight.

     Big pots of money attract politicians the same as fresh piles of shit attract flies. If you’ve got it, they want it, and nothing but armed resistance will keep them from reaching for it. The examples are legion. I’m sure you could cite a few yourself.

     Now, the above is happening in Canada, and so is not Americans’ problem… for now. But it’s not that long ago that the Clinton Administration proposed to tax American homeowners in a similar if not identical fashion. President Clinton’s rationale was that homeowners have an “unfair advantage” over non-homeowners:

  1. We don’t pay rent;
  2. Our property taxes are federally tax-deductible.

     Keep your eyes on the House Ways and Means Committee. If the Canadian federal government imposes a home equity tax and makes it stick, you can bet the mortgage money that our federal government will try it, too.

     A tangential but related observation: I’m a homeowner. I get one or more calls every week from unidentified persons who want to know if I’d be interested in an “offer.” I’m not and I tell them so. But consider: it would be in American governments’ interest for us all to be renters. Renters can be herded far more easily than homeowners. And that “15-minute” “Smart City” idea has never been buried. (Nope. It’s never even had Extreme Unction.) So our rulers have more incentives than just the financial one to “encourage” us out of our owned homes. Given their oft-demonstrated avarice, how can we trust them not to embrace the Canadian Liberals’ proposal to tax home equity?

     Remember that you read it here first.

Apr 23 2025

Love Of Evil

     I’ve seen this sentiment many times lately:

     Mind you, Leftist Democrats don’t actually say “I love those MS-13 gangbangers.” Their behavior says it for them. (Not one of them went to any trouble over the American hostages being held by HAMAS. Remember that.) And of course, we must ask why they’re so fond of murdering illegal alien savages.

     There are only two answers that hold water:

  1. If President Trump is on one side of an issue, they feel obliged to take the other side;
  2. The presence of murdering illegal alien savages in the U.S. helps them to advance their agenda.

     The first of those is irrational in the extreme. By and large, however venal and vulpine they may be, Democrats in federal office aren’t stupid. So I’d assign that a low probability.

     The second explanation has unpleasant implications. Yet it’s consistent with other Democrat behavior patterns. They want the State to be viewed as the be-all and end-all, in particular as the citizenry’s one and only protector. (Nota bene: That’s the definition of fascism. Review your Mussolini.) That’s why they’re hostile to the private ownership of firearms. A disarmed populace can’t protect itself against predators.

     But even a disarmed populace won’t feel a need for protection unless there’s a threat in town. “Aha!” say the Democrats. “Let’s import a threat!” And they’ve done exactly that.

     An expanding threat creates a rationale for more police.
     Unarmed citizens dominated by a large police presence are easily subjugated.
     That’s very much to the taste of the Democrats.

     Just one of those nasty early-morning thoughts.

Apr 22 2025

Surprise Endings

     The surprise ending is one of mystery and thriller writers’ staple commodities. They use the sudden “twist” in two ways:

  1. To give the reader that precious sense of illumination that only a surprise ending – but one which suddenly reveals its coherence with hitherto read-but-not-grasped details of the story – can give him;
  2. To keep the reader reading, for these mystery and thriller writers are sneaky bastards who love the feeling that they’ve “put one over on you.”

     In recent years, the surprise ending has become popular in a far more abbreviated format: the quickie text graphic. Some of them are priceless. I collect the better ones and share them with the C.S.O., a lifelong mystery buff. But some are better than others. Today, courtesy of Bustednuckles, I believe I may have encountered the most surprising, the most currently relevant, and the funniest yet:

     I laughed so hard I hurt myself.

Apr 22 2025

Monopolies Come In Many Flavors

     According to yesterday’s news – please forgive me; I’ve lost the link – the legislatures of eleven states are considering making ivermectin an over-the-counter drug, available to any adult purchaser without a prescription. I haven’t read of any open reactions from the medical establishments, but my prediction is that we’ll find out, sooner or later, that they’re not pleased.

     America’s medical cartel has great power. Cartels don’t like to see any chips in their armor. Even a tiny chip can get people thinking… and talking.

     I’m not medically knowledgeable. (I figured the less I “know” about what’s going on inside me, the less likely I’d be to fret about it. Stress kills a lot more people than the medical establishment will freely admit.) I know little about ivermectin, for example. I do know that its developers won the Nobel Prize, which suggests that there’s something very useful about it.

     Governments are jealous of power, as I’ve written many times. He who controls a vital resource has power over those who need it. That’s why governments strive to gain control over water supplies. Monopolies and cartels behave in much the same fashion.

     When the Flexner Report was first broached, the gloss on it was utilitarian; its recommendations were presented as “for the public good.” (“Who is the public? What does it hold as its good?” — Hank Rearden) But its primary consequence was the reduction of the number of conventional medical schools in the U.S., and the closure of “alternative” medical schools (e.g., for osteopaths and homeopathy). In short, as with all measures for “licensing” a given occupation, it shrank both the number and the variety of medical services available to Americans.

     Coupled with the Pure Food and Drug Act, medical licensure took the power to treat Americans’ various bodily conditions away from the private citizen and gave it to the State and those it would license. Indeed, there was pressure to eliminate the over-the-counter availability of anything deemed a “drug,” such that licensed medical practitioners would control all access to anything deemed medically useful. Fortunately, drugs such as aspirin, which had already been in use for a long time, remained freely available… but not for lack of trying by the newborn medical establishment.

     Conditioning access to medical goods and services on State approval has produced the situation we endure today, in which those things are becoming ever less available, ever more expensive, and ever more of doubtful efficacy. Consider the recent campaigns of defamation against chloroquine, hydroxychloroquine, and ivermectin in that light.

     Licensure is a pretty name for a foul practice. When an occupation is subject to licensure, the State restricts who may practice it, though usually through a nominally “private” designee (e.g., the American Medical Association). That gives the State monopoly power over that occupation. It can increase or decrease the availability of practitioners at its whim. Given the prescription regimen, the designees of the State have acquired absolute power over virtually all medicine in these United States.

     Power attracts the villain far more strongly than the decent man. As regards medicine, that dynamic is offset – partially – by the other attractants to a career in medicine or the associated sciences. Still, greed and power-lust have done their part in changing the American medical landscape for the worse.

     Of course medicine is not alone in this way. Once the State got the licensing bug, it was guaranteed to push its snout ever deeper into human affairs. Today there are over eleven hundred licensed occupations. Those who wish to practice any of them are subject to a web of conditions, constraints, requirements, and fees that their Nineteenth Century forebears would have blanched at.

     I’m not a Pollyanna. There’s no argument that some good did emerge from medical licensure. But let’s not blind ourselves to its other consequences. The State has seized so great a degree of power over us that virtually anything we take it into our heads to do, including on our own bodies, requires permission from the State or one of its lackeys. Ask our British and Canadian cousins how far that regime can be pushed – and the ultimate consequences for us who meekly permit it.

     Apologies for the early-morning tirade, Gentle Reader. This particular subject has been a thorn in my flesh for decades. I consider myself fortunate that the occupations I’ve practiced lifelong have eluded the grasp of the State. I don’t expect that to continue much longer; engineering is now one of the most common – and commonly pursued – trades in the world. Someone, somewhere must be tinkering with a proposal for licensing us. And as for fiction and the other forms of popular entertainment… no, I mustn’t go there at this hour.

     Allow me a closing quote:

     Power, like the diamond, dazzles the beholder, and also the wearer; it dignifies meanness; it magnifies littleness; to what is contemptible, it gives authority; to what is low, exaltation. – Charles Colton

     But do have a nice day.

Apr 21 2025

A National Outbreak Of Sobriety

     “May it please milord hero, the world is not what we wish it to be. It is what it is. No, I have over-assumed. Perhaps it is indeed what we wish it to be. Either way, it is what it is. Le voila! Behold it, self-demonstrating. Das Ding an Sich. Bite it. It is. Ai-je raison? Do I speak truly?” — Robert A. Heinlein, Glory Road

     I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve quoted Heinlein, here and in other places where my writing has appeared. On occasion, I ask myself whether I’d have become the person I am without his influence. Occasionally I’ve differed with one of his sentiments, but not often, and not in a superior, I-know-more-than-you-about-this spirit. And today, I think I know why I hold him in such esteem.

     Heinlein was a sober man. Just as in Star’s comment at the top of this piece, he took reality as it comes, and worked within its constraints. When pontificating about anything real, he stuck firmly to observable, verifiable reality. He limited his finesses to his fiction.

     Just now, many millions of drunks are awakening to some of reality’s hard surfaces. Some are angry that reality hasn’t indulged them. They don’t seem to recognize that one can’t “legislate” changes to the laws of nature. Not that it hasn’t been tried.

     I’m off on a ramble here, so follow along if you like, surf away if you don’t. I don’t promise any millennial illuminations, just a few thoughts about aspects of reality we’d prefer to be otherwise.

A man said to the universe:
     “Sir, I exist!”
“However,” replied the universe,
     “That fact has not created in me
     A sense of obligation.”

— Stephen Crane —

Nobody rides for free,
Nobody gets it like they want it to be,
Nobody hands you any guarantee.

— Jackson Browne —

     Matt Bracken, whom I admire greatly, has penned one of his darkest forebodings:

     Folks in the post-war generation born between 1946 and 1964 are now sixty or older. Scanning social media, it’s hard to miss the anger building against Baby Boomers. Those born after them are increasingly placing the blame for their woes on the unrelenting greed of the Baby Boomer generation. They believe that the Boomers had the sheer luck to be born when America was in its ascendency, and so they accumulated all the wealth, and now they are determined to take it all with them to the grave, not sharing a penny with the generations which came after.
     […]
     So add anger toward the Baby Boomer generation to the anger of Blacks against Whites, the poor against the rich, socialists against capitalists, Democrats against Trump Republicans, and a witch’s brew of social anger is being stirred with more and more fire building under the bubbling pot.
     Our social contract is so frayed that when riots begin the withheld anger boils over.
     White Baby Boomers living in single-family homes in affluent suburbs will be at the greatest risk of any demographic. The anger toward them will be come from several social vectors at the same time. People displaced from urban cores by rampant criminality will have no compunction at all against invading the homes of empty-nest Baby Boomers. Their lives will be taken in the first minutes if they are fortunate. If not, their prolonged abuse and torture will serve to amuse the new tenants.

     A grim imagining, to be sure. Moreover, it has a nonzero chance of materializing in the foreseeable future. The key insight is a simple one:


Among Baby Boomers,
Millions were drunk, but most sobered up.
Many who came after us stayed drunk,
And now they’re angry about it.

     There’s a great deal to say about the process from which this situation developed. I’m not going to say any of it. It is what it is. The past isn’t just a foreign country; it’s an inaccessible country, frozen in time’s peculiar amber. We must live, plan, and work today.

     There are many ways of partitioning a population into demographic cohorts. The one of importance today is not one of the usual ones. Indeed, it has an unpleasant cast:

  • There are those who accept reality and its constraints;
  • And there are those who think they’re owed.

     These are not like racial or ethnic distinctions. Individuals can move between them, and often do. Many other characteristics are found in both cohorts. Nor is it fair to say that one cohort is “good” and the other “bad.” I’ve known career criminals who were utterly realistic, and individuals who were sweet as sugar, kind to everyone they met, who nevertheless were consumed by envy.

     One dominated by envy is unable to perceive reality clearly. It’s a lot like being drunk. The cause-and-effect chains enforced by the laws of nature, including human nature, are out there operating smoothly, as they always have. The envious either are blind to them, or will them aside. They “want what’s coming to them,” and that’s all there is. Who said anything about work?

     He who “sobers up” – i.e., who accepts reality as it is – will usually operate sanely thenceforward. He’ll understand that nobody rides for free and that nobody owes you nothin’. He’ll work for what he wants. There’s no guarantee that he’ll get it, of course, but simply by accepting the italicized propositions, he greatly improves his chance of getting it.

     But drunkenness has a grip. It feels liberating, at least for a while. No constraints! No rules! Just this dizzying ride that seems to last forever. It won’t, of course. That recognition must precede the sobering-up.

     The passage of time steadily separates the sober from the drunken. Over time the gap between then in financial matters, in social status, and in prospects for survival grows ever larger. Some of the drunken awaken to that gap, shake off the fog of intoxication, and get to work righting themselves. Some are shaken awake by the loss of their “enablers.” But some remain drunk lifelong.

     I’ve known men who had a long period of sobriety shattered by an unfriendly turn of chance, and tumbled into drunkenness. I’ve also known men who, though drunk for a considerable time, sobered up, set to work, and eventually joined the ranks of the accomplished and respected. As I said above, people do move between those cohorts.

     The former group often wallow in their miseries. Whatever balm self-pity provides, they slather it on, ignoring whatever insights their misfortune might have borne. The latter group often look back on their drunken period and say “It wasn’t good, exactly, but I learned a lot from it.” The contrast educates them in ways that, quite possibly, nothing else could have done. Yet in both cases, reality continues to be what it is. Its laws aren’t suspended to do either group dirty.

     The analogy does have some rough spots. Being consumed by envy isn’t exactly like drunkenness. But both prevent the sufferer from accepting what he needs to do to improve his lot.

     My self-imposed exile wasn’t for any particular purpose. Maybe it served one even so.
     —No maybes about it, Al. You are not who or what you were. You’re far more. Some of it is invisible to you yet, though it won’t be forever. Just one of the unacknowledged laws of human nature at work.
     Which is?
     —At every moment of your life, you are everything you have ever been. It’s all there, from the instant of your birth onward to this very moment. And it all plays a part.
     Even the pain?
     —Especially the pain.

     [Freedom’s Scion]

     Among the naïve demographic classifications – it’s mainly of interest to socialists – is the partition into Haves and Have-Nots. The appearance of Having can be misleading. Many who appear to Have, including some who Have in great measure, are terribly envious. Similarly, many who appear to Have-Not are happy even so. They might have aspirations, but they’ve accepted their current status as the reasonable result of prior decisions and actions. (Columnist Fred Reed once referred to them as “the successfully poor.”)

     Part of what makes for happiness is the acceptance that there are things one cannot change. Among those things are the past and the laws of nature. Material wealth seems to matter less than the possession of that bedrock realism. It makes it possible to treat past and present as starting points rather than fetters.

     Envy destroys happiness. It focuses the envious one on things he cannot change. He comes to hate them. That he cannot change them only sharpens his hatred. And as one cannot hate natural laws, that hatred must find a palpable target. Usually it’s persons who “have it good.”

     Matt Bracken’s piece suggests that the envious could soon mobilize against those they envy. He cites the Baby Boom generation as the likely initial target, though he also foresees an “All The Last Wars At Once” deterioration into ever finer factions among whom there is no peace.

     What will divide the warring factions from one another is envy. Each will see the others – some of them, at least – as unfairly “having it good.” The criterion may be material, social, or any other pseudo-metric one can imagine. When envy is in the saddle, no good destination is in sight.

     It won’t matter that many who “have it good” worked themselves to a sliver to get what they have. It won’t matter that in many cases the envied one’s true condition is far less desirable than it appears. Envy dismisses such considerations.

     The value of Bracken’s essay to those of us who aren’t ruled by envy is that it points the way to what we should do, if we think Bracken’s predicted future likely. But there’s a lot of envy out there to power the kind of chaos Matt fears. My assessment is that it’s an even-money bet.

     I’ve said enough. Read Matt’s piece. Gather for yourselves whatever evidence you need to decide whether his prognostications are likely or unlikely. Then act accordingly.

     Planning and acting according to what you see and expect is the imperative of realism. Though the Left is doing its damnedest to prevent it, we could enjoy a national outbreak of sobriety. In that case, the future will be bright. Alternately, millions of Americans could sink ever deeper into envy and resentment of others. In that case, trouble is coming.

     Have a nice day.

Apr 21 2025

The Passing Of A Pope

     Yesterday evening, Pope Francis, the Supreme Pontiff of the One, Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church, passed away. He was 88 years old and had been Pope for twelve years.

     Pope Francis, who had been Jorge Cardinal Bergoglio, Archbishop of Buenos Aires, Argentina before his elevation to the Throne of Saint Peter, was a divisive figure in many ways. He soft-pedaled several longstanding Catholic doctrines. He inserted himself and his opinions into many non-theological subjects, to the dismay of millions of Catholics of different views. Yet he was loved, for Catholics have always loved their popes. It’s in the book.

     Now there will be a Conclave of the College of Cardinals. There will be speculation about Francis’s successor, including whether the next Pontiff will continue in Francis’s vein or return to the more traditional path Francis’s predecessor Pope Benedict XVI had followed. Talking heads worldwide will natter over these things and others as we await white smoke from the Vatican. It’s understandable that they should do so, for the Pope is the most important mortal on Earth. He wields more influence over the behavior of men than any president or prime minister.

     Catholics will pray. It’s what we do.

     Eternal rest grant him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.

Apr 20 2025

The State’s Paramount Imperative

     …is to condition the masses never to question or quarrel with the State:

     Christopher Dunn was falsely convicted of fatally shooting a 14-year-old in 1991. He was later released after serving over three decades of a life sentence in prison for a crime he did not commit.

     So far, this looks like a positive if bittersweet story. Dunn can’t get back the three decades he spent behind bars, but at least he’s free now. But hold on just a moment:

     The Missouri Supreme Court ruled this week that Attorney General Andrew Bailey can appeal Dunn’s overturned conviction, according to the Missouri Independent.
     […]
     Bailey argued that the state has a legal interest in maintaining its convictions and that allowing Dunn’s exoneration to stand would create distrust in the state’s justice system. The state’s Supreme Court concurred, claiming “the state is an aggrieved party under Missouri’s civil appeals statute and may challenge the judgment,” the Missouri Independent reported.

     I added the emphasis.

     The State must not be questioned! Its hold on power depends on the willing submission of its subjects. Should the people come to doubt the State’s omniscience, who knows what would follow? No, Comrade, thou shalt not question the Omniscient, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent State! Its masters would pout.

     Do you know what’s hardest about being a freedom-advocating commentator? Resisting the impulse to let it all go! When a State prosecutor can make such a claim in open court, and have the presiding judge deem the State “an aggrieved party,” all the masks are off. The statists no longer feel a need to pretend to care about rights or justice. The English language lacks words adequate to describing such incredible villainy.

     The sole nonviolent barrier to such betrayals of justice is the trial by a jury of private citizens. Watch for signs that our would-be masters are maneuvering to do away with it. I’m sure we’ll see them, by and by.

Apr 20 2025

The Greatest Event In History

     In the end of the sabbath, as it began to dawn toward the first day of the week, came Mary Magdalene and the other Mary to see the sepulchre. And, behold, there was a great earthquake: for the angel of the Lord descended from heaven, and came and rolled back the stone from the door, and sat upon it. His countenance was like lightning, and his raiment white as snow: And for fear of him the keepers did shake, and became as dead men.
     And the angel answered and said unto the women, Fear not ye: for I know that ye seek Jesus, which was crucified. He is not here: for he is risen, as he said. Come, see the place where the Lord lay. And go quickly, and tell his disciples that he is risen from the dead; and, behold, he goeth before you into Galilee; there shall ye see him: lo, I have told you.
     And they departed quickly from the sepulchre with fear and great joy; and did run to bring his disciples word. And as they went to tell his disciples, behold, Jesus met them, saying, All hail. And they came and held him by the feet, and worshipped him. Then said Jesus unto them, Be not afraid: go tell my brethren that they go into Galilee, and there shall they see me.

     [Matthew 28:1-10]

     Nearly two millennia have passed since then. Rejoice in the simplicity of it! He promised that he would return from death. He kept his promise. Nothing comparable has occurred since, but then, nothing else really matters.

     Happy Easter, Gentle Reader. For he is risen, as he said. May God bless and keep you all.

Apr 19 2025

Always Choose The Right Word

     English contains a wealth of what are colloquially called synonyms but really aren’t. Unfortunately, people who aren’t alert to subtle differences between the actual meanings of words will frequently select the wrong one for their purpose. One of the commonest cases involves the words honesty and candor. These frequently interchanged words are not really interchangeable. For example, here’s honesty in action:

Prosecutor: Mr. Smith, at about 7:35 PM on the night of October 8, 2024, on the corner of Main Street and Grand Avenue in the city of Onteora in the state of New York, did you brutally beat James Johnson to death with an iron pipe while cackling fiendishly, after which you urinated on his corpse before going to the local tavern for a drink?
Smith: Yes.

     In contrast, here’s candor:

Interviewer: Mr. Davis, what do you consider your greatest weakness?
Davis: My honesty.
Interviewer: I don’t consider honesty a weakness.
Davis: I don’t give a fuck what you think.

     Because of Davis’s misuse of honesty where candor would have been more accurate, the remainder of the interview did not go well. Don’t let this happen to you.

Apr 19 2025

Just Another Day In Multicultural Paradise

     No one is safe anywhere:

     Jacob Couch and his wife Kristen were sitting on a bus bench on the corner of 6th and Broadway in Tucson on the morning of April 5. After a vacation, they traveled by bus from California back home to Alabama, but decided to stop in Tucson first to explore the area.
     Shortly after sitting down, a man approached them and started yelling for some reason. Court records say Jacob, the father of two children, then started arguing with the crazed man when tragedy struck.
     Police say the man, 25-year-old Tucson resident Daniel Michael, hit Jacob in the neck with what Kristen described as a machete-type knife.
     Jacob started bleeding uncontrollably after being slashed in the neck. Jacob’s sister-In-Law, Erica Sims, revealed that the weapon “cut the artery in the back of his neck in half and went so deep that it hit his skull.”

     The victim and his attacker:

     Jacob Couch is dead. Why is Daniel Michael still alive? Isn’t Arizona a “constitutional carry” state? Was there no armed citizen available to administer summary justice to this miscreant? Or were all the available persons terrified of being called “racists?”

     But the article assures us that the murderer is now in custody:

     Three days after the incident, officers were able to locate Michael at his home. Documents show during a search warrant investigators found a hatchet in his apartment as well as clothes worn during the incident. Records say when Michael was confronted with surveillance video of him in the area of the scene, he confirmed it was him.

     I added the emphasis.

     Who’d like to give odds on whether Daniel Michael will become the Left’s next cause celebre? Will he be gifted thousands of dollars through a GoFundMe appeal? Will Black Lives Matter parade for his defense? I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. But one thing is clear: In these United States of America, whites and Asians must avoid blacks, especially young black males.

     John Derbyshire has told us. Heed his words.

Apr 19 2025

Things You Definitely Didn’t Need To Know

     This comes from my favorite tall but brilliant, fabulously talented and visually stunning example of a placental mammal:

     Did you know you can mail potatoes without a container? This delightful information comes from the USPS’s Postal Facts page. As with coconuts, one may mail potatoes simply by writing the destination on the potato, weighing the potato, then paying the appropriate postage for said potato and it can be shipped as-is. The potato will then be conveyed thence to its destination by the hardworking men and women of the United States Postal Service.
     Let someone know they are special. Send a tater! Or an SOS.

     How could I have lived so many years without knowing that? Thank you, Diogenes my love. This is vital information to one of Irish descent. But I have a question: Can one send said potato Express Mail? I wouldn’t want it to arrive all mushy and covered with “eyes.”

Apr 18 2025

A Terrible Clarity

     I’m something of a clarity evangelist. I despise people who deliberately muddy the waters of discourse. Yet politics being what it is, there are many such prominent ones. We seldom get a respite from their blather. That’s by design.

     Clarity is power’s greatest enemy. To achieve and maintain power, those who want to rule you must confuse you. Else you might realize what has been done to you – what is still being done to you! – and therefore, what you must do.

     If the conscious mind has any bedrock need, it is clarity. Yet clarity can be terrible beyond measure. Today we commemorate a day when things became all too clear.

     The only true power is total power: power absolute and unbounded. The truly ardent power-luster will accept nothing else. That has an implication from which most of us recoil. In the interests of clarity, let it be stated plainly, once and for all:

If he cannot have total power over you,
He will kill you.

     George Orwell was magnificently, terrifyingly clear about what power is at its heart:

     ‘The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.’ He paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: ‘How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ‘By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ‘Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing. Do you begin to see, then, what kind of world we are creating? It is the exact opposite of the stupid hedonistic Utopias that the old reformers imagined. A world of fear and treachery and torment, a world of trampling and being trampled upon, a world which will grow not less but more merciless as it refines itself. Progress in our world will be progress towards more pain. The old civilizations claimed that they were founded on love or justice. Ours is founded upon hatred. In our world there will be no emotions except fear, rage, triumph, and self-abasement. Everything else we shall destroy — everything. Already we are breaking down the habits of thought which have survived from before the Revolution. We have cut the links between child and parent, and between man and man, and between man and woman. No one dares trust a wife or a child or a friend any longer. But in the future there will be no wives and no friends. Children will be taken from their mothers at birth, as one takes eggs from a hen. The sex instinct will be eradicated. Procreation will be an annual formality like the renewal of a ration card. We shall abolish the orgasm. Our neurologists are at work upon it now. There will be no loyalty, except loyalty towards the Party. There will be no love, except the love of Big Brother. There will be no laughter, except the laugh of triumph over a defeated enemy. There will be no art, no literature, no science. When we are omnipotent we shall have no more need of science. There will be no distinction between beauty and ugliness. There will be no curiosity, no enjoyment of the process of life. All competing pleasures will be destroyed. But always — do not forget this, Winston — always there will be the intoxication of power, constantly increasing and constantly growing subtler. Always, at every moment, there will be the thrill of victory, the sensation of trampling on an enemy who is helpless. If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face — for ever.’

     I know you’ve seen that passage before. You may have seen it here; I’m sure I’ve used it, though perhaps not in this context. The logic of power demands either total submission or death.

     But the full horror of the Party’s program only becomes clear when O’Brien discloses the intent behind Winston’s “re-education:”

     ‘Get up,’ said O’Brien. ‘Come here.’
     Winston stood opposite him. O’Brien took Winston’s shoulders between his strong hands and looked at him closely.
     ‘You have had thoughts of deceiving me,’ he said. ‘That was stupid. Stand up straighter. Look me in the face.’
     He paused, and went on in a gentler tone: ‘You are improving. Intellectually there is very little wrong with you. It is only emotionally that you have failed to make progress. Tell me, Winston — and remember, no lies: you know that I am always able to detect a lie — tell me, what are your true feelings towards Big Brother?’
     ‘I hate him.’
     ‘You hate him. Good. Then the time has come for you to take the last step. You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.’

     For the Party would not allow Winston or any other man to die hating them. That would make him a martyr, and martyrs exemplify the unmaking of power. The martyr is indispensable to possibility of revolution. Therefore, they who hold power must strive to their utmost to avoid creating martyrs.

     It’s all so simple! It’s like a beginner’s first class in propositional logic. But Orwell was a genius, and the genius’s necessary qualities include the ability to accept what is terribly clear. Our contemporary power-lusters aren’t nearly as bright or penetrating as was George Orwell.

     Neither were those of First-Century Judea.

     “Christ was crucified for preaching without a police permit.” — Robert A. Heinlein

     Power, in Judea in Christ’s time, was founded on the Judaic religion. At the summit of that religion stood the Sanhedrin, which – with the indulgent cooperation of the Roman occupiers – could decree the death of any man who dared to defy its rule. Rome was perfectly happy to allow the Sanhedrin that power. To rule a great empire requires collaboration with local rulers. Without it, there’s no avoiding the repeated imposition of mass terror and bloodshed through military force.

     To the Sanhedrin, Jesus of Nazareth appeared to be a threat to their power. They couldn’t have that, so they contrived his death. The actual executioners were Roman soldiers. Rome wasn’t indulgent enough to allow the Jews to impose capital punishment themselves; that would be taking this “home rule” business a wee bit too far. But when Herod sent Jesus to Pilate, Pilate knew what he had to do to “keep the peace:” specifically, peace between the occupying power and the local power structure.

     The Gospel narrative tells us that Jesus knew what was coming. Being as human as he was divine, he feared it. He prayed for “this cup to pass from me.” [Matthew 26:39] Yet he accepted it as his Father’s will. Why?

     For Jesus himself had said it:

     This is my commandment, That ye love one another, as I have loved you. Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends. Ye are my friends, if ye do whatsoever I command you. [John 15:12-14]

     Jesus’s Crucifixion was the ultimate consequence of the power-lust of the rulers of that place and time. Jesus’s acceptance of His Crucifixion was the final demonstration of his love.

     Power and love are antitheses. No one who sincerely loves seeks power. Conversely, no one who seeks power can sincerely love.

     Coincidentally and most ironically, the morning brings an irrefutable demonstration of power-lust — sanctimoniously disguised, as it must always be in our time, as a necessity in defense of ideals the writer does not truly hold:

     Evil has come to America. The present administration is engaged in barbarism; it has arbitrarily imprisoned its opponents, revoked the visas of thousands of students, imposed taxes upon us without our consent, and seeks to destroy the institutions which oppose it. Its leader has threatened those who produce unfavorable coverage, and suggested that their licenses be revoked. It has deprived us, in many cases, of trial by jury; it has subjected us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and has transported us beyond seas to be imprisoned for pretended offenses. It has scorned the orders of our courts, and threatens to alter fundamentally our form of government. It has pardoned its thugs, and extorted the lawyers who defended its opponents.
     If these actions become normal, the government could arrest anyone and deport them to prison in a foreign land, without hope of redress, for no reason. It is nothing less than the total abdication of rule of law in this country. There is no guard or protection against it. If this theory prevails, then it is the end of America as a free nation.
     I do not wish for this essay to be a mere catalogue of outrages. The conduct of the present administration is as well known to you as it is to myself, and can be understood by any sensible person. On it, no further comment is ventured.
     What remains for us to decide is when we fight. If the present administration wills it, it could sweep away the courts, it could sweep away democracy, and it could sweep away freedom. Protest is useful only insofar as it can effect action. Our words might sway the hearts of men, but not of beasts.
     If the present administration chooses this course, then the questions of the day can be settled not with legislation, but with blood and iron. In short, we must decide when we must kill them. None of us wish for war, but if the present administration wishes to destroy the nation I would accept war rather than see it perish. I hope that you would choose the same.

     In my most terrible nightmares, I could not have made matters clearer. Writer Nicholas Decker, of course, is a Leftist. He’s a Leftist of the 1984 / O’Brien stripe, albeit without the deeper understanding O’Brien displays in the passages I quoted above. I imagine he fancies himself a revolutionary theorist. But the central point must not be obscured by incidentals: he wants power, and he sees mass murder as the only route to it.

     In that regard, he’s in tune with Bill Ayres’s Weather Underground:

     I asked, “well what is going to happen to those people we can’t reeducate, that are diehard capitalists?” and the reply was that they’d have to be eliminated.
     And when I pursued this further, they estimated they would have to eliminate 25 million people in these reeducation centers.
     And when I say “eliminate,” I mean “kill.”
     Twenty-five million people.
     I want you to imagine sitting in a room with 25 people, most of which have graduate degrees, from Columbia and other well-known educational centers, and hear them figuring out the logistics for the elimination of 25 million people.
     And they were dead serious.

     The logic of power leads there and only there. Ayres and his collaborators knew where they were headed. Nicholas Decker has embraced their method unflinchingly. He has made it clear that the Left will stop at nothing. For his candor, we owe him our thanks.

     Gentle Reader, if I had been asked to compose a paean to the sort of villainy depicted above, I don’t think I could have done it. Nicholas Decker has provided us a terrible clarity, indeed – and on the day we commemorate Jesus of Nazareth’s sacrifice of himself in irrefutable demonstration of the exact opposite, at that. Could the Left’s absolute hostility to Christianity have been made that clear in any other way?

     Power or love? On this Good Friday in the Year of Our Lord 2025, let us choose wisely… and as far as possible, from love.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Yours in Christ,
Fran

Apr 17 2025

Inane Utterances

     There’s a lot of talk in the air… but then, isn’t there always? It’s not new that everyone and his halfwit Uncle Herman are jabbering to beat the band. But what are they saying? Does it mean anything? Does it even make sense?

     I’ve been on a decades-long crusade against verbal offal – what I like to call semantic noise. If you’re going to talk, say something that’s worth the breath. More: say something that doesn’t just fill the air. Say something that actually means something!

     Now, one must expect idiocies from idiots. Sadly, there are more such roaming the landscape than ever before in history. A great many of them are in politics. Who was it who called politics “Hollywood for ugly people” — ? God knows, the idiots have flocked to those pastures in even greater numbers. And how they prattle on!

     Here’s an example:

     Under the innocuous-looking sub-heading titled “Strengthening media diversity — safeguarding freedom of opinion,” the new German coalition contract conceals what George Orwell would recognize as classic doublespeak. The section “Dealing with disinformation” reads:
     “Targeted influence on elections and by now commonplace disinformation and fake news are serious threats to our democracy, its institutions and social cohesion. The deliberate dissemination of false factual claims is not covered by freedom of expression. That is why the media supervisory authority, which is independent of the state, must be able to take action against the manipulation of information, hate-mongering and agitation while safeguarding freedom of expression—on the basis of clear legal requirements … We will ensure that online platforms fulfil their obligations with regard to transparency and cooperation with the supervisory authority.”

     Once the contradictions and circumlocutions are canceled out, the meaning of that passage comes to this: we will suppress disapproved views. Yet it tries to claim that the intent is “safeguarding freedom of expression.” The verbiage in which it’s dressed is an attempt to deflect attention from the contradiction between freedom of expression and the prohibition of disapproved views. Can’t have disapproved views in the new, free Germany! And note this phrase:

     …the media supervisory authority, which is independent of the state…

     How can an “authority” with actual authority be “independent of the state” — ? Enforcement power is what makes the State what it is! No one but the State and its agents possesses it.

     I’m sure a regiment of bureaucrats labored over that passage. It bears the mark of something carefully crafted to mean nothing.

     But there’s worse. Here on the Western side of the pond, politicians blather in typeset phrases that are content-free – when they’re not openly self-contradictory – meant to convey one thing: I’m a good guy. One I’d hoped never to hear from again was at it just yesterday evening:

     Biden also started screaming out of nowhere as he accused Republicans of targeting Social Security.
     “It’s about dignity. Simple dignity! Everyone! Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity… regardless of who they are!” Biden said.

     Let’s leave aside the cruelty of trotting out this demented old man for political fodder. Consider only the statement above:

     “Everyone deserves to be treated with dignity”

     Define deserves. Then define dignity. Then tell me how anyone could emit such nonsense and receive a respectful hearing. Yet it’s everywhere. It’s maddening and deafening.

     We all know the kneejerk phrases popular on the Left: “pay their fair share;” “if it saves just one life;” “gun violence;” and that perennial favorite, “social justice.” Utterly meaningless, all of them – yet leftists repeat them endlessly, using them as bludgeons with which to silence disagreement. Ann Coulter was penetrating about this tactic in her book Slander:

     [A]lmost all liberal behavioral tropes track the impotent rage of small children. Thus for example, there is also the popular tactic of repeating some stupid, meaningless phrase a billion times: Arms for hostages, arms for hostages, arms for hostages, it’s just about sex, just about sex, just about sex, dumb, dumb, dumb, money in politics, money in politics, money in politics, Enron, Enron, Enron. Nothing repeated with mind-numbing frequency by all major news outlets will not be believed by some members of the populace. It is the permanence of evil; you can’t stop it.

     It’s wearying to have to deal with it so often.

     Why is this on my mind, you ask? Just yesterday, I’d been chatting pleasantly with a narrow-gauge celebrity for about twenty minutes when she proudly proclaimed herself an “activist” for “social justice.” Now, there’s only one reason anyone ever makes such a statement: to elicit approval from the hearer. I think I shocked her with my response:

     Look, “social justice” is a contradiction in terms! Maybe you never thought about that before, but if you’re an “activist,” you SHOULD have. So go do some actual thinking before you bother me again.

     That shut her up… for a couple of minutes. She was right back at me, pleading for a “private chat.” Why, I can’t imagine.

     Let’s have some intolerance, please! Let’s put some of Arthur Herzog’s “sharp questions” to people who assail us with such noise:

     “Why?” “What for?” “When?” “What do you mean?” “Who?” These are terrifying questions, in a way, considering how seldom they are answered. And when answers are given, they don’t appear to be the right answers….
     The point is that such questions are designed to illuminate what is happening and they tend to take little for granted by way of conventional answers. The aim of the radical skeptic is to lower the confusion and eliminate the nonsense, hedges, and non sequiturs which make the American political dialogue something that approaches real torture.

     Were I God-Emperor of the Universe, I would have a special medal struck, to be awarded to persons who had befuddled a nonsense-speaker sufficiently to shut him up. Call it the Squelch Medal; it would commemorate the defense of silence against the pollution of semantic noise. It would come with free airline travel to some notably quiet place, perhaps a Trappist monastery.

     Would President Trump be interested in inaugurating such an award?

Apr 16 2025

“We Don’t Want That Strongman! We Want OUR Strongman!”

     Remember Stalin? Well, all right; you’d have to be a lot older than I am to have been an adult during Stalin’s term of power. Anyway, Stalin was an old-fashioned strongman: he ruled the Soviet Union absolutely, personally decreeing what was to be and brooking no opposition. And the American Left loved him.

     Remember Mao Tse-tung? He was a little more recent. He was of the same ilk as Stalin. Absolute autocrat, insisted on having his way in all things. Killed more of his own people, too. And the American Left loved him.

     Hey, how about Fidel Castro? He didn’t kill quite as many as the others, but he was just as much the autocrat-dictator as were they. Got his way in everything. Ruined what had been a peaceful and prosperous island-nation. And the American Left loved him.

     I could go on. There was Juan Peron. There was Josip Broz Tito. There was Pol Pot. There was Daniel Ortega. There was Salvador Allende. There was Hugo Chavez. All were darlings of the American Left. You could easily conclude that our domestic Left really likes the autocrat-dictator model of governance.

     But then we come to Nayib Bukele of El Salvador.

     The American Left purely hates Bukele. Why? Unclear. Salvadorans love him. By a simple expedient – locking up the members of all the violent gangs that made El Salvador a terror-stricken nation – he’s made it possible for ordinary people to live without undue fear. No president of that country had dared to do anything that direct… until Bukele.

     Bukele is plainly of the strongman breed. That’s the way he’s governed, so far. You’d think that would recommend him to their tastes, but no. I can’t fathom it. Can you, Gentle Reader?

     The Biden / Usurper Administration hated him. Bidenites accused him of negotiating with the gangs to reduce homicide rates. The UN Human Rights Commission hates him, too – for “unnecessary and excessive use of force” in dealing with the gangs. Granted that he suspended Salvadorans’ civil rights to deal with the gang emergency. But “if it saves just one life,” right, guys?

     Anyway, pictures of Bukele palling around with President Trump are just the end, don’t y’know. The man must go! And all the “innocent undocumented Americans” he’s locked up in that big prison must be returned to their homes and their grieving families at once! Their rights must be respected!

     I wonder whom our Left would prefer to rule over El Salvador? Hey, maybe when President Trump’s term of office is over, he can run for President of El Salvador! They don’t have a 22nd Amendment to deal with, do they? The Left would be glad to see him go, and he’d displace that strongman they hate, too! Win-win, right?

     Just one of those early-morning thoughts.

Apr 15 2025

A Tragedy

     I know mine to be a minority viewpoint in this regard, yet I hold to it nevertheless:


Religious indoctrination in youth
Is the best predictor
For apostasy and atheism in adult life.

     The evidence for that is little short of conclusive. Saying so shocked a great many of my Catholic readers. I put it into the mouth of my most popular character:

     “What has the typical response to indoctrination been, Father? What percentage of the children that have passed through parochial schools remain communicants as adults? Do we really need any other explanation for why the schools are closing down at such a rate?”
     The priest grinned without humor. “Don’t you think the property tax situation might have had something to do with it, Louis? To say nothing of the problems the Church has had with zoning boards all over the country?”
     Louis shook his head. “That’s nothing new. The American Church has faced those forces for three centuries. It’s only in the last fifty years that our numbers have diminished this way. And we’re mostly to blame for it.”
     He scowled. “It was always a mistake, you know. Religion isn’t for children, and to impose it on them by force has never been to anyone’s greater good.”

     …though that didn’t assuage the feelings of the many who were appalled by it.

     There are several reasons for this, but one stands above the rest: the behavior of adults. Adults seldom realize how closely their children watch them and analyze their behavior. Any behavioral departure from the norms they preach will cause their kids to think hypocrite! In the juvenile mind, that has severe consequences.

     Parents cannot afford hypocrisy when and where their kids might detect it. If you tell them that God is watching, you must act accordingly. If you teach them the Ten Commandments, or the all-encompassing Two Great Commandments, you must take care that your children never see you violate them. Should you slip and be caught, you must confess your fault – to your kids — and promise them that you’ll strive to do better from then on.

     But how many parents can honestly claim to have upheld that standard?

     To a child… and, tragically, to the adult he will become… hypocrisy equates to the negation of the violated stricture: “They say one thing but do another, so how can what they say be true or important? Ignore it!” Even later in life, when the adult who developed from that disappointed, disillusioned child acquires enough experience of Mankind to understand that we are fallen, he will be reluctant to revisit the faith he rejected. Rare is the man who’s happy to admit that he was insufficiently mature to understand his parents, especially in their weaknesses… even if they’re weaknesses he shares.

     So when I read something like this:

     As all of you know, I am not a believer in any sort of deity. I guess that’s odd, being that I grew up in a Catholic household and was sent to a Christian private school for three years. My parents were hoping that the experience would help. It didn’t. All my experiences with organized religion did was make me believe that the people in the churches were mostly lying hypocrites.

     … I want to weep for what the writer has denied himself. His pride will probably be involved. No one likes to admit to error, even the sort of error that’s understandable from a child. The more a man thinks of himself – justly or otherwise – the less likely he’ll be to make such an admission.

     There is nothing in the universe that compares to the knowledge that there is a God who loves us and wants us to be with Him in Paradise. It’s not provable by secular standards of proof. Yet secularists accept many far more questionable propositions on far less evidence. They who refuse to ponder the possibility have denied themselves a comfort of inestimable magnitude, great enough to cushion the most savage of blows. I pity them.

     “Christianity, if false, is of no importance, and if true, of infinite importance; the only thing it cannot be is moderately important.” – C. S. Lewis.

     Enjoy your Holy Week, and may God bless and keep you all.

Apr 15 2025

On The Attack

     Among the things President Trump has learned from his time in the public eye is a simple truth of combat: If you attack, your opponent must defend.

     It’s always better – in the short term, at least – to be on the attack than on defense. Keeping your adversary busy defending against your attacks reduces his resources and opportunities for attacking you. That gives you the initiative, which can be converted into other advantages as well.

     Apparently, Trump’s adversaries in the news media weren’t ready for him to seize the initiative:

     Donald Trump met with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, in the Oval Office on Monday, and during their meeting, they took some questions from members of the press who were in attendance. The meeting was a huge win for El Salvador and the United States, but CNN didn’t fare so well.
     […]
     At some point during the meeting, Bukele praised Trump for lowering border crossing rates to 95% in just a few months, but Trump corrected him and said that as of Monday, the number is actually 99.1%. “Why doesn’t your media report this?” asked Bukele.
     Trump responded:

     Well they get out, but the fake news, you know, like CNN — CNN over here doesn’t want to put them out because they don’t like, they don’t like putting out good numbers… Because I think they hate our country, actually. But it’s a shame. You’re right. Isn’t that a great question? Why doesn’t the media, why don’t they put out numbers?

     CNN’s Dana Bash felt compelled to respond to the attack:

     I doubt the editors of CNN were pleased by that, nor should they have been.

     There’s an old story from the years when Lyndon Baines Johnson was still a Senator from Texas, and was locked in a neck-and-neck contest for his seat. It’s said that he told one of his publicity helpers to start a rumor that his opponent was known to fuck pigs. The staffer was nonplussed, and replied “We can’t prove he’s a pig fucker!” LBJ smiled and said, “I know that. I just want to hear him deny it!”

     In our time, political combat is no-holds-barred. It’s a pity that it should be so, but one must be realistic about the milieu and the conditions it imposes upon us.

Apr 14 2025

The Enemy

     [I’m exhausted today, so have a reprint from Eternity Road in September 2004. It addresses the cleavage between Left and Right in a way that many are still reluctant to acknowledge. Unfortunately, the great majority of the links no longer work. – FWP]

     Via Sarah at Trying To Grok comes a link to an extraordinarily illuminating exchange between a conservative blog-proprietor and a liberal visitor:

     I haven’t posted much today. One reason is I’ve been considering a question.

     First, a little background. This is a conservative blog. We aren’t shy around here about professing our support for President Bush and other Republican candidates. If you had missed that point, let me invite you to take a look around.

     We (the authors of this site) are Conservative Republicans. We write about Conservative Republican matters to our audience, who are mostly (go figger) Conservative Republicans. Makes sense so far, doesn’t it?

     But over the last couple of months in particular we have noticed an increase in comments from Liberals. Not just trolls, although God knows we have our share of them, but from self-professed Liberals, Kerry fans, who sometimes even make a semi-intelligent argument, even if they’re usually wrong.

     I don’t hold that against them. For the most part, they’re just misinformed.

     But what I have to wonder is WHY? Why are they here? We certainly don’t have anything to offer them and their belief system.

     And then it occurred to me why.

     It’s because the Democratic party, which has now gone beyond leftist to outright radical, doesn’t have much to offer the average Democrat either. Democrats are seeking thoughts and ideas that their own party is no longer offering them.

     Case in point: I’m a union member. The union I belong to has endorsed John Kerry. Out of the (100% union members) 30 people in the facility where I work, John Kerry can expect….zero votes. Some of the folks I work with are Democrats, but they recognize that Kerry is the WRONG MAN for the job.

     My dad’s a lifelong Democrat. HE recognizes that John Kerry is the WRONG MAN for the job. He’ll be voting for Bush, at the age of 71 the first time he has ever voted for a Republican candidate.

     And the Liberals keep coming here, and reading, and commenting. Oh, sure, they raise hell in the comments. They try to plead their cases. But you know what’s MOST important?

     They keep coming back. They keep reading.

     There may be hope for some of them yet.

     That was the main body of the post, of course. But hearken here to one liberal’s response:

     Three words: Know your enemy.

     You want to see blogs with some serious followers? Go check out Atrios, with its comments in the hundreds for every post. Go check out Pandagon, with its everyday readers of 25 or more. Go check out dailykos, and tell me Democrats are giving up and don’t really like Kerry anyway.

     I dare you.

     Know your enemy — ?

     I wouldn’t have goggled much at “opponent,” and only slightly more at “adversary,” but “enemy” connotes something much more significant.

     An enemy is one who has pledged to break you to his will. Normally, you’ve made a reciprocal pledge about him. An enemy is one whose motives and objectives are absolutely incompatible with yours, so that the only way to settle things between you is the test of arms.

     If Smith and Jones have compatible objectives, for example combating terrorism, curbing some destructive practice, or improving the lot of the underclass or the working poor, they needn’t be enemies. They might disagree on the proper tactics, and the disagreement might be quite dramatic, but the commonality of their values allows them to coexist amicably. Political adversaries with compatible values and morals are not enemies, any more than two engineers with different solutions to an engineering problem would be.

     Only persons whose differences are on morals or values need be enemies. Morals are the set of constraints on human behavior that define what is not permissible in pursuit of any goal, however high-minded. You may be utterly sincere in your desire to better the condition of the poor, but if you advocate theft, enslavement, or murder as your means of doing so, you become my enemy. Values are, of course, the goals themselves. If my goal is to conquer your country and enslave your people, we will most certainly be enemies.

     It is characteristic of those on the political Left today that they do consider us on the Right their enemies, with whom no accommodation is possible. Bear in mind that this is the case despite the superior success of Rightist policy prescriptions at achieving Leftists’ averred goals!

     What can this mean?

     To this writer it means that it’s time to ask what Theodore Sturgeon called “the next question.” The Right espouses most of the same goals as the Left: peace, security for Americans’ lives and property, an end to terrorism, economic improvement for the underclass, protection of the air and water against negligent or malicious damage, and so forth. We do differ on some “hot button” issues, such as abortion, but the commonalities between our stated objectives is overwhelming. So what’s the problem? Where’s the gulf that requires them to destroy us?

     In part, it could be envy. There’s a substantial conservative majority in America today, and it’s getting stronger and more vociferous all the time. During our terms in power, we have been more successful at achieving what the Left claims to want to achieve than the Left has been during its own periods of puissance. Envy is a strong force, and its grip on men’s minds is a subtle and involute thing. It ought not to be discounted.

     But there’s another, darker pair of possibilities, which has even more explanatory power and could well be the key to American political acrimony at all levels and over all subjects:

  • They’re lying about their goals.
  • They think we’re lying about our goals.

     Among ordinary decent Americans who style themselves “liberals” and take a passing interest in politics but don’t consider themselves activists, the first hypothesis doesn’t look good. Decent Americans are, after all, exactly that: decent Americans. Decent people understand that cooperation is the key to achieving any social objective. They don’t attempt to deceive others about what they want. A few might think conservatives are being cagey about their real goals, but only a few. Most of them know too many conservatives personally, and therefore have ample evidence to corroborate the premise of conservatives’ candor and benevolence.

     Among left-wing activists, on the other hand, matters are much different. For one thing, their societies tend to be closed to others of different opinions. As a result, they are self-insulated from evidence that would contradict whatever they might choose to believe about “the enemy.” For another, their politics is powered by the assumption of differential rectitude: the premise of their own moral superiority to those not of their kind, brilliantly delineated and explored in Thomas Sowell’s The Vision Of The Anointed. They cannot afford to concede conservatives superior insight on any topic, or moral acceptability on general principles; that would undermine their anointed status and send their concept of their place in the world crashing to the dust.

     Evidence for this is everywhere. Look at the moral haughtiness and outright contempt for conservative views to be found among such as Oliver Willis, Kevin Drum, Markos Zuniga and Duncan Black. Look at the venom dripping from the pens of those who flock to their banners. Look at their casual dismissals of the notion that any conservative might have wholesome aspirations for the less fortunate, or the notion that a conservative could possibly be a good and worthy man. Look at the way they routinely assert that whatever tactics their side employs are just dandy, since they’re on the side of the angels, whereas when conservatives do the very same things, their indignation knows no bounds.

     Near enemies, by the way, must always get more attention and effort than far ones, which is why leftist activists hold defeating President Bush and Republicans generally to be infinitely more important than extirpating the terrorist infrastructure from the Muslim Middle East.

     If you grant the Left’s premises and close your mind, as leftists do, to the counter-evidence to them, the rest of their aggressive, take-no-prisoners attitude towards us follows remorselessly. But that’s almost unnecessary to say. Many conceptual aberrations and diseases of the mind are logically impeccable, if you grant the absurd assumptions at their bases. (Arthur Herzog, in his book The B.S. Factor, defines a paranoid as “a logician with a fractured premise.”)

     Consider also this: the extraordinary dismay among leftist activists when someone they consider “one of us” defects even on one subject. The best illustrations of this in recent years have been the awakenings of Gregg Easterbrook and Bjorn Lomborg to the failures of statist-interventionist environmentalism. These men received so much vilification, and such savage assaults on their worth as human beings, as to suggest that they’d declared fellowship with Osama bin Laden. Conversely, a conservative who changes his views, such as Glenn Loury, is hailed as a sort of hero, and is feted in a manner more appropriate to a great military commander or a mighty savant. The intensity of the denunciations and accolades marks the enveloping us-versus-them attitude as essentially religious, rather than analytical and respectful of the evidence.

     Could leftists be lying about their goals? Might their much vaunted “compassion” be a mere smokescreen, and power over all the rest of us be their true and only objective? In a very few cases, yes. But such persons are less likely to be “ordinary” Americans than politicians with large public profiles and much notoriety. Whatever their station in life, these are the very definition of monsters: men who have sold their souls for power and recognize no constraints in the quest for it. They cannot be saved by any human exertion; they can only be watched, and put down when it becomes expedient to do so.

     We must concern ourselves with the followers of the “conservatives are secretly evil” axiom. These can yet be salvaged, even if they remain left-aligned, simply by confronting them with the counter-evidence they have been denied, or have denied themselves: ourselves, our courtesy, our humility, and our sincere desire to see things get better for everyone. Given time, a sufficient interpenetration could defuse the hostilities and return America to the days when a defeated activist could sincerely wish his victorious opponent the best of luck, as Hubert Humphrey did when he lost to Richard Nixon in 1968 (“He’s going to have my help”), or as Dan Quayle did when he and Bush the Elder lost to Bill Clinton and Al Gore in 1992 (“If he runs the country as well as he ran the campaign, we’ve got nothing to worry about”).

     Remember this when tempted to designate someone your enemy: you will force him, willy-nilly, to do the same to you. He might have wanted to grant your integrity and benevolence, but your declaration of war will compel him to reciprocate, if only in self-defense.

Apr 13 2025

Our Degeneration

     First, let’s have a clip from an underappreciated movie:

     Among the reasons for my admiration of Victoria Jackson is her willingness to accept small, unattractive parts like that and play them to the hilt. But let it rest for now.

     I am alternately amazed and appalled by the depths to which we – Americans – have sunk in the name of “tolerance.” I shan’t enumerate the varieties; I might not live to finish counting. Let it suffice to observe that the Gospel of Moral Relativism has birthed more monsters than Satan commands.

     The telltale consequence is how hard it is to shock us today. Intoxication? Casual theft? Adultery? Abuse of children? Exploitation of the elderly and disabled? Deliberate racism against / exclusion of Christians, men, or whites? Promotion of violence for a political purpose? These things all seem to have entered the category of “just another ho-hum day.”

     The percentage of days when I find myself thinking “Why not haul the Barrett .50 up to the top of a tall building and express my sentiments that way?” has grown disturbingly high. I keep to myself nearly all the time now, so I needn’t deal with the irrationalities and lunacies rampant among us. And I once called myself a libertarian. Go figure.

     Would you like to know what set this off? Recently the USA Fencing Women’s competition for the April North cup was held. It’s a sport in which I take an interest, as you might have discerned from the Realm of Essences novels. But who faced off for the title? Two men.

     I want insane asylums back.
     I want judicial commitment back.
     I want the vigilance committees back.
     I want the civil-rights laws repealed – all of them.
     I want “He needed killin’” restored as a defense to a charge of murder.

I Want America The Way It Was Before We Went Insane!

     Sorry, Gentle Reader. It all got to me and I simply had to vent. You know how it is with us old guys. I feel better now. Anyway, the mental disorder that has turned these United States upside down is tolerance. Give that a few cycles on your mental merry-go-round. Add a few drinks and have a nice evening.

Apr 13 2025

Add this to the list of shots I’m not getting

Get the flu shot, then get the flu.

People who received a flu vaccine formulated for the 2024-2025 flu season had a 27% higher risk of getting the flu than those who didn’t get the vaccine, suggesting “the vaccine has not been effective in preventing influenza this season,” according to a new preprint study.

The study of 53,402 employees of the Cleveland Clinic, an Ohio-based nonprofit academic medical center, concluded that the flu vaccine had a negative effectiveness rate of 26.9%…

Anecdotally, I’ve never been as sick with the flu as when I get the flu shot. The last real bad virus I had was something that my dear Mother brought back with her from a trip to Iowa, and I picked it up shuttling her around while she was sick. Other than that? Sniffles now and then, mostly due to hay fever.

So it doesn’t shock me one bit to find out that when you get yet another jab that claims to protect you from a virus, you are in fact more susceptible to said virus. Sound like any other jab that’s come out lately?

At this point in my life, if the jab wasn’t developed prior to my birth, I’m probably not going to take it. Big Pharma has turned me into an anti-new-vaxxer pretty damn completely.

Apr 13 2025

Choosing The Thief

     Catholics call today Palm Sunday: the day commemorating Jesus’s entry into Jerusalem. That event had features that suggested that the Redeemer would be hailed, even lionized, by the people of the city. As anyone familiar with the story of the Passion is aware, that turned out not to be the case:

     [Applause to Dio for the above graphic.]

     That image put me in mind of an early Robert A. Heinlein story: “Gulf:”

     “Kettle Belly, I confess to a monkey prejudice in favor of democracy, human dignity, and freedom. It goes beyond logic; it is the kind of a world I like. In my job I have jungled with the outcasts of society, snared their slumgullion. Stupid they may be, bad they are not I have no wish to see them become domestic animals.”
     For the first time the big man showed concern. His persona as “King of the Kopters,” master merchandiser, slipped away; he sat in brooding majesty, a lonely and unhappy figure. “I know, Joe. They are of us; their little dignities, their nobilities, are not lessened by their sorry state. Yet it must be.”
     “Why? New Man will come granted. But why hurry the process?”
     “Ask yourself.” He swept a hand toward the oubliette. ‘Ten minutes ago you and I saved this planet, all our race. It’s the hour of the knife. Someone must be on guard if the race is to live; there is no one but us. To guard effectively we New Men must be organized, must never fumble any crisis like this and must increase our numbers. We are few now, Joe; as the crises increase, we must increase to meet them. Eventually and it’s a dead race with time we must take over and make certain that baby never plays with matches.”
     He stopped and brooded. “I confess to that same affection for democracy, Joe. But it’s like yearning for the Santa Claus you believed in as a child. For a hundred and fifty years or so democracy, or something like it, could flourish safely. The issues were such as to be settled without disaster by the votes of common men, befogged and ignorant as they were. But now, if the race is simply to stay alive, political decisions depend on real knowledge of such things as nuclear physics, planetary ecology, genetic theory, even system mechanics. They aren’t up to it, Joe. With goodness and more will than they possess less than one in a thousand could stay awake over one page of nuclear physics; they can’t learn what they must know.”
     Gilead brushed it aside. “It’s up to us to brief them. Their hearts are all right; tell them the score they’ll come down with the right answers.”
     “No, Joe. We’ve tried it; it does not work. As you say, most of them are good, the way a dog can be noble and good. Yet there are bad ones Mrs. Keithley and company and more like her. Reason is poor propaganda when opposed by the yammering, unceasing lies of shrewd and evil and self-serving men. The little man has no way to judge and the shoddy lies are packaged more attractively. There is no way to offer color to a colorblind man, nor is there any way for us to give the man of imperfect brain the canny skill to distinguish a lie from a truth.
     “No, Joe. The gulf between us and them is narrow, but it is very deep. We cannot close it.”
     “I wish,” said Gilead, “that you wouldn’t class me with your ‘New Man’, I feel more at home on the other side.”
     “You will decide for yourself which side you are on, as each of us has done.”

     [From Assignment In Eternity]

     The above is a tragic assessment of Mankind, to be sure… yet it is consistent with our habitual “choosing the thieves” over honest men who prefer to tell us the truth rather than pander to our sugarplum fantasies.

     But Heinlein was famously libertarian, in nearly every respect. How could he have an attractive protagonist endorse an oligarchy of the Superior? It’s too inconsistent to accept.

     It’s worth more than a few moments’ thought.

     From my novel Chosen One:

     The saber gleamed in the muted light. I’d spent a lot of time and effort sharpening and polishing it.
     It was a plain weapon, not one you’d expect to see in the hand of a king. There was only the barest tracing on the faintly curved blade. The guard bell was a plain steel basket, without ornamentation. The hilt was a seven inch length of oak, darkened with age but firm to the touch. There was only a hint of a pommel, a slight swell of the hilt at its very end.
     “What is this?”
     “A sword. Your sword.”
     A hint of alarm compressed his eyes. “What do you expect me to do with it?”
     I shrugged. “Whatever you think appropriate. But a king should have a sword. By the way,” I said, “it was first worn by Louis the Ninth of France when he was the Dauphin, though he set it aside for a useless jeweled monstrosity when he ascended the throne.”
     Time braked to a stop as confusion spun his thoughts.
     “I don’t know how to use it,” he murmured.
     “Easily fixed. I do.”
     “But why, Malcolm?”
     I stepped back, turned a little away from those pleading eyes.
     “Like it or not, you’re a king. You don’t know what that means yet. You haven’t a sense for the scope of it. But you must learn. Your life, and the lives of many others, will turn on how well you learn it.” I paused and gathered my forces. “What is a king, Louis?”
     He stood there with the sword dangling from his hand. “A ruler. A leader. A warlord.”
     “More. All of that, but more. The sword is an ancient symbol for justice. Back when the function of nobility was better understood, a king never sat his throne without his sword to hand. If he was to treat with the envoy of another king, it would be at his side. If he was to dispense justice, it would be across his knees. Why do you suppose that was, Louis?”
     He stood silent for a few seconds.
     “Symbolic of the force at his command, I guess.”
     I shook my head gently.
     “Not just symbolic. A true king, whose throne belonged to him by more than the right of inheritance, led his own troops and slew malefactors by his own hand. The sword was a reminder of the privilege of wielding force, but it was there to be used as well.”
     His hands clenched and unclenched in time to his thoughts. I knew what they had to be.
     “The age of kings is far behind us, Malcolm.”
     “It never ended. Men worthy of the role became too few to maintain the institution.”
     “And I’m…worthy?”
     If he wasn’t, then no worthy man had ever lived, but I couldn’t tell him that.
     “There’s a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There’s no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself.”
     His face had begun to twitch. He’d heard all he could stand to hear, and perhaps more. I decided to cap the pressure.
     “Kings have refused their crowns many times, Louis. You might do as much, though it would sadden me to see it. But you could break that sword over your knee, change your name, and run ten thousand miles to hide where no one could know you, and it wouldn’t lessen what you are and were born to be.” I gestured at the sword. “Keep it near you.”

     The vision above isn’t too distant from that in the Heinlein novella. Despite my yearning for the abolition of the State in all its duplicitous and meretricious forms, it just might be the best we can do. For while there are wise and just men among us, in the main Mankind is neither wise nor just.

     We are fallen.

     A little off the usual track for an early-morning thought, eh? Well, I have to go with what’s on my mind. It’s there because of an encounter from yesterday: Someone at Facebook was touting his newly released anti-Catholic novel in a writers’ group. You can imagine how I reacted, especially after a commenter added his opinion that “Catholicism is a pestilence upon humanity.”

     Today, begins Holy Week, as he who would be acclaimed King of Kings over the centuries to come begins his last week before his Passion. It’s a good occasion on which to reflect on our terrible propensity for choosing the thief. Our thieves, of course, carry briefcases in contrast to the burglary tools employed by Barabbas’s ilk. (“A man with a briefcase can steal more money than any man with a gun.” – Don Henley) They lie to us, promise that allowing them to steal will make us rich, and we believe them.

     I’d say our race still has a bit of maturing to do.

     Have a nice day.

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