Mar 23 2021

Culture, Context, And Criticism

     Forgive me, Gentle Reader: I’ve lost the link, but a few days ago I read an article that sticks in my mind for reasons you will soon grasp without prompting. It was a critical article about The Who, the great British rock group that blew through pop music in the late Sixties and early Seventies like an energizing tornado.

     Peter Townshend, Roger Daltrey, John Entwistle, and Keith Moon brought a furious, irresistible power to pop music at a time when it was drooping toward self-obsession and self-indulgence. Far too many rock musicians had decided to posture as creative geniuses (not a chance), virtuosi (damned few), or gurus (God save us). They had begun to drift away from the essence of what had brought them popularity: the entertainment value of music written for ordinary people to enjoy, to carry around, and perhaps to imitate.

     In those years there was only an embryo of a critical institution dedicated to pop music. There was Rolling Stone, and a handful of far smaller and less influential imitators. Establishment cultural critics mostly dismissed pop music, often with contempt (“Noise in three major chords”). Even the worldwide popularity of the Beatles and the Rolling Stones had little influence on criticism at that time.

     The Who forced people to pay attention. Partly it was their power-pop music, a far cry from most of what was being recorded at the time. But some of it came from their outrages, such as the destruction of their instruments in the middle of a performance. Critics scratched their heads over it. Could such deliberate flaunting of the norms be the new trend in pop entertainment? There was no consensus, only this deliberately outrageous band that seemed to disdain conventional notions of entertainment.

     The Who’s first three albums sold well in England. They’d had a couple of hits that crossed the Atlantic, “Happy Jack” and “I Can See For Miles,” which were enough to stimulate American pop fans’ interest in this outlaw band. But it wasn’t until 1969, a landmark year for all of pop music, that The Who’s star was firmly anchored in the firmament.

     The key was Tommy, the first true “rock opera.”

     Music has been used to tell stories for centuries. Indeed, the union of song with story is responsible for much of what we know about the lives of our progenitors of medieval and later times. But rock music hadn’t gone beyond the love song and the political or “protest” song. The “concept album” concept was still in the process of being born. Then came Tommy, a full-length story of love, murder, intrigue, and a child compelled to witness it all and to keep silent about it.

     Tommy was immediately hailed as a masterpiece. No, it wasn’t Verdi or Puccini. It didn’t have the majesty of a Beethoven symphony or Bach’s Mass in B Minor. It had something else: popular reach. Approachability and comprehensibility. An affecting story told in popular tunes your neighborhood party-guitarist could copy. In a year that featured some of the very best, most seminal rock music ever recorded, Tommy was at the pinnacle.

     The critics of the time were somewhat bemused by it. They’d been following the self-nominated virtuosi and gurus. It seemed to them that there was more mileage in those currents than in the Who’s power pop. Given the developments of the decades since then, they were probably right about that. Even so, Tommy compelled them to take notice. They dared not disappoint the millions who thrilled to it if they wanted to sell column-inches.

     Fifty-two years have passed since then. Many changes have come over pop music. I’m an old man, soon to be seventy, and at a great distance from the stuff that’s being promoted today. But I still listen to Tommy now and then, and smile.

***

     As for the aforementioned critical article about The Who, the author, whose name has vanished from my memory as completely as the link, said of Tommy that over the years its significance has “diminished greatly.” That caused my eyelids to snap back against their stops. What could the writer have meant with such a curt dismissal?

     Granted that Tommy blazed no new trails in musicology. Granted that other concept-oriented works, including a couple of “rock operas,” have come along since then. Granted even that The Who thereafter traveled a great distance from the musical and narrative styles Tommy exhibited. But what of that? What made Tommy a pop-music milestone was the cultural context in which it emerged.

     “Cultural context” strikes me as a unitary concept. It is impossible to grasp a culture divorced from its seemingly noncultural surroundings. Could the many “protest songs” of the Sixties be understood apart from the Sixties’ sociopolitical milieu, most emphatically including the Vietnam War? What about the psychedelic songs and the “acid rock” of Grateful Dead and Jefferson Airplane?

     An attempt to separate a cultural artifact from its time inevitably does violence to the artifact. The artifact must be viewed in its original context for its significance to be appreciated. So it is with pop music, quite as much as with orchestral music, painting, sculpture, drama, or any other element that receives cultural attention.

     Tommy defied many existing and emerging trends. Its popularity confused those critics who saw the San Francisco and Los Angeles musical communities as the wave of the future. Once again, they weren’t entirely wrong about that assessment, judging by the music of the decades that followed. But there’s important information in that critic’s dismissal of Tommy’s significance. In a sense, its relevance is eternal:

Critics are always an Establishment.

     The critical temperament seeks the same thing as the creative temperament: audience, acceptance, and applause. However, the critic’s assets are far weaker than those of the creative. He is tightly bound to his time’s creatives, unable to command attention without them. This automatically makes him seek for the trend in motion (or about to erupt), and to strive to “get out in front of it.”

     Many have commented on this phenomenon. It does seem to partake of a pervasive envy among critics of the creatives upon whose products they feed. Perhaps the pithiest of such commentary comes from a creator of note: the late Robert A. Heinlein:

     A critic is a man who creates nothing and thereby feels qualified to judge the work of creative men. There is logic in this; he is unbiased, he hates all creative people equally. [From Time Enough For Love]

     If you’re a creative – once again, the medium in which you choose to create doesn’t matter – you might want to keep that thought handy for when your stuff comes in for critical attention. Think of them as remoras straining to suck nutrition from your scales and fins. The attitude drains all the sting out of their superciliousness. It’s done wonders for me.

Mar 23 2021

Pretty much.

Someone should write a book: The Education of Valdimir Putin. About the lessons Russia has learned about its Western ‘partners’ since the end of the Cold War. Western engagement with Russia seems to consist entirely of lies, bluster, insults, betrayal, pigeon-like chess playing, pressure tactics (sanctions), intimidation, etc. Such group-think and hostility leads to war.[1]

Our hostility to Russia is one of those Great Mysteries. It’s there but it simply fails to register at a visceral level. I don’t “get it” in short. Few were more ardent a cold warrior than I but the freaking structure of the Soviet Union is in the veritable dustbin of history and the Russian people simply cannot have any illusions about the ghastly gang of gangsters (GGG) who ran the country into the ground. Simply getting chickens to the meat counters was something the government couldn’t accomplish. And let’s not even consider the earlier internal forced labor, arbitrary rule, hideous repression, starvation, and slaughter. A lot of seriously hurt feelings out of that.

Some otherwise sensible people think that the fall of the Soviet Union was a deception operation, SHMG, designed to disarm us mentally as to the enduring threat of Soviet communism. That’s pretty rich to my way of thinking but the larger issue of the post-1991 incessant riding and prodding of the Russians is even more astonishing. As a certified “Right-wing Hater” I’m more than happy to participate in a hatefest against orphans, puppies, kittens, lovable butt-heart feminists, vibrant Shaniquanauts, and benighted gender-change entrepreneurs but even I have to have at least some evidence that mischief is afoot.

As I’ve pointed out, even if you think that the Russians “took over” Crimea, Luhansk, Donetsk, Abkahzia, and South Ossetia completely without Western provocation of any kind and in violation of all norms of civilized behavior, the sum total of that action in geographical terms is a whopping 0.54% increase in the territory of the Russian Federation. Well, “today South Ossetsia, tomorrow the world” the thinking must go but to me it all boils down to a gigantic failure of imagination to create something healthy and vibrant on the wreckage of WWII and the Cold War. Ef that, apparently.

But, neeewwww, here we are wrapped around the axle about “white supremacism,” hurt lesbian feelings, economic lunacy, and the abandonment of the very basic institutions of our nation; prosecuting reckless, pointless wars against Iran, Libya, Syria, Afghanistan, and Iraq; and pushing the NATO Area of Operations from the North Atlantic to the effing South China Sea. All very “progressive.”

Notes
[1] Comment by Jackrabbit on “Syria – The War Is Resuming On Several Fronts.” By b, Moon of Alabama, 3/22/21.

Mar 22 2021

Something New for a Birthday Gift

My ‘baby’ brother Ron, turns 60 today. I wanted to do something special for him, but really find it difficult. Like me, he’s reached an age where he can afford whatever he wants – and, like me, generally his tastes are simple, and he is disinclined to stockpile cr@p.

So, when I found that today is also the birthdate of Louis L’Amour, I thought it would be fun to read a story by him at the same time. He liked the idea, he chose the Last of the Breed, set in the Cold War era, and, thanks to the magic of online ordering, we both have copies, and will be discussing it when we next get together, virtual or real.

I wouldn’t have thought about this, except for the fun we’ve been having in our virtual book club. It does make it more sociable to read the same book and discuss it with friends. This is one that I may try again with other family or friends at a distance.

Mar 21 2021

Deciding To Believe

     Many Christians never face a moment when they must decide: “Can I accept this set of propositions called Christianity as credible…plausible…true, and worth committing my life to them?” In part, that’s because many of us who were “raised in the Faith” never get an opportunity to question its soundness. In equal part, it’s because many people don’t like the feeling that comes with questioning their beliefs and practices, even if those beliefs and practices were inculcated in them by a process of indoctrination when they were too young to resist. No doubt there are other reasons for remaining unquestioning.

     Those of us who have fallen away face a different set of incentives and disincentives. For many, the worst is pride: the reluctance ever to admit that one might have made a mistake. For others, the main barrier is an ersatz rationalism that rejects the supernatural with prejudice. And for others still, the key hindrance is one’s anticipation of what others – often the very persons who induced us to leave the Faith in the first place – will say about our “backsliding.”

     I shan’t demean any of those obstacles. We are weak and fallible creatures, and never weaker than when we confront our own fallibility. My own, however, was different: I had to satisfy myself that nothing the Faith demanded of me was contrary to the dictates of reason. To reach that conclusion, I had to learn the Faith all over again, from the very beginning.

     I had no help during that process. I was still “away,” and felt that I had to remain away until I’d made up my mind. The C.S.O., though a good woman in every sense, is an agnostic, and could not be any part of my explorations. I had to go it alone, working entirely from the Scriptures and my own deductions about what God wants for us and from us.

     And of course – forgive me for jumping to the end of the tale – I made it. I concluded that Christianity is entirely reasonable.

***

     My conclusion that Christianity is entirely reasonable decomposes into two components:

  1. The theology, a.k.a. the “supernatural backstory” about the birth, ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth, is both believable on the available evidence and consistent with what we can infer about God;
  2. The moral-ethical doctrine expressed by Jesus is entirely wholesome, life-affirming, and consistent with Man’s nature as a “project pursuer:” i.e., a seeker of prosperity, security, community, and peace.

     Of course, it was necessary to accept a postulate: that there exists a Supreme Being responsible for all of Creation, whom we call God. But all logical explorations require one or more postulates. The opposite premise – that there is no God, and therefore that the universe either has always existed or “just happened” one day – is no more plausible and in many ways less so.

     That exploration transitioned into a sort of “post-doctoral” phase. Indeed, it’s still going on. In it I strive continuously to separate the teachings of Christ, whose authority was established incontrovertibly by His Resurrection, from those of fallible men, whose authority is almost always self-proclaimed. During the Advent and Lenten seasons, those studies become more intense than usual, in part because of the elevated chatter from persons – Christian and non-Christian – with axes to grind.

     When I sift among the pronouncements of men for nuggets of insight and test them for validity, I use two Gospel passages as my filter:

     First, Jesus proclaimed the overarching importance of two Great Commandments:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

     Second, He, being God, would not withhold from anyone what that person needs for the sake of his soul:

     And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting? Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. [Matthew 19:16-19]

     If a man, be he lay or cleric, exhorts me to accept that some proposition is “God’s will,” I test it against those passages. Unless it’s consistent with both, it fails…as does the “authority” of its proposer.

     The above progression, from a simple postulate through study and analysis that has already taken years and will probably continue to the end of my life, is what makes it possible for me to be a believing Christian.

***

     Once more I shall say it: Atheism is an intellectually defensible position. Its essence consists of the rejection of the postulate of a Supreme Being. Some very smart people have been atheists. (Yes, some not-so-smart people, too.) But the recognition that makes atheism defensible is one that most atheists will resist to the death: i.e., that to maintain that “There is no God” is itself a statement of faith. It’s as unverifiable and unfalsifiable, given human limitations, as my belief that there is a God.

     (There’s some entertainment to be had from the dogmatic certainty of the militant atheist. It proceeds from a species of self-unawareness, which in other contexts gives rise to all sorts of humor. But one mustn’t laugh at him. As the saying goes, every saint has a past, and every sinner has a future. Yes, you too.)

     The great crimes against the mind and soul are those statements and deeds that attempt to foreclose the path to faith. The raucous, supercilious derision of the unbeliever. The lies and distortions of the pseudo-authority. The forcible attempts by parents, spouses, and others to impede the journey to faith. These are violations of the integrity of the mind: its freedom to inquire, to sift the evidence, and to reach its own conclusions. The good atheist or agnostic avoids those…but not all such persons are good.

***

     The above is on my mind for several reasons, one of which is a bit of fiction I’ve been laboring over. In it, a Catholic priest is puzzling over how to introduce Christianity to a young, intelligent woman who knows literally nothing about it. Indeed, she was only recently acquainted with its existence, owing to her being the ward of a devout man. Here’s the key snippet:

     It was unusually mild for an Onteora summer day, so once Ray had removed his vestments, tidied up after the noon Mass, and had eaten some lunch, he took his cell phone, his folio, and a ballpoint pen out to the bench in the rectory’s side yard, and sat to enjoy the gentle breeze. He opened his folio on his lap, uncapped his pen, and stopped to think.
     Where to begin?
     Young children’s instruction usually begins with Genesis, the creation story and the story of Adam and Eve. I’m not sure that’s the way to go with Fountain. The story has a lot of instructional value, but it also promotes questions I’m not sure I could answer. Or that anyone else could, really.
     Even so, “how did things begin?” is the usual starting point for all religious instruction. If I don’t start there, then where?
     He found himself at a break point, a resting place in his thoughts that posed a demand for introspection. His own faith, as passionate as any he had encountered in any other Catholic, had begun not with Genesis but with Thomas Aquinas and the concept of natural law. Immediately upon being introduced to the concept, he’d felt an imperative need to grasp the nature of those laws and why they were so well suited to Mankind. More urgently still, he’d needed to know how they’d come about.
     In a tangent that at first baffled him, his thoughts swerved to Fountain’s extraordinary cooking, her comments about the voices of foods, and her astonished, joyous first encounter with wine.
     Food speaks to her, she said. What does it say? What can it say?
     The question answered itself.
     She senses the natures of the foods she works with, so intimately and sensitively that she can evoke culinary wonders from the most fundamental stuffs. And Larry said it’s a regular occurrence. The dish she served His Holiness wasn’t a one-time thing.
     To sense the natures of things is to sense the laws designed into them.
     It was an epiphany to rival Ray’s first true communion with God: the day, more than twenty years before, when he first sensed the will of the Father, heard the voice of the Son, and felt the Holy Spirit move within him. The day that he knew, without the smallest trace of doubt, that despite the adverse counsels of his parents, the discouragements from his friends, and the innumerable attractions of a worldly, secular life, the priesthood was where he belonged.
     Laws don’t just hang in the void waiting for something to come along and conform to them. They’re inherent in the making, the designer’s mind as he conceives of them and his hands as he forms them from the ingredients he chooses.
     Whatever he intends to make, the human maker must conform to the laws inherent in his chosen ingredients. He cannot escape them or set them at naught. But the ultimate Maker, who created all the ingredients men work with from nothing but His will, conceived of His creation-to-be with the laws already embedded in it. The laws He chose ab initio.
     Aquinas’s discourse on the metaphysical necessity of an uncreated Creator, an Initiator without whom existence would pose a problem of infinite regress, came at once to mind. It completed Ray’s epiphany, gave form and solidity to his intentions, and added an exclamation point of the purest and most exultant joy.
     That’s how to do it. That’s how it should be done.
     He bent over his folio and started writing furiously.

     Father Ray’s faith is passionate for the same reason as mine: because he found his way to it through the exercise of his intelligence, as noted above. That made it his preferred way to introduce it to a catechumen completely new to it. He’s aware that Aquinas’s argument for an uncreated Creator is in the nature of a postulate, and that his student (Fountain) might not accept it, but it doesn’t trouble him, for he is concerned with education rather than indoctrination.

     I could wish that all education in Christianity and its tenets were of that sort.

***

     Today is Passion Sunday, the last Sunday before Palm Sunday, Holy Week, and the concluding triduum of the Easter miracle. It’s a good time for Christians to review what they believe and why. Sadly, most don’t bother with such reviews, owing to the considerations I enumerated in the opening segment, among others.

     Just as Christmas has been secularized for the enjoyment of the non-religious, so also has Easter, with its colored eggs and chocolate bunnies. Yet we who have made the decision to believe cannot help but be aware of the awesome significance of the Resurrection miracle. Without that miracle, Christianity would not exist. The recent movie The Case for Christ depicts what the acceptance of that event does to one unbeliever: Lee Strobel, the author of the book from which the movie was made.

     For Christians, Easter joy is about more than chocolate. Oh, bring the chocolate, too; we like it as much as anyone else. But for one who has come to the Faith as an adult, determined to test it against the dictates of logic and evidence, it has an impact to which dyed eggs and chocolate bunnies cannot compare. It confirms all the promises of the Redeemer in the most dramatic way. Among those promises was this one: that at the end of life we will follow Him to where He now resides.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Mar 21 2021

Pearls of expression.

At the time when political power began soaring, in the 1930s, American political thinking systematically disregarded the danger from government. In the 1940s, as Professor David Ciepley observed, “the State was dropped from American social science, as part of the reaction to the rise of totalitarianism. All traces of state autonomy, now understood as ‘state coercion,’ were expunged from the image of American democracy.” Ciepley explained that “the emergence of Hitler and Stalin as the ultimate social engineers led American political scientists to … fall silent about all such activities in the American governmental system. If totalitarianism means elite social engineering, then American democracy must mean popular control.” Democracy became the purported champion of freedom, because people were taught that democracies were inherently nonoppressive.[1]

What social engineering?

Notes
[1] “The Never-Ending Battle Between Leviathan And Liberty.” By James Bovard, ZeroHedge, 3/20/21 (emphasis added).

Mar 20 2021

Beware!

     Someone has been sending out emails that purport to come from me.

     I have not been emailing the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch. Someone is trying to “phish” you. Do not click any links in any email that bears my name, or a Liberty’s Torch address.

     An email originated by me will always contain an image of my business card. Keep that in mind.

Mar 20 2021

“Domestic Terrorism” (UPDATED)

     I pay almost no attention to the mainstream media. While I’ll occasionally take note of one of their distortions or deceptions, normally I ignore them. They’ve fouled their own nests so thoroughly as to have forfeited all credibility as sources of verifiable information.

     Nevertheless, the media are important: not because they convey important information to the general public – they don’t – but because large numbers of Americans still believe that they do. Those Americans trust that “if it’s important, I’ll read about it in the New York Times or see it on the CBS Evening News.” And so the media can deceive by omission: i.e., they can persuade their readerships and viewerships that some event reportage of which would evoke intense interest either didn’t happen or was far too insignificant to merit their coverage.

     Which brings us to this infamy, which I’ve learned about only through the diligence of Kenny “Wirecutter” Lane:

     In the early Tuesday [February 2, 2021] morning hours, motion sensors alerted the occupant, hereafter referred to as John Doe (names have been changed to protect the innocent) that there was movement along the driveway to his home. Given the time of day, the location of the home, and some recent history that will be discussed later, Doe knew he needed to react, but in a non-threatening manner. His decision was to put on a pair of pants, remain barefoot and shirtless, and move to the front porch with his hands raised in the air. What appeared in the driveway was the lead vehicle of three BearCat armored personnel carriers – commonly referred to as personnel tanks (pictured left) – in a convoy of over thirty total vehicles.

     The BearCats are armed with a rotating turret for housing customer-specific weapon systems. Five gun ports are located on each side of the vehicle, and an additional two on the rear. The vehicle[s] are often equipped with .50 BMG or 7.62mm rifles. It is a military-grade vehicle often used by U.S. Special Forces and the Australian military.

     But on this day, they were cruising the Flathead Valley with thirty other police vehicles in tow.

     Also surrounding the house were one-hundred-plus federal agents with a helicopter in support. Federal agents immediately took Doe into custody and placed him in loose-fitting flex cuffs into the back of one of the BearCat vehicles. Inside the vehicle, John was placed on the outer wall, and at his feet were loaded weapons. Doe later concluded that this had to be a setup, for if he were to try to free himself, he would likely be killed.

     Got your attention? I’m sure you’re eager to learn the reason for this military-scale raid and arrest of a peaceable private citizen in Montana:

     What provoked this Montana this raid? Doe’s former girlfriend from North Carolina filed a restraining order (a civil matter, not criminal) against Doe in that state claiming he was homicidal, suicidal, a threat to her, and had bomb-making materials with the intention to cause harm. She also claimed he had booby traps all over the home and the surrounding property. But none of this was true.

     A restraining order filed in a North Carolina state court provoked a military-grade assault on the home of a Montana resident. Give that a moment to sink in. Then read the entirety of the article for yourself. Believe me, it’s worth your time.

***

     If you recall the coverage of the Branch Davidian / Waco incident, you surely remember the attention it received nationwide. The media of 1993 regarded it as highly newsworthy: illegal-weapons allegations against a religious cult whose leader supposedly held underage concubines in sexual slavery. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, known derisively throughout the firearms-rights community as “F Troop,” initiated hostilities with a completely unnecessary SWAT-style raid on the Branch Davidian compound that cost nine lives. The consequences included a 51-day standoff with the FBI, the incineration of the compound after a saturation bombardment with tear gas, and a total loss of 76 Branch Davidian lives, including 25 children.

     None of the allegations used to justify the above atrocities were ever substantiated. Even so, the media aided the Clinton Administration and then-Attorney-General Janet Reno by popularizing the federal characterization of the Branch Davidians as a violent cult rife with child abuse, and which engineered its own destruction. The defamation of the Branch Davidians was conducted both through highly tendentious “reporting” and television dramas.

     Once the public notices an incident of that sort, the media must begin to report on it, albeit not necessarily honestly. The Waco siege was far too noticeable to cover up. The events of February 2, 2021 in Flathead, Montana are plainly a different story.

***

     The media have given the Montana incident no coverage whatsoever. I’m still looking for further substantiation of the Montana Daily Gazette report, but simply for the sake of speculation, let’s assume for the moment that it’s accurate. The general public doesn’t know about it. What would the majority of Americans have to say about it, were they to be informed of it, the scale and destructiveness of it, and the reasons for it?

     There’s been a lot of casual talk – mostly from the Left and the supporters of the Usurper Regime – about “domestic terrorism.” To me, the Montana incident is a perfect example: the use of overwhelming federal forces to terrorize a private citizen for no good reason. Surely if there were a good reason, the feds wouldn’t have kept the raid completely secret. Indeed, they would have trumpeted its success as a stroke in the cause of justice, or national security, or whatnot. Neither would they have persuaded the national media to ignore it.

     Governments throughout these United States have been acting against citizens’ rights foe some time now. Especially threatened is our right to freedom of expression. In case you’re unpersuaded that the threat is real, consider this recent report from New York City. Can you imagine the intimidating power of what De Blasio has proclaimed – how chilling the effect upon New Yorkers’ freedom of speech?

     Firearms rights? You can forget them. Indeed, the “John Doe” of the Montana incident may have been targeted specifically for that reason. He was a Federal Firearms Licensee, qualified to make, repair, and sell firearms of all kinds. No allegation that he was in violation of any of the terms of his license has been made.

     Thomas Jefferson wrote in the Declaration of Independence of “the consent of the governed.” Is it plausible that a government that wields such immense degrees of force against a peaceable private citizen genuinely has that consent – or believes that it has it?

     UPDATE: For those interested in learning more about the Waco siege, this article by James Bovard provides a fascinating look at the cover-up orchestrated by the Clinton Administration in the aftermath, including its unconcealed aim: “to restore trust in government.” Download it and hold onto it; it’s the kind of explosive expose that attracts unfriendly attention.

Mar 19 2021

Conditions For Tolerance

     Sane persons in a sane society appreciate the value of a degree of conformity: not smothering, “everyone must be and think and do exactly alike” conformity, but a concession to important norms of conduct pertinent to public places and public events. It’s why we have “blue laws” about acceptable degrees of personal exposure on public streets.

     Whoops! Excuse me! We had such laws once upon a time. If they’re still on the books, they’re not enforced, at least not consistently. Today there appear to be neither effective norms for public conduct nor any great willingness to assert them. Some of the consequences have been dire.

     Well, at least we still have laws about criminal conduct, right? Thou shalt not kill, steal, or diddle the underage, for example. Those are enforced, aren’t they? Not perfectly, but most of the time, right?

     Even those inarguable laws don’t receive perfect respect, much less perfect enforcement. Ashli Babbitt’s family might have a few words to say on the subject. Ditto for all the victims on Jeffrey Epstein’s private island. But perhaps that’s too large a story for a Friday morning in Lent. Today I have another, “smaller” story in mind:

     Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Brett Blomme was arrested Tuesday on tentative charges of possession of child pornography, the state Department of Justice announced.

     Blomme, 38, was taken into custody by special agents with the state Division of Criminal Investigation “following an investigation into multiple uploads of child pornography through a Kik messaging application account in October and November 2020,” according to a statement….

     A 44-page search warrant filed Friday by a DCI special agent said investigators found Blomme, using the name “dommasterbb,” uploaded 27 videos and images containing child pornography. Two of the files were uploaded at a Milwaukee County government building, the search warrant said.

     The special agent sought permission to search Blomme’s courtroom, chambers, houses in Milwaukee and Dane counties and his 2017 Audi. Blomme is currently assigned to Milwaukee County Children’s Court….

     Blomme was elected to the court in the spring 2020 election, defeating incumbent Milwaukee County Circuit Judge Paul Dedinsky, an appointee of former Republican Gov. Scott Walker….

     A longtime LGBTQ activist, Blomme previously was director of major gifts at the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin for 18 months, following a stint at the Madison City Attorney’s Office. From 2011 to 2015, he practiced criminal defense with the State Public Defender’s Office….

     During the election, Blomme had to explain why he, his husband and their children live both in Milwaukee and the Madison area.

     So the accused Brett Blomme, who has been charged with the possession of child pornography, is:

  • A homosexual;
  • An “LGBTQ+ activist;”
  • And a Children’s Court judge.

     I’d bet any amount you’d care to name that the “LGBTQ+” types will scream bloody murder about causal connection proposed between those three things and a pedophilic offense. It must all be mere coincidence!

     Funny how common such coincidences are, isn’t it?

     Cassandra Fairbanks adds:

     The alleged pedophile judge was the president and CEO of the Cream City Foundation, which runs the Milwaukee Drag Queen Story Hour for local children. As of early Thursday morning, however, all articles and mentions of him had been scrubbed from their website….

     According to his LinkedIn profile, Blomme served as the president and CEO of the drag story hour foundation until August 2020, when he left to become a judge.

     “Brett Blomme is the President & CEO of Cream City Foundation. He has nearly 15 years of experience in philanthropy, community organizing, law, and nonprofit management. Before joining CCF, Brett served as the Director of Major Gifts for the AIDS Resource Center of Wisconsin (ARCW),” his profile states.

     Mike Hendrix comments:

     [W]e now have the Pervert Corollary to Sutton’s Maxim: Kiddie Diddlers will reliably be found where the kiddies are. Which would make DQSH a mighty neat little setup for these monstrous freaks, wouldn’t you say?

     Mike adds a few pictures from “Drag Queen Story Hours” past to nail the coffin lid tightly shut. Surf over there for a gander; my stomach isn’t strong enough to post them here.

***

     My thoughts on this subject revolve around the concept of tolerance, specifically: What is tolerable and what is not? Upon what criteria shall we decide?

     Those questions are at the heart of all efforts to maintain a society that is simultaneously maximally free and adequately orderly. The answers are elusive, in part because of the unprecedentedly high willingness of activists to create confrontations, coupled to the aversion to confrontations common among non-activists. Mark Steyn’s observation about “the smarter bullies” comes to mind:

     If it were just terrorists bombing buildings and public transit, it would be easier; even the feeblest Eurowimp jurisdiction is obliged to act when the street is piled with corpses. But there’s an old technique well understood by the smarter bullies. If you want to break a man, don’t attack him head on, don’t brutalize him; pain and torture can awaken a stubborn resistance in all but the weakest. But just make him slightly uncomfortable, disrupt his life at the margin, and he’ll look for the easiest path to re-normalization. There are fellows rampaging through the streets because of some cartoons? Why, surely the most painless solution would be if we all agreed not to publish such cartoons. [From America Alone]

     Steyn has outlined a pattern easily understood in application to any and every sort of deliberate public disturbance. There are fellows disrupting our church services and protesting loudly outside our courtrooms because we consider homosexuality a mental disorder? Why, surely the most painless solution would be if the diagnostic treatises were to remove such a classification. The construction of parallel formulations for other public nuisances is an exercise for my Gentle Readers.

     As it happens, I’ve been addressing the “What are the limits of tolerable tolerance?” question for some time. I wrote a substantial novel that addresses it. But a generalized solution to the question may be impossible to reach.

     Worse yet is the possibility that political pressures might compel a “generalized solution” that solves nothing, or makes matters worse. Political decisions often have that character.

     Of two things we may be sure:

  • As long as activists get what they want from forcing confrontations and political maneuvering, they’ll keep doing so.
  • With each such confrontation (and the consequent concessions to the activists), the far larger, non-activist public will grow wearier, angrier, and more inclined to intolerance, even when it’s unwise.

     As Herbert Stein memorably put it, “If something cannot continue indefinitely, it will stop.” Even if we can’t be sure exactly when.

***

     American society of today tolerates several things it should never have agreed to tolerate. Permitting the sexually disordered to have access to vulnerable children is one such mistake. Tolerance of insane levels of counterfactual self-classification – e.g., the bearded hulk in a dress who claims to “identify as a woman” – is another. While these things certainly don’t account for all abuse of the vulnerable young, they contribute a share that is easily eliminated.

     This is not to say that homosexuals and those who prefer to present as the opposite sex don’t have rights. They most certainly do. But no more than you or I do they have a right to impose themselves on others willy-nilly. Unfortunately, as the Brett Blomme case illustrates, they’ve succeeded in using politics to win privileges that invade the rights of others, including parents’ right to insulate their children from pernicious influences.

     We the Normal have lessons to learn about the abuse of the concept of tolerance. Unfortunately, we’re learning them in the harshest imaginable way. Too many children have paid or are paying a price they cannot afford.

Mar 19 2021

What is wrong with this video?

I was watching Biden’s speech about the COVID vaccination progress. The video is like watching an animatron in ‘action’.

But, what I finally noticed was the periodic interruptions in the video – an interruption, with lines of color in the middle of the screen – that came up in the middle of the speech.

“Doctored video?”

Are they just THAT bad at video? Or, are the many accusations that the videos are heavily doctored to produce something not showing Biden’s mental deterioration actually true?

I know I’m leaning towards the latter.

Mar 19 2021

Anyone Here Live Near the Border?

Or, know someone who does, and is willing to spend some time. Cuz, since AOC is no longer able willing to pose near it, to bring media attention to the “plight” of people who made their own choice to commit an illegal act – crossing the border without the permission of the target country – it would seem a good time to make life-sized posters of her, pose them at strategic spots, and put those pictures on social media.

This would seem to be a good idea for an aspiring prankster/street journalist/NLD. Come on, who’s gonna volunteer for the stunt? I’ll gladly pass the hat for the cost of the posters.

Candace Owens did a mocking pose previously, that got a lot of attention.

Mar 19 2021

Your Morning Giggle

     A morning that starts with a belly laugh presages a day that will be all right – and The Feral Irishman has provided us with one. Sadly, I can’t figure out how to copy or embed it, so head on over to Irish’s place and enjoy it there.

     Laughter isn’t just the best medicine; it’s also a powerful weapon. Ridicule is almost impossible for a stuffed shirt type to bear. Laughing at our adversaries is thus both good for us and bad for them. Ask any devotee of Saul Alinsky.

     “The devil…the prowde spirit…cannot endure to be mocked.” – St. Thomas More

Mar 18 2021

America’s Gate

     I was once in favor of an immigration regime equivalent to open borders. Then I did some thinking, along the lines of this famous G. K. Chesterton quote:

     There exists… a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I do not see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer, “If you do not see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it….”

     Some person had a good reason for thinking (the gate or fence) would be a good thing for somebody. And until we know what the reason was, we cannot judge whether the reason was reasonable.…The truth is that nobody has any business to destroy a social institution until he has really seen it as an historical institution. If he knows how it arose, and what purposes it was supposed to serve, he may really be able to say that they were bad purposes, that they have since become bad purposes, or that they are purposes which are no longer served.

     But if he simply stares at the thing as a senseless monstrosity that has sprung up in his path, it is he and not the traditionalist who is suffering from an illusion….

     [From The Thing]

     So: Why do nations have borders and immigration laws? Were they instituted to serve a purpose we can analyze, or were they merely “a senseless monstrosity that has sprung up” and which we have not yet seen fit to dismiss?

     The question is particularly relevant to the current pressure against the southern border of the United States. That pressure exists for a simple reason: there are multitudes on one side of the border who want to be on the other one. Questions arise:

  • Why do those multitudes want admission to the U.S.?
  • What would be the effects of admitting them?
  • Is there historical evidence on the subject?

     America once had an open-borders policy. Its foremost symbol is Ellis Island, the processing center for new immigrants from Europe from 1892 to 1954. Many millions entered this country through that gate.

     Those millions mostly became law-abiding Americans. They put a strain on the nation’s public sector for a while, particularly its public schools, but over time the assimilated, they and their children learned the English language, and they formed stable communities. Their industry and responsibility returned a great deal more to the nation than the cost of having originally admitted them.

     Yes, there were a few smudges on that pretty picture. Our Northeastern cities acquired Irish and Italian crime gangs. Inter-ethnic animosities were acted out in street fights and urban warfare. Unscrupulous employers and other parasites found ways to exploit new arrivals. And of course not all the immigrants of the period came here to become law-abiding Americans. Still in aggregate, the immigrant influx of the early 20th Century proved a net benefit to our still-growing society and economy.

     That’s the picture the open-borders advocate would have you see as he argues for his preferred policy. But it omits several important features:

  • The immigrants were almost all European Christians or Jews.
  • They were required to support themselves; there was no “welfare state.”
  • The laws of the period licensed and regulated far fewer occupations than the laws of today.
  • Assimilation was demanded of those immigrants, a far cry from the expectations of our time.

     In other words, the immigrants who came through Ellis Island, and the America that awaited them, differed in several critical ways from the migrants pressing our borders and our nation today. To look at the success of immigration of that earlier period and say “Why can’t we do that again?” is to overlook those critical factors.

     For immigrants to be a net benefit to a nation, they must be compatible with its most important norms:

  • Its laws and norms of conduct;
  • Its dominant language;
  • Its economic system.

     The admission, legally or otherwise, of immigrants incompatible with American laws, norms, language, and economy has done us great harm. It’s resulted in the distortion of our public institutions, especially our schools. It’s put a sharply increased burden on our “social safety net.” And it’s created exclaves in which English is not spoken and the laws of the surrounding state and nation are largely ignored.

     The altered laws and reduced expectations that have facilitated the immigrant waves of the most recent decades, whether legal or illegal, took down a gate of the sort Chesterton mentioned in the opening quote. They who strove to dismantle that gate are responsible for what has followed.

     The gate must go back up. The insistence upon assimilation, especially, is vital to any program of immigration. Restoring that gate is the key, regardless of whence the would-be immigrants of today might come. The majority of contemporary immigrants have no intention of assimilating and experience no pressure to do so. Worse, a great many of them strive to change the United States, or a portion of it, into a replica of their motherlands, including the horrors that drove them forth.

     It is these ugly facts that today’s open-borders advocate would have us ignore.

     (See also this essay on borders and pernicious supranationalism.)

Mar 18 2021

Should They Stay, or Go?

Migrants, that is.

For a long time, there have been several classes of migrants:

  • Those looking for opportunities – mostly economic in nature
  • Those looking to escape poverty, crime, and horrific governments in their home countries
  • Those hoping to be reunited with their families in the USA, some of whom may not necessarily have legal status, which would entitle them to sponsor a family member
  • Those looking to take advantage of America’s many opportunities to engage in criminal activity
  • And, the smallest number, those who are leaving their home under dire threat of death or lengthy imprisonment (and those prisons are NOT Club Fed-type)

Trump started a new policy (actually, an old one, but one that had not been used in many years). He instructed would-be refugees to apply for asylum in the nearest safe country to their country of origin. As a result, Mexico got a large portion of the Central American – and other – travelers.

I believe that Mexico was given some financial assistance in managing this influx of people. Many stayed only a short time, realizing that it could be years before they were able to have their claims acted upon. Most returned home.

Biden, and other “more knowledgeable and compassionate” Leftists, decided to scrap that “inhumane policy”. As a result, bodies flooded North, and Biden’s cages Humane Temporary Residences are creating photo ops that are humiliating to the pResident. Even the media is noticing this.

And, when you’ve lost the Puppydog Media, you’ve lost Amerika – not only those who love her, but also those who spell it with a ‘K’.

Mar 17 2021

Google’s Avoidance of St. Patrick is NOT New

I saw this post on American Thinker – pointing out that this year’s St. Patrick’s Day Google Doodle ignores the saint almost completely.

It got me thinking, and I found that almost ALL of the saint’s day’s doodles were secular, or near enough. The closet thing to a recognition of the religious aspect of the day was shamrocks used in the pictures.

It’s a pity. A country’s Patron Saint, particularly one that changed so much of history (including American history) should be noted properly.

You can check out the doodles here. Lots of green shamrocks, some loose connection to the island, and only a few that even skirt around the edges of Catholicism. 2012 comes the closest – as the doodle is based on the Book of Kells.

Mar 17 2021

Movies to Watch – Prime Video – 1st Film

I’m watching No Safe Spaces, with Adam Carolla and Denis Prager, among others. As long as you have the Prime account for the shipping, you might as well use it to both educate yourself, as well as to F*** with Amazon.

You have to work to find some of the videos, and a few are already de-listed/cancelled. I think the hunt will be the most exciting part of this – can I find something I want to watch – BEFORE they make it unavailable?

Consider this your protest against the Leftist Dogma.

Mar 17 2021

Faith Gives You Power…

     …and power is required to do this:

     Bravo, young Americans. We need more of you.

Mar 17 2021

The Antidote Is Practical Anarchism (UPDATED)

     The evidence has mounted to a conclusive level: the federal government is in the hands of persons who are utterly consumed by hatred of America.

     Any number of people would look at that statement and say “Yes, but what can we do about it?” Bookworm asks that question this very morning:

     So what happens when you have a situation such as the one we’re now facing, where not only are the Democrats triumphant, but Republicans have lost completes faith in the system because they believe, probably rightly, that the election was strongly affected by fraud? What happened wasn’t just any fraud, either. Jay Valentine calls it sovereign fraud, meaning that it wasn’t just random actors, but was a coherent government strategy from Democrats at every level of the government.

     However, she goes on to suggest that what we need is, in essence, “to behave like Leftists:” to find and follow a leader:

     Unfortunately, the only thing that will pull conservatives together at this point is a true leader. Trump, much as I love the man, is not a true leader. He is a systems man. In 2015, he realized there was something very broken with the American system and he tried his darndest to fix it. He had no idea he was swimming among sharks, and when he did realize that, he did not know how to handle the sharks. That’s part of why he lost the election. Now that Trump is down in Florida, he is making plans to get rid of his political enemies but he shows no sign of wanting to lead 80 million disaffected conservatives who feel utterly betrayed by the political system.

     But this is a terrible mistake, a perpetuation of the pre-World War I strategic conceptual envelope in which mass armies clash frontally until one or the other is exhausted or is broken. There is no future for the Right in such strategies. They require a characteristic we, by our very natures, do not possess: subordination.

     Leftists subordinate themselves willingly. That’s among their most prominent characteristics: the “follow the leader” mentality willing to swallow any lie and commit any infamy, no matter how outrageous, if it comes down from On High with the assurance that it will serve “the cause.” Only one willing to geld his own rationality – who will refrain from thinking when The Leader demands it – can accept such a regimen.

     The Left’s drive for the cartelization of the American economy – its coalescence from millions of small, mostly family-owned businesses into a couple of thousand mega-corporations – is inseparable from Leftist psychology and strategy. Remember “In capitalism, he who does not work does not eat; in socialism he who does not obey will not eat.” ¬– ? That came from Leon Trotsky, one of the Bolsheviks’ early theorists and leaders. He who is dependent upon a rigidly hierarchical employer for his sustenance – that’s about half the country at this time – swiftly learns to submit unprotestingly to direction. Decades of that can inculcate the habit of subordination, an actual need to be led, in anyone. It’s done so to a frightening percentage of our population, to the great benefit of the Left.

     What Americans who want freedom must do is diametrically the opposite of what Leftists do. We must reject the authority of the Usurper Regime.

     And why not? If the regime is illegitimate – if it literally stole its way into power, rather than winning fairly – then it has no legitimate authority. It possesses some enforcement power, which freedom-loving Americans must learn to evade and deflect, but no more right to govern than a foreign invader.

     This is easier said than done…yet it can be done. Moreover, when practiced by millions, it is unstoppable. A certain Mohandas K. Gandhi demonstrated that to considerable effect.

     The method is simple to summarize, but complex in execution. It requires:

  1. Identifying the mechanisms of authoritarian control,
  2. Separating ourselves from them,
  3. Going about our business as if they don’t exist.

     While there are hazards to doing this, the more of us proceed with it, the less they become. There are also sacrifices involved: sacrifices of accustomed conveniences, of established routines, and of a portion of our standard of living, which would hopefully be temporary.

     I’m moved to outline a program, something like a revolutionary manifesto. I shan’t do so here at Liberty’s Torch, as it would draw too much attention from “the wrong sort.” But I may do so, though my Gentle Readers are easily smart enough to work out the details for themselves.

     Don’t look for a Man on Horseback. Our best hope is in many millions of Americans deciding, as individuals, that regardless of what the Usurpers and their media handmaidens might say, they will live and work as free men. The question is whether enough of us still possess that will.

     UPDATE: Here’s a model to study and emulate! Remember that The Left is inherently hostile to fun:

     Americans are so fun-oriented that we devote whole industries to it, most emphatically including the video gaming industry. We even seek to make our work lives fun, to the extent that might be possible. My favorite source of business advice, Robert C. Townsend, put it this way:

     If you don’t do it excellently, don’t do it at all. Because if it’s not excellent it won’t be profitable or fun, and if you’re not in business for fun or profit, what the hell are you doing here?

(Granted that not much can be done for coal mining or grave digging. But note how such jobs are the ones most swiftly put to automated techniques.)

     So have as much of it as your body can stand!

Mar 16 2021

Some Audible Fiction

     For those who prefer listening to reading, I’ve recorded my short story “Norms.” If you like this sort of presentation, let me know and I’ll record some of my other short pieces.

Mar 16 2021

Getting It Through The Thickest Heads

     I have a graphic of which I’m particularly fond:

     It’s critical not to appear weak. Weakness invites disrespect. Weakness shown to an enemy invites a savage attack. Even if you’re secretly strong behind a facade of weakness, inviting disrespect is bad policy. Tempting an enemy to attack is lunacy. This is hardly rocket science.

     Kurt Schlichter lays it out for us:

     Really people, this is getting exhausting. How many times do we have to say it? How many people have to plead for forgiveness and end up humiliated, broken, and – not incidentally – unforgiven before people understand that the only effective response to these monsters’ fake outrage is to flip them the middle 20 percent of the fingers of a Bulwark staffer’s primary erotic partner?

     Never never never give them an inch. It always ends badly.

     Please read it all. Then read this piece, and this one, and perhaps this one as well.

     We are engaged in a war with blood enemies: persons who intend not just our subjugation but our elimination.

     Blood enemies do not forgive – and the Left has declared all of us in the Right to be blood enemies. Today they control the whole federal government, all the major media, all the educational institutions, all the entertainment centers, and the entirety of Big Tech. Show them even an instant’s weakness or uncertainty, and they go for blood.

     I’m not speaking figuratively. They won’t stop at our silencing, for they know that one who is silenced publicly can still speak and persuade privately. Nor will they be satisfied with majority control of American government. They want it all: no dissenters, no “loyal opposition,” no “two party system.” They intend our total destruction, nothing less. They will use anything as an entering wedge: race, sex, orientation, ethnicity, religion, you name it. Differing with them on any issue, to any degree, puts their crosshairs on your forehead.

     (If you’ve wondered why I openly proclaim myself to be a racist, a sexist, a homophobe, an Islamophobe, and a closed-borders advocate, now you know. It saves time and is less likely to provoke actual combat than drawing my sword. On those occasions when I actually want to start something, I simply proclaim Green Lantern to be the greatest movie ever made. It almost always works, but make sure you’re ready for anything.)

     The weakness of patriotic Americans’ reactions to the attacks by the various Leftist interest and identity groups has emboldened them to press for more. They too know Lenin’s maxim of the advance: “Probe with the bayonet: if you meet steel, stop. If you meet mush, then push.” So far, mush is all the Left has encountered. What else but relentless demands for more could we have expected?

Stand your ground.
Never offer an apology.
Be forthright about your values.
Show contempt for those who deride them.
And remember always what Niccolo de Machiavelli told us:

“Before all else, be armed.“

     It does wonders for one’s self-esteem.

Mar 16 2021

American Stasi

It’s been here for some time.

Those people who will ‘pile on’ when they detect the slightest disagreement with their views.

Or, when someone who is an easy target says or does ANYTHING.

Doesn’t matter what they say. Or DON’T say. Or if they apologize for clumsy wording, if it might be taken in an inoffensive way.

The lessons have been learned by Good Stasi and their Followers.

  1. Be quiet at all times – even when off-camera, with “friends”, or in the secrecy of your own room.
  2. If you DO talk, make sure you are not the first. Wait until an approved person speaks, clearly indicating what the approved viewpoint is.
  3. If the viewpoint changes in mid-sentence, switch with it. Never be caught expressing a newly-disapproved idea. It’s even worse than clinging to the old ideas.
  4. If caught speaking UnGood Thoughts, NEVER apologize. Instead, counter-attack, and hope you can swing some sentiment your way. A good counter-attack is to denounce that person attacking you as Even Worse. After all, surely they must have said or done SOMETHING in their life – or, in a pinch, be friends with or related to someone who did.
  5. Silence when a friend or family member is attacked is just as bad as open support; you must immediately leap to your feet, and denounce their heresy.

Folks, this is scary. It’s STARTING in the schools and social media, but it will not end there. We need to support – vocally, through media posts, and – if possible – through some donations – those who are being UnPersoned.

It’s past time to speak up. If you let these innocents be taken down, there LITERALLY will be no one to speak up for YOU.

We need not sift through the reputed words of those accused. A simple statement, based on principle, is:

“In America, we are free to say what we chose to – 1st Amendment”

Period. No limitations, other than actual lies (and, BTW, you are free to engage in slander, but there will be financial penalties). No exceptions for ‘Hate Crimes’ or ‘Racism’.

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