The fact that this was even a question makes my blood boil.

Trump can kick the trannies out of the military.

The fact that some Leftist judge thought that the COMMANDER IN CHIEF could not tell people to GTFO of the military shows we’re living in a clown world. Thankfully there’s at least a little bit of sanity, although the Leftist cohort on SCOTUS once again showed that they’re against the Constitution specifically, and reality in general. Although given that Ketanji Brown Jackson cannot even define what a woman is, she probably should have recused herself.

What a time to be alive. And not in a good way.

A Memory And More

     The truly great stories are few in number. Not all are well known. Yet those who encounter them are almost unanimous in wonder and praise. We go looking for other works by their author… often to our disappointment. Not only does greatness touch few, it seldom lingers at any address.

     One example is Daniel Keyes, the author of Flowers For Algernon. Keyes did write other tales, but nothing to compare with his masterwork. He expressed jocular bewilderment over Algernon to no less than Isaac Asimov. “Listen, when you find out how I did it,” he said to Asimov, “let me know, will you? I want to do it again.”

     Keyes’s high achievement was recognized by millions. Others are not so fortunate, at least within their lifetimes. One that’s on my mind this morning is Floyd L. Wallace.

     Wallace wrote largely for the “pulps,” especially Galaxy Science Fiction. Several of his stories are available at Project Gutenberg. He was consistently competent and entertaining, but one of his stories, “Student Body,” stands high above the others, especially in its climax. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say about the tale:

     Humanity is spreading rapidly through the galaxy, and a planet known as Glade has been identified as suitable for colonization as it has a near-Earth climate (and presumably near-Earth gravity and atmosphere). A colonisation expedition lands on Glade; one rocket contains the potential colonists and their equipment, whilst a second rocket returns to Earth to confirm the suitability of the planet and bring more settlers.
     Under the energetic leadership of Executive Hafner, the colonists start to assemble agricultural equipment and prepare for planting fast-growing crops that they will need to survive. But biologist Dano Marin is already concerned that all is not as it should be. Biological controls have previously surveyed the planet, without actually landing, and cleared it as being benign, but very soon mice appear and attack the crops and food stocks. Attempts are made to control them, but they then appear in plague proportions.
     Marin thinks he knows what has happened. The apparently harmless native lifeform, which he dubs the ‘omnimal’, has the ability to adapt to threats as they appear. They can mutate and reproduce with amazing speed. As the mice are brought under control by robot cats, they are replaced with rats who attack one of the cats en masse and manage to destroy it. The humans bring in terriers to fight the rats, but this only stops them temporarily. They are then further replaced by tiger-like creatures.
     Marin now knows what the next mutation will be and is proved right when food again goes missing from the fields. With Hafner only partially convinced, he seeks out the new creature. Hafner wants to shoot it, but Marin convinces him not to, knowing that a further mutated creature will be unstoppable. They come face-to-face with the creature and the story ends with the line: “It looked very much like a man.”

     That plot summary, while accurate, fails to capture the power of the story’s ending. Up to the omnimal’s evolution of the humanoid creature, its products had been naked threats: predators aimed at destroying the human colony. Then comes the final stage:

     Two nights later, just before dawn, the alarm rang.
     Marin met Hafner at the edge of the settlement. Both carried rifles. They walked; the noise of any vehicle was likely to frighten the animal. They circled around and approached the field from the rear. The men in the camp had been alerted. If they needed help, it was ready.
     They crept silently through the underbrush. It was feeding in the field, not noisily, yet they could hear it. The dogs hadn’t barked.
     They inched nearer. The blue sun of Glade came up and shone full on their quarry. The gun dropped in Hafner’s hand. He clenched his teeth and raised it again.
     Marin put out a restraining arm. “Don’t shoot,” he whispered.
     “I’m the exec here. I say it’s dangerous.”
     “Dangerous,” agreed Marin, still in a whisper. “That’s why you can’t shoot. It’s more dangerous than you know.”
     Hafner hesitated and Marin went on. “The omnimal couldn’t compete in the changed environment and so it evolved mice. We stopped the mice and it countered with rats. We turned back the rat and it provided the tiger.
     “The tiger was easiest of all for us and so it was apparently stopped for a while. But it didn’t really stop. Another animal was being formed, the one you see there. It took the omnimal two years to create it—how, I don’t know. A million years were required to evolve it on Earth.”
     Hafner hadn’t lowered the rifle and he showed no signs of doing so. He looked lovingly into the sights.
     “Can’t you see?” urged Marin. “We can’t destroy the omnimal. It’s on Earth now, and on the other planets, down in the storage areas of our big cities, masquerading as rats. And we’ve never been able to root out even our own terrestrial rats, so how can we exterminate the omnimal?”
     “All the more reason to start now.” Hafner’s voice was flat.
     Marin struck the rifle down. “Are their rats better than ours?” he asked wearily. “Will their pests win or ours be stronger? Or will the two make peace, unite and interbreed, make war on us? It’s not impossible; the omnimal could do it if interbreeding had a high survival factor.
     “Don’t you still see? There is a progression. After the tiger, it bred this. If this evolution fails, if we shoot it down, what will it create next? This creature I think we can compete with. It’s the one after this that I do not want to face.”
     It heard them. It raised its head and looked around. Slowly it edged away and backed toward a nearby grove.
     The biologist stood up and called softly. The creature scurried to the trees and stopped just inside the shadows among them.
     The two men laid down their rifles. Together they approached the grove, hands spread open to show they carried no weapons.
     It came out to meet them. Naked, it had had no time to learn about clothing. Neither did it have weapons. It plucked a large white flower from the tree and extended this mutely as a sign of peace.
     “I wonder what it’s like,” said Marin. “It seems adult, but can it be, all the way through? What’s inside that body?”
     “I wonder what’s in his head,” Hafner said worriedly.
     It looked very much like a man.

     No one who reads that story will forget how it ends. Savor it for a moment. Then we turn to politics.


     Don Surber provides a penetrating look at what the Left fears today:

     Trending Politics reported, “A number of House Democrats are livid with Rep. Shri Thanedar (D-MI) for bringing several articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump, according to a report from Axios.
     “The House Democrat filed multiple articles of impeachment against the president over the deportation of Kilmar Ábrego García, a suspected MS-13 gang member with ties to a convicted human trafficker earlier this week.”

     Now, the Democrats have repeatedly tried to oust President Trump, so from that angle this isn’t big news. But Surber provides another perspective:

     As nifty and as fun impeaching Trump was the first couple of times, the impeachments set in motion a quest to destroy him that failed time and time again. That which did not kill him only made him stronger.
     Raiding his home in Mar-a-Lago failed. Suing him for borrowing money and paying it back on time with interest failed. Indicting him for paying off a hooker failed. Getting a mugshot top gloat failed. Setting him up for an assassination in Butler, Pennsylvania, failed.

     Donald Trump’s 2015-2016 campaign for president was ridiculed from end to end of the media spectrum. More scorn was poured on his candidacy than any politician suffered before him. Have another memory:

     Yet he won. He governed successfully despite the constant attacks on him, including the two impeachments. Remember all the “walls are closing in” pronouncements?

     The 2020 election had to be stolen to displace Trump from the White House. He came back with a vengeance in 2023 and 2024 – again to a chorus of howls that he wouldn’t be elected:

     Add the lawfare and the two assassination attempts to all that. Trump still triumphed. Today he’s at his strongest and most determined. You’d almost think the man is one of Nietszche’s ubermenschen!

     That, not the likelihood of divine intervention, is what has the Democrats upset with the impeachment attempt by Congressman Shri Thanedar. They “shot at the king” many times, in many different ways. Each failure to bring Trump down brought a new, stronger and more determined Trump. His support eclipses that of any previous president.

     The Democrats learned slowly, but they learned. They can’t risk another attempt on Trump. Their previous ones have produced a furious, energized Trump with 77 million equally energized supporters cheering him on. They’re having trouble coping with that. It’s what would come after another attempt to depose him – successful or not – that they don’t dare face.

     Maybe divine intervention, too.


     In closing: A great story is being acted out in real life, as we speak. It will surely be remembered. But we want the ending to be as positive as that of Wallace’s “Student Body.” For that, we must support the president in his efforts to heal our ailing Republic. Whether or not his priorities and his timing mesh with ours, we must keep faith and stand with him.

     Stay tuned.

Pooped And In Pain

     I know, I know: it’s only ten days since my last one. Nevertheless! Your Curmudgeon must take the day off from blogging. Today my full-time job will be dispatching the invisible malefactor currently trying to tie my torso into a French twist.

     Enjoy your Cinco de Mayo. I hope to be back tomorrow.

It’s Critical To Choose Your Targets Wisely

     That had probably never occurred to phony comedian / talk show emcee Stephen Colbert before this:

     In a jaw-dropping moment on live television, Stephen Colbert took a direct shot at Karoline Leavitt—only to be stunned by what happened next. With millions watching, Leavitt’s powerful comeback turned the entire narrative on its head. What started as a late-night joke quickly spiraled into one of the most talked-about political moments of the year. Read how Karoline Leavitt flipped the script on Colbert and delivered a response no one saw coming.

     Fair-use rules forbid me to quote much more of it, so go thou and read it for thyself, for it is massively nifty. It tells an important tale: how vital it is not to try to conciliate an open enemy, even one who commands a large following. Colbert did his damnedest to put Leavitt in a bad light – to make her look as if she were either a moron or a “traitor” to her sex and her generation. Without ever losing her composure, Leavitt eviscerated him – and Colbert knew it.

     President Trump chose his press secretary very, very well. Leavitt’s public-relations instincts and her firm grasp on her convictions makes that plain. At this point, a lot of her contemporaries must be wondering how their hero Stephen Colbert could have misfired so badly. She riposted every one of his underhanded thrusts. By the end of their exchange, he was surely fuming.

     Let this be a lesson to other Trump appointees who receive invitations from ideological adversaries. This is the Left. Its public figures aren’t interested in fairness, or a dispassionate examination of the evidence. They hate us for differing with them and want to bring us down. Don’t give them an inch.

     I wonder if Leavitt gives lessons in combat rhetoric and public poise?

Things That Can Make You Feel Better

They aren’t always obvious:

… but when they work, they work!

Conversations

     As it happens, I have a chronic cough. I’ve had it for a long time. Now and then it “flares up,” and becomes more than a passing nuisance. This morning was a “now and then,” which resulted in the following exchange:

CSO: It’s time you saw Michelle (my nurse-practitioner) about that cough.
FWP: I’ve had it forever. Michelle knows about it. What do you expect her to do about it?

CSO: She could give you something for it.
FWP: Sweetie, I’ve been on drugs for hypertension for more than twenty years. My blood pressure’s still scary. I’ve been taking pills for prostatitis for nearly as long. My prostate’s still the size of a tennis ball. Then there’s the diabetes pills. My blood sugar is still really high. Michelle prescribed all those drugs. Do you really think anything she’d prescribe would get rid of the cough?

CSO: If that’s the case, maybe it’s time to get rid of Michelle.
FWP: There’s no pill for that – and if there were?
CSO: Forget I said anything.

     This one wasn’t very funny, was it?

Freedoms That Aren’t

     You and I, Gentle Reader, are aware of the limitations that come with employment… at least, I am, and I hope you are. What the boss tells you to do, you do; what he tells you not to do, you don’t. Roger-wilco acceptance of one’s supervisor’s decrees is the price of one’s paycheck. Neither of us would expect to claim a “freedom” to defy supervisory authority and have that claim respected.

     Apparently, it’s not the same in the media. Quite recently, Bill Owens, the head-honcho producer for CBS’s 60 Minutes, resigned his position. The reason he gave was that management above his head was unacceptably limiting his journalistic “freedom.” No, he didn’t claim that he should continue to receive a paycheck, but it was hard to escape the feeling that he believed his prerogatives had been violated.

     A little while before that, Jeff Bezos, the moderately well-known retailer who owns the Washington Post, told its editors to revise their editorial stance: i.e., to move toward advocacy of free speech and free markets in their editorial output. That caused an uproar in the Post’s offices. There were some resignations over it, though I don’t know how many. The editors and reporters of that organ seem to have felt much as Bill Owens did.

     It puzzles me. In no other occupation does an employee’s claim that he ought to be able to do as he likes, irrespective of his supervisors’ dictates, taken seriously. In media, it seems the attitudes, if not the black-letter rules, are different.

     Wait! I’ve just thought of another “industry” in which the claim is both made and defended: education. Employees there trumpet their “academic freedom” to say and do as they please everywhere and everywhen, without penalty. There’s a narrow, shaky precedent for the claim, inasmuch as professors of an earlier day survived “purge” attempts founded on their emissions outside the classroom. But these days, primary-school sex-ed instructors – yes, you read that right – make the same claim, seriously asserting that they have a God-given right to teach toddlers about the joys of anal sex.

     This sort of thing gets my head whirling. I can’t imagine any such claim being taken seriously. Yet they happen frequently – usually in cases of egregious misbehavior.

     Developments such as these are part and parcel of the devolution of actual freedom. Once again, the Grand Master has a few words on the subject:

     “That will do, Sambo. Please refrain from expressing opinion uninvited.”
     “I thought you were the great champion of free speech?”
     “I am. But there is no free lunch. If you want to make a speech, you can hire your own hall; this one is paid for by the Circle.”

     I know that there are any number of other things to obsess about today. But what on Earth will we do if they who hire, pay, and fire are allowed to tell their employees “No, you can’t do exactly and only as you please” — ? And what if the right of “sexual education” instructors to demonstrate vibrators and dildos to schoolchildren should be summarily dismissed? Could the Republic survive?

     Just an early-morning thought.

No Anesthesia Dept.

     It isn’t often that a staffer in a Republican administration lets loose the way Stephen Miller does in the video embedded below:

     That reaming will have a lot of reporters – and their supervising editors – investing in Preparation H. Do you get the feeling Miller has strong feelings about press duplicity and press standards? So do I.

     It’s no wonder people are talking about Stephen Miller as a hot prospect for bigger things.

New Directions In Catholic Sacramental Practice

     Yes, yes, I know a Conclave is assembling, and the discernment of a new Supreme Pontiff will soon be at work, and many proposals for changes in Catholic teaching and practice will be on the cardinals’ minds, and so forth. But here’s a really serious idea for reform that the new Pope, whoever he may be, would be advised to take seriously:

     It would liven up Sunday Mass, eh what?

How To Make A Leftist-Statist-Globalist Mad

     We’ve got plenty of those here in the U.S., and they’re madder than a mob of March hares:

     But America doesn’t have a monopoly on them. Oh no. Europe has plenty – many highly placed, too:

     European leaders hate him because he will tell them hard truths they desperately want to deny. German diplomats literally laughed when Trump warned them that they were too dependent on Russian gas, but after the invasion of Ukraine and the bombing of the Nord Stream pipeline (conducted by Ukraine with the assistance of the United States’ Joe Biden!) they were not laughing.
     Early in his first term, Trump began pushing NATO countries to at least honor their treaty obligations to increase defense spending to the 2% of GDP minimum. This demand was beyond the pale. An outrage! It was Trump breaking a sacred trust, even if that sacred trust was being broken daily and had been for decades by the Europeans themselves.
     How could Trump point out, quite rudely, that Europe wasn’t doing what it was both legally and morally obligated to do?!
     Sacre bleu!

     Europe’s descent into military feebleness was deliberate. America enabled it with the North Atlantic Charter and our guarantee of a “nuclear umbrella.” The potentates of the Old World seized their chance right then and there. They ceased to take their own militaries seriously, slashed military budgets, poured scorn on their armies’ needs for modern equipment and training in the tactics of the new battlefield, and directed the “savings” into their welfare states. National defense? We don’t do that anymore. America will handle it.

     It took a few years – in 1956, Britain and France still had enough muscle to contribute, albeit apparently negatively – to the Suez Canal War. But by 1967 it was all a memory. When hostilities broke out in the Middle East, the “Continental powers” sat back and watched.

     And so today, when Europe is anxious to guarantee the defense of the border of Ukraine – where exactly is that, I wonder? – the enfeebled nations of European NATO can’t even muster a couple of properly equipped divisions with which to do so. They want America to do it.

     The cherry atop this slag heap is that Ukraine is not a NATO member, and probably never will be. NATO has no treaty obligation to rush to the defense of a non-member. But then, the masters of European NATO don’t see their obligations the same way they did at the beginning of the alliance:

     Ensuring stability at home by engaging outside of NATO
     The outbreak of crises and conflicts beyond Allied borders can jeopardise the national security of NATO member countries – a more dangerous and unpredictable world makes things less safe for everyone. As a result, the Alliance also contributes to peace and stability through crisis prevention and management, and through partnerships with other organisations and countries across the globe. Essentially, NATO not only helps to defend the territory of its members, but also engages – where possible and when necessary – to project its values further afield, prevent and manage crises, stabilise post-conflict situations, and support reconstruction.

     [From NATO’s website.]

     I’d bet that a goodly portion of NATO’s budget goes to meddling in nations that aren’t members. The consequences for the forces under NATO’s own commanders “should” be “obvious.”

     The hour has come for the United States to announce that it’s leaving NATO. NATO itself was the spark that lit the Ukraine-Russia conflagration. Had it never been suggested that Ukraine might be admitted to NATO, it’s likely that Vladimir Putin’s ambitions would have been sated once his forces had seized Crimea and the long-sought warm water port that came with it. But that’s to the side. The need of the time is to end the war and, if possible, put an end to NATO’s power to involve America in conflicts far from us.

     “America First” surely ought to mean that much.

     “I have said this before, but I shall say it again and again and again; your boys are not going to be sent into any foreign wars.” — Franklin D. Roosevelt, October 30, 1940.

A Critical Category Not Yet Defined

     This morning, prompted by this article, Weird Dave asks this:

     Question: Can/should the 1st Amendment be re-written to exclude religions like Islam?

     The problem isn’t as stiff as one might think, because it isn’t really “to exclude religions like Islam.” It’s to define religion in a fashion that includes only creeds that are noncoercive matters of individual choice. Islam would not qualify under those conditions.

     When the First Amendment was composed, Fisher Ames did not imagine that a creed as noxious as Islam would ever come to our shores. Perhaps he had no acquaintance with it. So he used the undefined term religion without ensuring that it would exclude cults that practice murder, slavery, rape, and the oppression of non-members.

     There are many undefined terms in our lexicon, because definition itself is hierarchical. We define a category this way:

     Category X consists of all those items which:

  1. Are members of Category Y (the genus.)
  2. And also possess property Z (the differentia.)

     So pursuing the definition of category X down through its genus category Y brings us to the even larger category Q which is the genus of category Y, and so on until we reach the “base” of undefined terms (e.g., “reality”).

     Today’s exercise in lexicography is to propose such a definition for religion. It can be done, but it takes some care not to exclude any benevolent creed while excluding all non-benevolent ones. Give it a try. Post your proposed definition in the comments.

Happy Victims of Communism Day. Also, NATO is dead, but the corpse is still moving.

Europe would struggle to field a force of 25,000. The current number of US active duty troops based in Europe? 84,000. That’s Army, Air Force, Navy and Marines.

So it’s May Day, which the commies try to celebrate, but commies really suck at true happiness as Marxism is the religion of envy and ingratitude. So let’s all spend a moment comprehending the loss of human life that communism brings with it everywhere it goes.

Done? Good. Back to the second part of this post. NATO is dead. Europe killed it, and what we have left is a zombie, wearing NATO’s skin as a suit, demanding that the US continue to be a patsy for the globalists while doing nothing in return.

Let me break it down for you in Army numbers, since that’s what I’m familiar with. One division is roughly 15,000 soldiers, give or take. The US Army has ten active duty divisions. Europe cannot field the equivalent of under TWO DIVISIONS worth of troops.

What is the point of being in a treaty, a DEFENSIVE treaty, where we call upon other members of that treaty to defend us if we’re attacked, when the other members of that treaty cannot do a single damn thing militarily? Imagine making an agreement with your neighbor, where you say “Hello there neighbor, if your house is invaded I will assist you in repelling the invaders, and you will do the same for me. And thus our neighborhood will be stronger and better able to withstand these hooligans and ne’er-do-wells.” And so you both agree to this, and you spend decades building up your armory. You have shotguns. Pistols. Rifles. You have alarm systems. You are prepared to defend not only your house, but your neighbor’s house as well. And one day, you go over to your neighbor’s house and ask what he’s done to prepare for any criminal skullduggery that might occur, and he shows you a bidet that he installed on his toilet, and a pontoon boat that he bought.

Would you trust that neighbor to defend a single thing? Of course not.

NATO isn’t even a pathetic joke any more. NATO doesn’t really exist. NATO is the USA, and a host of hands reaching out to beg for more of what we have without providing a damn thing in return.

NATO is dead. We should stop carrying it’s corpse on our shoulders.

Beware The Bottleneck!

     Time was, not long after the World Wide Web was opened to general use, there was this phenomenon called the blog. It was a shortening of weblog, which quickly fell into disuse. Blogs originated as a kind of online journal, a modernization of the diary, which was also visible to others. It seemed the perfect vehicle for recording one’s thoughts and travels… if, that is, one happened to be an incurable narcissist.

     It caught on, big time. And for a while, there were millions of blogs. Some were more popular than others. Some were more actively maintained and extended. But few were of that “original type” that functioned as an online diary. Most were about some specific subject in which the proprietor had a strong interest. And of course, the most popular such interest was current events / politics.

     But the technology of the Web was only just getting into high gear. Further developments brought us the mass media called Facebook and Twitter. As they became popular, the great majority of those millions of blogs fell into disuse. After all, they took work to maintain, whereas Facebook is maintained by faceless cadres of programmers paid by others. With Twitter it was much the same, though at first it limited users’ emissions to 140 characters. The “blogosphere” shrank de facto, such that today only a small fraction of those early blogs are still actively maintained.

     The originally sunny social-media picture didn’t take long to darken. The masters of those sites imposed controls – censorship, in the colloquial use of that word – designed to prevent the expression of opinions the masters deemed “harmful.” The suppressed communications soon included what the masters deemed “misinformation,” as well. Facebook, Twitter, and their imitators became tools for throttling the free exchange of information and opinion. Their users found they had walked into a trap.

     Go back to the blogs? It was a daunting prospect. The users of social media had become accustomed to the conveniences afforded them. Facebook, Twitter, et alii helped them to stay in touch with their friends and relations, and to make new contacts far more easily than did the blogging world. A bare few departed for other outlets. The social media’s campaign of censorship continued and intensified under pressure from government bodies and left-wing activists.

     Bottlenecks make censorship easy. When all the data is flowing through a single pipe, it’s easy to seine out the undesirable portion and ensure that no one ever sees it.

     Recently a new bottleneck has attracted considerable interest: Substack. This facility offers the prospective user a degree of simplicity comparable to that purveyed by the social media, albeit at the price of limited customization options. It also facilitates the construction of pay-to-read features, which is attractive to persons who think what they have to say is worth other people’s money. The icing on the cake is that the masters of Substack have promised that there shall be absolutely no censorship, regardless of anyone’s opinion of what’s “offensive,” “harmful,” or “wrong.”

     The Left doesn’t like that. Neither do the would-be censors inside the federal bureaucracy. And Substack, being a bottleneck, is easy to attack. Dr. Robert Malone takes note:

     For a while now I’ve been worried Substack would become a major target of the Censorship Industrial Complex for the hideous and dangerous crime of allowing free speech.
     This story from The UK newspaper the Guardian, which was picked up by Citizen Free Press, might be significant or at least bears watching.

     Dr. Malone cites several attacks and responses from that article, then continues:

     I for one did not know that Substack had “loads and loads of out-and-out Nazis on their platform.”
     But even if it does (which it doesn’t), I say (at least from what I know now), let them post away. The only Nazi-like techniques I see influencing any important narratives come from the government and its many fascist partners.
     Also, why didn’t this article give us some excerpts from some of these “Nazi” Substack authors? For example, are these posters calling for the extermination of the Jews?
     If these newsletter sites are advocating murder or violence, kick them off, but I don’t know that they are.
     Also, how many subscribers do these sites have? Out of the tens of thousands of Substack authors and 30+ million Substack subscribers, how many are Nazis?
     As usual, we get shocking charges with no examples given of alleged shocking speech.

     The important thing about this wave of attacks is that it is typical. The Left isn’t terribly creative; its activists tend to overuse a (previously) successful tactic until it rebounds against them. Accusations of “Fascist!” and “Nazi!” feature prominently in all left-wing activism. They have no other strings to their bow. Substack is merely their latest target.

     It’s also typical in that, as they want the biggest possible payoff for their efforts, Leftists invariably target bottlenecks. Facebook and Twitter were “low-hanging fruit,” and – with government connivance and assistance – were swiftly brought to heel. Substack, being another convenience facility with thousands of users and millions of subscribers, has been targeted for similar reasons.

     An anti-censorship regime is now in Washington, which will make the Left’s task much harder. Yet it will persist, for the thing Leftists hate most is when their ideological opponents get to argue with them. Leftism falls easily before rational argument and objective evidence; therefore, they seek to squelch those things wherever and whenever possible. While they lost the battle for control of Twitter when Elon Musk purchased it, that didn’t dampen their ardor to dominate all public discourse.

     I wish Substack, its proprietors, and its many users all the best. I certainly hope it prevails in its efforts to remain a bastion of free expression. That having been said: Remember that bottlenecks are targets. He who values his independence must beware them. There’s surely enough history to that effect.

Quote Of The Day

     Now and then, I select a quote of the day not for its insight or elegance, but for its obvious lack of penetration. Today is such a day:

     “The challenge is that they’ve got—on the Senate side—incredibly ineffective and, frankly, out-of-touch leadership that has no idea how to offer an alternative to Donald Trump,” [pollster Frank] Luntz said. “They don’t wanna bash—slap around the president. What they want is that agenda delivered in a more efficient, more effective, more compassionate way.”

     I’ve seldom seen a more complete failure to see and report in so short a passage. I could let it stand naked as a demonstration of the will not to see, but I’d rather unfold the thing a bit more thoroughly than that.

     The Democrats’ Senate “leadership” is uninterested in “offering an alternative to Donald Trump.” It’s a gaggle of old men who have no real interest in “leading” anyone anywhere. Their sole concern of importance is to retain their positions for at least one more electoral cycle. No particular element of policy or Democrat ideology matters enough to twitch the needles of their meters. If Trump matters to them at all, it’s as an occupational requirement: he’s a Republican, therefore they must denounce him.

     Quite clearly, Senate Democrats do “wanna bash—slap around the president.” It’s all they have to offer. They cannot articulate a “Democrat agenda,” because the voters have already rejected it. The public is delighting in the swift, forceful moves of the Trump Administration. Announce an alternative to that?

     It’s ludicrous to suggest that anyone could do a more efficient, more effective job at implementing the Trump program than Trump is doing right now. He’s moved so fast and so firmly that even his most ardent supporters are breathless. But that’s to the side, because Democrats don’t want that program implemented at all. They want the status quo ante, wherein they could posture, bellow, and steal with impunity. As for “compassion,” Trump is exhibiting the only kind of compassion that matters politically: compassion for a suffering nation that’s been neglected (if not badly abused) by all of his post-Reagan predecessors.

     I can’t imagine how a supposedly politically astute pollster could have jammed such a bundle of inanities together and offered it to the public. What’s worse is that Frank Luntz is a trusted source of strategic advice… among Republican politicians. Go figure.

Great Men

     There are great men in every era. However, not all of them are publicly known. Even fewer are publicly celebrated.

     David Horowitz was a great man. I’m sad to have to phrase that in the past tense, for we needed him more than most of us knew. He emerged from the ranks of “red-diaper babies” to lead a clear-eyed, pro-freedom, pro-American charge for decades. He was insufficiently appreciated for it.

     May God hold you close, David. In remembrance, please watch the short video below. For my money, it’s among the clearest demonstrations of his courage and candor.

“The Good Old Days”

     I just stumbled upon this rather revealing bit of dialogue between a company president and a new hire. Please read it. What was the president trying to say to his new hire, albeit without actually saying it?

     Every workplace possesses a culture of some kind. Newbies are expected to learn what that culture is and conform to it. I once worked briefly at a small company where virtually every third word uttered by anyone, from the owner down to the janitor, was obscene. (No, it wasn’t all men. But you wouldn’t have wanted to date any of the women.) Eventually I decided that I didn’t fit in and left for other pastures.

     It’s generally not possible for anyone to enter a new business environment and make it over to suit his preferences. Even small shops will have their norms. If you can’t or won’t conform, you’ll eventually be informed that “you’re not a good match” and advised to move on. Woe betide you should you decide to remain.

     This is neither good nor bad. It simply is, ubiquitous. Yet many young workers struggle with it and against it. Many enter the working world unaware of it, which suggests that their breadwinner parents have neglected one of their duties toward them.

     It’s the same in society at large. Every society will have a culture. That will be so even if it amalgamates aspects from many other, older cultures, as does the prevailing culture of the United States. There will be local and regional variations, of course, but there will be overall commonalities, and the newcomer will be expected to learn them and conform to them.

     It’s not about law. It’s about customs. Customs can be more binding than black-letter law – and more ruthlessly enforced.


     A great deal of fiction centers on individuals who, for whatever reason, don’t fit in, whether it’s with their families, their neighborhoods, their employers, or their nations. Their discomfort can be extreme. It can turn a man otherwise inclined to be sociable and gregarious into an isolate. Once again, this simply is: a fact of life on this planet. The unarticulated rule, enforced principally by social cues, inclusions, and exclusions, is learn and conform or move on:

     He’d thought he carried himself well, and by city and college standards he did. Yet there were men around him at OA that had made him feel coltish and crude. Not all of them, but a healthy fraction. In their poise and self-assurance, they were more than enough to set the standards of the company culture, standards whose violation they would not tolerate.
     He’d used a four-letter word at one of his first meetings, and white-haired old Harry Toussaint, his supervisor, had immediately whisked him out of the room to reprove him. He’d failed to hold a door for a secretary, and Rolf Svenson had swooped down on him as if he’d thrust his hand under her skirt. He’d allowed a coworker who’d irritated him to stumble on a subproject for lack of information he could have supplied, and gentle, fatherly Dick Orloff, he of the endless fishing charters and football pools, had blistered him in public for not supporting his colleague.

     [From Chosen One]

     Dress codes give a clue, at most, to what a company’s prevailing culture expects of new additions. Similarly, an immigrant to a nation is highly unlikely to be handed a copy of The Customs of This Country, Seventeenth Edition, Revised 2025 as he gets off the boat. It’s up to the newbie to figure it out and adapt to it.


     That having been said, cultures can and do change over time. The American culture of the 1900 – 1920 decades differed greatly from that of the 1950s and 1960s, which differed greatly from that of today. Older Americans tend to regard the cultures in which we matured as preferable. Among our great regrets is having let it slip away, even if it were never in our power to retain it. “Those were the good old days” is what we think, whether or not we say it audibly.

     The question I’ve been pondering this morning is what percentage of today’s young Americans, upon reaching their dotages, will look back upon today’s American culture and say, “those were the good old days.”

     Memories morph and mutate over time. Some fade, while others grow brighter. It’s probably required of “good old days” syndrome that we allow the unpleasant memories to slip away, that the good ones might shine unclouded. No doubt the Fifties and Sixties, when I was maturing, had their share of demerits that I can no longer remember clearly.

     But what will be remembered as today’s bright features by the septuagenarians of the 2060s and 2070s? What aspects of our time will those Americans need to forget in their remembrances of today as “the good old days?”

     I think they’ll want to forget today’s pervasive sense of separation, the silently enforced distance from others. I think they’ll omit the uneasiness they feel in today’s cities and crowds. They’ll want to forget the sense of being watched, too – whether the watcher is someone sizing them up for predation or a government busybody being paid to monitor them for “tax evasion” or violations of “national security.” Leave aside the ubiquitous censoriousness, always being glared at by strangers for daring to cough or sneeze. Where’s your mask, Citizen?

     What will they remember? That’s just as important. For the life of me, I can’t come up with anything. But then, I’m already old, wistful, and far more burdened by regrets than my younger self could ever have imagined he’d become.

     Just one of those early-morning thoughts. Do have a nice day.

This Reminds Me of a Movie…

…yeah, it was Live Free and Die Hard (or, #4 of that series). Here’s the link.

I loved that movie! Still find myself re-watching it when I notice it on the schedule.

Shortly after the beginning of the movie, government-linked services – electricity, phones, gas, and other sources of energy start failing, rather abruptly, leaving people unable to function.

That’s the part where I have to suspend my hard-won knowledge of how MOST of America works. In contrast to the helplessness of the public in the movie, having experienced power outages of a week or more in duration, I know that the average person is relatively resilient.

Rather than stand around helplessly in stalled traffic, AMERICANS would assess the situation, and start self-organizing to fix it.

We’d push broken cars, trucks, and other vehicles out of the way. We would tend to the seriously injured, and figure out where the nearest hospital was located. Then we’d ‘appoint’ regular citizens as unofficial cops, and get the traffic moving.

How do I know that?

I have lived in many places, and seen what happens when power outages occur. Those outages included, auto fuel, electricity, gas, and phone.

Real quick, someone figures out a work-around for the situation, and life gits going!

In 1969, there was what has been called The 4th of July storm in the greater Cleveland. That windstorm toppled trees 6-8 feet in diameter, taking out all power in my hometown, Lakewood, OH.

We got no notice. Many of my neighbors and friends were at Lakewood Park for the Independence Day celebration when, suddenly, the storm was THERE! Four people died at the park that day, from falling debris mostly. Lakewood was point zero for the storm.

What happened within a short time period?

Neighbors in proximity to the park took in strangers, helping them get dry, reach their families, if possible, and feed them. So, Americans self-organized, and dealt with the crisis.

Power began failing quickly. I lived in an old neighborhood, and many people had gas stoves, furnaces, and fireplaces. So, they started using the backup systems.

The damage was widespread. Within a short time, people were warned to shut off their gas, until the company could assess whether it was safe.

No problem – people pulled the barbeques out of the garage, put in some charcoal, propane, or wood, and got cooking the food that wasn’t going to make it with the power out.

My dad had a brilliant idea – he used the phone book (remember those?), and found a few meat-packing facilities. He loaded up the contents of the freezer into cardboard boxes, and drove off to the next county to the west. He made a deal to store his food in their freezer until the power came back.

He also found a place with dry ice, and loaded up. While he was out, he picked up a few oil lamps and backup oil.

I remember we lost some milk, but we were able to ride out the aftermath of the storm comfortably. With the lamps, we were even able to play cards for entertainment.

We adjusted. Without government to tell us what to do, or provide the necessities of life, we managed.

So, for that matter, did most of our neighbors.

Years later, there was a major blackout of power where we lived.

“On August 14, 2003, a cascading failure of the power grid plunged more than 50 million people into darkness in the northeast US and Canada. It was the most significant power outage ever in North America, with an economic impact north of ten billion dollars.”

Our son was staying with a friend who had 4 kids. He walked 4 blocks to our house, and asked if he could take the ice cream and other frozen desserts that wouldn’t make it without power. We weren’t going to use the treats, so he left with the kid’s wagon loaded.

It’s hard for many people to fathom, the way that Americans manage to be self-resilient. Government, rather than being the ones that solve problems, is often the source of even MORE problems.

After Helene hit NC and other states, FEMA generated quite a bit of ill will in that region. They tried to FORCE people to leave home, and live like domesticated animals, being provided with food and water, and kept there with threats and force.

Pshaw! As my WV relatives might have said.

In Appalachia, people don’t stand around waiting for the government to act. Unlike other disasters, where FEMA herded human beings into captivity, where they docilely waited for food, water, and instructions, the hillbillies just said, “You and what Army?”

FEMA left a bitter legacy in that region. Hill folk are used to doing without, and relying on friends and family for assistance. The update in September, 2024, minimizes the problems.

I have a dear friend, a radio operator located near the NC/SC border, who has been active since the beginning. She has been running a regular net to handle requests for assistance, whether that is food, water, or help with locating vulnerable family or friends in the affected areas. Much of the area where damage was greatest is located in relatively isolated places, where the infrastructure – roads and bridges – is still not in operation.

Project Helene is still active, but their focus has shifted from emergency assistance to teaching the radio skills to enable people located in remote areas to make contact when need arises, and there is little available phone/cell service.

If you have a few extra dollars, you could put them to good use by donating them to the project.

It doesn’t make sense for the federal government to have an agency that HINDERS disaster recovery. If FEMA won’t change to be helpful, then eliminate it.

Is It Really About Sex?

     I could be persuaded to think so, given the trends. Three articles from the past week lean in that direction:

     Then today, there was a scattering of articles about the “pro-natalist movement,” which apparently has the Left even more incensed. Now, I don’t keep company with any leftists, so I can’t conduct a survey of my own. But if we stipulate that the movers and shakers of the Left regard the above with alarm, it might profit us in the Right to conjecture about the reasons.

     There are several threads worth pondering: the trend away from urban residence; young Americans’ renewed interest in home ownership; the noticeably growing interest among young women in a traditional “wifestyle;” and concern about the sunken birthrate among native-born Americans, particularly whites. Most of those things are relevant to the most conservative of all orientations: a belief that America’s decline is not inevitable; i.e., that the future can be better than the present.

     Youth and fertility are essential to a growing nation. Of course there will always be a place for us gray heads – someone has to tell stories about walking eight miles to school through hip-deep snow every morning – but growth requires increasing numbers as well as brisk capital formation and technological improvements in productivity. Everything starts with people, people start with birth, and birth requires young, attractive, fertile women who’ll marry, form families, and add to our race.

     The record of history says that as a nation becomes prosperous, its birth rates will decline. This is not a new subject here at Liberty’s Torch. It’s certainly not a simple one. The number of influences that tend that way is considerable. But history only records what has been. If conditions today differ greatly from those of the past, the anti-natal trend might be reversed.

     The most important difference between today and yesterday is that renewed confidence in the future. Confident people are more likely to reproduce than their opposite numbers.

     While I think there are good reasons to believe that confidence in the future is swelling among young Americans, it’s not something one can put calipers on and measure. Granted that barriers to family growth remain. Granted also that counter-incentives to family formation remain what they’ve been for several decades. But those things are not infinitely powerful. Families do form and endure, despite youth’s tendency to live in the moment. Children are deliberately conceived and born despite the attendant inconveniences and expenses. Confidence has power, too.

     It’s reasonable that the Left should oppose this trend. Leftism requires a kind of longsuffering despair: a willingness to surrender. Those who seek power over others find it difficult to subjugate confident, optimistic people; they’re far more likely to flip their would-be rulers the bird and get on with inventing the next uber-widget. Families of size give their adult members big reasons to fight for a better future, as well.

     So campaigns that denigrate those “thin, fertile Republican women” and the thematically related pro-natal, pro-family currents are to be expected. The major media remain the boughten allies of the Leftist power-mongers. They’ll propagandize against anything that seems to favor growth. They’ll have allies in the Death Cults, as well, for reasons that require no explanation.

     And God willing, the rest of us will get on with living, and creating more life:

     “God gave women wombs for the same reason He gave us the land: to grow something. To make life.” [from “Farm Girl,” in this collection]

     Elon Musk can’t do it all by himself, y’ know!

Dodges And Their Dodgers

     Way, way back in high school, as part of an essay contest, I was tasked to read a rather inane essay which lodged firmly in my damnably retentive memory: “On Not Prosecuting Civil Disobedience,” by “legal philosopher” Ronald Dworkin. Dworkin’s argument was as convoluted as such things always are. At the core, it consisted of this: that someone who breaks a law out of “conscience” isn’t really a criminal, but rather a servant of justice. He argued that the prosecution of such persons actually imposes a loss upon “society:”

     [O]ur society suffers a loss if it punishes a group that includes—as the group of draft dissenters does—some of its most thoughtful and loyal citizens. Jailing such men solidifies their alienation from society, and alienates many like them who are deterred by the threat.

     Dworkin’s motivation appears to have been opposition to the draft, which at the time of his essay (1968) was front and center in the public eye because of the ongoing Vietnam War. Of course, that war is now history, rapidly fading from public consciousness. As those who fought in it age and die, memory of the upheaval it engendered will fade as well. But Dworkin’s argument was pertinent to contemporaneous concerns. Few draftees went as willingly to arms as their parents and grandparents who fought in World War II.

     Today’s upheavals are over illegal immigration, the millions of illegal aliens within America’s borders, and what “should” be done about them. As the Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch are surely aware, two judges were recently arrested for relevant reasons. The uproar from the Left has seldom been louder. This article provides some perspective:

     MSNBC’s legal expert, for example, wondered whether this was the “best way to handle” what are admittedly bad-looking facts for the judge. He said, “It doesn’t look great for the judge, no matter how you slice it. But was this kind of escalatory action the best course of action, to actually go and arrest her, take her to court, and federally charge her? That’s a big step.”
     In short, MSNBC’s expert Dilanian called for ‘prosecutorial restraint.’ In other words, maybe judges should be above the law after all, if they’re on our team.

     Were the Dworkin argument – i.e., that one who breaks a law out of “conscience” ought not to be prosecuted – to be accepted as a legal principle, what defense would Judges Dugan and Cano mount, to say nothing of the many others who are currently aiding illegal aliens’ evasion of the immigration authorities? How would it be litigated? Is there a procedure for determining whether a plea of “conscience” is sincere? For “conscience,” like “justifiable homicide,” is an affirmative defense. Such a defense must be tried before a jury.

     That blows a large hole in the proposition that “civil disobedience” ought not to be prosecuted.

     Among the more important legal arguments of our time is the one over jury nullification: the proposition that the jury in a criminal trial has an absolute right to return a verdict of “not guilty” even if the defendant committed the act of which he’s accused. A jury has that right because a verdict of “not guilty” cannot be appealed, and because jurors cannot be held legally liable for their decisions. Judges and legislators dislike jury nullification for obvious reasons, but as a legal principle it stands unbreached.

     Prosecuting attorneys have a kind of nullification power, in that they may elect not to prosecute a particular defendant. Judges have their own version: they can rule a criminal complaint “dismissed in the interests of justice.” But as public officials, they’re subject to the scrutiny and criticism of the public, which might elect to remove them from their posts for too egregious an action of that kind.

     Thus, the threat of prosecution is not absolute, regardless of the offense or the motives of the offender. But under the law, it’s the deterrent that’s supposed to correct for floutings thereof. A nation that places the law above all persons, positions, and statuses cannot arbitrarily exempt any person or class of persons from its dictates. That’s the essence of the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal-rights and due-process guarantees.

     I intend to watch the Dugan and Cano cases closely. We’ll soon see if it’s really true in practice that “no one is above the law.” Not to put too fine a point on it, that assumption has been challenged by the kid-gloves treatment of some very prominent persons, including a recently unseated president of these United States and his son.

Quote Of The Day

     It’s hard to mutually assure destruction with a psychotic death cult. — Kurt Schlichter, concerning Iran’s pursuit of nuclear weapons.

     I’m of the same mind. Even so, I continue to hope that it won’t come to that. But that hope is dwindling.

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