Mar 22 2023

Dog Bites Man?

     (The full story on page A38 at bottom right, with pictures!)

     There are items of information to which the human mind is resistant. Take the certainty of death, for example. All but the youngest of us know this, yet very few people go through their day with even a background awareness that I will die someday, and it could be today. It might be impossible; consciousness of our inexorable mortality would amplify every fear we harbor, making the simplest decisions and actions exercises in risk avoidance. That’s among the reasons the Church exhorts us to practice mortification, an exercise that promotes the recognition of our common fate.

     Moving back to secular considerations, it’s a well-documented fact that a strong majority of violent crimes and crimes against property in these United States occur in a small minority of locales. One who is determined not to be a victim of such a crime would naturally be advised to avoid those locales – especially, not to live in one. But when we deal with persons who already reside in such a district, the advice tends to fall upon deaf ears. The tendency is to wave the argument and the supporting evidence aside, perhaps with a flip “It hasn’t happened to me yet” for a grace note.

     And here we come to Daniel Greenfield’s recent piece on the subject:

     A groundbreaking study by John R. Lott of the Crime Prevention Research Center, revealed that “1% of counties have 21% of the population and 42% of the murders” and “2% of counties contain 31% of the population and 56% of the murders.”

     The 1% of bloody red counties include such Democrat strongholds as Philadelphia, New York City, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Dallas, D.C., Miami-Dade, Milwaukee, San Diego, St. Louis, Chicago’s Cook County, L Houston’s Harris County, Detroit’s Wayne County, Memphis’ Shelby County, Phoenix’s Maricopa County, Cleveland’s Cuyahoga County, and many others.

     Biden won Cook County, the bloodiest county in the country, by 66%. He won Los Angeles County, the second bloodiest, by 71%, Harris County by 56%, Philadelphia by 81%, New York City by 76%, Wayne County by 68%, and Shelby County by 64%.

     One could reach various conclusions from the above alone. The first would be that Democrat governance fosters crime. The second would be that anyone who is risk-averse should stay the hell out of those 2% of “bloody red counties.” The third – and I say this without rancor toward anyone – would be that 31% of the population of this country is either blind to the risks it faces or completely BLEEP!ing nuts.

     The population of the U.S. currently hovers near to 330 million persons. 31% of that figure is over 102 million. That’s a whole lot of blindness and / or lunacy. But there we are: approximately one out of every three of our fellow Americans falls into one of those two categories. Finer determinations are left to the individual reader.

     Still, there are other conclusions to be drawn, assuming one has the patience and the informational resources to delve into the demographics of those bloody red counties:

     All the figures above are from the 2010 census.

     Certain conclusions leap out of such figures. I shan’t belabor the point, other than to repeat two favorite bits of advice. The first is from the late and deeply lamented “Ol’ Remus” of The Woodpile Report:

Stay away from crowds.

     The second is from the badly mistreated John Derbyshire:

     (10) Thus, while always attentive to the particular qualities of individuals, on the many occasions where you have nothing to guide you but knowledge of those mean differences, use statistical common sense:

     (10a) Avoid concentrations of blacks not all known to you personally.
     (10b) Stay out of heavily black neighborhoods.
     (10c) If planning a trip to a beach or amusement park at some date, find out whether it is likely to be swamped with blacks on that date (neglect of that one got me the closest I have ever gotten to death by gunshot).
     (10d) Do not attend events likely to draw a lot of blacks.
     (10e) If you are at some public event at which the number of blacks suddenly swells, leave as quickly as possible.
     (10f) Do not settle in a district or municipality run by black politicians.
     (10g) Before voting for a black politician, scrutinize his/her character much more carefully than you would a white.
     (10h) Do not act the Good Samaritan to blacks in apparent distress, e.g., on the highway.
     (10i) If accosted by a strange black in the street, smile and say something polite but keep moving.

     Keeping these bits of advice firmly in mind could be critical in preserving your life and property. Besides, I love all my Gentle Readers! For any of you to get killed would make me sad. So stay alert! And wherever you live and must travel, do have a nice day.

Mar 21 2023

Things Are Looking Up

     Someone with my proclivities has to be reminded that happiness requires him to “stay close to home:” that is, to keep the greater part of his attention on things that are personally important to him, and to hold the “big stuff” that occupies the attention of the talking heads at a good distance for as long as possible. With today’s foray into matters medical, it’s a particularly important bit of advice.

     My beloved wife Beth (a.k.a. “the Curmudgeon’s Significant Other” or C.S.O.) is nearing the end of her journey through cancer treatment and recovery. While she has some months of healing and plastic surgery ahead of her, she’s looking and feeling better than she has in some time. It’s an occasion for rejoicing and thankful prayer…and maybe a little music, too.

     This is my favorite track from one of Twentieth Century rock-music’s high points:

     Give thanks with me, Gentle Readers!

Mar 21 2023

Here Comes Another One (Just Like The Other One)

     Yes, today will be yet another day of long-distance driving, sitting in a surgical waiting room, and generally agonizing over the well-being of the C.S.O. So there’ll be nothing from me this morning. Perhaps later. Have a nice day, Gentle Reader.

Mar 21 2023

Small Update on East Palestine

This disaster is close to my heart. I’ve traveled those roads often, going from OH to SC, OH to PA, and OH to WV. It’s not just East Palestine that is affected, but also those communities nearby, whose own property values have taken a hit. The fear of health damage will be many years long.

The poor response to this is going to hurt the Democrats in 2024, I think. It should – actions, or, in this case, LACK of action, should have a cost.

The thing is, people aren’t dumb. They are capable of looking at attempts to ‘snow’ them, rejecting it, and acting in their own best interest. That so many have not done so yet is related to the fact that there have been more important things going on in their lives. Each Leftist act to screw up their lives was not resisted, as they were individually not worth the time.

However, cumulatively, the damage, and the cost, has mounted. The situation is not looking good for even the most charismatic candidates – and, those are the kind of candidates that the Dems are seriously short of.

I do hope that the citizens of East Palestine are not lost in the process.

Mar 20 2023

The Judgmental Cadre And Their Accelerating Irrelevance

     I read somewhere that cartoonist Scott Adams believes himself to be politically on the left: “Somewhere to the left of Bernie,” to use his formulation. Hm. Well, maybe. But Adams respects evidence, and anyone who does that won’t remain on the left for long.

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers are aware of Adams’s recent statement about blacks’ attitudes toward whites:

     “If nearly half of all blacks are not OK with white people … that’s a hate group. And I don’t want anything to do with them….And based on how things are going, the best advice I could give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. ’Cause there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed.”

     Always assuming that the Rasmussen poll accurately captured the attitudes of American blacks, Adams’s conclusion was and is impeccable. But of course, what he said is something that must not be said. So he’s been roundly castigated for it, lost most of his syndication for it, and has been relegated to the ranks of the socially untouchables.

     Evidence, you see, is irrelevant when a socially prescribed element of Goodthink is at issue. You are not allowed to cite evidence that cross-cuts the Goodthink! The media, which have the power of a hundred hurricanes, will whirl you off into the outer darkness where there is the weeping and the gnashing of teeth.

     I would have thought that persons on the Right would be willing to allow that Adams has reasoned soundly from what he knows. It’s possible to dispute the validity or the accuracy of the Rasmussen poll, but he who accepts it as valid and accurate cannot be faulted for reaching the obvious conclusion. However, some on the Right won’t allow it:

     The problem is, of course, everyone watching Scott Adams be cancelled for “racism” knew exactly what would happen if the races he was talking about were reversed.

[…]

     America, we have a problem. Here we have two white people saying the exact same thing, except one said it without getting loud and using profanity. Either these comments are racist, or they aren’t. I happen to think both sound racist.

     It seems I must say it again:

Facts Have No Agenda.
Therefore, Facts Cannot Be Racist.

     It doesn’t matter how a statement “sounds.” What matters is its accuracy and – if it involves a conclusion – its validity. Either half of American blacks disagree that “It’s okay to be white” or they don’t. If they do, American whites cannot and must not live among them, nor allow blacks’ incursion into peaceful, orderly white communities. And be damned to anyone – Left or Right – who tries to plead otherwise.

     I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Mar 20 2023

The First Day Of Spring 2023

     Good morning, Gentle Reader. It’s been an interesting week already, yet it’s only Monday. I’m in a “bar the doors and clean all the guns” sort of mood, but to keep things peppy around here (and to avoid involuntary commitment) I think I’ll muse over a graphic I snagged just yesterday. As is so often the case, I stole it from Mike Miles:

     Younger Americans might not be aware of Isaac Asimov, as he:

  1. Passed away in 1992;
  2. Wrote actual books that contain no videos, JPGs, or hyperlinks.

     Asimov was a prolific writer. If memory serves, he published over 200 books under his own name, and quite probably an equal number under various pseudonyms. His interests were wide – among his less well-known works were Asimov’s Guide to The Bible and Asimov’s Guide to Shakespeare — and he possessed a seemingly boundless confidence about his ability to tackle any subject whatsoever. His science fiction remains popular today – so much so that other highly popular and capable writers have added to his Foundation saga with further volumes.

     There’s no question that Asimov was highly intelligent. However, his confidence in his intellect led him to some strange positions. For example, he opined that a tax of 50% of one’s income was perfectly fair and reasonable. For another, he differed with another very bright man, the late Julian Simon, on his position about population growth, and took the losing side of Simon’s bet with Paul Ehrlich about the prices of commodities over time. Clearly, as intelligent as he was, he could also be wrong.

     The above graphic nods toward one of the more controversial questions of our time: the proper role of the intellectual. What is it? What bounds it? To what extent should ordinary people place their trust in the opinions of intellectuals?

     If there are hard and fast answers to those seemingly straightforward questions, I don’t have them. I don’t know anyone who does.

***

     As I’ve said on several occasions, a powerful intellect is a tool, not a state of grace from which one cannot fall. Never mind the posturing of the “many kinds of intelligence” promoters; there’s no substance to the notion. Intelligence is about one’s power to handle abstractions through logical operations. In its generalized form – what Charles Murray and Richard Herrnstein labeled g — it can be measured with fair accuracy. While allowances must be made for the influence of cultural factors on tests and testing procedures, the results of IQ tests have been shown to be reproducible within modest error bars. Indeed, they’ve become more so over time.

     But even the brightest man can go badly wrong in his reasoning. The ways in which a powerful mind can go astray are many. We don’t collect logical fallacies and misapplications of logic because they smell nice.

     One of the most important sources of intellectual error is the mistaken premise. If your premises are incorrect, reasoning from them is unlikely to lead you anywhere good. One of the most influential thinkers of his day, Thomas Malthus, started from a mistaken premise in composing his Essay on the Principle of Population. Later observations persuaded him that he had erred, which resulted in a revised essay describing how and where he’d gone wrong. Yet the uncorrected edition remains among the most influential works of all time.

     No matter how bright you may be, ensuring that your premises are right is critical to good reasoning.

***

     Have a fictional exposition on the importance of accurate premises:

     “I just have a question about this.” Rachel nodded sideways at the vessel she’d brought. “Did she tell you about it?”
     “Holly did. Fountain never said a word.”
     “I made it according to her instructions, but it doesn’t have the same effect as hers.” She dug the printed recipe out of her purse, unfolded it, and passed it to Trish. “I couldn’t help but wonder what I did wrong.”
     “Probably nothing,” Trish said.
     “Then why—”
     “You’re not Fountain.”
     Rachel merely stared.
     “Why are you looking at me that way, Doctor? A scientist should know she has to control all the experimental variables.”
     “It’s a postulate of the sciences,” Rachel said dryly, “that no investigator shall be deemed privileged over any other investigator. We carved that in stone after Rene Blondlot.”
     “Who was that?”
     “An investigator who wanted to be deemed privileged. When no one else could see the radiation he claimed to have produced, he said it was because only he could see it.”
     Trish grinned. “I’ll bet that pissed off his colleagues and competitors.”
     “It taught us something,” Rachel replied. “Either I bollixed up Fountain’s recipe or she didn’t give me all the details. No other explanation would cover it.”
     “Only if you’re superglued to that postulate,” Trish said. “But let’s imagine that there was an ingredient Fountain didn’t tell you about. Then adding that ingredient would produce a drink with effects identical to the one she gave you at the hospital, right?”
     Rachel nodded. “That’s my working hypothesis.”
     “But there’s at least one other possibility,” Trish said. “What if Fountain gave you a complete list of ingredients but omitted a processing step?”
     Rachel waved it aside. “Yeah, that would explain it equally well, but—”
     “We’re not done yet, Doctor. What if the environmental conditions under which the shake is made are the missing factor?”
     Rachel felt her jaw tightening and fought to relax it. “All right. Anything else?”
     Trish smiled nastily. “Only your no-privileged-investigator postulate, Doctor. How would you like to test that?”
     Rachel’s jaw tightened again. “How would we do that?”
     Trish reviewed the recipe Rachel had worked from, finished her coffee, and rose. “For that, we’ll need Fountain.”

#

     “I don’t understand, Miss Rachel,” Fountain said as she peered at the printout. “What is written here is exactly what I did to make your shake. I would expect you to get the same result if you followed these directions.” She canted her head. “Are you sure you did so?”
     Rachel cringed internally. “Yes I am, Fountain. I was meticulously careful at every stage.”
     “Do you still have an adequate supply of the ingredients?”
     “Oh yes. I bought more than enough to make two more servings.”
     “Then if it will please you and Miss Trish,” Fountain said with a look at Trish, “let us go to your home and try the recipe a second time.”
     Trish shrugged. “I’m game. You’re in Foxwood, right?” Rachel nodded. Trish fetched a large purse from her bedroom and pulled out a ring of keys. “We’ll follow you.”

#

     “Okay,” Rachel said. “We have here two potations—”
     “Hm?” Trish frowned. “How do potatoes figure into it?”
     Rachel chuckled. “A potation is something made to drink. Anyway, these two shot glasses contain samples of my and Fountain’s mixtures. The one in my left hand is hers; the other is mine. You’re the guinea pig.”
     Trish smiled crookedly. “Couldn’t figure out how to make it double-blind, eh?”
     “Nope. We’d have needed another participant, and Elise is at the clinic.” She offered the glass in her left hand to Trish, who took it and sipped from it.
     Rachel waited.
     “It’s okay,” Trish said. “Tasty, but I’m not getting the lift you talked about. Let me have the other one.”
     Rachel did so. Trish sipped from it and immediately screamed in exultation. “Yee-HAH!” Her whole body vibrated visibly. She thrust her arms toward the ceiling and started bouncing on her toes.
     “Now that’s what I call a tonic.” Trish bounced in place a few more times. “I’d do a few backflips if there were room enough. Looks like you got it right that time, Doc…hey, what’s with the long face? Fountain, did you tell Miss Rachel to do something you didn’t write down?”
     Fountain’s face filled with woe. “No, Miss Trish! We both did exactly as the paper says. I swear it!”
     “We did,” Rachel muttered. “We even synchronized the steps. I fibbed to you, Trish. The one in my left hand was mine. The one that lit your jets was Fountain’s.”
     Trish frowned. Rachel shrugged. “It was the closest I could get to a double-blind test.”
     “Hmph. Well, in that case, Doc, it looks as if we’ve found our missing ingredient.” Trish beckoned Fountain to her side and slipped an arm around her waist. “And it’s not sold in any store.”
     “Yeah.” Rachel turned away. “Shit.”

     [From The Wise and the Mad]

     Admittedly, that’s a fanciful case. The premises of experimental science include this one: The identity of the experimenter does not matter. But in the fictional case above, it did matter: my character Fountain had unique powers over food, which my character Rachel MacLachlan lacked. Indeed, Rachel mentions the infamous case of Rene Blondlot and his “N-rays” in support of her thesis. It merely happened that in my fictional experiment, the identity of the “experimenter” mattered very much.

     Of course, that was fiction. In the hard sciences, the “no privileged experimenter” premise is maintained absolutely. No one is permitted to assert the contrary and be treated as an honest researcher. But it serves to illustrate my point.

***

     If a hard scientist, accustomed to dealing with inanimate matter manipulable by human beings, should venture into “softer” realms of thought that deal with self-willed human beings who can resist manipulation, premises that served him well in the laboratory can lead him astray. There are some lurid examples of this. The late Linus Pauling comes to mind at once. In his later life Pauling, whose work in molecular biology was genuinely groundbreaking, allowed himself to be used by certain interest groups in promoting their social and political causes. Never mind that his brilliance in biochemistry was irrelevant to such causes. His reputation was what they sought to exploit, and he permitted it.

     To some degree, the hard scientist who allows himself to pontificate about economics, psychology, anthropology, sociology, political science, or the like is merely following his “fellow intellectuals” who labor in those fields. He might even tell himself consciously that “if they can sound off about all this crap, surely I can too!” But all commit the same error. People are not all the same! They vary too greatly in their desires, priorities, abilities, shortcomings, and influences to be treated as a hard scientist treats his experimental materials. They’ve always resisted absolute generalizations, and probably always will.

     The many cases of intellectuals propounding absurd theses in peremptory tones with absolute assurance are a great part of why “intellectual” is today a term of dismissal, if not contempt. I have no doubt that Isaac Asimov was sincere in deploring that development, but the failure of intellectuals, including himself, to respect the boundaries around their expertise is the greater part of the reason for it.

Mar 19 2023

The Pursuit Of Misery

     The calendar makes this the fourth Sunday of Lent in the Year of Our Lord 2023. That makes this Laetare Sunday, which parallels in significance the third or Gaudete Sunday of Advent. These days are periods for a lightening of the mood that dominates the rest of the Lenten and Advent seasons. Coincidentally, March 19 is also the feast day of Saint Joseph, husband and protector of the Blessed Virgin Mary and her divine Son. Saint Joseph has also been named the special patron of the Catholic Church. So it’s a big day for us theophages, though not as big as Christmas or Easter.

     But enough of calendric considerations. What’s on my mind right now is the notion expressed in the title, and how to avoid it.

     Contrary to the myths circulated by the Church’s enemies, Christianity is a religion of joy. After all, its Founder came among men to redeem us from our sins, from one end of Time to the other. We don’t practice and promote our faith or the virtues it exalts because they conduce to misery, but to happiness. Hilaire Belloc’s quatrain expresses it nicely:

Wherever the Catholic sun doth shine,
There’s always laughter and good red wine.
At least I’ve always found it so.
Benedicamus Domino!

     Sadly, during Lent that point is often obscured by the ubiquitous exhortations to sacrifice this, that, or the other thing. Today’s society recoils in horror from the very suggestion that we might be better off for a bit of temporary self-denial. We’ve lost the understanding and appreciation of delayed gratification that previous generations absorbed and internalized.

***

     At one time, in an essay I can no longer locate, I wrote that a man’s possessions have almost as much power over him as he does over them. (“Almost as much” because he can get rid of them, whereas they can’t get rid of him.) While the extension of this idea to generalized self-indulgence is difficult and imperfect, there is some relevance to it, especially as regards our habits of consumption.

     Like any other kind of habit, a habit of consumption gradually sinks below the threshold of consciousness. That is, we cease to be fully aware that we’re doing it. For some people, for example our old friend Smith, another person must call attention to the habit before Smith becomes aware of what he’s doing.

     Of course, some repetitive behaviors are not habits. You don’t “habitually” breathe, eliminate, sleep, or check your blind spot before changing lanes; you do those things because you must, or your life will end. A habit of consumption will necessarily involve an optional behavior, not required for the perpetuation of life. For example, as has been well established by millions of studies, coffee is necessary to life. (It is, isn’t it?) However, putting milk into your coffee, though it starts as the conscious exercise of a preference, can become a habit. Over the years you may cease to think about it, except for those unfortunate mornings when you discover to your surprise that there’s no milk in the house.

     Our exceedingly wealthy society is prone to habits of consumption. Our markets are dazzlingly efficient and our means are considerable; thus, for most of us, acquiring an ongoing supply of what we consume is relatively easy. It wasn’t always that way, which is one reason why our forebears were better at denying themselves something than are we.

     Let a habit of consumption be interrupted involuntarily – “Honey, where’s the milk?” “Oh, I’m sorry, I forgot to get some.” – and we become freshly aware of what we’ve been doing. The degree of the attendant discomfort will depend on many things, though there nearly always is at least some irritation. That surge of awareness should carry a message: I’ve been doing this automatically. Sad to say, apart from the irritation over having been denied something we’d come to expect, no message arrives.

     One seldom feels gratitude while indulging a habit of consumption.

***

     The more habits a man has, the greater is the portion of his life that he spends unconscious. Socrates of Athens has told us that this is a bad thing: “The unexamined life is not worth living.” And while habits of consumption are to be expected to some degree, especially in a nation as rich as ours, unawareness of them is unreservedly negative.

     One method for becoming more aware of them is the practice of voluntary self-denial: “For this season of the year, I’ll go without it.” The thing sacrificed enters into one’s consciousness: “I normally put milk in my coffee, but not today.” You become aware not only of what you habitually do but of why you do it. That actually improves the sacrificed indulgence – not “as a habit,” but as a source of pleasure and satisfaction.

     As voluntary self-denial increases the percentage of your day you spend fully conscious, so does your awareness of how much you have to be thankful for. Gratitude follows naturally. But gratitude not only increases your happiness, it brings you closer to God. It does so even if you fail to make use of the moment to pray, though prayer is always to be encouraged.

     But let’s not stop there, for the inverse is also true. As the percentage of your life spent unconscious increases, your overall happiness will decrease. You cannot be happy without being conscious of what you have, whether or not you feel you’ve earned it. If you know someone who seems to “have it all” but seems perpetually unhappy or unsatisfied, the probability is high that he seldom if ever gives conscious thought to how fortunate he is, and how grateful he should be.

***

     Of course, nothing of great value comes without a price. The price may be monetary, or it may be effort. The increased happiness that arises from voluntary self-denial is paid for by the effort of forgoing that chosen thing. And there is a caveat: it’s possible to forfeit that increment of happiness by grumbling about the effort, as if it had been forced upon you by a divine Drill Instructor.

     One of our founding documents speaks of “the pursuit of happiness” as a individual, God-given right. When Thomas Jefferson penned that phrase, he was probably thinking of the sort of material gain that free people can and do pursue. But heaping possessions around oneself is subject to the law of diminishing returns. Similarly, consuming without limit eventually causes the thing consumed to become a burden rather than a source of pleasure or satisfaction.

     Occasional voluntary self-denials are a preventative for that trap. Best of all, they remind us of the ultimate Source of all that is good, and the gratitude He is owed.

     Happy Laetare Sunday, Gentle Readers. May God bless and keep you all.

Mar 19 2023

Allegiances And Alliances

     It takes a bit of investigation to puzzle it out, but the facts are there for anyone who makes the effort. The United States has only one set of treaty obligations at this time: those that arise from the North Atlantic Charter, which created NATO. There was once a comparable SEATO, which created an alliance of nations in the South-East Asian region, but that treaty has expired. Our other “security commitments” are entirely informal, matters of “understandings” between national administrations.

     In particular, we have no treaty obligations to Ukraine.

     Recently, Tucker Carlson submitted the question of “what we should do about Ukraine” to a number of prominent politicians and aspirants to high office. That question is obviously pertinent to the ongoing war between Ukraine and the Russian Federation. Equally obviously, any contender for the presidency must expect to face that question. Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is one prospective contender, albeit undeclared at this time.

     Here is the most pertinent part of DeSantis’s response:

     While the U.S. has many vital national interests – securing our borders, addressing the crisis of readiness within our military, achieving energy security and independence, and checking the economic, cultural, and military power of the Chinese Communist Party – becoming further entangled in a territorial dispute between Ukraine and Russia is not one of them. The Biden administration’s virtual “blank check” funding of this conflict for “as long as it takes,” without any defined objectives or accountability, distracts from our country’s most pressing challenges.

     Without question, peace should be the objective. The U.S. should not provide assistance that could require the deployment of American troops or enable Ukraine to engage in offensive operations beyond its borders. F-16s and long-range missiles should therefore be off the table. These moves would risk explicitly drawing the United States into the conflict and drawing us closer to a hot war between the world’s two largest nuclear powers. That risk is unacceptable.

     Sounds pretty moderate, doesn’t it? In good agreement with the Trump Administration’s policy of “America First.” I can find nothing objectionable in it. But then, I’m not a member of the political elite:

     Former Vice President Mike Pence, without mentioning Ron DeSantis by name, rebuked the Florida governor Saturday for his isolationist approach to the war in Ukraine….

     A sharp divide inside the GOP over U.S. involvement in Ukraine has made Mr. DeSantis the target of widespread Republican criticism for suggesting America should focus on problems closer to home. His approach aligns him with former President Donald Trump, who is warning the conflict could cause “World War III.”

     “There must also be a complete commitment to dismantling the entire globalist neocon establishment that is perpetually dragging us into endless wars, pretending to fight for freedom and democracy abroad,” Mr. Trump said in a campaign video Thursday.

     Mr. Pence said those who suggest the U.S. can’t take care of its problems at home and still remain the leader of the free world are selling America short.

     “That’s a pretty small view of the greatest nation on Earth,” he said. “We can do both.”

     The article does mention “declining Republican support” for American involvement in the conflict, but then, the great majority of Republican-aligned voters aren’t members of the political Establishment. At least, we don’t expect defense contractors to help us with our monthly bills.

     DeSantis is no better liked than Trump in Establishment circles. Whether the letter after the name is D or R, Establishmentarians are firmly opposed to what Pence has called “isolationist” policy. “Isolationist,” in their idiom, means any lessening of the “GloboCop” posture of the U.S. toward regional wars. They want significant, visible American presence in all such conflicts, regardless of the particulars.

     On the Republican side, it might be about maintaining the stream of campaign donations. On the Democrat side, the issue is power, and the prestige that widespread international meddling brings with it. They’re the Twenty-First Century’s descendants of the Nineteenth Century colonialists who sought to impose the rule of their nations on less developed lands “for their own good.” The first of them, Woodrow Wilson, was determined to involve the U.S. in World War I. Democrat presidents since him have eagerly inserted American forces in war after war, regardless of the relevance to American interests.

     I submit that ordinary Americans have a strong interest in not being caught up in a war with Russia. Whether or not it would “go nuclear” is a side issue. “Never get into a land war in Asia,” right? Our last foray cost nearly 56,000 American lives and brought us…nothing of value. A war with Russia would be a great excuse for imposing censorship, confiscatory taxes, a renascent draft, and other authoritarian controls on American life. Read up on the activities of General Hugh Johnson during the World Wars for a refresher.

     But the Establishmentarians have another agenda…and our interest in remaining alive and free doesn’t factor into it. The “America First” component of the electorate is their enemy. Anyone who claims to speak for it must be destroyed. Like Trump, Ron DeSantis had better watch his back.

Mar 19 2023

Courage Or Opportunism?

     At this point, I’m unable to take any mainstream “journalist” seriously. They strike me as a clique of toadies, ever willing to kowtow before power in the hope of ingratiating themselves and winning “access.” Thus, I entreat you to view the following:

     I don’t know the “reporter” who condemned Lori Lightfoot to her face. What I do know is this: she will soon no longer be the mayor of Chicago. Given that, what negative consequences is the “reporter” likely to face? Any? None?

     Perhaps I’m being unjustifiably harsh. The next mayor might be a Democrat and a Lightfoot ally. All the same, this looks to me like opportunism rather than journalistic courage. Your opinion is your own.

Mar 18 2023

Peak Lawlessness

     According to this article, Donald Trump, the 45th president of these United States, expects to be arrested on Tuesday:

     Numerous leaks have reported Trump will be charged next week in New York City in the Stormy Daniels case where he has been accused of paying Daniels as part of a confidential settlement before the 2016 election to buy her silence over her unfounded accusation of an affair.

     Given the Left’s desperation about keeping Trump from regaining the presidency, I find this credible. But there might be a “gotcha:”

     Trump, who has 24-hour protection by the U.S. Secret Service, currently resides at his Mar-a-Lago club in Palm Beach, Florida, which he rarely leaves.
     Under Florida law, the state’s governor is responsible for making sure a person in the state is arrested and delivered to another state if that person is indicted on a felony charge.
     However, Florida law also gives the governor the power to call for a further investigation before a defendant is extradited if that defendant refuses to comply with extradition.

     If this is the case, Governor DeSantis will have a lot of influence over what comes next. How he’ll use it is anyone’s guess.

     Elon Musk and others have opined that if such an arrest should occur, it will catapult Trump back into the White House in November 2024. If elections were still reasonably honest, that would probably be so. But we know that the electoral machinery is now entirely in the control of the Left. They’re likely to pull out all the stops – if there are any remaining – to prevent his re-inauguration.

     But what if the Left were to fail to steal the 2024 election? What then?

     Then President Trump had better watch his back. He’s well guarded, I know, but as Michael Corleone said to Tom Hagen near to the end of The Godfather Part II, “If anything in this life is certain, if history has taught us anything, it’s that you can kill anyone.” The Left would be desperate enough to try anything. Bombs? Plausible. An enfilade with machine guns? Not beyond the bounds of possibility. Throwing waves of bodies at the president-elect, spending lives by the hundreds just to get one close enough to Trump to snuff him out? I can imagine that, too.

     Do not imagine that any degree of carnage would strike the Left’s planning cadre as unthinkable. Trump restored to the Oval Office is their worst nightmare. Moreover, in this they have allies throughout the Republican Establishment. Trump threatens to upset their applecarts, too.

     But there’s this, too: Were anyone to succeed in assassinating President Trump, it would herald the end of all law and all order in these United States. The event would dissolve all obfuscation about the bipartisan political Establishment and the Deep State. No level of government would be able to assert and enforce its authority in the chaos that would follow. Electric Boogaloo? Try Nuclear Tarantella.

     Stay tuned.

Mar 18 2023

Social Deterioration In Real Time Dept.

     As long as we’re looking at signs of the Apocalypse, have another:

     Well, yes, she’s an idiot. The cloth mask is a dead giveaway. But not only is she mumbling through a completely unnecessary mask, she’s unable to grasp a simple fact: Walmart knows what’s being stolen and what isn’t. That’s one of the reasons for having a point-of-sale / inventory control system. The security tags on the shades of makeup most desired by black women merely reflect those data.

     As it happens, the enhanced security trend has reached my supposedly safe portion of Long Island. However, Walgreen’s has implemented a “protect it all” scheme: everything small enough to be stuffed into a woman’s handbag is now locked behind a Lucite shield. I discovered this in the course of:

  • Going to Walgreen’s to purchase ibuprofen;
  • Discovering that the ibuprofen was behind such a locked shield;
  • Summoning sales help to liberate the ibuprofen;
  • Watching the saleswoman pull out a large bundle of keys and sort through them for the right one;
  • Watching her unlock and open the shield, extract one large bottle of ibuprofen, and close and relock the shield;
  • Watching her scamper off toward the registers with that bottle of ibuprofen faster than I could follow her.

     It protracted what would have been a five-minute stop into about fifteen minutes. This constitutes a severe blow to Walgreen’s. The store needs more personnel than it otherwise would. It must pay those salespeople, and provide them with certain noncash benefits. It must purchase accident insurance and unemployment insurance to cover them. Finally, it must deal with the reduced willingness of shoppers to shop there, owing to the indignities and the losses of time.

     Unless those costs and that reduction in trade are covered by increases in the retail prices of what it sells, Walgreen’s is in trouble. Yet I have no doubt that were I to visit any comparable institution in my district, I’d see the same precautions against theft in place or being implemented.

     But at least no one can accuse Walgreen’s of “racism” for protecting only the part of its stock-in-trade that’s stolen most often. What a bargain!

Mar 18 2023

Open War Is Upon Us

     Whether we like it or not. Please click through and watch the video:

     That aired on the BBC yesterday — Saint Patrick’s Day. So did this clip:

     Isn’t it getting a wee bit obvious, Gentle Reader? On one of the most joyous Christian celebrations in the Western world, what do those…people lambaste us with? Nothing Christian, to be sure. Paeans to paganism. Lectures about “racism,” “xenophobia,” and “the contributions of migrants” to Irish history!

     There is a full-scale attack in progress on everything Christian, everything Western, and – I must include this, so forgive me if it raises your neck hair yet again – everything white. It no longer attempts to be subtle. It no longer uses the “but” sidestep. It simply effaces and obliterates all the distinguishing characteristics of Christian-Enlightenment civilization. It gives everything non-Christian, non-Western, and non-white pride of place even on occasions such as Saint Patrick’s Day.

     I fear for Easter this year. What will they batter us with then? Islamic scripture? The life and loves of Muhammad? Or perhaps a recruitment video for al-Qaeda?

     It’s time to get seriously angry.

Mar 17 2023

Something Beautiful For Your Friday Afternoon

     Because there’s more than enough ugliness to go around:

     Enjoy.

Mar 17 2023

Right But Ignored

     I was once given a gift subscription to a weekly periodical – one that arrived on pulp paper rather than as an email – that aggregated the writings of prominent conservative opinion writers. That started arriving in my mailbox in early 1990, if my memory is accurate. Among other things, it provided my introduction to the late and deeply lamented Joseph Sobran.

     Sobran was a standout among conservative columnists. He was his own man, ever willing to go where he pleased, without regard for the preponderance of opinion on the Right. Moreover, his writing was so perfectly lucid that when his case was sound – i.e., when he had his facts straight – it was irresistibly convincing. I could not read a Sobran column without being impressed by his clarity and forcefulness.

     If you’re old enough to have lived through it and serious enough to have kept up with the news, you may recall a couple of things about the Year of Our Lord 1990:

  • The U.S. had just completed the Reagan Era.
  • George H. W. Bush was the president of these United States.
  • Saddam Hussein, the strongman dictator of Iraq, was plotting the annexation of Kuwait.
  • The strongman dictator of Panama, General Manuel Noriega, was being removed from his perch by American forces.
  • The Iron Curtain and its manufacturer, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were being dismantled by popular pressure, and would soon fall completely.
  • Red China was tacitly dismantling its Communist economy in favor of “state capitalism,” which would coincidentally leave the Communist Party in complete political control.
  • Francis Fukuyama would soon publish The End of History and The Last Man, a tome whose thesis would be hailed by the naïve and shortsighted of all political creeds.

     If you would just squint with the light behind you, you could almost see Thomas Jefferson smiling down at us from heaven. “I told you!” he said to the spirits of George Mason and Patrick Henry. “The ball of liberty has rolled right around the globe.” And in that heady heyday of the Land of the Free, it was possible to believe it…for a while.

     Joseph Sobran didn’t let his guard down. A lot of other conservative columnists did. The temptation was too strong for them. The forces of entrenched power and privilege were far from giving up. Perhaps the other luminaries of the Right should have known that; Sobran did.

     When the drums began to beat over Iraq and Kuwait, Sobran was virtually alone on the Right in opposing the drive for war. “Has the Left given peace a bad name?” he wrote memorably. He took issue with the suggestion that any vital interest of the U.S. was at stake in that matter. Indeed, the U.S. didn’t – and still doesn’t – have any treaty obligations toward any Middle Eastern nation. But seldom can a lone voice deflect a nation from a drive toward war.

     The Reagan years had seen little American involvement in armed conflict. Yes, there was Grenada. Yes, there was Libya. And yes, to this day there are opinion writers who dispute the necessity of both actions. But they were blessedly brief. The bloodshed was minimal.

     But the Bush family was a wholly-owned subsidiary of the defense and intelligence sectors. Reagan’s notion that a military intervention should serve the vital interests of the United States was anathema to them. Pere et fils were united on that, and remain so.

     I worked for a defense contractor back then. I hardly need tell you what the preponderance of opinion was about Operation Desert Storm. “Contracts! Jobs! Orders for more airplanes!”

     Eisenhower told us. Joseph Sobran reminded us. We should have listened.

***

     In the years before the First World War, the French military was under the supreme command of General Victor-Constant Michel. From what I’ve read, General Michel was a clear-sighted analyst and a sober military planner. He foresaw the Schlieffen Plan of a German invasion through the Low Countries, and was open about his reasons for predicting it. On the basis of his prognosis, he advocated a defense-oriented strategy for France hat would deter such an invasion.

     But the attitude among other top French commanders was irremediably opposed to the Michel strategy. France had lost the War of 1870 in a most humiliating fashion. The German Empire had annexed the districts of Alsace and Lorraine as part of the price of peace. All the generals other than Michel were slavering for the chance to avenge themselves for their earlier defeat, and to take those lost provinces back. So Michel and his emphasis on a strong north-northeastern defensive position had to go.

     In 1913 Michel was ousted as supreme commander. He was replaced by General Joseph Joffre, a notably offense-minded commander who saw things the way the rest of the commanders did. He had no respect for Michel’s analyses. He founded French war strategy on an all-out thrust into Alsace and Lorraine, with the intent of driving headlong into Germany and forcing the Empire to sue for peace.

     But in those days before the mechanization of ground warfare, a serious analyst would have regarded a major thrust through Alsace and Lorraine from the French side as madness. Those provinces were about the best defensive ground in Europe. Indeed, that was a great part of the reason Germany wanted them, for France, despite its defeats in 1870 and 1814, was the most feared military power on the continent. For six centuries its forces had been well nigh unstoppable. The Metternich Plan that emerged from the Congress of Vienna was aimed directly if not exclusively at blunting French aggression.

     In other words, the Joffre Plan was insanity on a stick, despite the enthusiasm for it among other French generals. What Michel foresaw came to pass almost exactly as he foresaw it. Yet it is Joffre who is well remembered to this day. General Michel has been reduced to a footnote. As Barbara Tuchman wrote in The Guns of August, “To be right and overruled is not forgiven to persons in responsible positions.”

     I hope it’s forgivable for opinion writers: both for those who were swept up by the tide of martial ardor and for those who resisted it.

***

     The drums are beating once again. The political Establishment is nearly unanimous that the U.S. must fight for “Ukrainian integrity.” Those who dissent are routinely slandered as “pro-Putin.” Tucker Carlson, of all people, has been called a “Putin apologist.” Despite Russia’s superiority in men, material, and strategic position, Vladimir Putin’s clear commitment to victory, and the dubious ability of NATO to reverse the course of the war, the possibility of escalation to a nuclear level is waved aside as “fear-mongering.”

     Joseph Sobran died in 2010, at age sixty-four. The wars and prospects for war in our time are no longer his concern. I hope soon to celebrate my seventy-first birthday. I hope to celebrate another. I wonder if I will.

Mar 17 2023

Of What Use is an Aging Person?

This is an issue that many struggle with – the idea that they are “too old” to be useful to their family and neighbors. The Survival Blog addresses this issue here.

In addition to the suggestions that post has, let’s add in others:

  • Wisdom and experience with handling food prep, storage, and cleanup the “Old Way”. Don’t underestimate this – when the Covid restrictions hit, and local stores were out of bread, suddenly younger individuals realized the utility of knowing how to turn flour, water, salt, and yeast into something that was edible. I’d had a long experience with breadmaking, thanks to my husband’s desire to go “Old School”. I bought Laurel’s Kitchen (still a very good introduction to providing meals that are both nutritious and inexpensive), and a few specialty cookbooks (Beard on Bread is indispensable), and learned to bake.
  • Sewing, knitting, crocheting – all of those skills both stretch out a budget, and allow for clothing creation and repair. We augment our heating with strategic use of afghans. In a pinch, I can make mittens, hats, and scarves for family. I’m learning variations on other items, and have passed those skills on to my children (except for my son – he, rather surprisingly, learned needlework in middle school).
  • Backup child care for emergencies. Organizing pickup from schools, should the parents be held up at work by a disaster. This doesn’t have to be a commitment to daily babysitting, just having the ability to put a plan into operation, should weather or national disaster interrupt normal operations. That would include a list of people who have been authorized to pick up local kids, notify the families where they are, and keep them fed and safe until they are reunited with their parents.
  • Pet care – feeding, walking – for short periods. Taking in mail, if the absence is longer than a day or two.
  • Simple home repairs. I set up our home network, security system, and will be stopping off today or tomorrow to get a new tub diverter that has become worn out. I’ll be putting it in myself, if I can (limited dexterity with my arthritic hands might be the issue). My goal is to add to the number of things I can repair. I have a lamp that has a damaged cord; I have the replacement, and will be looking into its repair over the next couple of weeks.
  • Teaching – basic Math and English skills, along with useful skills for children. Gardening. Home maintenance. Household Chemistry (soaps, cleansers, home remedies for mild illnesses). I may even resurrect my old knot-tying skills from Girl Scouts.
  • Communications – building a local neighborhood watch (it’s not just using the hardware, it’s knowing who to trust, logging activity on the street, using GMRS handhelds, and training others). Setting up training on ham radio, if possible. Serving as an Elmer (more experienced amateur who assists newbs), participating in local nets to gain experience and to build relationships, should the SHTF. Building relationships with local first responders – police, fire, hospitals – and assisting them with communications in drills. Getting to know who can be trusted, and – more importantly – who cannot.

You can probably add your own recommendations to the list. The point is, old does not have to mean useless.

Mar 17 2023

Developments In Inter-Racial Relations

     Have a look at this – and don’t cringe away from what you’ll see:

     The black would-be murderer would not drop the knife he held – the knife with which he’d been trying to kill a defenseless white woman – even after he’d had a whole clip of (what was probably) 9mm ammunition fired at him. Why do you suppose that was?

     I have no doubt that the white cop who took him down will face an eviscerating “fact-finding” about this incident. We’re in the Era of the Most Holy George Floyd, don’t y’know. I mean, for blacks to rape and / or kill white women is their racial prerogative. Protected by the Constitution, isn’t it? I’m sure it’s in there somewhere.

     If you’re white:

  • Stay away from blacks;
  • Never leave the house unarmed;
  • If you must shoot, shoot to kill.

     Would anyone like to argue the point?

Mar 17 2023

It’s Official!

I am – once again – OFFICIALLY a Woman!

I received my OH drivers license, and it clearly IDs me as a Female. Which, as I’ve been previously identified as a MAN by SC, probably makes me a de-transitioner. Hey, that should qualify me for my own Internet Talk Show, shouldn’t it?

BTW, Fran, when you have the time, you probably need to change my identifying tagline description to “Native Buckeye – a totally useless nut!”

I’ve really been having fun with this.

Mar 16 2023

Day Off, Kinda-Sorta

     Today will be another day of long drives, hospitals, surgery, and so forth, so there will likely be nothing from me until late today, if at all. Enjoy your day, Gentle Reader, and perhaps if the Spirit moves you, say a prayer for my wife. Till whenever.

Mar 15 2023

Personnel Policies

     I’ve known a lot of people who were and are smarter than average. That comes from working in occupations that require that characteristic. Bluntly, if your duties will necessarily require careful thinking, distinguishing among things and ideas according to their inherent properties, you must be able to do so. Why else would your employer hire you?

     But let it be said at once: Even smart people can be deluded. Even smart people can and will cling to their delusions, especially if those delusions are vital to the maintenance of their self-concept. I’ve said it before: Intelligence is a tool, not a state of grace. It must be called into action for it to have value. And on certain subjects, issuing that call is harder than many will accept. Yea verily, even smart people.

     One mantra used to defend propositions that are otherwise indefensible goes like this: “It’s always been this way.” The unstated implication, of course, is that “This is the way it must be.” It’s a striking non-sequitur, but a great many minds, even among the most capable, can fail to see it…and sometimes do.

     I’m about to shock you, Gentle Reader, so hold on to your seat and brace for impact: That sort of pseudo-thinking is one of the Left’s chief propaganda weapons against the conservative Right. There’s even a joke: “A conservative is someone who thinks nothing should be done for the first time.” And like most effective japes, there’s a kernel of truth to it. Else why would people so reliably become more conservative as they age?

     Churches – institutions formed for the conservation and promulgation of a religious creed – tend to be the most conservative of all institutions, in the “resistant to change” sense. That’s perfectly reasonable. A religious creed must be based on some variety of revealed truth. To alter its preachments in later decades or centuries is tantamount to saying “We got it wrong back then; here’s the real revealed truth.” That would fatally undermine any church and its doctrines.

     But there’s a significant difference between a church’s doctrines and its personnel policies.

***

     Perhaps you’ve already read about this bit of news:

     Pope Francis said the Catholic Church’s thousand-year-old practice of celibacy could be changed.

In a recent interview with an Argentine publication Infobae, Francis said the ban on priests having sex was only “temporary” and that there is “no contradiction for a priest to marry.”

“There is no contradiction for a priest to marry. Celibacy in the western Church is a temporary prescription,” Francis said. “It is not eternal like priestly ordination, which is forever whether you like it or not. On the other hand, celibacy is a discipline.”

     Straightforward and, despite the divergence from a millennium of Catholic practice, entirely correct. But wait: there’s more!

     The Catholic Church began requiring celibacy in the 11th century because clergy with no children were more likely to leave their money to the church.

     This is not quite complete. Europe’s Middle Ages saw many social and political transformations. Those transformations frequently involved the Catholic Church and its clergy. Catholic clergy had considerable authority in those centuries, including, among others, a de facto power to tax. That power was tacitly upheld by the secular rulers of those places and times. In return for that privilege, royals and nobles expected the clergy to support their claims of authority reciprocally, a factor that could be decisive in times of war.

     It wasn’t a perfectly amicable arrangement. There were some clashes between secular and clerical claims of authority, but for centuries they were usually resolved with a bit of haggling. A more serious problem arose from what we might call clerical dynasties. Married priests would indeed leave their accumulated wealth to their sons, just as did most fathers of the times. But beyond that, those priests tended to leave their clerical positions to their eldest sons, resulting in the accumulation of both financial and temporal power in such dynasties that came to rival the secular royal and noble families. The nobility of the time came to regard that as unacceptable.

     If you’re acquainted with the term benefice, this is hidden in its meaning. It’s closely coupled to the obscenity called simony, which bedeviled the Church for centuries.

     Royal and noble pressure on the Church to end this parallel authority structure mounted as Europe matured politically and economically. Pope Gregory VII was finally persuaded that the best way to prevent the formation of such clerical dynasties was to forbid priests to marry. Thus, they could not have children who would inherit from them. The end of the clerical privilege of taxation followed some decades later.

     But a personnel policy that dictates clerical celibacy cannot be found anywhere in the Bible. Christ never said a word about it. The Apostles had wives, as did the majority of priests throughout the First Millennium.

***

     Pope Francis, of whom I think very little, is essentially correct in his statement cited above. If the Church were to end clerical celibacy, I doubt God would be offended. Whether it will ever do so is unclear; Francis himself is opposed to doing so. That doesn’t change the availability of the option, should the Vatican someday find it beneficial.

     My opinion is that clerical celibacy should end. Yet I do have some reservations about the matter, owing to my own rather conservative nature. Married priests would be less likely to live together in rectories. They would be less mobile, for the same reasons other married couples frequently experience difficulties in relocating. Pressure would mount on the Vatican to change another of its longstanding personnel policies: its ban on the ordination of women. And of course, the children of married priests would present a new challenge to contemporary systems of education. Unless such children were to attend Catholic educational institutions exclusively, their influence on existing schools could prove fatally disruptive. Though that wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing.

Mar 14 2023

Unforgivable Sin, Ineradicable Stain

     Perhaps you’ve already read about this latest infamy against the well-being of the American people:

     The Department of Interior (DOI) initiated a rulemaking process to “establish maximum protection” for 13 million acres of land across the National Petroleum Reserve in Alaska. It was set aside by. Congress for resource development.
     Biden added another 2.8 million acres withdrawn from oil and gas leasing in the Arctic Ocean off the northern coast of Alaska.
     The DOI boasted in a statement about delivering “on the most aggressive climate agenda in American history.” They added gleefully that Biden “secured record investments in climate resilience and environmental justice.”
     “And his economic agenda has put the United States back on track to reach its climate goals for 2030 and 2050, all while reducing America’s reliance on oil and protecting American families from the impact of Putin’s war on global energy markets.”

     Overbearing sententiousness is bad; mock-piety is worse. Combine the two with blatantly anti-Constitutional actions, and the resulting cocktail might prove lethal. But the practical effect is not what’s grabbed my attention this morning.

     The Constitution specifies the legitimate powers of the three branches of the federal government. Nowhere does that document award authority over “the climate” to any branch. Nowhere does it say even one word about “the environment,” much less “environmental justice.” The Biden / DoI action is an exercise of powers not granted to anyone. Yet I have no doubt that the Usurper Regime will get away with it.

     The federal government has swelled so far beyond its Constitutional bounds that a man from Mars who hoped to familiarize himself with its powers and duties by reading the Constitution would think he’d landed in some wholly different country. It gets away with the exercise of such usurped powers every day. We the Formerly Free permit it. The prevailing attitude seems to be that there’s nothing we can do about it. Our passivity disgraces us, yet we seem immune to the shame.

     We could talk about voting power and voting blocs. We could ponder the corruption of the judiciary at all levels. We could address the vague conception of “stakeholders” as superior to owners. None of that matters. What matters is that by permitting regulatory bodies to exercise unbounded, unreviewable quasi-legislative power, and permitting the president to arrogate legislative authority to himself by “executive orders,” we have lost the rights the country was founded to guarantee and defend.

     We’ve also lost something so important that no less a figure than Saint Thomas Aquinas discoursed upon it eight centuries ago in his Summa Theologica. Rather than oppress you with quotes from that document – not enough of my Gentle Readers read Latin – I’ll cite an old essay of mine:

     Law as something other than the whim of those in power is an ancient concept. Yet few nations have cared to try the concept in practice. Fewer still have managed to do so.

     For there to be a Rule of Law in principle rather than merely by lip service, the corpus of laws must meet certain criteria:

  • They must be clear of impact.
  • They must not distinguish among persons.
  • They must not contradict one another in any way.
  • They must be made by a consensus-approved process.

     That last condition requires elaboration. The process by which laws are made or changed must itself be controlled by a law which commands overwhelming popular assent. Moreover, the control must ensure that the legislative process is highly stable. If that process can be changed, the manner of change must be:

  • Public;
  • Difficult;
  • Deliberate.

     Otherwise, private citizens would be justified in thinking that whim had taken command of the law. Under such conditions, there cannot be sufficient stability in the law to command the required consensus. In this we glimpse the great importance of a supreme law that governs the making of all other laws.

     It should be clear from the above that the United States has not known a true rule of law for quite some time. All the requirements above have been violated repeatedly, sometimes with callous disregard for any consideration other than the whims of elected officials, at the federal, state, and local levels for more than a century.

     The law is no longer within the bounds expressed above.

***

     “As above, so below,” say the Wiccans, and in this regard they are quite correct. What the federal government gets away with, state and local governments will attempt within their own demesnes – and they’ll usually reap an equal degree of success. This is nowhere more visible than in matters pertaining to land.

     Private persons and organizations have often purchased tracts of land – tracts that have no legal limitations attached – and have been told afterward that they’re not allowed to do what they’d purchased them for. Private homeowners suffer similarly, when local or state regulators decree some change to the conditions that must exist within the home or on the surrounding grounds. The ludicrousness of such doings can reach obscene heights. For example, when I purchased my home, there was a shed on it. I disliked the shed and decided to have it removed. More than twenty years later, my township attempted to extract a large fine from me for that – not because it was against the law, but because I hadn’t asked permission to demolish a structure I owned that sat on my own property.

     In a far more egregious case, a French consortium called Carrefour purchased a large plot of land not far from my home, with the intention of building a shopping complex there. The consortium had already certified that the land was zoned for such use…but the zoning board decided that it didn’t want Carrefour’s complex. So it revoked the previous zoning, under which Carrefour had paid many millions of dollars for the plot. The consortium was forced to sell the land at a loss – to another developer who put a shopping complex on it, with the tacit approval of the zoning board.

     A representative for Carrefour, upon learning of the board’s de facto seizure of the consortium’s rights, commented that “You can be told on one day that a thing is black, and on the next that it is white. This is a good lesson.”

     Stability in the law has become a complete fiction.

***

     The sin is ours for permitting such rule by whim. It’s a stain on our national reputation that will not soon be erased, if ever. It undercuts any claim we might have to being free men, jealous of our rights and ready to defend them.

     But hey, we have Lee Greenwood to flatter us that nothing of importance has changed. All rise for flag salute.

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