Mike at Cold Fury has excerpted a fascinating story that must be read in its entirety. It’s about an incident in an American “public” grammar school. The resolution of the real-life conflict it depicts will have you howling with laughter. Hie thee hence!
Mar 03 2023
The Weapon
Eric Frank Russell, one of the most talented writers of his day, left as his legacy to the developing field of science fiction a magnificent novella titled “And Then There Were None.” (Yes, I’ve commended it here before this.) This novella is so powerful, and so memorable, that it was awarded a place in the Science Fiction Hall of Fame despite being utterly free of the usual pseudo-science / gee-whiz technology by fiat that characterized science fiction at that time (1951). I regard it as required reading for anyone who wants to understand what it takes to prevail against an enemy — any enemy. Russell called it The Weapon: capitals mandatory.
Russell’s Weapon was quite simple: “I won’t.” Just two words! Amazing! (Yes, Ayn Rand managed to knock it down to one word – “No.” – six years later, but she had to write a half-million-word novel to do it. You pays your money, et cetera.) Its simplicity has commended it to readers for seventy-two years. It’s made Russell a hero to freedom advocates forever more.
The Weapon is unanswerable and unstoppable. More, it’s useless to those who desire to oppress us. But there is a cost to it: one must be ready to face the consequences…and those can be quite painful. For those who desire our subjugation can wield other sorts of weapons, the fire from which is not to be lightly accepted nor easily weathered. One of them is on my mind this morning.
I know that most Gentle Readers are dismissive of video presentations. Unfortunately, I can’t provide a useful transcript of this one. But despite its length – 17.5 minutes – the video is eminently worth your time, I promise you:
Matt Walsh would once have been called a “controversialist.” And there’s no question that his forthrightness upsets a lot of people. Beyond question, having one’s nose rubbed in an unpleasant fact has an upsetting effect, regardless of the specifics of the fact. But as Matt makes plain in this video, that doesn’t keep it from being a fact.
Matt has fingered the most distressing tactical feature of contemporary argument: the exploitation of the disinclination among good persons to court conflict – i.e., to upset anyone – including conflict with openly evil persons. “You’re being too rough!” and “You’re hurting people’s feelings” are accusations Matt has faced many times. You see, he dares to speak plainly of actions undertaken to do grave harm to children and our society.
(Say, remember when “It’s for the children!” was the unanswerable justification for any and every Leftist lunacy? I do.)
Yes, the subject is the transgender madness: specifically, how it’s affecting American children.
Many who agree with Matt about the facts of the matter are horrified by his bluntness. But Matt is merely stating observable facts. To criticize a man for speaking the truth is to endorse dishonesty. But he who states a preference for dishonesty, even if he limits it to certain subjects, has condemned himself as dishonest. On what subjects could he be trusted thereafter?
George Orwell’s vital essay Politics and the English Language comes immediately to mind. Indeed, Orwell was speaking of this very thing. If you haven’t read it recently, do so before continuing on here.
In his classic treatise The Art Of War, Sun Tzu posited that perfection in warfare lies in inducing your enemy to surrender without ever meeting him in battle:
In the practical art of war, the best thing of all is to take the enemy’s country whole and intact; to shatter and destroy it is not so good. So, too, it is better to recapture an army entire than to destroy it, to capture a regiment, a detachment or a company entire than to destroy them. Hence to fight and conquer in all your battles is not supreme excellence; supreme excellence consists in breaking the enemy’s resistance without fighting….Therefore the skillful leader subdues the enemy’s troops without any fighting; he captures their cities without laying siege to them; he overthrows their kingdom without lengthy operations in the field.
This ideal can only be achieved by weakening the enemy’s will through non-martial sallies: combative strokes that appear unrelated to the combat.
In the ideological warfare of our time, “You’re hurting my feelings!” is the stroke that has most successfully weakened the will of the Right. Indeed, it has proved so potent that many commentators in the Right, perhaps unaware of what they’re doing, have picked it up and wielded it against themselves and others of like mind.
They balk at calling evil evil.
They balk at calling insanity insanity.
They balk at calling cowardice cowardice.
Because such statements might hurt someone’s feelings.
How do they rationalize this? They don’t. They simply say “There’s no need to be so rough.” “You can make your point more sensitively.” “You’ll never convince them like that.”
Convince whom? The enemy, whose open agenda is the maiming of children? The anathematization of all that is right, good, and decent? The destruction of American society itself?
Matt Walsh has pinned the matter to the wall.
I’ve noted, in other contexts, that once you’ve realized that you’re at war, before all else you must identify the enemy. If you’re unwilling to do that, you become a “Jim Taggart caricature:”
[James Taggart] “What I mean is, there are practical problems to solve, which…For instance, what was that matter of our last allocation of new rail vanishing from the storehouse in Pittsburgh?”
[Dagny Taggart] “Cuffy Meigs stole it and sold it.”
“Can you prove that?” he snapped defensively.
“Have your friends left any means, methods, rules or agencies of proof?”
“Then don’t talk about it, don’t be theoretical, we’ve got to deal with facts! We’ve got to deal with facts as they are today…I mean, we’ve got to devise some practical means to protect our supplies under existing conditions, not under unprovable assumptions, which –”
She chuckled. There was the form of the formless, she thought, there was the method of his consciousness: he wanted her to protect him from Cuffy Meigs without acknowledging Meigs’s existence, to fight it without admitting its reality, to defeat it without disturbing its game.
The next step after that is to determine whether the enemy can be induced to surrender without fighting. But in ideological combat, that is only possible if the enemy can be persuaded that he’s unwittingly gone wrong or has been misled. That’s a judgment that must be accurate. To treat a hard-driven, undauntable enemy that thirsts for your blood as someone who can be “reached” is perhaps the worst of all possible mistakes, for he will use your error to disarm you.
Massive plaudits to Matt Walsh. He has done the Right a service whose importance is impossible to overestimate…if we’ll just take it seriously.
Mar 02 2023
An Utterly Absurd Bit of Gaslighting Accepted By Majority
Popped up from memory, a large segment of the American public ends up responding as does Imogene Coca at the end of this vignette.
My point is Hollywood demonstrated this for the benefit of our political class 55 years ago.
Mar 02 2023
An Attitudinal Imperative
And it came to pass, as he went to Jerusalem, that he passed through the midst of Samaria and Galilee. And as he entered into a certain village, there met him ten men that were lepers, which stood afar off: And they lifted up their voices, and said, Jesus, Master, have mercy on us.
And when he saw them, he said unto them, Go shew yourselves unto the priests. And it came to pass, that, as they went, they were cleansed.
And one of them, when he saw that he was healed, turned back, and with a loud voice glorified God, And fell down on his face at his feet, giving him thanks: and he was a Samaritan.
And Jesus answering said, Were there not ten cleansed? but where are the nine? There are not found that returned to give glory to God, save this stranger.
And he said unto him, Arise, go thy way: thy faith hath made thee whole.[Luke 17:11-19]
What I find fascinating about this passage is that Jesus doesn’t retract His gift of healing to the other nine lepers. He notes their absence, but goes no further. Moreover, He commends the grateful one for his faith rather than for his expression of gratitude. In doing so He observes that the grateful one is “a stranger:” a Samaritan, a people with whom the Jews did not have warm relations at that time.
Regard this episode in the light of these others: the Roman centurion He met in Capernaum:
And when Jesus was entered into Capernaum, there came unto him a centurion, beseeching him, And saying, Lord, my servant lieth at home sick of the palsy, grievously tormented.
And Jesus saith unto him, I will come and heal him.
The centurion answered and said, Lord, I am not worthy that thou shouldest come under my roof: but speak the word only, and my servant shall be healed. For I am a man under authority, having soldiers under me: and I say to this man, Go, and he goeth; and to another, Come, and he cometh; and to my servant, Do this, and he doeth it.
When Jesus heard it, he marvelled, and said to them that followed, Verily I say unto you, I have not found so great faith, no, not in Israel. And I say unto you, That many shall come from the east and west, and shall sit down with Abraham, and Isaac, and Jacob, in the kingdom of heaven. But the children of the kingdom shall be cast out into outer darkness: there shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth.
And Jesus said unto the centurion, Go thy way; and as thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee. And his servant was healed in the selfsame hour.[Matthew 8:5-13]
…and the Canaanite woman who begged Him to heal her daughter:
And, behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil.
But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away; for she crieth after us.
But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel.
Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me.
But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs.
And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.
Then Jesus answered and said unto her, O woman, great is thy faith: be it unto thee even as thou wilt. And her daughter was made whole from that very hour.[Matthew 15:22-28]
The Pharisees and Saducees, the “religious snobs” of the day, exhibited a dogmatic certainty that they knew the Law. This Johnny-come-lately of a street preacher had nothing to teach them. Nor did they show gratitude for His teachings even when they recognized the truth in them. Jesus was less than friendly toward them. He displayed great warmth toward those who, not being Jews, had no particular reason to honor a Jew who came among them…yet did honor Him and praise God for Him.
Gratitude is not the same as faith. It is a consequence of sincere faith. For sincere faith recognizes the love of God for His creatures. Such a love irresistibly inspires gratitude; the reaction is automatic.
Gratitude, as I’ve said before, is the secret to happiness.
Ponder the connections for a moment. Then have a look at this essay by Michael Pakaluk:
[I]n this year of renewal of Eucharistic Devotion I like to think that another lesson is: how easy it is to give thanks. Simply go to Our Lord and say thank you. In human terms, one might have thought the healed leper was bound, say, to lifelong servitude to Our Lord for the favor done; or dedicating his life to helping lepers. But apparently it was enough for him simply to find Our Lord and thank him – “It is mercy I desire not sacrifice.”
Have you wondered why we have tabernacles in our churches at all? They are not there by accident. What is their purpose? Yes, they are Our Lord’s answer to the plea at Emmaus, mane nobiscum, Domine, “remain with us, Lord” as St. Pope John Paul II taught. But, presumably, they have some purpose other than being a focal point of devotion during Mass.
That request by the Apostles that He not leave them is answered in the Eucharist.
I know that many Protestants differ with us Catholics about the nature of the Eucharist. As it is possible to disbelieve anything not readily reproducible before witnesses, it is possible to disbelieve in Transubstantiation despite the various reports of Eucharistic miracles, simply by rejecting such reports as mistaken…or fraudulent. But regardless of which Eucharistic doctrine you prefer, the origin of this gift, the Last Supper, makes plain His intentions:
And as they were eating, Jesus took bread, and blessed it, and brake it, and gave it to the disciples, and said, Take, eat; this is my body. And he took the cup, and gave thanks, and gave it to them, saying, Drink ye all of it; For this is my blood of the new testament, which is shed for many for the remission of sins. [Matthew 26:26-28]
And that intention is reinforced as He prepares to leave this world:
Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world. Amen. [Matthew 28:20]
Surely that is reason enough to be grateful.
May God bless and keep you all.
Mar 01 2023
From Cynicism To Sarcasm: Progress Or Regress?
The Diogenes of history — i.e., “the one with the lamp” – was known as The Cynic, for good and sufficient reasons:
Diogenes of Sinope was a controversial figure. His father minted coins for a living, and when Diogenes took to debasement of currency, he was banished from Sinope. After being exiled, he moved to Athens and criticized many cultural conventions of the city. Diogenes modelled himself on the example of Heracles. He believed that virtue was better revealed in action than in theory. He used his simple lifestyle and behaviour (which arguably resembled poverty) to criticize the social values and institutions of what he saw as a corrupt or at least confused society. In a highly non-traditional fashion, he had a reputation of sleeping and eating wherever he chose and took to toughening himself against nature. He declared himself a cosmopolitan and a citizen of the world rather than claiming allegiance to just one place. There are many tales about him dogging Antisthenes’ footsteps and becoming his “faithful hound”. Diogenes made a virtue of poverty. He begged for a living and often slept in a large ceramic jar in the marketplace. He became notorious for his philosophical stunts such as carrying a lamp in the daytime, claiming to be looking for an honest man. He criticized and embarrassed Plato, disputed his interpretation of Socrates and sabotaged his lectures, sometimes distracting attendees by bringing food and eating during the discussions. Diogenes was also noted for having publicly mocked Alexander the Great.
You don’t have to approve of all of that to get the gist. Certain parts of it strike me as admirable, particularly his thrusts at Plato. But I digress.
Cynicism is largely misunderstood. It’s not curmudgeonry, a stance about which I’ve already ranted sufficiently, but rather a strong disinclination to believe in protestations of selfless virtue. The cynic holds self-interest as the default explanation for all human behavior, and insists on copious evidence for any other proposed motivation.
In other words, the cynic knows himself and assumes that others are, in the main, much like him. My assessment is that he’s likely to be right far more often than wrong. In this I differ with one whose wisdom I’ve often praised:
“I have sometimes wondered whether [Twentieth-Century liberals] possessed a vested interest in disorder – but that is unlikely; adults almost always act from conscious ‘highest motives,” no matter what their behavior.”
For in the decades since Starship Troopers was published, we have seen far too much “behavior” which can only be explained by a vested interest in disorder. Moreover, the evidence is so strong for this explanation that virtually anyone who’s lived through the Usurper Years is compelled to accept it… whether he’ll admit it or not.
And from this, we arrive at our contemporary Diogenes: the Sarcastic. In her most recent post, she cites a recent self-beclownment by a Congressional Democrat:
I bring you Rep. Steve Cohen (D-TN), a man that’s no stranger to beclowning himself for the cameras. After all, this is the same guy who once brought a bucket of KFC to a hearing because then-AG Bill Barr rescheduled.
On Tuesday, Cohen decided to go on a rant denouncing the “right-wing” Supreme Court for doing things like upholding the constitution and forcing the Biden administration to follow the law. In the midst of that, the congressman proclaimed that women and black people don’t have God-given rights….
COHEN: I’d liked to have asked him some questions about God-given rights, and he was saying all our rights are God-given. I just wondered when God decided to give women the right to vote and why God didn’t decide to give women the right to vote back in the, uh, 1700s. The Constitution was drawn up in the 1780s. I can’t believe God would say “no, women shouldn’t have the right to vote…”
…And when God decided slavery would be illegal. God was okay with slavery until we have a war where millions of people were killed and then God changed his mind? That’s hard to fathom.
I’m sure that sounded a lot smarter in his head.
It’s hard to satirize something as idiotic as Cohen’s statement. That’s Democrats for you. The ones that aren’t outright evil are too stupid to be believed. And yes, a healthy fraction of them are both. (Before I proceed, allow me to state it plainly: Most Republicans are no better. Politics has little attraction for the intelligent and honest.)
Unfortunately, Cohen’s view, dumb as it may be, is popular on the left. They have turned the US government into a god to be worshiped. No one has the right to do anything unless the overpaid elites in Washington give their stamp of approval. Thankfully, at least for now, the United States has a Supreme Court that is willing to check the Democratic Party’s most authoritarian instincts. That probably won’t always be the case, though.
Diogenes the Sarcastic lets it stand, in all its awful majesty, with only this comment:
I’m sorry, you’ll have to forgive me, or praise me (your choice) but I just cannot look at Congressman Steve Cohen and not see Lon Chaney’s 1925 Phantom of the Opera with glasses on. Sometimes I can’t keep from bursting out laughing.
In this she is quite correct. What need is there to poke fun at one who has already poked himself in both eyes? Perhaps in the political realm even sarcasm has outworn its usefulness.
There isn’t much more to say about this particular emission from a not-particularly-prominent Democrat Congressvermin, except for this: His constituents should reflect on what having elected that low a creature their Representative says about them.
Feb 28 2023
Educational Necrosis
In his classic study Systemantics, author John Gall presents a compelling case for the proposition that human systems of all kinds, no matter their origins or aims, will operate in failure mode –— the overwhelmingly greater part of the time. System failure in Gall’s analysis is determined by the comparison of the system’s ostensible aims with its observable behavior and performance. His argument has many similarities to the observations of such thinkers as Cyril Northcote Parkinson, author Jerry Pournelle, historian Robert Conquest, sociologist Robert Michels, and Public Choice economists James Buchanan, Gordon Tullock, and Mancur Olson. And indeed, the available evidence strongly supports Gall’s assertion.
Pournelle’s Iron Law of Bureaucracy nicely summarizes the rot at the heart of the majority of failing systems:
…in any bureaucratic organization there will be two kinds of people: those who work to further the actual goals of the organization, and those who work for the organization itself. Examples in education would be teachers who work and sacrifice to teach children, vs. union representatives who work to protect any teacher including the most incompetent. The Iron Law states that in all cases, the second type of person will always gain control of the organization, and will always write the rules under which the organization functions.
This can be compared to the Iron law of oligarchy.
Visible evidence of this phenomenon is all around us. I can hardly name a human system that deviates from the pattern. Yet we are constantly told by the bureaucracies’ spokesmen – and would someone please tell me why a bureaucracy should have a spokesman? – that all is well, things are, if not perfect, at least acceptable, and with time they’ll get better yet. “We’re working on it,” the spokesdroids assure us. “Just give us time…and more money.” Their programming permits them to issue no other explanation.
When we speak of the problems with education in America, we almost always have the government-run “public” schools in mind. (Colleges and universities are a separate study.) It has been plain for some time that this system is in a condition of failure so horrendous that virtually any alternative would be preferable. Yet the system, which has great size, huge resources, and enormous political clout, manages to maneuver both to retain its privileged, tax-funded position and to obstruct alternatives that outperform it.
Today I have three stories that bear upon this problem:
- Virginia teachers refuse to teach kids about communism.
- No honors classes in Los Angeles-area school district.
- Don’t you dare to protest porn in the schools!
Would any Gentle Reader care to argue that these stories don’t constitute strong evidence of failing systems, according to the criterion I stated above? Yet such developments are legion, from coast to coast. Parents sincerely concerned with their kids’ educations are furious about them. School board meetings are rife with anger and demands for change. And year after year, nothing changes.
The problem is system. Not “the system,” but system itself: i.e., the notion that a systematized institution for this purpose can remain true to its ostensible aims for more than a generation. Within two decades any such system will be infiltrated, colonized, and conquered from within by the very forces we would move heaven and earth to exclude from it. After that, it will co-opt any attempt to “reform” it by the very methods it used to suborn it.
As regards specific practices in the schools, this essay provides important illumination:
I’ve surely made it clear that I’ve very little (and by ‘little’, I mean less than zero) respect for the textbooks, materials, and purposes, employed in our schools today, but as bad as the sketchy facts, ideological spin, and lies by omission or commission (hello 1619 Project) of most educational content is, those alone don’t have the power to implant their ‘key facts’ into a bored student’s memory, or to significantly alter how they think. How such materials leave their mark on a student’s mind has less to do with what’s laid out on the page in black & white, than with what questions are asked, and how they’re expected to answer them. Schools devote a significant amount of time to drilling in the habit of how students are expected to ask and answer questions (quizzes, worksheets, tests, homework), because that pattern is what will persist in their thoughts & actions long after the ‘key facts’ and details of their more recent test scores, or total cumulative GPA, have been forgotten.
Please read it all.
The fundamental fact about the failure of the educational system is not the specifics of what’s being taught, though that’s execrable enough, but the inexorable internal dynamic that has corrupted it. Allow me to lay out a skeleton for you:
- The system originates under full local control.
- Persons with varying motivations enter its gates. Some do so out of a love for knowledge; others for the opportunities to profit in various ways. The latter group includes a few power-seekers uninterested in education as we’ve classically understood it.
- Over time, the power-seekers rise to positions of power. Thereafter, they arrange that persons of like mind will be favored in all matters over which they have sway. Over time the purely self-interested align themselves with the power-seekers; it’s their best prospect for continued gain and job security.
- The power-seekers solicit the state governments to become involved in funding, curriculum, and the rules that govern teacher advancement. The politicians are happy to comply.
- Rules proliferate that disfavor the Socratic-style teacher who strives to impart understanding, encourage critical thought, and foster independence of mind. After all, they make the “drill” instructors look bad, and we can’t have that.
- It now becomes vital that dissenters in the ranks be silenced or driven out of the system. Teachers are no longer free to follow the Socratic method; this is rendered impossible by system-wide standardized tests and methods of assessment.
- Parents and others outside the system start to notice that while Johnny might be able to read and cipher, he hasn’t learned to think in a logical and organized manner, and is without any idea how to go about researching a matter in which he has not been drilled. Attempts by persons outside the system to investigate the reasons for these deteriorations are thwarted or deflected by a variety of methods.
- Those within the system focus ever more narrowly on ensuring that it will serve their own interests. Political forces are led to cooperate with their efforts through various incentives.
It’s the way of things in the American education system and has been so from John Dewey, if not even earlier.
It would do your kids little good to recur to “private” schooling. Those institutions are about as far gone as any element in the government-run system. Even Catholic education has been greatly degraded by the developments of the century and more behind us. The emphasis on standardized tests composed of multiple-choice questions gradable with an “answer key” is to blame – less work for the teachers and their aides, right? – and little can be done about it.
This time around, there is a Last Graf: Keep your kids out of the system if at all possible. To those who operate the system, your children are bargaining chips with which to squeeze money and other perquisites from you and from local and state governments. Any notion you might have to the contrary will be shouted down at the very least. At the worst, you could find yourself under the crosshairs of the FBI, like Terry Newsome and others. Verbum sat sapienti.
Feb 27 2023
Further Intrusions Into Medical Privacy
The doctor-patient relationship is deemed legally immune to demands for information from agents of the State. That immunity is considered so important that it extends beyond the death of either party. It covers diagnoses, the results of lab tests, decisions to treat or not to treat, and details of both treatment and results. And like many other relationships once considered utterly private, it’s under attack:
Doctors are speaking out against a new law that arguably paves the way for the FDA to prohibit treatments for purposes it hasn’t expressly authorized, going far beyond highly politicized subjects such as treating COVID-19 with ivermectin.
The authority to ban off-label uses was buried on page 3,542 of the 4,155-page omnibus appropriations bill signed into law at year’s end, though it’s specifically applied to “banned devices.”
The FDA requested this “very unprecedented” update after a string of court losses, Endpoints News senior editor Zachary Brennan told WBUR earlier this month, while cautioning that it’s not clear whether the agency could broadly interpret “devices” to cover drug treatments.
Apparently the “experts” in our federal government are smarting after the string of losses and rebuffs they’ve suffered over COVID-19, chloroquine, and ivermectin. They don’t want to be shown up again; it’s bad for their reputation. But any such ban would be unenforceable as long as the doctor-patient confidentiality rule stands strong. So what’s the point of this?
Under 5th Circuit precedent, which recognizes off-label use as the “standard of care” in many medical contexts, federalism constraints prevent the agency from even “advis[ing] whether or for what purpose a doctor should prescribe” an approved drug, they said. The doctors’ lawyers didn’t respond to Just the News queries on how the revision could affect their litigation.
Hm. A federal attempt to muddy the waters in a lawsuit highly likely to be won by the plaintiffs? Interesting.
Applied to existing law, the revisions grant the secretary of health and human services authority to initiate a regulatory proceeding for an already approved “device intended for human use” to ban intended uses that present “substantial deception or an unreasonable and substantial risk of illness or injury.”
Just the News confirmed this legislative construction with Joel Zinberg, associate clinical professor of surgery at the Icahn School of Medicine and former Columbia law lecturer, who was apparently the first to widely publicize the omnibus provision in a Wall Street Journal op-ed accusing the FDA of “unwarranted intrusion into the physician-patient relationship.”
“Since the new provision lets the FDA skirt the ban on interfering with the practice of medicine by banning devices for particular uses, the agency will likely claim this as a precedent allowing it to ban off-label uses of drugs as well,” Zinberg wrote in the op-ed.
Even more interesting. And it would have exceedingly wide effects on current medical practice:
“Damn — 3/4 of the stuff we use Is off label,” University of Kentucky medical professor Lisbeth Selby wrote. “This is a ploy to get more money for drug companies.”
“Potentially catastrophic for use of antibiotics,” said Livermore, former director of antibiotic resistance monitoring at Public Health England. Restricting their use to “indication only” would “deny useful treatments to patients with highly resistant bacteria simply because these drugs never had an appropriate trial in the setting,” such as tigecycline for hospital pneumonia, he told Just the News.
Selby provided Just the News an exhaustive list of the off-label treatments she uses regularly in her gastroenterology practice at the Lexington Veterans Affairs Medical Center, with asterisks on “those used daily.”
There’s a whole education here. But it stands to reason: many drugs are brought to market because of their success in clinical trials at combating a single, well defined ailment. That such a drug should reveal effectiveness against other illnesses becomes more likely the longer it’s in use – which means after the patent on it has expired. There go the larger profits the manufacturer could have made for those “off-label” uses.
Will these revisions become law? Unclear. But to have some light shed on the monetary incentives behind the attempt is clearly of value.
Full disclosure: I take several drugs for “off-label” reasons…and they’ve done good things for me. Suffice it to say that my quality of life would be substantially degraded were I denied the use of those medicines. We shall see.
Feb 27 2023
Censorshop
I’ve ranted more than once about the usefulness of a steadily centralizing economy to those who desire total power over us. I trust the point was not lost on my Gentle Readers. However, it remains easy to miss the indications of political control over one’s workplace, so here’s a nice fresh one:
A Christian nurse was suspended from a NHS certification program after she said “being white doesn’t make you racist.”
Amy Gallagher said the harassment and bullying by the woke staff left her with crippling anxiety.
The lecturers at the NHS in Britain also taught that Christianity is responsible for racism because “it’s European.”
Britain’s National Health Service is a perfect example of what happens to medicine when the State seizes it and decrees how it shall be provided. Be aware that this is the model of what the Left wants to impose on Americans. Be further aware that it also exists in Canada, which accounts for the thousands of Canadians who’ve streamed across our northern border in search of a competent and available doctor.
At any rate, the British NHS not only decrees who shall receive medical care, when, and on what terms, but also what its employees are permitted to say:
Lecturers at the Tavistock and Portman NHS Trust told her ‘whites don’t understand the world’ and ‘Christianity is responsible for racism because it’s European’ in a series of ‘politically biased’ talks.
One of the Tavistock’s seminars was even called ‘Whiteness — a problem for our time’ and included a description on the Trust’s website that ‘the problem of racism is a problem of whiteness’.
When Amy challenged these controversial views she was ‘bullied’ by staff and suspended from the course, pending an investigation into whether she is safe to work with patients.
It’s not quite that bad in the U.S. today, but it’s getting there. And it becomes ever more dominant as the large employers come to dominate an ever-expanding percentage of the workforce. The larger a company becomes, the more tempting a target it becomes to the SJWs and the assorted components of the Left’s alliance.
I’m not going to repeat myself about the wherefores. Either you’ve been paying attention or you haven’t. These are the fruits. Scott Adams’s advice to “diversify your employer” has never been more imperative. If it’s all feasible, consider working for yourself and contracting with temporary employers as the opportunities arise.
I’ll be back later with something else. It’s time for a grocery run.
Feb 26 2023
The Longest Long Con
I ran across this graphic only a few minutes ago:
It’s at the center of my thoughts for a reason upon which I’ll rant a bit later in this piece. For now, I’d like to remind you about an old song, and an old practice far too many of us followed in our younger years. The song:
Every time I think that I’m the only one who’s lonely
Someone calls on me
And every now and then I spend my time in rhyme and verse
And curse those faults in me
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to give me kicks, and be my steady chick
And give me pick of memories
Or maybe rather gather tales of all the fails and tribulations
No one ever seesWhen we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punchWhen vague desire is the fire in the eyes of chicks
Whose sickness is the games they play
And when the masquerade is played and neighbor folks make jokes
As who is most to blame today
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to set them free, and let them see reality
From where she got her name
And will they struggle much when told that such a tender touch as hers
Will make them not the sameWhen we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punchAnd when the morning of the warning’s passed, the gassed
And flaccid kids are flung across the stars
The psychodramas and the traumas gone
The songs are left unsung and hung upon the scars
And then along comes Mary
And does she want to see the stains, the dead remains of all the pains
She left the night before
Or will their waking eyes reflect the lies, and make them
Realize their urgent cry for sight no moreWhen we met I was sure out to lunch
Now my empty cup tastes as sweet as the punch(Tandyn Almer)
There was a “game” we young folks played, when I was a younger man, single and desirous of…well…we sometimes called it nookie, alright? It went like this:
HE: Get her high and chat her up sophisticatedly, and maybe you’ll get her into bed.
SHE: Pretend to listen and let him think he might get me into bed so I can get high on his dime.
If you “matured” in the Sixties and Seventies, you may have been a “player” in this game yourself. It was a con, of course. He wasn’t at all interested in her mind; she wasn’t at all interested in his body. But both sides were willing to pretend for the sake of what they really sought, and yes: every now and then she would give him what he really wanted from her. (After getting higher than Icarus ever got, of course.) Tandyn Almer’s lyric above recounts this con game in Ferlinghetti-esque fashion…regardless of whether you can recite the whole thing from memory alone.
“Along Comes Mary” was a warning…but the young have always been dismissive of such cautions. Our glands spoke in a voice that would not be denied. Our heedlessness got us into no end of trouble. That’s the way it goes when you keep playing a con game.
The graphic at the start of this jeremiad tells a central truth, one which recent events have made plain…yet few are willing to accept it. There are reasons for that, most prominent among them being the continuing media emphasis on Left vs. Right, and the contemporary phenomenon of the Never-Ending Campaign.
If the media megaphone can get you charged up about a notionally two-sided contest — with the help of the contestants, of course — it can keep your attention on what’s being said and away from what’s being done. That is the pattern of the last forty years at least. It keeps the political parties fat and happy, the media moguls dancing in dollars…and you and I bereft of the thing this nation was founded to protect and preserve: FREEDOM.
It’s a con game, Gentle Reader. It’s been nothing else since Ronald Reagan left office — and do you want to know what the Big Giveaway is, the one that everyone in this country should reflect on? It’s right out there in front of God and everybody, but only a handful of commentators have even brushed their microphones against it:
It’s the swindling of Donald Trump.
Trump was a genuine Outsider, a maverick determined to do right as he saw it. That made him an unacceptable, permanently “outside the tent” figure to the master croupiers of the Con Game, they who pour the Very Best Butter over the cams of the Big Rake-Off Machine we call party politics. They labor ceaselessly to keep We the People in Us vs. Them mode, that the oceans of campaign dollars might continue to flow uninterrupted into their coffers. Despite their best efforts, Trump gained the White House and set about doing as he said he would do. Unthinkable! the masters of the Establishment said to one another. No one keeps campaign promises! That’s why we let our puppets make them!!
So Trump had to go. The theft of the 2020 presidential election was the plainest imaginable revelation about the essential phoniness of contemporary political “conflict.” But despite Election 2020 and subsequent developments – Ukraine, anyone? — only a few have caught on.
Disaffiliate yourselves from the farce. Stop paying it any attention. Stop expecting political mechanisms to solve any of your problems. Concentrate on doing the best you can for your family, your friends, your neighbors, and your community, however defined. The game is rigged — so completely that even though “it’s the only game in town,” there’s absolutely no point in playing it any longer.
Be free. Freedom is not granted; it is taken: by you or from you. And the longer you focus on the con game called politics, the longer it will be withheld from you — by your own stubborn inanition.
It’s time for Mass. Perhaps I’ll be back later.
Feb 25 2023
Music For A Snowy Saturday Afternoon
If you’re around my age, you might remember the original version of this:
I’ve heard a lot of denigrations of The Association. They may have been “pop for the masses,” but their songwriters were among the best of the AM-Radio era…and Pat Metheny has taken their classic tune and done it full justice. On a single guitar, at that!
Feb 25 2023
An Unsurprising Reaction
The old fable about the emperor’s new wardrobe, which only the honest and competent could see, ends with a small boy shattering the delusion, simply by speaking the truth. What Hans Christian Andersen had in mind in his fable is disputed today. Partly that’s because Andersen’s original ending for the tale was somewhat different. (Also, critics, being inherently envious of the genuinely creative, like to insert their own notions into everything, no matter how ridiculous.) Nevertheless, the fable stands as a parable about people’s willingness to swallow and even repeat a lie if doing so might be to their advantage.
But that first ending…according to Infogalactic, it might have derived from an incident in Andersen’s childhood:
Andersen’s decision to change the ending may have occurred after he read the manuscript tale to a child, or had its source in a childhood incident similar to that in the tale. He later recalled standing in a crowd with his mother waiting to see King Frederick VI. When the king made his appearance, Andersen cried out, “Oh, he’s nothing more than a human being!” His mother tried to silence him by crying, “Have you gone mad, child?”. Whatever the reason, Andersen thought the change would prove more satirical.
Whether or not it’s the real reason for the change, Andersen’s mother’s reaction is both typical and instructive. The powerful can inflict great suffering on any of the “common folk” who dare to challenge them. Pre-teen Andersen would not have known this; his mother certainly did.
These days, you don’t have to be a king to put the screws to someone who says something contrary to “received wisdom.” You merely have to be vindictive enough, and loud enough, to make him an embarrassment to those who have some degree of power over him. “Cancel culture” is based on that effect. Few among us in the Internet Commentariat are courageous enough to risk its ire.
Just recently, an accomplished man who seems more courageous than most had occasion to say a couple of things that the Cancelers took amiss. One was that he’d been wrong in saying that aversion to the COVID-19 vaccines is wrong or ignorant. The other was even more controversial:
26 percent of blacks said uh no it’s not okay to be white. 21 percent weren’t sure. Add ‘em together that is 47 percent of black respondents were not willing to say it’s okay to be white.
That…that…actually that’s like a real poll. This just happened.
Did you have any idea? Would…would you have imagined that that could have happened?
So I realized…um…as you know I’ve been identifying as black for a while…years now…because I like you know I like to be on the winning team…and I like to help and I always thought well, if you help the black community that’s sort of the biggest lever…you know, you could…you can find the biggest benefit. So I thought well that’s the hardest thing and the biggest benefit so I’d like to focus a lot of my life resources in helping black Americans, so much so that I started identifying as black to just be on the team I was helping.
But it turns out that nearly half of that team doesn’t think I’m okay to be white, which is of course why I identified as black because so I could be on the winning team for a while. But I have to say, uh, this is the first political poll that ever changed my activities. I don’t know that that’s ever happened before.
You know normally you see a poll, you just look at it you go ah whatever…you know, oh this is interesting what other people think. But as of today I’m going to re-identify as white, because I don’t want to be a member of a hate group. I had accidentally joined a hate group.
So if…if you know nearly half of all blacks are not okay with white people according to this poll — not according to me, according to this poll — that’s a hate group. That’s a hate group and I don’t want to have anything to do with them.
And I would say you know based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people. Just get away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed. Right? This can’t be fixed. You just have to escape.
To the best of my knowledge, Scott Adams was sincere about all that. He really has become convinced that American blacks constitute a hate group, and that he wants no part of it.
It might be awfully hard to cancel Adams, a highly successful cartoonist and a medium-gauge Web commentator, but I’m sure the forces of the Left are putting their full efforts to it.
No, I’m not here to talk about cancel culture, or its myrmidons, or how they operate to silence those who have displeased them. Neither am I about to discuss polls, how they’re often biased, or the wisdom of trusting them. What’s on my mind this morning is the associated phenomenon we call virtue signaling, and how it contrasts with argument from hard data.
Another commentator, perhaps not as widely admired as Scott Adams, reacted to Adams’s video thus:
Was Adams’ video a racist rant, or the sound of a man giving up? The man who partnered with someone to rebuild Detroit is now saying that such efforts are no longer worth his time since the only outcome is that he is called a racist. And what of the videos he mentions of black attacks on non-blacks? Attacks on blacks, whether they are actual or manufactured, receive no end of press. When the reverse is true, the media and federal, state, and local governments turn handsprings to avoid mentioning the races involved. What are we to make of that? Are these attacks racism or karma?
So far…well, I won’t say “so good,” but at least not openly dismissive nor contemptuous of Adams’s statement. But wait: there’s more!
No matter that I have never uttered the N-word and have never held a racist point of view in my life. By the color of my skin, the people pushing this agenda have decided I must be whatever they define me to be. Which is racist. And evil. Just as evil as the white supremacists that the DOJ claims are hiding behind the stack of tomatoes at your local grocery store. And I refuse to bow to evil racists or submit my grandson to them. No matter their side, and no matter their color.
That’s the conclusion of Lincoln Brown’s piece – the part he intends for you to take away with you: “No racism! Evil, evil!” But it has nothing to do with Adams’s statement, the poll on which it’s based, or his reversal of convictions. It’s pure virtue signaling: “Hatred is bad! I’m a good guy! I don’t hate anyone!”
I don’t know Lincoln Brown. Therefore I can’t testify to his actual convictions, only to his words on the screen. Also, I’m an outsider. I have no idea whether Brown feels that he must say the above to retain his perch at PJ Media. I will say this: I would not have regarded Brown’s essay as worthy of my talents, for one reason above all others: It evades the issue.
The issue, for those who’ve slept through this piece up to this point, is whether the results of the Rasmussen poll are adequate justification for regarding American blacks – at least those who don’t think “it’s okay to be white” – as a hate group.
Brown can’t simply dismiss Adams’s sentiments as factually wrong. It’s plain that they make him uncomfortable, in which I’m certain he’s not alone. But he’s unwilling to joust on the ground of the poll itself: that is, whether it accurately summarizes the sentiments of American blacks, and if so, whether that justifies Adams’s new position. Instead he rang off with a pious statement that disavows racism: a Last Graf likely much more acceptable to PJ Media’s editors. From that, I infer that he regards the poll itself as an unsafe subject.
Facts that cross-cut the “received wisdom” often seem unsafe.
I’m not going to repeat any of the well-worn mantras about how facts are stubborn things, et cetera. My Gentle Readers have seen those often enough that they probably get after-images of them when the lights suddenly go out. What’s most important here is the core of effective disputation: that is, how to argue your position, especially when those who oppose you are many and vitriolic.
If the basis of an argument is facts and the inferences that can be reasonably drawn from them, that argument is potentially profitable. It can be resolved, and not on basis of differences in the debaters’ eloquence or snark. But when the basis of a dispute is fear — fear of the consequences of dissenting from the most militant sentiment – there is no argument worthy of the name. There is only success or failure in propitiating those who might decide to harm you.
Facts are as important in the discussion of America’s racial animosities as in any other subject. Yet today, the tendency is to avoid citing the facts and discussing what they imply. It can get you canceled. Consider what’s being done to anyone who diverges from the Left’s position on homosexuality or transgenderism. The Left is no less militant about race: specifically, that we white folks are inherently racist and thus deserve to be humiliated and mulcted for it.
My own position, which is radically different from what I espoused as a younger man, is founded on a combination of enduring statistical facts and personal experiences. That it’s essentially congruent with Scott Adams’s conclusion is irrelevant. If you want to argue with either of us, you must not simply castigate us as “bad;” you must show where and how we’re wrong.
And to this point, no one has been willing to do so.
Feb 24 2023
A Less Pessimistic View of the East Palestine Spill
I read this, and the guy seems to have a more balanced view of the level of pollution/contamination that the derailment may have caused. I’d not be surprised if residents had some irritation to their breathing system – even fairly mild acids can cause a nasty burning pain in skin tissue. But, that’s not saying that there will be permanent damage, or cancers. A short blast of a chemical is less likely to cause long term harm than the day-to-day absorption of chemicals over a long period of time.
No credit to Buttigieg, the clown who is F*****g up the DOT, both through his incompetence, and his laziness. News flash, Petey – when you’re in charge, and there is a major crisis, no one gives a rip whether you’re ‘bonding’ with your kid, or missing a REALLY important vacay. You need to drop everything, and deal with the emergency.
He’s clearly in over his head. As a mayor in South Bend, Petey’s biggest accomplishment was installation of decorative paving stones. I’m not kidding, that was it.
Feb 24 2023
And Now, A Word From Our Sponsor
“Hope” is the thing with feathers –
That perches in the soul –
And sings the tune without the words –
And never stops – at all –And sweetest – in the Gale – is heard –
And sore must be the storm –
That could abash the little Bird
That kept so many warm –I’ve heard it in the chillest land –
And on the strangest Sea –
Yet – never – in Extremity,
It asked a crumb – of me.(Emily Dickinson)
Hope is the second of the three theological virtues: the primaries to which all Christians are exhorted to commit themselves unwaveringly. Faith and charity are interlocked with hope. Hope is a mirror to faith, for faith posits God’s love and mercy. Hope makes charity possible, for without it one would merely hug one’s assets to his chest and cower from involvement with others. Hope’s polar opposite, despair, amounts to the forsaking of God, for God is Love.
But to retain one’s hope when things are tough expresses something else, as well: courage. C. S. Lewis called courage the testing point of all other virtues:
This, indeed, is probably one of the Enemy’s motives for creating a dangerous world—a world in which moral issues really come to the point. He sees as well as you do that courage is not simply one of the virtues, but the form of every virtue at the testing point, which means, at the point of highest reality. A chastity or honesty, or mercy, which yields to danger will be chaste or honest or merciful only on conditions. Pilate was merciful till it became risky. [The Screwtape Letters]
In this hope resembles all the other virtues. To maintain one’s hope in the darkness – to continue to fight, work, and hope when it seems utterly pointless – demands courage.
I filched the following from Mike Miles:
How true that is. It’s easy to “hope” for continued prosperity, continued security, continued peace. Hope is at its truest when all that we value has been taken from us, with no relief in sight, yet we grit our teeth and soldier on. He who rises from disaster’s rubble, girds his loins, marshals his forces, and goes forth to strive afresh knows what hope really is…and what it asks of us.
Just now things are pretty bleak. Americans have lost much; in the foreseeable future, we’ll lose even more. The forces of evil are relentless. They cannot be defeated permanently, for they refuse to accept defeat. As Tolkien told us, the Shadow will take a fresh shape and grow again.
But that’s just one more argument for hope. If the tyrants and destroyers refuse to accept defeat, why should the good people of the world accept it? Are we not at least as strong and resolute as they? Can’t we match their determination with our own? Indeed, isn’t that the central test of existence?
At irregular intervals I find myself at the computer, fingers poised over the keys, but unable to write in the face of the counsel of despair: What’s the use? What have I succeeded in improving? What reason do I have to think that anything will change because of what I might say? Haven’t I said quite enough already? Aren’t there better ways to spend what remains of my life?
At such times I need a hope refresher. It comes in various guises, some of which are harder to discern than others. Maybe I’ll encounter a favorite book or poem, or hear an uplifting piece of music. Maybe I’ll recharge after reading some Web colleague’s recent emission. Or maybe someone who’s read one of my novels will write to me to express his appreciation. All I need to do is remain awake and alert; hope will find its way back into my soul.
God, too, is relentless. He washes His hands of no one. Hope is simply the recognition of that truth.
Just a few casually nonpolitical but hopeful words from the crazy Catholic commentator who arrogantly continues to vent his assorted foolishnesses onto the World Wide Web. Please enjoy your day – and remain hopeful. In parting, have an old anthem from the Seventies:
And may God bless and keep you all.
Feb 24 2023
Now They’ve Gone Too Far
Maybe we’ve stood still and silent while they ruined the economy, destroyed the nation’s energy supplies, choked the ports, fed our Strategic Petroleum reserve to China, and led us to the brink of nuclear Armageddon, but we can’t let them get away with this!
Now Unilever, the far-Left corporate giant that brings us Ben & Jerry’s Marxist ice cream and other frozen delicacies, is doing its part by making its ice cream freezers significantly warmer, so that now if global warming doesn’t melt your dessert, Unilever’s woke freezers will take care of that for you on their own.
The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday that Unilever is working on ways to “warm up its ice cream freezers in convenience stores without turning its products into puddles.” This quixotic endeavor is, we’re told, “part of a broader effort to pursue green goals and potentially boost sales in the process.” Warmer, softer ice cream that melts faster is going to boost sales? Well, maybe because after the whole thing runs down one’s hand in a gooey, sticky mess, some people will valiantly buy another ice cream and try again, but that’s not likely to be a high percentage of frozen delicacy consumers. Unilever doesn’t appear to have thought this through.
By threatening our ice cream supply, Unilever threatens our very way of life. This must not stand! There must be a Twenty-First Century Jacquerie! America’s prepubescents must beat their popsicle sticks back into swords and brandish them threateningly at Unilever’s corporate headquarters!
While you’re at it, make mine Breyers’ Coffee. Two scoops, please.
Feb 24 2023
As Long As We’re Talking About Hate Groups
…some even have their own TV shows:
Joy Behar says the residents of East Palestine got what they deserved because they voted for Trump.
“That’s who you voted for!” she shouted at the camera. “In that district. Donald Trump, who reduces all safety. He did in those days.” pic.twitter.com/brMUQfthQj— Nicholas Fondacaro (@NickFondacaro) February 23, 2023
You’ve got to watch out for “groups,” Gentle Reader. Sometimes they promise you cookies, but it never works out quite right, for a reason I call Gresham’s Law of Groups. When a group values its bad members equally to its good members, over time the good members will disappear, leaving the bad members to dominate the group. After that, outsiders will assess any good members that remain as no better than the company they’ve chosen to keep.
As I’ve said several times before this:
Feb 23 2023
Good Sense Dept.
Good sense often seems to have been anathematized, if not outlawed. It’s still possible to have good sense, but to speak good sense where others can hear is becoming increasingly dangerous. It can cost you everything: Your family, your friends, the good will of your neighbors, your occupation, your business associations. Now and then it can even cost you your life.
Good sense is expressed in a number of maxims. The one that comes to mind just now is a simple one:
Fairly straightforward, no? And awfully hard to argue against. But a whole lot of people don’t…quite…get it. They’re determined to force themselves on others who’d rather not be burdened by their presence. And their efforts in that direction create a great deal of tension and resentment. Occasionally it eventuates in violence.
Herewith, a brief video from Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert. Please watch it.
Good sense raw and unprocessed. It calls to mind the observation of Professor Helmut Schoeck that the typical response to generosity is resentment and envy:
No one admits publicly, and hence public opinion does not admit, that ingratitude is the norm. It is astounding that countless benefactors allow themselves to be persuaded over and over that ingratitude with the resultant hatred is a rare and special case.
We tried, White America. We tried our best. We told ourselves it was our duty to help, that we were atoning for the crimes of Americans past. And we gave without any reckoning-up.
It’s time to stop. There must be a divorce. Not the sort Marjorie Taylor Greene advocates, but a racial divorce:
Blacks must not be welcome within them.
This will be condemned by the bien-pensants, of course. “It’s racist!” Damn right it is, baby. “It’s prejudicial!” You think we’re the only ones? The necessity has become too blatant to be denied any longer. Too much blood and treasure has been spilled in the attempt to harmonize inherently unharmonious races.
Will it cost us? Of course. But as David Bergland has said, Utopia is not one of the options. All the alternatives are still more costly – and not always in dollars and cents.
Thoughts?
Feb 23 2023
Presidents And Pretenders
Yesterday, Donald Trump did something that neither Joe Biden nor any member of his Cabinet has yet done: He went to East Palestine, Ohio. Moreover, he went with a large quantity of food and potable water. The residents of that badly beset district were overjoyed by his visit. Yes, they appreciated the aid he brought as well, but it’s my guess that they’d have cheered him just as enthusiastically even if he’d arrived empty-handed.
What Donald Trump did was the quintessence of presidential behavior. It recalls to mind what President Ronald Reagan is rumored to have said after meeting Trump: “When I met that young man, I felt like I was the one shaking hands with a president.”
One can scoff at the objective weight of such a visit. Trump’s presence did nothing to mitigate the disaster. Surely the food and water he brought will be used up relatively quickly. Yet no one can dismiss the effect it had on the residents of East Palestine. Trump’s arrival told them in the plainest of terms that they matter to him.
It’s been said, with much justice, that we go to the polls every four years to elect a national father figure. Fathers care. They don’t just say it; they show it. That’s what we expect of them.
The Usurper Regime has no interest in allowing any of its better-known figures to appear in East Palestine. It would identify whoever might do so with the disaster itself. That’s to be expected, as the worst effects of the derailment arose from the “controlled burn” imposed with the approval of the Environmental Protection Agency. Biden’s administration is already in trouble with the electorate. No matter whom the Democrats nominate for the presidency in 2024, for the current administration to be coupled to the worst environmental disaster in American history would be a monumental black mark against the Democrat Party.
Events such as this make plain who is genuinely of national stature. Statesmen stand forth; pretenders cower and hide. As little affection as I have for government per se, it cheers me to see a man of quality act the part, while the dementia patient installed in the Oval Office strives to escape our scrutiny.
There isn’t much else to say about this matter. East Palestine will at last receive some aid from the Federal Emergency Management Agency. No doubt there will be remediation efforts, though they’re likely to be mainly palliative. And doubt it not, the affected region will suffer. There will be disease and deaths.
But at least it’s plain and open where ordinary Americans stand with the Usurper Regime, and with the man who belongs in the office Biden the Pretender occupies today.
Feb 22 2023
Freedom Of What?
I have a great admiration for the Founders of this nation. Many of them thought more deeply about political processes, especially the innate dynamic of governments to grow over time, than anyone who’s come since them. This morning I find myself reflecting on the wisdom of one in particular: the celebrated yet underappreciated Alexander Hamilton.
Hamilton is generally portrayed as an arch-Federalist, who wanted the federal government to be much more powerful than the rest of the Constitutional Convention. And that is true in some respects. For example, he originally proposed that U.S. Senators and the President, once elected, should serve for life. The argument, which bears a strong resemblance to that of the Constantians for a monarchy, is that an official who cannot be removed by an electoral process is independent of any supporter or group thereof. Hamilton also proposed that the President should have considerably more power than the Constitution gives him.
However, speaking from today’s vantage, Hamilton’s most telling analysis was of the undesirability of a Bill of Rights. The core of his argument touches on one of the key problems of our time: interpretation and its vagaries:
I go further, and affirm that bills of rights, in the sense and in the extent in which they are contended for, are not only unnecessary in the proposed constitution, but would even be dangerous. They would contain various exceptions to powers which are not granted; and on this very account, would afford a colourable pretext to claim more than were granted. For why declare that things shall not be done which there is no power to do? Why for instance, should it be said, that the liberty of the press shall not be restrained, when no power is given by which restrictions may be imposed? I will not contend that such a provision would confer a regulating power; but it is evident that it would furnish, to men disposed to usurp, a plausible pretence for claiming that power. They might urge with a semblance of reason, that the constitution ought not to be charged with the absurdity of providing against the abuse of an authority, which was not given, and that the provision against restraining the liberty of the press afforded a clear implication, that a power to prescribe proper regulations concerning it, was intended to be vested in the national government. This may serve as a specimen of the numerous handles which would be given to the doctrine of constructive powers, by the indulgence of an injudicious zeal for bills of rights.
Hamilton is at his most cogent here. Say a thing once: its import is beyond dispute. Say it twice: it becomes vague, elusive, capable of ambiguity. History has validated Hamilton’s reasoning: Twentieth Century scholars, including many a federal judge or Justice, rejected the Constitution as a document that limits the powers of the federal government! They prefer to see those powers bounded solely by the exclusions stated in the first eight Amendments; Amendments IX and X are treated as “mere truisms,” without binding force.
Here’s another telling stroke:
On the subject of the liberty of the press, as much has been said, I cannot forbear adding a remark or two: In the first place, I observe that there is not a syllable concerning it in the constitution of this state, and in the next, I contend that whatever has been said about it in that of any other state, amounts to nothing. What signifies a declaration that “the liberty of the press shall be inviolably preserved?” What is the liberty of the press? Who can give it any definition which would not leave the utmost latitude for evasion? I hold it to be impracticable; and from this, I infer, that its security, whatever fine declarations may be inserted in any constitution respecting it, must altogether depend on public opinion, and on the general spirit of the people and of the government. And here, after all, as intimated upon another occasion, must we seek for the only solid basis of all our rights. [Emphasis added]
This is the foundation for my thoughts this morning.
I’ve just encountered a powerful statement by Archbishop Carlo Maria Vigano:
The totem of freedom of worship allows Satan worshippers to erect a blasphemous monument to Baphomet in front of the Arkansas State Capitol in Little Rock or a statue of a demon on the façade of the New York Courthouse to celebrate an abortionist Supreme Court judge; while in New Mexico the Satanic Temple inaugurates a clinic that performs ritual abortions and benefits from state recognition. Meanwhile, the Secret Service of the Biden Administration has nothing better to do than profile traditional Catholics and keep an eye on the communities in which the Liturgy is celebrated in Latin, as if they represented a threat to the established order and a potential danger to the institutions of the State.
His Excellency is irrefutably correct, for a reason that hearkens back to Hamilton’s critique: You say we have freedom of religion? Tell us, please: what is a religion? There is no universally accepted definition. I’ve tried to compose one, and for all my efforts I’ve failed to satisfy the central criterion I intended to serve: to exclude creeds hostile to justice.
In these post-Constitutional times, just about any corpus of belief can claim to be a “religion,” and thus to gain some measure of protection from those who find it hostile to them. Parallel to this we have the militant atheists clamoring for “freedom from religion,” as if Amendment I gave Washington the power to drive religious expression out of all public places, confining it to churches and private homes. Amendment I’s attempt to guarantee this undefined freedom, through the efforts of demagogues and word-twisters, has created chaos where liberty was intended.
The Constitution as written did not confer upon Washington the power to ban or regulate any creed or its observance. (Neither did it forbid any state to do so, but that’s a subject for another screed.) By incorporating the common law of England, it conferred upon juries the power to punish crimes; nothing more. Amendment I was what muddied the waters, giving rise to a milieu in which any creed, Satanism among them, could claim protection for its vilenesses.
It should come as no surprise that judges have conferred protection upon some of the most execrable displays now blighting our public places in the name of “freedom of religion.” Declaring “freedom of religion” while leaving religion undefined could have had no other result.
I could detail the obscenities that have arisen from such ambiguities, one Amendment after another. But there’s little point, other than this:
Good intentions are no shield.
This might be the ultimate argument against government itself.
Feb 22 2023
An Twist on an Old Slogan
The early Sixties Feminists used to use a phrase (I believe it was borrowed from Maoists), “The personal is political”.
By that phrase, they meant that women could best be reached by ingraining in their message that ALL personal interactions were inherently political. A man didn’t just fail to clean up after because he was worried about his job and forget; no, there had to be a deliberate action on his part to establish his Male Dominance.
The reinforcement of that teaching is why women are always asking What You Really MEANT by your actions.
Well, I have a new phrase – The PERSONNEL is Political.
American Greatness has an essay about education, and how the real problem is not the Curriculum, but the PEOPLE/PERSONNEL that are teaching the curriculum.
I think they’ve got something there.
There is a reason that HR departments – dominated by women – are so big. It has become an exercise in Empire Building – that process by which the head of a department tries to wriggle into every decision that is made in the company. All aspects of employee management – Hiring, Firing, Disciplinary, Evaluation, and Training – have HR as the final decision-maker.
Now, THAT’S power!
HR can force departments to take divisive and often incompetent people, and keep them, even though they hamper the core function of the department. Sometimes, the only way to get rid of their poisonous presence is to “kick them upstairs” – promote them out of your way.
So, in schools, the trouble with the Agenda is not the curriculum as much as they people twisting it into a Woke Mess.
Ironically, social media has helped get rid of some of the worst of the Woke. They just can’t resist displaying their SJW cred on TikTok, Instagram, and other performative social media. When parents are alerted to that recorded stupidity, that person is often fired, or at least toned down and made ineffective.
Hence, the push to shut down – even arrest – parents and other questioning citizens. That creates ‘bad optics’ (what used to be called Stupid Actions’ on the part of school boards.
Feb 21 2023
Apologies For Being Repetitive…
…but I feel obligated to aggregate the data:
Loud neighbors and threats at an apartment complex in Houston led to the arrest of two sisters. The sisters are accused of grabbing their guns earlier this week to confront their noisy neighbors.
The sisters claim the confrontation took place because their neighbors were being too loud during sex. Houston police arrested Alexis Davis, 25, and Treasure Bibbs, 21, for allegedly pulling a gun on a married couple just before 7:00 am on Monday morning.
The gun-toting sisters:
Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.
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