Jan 11 2023

That “How?” Question

     It just keeps coming back.

     Jim Jordan has trumpeted the intentions of his “Weaponization of Government” subcommittee. They’re exactly what I would have expected from Jordan, one of the few genuinely laudable persons in Congress:

     Lauren Boebert, another admirable Representative, has added her concurring opinions:

     Applause, but…how? What do you propose to do about it, other than hold hearings? When will we see a detailed plan that shatters the Civil Service walls around those weaponized agencies? Does either of you have the outline of a plan? If so, when will the rest of us get to see it?

     The Civil Service is demonstrably Left-owned, and to the Left, only power matters. Even were every agency to be purged of its top men, all to be replaced by solid pro-freedom, Constitution-respecting conservatives, the working parts of those agencies would remain as they are. The leadership would be helpless against them. Fire tens of thousands of bureaucrats? It’s damned near impossible to fire one. The agencies would continue as they’ve done these past five decades to target the Right for destruction.

     It’s the power dynamic again. They who seek government jobs are people who want what they offer that’s unavailable in the private sector: power over others and job security. Power over others is the priority of the Left, which gives its adherents a natural advantage at pursuing it. Thus, if every one of the alphabet agencies were to be purged completely and a restaffing process to begin tomorrow, when their offices had been repopulated the situation would be the same as it is today.

     A natural dynamic cannot be countered with a Congressional subcommittee. It can only be thwarted by a more powerful natural dynamic. There is only one such: the one that Henry Bowman and his allies actuated. Until that engine gets cranked up and roaring, there will be no enduring substantive changes.

Jan 11 2023

“Stop! Stop! Danger Will Robinson!”

     We have all – well, most of us – known the frustration of trying to scrape a thick sheet of ice off a windshield. It can test the patience of the most patient man, especially if the temperature and the snow are still falling and he forgot to bring gloves that day. Continental New Yorkers know the trial well. Many a windshield has been starred or shattered in the resulting fury, especially if the sufferer is late for an appointment or desperate to “beat the rush.” In this piece at LifeHacker, writer A. A. Newton proposes a dangerous expedient:

     If you’ve ever tried to scrape a thick layer of hard ice off your windshield, you know that the hardest part is getting under it; until you can get a corner of the scraper blade in between your window and the ice, it’s not going anywhere. This is exactly why most ice scrapers have ridges on one side of the blade. You’re supposed to use them to “score” the surface of the ice. It’s almost like perforating a piece of paper you want to tear cleanly; scoring the surface breaks up the tension, which makes it significantly easier to scrape off with the flat side. I had no idea that’s what the ridges were for, but in my defense, I was never any good at physics.

     I added the emphasis. What is this writer about? Is he unaware that perforating a sheet of something can, and often does, make it stronger? Has he never tried to tear a check from a checkbook and ripped it askew? Has he never attempted to separate the “Return this part with payment” from the rest and had it tear perversely across the perforation? Has he never tried to tear off a length of toilet paper and…well, you get the idea.

     When it comes to windshield ice, imagine the many ways perforation could go wrong. Some would require replacing the whole windshield. In his story “It Was Nothing – Really!” the late Theodore Sturgeon explored this phenomenon to its ultimate conclusion. The wise would heed his warning. Beware!

Jan 10 2023

Taking Exceptions

     Let’s spin up with a Blinding Flash of the ObviousTM;

     The bottom line is that if you don’t have control over what gets injected into your own body, you have no meaningful freedom in any sense of the word. Any state that does not safeguard the right to full autonomy over what pharmaceutical products you do or do not take is, by definition, despotic. — Ben Bartee

     Donald W. Molloy, the federal judge who recently issued a ruling to the contrary, cited as his justification one of the dominant shibboleths of our time: “public health.” That phrase must have terrifying power, for by wielding it Molloy nullified the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution of the United States:

     Amendment IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.

     Of course, those who applaud the ruling would protest that Molloy didn’t do any such thing; he merely noted an exception that overrides what would otherwise seem a blanket defense against such medical tyranny. The Nuremberg Code? Please! That was about those nasty Nazis and their experiments. This is for the public health!

     Yet another case of a “compelling government interest.” Sick of it yet?

     The paper barriers we were once taught would defend our rights from would-be totalitarians have been multiply perforated and reduced to tatters in exactly this fashion – and both Democrats and Republicans have collaborated at it.

     Some very smart people have been deluded in this way. “Public” has come to be a bit like “social;” it inverts the meaning of the word that comes after it. “Public health.” “Public education.” “Public property.” “Public good.” Yet virtually no one has made “public mention” of the curious power of this modifier.

     (“Who is the public? What does it hold as its good?” — You know who.)

     It probably wouldn’t have been possible to puncture our right to bodily autonomy without the prior medicalization of our entire existence. It probably wasn’t planned this way. Yet the decades immediately behind us have seen such a swelling of emphasis on “health,” broadly defined, that aspiring tyrants must have seen their chance.

     “No amendment is absolute.” – Joe Biden

***

     I’ve raved so many times about rights and how they differ from permissions that I can’t bring myself to do so any further. Either you get the idea or you’re beyond my power to educate. As I have very little time left on this ball of mud, I shan’t expend any more effort on the elucidation.

     Novelist Eric L. Harry did the nation an immense service that it hardly noticed: he made the function of rights explicit in a statement that “should” be part of the civics tutelage of every young American:

     “Rights are an archist concept. Rights have no meaning except when confronted with superior power. They are what is left to the people after the government has taken all its wants. Your country’s Bill of Rights defines your most cherished freedoms how? By limiting the legal power of government to encroach upon them.” [Eric L. Harry, via fictional anarchist theorist Valentin Kartsev in Harry’s novel Protect and Defend.]

     Let’s leave aside for the moment exactly how effective the Bill of Rights has been at protecting and defending our rights. Harry’s point is perfectly clear: Rights are supposed to limit the reach of the State. In the absence of the State, why would we natter about rights? Yet “rights” is the word most frequently employed by interest groups and noisy minorities…to demand infringements on others’ rights.

     In the recent pandemic, the “right” we were bludgeoned with was “the right to be safe” – specifically, safe from the terror of the Kung Flu, of course.

     Never before in the history of language has a more vacuous conception been bandied about by supposedly intelligent and thoughtful men. But millions swallowed it and repeated it as if it were Holy Writ. Virtually no one recognized this “right” for what it is: a demand by hypochondriacs of a specialized kind that others prostrate themselves before their fears.

     The aspiring tyrants of our nation seized that “right” and wielded it a outrance. Thus was the Fourth Amendment shredded forever.

***

     “Public health” must join “national security” in the Dictionary of Pernicious Nonsense. Never again should we permit this madness, this bludgeoning of an entire nation to assuage the fears of hysterics. If the excesses of the past three years have had any positive consequence whatsoever, it would be the awakening of millions of Americans to the horrors that “public health” can be used to impose upon peaceable citizens.

     “Public” anything must be retired from our lexicon – if necessary, by force.

Jan 09 2023

Rhetorical Trends Dept.

     There’s a new buzzphrase being bandied about, Gentle Reader. If you’re as news-obsessive as I, you’ve surely heard it. Perhaps you even reflected on its mendacity. But as not everyone is as attentive as you and I, let’s put it right out there in front of God and everybody.

     The ominous phrase is “the people’s business.”

     If you’ve read or heard it, how did you react? Did you let it pass without further reflection? Did you note the context, which is the minimum required for unpacking it? Did you ponder the intent of the speaker? Were you able to discern from his statements:

  • His conception of “the people,”
  • What he deems to be their “business,”
  • What ought to be done about it,
  • And by whom?

     “The people,” you see, is itself a political buzzphrase. Some would call it a term of art. “The people’s” identity and dimensions are unknown. Among its other lacks are a unitary consciousness, a coherent set of needs and desires, and any sort of plan. In other words, by any imaginable standard it is unreal.

     Yet we hear about it all the time.

     The most recent invocation of “the people’s business” has been in connection with the fight over the Speakership of the House of Representatives. That chamber of Congress has been called “the people’s house.” Historically, that was because its members were elected by popular vote, whereas until the ratification of the Seventeenth Amendment in 1913, United States Senators were chosen by the state legislatures. Today the designation has less meaning.

     The two-hundred-plus Republican Congressmen who’ve lined up to make Kevin McCarthy the Speaker expressed their irritation with the twenty hold-outs in varying ways. However, one constant among them has been the insistence that the squabble is delaying “the people’s business.”

     Hold hard there. If you consider yourself one of “the people,” then your business, whatever it may be, would surely be subsumed under “the people’s business.” That leads us to an overwhelming question:

Isn’t your business for you to do?

     If you feel that way – I do – wouldn’t you assume that every other self-respecting individual so casually subsumed under that phrase “the people” would feel the same?

     You’re on notice that the Establishmentarians in the Republican Caucus in the House of Representatives don’t agree.

***

     No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. – Judge Gideon Tucker, 1866.

     Government Systems, acting in accordance with the laws of growth, Tend to Expand and Encroach. In encroaching upon their own citizens, they produce Tyranny, and encroaching upon other Government Systems, they engage in Warfare. – John Gall, Systemantics

     Few observations about the behavior of human institutions have been confirmed as repeatedly and reliably as those above. The chief implication is fairly obvious – governments, no matter how constituted, are a threat to those they rule – yet men persist in trying to fence them in with protections for individuals’ rights and latitude of action.

     The great majority of men resist the notion that we’d all be better off without the State. Some resist it out of a sincere conviction that without governments, things would be worse, though seldom is that conviction tested analytically. Others resist it because they’re “in on the action,” or hope some day to be so. And still others resist it out of a fear of the unknown. Even as the State grows, constricting their lives ever more straitly and swallowing ever more of their property, they strain to rationalize this indefensible idea that some should be permitted to wield coercive power over others.

     I’m done with it, myself. I don’t regard my business, such as it is, as something that others, however selected, have any right to interfere in. If I have the right to say “Mind your own business” to other individuals and make it stick, why shouldn’t I have the right to tell political busybodies the same? And if I have that right, don’t you have it as well?

     The illusion of choice provided by elections, by which the power-mongers of the world hope to distract and delude us, doesn’t deceive me. Power-mongers want power above all other things. They’ll do anything and everything to get it, keep it, and increase it. What letter comes after their names makes no significant difference to their pretensions or intentions. That’s been displayed ever more openly these past seven years.

     By my lights, governments are fundamentally morally indefensible. From what I see around me, the number of those who agree with me increases daily. Yet things remain the same year after year and century after century.

***

     I was delighted by the fight over who would wield the Speaker’s gavel. It didn’t just offer a clear glimpse of what really matters to the political Establishment; it also delayed “the people’s business.” While the fight went on, Congress could not act. And so, for a little while, even though “the legislature” was “in session,” we were safe from further predations.

     Now that the Speakership has been decided, we’re in danger once more. The few procedural changes and concessions the twenty hold-outs managed to wring from Kevin McCarthy will likely prove illusory. Politicians make promises all the time. They seldom keep them. McCarthy and his Establishmentarian fellows will find rationales under which to dismiss his promises to the hold-outs. I’d be pleased to be proved wrong, but I know which way to bet.

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers are all familiar with the secular parable of the tortoise and the scorpion. By now, anyone who’s been paying attention to the gaucherie of American politics should be aware of the nature of the professional power-monger. Isn’t it time to act on what we know all too well – what has been demonstrated to us repeatedly throughout the annals of history?

     Isn’t it time to declare that “the people’s business” is a canard – that an individual’s business is his own to do?

     See also this excellent piece by Sundance at The Last Refuge. Keep your business to yourself, as far as possible. And keep your pantry full and your powder dry.

Jan 09 2023

SKUNC >> RINO

This news item “Adam Kinzinger, House Republican Who Served on Jan. 6 Committee, Lands Job at CNN After Retiring” reminded me why I could never abide the easier to recognize but poor choice for a pejorative that is Republican In Name Only.

For one thing, a RINO is still a republican, just not a constitutional one. He works at the behest of the principals who fund him, not for the principles of, and in defense of the constitution that protects, those he allegedly represents.

RINO, because of rhinos, has too many pleasing attributes for it to be a proper derogatory term. Statist Knowingly Undermining National Charters is not only specifically pejorative, it describes the species internationally. And for those who rightly see a problem with the creation and funding of the UN, SKUNC simultaneously means Stooge Kneeling to United Nations Controllers — a bastard’s dream of an organization designed to undermine the sovereignty of every nation on Earth.

Please see and spread the insight as to why it is proper and better to refer to renegade Republicans as SKUNCs. The stink from this one is particularly noticeable.

I will rest much easier when I see more cartoons of skunks with the coward’s yellow stripe down their back (rather than the tough, thick-skinned and dangerous rhinos) begin to proliferate.

I may be dreaming, but you, given a better alternative for showing your displeasure of rotten Republicans, can help make my dream a reality. Thank you.

Statist Knowingly Undermining National Charters
or
Stooge Kneeling to UN Controllers

Jan 08 2023

On The Reason Progs Favor Border Invaders

“…as the wetback problem was never about humanitarian concerns but about the accumulation of power via the fraudulent votes of the invaders….” — AoS coblogger CBD

The reason I’m calling attention to this is I am hoping to prevent others from also carelessly parroting what I consider a red-herring. Heck, some of those migrants are more astute than some American citizens I know.

C’mon. Illegal voters is the lesser concern. The real danger to election integrity are the various vote counting machinations, now systemic, and the apparent coercion on courts to dismiss cases challenging them.

How many times must other Stalinist tactics be pointed out before we insist on an Untouchables to drive out the principals implied in Stalin’s infamous boast: “It’s not who votes that counts, but who counts the votes.”

It simply rankled me to see CBD repeating one of the Establishment cover stories so blindly. Is there a significant number of readers who agree with me? I hope so. When you see something that smells at all like how that stinks to me, you should call it out too.

Jan 08 2023

An Epiphany Story

     I’m fairly sure all my Gentle Readers know the story of the Magi and their gifts to the Christ Child. Today – the first Sunday after New Year’s Day – is the day when Catholics celebrate the Epiphany, which includes that momentous visit to the Holy Family from three of the most learned men of the Eastern world. I prefer to deem that event to be the true inception of the Christmas gift-giving practice, rather than Saint Nicholas of Myra’s gifts of coins to young women unable to raise a dowry.

     For those who’d like an elaborate explanation of the Magi and their gifts, my personal exegesis is here. But for the rest, and for those who’ve already read that earlier piece and would like something new, here’s a kinda-sorta joke, supplied to me this morning by my pastor, Monsignor Christopher Heller:

     When Janie turned thirteen, her parents decreed that she was old enough to take public transit unaccompanied. For her first such venture, she decided to visit her grandmother, who had recently moved into an apartment in Manhattan. The prospect excited Janie, for not only did she love her grandmother, she loved to visit the city, and any reason to go there was sufficient. But Janie had not previously visited Grandma in her new apartment, so she rang up to ask for directions.

     Grandma was most explicit about which buses and subways to take, and how to get from the last subway to her apartment building. But at that point, her directions became…unusual.

     “When you get to my building,” Grandma said, “go to the panel of buttons at the left side of the entrance, and push the button labeled 309 with your elbow. That’s my apartment number. When I hear the buzz, I’ll buzz you into the building. From there, you go into the building lobby, where you’ll find the elevators. Push the Up button with your elbow and get into the first elevator car that arrives. Before the door closes, push the button labeled 3 with your elbow. That’s my floor. When you get there, get off and head left down the hallway to the door labeled 309. Push the doorbell button with your elbow, and I’ll come to let you in. Got all that?”

     “I do, Grandma,” Janie said, “but I don’t understand why I have to use my elbow to push each of those buttons.”

     “What,” said Grandma, “you’re coming empty-handed?”

     First, let’s get this out of the way: <rimshot />

     Now, let’s reflect for a moment: Just why do we give gifts to our loved ones and friends on Christmas, or on the Epiphany as our Eastern brethren prefer to do? I know some consider it an obligation which, if sloughed, could result in ill feeling or a loss of reputation. Perhaps it is, in some circles. But in the tradition of the Magi, it’s supposed to be an expression of love.

     Those three men would not have traveled a long, difficult route through the desert for a trivial reason. The prophecy they followed to find the Christ Child held Him to be the future King of Kings. “King” is a title often awarded to the Magi. (Cf. “We three kings of Orient are.”) While the tale of their journey omits mention of their exact role in Persian society, it emphasizes their high status and the great respect others had for their scholarship. To do what they did, they must have accepted the prophecy’s attribution of supreme status to the Child. That prophecy made Him “King and God and Sacrifice,” all in one.

     What would be a more fitting response to the discovery of such a Being than a pledge of fealty, worship…and love? Indeed, would any other response be possible?

     A gift offered sincerely is always given out of love.

     Too often we give gifts out of a sense of obligation. Such gifts express compulsion and resentment more than anything else. But the gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh the Magi presented to the Christ Child stood outside any obligation known to that time. They were given out of love to One who is Love Himself, and who would ultimately accept the sacrifice of His mortal body to prove it.

     Happy Feast of the Epiphany, Gentle Readers. May God bless and keep you all.

Jan 07 2023

How About Something…Strange?

     This is the final track of Earth Opera’s first album. Listen at your own peril: once you’ve heard it, it will stay with you for days:

I decree that her death be by rumor the skull gleamed
And creaking sat back in its chair
In agreement the room full of white teeth all clicked
And they said we must do what is fair

While the priests prepared hammers and nails
And the carpenters planed
The nuns nodded knowing to sentence a sinner
Is justice and law of the same

In the cobblestone streets of the village
The hawkers and mongers are wagging their tongues
With sly smiles of insinuation they watch her
And talk of the ensuing fun

Her beauty defilement
She will now pay for this crime of lust
The monks in the towers are pealing the bells
To remind the people that they must

And the carrion crows are arriving in droves
As the sun sets to pick the bones clean
And the clowns stand around and they stare at the ground
And they secretly weep at the scene

In the rectory, the priest laughs
And lets the wine drip down his vest
He calls and caresses his lover who laughs
As he wipes his mouth on his chest

The widows and virgins at watch in the window
As sinners are purged down bellow
No willows will weep for her silence of ashes
Will sleep in the new-fallen snow

— Peter Rowan –

Jan 07 2023

Trust And Its Enemies

     This morning, Cold Fury co-contributor SteveF has posted an excellent piece on a subject of great importance: trust. (Yes, I’ve ranted about it too.) Steve delves into the developments that allowed dishonest behavior to explode:

     One is the increasing population and increased concentration in urban areas. When everyone in a small town knows each other, they’ll know who can’t be trusted to keep his word and they’ll probably have a good idea who broke into the Smiths’ house last night. By contrast, when you have a hundred thousand people in a couple square miles, interpersonal relationships break down and accountability drops along with visibility. Trust drops, too, because more people means more bad people.

     The second factor in decreasing trust is automobiles, and mobility in general. Since agriculture became a big thing around six thousand years ago, most humans have lived and died within a few dozen miles of where they were born. If you’re going to be dealing with the hundred people in your village for the next thirty years, it’s in your best interest to stay in their good graces. Don’t break into their houses and steal their stuff because you’ll probably get caught when someone sees you using the stolen shovel. Don’t break promises because your neighbors will remember and you won’t be able to get help when you need it the next year.

     Both of those developments are important, though for reasons that contrast in an interesting way. The first of them – the great increase in both population and population density in most of America – speaks of our limited ability to know others, whether directly or by proximate connection. The second one – our radically increased mobility – speaks of the ease of escaping the consequences of one’s actions. It’s worth a few moments’ thought to see how those influences collaborate to degrade our willingness to trust others.

     Needless to say, those whose greatest desire is for power over us have exploited those developments to the hilt. Steve covers the most significant of those sallies as well.

     What strikes me about the thing is the irony at its heart. The increase in our numbers was long thought to be a pure gain, to us individually and to the nation. More people would surely make America stronger, wealthier, and more secure. Moreover, until about 1900, Americans looking for safety and security moved toward the cities, because in the cities the resources and facilities that sustain and protect life were more available than in the rural areas. Plainly that’s no longer the case.

     Who would argue that we would be better off if we were less free to move around? The privately owned automobile represented the greatest gain for individuals’ latitude of action in human history. Mass transportation methods add to that, of course, but the privately owned car – “an essentially anarchic device” (Barry Bruce-Briggs) – was and remains the key to individual mobility. It makes it possible for Americans to go to where they can get what they want, whether that be some good, some service, or just a little time away from our cares.

     But as Steve has noted, those things also decrease our knowledge about those around us, and increase our ability to flee the consequences of our bad behavior. In their train have come government’s various encroachments on our freedom. Identification documents. Passports. Surveillance cameras. Huge police departments and investigations bureaus. Pervasive record-keeping. Ever more minute regulations of commerce and finance.

     That these things have come upon us gradually, such that we’ve become sequentially accustomed to them, doesn’t reduce their weight on our liberty. For a cherry to top off the sundae, governments’ encroachments have amplified the problem. Governments thrive on an atmosphere of distrust. We should have expected this, for government itself is inherently untrustworthy. American governments have become ever more so as time has passed.

     Yet what are aspirants to office best known for? Promises. What is the phrase that most plainly identifies the politician? Trust me.

     A land frontier once allowed us to distance ourselves from what displeased us. That frontier has closed. Were the “high frontier” to spring open through advances in technology, we might see a new diaspora. Those of us determined to reclaim our freedom would venture outward, away from people, societies, and institutions we can no longer trust. There are surely enough of us who’d like the option.

     We would travel in groups: knots of humanity whose members know and trust one another. Who would willingly brave the dangers of interplanetary exploration and settlement with persons he doesn’t trust at his back? The immense room convenient space travel would afford us would make it possible for such groups to spread out, re-establishing the barriers of distance that once insulated mutually distrustful societies from one another.

     For the moment, the technology isn’t there. It might never come. Our gravity well is deep. Newton’s Third Law has proved unbreakable so far. Barring unforeseeable developments, if we are to re-establish the high-trust society that we once knew, it must be here on Earth.

     Steve’s essay provides some pointers. Please read it all.

Jan 06 2023

Conversations

     This just in: The C.S.O. made our morning decaf and alerted me to its readiness. I naturally scampered to the kitchen and poured a cup. A few minutes later I returned for my second cup, and the following exchange ensued:

CSO: Back so soon?
FWP: I finished my first cup, so I’m here for my second.
CSO: (somewhat haughtily) I’m still drinking my first. I prefer to savor it sip by sip.

FWP: One of these days, I’m going to accompany you to the gas station when you need a fill-up.
CSO: Why?
FWP: Because when you put the pump nozzle into the inlet and squeeze the release lever, I’ll count off about three seconds and shout “Wait! Stop! Let it savor that first sip.”
CSO: Go away.

     If you’ll pardon the choice of cliche: Your mileage may vary.

Jan 06 2023

The Uses Of Licensure

     Divemedic has written insightfully on the grift we call licensure. Indeed, he’s done so more than once. I’m confident that many who read those pieces will come away disturbed but not convinced. Disturbed, because the evils Divemedic cites are indisputable; unconvinced, because licensure has been a part of Western ways for long enough that they’ll reflexively say “But what would replace it?”

     There are several answers to the question, but the exploration thereof is beyond my intentions for this screed. Rather, I’d like to note one of the uses of licensure that doesn’t get much attention: its use to “whip the dissident back into line:”

     Dr Jordan B Peterson blasted Canada’s “commissars” and penned a scathing letter to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau Tuesday after a leading association of his fellow psychologists threatened to go after his license to practice clinical psychology over social media criticisms of the nation’s far-Left government.

The College of Psychologists of Ontario ordered the best-selling author and Daily Wire+ host to undergo “social media communications retraining” or face a hearing on the potential suspension of his license. In the letter to Trudeau, Peterson vowed not to participate in the process and decried the effort to stifle free speech.

“I simply cannot resign myself to the fact that in my lifetime I am required to resort to a public letter to the leader of my country to point out that political criticism has now become such a crime in Canada that if professionals dare engage in such activity, government-appointed commissars will threaten their livelihood and present them with the spectacle of denouncement and political disgrace,” Peterson wrote. “There is simply and utterly no excuse whatsoever for such a state of affairs in a free country.”

     I like Dr. Peterson. He strikes me as a man with both hard sense and the courage of his convictions. I seldom disagree with his positions, and I find his generosity about sharing his thoughts both singular and admirable. I’m sure I’m not alone in that, considering how large his audience has become.

     But Canada licenses his profession, ostensibly to guarantee the competence of its practitioners. The Ontario College of Psychologists apparently has the power to revoke that license. They’ve threatened to do exactly that over Dr. Peterson’s emissions on “social media.” They want to haul him into line with Trudeau Regime policy and “woke” attitudes, at least as regards what he says in public.

     What relevance do Dr. Peterson’s statements on social media have to his competence to practice as a clinical psychologist?

     Let the question hang in the air for a moment. Let it stimulate a few other questions. Start with this one: Who awarded the Ontario College of Psychologists the authority to expel Jordan Peterson from his chosen profession? Why does that particular body hold the power to deny Dr. Peterson his living? If we squint just right, can we see the heavy hand of the State behind the OCP’s ukase?

     Did you foresee that a licensing authority might be used to stifle opinions the government dislikes? If not, you haven’t been thinking deeply enough about licensure. Today, that particular use of licensure is shaping the future of several rather important occupations.

     As licensure expands to embrace ever more trades, licensing bodies are swiftly captured by the very people we’d least like to have power over our ability to earn a living: People to whom power over others is the greatest of all prizes. Yes, they’ll use that power to establish criteria for the occupation, which is the nominal rationale for licensure. But they’ll also use it to stifle competition with them and their friends. And today – with a nod from governments – they’ll use it to discourage opinions they disapprove.

     A great many people would like to see Jordan Peterson silenced. The Ontario College of Psychologists may have given them the weapon they need to achieve that end. Dr. Peterson has said that he’ll fight the OCP’s “ruling.” I hope his campaign is widely followed…and successful, of course. Ezra Levant set the standard, by refusing to kowtow to Canada’s “hate speech” authorities. I hope Dr. Peterson is aware of Levant’s tactics in that struggle, and is willing to adopt them for his own.

     Power over a man’s subsistence is power over his will. – Alexander Hamilton

Jan 05 2023

The Obfuscation Game

     The Left has adopted a new tack in its campaign against the right to keep and bear arms. A recent article in The Atlantic, a left-inclined publication, contended that the Second Amendment to the Constitution of the United States is a “mystery” whose meaning is uncertain. While the article refers to several considerations (some of them utterly irrelevant), it makes no reference to the many writings from the Constitutional period that firmly support the interpretation of the Second Amendment as asserting and protecting an individual right. Overall it suggests sotto voce that while legal scholars may continue to labor over the true meaning of the Amendment, legislatures and courts should have utter freedom to set policy about firearms in private hands.

     No one has called any other guarantee in the Bill of Rights a “mystery” whose language must be forever analyzed and debated. Respected grammarians are unanimous that the “militia clause” is explanatory rather than restrictive, and that the right being guaranteed applies to individuals rather than to any collectivity. Historically – i.e., before the legal atrocities of the Twentieth Century – the right to keep and bear arms was universally honored as individual, absolute, and pertained to all categories of armament. But statists of all stripes are determined to prevent that right from being recognized, much less exercised. Inasmuch as the Supreme Court has come down firmly on the side of the individual nature of the right – see the Bruen decision for the details – the anti-firearms forces have chosen to try to obscure the right itself.

     That’s the Left for you. They never give up. They treat their defeats as temporary setbacks while demanding that their victories are permanent and not to be questioned. And the vision of an armed citizenry rising against them in anger is their greatest fear.

     Sadly, New York is at the forefront of the campaign to retain government restriction of the right to keep and bear arms. Kathy Hochul’s minions in the Attorney-General’s office have thrown up one obfuscation after another in the attempt to deny New Yorkers the exercise of their rights. Jared of Guns and Gadgets has a good presentation on New York’s most recent attempt to weasel-word its way around the plain import of the Second Amendment and the Bruen decision.

     In a way, the recent op-ed on NJ.com that calls the Second Amendment a “curse” is more honest. In condemning the Second Amendment, it tacitly admits that the right guaranteed by the Amendment is plain and simple, and thus that legislative and administrative attempts to deny it must fail. But no doubt its authors would evade that implication were they to be challenged on it.

     Mao Tse-tung wrote that, as “political power flows from the barrel of a gun,” the people must be prevented from owning guns, so that they can never be used against the Communist Party. The attitude of American statists is entirely consistent with this. If they can’t simply ignore the Second Amendment, their next move is to render it impossible to understand by larding all manner of pseudo-scholarly gobbledygook on its interpretation. Stay tuned.

Jan 04 2023

How To Do It

     No ranting about politics or current events today. Let me tell you a story instead. It’s a true story of some importance, so refill the mug and kick back.

***

     Time marches on, and in only one direction. But he whose memory is reliable will retain the important lessons of times past. Some of those lessons are more explicit than others. Some take a while to be appreciated fully.

     I was a young man, only recently introduced to the layers of programming complexity beyond “Hello world,” when I encountered perhaps the most important lesson an aspiring software artisan can receive. It came after a dismal experience I’d had in attempting to make use of one of software’s “forbidden sins” (about which more later). I was recounting the frustration of the event to a “older and wiser head:” a graduate student in computer science named Bruce, who had befriended young and callow me out of motives that have no place in this tale.

     After I’d run down about my failure, Bruce nodded knowingly. He said something like what follows (I can’t recall his exact words from fifty years back):

     “There are three kinds of programmers,” Bruce said. (We hadn’t yet started calling ourselves “software engineers;” that particular vanity didn’t take hold until the Eighties.) “The first is the beginner. He programs simply. He doesn’t know enough to do anything else. That makes his programs easy to diagnose and debug. But after a couple of years, he becomes an intermediate programmer. That guy knows all the tricks and sophistications, and he’s determined to show them off in everything he writes. That makes his programs impossible to debug, because everything is wrapped around everything else. And may God help the programmer who’s asked to debug or extend one of them.”

     I was listening closely, certain that Bruce was about to reveal a guild secret that would elevate me from the rude beginner that I was to the stratospheric levels of the elite. And it was so: I was about to hear such a secret…but its essence surprised me completely.

     “The mature programmer,” Bruce said, “has been there and done that. His programs look a lot like those of the beginner, because he knows it’s best. If there are faults in his work, he’ll want to be able to find them quickly and confidently, and a program full of tricks and clevernesses isn’t that sort. If someone else has to extend his work, he wants that guy to be grateful for the ease of it, not resentful about all the time and labor he has to put in.”

     I was a bit confused. Why learn about the advanced techniques, and all the clever tricks and gadgets, if you’re not supposed to use them? What’s the point of acquiring all that knowledge? But I was a beginner. I had to pass through the intermediate stage to appreciate Bruce’s insight. (In particular, I had to learn to avoid assembly language except in extreme circumstances, and to appreciate the prepackaged conveniences provided by operating-system vendors, but that journey will be left for another time.)

     What was the forbidden sin, you ask? It was one of the true evils of programming practice: self-modifying code. And yes, I did encounter a problem in later years in which that evil seemed a virtue, but that tale will also be reserved for another day.

***

     Time marches on. As the years passed I unlearned many practices I’d once thought were clever and useful. It was the crucible of experience that taught me better: mainly, the requirement to maintain and extend my own products. And so I came to understand what Bruce had tried to tell me, and I gradually passed from “intermediate” to “mature” as a software artisan.

     When I first acquired supervisory responsibility, my subordinates were mostly raw beginners, fresh out of college. I strove to impress Bruce’s wisdom on them as they developed…and in almost every case, I failed utterly. Each of those young men and women had to pass through the “intermediate” stage, just as I had. It wasn’t about intellect or respect for the wisdom of others, but about the need to be bruised by one’s own sins. Another person’s experiences are seldom as educational as one’s own.

     There’s a strong parallel here to Mike Gancarz’s parable about The Three Systems of Man. If you haven’t read it, please do so. It’s a mind-expander.

***

     As time marches on, machinery ages. I learned that rather early in life, during my motorhead phase. Things frequently need to be repaired, sometimes replaced, and often discarded as unsalvageable. (Cf. Oliver Wendell Holmes’s The Wonderful One-Hoss Shay.”) This is also the case with the domestic systems that ensure our comfort: heating, air conditioning, water heating, and the like.

     A couple of years ago, I was contemplating my antiquated heating / hot water system. It was of an ancient and intricate design that I’d mused over far too long and too often. It failed at a cross-eyed look, was inadequate to the needs of the house, and had cost me and others a lot of time, effort, and scraped fingers merely to do routine maintenance. The time had come: it had to go.

     But as time marches on, bodies age much as machines do. I knew I wasn’t personally up to removing that system and installing a new one. I surveyed local HVAC companies and asked for quotes, delivery / installation times, and technical data about their products. I didn’t see anything that satisfied my most important criteria until by complete happenstance, I mentioned my search to an oil-delivery man. He’d glanced at my old boiler, sniffed, and asked what I planned to do about it. I told him I was in the market, and he showed me a picture.

     I fell in love almost on the instant. The picture displayed a unitary heating / hot water system that was the very image of simplicity. It had obviously been designed by someone who knows what it takes to maintain such systems, and was determined not to inflict on others the horrors that he had experienced in his own trials.

     I wrote and signed a check minutes later. Barely a week afterward, my old heating / hot water system had been removed; the system whose picture I’d been shown was in its place and functioning smoothly. It took only a single day, which is itself a testament to good design.

     When I need a little reinforcement for my shaky confidence in the future of our species, I go downstairs to my machine room and contemplate that heating / hot water system. Everyone whose gaze has rested upon it has awarded it his warmest approval – and not because I was standing next to him with a loaded gun.

***

     Albert Einstein is reported to have said that “Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler.” If he really did say that, it might eventually prove to be a greater contribution to human wisdom than any of his others. (Remember what Thomas Jefferson said: “There’s an awful lot of made-up shit on the Internet.”) Simplicity is the most underappreciated virtue…at least, it seems that way to this retired engineer. There are too many examples all around us for that point to be seriously disputed.

     Part of the reason I say that is the great number of practitioners of all sorts whose highest aim seems to be impressing others with how clever they are. It’s a vain undertaking. Cleverness is ephemeral; after a while, practically no one will remember it admiringly, particularly if it has to be ripped out and replaced. People do remember simplicity and its intrinsic elegance. They also remember the modesty of the practitioner who stands back and lets his work speak for itself.

     This is the case in every field of endeavor: mathematics, the sciences, engineering, architecture, music, art, exposition, storytelling, law, what have you. All other things being equal, what is simple and easily comprehended will be honored over what is involute and obscure. That having been said, when involutions are required to solve a problem, one must “bite the bullet” and do what’s necessary…and then document it to the hilt for the succor of those who will, inevitably, come after oneself.

     And when, as time marches on, someone with greater insight or better tools happens along, squints at one’s legacy and contrives a simpler replacement for it, the only appropriate response is applause. This eventually happens to nearly every complexity we must endure, and well that it should be so.

     Let’s make this Year of Our Lord 2023 a year for the pursuit and celebration of simplicity. This is especially imperative for the creators among us, for we are not isolated in time or circumstance. With vanishingly rare exceptions, we all benefit from others’ gifts. Let’s do unto them – known or unknown, present or future – as we would have them do unto us.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Jan 03 2023

It’s Hard…

     …to be as frequently and consistently wrong as the notorious Paul Ehrlich. Nevertheless, the mainstream media can’t seem to stay away from him:

     CBS’s “60 Minutes” welcomed the new year with a doomsday message from Paul Ehrlich, a well known eugenicist who has called for population control due to ‘limited resources’ on planet earth.

     Paul Ehrlich has been virtually wrong about everything over the last 6 decades.

     Have a few of his predictions:

     But merely being repeatedly and wildly wrong apparently hasn’t tarnished Ehrlich’s reputation as an “expert:”

     Ehrlich called for population control in the 60s in his book “The Population Bomb” because he believed widespread famines would kill off hundreds of millions of people.

     “The next few decades will be the end of the kind of civilization we’re used to,” Ehrlich said.

     Concerning Ehrlich’s population-control agenda, Nina Bookout writes:

     60 Minutes promotes a guy and others who want to save the planet by killing off the humans. The atrocious part of this is FAR too many in our governments around the world believe in this crap. They’ve adopted Soylent Green as a freaking how-to guide instead of the warning it was intended to be.

     The pattern is noteworthy, not because Ehrlich is unique, but because he isn’t.

***

     The media are no longer purveyors of information in the old sense. Today, their function is to disseminate the “party line” and to suppress dissident views. Contemporary “experts” apparently don’t have to be right, whether in the past or the present. They do need to be useful to those media barons…and to the interests that provide the prescribed agenda.

     The global warming / “climate change” canard is noteworthy in this connection. The warmistas claim to represent “climate science,” yet among their leading lights are no climatologists. They assure us of impending doom – in fact, they’ve been doing so for nearly thirty years – but not one of their predictions about the world’s climate has been realized. They point to their “models,” a variety of simulation about which I have a certain expertise, and demand that their claims be respected on that basis – but they generally refuse to discuss the mechanics of those models or the assumptions they embed. Finally, there’s the little matter of their dishonesty about their datasets, but that’s enough for one day.

     Yet they parade as experts. More, they demand that those who differ with them, including some highly accomplished and respected scientists, be denied access to the channels of information dissemination. They lobby for the dissidents’ papers to be suppressed. It’s all of a piece, for a claim of scientific knowledge is based not on “consensus” (or the volume of one’s shouting) but on a record of successful predictions…and they don’t have one. That leaves them only one way to dominate the discussion: the silencing of those on the other side.

     A manufactured lack of opposition is the key that opens the way to “expert” status for him whose actual predictive accomplishments are nil. That’s why Americans must unlearn their trust in the mainstream media. That is, what remains of it. Many have already distanced themselves from all the fear porn. More will follow. Perhaps when the media barons realize that their “experts” are preaching to an absent audience in an empty hall, they might recalibrate their criteria for awarding “expertise.” However, by then it could prove too late to undo the damage they’ve done.

Jan 03 2023

Ignorance Supports Propagandization

     Let’s lead off with a bit of history from one of the geniuses of Twentieth Century music:

     In the chronicles of human evil, Iosif Vissarionovich Dzugashvili holds a very high place. Yet seldom is this monster mentioned in our young people’s history textbooks. There’s practically no mention of his millions of victims in high schoolers’ “social studies” curricula. Indeed, many who are allowed to hear his name can’t recall it the next day, or tell you why he’s historically significant.

     You must keep the children’s heads empty if you seek to fill them with lies.

     Now that “our” “public” “schools” – apologies, Gentle Reader; I had to placate my “sneer quote” key at least once this year – have been completely suborned by the Left, young Americans are being fed all manner of falsehoods designed to get them to hate their country, its founders, and its core principles. That’s possible only because all knowledge of the history of socialist states and their horrors is carefully withheld from them. Mention of the extraordinary poverty and brutality of the last fully Communist state, North Korea, is kept from their eyes and ears. Ignorance of what has been makes it possible to propagandize them against what is.

     The campaign to turn the generations coming to power into socialist lunatics has proved phenomenally successful, as anyone familiar with the caperings of AntiFa and Black Bloc must allow. Nor are things materially different in Europe.

     Stalin and his inhuman savagery are the logical culmination of a system of government that exercises total control over every aspect of human life. Friedrich Hayek told us why this must be so. But who reads books these days? Only antiquated fossils like me. Our young folk are too busy checking their Facebook statuses and texting one another on their cellphones.

     Surveys have indicated that a strong majority of Americans under 34 years of age don’t know why the American colonies rebelled against England. Without that foundation, how could we expect them to understand the Declaration of Independence or the Constitution of these United States? They become specimens of ignorance, vessels for socialist nonsense spoon-fed them by their “educators.”

     The following gem from 90 Miles From Tyranny says it all:

     Watch for it in the young people around you. Tell them – calmly, please – that they’ve been fed a torrent of the worst lies ever told and implore them to read some actual history. Beyond that, I don’t know what to do about it. But at least we’ll know the faces of our destroyers when they come for us.

Jan 02 2023

“Why” Is The Hardest, But “How” Runs A Close Second

     Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene of Georgia, whom I generally like and admire, recently Gabbed thus:

     Here we are in the land of “How?” And a most challenging land it is.

     The “How?” question is at the base of many of the evils embedded in federal taxation, spending, and policy. It’s thorniest when policies pertinent to national legislation clash with conditions that vary according to region, state, or Congressional district. In practice, it cannot be answered in a fashion that won’t harm anyone’s interests.

     For our first example, let’s address the income tax. Among its villainies is that it’s a national tax on individuals: a blatant departure from the principles of federalism and subsidiarity. That was inevitable once the Sixteenth Amendment was ratified. Every provision of any income tax legislation therefore applies throughout the United States. That gives rise to an unholy dynamic, founded on an ancient wisdom:

Everyone Has An Ox;
No One Wants His Ox Gored.

     Thus, income tax laws have proliferated that feature both:

  1. High tax rates that rise as income rises;
  2. A multiplicity of exemptions that cater to particular constituencies.

     And thus, we get the following sort of thrust and parry:

Congressman 1: We must reduce federal tax rates!
Congressman 2: Agreed, but we must also be fiscally responsible.

Congressman 1: Well, yes. But the tax rates must come down.
Congressman 2: How do you propose to cover next year’s budgeted expenditures?

Congressman 1: We can eliminate some exemptions.
Congressman 2: Very well, how about these? (Indicates exemptions prized by the other’s constituents)

     At this point there comes a moment of frozen silence. Congressman 1 is aware of what the loss of that exemption would do to his prospects for retaining office…as is Congressman 2. While Congressman 1 might be sincere about the need to lower federal tax rates, he’s probably even more sincere about retaining his seat in Congress. Congressman 2 has hit him there for a perfectly obvious reason.

     The same sort of thrust-and-parry would apply with equal force to reductions in federal spending:

Congressman 1: We must reduce federal spending!
Congressman 2: Agreed, but we must also cover the nation’s important needs.

Congressman 1: Well, yes. But spending must come down.
Congressman 2: How do you propose to reduce it?

Congressman 1: We can eliminate some unnecessary subsidies.
Congressman 2: Very well, how about these? (Indicates subsidies prized by the other’s constituents)

     See how easy it is? Every pro-spending legislator knows the drill. The anti-spending legislators, by virtue of their desire to remain in office, are thus easily disarmed. Representative Greene would face exactly this sort of counter were she to seek reductions in outlays for which she has called.

     What makes it worse is that there is a large body of “constituents” who are represented by no one and answer to no one: the millions of federal bureaucrats in the “alphabet agencies.” All of them seek greater status: bigger titles, larger budgets, more subordinates, and larger areas of responsibility. Reductions in federal spending would cross-cut the agendas of some of them, no matter where in the budget they might occur. Thus reductions in federal outlays would incite some of them to work against whatever Congressmen are seen to be behind them.

     You and I fear the federal government. Congressmen fear the bureaucracies. They’ve been taught to do so.

So, Representative Greene, while I agree with your sentiments, I await your demonstration of how they can be realized. Slam that little word how.

Jan 02 2023

Tidbits

     Sometimes the news comes bite-sized.

***

1. Federalism and Freedom.

     John Hinderaker provides a glimmer of hope:

     Currently, we have at least two large states, Texas and Florida, that enjoy strong, effective leadership, while our national government flounders. States like Texas and Florida are plenty big enough to go it on their own, and one wonders how long they will chafe under the yoke of an inept and destructive central government.

     And wonder of wonders, net population flow is into those states.

     In recent years, the federal government has encroached on its citizens’ rights to an unprecedented degree, and in a way that is particularly hostile to residents of the well-run states. Why should citizens of Florida and Texas—and North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Oklahoma, Tennessee, South Carolina, and so on—put up with a government that leans on social media companies to limit their freedom of speech? Why should Florida, for example, continue to recognize the authority of the FBI if it deems that agency to be hopelessly corrupt? And why should energy-rich states like Texas, North Dakota and Louisiana allow their economies to be suppressed by an unholy alliance of misguided environmentalists, greedy politicians, Big Wind and Big Solar?

     Those are dangerous questions, John. You could be branded an Enemy of the Regime for asking them. Yet they are the questions most pertinent to our current political milieu. The answers are unlikely to please the Washington Establishment.

***

2. Optimism: Misplaced or Appropriate?

     An old gag runs thus:

Optimist: This is the best of all possible worlds!
Pessimist: I’m afraid you’re right about that.

     As a general rule of action, I try to expect dismal developments and plan accordingly. It’s been a reliable guide for some decades…roughly from the instant of my birth to this present moment. That can make it hard to remain properly cheerful – and cheerfulness is almost always the most constructive attitude possible. It can be quite a trick to stay positive and pleasant without descending into Panglossian foolishness.

     Today, J. B. Shurk counsels freedom advocates to remain upbeat:

     The system’s too powerful! You can’t beat a “big brother” police State! The globalists control all the money and have all the leverage! I’ve heard every reason under the sun why individual liberty will continue to lose out to the rapidly advancing technocratic surveillance structure extinguishing Western freedoms today. I say, “So what?” The bigger they come, the harder they fall.

     Our whole human story is a repeating pattern in which power accumulates, empires emerge, power corrupts, divisions grow, and empires come crashing down. Anyone who thinks an international oligarchy of corporate behemoths, central banks, and Intelligence Community spy chiefs will succeed where the Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Carolingian, Byzantine, Ottoman, Yuan, Ming, and British empires all failed makes the mistake of giving today’s power brokers more credit than they deserve. International oligarchies commanding unbeatable militaries and hoarding unparalleled wealth are nothing new. The “unbeatable” are always beaten.

     Historically, that is indeed so. All the ancient totalisms have fallen. But remember your Baron Rothschild: “Trees do not grow to the sky.” Trends of any sort are suspect, and the longer a trend has run, the more suspect it becomes.

     I know, I know: “The trend is your friend,” as the technical analysts say. And in the short run they’re correct about that. The challenge is accurately predicting when the “short run” will end. There’s an ugly possibility that wasn’t available to the old ruling classes that’s nearing attainability:

     “About twenty-two hundred of your years ago, a great geneticist isolated the constellation of genes and alleles that give rise to a brain capable of sentience and rational thought. It was well that she was female and discreet. She immediately conceived of the application to the pacification of our race, and set about assembling a team that would construct a nanite that would unmake the sentience constellation in our male progeny. As soon as they were certain it was effective and safe, they flooded the waters of our world with the devices. Within fifty years, there was virtually no violence among us.”
     She glanced back at the door of Vellis’s cell. “My husband is typical of Loioc males. His brain masses to about sixty percent of mine. His ability to communicate is limited to what he can absorb through conditioning: simple sounds and simple gestures. He’s not the sort of companion with whom I could have a conversation such as this.” Efthis smiled. “But he essays no violence. He recognizes females—Loioc females, at least—as his superiors by inborn instinct, and submits to us without hesitation. Now that he’s been conditioned for personal loyalty, he does as I command him, and nothing more.
     “We had a few regrets, of course. Society was more dynamic, and more interesting, before we unmade our males’ minds. But the consensus was that a degree of social and economic stasis would be a small price to pay for the elimination of the horrors male aggression had brought us. At any rate, that door is closed forever. The nanites are self-replicating. The waters of our world are saturated with them, and they can never be seined out.”
     Althea suppressed her desire to shudder and did her best to smile.
     “If you had asked your men whether they would agree to be…pacified that way,” she said pleasantly, “do you think any great number of them would have said yes, do it?”
     Efthis shrugged. “Possibly not, but what does it matter? The moral imperative was too obvious to permit any resistance. We had learned all too well what develops when male aggression is permitted to operate unchecked.” She waved an elfin hand. “You would not find a Loioc anywhere below who’s unsatisfied with the arrangement.”

     Yes, it’s science fiction. But that doesn’t mean it can’t become reality. Or something with a similarly pacifying effect, such as Aldous Huxley’s soma. Daily advances in the understanding of the human genome aren’t just a pathway to the elimination of such scourges as birth defects and susceptibility to disease. They carry as much danger as opportunity.

     Of one thing we may be sure: If it were to become possible, a very large group of persons, confident in their superior wisdom, would say to themselves and to one another that the moral imperative is just as obvious as Efthis deemed it. Be ever mindful – and watchful.

***

3. Trend Confronts Counter-Trend.

     For a few years now the “gender identity” movement has charged forward with little opposition. But that appears to be the case no longer — and those who benefit from the “transition industry” aren’t happy about it:

     For years, the LGBTQ+++TM social engineers denied that “detransitioning” — the act of attempting to reverse (often irreversible) medical interventions and social “transitions,” most often performed on children — even existed as a phenomenon.

     NBC, for instance, ran the following interference to chill public dissent against transing children in 2019:

     Stories about detransitioning often include misinformation not only about the prevalence of transition regret, but also about transitioning itself, according to transgender health experts and LGBTQ advocates… coverage that questions the existence of trans identities can be particularly harmful to trans youth, an already vulnerable group that has an alarmingly high rate of attempted suicide.

     LGBTQ+++™ “advocacy” group Stonewall outright labeled the “detransition” problem a “myth.”

     You see, until very recently, even broaching the “detransition” issue in public discourse was off-limits because it was tantamount to suiciding vulnerable “trans youth,” a rhetorical trick clearly meant to quash any dissent because transing children can’t be defended on its merits in an open debate.

     That was 2019, and this is now. The numbers of “detransitioners” have predictably ballooned in the intervening years, and so the corporate media is forced to address the issue in some way.

     Via Reuters:

     Understanding the reasons some transgender people quit treatment is key to improving it, especially for the rising number of minors seeking to medically transition, experts say…
     Many [transgenders] have said their gender identity remained fluid well after the start of treatment, and a third of them expressed regret about their decision to transition from the gender they were assigned at birth. Some said they avoided telling their doctors about detransitioning out of embarrassment or shame. Others said their doctors were ill-equipped to help them with the process. Most often, they talked about how transitioning did not address their mental health problems…
     When someone does detransition, [“transgender” professor of social work Dr Kinnon MacKinnon] say[s], it’s almost never because of regret, but rather, a response to the hardship of living in a society where transphobia still runs rampant.”… “We cannot carry on in this field that involves permanently changing young people’s bodies if we don’t fully understand what we’re doing and learn from those we fail,” said Edwards-Leeper, the clinical psychologist and WPATH member. [emphasis added]

     As it happens, there are now quite a few detransitioners, such that they can no longer be ignored or dismissed as victims of “transphobia:”

     Gender ideology depends entirely on one question: Is gender dysphoria a legitimate biological disposition, or is it a social contagion?

     With a few rare exceptions, almost all of the evidence points to the latter. For example, until very recently, gender dysphoria was considered a rare mental condition that affected mostly young boys. Now, however, 1 in 5 young adolescents say they identify as a gender different than their sex, with young girls making up the majority of those who seek treatment.

     More persuasive than this statistical switcheroo are the inconvenient testimonies of detransitioners — those who transitioned to identify as a gender different than their sex only to desist later on. Their stories tear apart gender ideology by rebutting its core argument: that a different identity will make a gender-confused person happier and more fulfilled.

     Detransitioners have discovered that the opposite is true: Transitioning never fixed the underlying anxieties they struggled against because those anxieties were never the result of gender confusion. Rather, they stemmed from other mental woes, such as social isolation, body dysmorphia, and even repressed homosexuality . Adopting a new gender identity was simply a Band-Aid solution that made them feel better for a little while, with its new sense of purpose and built-in community, until reality set in and their troubles returned.

     I have no doubt that the social contagion – in terms unpleasantly more blunt, the fad — is at the root of most of it, possibly all but a tiny fraction. Minors are easily led…indeed, all the way into their majority. And what’s trendy can seem more imperative than what’s real. But some transitioners are happy with the results, make strenuous efforts to present themselves accordingly, and in the main succeed at looking like what they prefer to be. So there remain at least two important problems.

     First is this one: the unwillingness of some to accommodate those who insist on their transitions and are resolved to maintain them. If Smith knows that Jones is biologically male, compelling him to accept the counterfactual reverse is unseemly and wrong. A friend of mine lost his job for saying so in the presence of a couple of Human Resource harridans who were busily proclaiming that he and similarly minded others must “honor their choices.” I’m sure he’s not alone in this tragedy.

     Second, and equally important, there is a barrier that must not be crossed out of determination to cleave to the realities. One who presents adequately as male must be taken as male; one who presents adequately as female must be taken as female. Never in our history have we done otherwise, at least in public settings such as restrooms. The suggestion that guards should be posted at the doors to single-sex facilities to “check the hardware” before permitting access is as vile as the notion that a bearded man in a dress be permitted access to a little girls’ locker room.

     Is there a gray zone? Of course. But it will become less gray as matters progress. Until then, we must cope as best we can.

***

     The Year of Our Lord 2023 promises to be at least as challenging in many regards as were 2020, 2021, and 2022. It’s important to be braced for unpleasant events, to be prepared to defend oneself, one’s loved ones, and one’s property, and to go about one’s business in an unperturbed fashion as far as that may be possible. And while it’s essential to keep up with the news, it’s also imperative that we not “obsess” about things that are beyond our control. That can ruin any life:

     Jubal blinked. “Front!” Anne appeared, dripping. “Remind me,” Jubal told her, “to write an article on the compulsive reading of news. The theme will be that most neuroses can be traced to the unhealthy habit of wallowing in the troubles of five billion strangers. Title is ‘Gossip Unlimited’—no, make that ‘Gossip Gone Wild.’”

     Defy the wisdom of the Grand Master of Good Sense at your peril. And do have a nice day.

Jan 02 2023

Time to stop pretending.

The Chinese philosopher Confucius (c. 551 – c. 479 BC) observed a while ago that the beginning of wisdom is to call things by their right names. 

Known as the doctrine of the rectification of names, it held that if people can’t agree on the meaning of words it’s unlikely that relations between people can be harmonious or that sound government policy can be made.  Think of the words “wife,” “husband,” “man,” “woman,” “marriage,” “climate change,” “racism,” “affirmative action,” “education,” “elections,” “constitution,” “Russian expansionism,” and “democracy” as they are used now and you can’t help noticing that their meanings are, shall we say, a bit rubbery. 

“Marriage” seems to mean something not much different from “shacking up” in some quarters and good luck figuring out what “natural born citizen” means.  (Someone should ask that constitutional law professor, Barack Obongo, about that latter term.)  “Enumerated powers” now means “unenumerated powers” and “international border” now means “superhighway.”  “Department of Homeland Security” is pregnant with meaning.  It’s just that I don’t know what that meaning is.  Nothing to do with “security” apparently.

I hate to think what “love” entails and seeing as how this is a family site I won’t go into detail on that.

The good news is that “clown,” “vicious, corrupt political class,” “congressional whore,” “sedition,” and “treason” are terms that I find to be yet crystal clear, but maybe that’s just me.

It’s a puzzle it is, Ollie. 

Here’s a modern take on dealing with, um, lack of precision in “our” thinking:

For the past two years I can only encapsulate the entire social, political and socioeconomic dynamic that surrounds us by saying we are living in an era of great pretending.  Why?  Because nothing else adequately explains it.

A recession is no longer two negative quarters of economic growth.  Elections are no longer defined by votes cast, but by ballots counted.  Meanwhile, women are claimed to have penises and people will argue -strenuously and with commitment- that men can give birth to babies.

Simultaneously, vaccines are no longer about medicines to avoid viruses, and Americans have some moral obligation to fund the administrative salaries, pensions and expense accounts for a nation of European politicians, in a country that few taxpayers could find on a map.

We must pretend the occupant of the oval office is not a dementia patient, at the same time we must pretend the Dept of Homeland Security and FBI is not telling online speech platforms that identifying the dementia patient, as a dementia patient, means you are a domestic violent extremist.  The absurdity of the pretenses are off-the-charts.

* * * *

When it becomes so easy to deconstruct the madness simply by pointing out the reality, eventually anyone can do it.  In an era of great pretending, when you speak factual and [plain] truth, people thirsting will come for the sanity.  Yes, there’s only so much hypocritical nuttery that can possibly fit into the social fabric of a nation, and we’re full.[1]

Notes
[1] “2022, Perhaps the Apex Year for an Era of Pretending.”  By Sundance, The Conservative Treehouse, 12/31/22 (emphasis added).

Jan 01 2023

Yes, This Does Boggle My Mind

Over 1/4 of a million Alien Invaders – in TX, alone.

Jan 01 2023

An End Of Year Review Of An Unpleasant Sort

     While I’m grateful to have made it to another year, it’s sometimes difficult to imagine how the United States did so. Here, from the tragically underappreciated Jared Taylor, is a recap of some of 2022’s less praiseworthy developments and events:

     Yes, Taylor is unsparing…but given our passivity in the face of such horrors, should we be spared? If I may speak for myself alone: I would be embarrassed to ask. Your mileage may vary.

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