Jul 07 2022

Disdain, Distaste, And Self-Regard

     At present, all signs point to the Republicans giving [Democrats] an electoral shellacking but, hey, we’re never really outside the margin of magical mail-in ballots, are we?

     While I have often cautioned about Republicans being overly optimistic about November, I am gradually moving toward the position that all the GOP has to do is get out of the way and let the Democrats defeat themselves.

     [Stephen Kruiser]

     Consider the above a tone-setter.

***

     If I know anything – other than art, that is – it’s how disdain and distaste work. Trust a curmudgeon to be fully booked up on those subjects.

     A great many people hold the opinions they do because of their admiration for others who have those opinions. They want to be associated with those others. They want those others to regard them cordially, perhaps even as friends. This applies just as strongly to political opinions as to any other variety.

     Now and then we actually get to see distaste in action. For example, there’s considerable distaste circulating around certain public figures: Sam Brinton and Tiara Mack come to mind at once. Their behavior has earned that distaste. In Brinton’s case, his whole being is involved; nothing he could do, including resigning his government post, converting to Catholicism, and becoming a Trappist monk, could free him of it. In Mack’s case, the distaste is the consequence of a single behavion: her tawdry “twerking upside-down” performance. (Yes, Gentle Reader: a behavion is the fundamental particle of behavior. Of course it’s a real word! I just made it up, on my authority as dictator verborum to the World Wide Web.)

     That distaste is having perceptible effects on political responses. The opinion polls, which in the usual case tell us nothing more reliable than that “this is the way people want pollsters to view them,” display a strong trend away from the currently regnant Democrats. Considering that in the November 2020 elections those…persons reaped an all-time record number of votes for their presidential candidate, that’s something to ponder.

     Yet Democrats campaigned nationwide and without pretense on exactly the policies they’ve fastened upon us since then. The effects of those policies were all foreseeable. How likely is it that those voters – the real ones among them, that is – have “wised up” since then?

     Distaste for the caperings of unfortunately prominent Democrats and supporters is a far more plausible explanation.

***

     Distaste excites the activity of another aspect of the human psyche: our self-regard. When we look with distaste upon a person, or a group of persons united in some distasteful fashion, our self-regard impels us to respond internally with “I’m better than that.” (We’re seldom sufficiently critical of ourselves for that reaction to be either completely accurate or completely sincere, but that’s a subject for another tirade.) We cannot think as well of ourselves as we’d like while we keep company with persons we disesteem.

     “Keeping company,” interpreted broadly, would include holding the same opinions and positions on matters of current interest. Yes, it really works that way. It’s why so many of us inherit our politics from our parents. It’s why so many of us adopt the politics of persons we admire. The negative form of those associational influences has as much power as does the positive.

     This gives me some hope for the upcoming elections. Not that there’s such a thing as an un-stealable election in this universe of discourse; Stephen Kruiser hit that one dead-center. However, the Left might not be brazen enough to steal the tens of millions of votes, in hundreds of separate elections, that would be required to overcome the predicted “red wave.” Some thefts are beyond fan-dancing away to the satisfaction of the whole of the media, even as corrupted as they’ve become. I’d suggest that you ask Hugo Chavez, but he’s dead.

***

     As one of my literary gurus has said, you can’t beat something with nothing. (It doesn’t matter how close to “nothing” that “something” may be. Herbert Hoover found out about that in 1932.) Winning in November will require effort by many thousands of persons. Voters must vote; poll-watchers must maintain vigilance; reporters must report promptly, accurately, and fearlessly. And as we know that the majority of Republicans are either spineless or corrupt, the effort must continue from there. We must hold “our representatives’” feet to the fire. Those that fail to act sincerely upon their campaign pledges must be punished for it.

     That having been said, it starts with the swelling disdain and distaste ordinary Americans feel for those currently in power, and their natural reaction out of their self-regard toward those they deem unacceptable. Disdain and distaste may do the work that reason and evidence have failed to do. We have reasons to hope, but as has been said too many times already, hope is not a strategy. Prepare to do your part.

Jul 06 2022

New Things To Fear

     Thankfully, the COVID-19 fear porn has exhausted its bite. In consequence, we who ask only to be left alone are beginning to peer “behind the curtain.” What we’re seeing is both astonishing and terrifying.

     Feel free to dismiss what follows as the ravings of a paranoid septuagenarian. I’m tempted to dismiss them myself – and they’re my ravings. But if they’re to be detoxified, they must be aired.

***

     The origin of the state has often struck those interested in it as murky and difficult to fathom. Franz Oppenheimer argued that it could be traced to the bands of marauders that formed to prey upon stationary communities in the years when agriculture was new. After a number of sorties against this village, that one, and that other one over there, some band was taken by a new idea. “Why,” their members asked one another, “don’t we settle down to plunder one rich village continuously? Provided we don’t steal so much that the villagers are left with no incentive to work, we’d be able to mulct them indefinitely. We’d do less running around, too.”

     No one knows where the idea was first applied. Wherever it may have been, the band that tried it first discovered several things straightaway:

  • Settling down and becoming stationary made its members targets;
  • The more they demanded from their victims, the less the victims were inclined to produce (i.e., an early demonstration of the Laffer Curve) and the more likely they were to revolt;
  • Short of revolt, their victims could and would get up and leave should the exactions become too onerous;
  • Success breeds emulators: other bands of marauders that observed the success of this new tactic tried it out and found it gratifying.

     Pretty soon, those proto-states started viewing one another’s successes with envious eyes. The grass is always greener, and all that. The raids resumed, but this time it was state versus state: the origin of warfare.

     Such warfare is conducted for gain. But war for gain is a chancy business. It seldom works out the way the aggressor intends. In time, the proto-states discovered that there was a way to use their rivals that minimized the need for bloodshed: each of them could tell their subjects that their state would protect them from all the others! Again, the idea was rapidly and widely adopted.

     To keep the seriousness of the threat strong in the subjects’ minds, there had to be at least some state-versus-state combat. And of course, there was. While it was a losing proposition when viewed in isolation, it reinforced the overall system, justified increased exactions for “defense,” and provided a distraction from other things the rulers were doing to the ruled.

     In essence, the many states quietly allied with one another against their subject peoples. The State System — the entrenchment of the states as “inevitable” – was born.

***

     The argument for the state has always been founded on fear:

  • Fear of other states;
  • Fear of domestic predators;
  • Miscellaneous fears that “things won’t get done.”

     All those fears are with us today. Recently there’s been a new one in town: fear of a pandemic disease. While it’s faded essentially to background noise (despite the “authorities’” sternest efforts to keep us in fear), it had a very good run. It enabled governments around the world to impose draconian conditions upon their subjects. Now that it no longer dominates us, those who fabricated it are frantic to find something with which to replace it. After all, they don’t want to give up all that power.

     The thing to contemplate is how many “candidate-fears” preceded the COVID-19 scare. A couple of them are still being touted, resource exhaustion and “climate change” being the most prominent. But those never caught on to the extent possible for a mystery virus that could be ballyhooed as a potential world-ender. It seems likely that those who seek ever greater and more enduring power over the rest of us are considering new candidates as we speak.

     To this end, the statists will always point away from the state and toward something else. “Fear the state?” they say. “Absurd! The state exists to protect you!” And a lot of people, many of them intelligent enough to know better, will buy that premise. What follows would gladden the greatest sleight-of-hand artists of history, for the state is always and everywhere the greatest of all threats to human life and well-being.

     What plucks our men from their homes and sends them far away to war?
     What confiscates half our earnings and builds huge taxes into the prices of everything we buy?
     What is it that pounces upon its critics and punishes them without cause, while allowing demonstrated predators to rule the streets?
     And what is it that keeps telling us that we don’t need weapons of our own – that the armed personnel of the state will protect us better than we could do for ourselves?

     What is it that has the greatest interest in making us fear everything but itself?

     Just a few scattered thoughts for this Wednesday afternoon.

***

     Time was, the antidote to fear was distance. What’s nearest you has the best access to you, for good or for ill. Get far enough away from the thing feared and it can no longer reach you. Achieving that sort of distance today is effectively impossible.

     We can be certain of this: States everywhere are run by men who understand that fear is the basis of their power. They have private think tanks and government agencies studying how best to use our fears against us, and to afflict us with new ones. While we cannot know what they’re contemplating, we can know its purpose.

     Beware the man who wants you to fear, regardless of the specifics of his pitch. He is not your friend. And now to close, a few quotes:

     No power is strong enough if it labors under the weight of fear. [Marcus Tullius Cicero]

     Fear always springs from ignorance! [Ralph Waldo Emerson]

     Our tragedy today is a general and universal physical fear so long sustained by now that we can even bear it…The basest of all things is to be afraid. [William Faulkner, Nobel Prize acceptance speech]

     Fear is an acid which is pumped into one’s atmosphere. It causes mental, moral and spiritual asphyxiation, and sometimes death; death to all energy and growth. [Horace Fletcher]

     Fear is like fire: if controlled, it will help you; if uncontrolled, it will rise up and destroy you. [John F. Milburn]

     Fear is the main source of superstition, and one of the main sources of cruelty. [Bertrand Russell]

     Courage is the complement of fear. A man who is fearless cannot be courageous. (He is also a fool.) [Robert A. Heinlein, Time Enough for Love]

     “Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.” [Frank Herbert, Dune]

Jul 05 2022

I’m Not SAYING That I’m Falling Apart…

…but, I’m hobbling around today. My toe had a smackdown encounter with the leg of a wooden chair in my daughter’s living room. The toe lost, and is blackened and swollen. As a result of my need to place weight gingerly on the right foot, my left ankle has compensated by becoming sore and stiff, additionally throwing stress on the whole d****d body.

For me, old age is just one body part after another trying to kill me. Or, at least, leave me whimpering on the couch, gobbling pain pills.

But, this will heal quickly. My sister is having an operation tomorrow to pin the break in her tibia. I’m preparing to spend some time in the waiting room with my sweet brother-in-law, as well as assist with getting her into the house without another fall.

Maybe I’ll delegate my husband – he’s stronger.

It’s also Clear Up the Desk Day, a periodic holiday celebrated by FINALLY filling all that paperwork that hits my house, depositing the checks, and otherwise making the office usable again. Why don’t I do that daily? Because I have medical appointments, errands, extra travels when my husband blows into town, and assorted family semi-emergencies. And Lazy Days, when I put on the popcorn and binge-watch TV. When all that action is going on, I tend to just throw the mail in the direction of the desk, and close the door.

This has been a calmer summer than I originally anticipated. Few “mostly peaceful” protests, only the “New Normal” food and other supply shortages, and – Thank God! – limited appearances by Biden and many of the other semi-sentient politicians. Why, it’s ALMOST as though they had caught on that people REALLY don’t want to hear them bloviate about how awful the voters are! Guess it finally got through their heads that the whole party – not just the Righteously Woke – are in DEEP trouble in the fall elections.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bunch.

Now, if we can just think of a way to get rid of the RINOs, we’re be in Hog Heaven (Hey! Didn’t I hear something recently about how pigs will eat near anything? Nah, that’s Cruelty to Pigs.)

Jul 05 2022

The Crux Of The Matter

     crux n. a vital, basic, decisive, or pivotal point.

     The nature of Man underlies everything in human society. We build the societies we build because we are what we are, including how various characteristics are distributed among us. Most of us want to be left alone…mostly. But some of us can’t abide that. They want power over the rest of us. Our demands to be left alone merely annoy them. That is the crux of the matter. The rest is merely detail.

     A people accustomed to freedom – that is, to being left alone – is hard to subjugate. The power-seekers knew, after a couple of abortive attempts, that they could not simply shackle us against our will. We were too united in our determination to remain free. But by using salami tactics, they inured us little by little to a new kind of bondage. This J. B. Shurk essay is eloquent on the subject.

     This put me in mind of the Three Systems of Man: what they are, why they emerge as they do, and what they say about us.

***

     In his delightful little book The UNIX Philosophy, Mike Gancarz describes the Three Systems of Man and why they’re all we ever produce. As his elucidation of this seemingly unavoidable progression goes on for five thousand words, I shall attempt to condense it:

  1. Man builds the First System with his back against the wall.
         An engineer has a tough problem to crack, very few resources, and very little time. That triggers his ingenuity: He comes up with a simple but powerful idea, implements it swiftly and without lace edging, and moves on to other endeavors. The First System stuns those who become acquainted with its power, performance, and ease of use…but carpers emerge to criticize the First System for features it lacks.
  2. “Experts” build the Second System using ideas proved by the First System.
         The First System also inspires envious “experts.” Usually these are people with lots of paper credentials but no achievements significant enough to compare to the First System. They form a huge committee whose aim is to “complete” or “perfect” the First System. They take a great deal of time, consume mountains of resources, and ultimately produce the Second System: a Brobdingnagian monstrosity overloaded with features 98% of its users will never use. It’s fat, slow, and annoying…but every one of those “experts” has his fingerprints on it somewhere. They often go on speaking tours to orate about their “achievement.”
  3. The Third System is built by people who have been burned by the Second System.
         The First System lacked a few desirable features, but it ran like a rocket. The Second System is replete with features, but it lumbers like a hippo with bad knees. The Third System emerges when a doggedly determined engineer or a small group thereof, delighted by the core concepts in the First System and appalled by their entombment in the fat and frills of the Second System, revives them and adds only the few, widely desired and appreciated features the First System omitted. In other words, the Third System is the First System showered, shaved, combed, manicured, and dressed for dinner.

     The Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States, together with the Bill of Rights, constitute America’s First System. What we endure today is a Second System from the depths of Hell.

***

     Why do Second Systems emerge to dismay those compelled to use them? Simply, it’s the nature of Man. There will always be some men who envy the achievements of others but who have little to offer anyone. Envy, which Joseph Sobran and others have termed “hatred of the good for being good,” is a wholly destructive emotion. It expresses itself in destructive actions. And though it ultimately destroys the envious one, it can take a great toll on innocent others before then.

     Most men feel envy now and then. In most cases it’s restrained and prevented from doing harm. The usual restraints are social customs, religious doctrines, and the weight of the law. But these things can falter and fail, especially when the envious succeed in rising to power.

     Envy combined with power-lust can do terrible things. It’s done terrible things to our country. The clean and elegant design embodied in the Constitution, which was founded on the core principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, has been destroyed by power-lusters’ innumerable excisions from it and accretions to it. As left-leaning scholar Leonard Levy has said, the Constitution’s text no longer matters. All that matters is what the Supreme Court has said about it in hundreds of volumes of commentary…and that commentary has largely condoned, whether explicitly or implicitly, the expansion of the federal Leviathan in defiance of the plain language of the Constitution.

***

     The core concepts of America’s First System – sharply limited government, enumeration and separation of powers, and federalism – all militate toward a presumption of freedom for the common man and noninterference with his peaceful endeavors. They wait to be reanimated and re-energized. But our Third System is late for delivery. As with a gravid woman unable to deliver naturally when her time is upon her, birth must be compelled, by Caesarian section if necessary. Else the mother will die, and her unborn child with her.

     And that, too, is the crux of the matter.

Jul 04 2022

A Little Extra

     Among the words of which I’m particularly fond, lagniappe holds a special place. There are several reasons, among them the difficulty of pronouncing it properly and the puzzled grimaces most people make when they hear it. It means “a little extra,” usually a small benefit beyond what one had expected.

     I first encountered the word many years ago, in an old Frederik Pohl / C. M. Kornbluth novel, Search the Sky, about the consequences of an interstellar diaspora. It’s not a particularly exalted novel, but it’s beautifully written, as you’d expect from the combined talents of those two writers, and contains many humorous turns. Here’s one:

     “I’ll tell you anything I know,” Marconi declared positively, and insincerely. “Tend to that fellow first though, will you?” He pointed to a uniformed Yards messenger whose eye had just alighted on Ross. The man threaded his way, stumbling, through the tables and laid a sealed envelope down in the puddle left by Ross’s drink.
     “Sorry, sir,” he said crisply, wiped off the envelope with his handkerchief and, for lagniappe, wiped the puddle off the table into Ross’s lap.

     Not bad, eh? And there’s that word, in an ironic usage.

     Anyway, here we are on the birthday of our nation, which we usually celebrate with cookouts, beer, and volleyball, but seldom a thought for what it is we’re celebrating. For the less thoughtful, it’s just a day off from work. (“Three day weekend! Yay!”) For persons of ordinary dispositions, it can include such considerations as ensuring that there are enough buns, keeping the dog from pissing on the marigolds, and where the Hell has the lighter fluid gotten off to this time? But for some, it’s a good opportunity to reflect on the lagniappes in our own lives.

     As beset as we are with politically generated troubles, it’s especially important to be mindful of our individual blessings, even the smallest of them. Possibly more important on Independence Day in this Year of Our Lord 2022 than on any other day this year. And so, out of the spirit of boundless generosity for which this D-list Mencken of the World Wide Web is so widely known, I shall enumerate a few of mine own. Perhaps they’ll stimulate recognition of a few lagniappes by my Gentle Readers.

  • Our neighbor to the south, a fellow even more advanced in age than I, doesn’t mind that deer keep nibbling on his shrubs and chowing down from his bird feeder. He enjoys watching them, as do I.
  • Our neighbors to the north have three children. Very nice children, actually. They like our dogs. Two have recently gone off to college; the third will get there in due course.
  • As best I can tell, there are no mosquitoes nor ticks this year. Also, the ants and the poison ivy have conceded defeat.
  • Though ours is a connecting street, the traffic is moderate and our front hedge dampens the noise acceptably.
  • Despite the pleas of three brokers and two hedge fund managers, I’m still retired.
  • My mechanic has declared his determination never to retire.
  • Our favorite wineries have yet to raise their prices.
  • I slept well last night and rose refreshed.
  • Despite everything, I’m still married.
  • So is my wife.

     This must not be neglected:

The secret to happiness is gratitude.

     If you have no great triumphs over which to preen, make use of the small ones, the lagniappes that you did not expect. Perhaps they seem incidental. Perhaps you lucked into a few of them, which should inspire still more gratitude. There will be time – indeed, there always is – to grumble over difficulties and setbacks. And as some recent Supreme Court decisions have reminded us, the Constitution still stands and the free Republic it chartered may yet stage a comeback. Dum spiro, spero, right, Gentle Reader?

     Happy Independence Day. May God bless and keep you all, and may He aid us in restoring our nation to the Land of the Free that it was and should be.

Jul 04 2022

Just what are we celebrating today?

We won our independence from England but do we really have any of our freedoms left?

After 1865 the American government’s “just” powers were no longer derived from the consent of the governed, as Jefferson so eloquently stated in the Declaration of Independence, but by the whims of politicians and bureaucrats in Washington, D.C. and enforced by their “supreme” court and their military and police state apparatus.

The Jeffersonians had long warned that if the day ever came that everyone’s constitutional liberty depended on the pronouncements of a few government lawyers with lifetime tenure, Americans would then live under a tyranny. That tyranny arrived in 1865 and was celebrated by future tyrants such as “progressive” icon Woodrow Wilson who, in his early twentieth-century book on congress, wrote approvingly about how, with the effective abolition of federalism, states’ rights, the Tenth Amendment, and especially the rights of secession and nullification, the limits of liberty were indeed in the hands of those five politically-appointed government lawyers with lifetime tenure. The wolf was finally in charge of “guarding” the sheep and has been ever since.

“Lincoln’s Repudiation of the Declaration of Independence.” By Thomas DiLorenzo, LewRockwell.com, 7/4/22.

Jul 03 2022

Transgressive Artists And Their Transcrap

     Count on a lover of words to mangle them artistically. Of course, “art” doesn’t mean what it once did, but we’ll get to that in a moment.

     “Transgressive” is one of those words: the sort that appear only in very specific contexts. Such words are often used to defy some near-universal understanding, or to introduce confusion into conversations about a simple subject. The context for “transgressive” is “art” as practiced by Philistines.

     My stimulus for today is this subtly hilarious essay by the great Roger Kimball:

     “The most delicious news to emerge from the art world this year,” I wrote at the time, “came in October, courtesy of the BBC.”

     Under the gratifying headline “Cleaner Dumps Hirst Installation,” the world read that “A cleaner at a London gallery cleared away an installation by artist Damien Hirst having mistaken it for rubbish. Emmanuel Asare came across a pile of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays and cleared them away at the Eyestorm Gallery on Wednesday morning.”

     I went on to express the hope that Asare would be immediately given a large raise. “Someone who can make mistakes like that,” I noted, “is an immensely useful chap to have about.”

     I also daydreamed about this paragon of the cleaning industry being taken on by some large metropolitan paper, the Daily Telegraph, for example, since he clearly demonstrated sounder aesthetic judgment than most of the fellows calling themselves art critics.

     Alas, Asare’s good work was soon undone.

     Please, please read the whole thing! You’ll laugh your slats off.

     It put me in mind of a tongue-in-cheek movie from some years back, The Runestone, which (among other things) shows us a gallery filled with “transgressive” “artworks” (yes, my sneer-quote key is in for a workout) being perused by the sort of aesthetes that have come to infest the art world. One of them, a young man viewing a piece of purely ridiculous “performance art,” utters a line that had me in stitches:

     “It’s art…but do I like it?”

     You might need to think that one over for a moment to get full value for it.

     I have no idea whether Kimball ever saw that movie, though it seems unlikely.

     The demise of art as we know it was made possible by the dismantling of standards. The “art world” didn’t even know it had standards until the “transgressive” “artists” arrived to demolish them. It didn’t start with “performance art,” but with the “abstract” “artists,” for whom depiction was a vulgar excrescence on their chosen “art form.” You know some of the famous names, whatever you might think of them.

     Kimball adroitly denounces such parodies of genuine art by comparison to a display of brilliance by one of the great Renaissance artists: Raphael. No one would ever question Raphael’s talent or artistic vision. Could anyone say the same for Daniel Hirst’s garbage?

     Robert A. Heinlein sounded a harmonious note in Stranger in a Strange Land:

     “Shucks,” Duke told them, “didn’t you know? The boss likes statues.”
     “Really?” Jill answered. “I don’t see any sculpture around.”
     “The stuff he likes mostly isn’t for sale. He says the crud they make nowadays looks like disaster in a junk yard and any idiot with a blow torch and astigmatism calls himself a sculptor.”

     As Heinlein wrote that in 1962, there’s a considerable amount of heft to it.

     J. Neil Schulman sounded a similar note:

     “What killed the symphony orchestra was not competing with their own recordings,” [Jaeger] replied, “but not having any new symphonic compositions to use to compete with. And this was due to a sort of Gresham’s law–counterfeit music driving out real music–that you would unleash upon lasegraphy.” Ingrams drew back.
     “Why, I’d never–”
     “Listen, Ingrams,” said Jaeger. “What you do with your career is your affair. I just want to see things sold with the proper label. You want to use an achromatic form, it’s not a new idea. In music they called it ‘atonality’: compositions made up of sounds without harmonic tonality, without melody or chords – chaos without letup, tension without release. But music is defined by its harmonic tonality–just as lasegraphy is defined by its concordant chromatics–and music without harmony was, in effect, music without music, just as lasegraphy without chromatics is lasegraphy without lasegraphy. And when two generations of symphonic composers, performers, and critics labeled musical tonality as a relic of the past, force-feeding their ever-dwindling audiences with noise sold as ‘modern’ music–while, simultaneously, definitive performances of past tonal masterpieces accumulated on recordings–the audiences withdrew from the concert hall to their living rooms, and a great art form was dead. Every composer, performer, and critic who backed this counterfeit music with his or her reputation was a party to the murder of classical music–no, scratch that–to its genocide.“

     It cannot be put better.

     But artistic freedom! The need to transcend the boundaries! The imperative of exploring new forms of self-expression! This is the cant of the transgressives and the critics who strive to legitimize their demolitions of art. Could they express, in simple language, what the boundaries are? Or would they merely sneer at the question, take a fresh champagne flute from a nearby waiter, and pass on?

     I haven’t had the following conversation, but I hope someone will. The curtain rises on a gallery filled with “modern art:”

Visitor 1: (standing before a pile of garbage presented as an “artwork”) Why didn’t the night janitor clean this up?
Visitor 2: What? How dare you say such a thing! This is the latest masterpiece from [insert your dispreferred “modern artist” here].
Visitor 1: Well, I hope he gets help soon. And hires a cleaning lady, too. He obviously needs one.

     Any volunteers?

Jul 03 2022

Deliberate destruction.

Food production and the fossil fuel industries are not the only ones on the globalists’ chopping block. Last weekend I was invited to a zoom call with the German firebrand “MEP Christine Anderson.”
who gave us a brief report about the recent vote in the EU parliament to extend the Covid pass requirement for another year. The parliament voted in favor of the extension in plenary session in spite of the fact that the measure is wholly useless and unjustified – to say nothing of the fact that 99% of Europeans are opposed to it. Mrs. Anderson’s explicit assessment on the matter was that EU’s democracy is a sham and a fraud. The plenary never debated the measure – they simply took the vote. Why the majority of MEPs voted in favor is entirely a mystery, and a sinister one at that.

But perhaps the most interesting and unexpected part of the 3 hour long call was about the airline industry. Three of the participants on the call had deep inside knowledge of the airline industry (one of them a pilot) who said in no uncertain terms that the industry is now being systematically and deliberately demolished. Apparently, the ultimate purpose is to kill airline travel altogether.[1]

I’m not going to hide behind a demure “what the hell is going on?” post. I know what’s going on. The deliberate attempt to destroy the West is as plain as the nose on my face. And we’re talking Mt. Rushmore here.

The withdrawal from Afghanistan might be explained by rank incompetence. That said I can imagine what would have happened to me as an Army lieutenant if I had screwed up something as simple as a movement, not under fire, from A to B with 10 deuce and a halfs, a map, a radio, and 12 months to plan it out. I still don’t know who was “it” for conducting that particular Afghan tea party but he seems to have skated on over to his new assignment with no apparent damage done to his career.

So, maybe a screw up that was not punished for domestic political reasons. And that’s a big “maybe.” A general officer always has a hard-headed command sergeant major and a vigorous, competent operations officer to advise him about, in this case, truly massive movements of men and materiel. The task of cutting our losses and getting out of Dodge would have been uppermost in his and their practical minds and questions would have been asked of the commander seeking information about the broad outline of “The Plan.” More likely we saw something deliberately screwed up. I have too much respect of military training, procedures, and leadership principles to believe that the exact nature of the predictable disastrous withdrawal was not communicated by the commander up the chain . . . and ignored. Bidenism over West Point. Guaranteed.

This was a rather unfortunate sideshow to the overall all-units, all-jurisdictions, all-hands Klown Kavalcade now hoving into view these last few decades. And that Kavalcade beggars the imagination. I need not repeat my usual list of economic, social, monetary, spending, welfare, immigration, cultural, trade, educational, and diplomatic land mines, booby traps, and idiocies. Every decision in every area and every zip code, without fail, is the wrong one. As with the Afghanistan skeedaddle, it’s simply not possible for smart people to screw up with such regularity and all across the board if “git ‘er done” were the first principle and not some bizarre, sinister political agenda.

Sure. Janet Yellen thought that inflation is “transitory.”

So recall from your recent memory the astonishing way in which the Western world acted when faced with the recent “pandemic.” Was there ever a more authoritarian, destructive, anti-science, manufactured hysteria? The simple concept of risk-benefit analysis was completely abandoned and decisions that affected the lives and livelihoods of millions were taken as though a .2% mortality rate signaled the return of the Black Death. Clearly beneficial alternative treatments were anathematized and the clearly astonishing side effects of the “vaccines” were hidden, downplayed, or disguised. Dangerous drugs became part of the approved protocols and perverse . . . no, evil incentives were offered to all hospitals to misidentify Covid-19 as the culprit. Career ruin awaited experts who questioned the salvific “vaccines” now well known to be virtually useless and, arguably, extremely damaging. Ivermectin was characterized as something in the “eye of newt” category.

Now think of the Biden assault on fossil fuel exploration and production, the equally-dishonest climate change lie factory, the slobbering over electric vehicles, tiny houses, “alternative” enegy, hideous chemical and surgical mutilation of young, confused people, and the vicious attacks on white people, white culture, and the foundations of our country. Then think of the pointless, baseless, manufactured hostility to Russia and our insane efforts to bring down its government and destroy its economy, all with serious damage to ourselves. Then think of the rash of fires at American food production plants. Then of the bizarre, officially-sanctioned looting, arson, and murder of the summer of 2020. Random somethings? Or agenda-driven?

The author of the above passage sees something sinister in the EU lock-step extension of the Covid pass requirement. It’s not that hard to figure out. The founding of the EU was premised on the lie that “nationalism” rather than totalitarian government (informed by the monstrous lies of socialism) had been the cause of Europe’s woes in the first half of the century and that “globalism” was the righteous path for all to take in the future. The EU had to tread carefully at first but it can now be more overt in pursuing its authoritarian agenda that no European citizen signed onto. It started on a corrupt basis and now we see the result. Economic and cultural madness is the Order of the Day. The crazed importation of hate-filled, arrogant, unassimilable Muslims and other third-world primitives is just the lagniappe. I mean, really freaking unassimalable. Consider, while you’re at it, the loathsome E.U. member Frans Timmermans and his multicultural bullshit.[2]

You may already know my mantra: If you hated America (or your own Western country) and wanted to destroy it, what would you do differently from what is being done now by your own leaders? What about all our national governments is decent, kind, rational, patriotic, or constructive?

Notes
[1] “A small short? The coming collapse of the air travel industry.” By Akrainer, ZeroHedge, 7/2/22 (emphasis added).
[2] Ask yourself who decided that the future he adores is the only path? Why is wanting to have one’s own culture and nation such a corrupt, antiquated desire in his view?

Jul 02 2022

Intentions Over Achievements

     Many a commentator has noted the Left’s preference for hawking its intentions for a proposed bill, and completely ignoring (or fan-dancing away) the consequences of the bill once it’s been signed into law. Thomas Sowell cites a number of instances of this behavior in The Vision of the Anointed, which I recommend heartily to anyone who has yet to read it.

     But wait: there’s more! What if the intentions the Left professes aren’t the ones they really harbor? What if their actual intentions differ radically from the ones they claim? What if they’re malevolent? It’s plain that they wouldn’t admit to such motives right out in front of God and everybody…even though now and then they actually do.

     The suspicion is growing – and with good reason.

     We’ve heard the Ventriloquist-Dummy-in-Chief prevaricate, obfuscate, wave evidence aside, and blame others frequently enough to be certain that something other than the well-being of the American people tops his priorities. The same goes for all of his Cabinet secretaries and deputy secretaries, and for all the more vociferous Democrats on Capitol Hill. Blue-state governors and mayors are no better at “facing the music.” It recalls to mind a piercing passage from Atlas Shrugged:

     “At first, I kept wondering how it could be possible that the educated, the cultured, the famous men of the world could make a mistake of this size and preach, as righteousness, this sort of abomination—when five minutes of thought should have told them what would happen if somebody tried to practice what they preached. Now I know that they didn’t do it by any kind of mistake. Mistakes of this size are never made innocently. If men fall for some vicious piece of insanity, when they have no way to make it work and no possible reason to explain their choice—it’s because they have a reason that they do not wish to tell.”

     Indeed.

***

     There are three categories of non- or anti-public-spirited motivation to be found among members of the political Establishment:

  1. Favoritism toward particular interests or clients;
  2. Hatred of the private citizens of the country;
  3. Delight in the exercise of power.

     The first of these is a version of the profit motive. While it’s natural and acceptable in commerce, it’s not supposed to animate holders of public offices in the performance of their duties. The second, an omnidirectional malevolence, is difficult for any decent person to understand. Yet we’ve seen it in operation in other countries, which forces us to ask why it should be impossible here. I have no doubt that some, at least, of America’s political Establishment are motivated by considerations in one or the other box.

     The third is the one most difficult to grapple with. It points to a classical problem with awarding power to some to exercise over others: Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?

     The great irony here is that we’ve already been told that this is the primary motivation of all power-seekers:

     ’The real power, the power we have to fight for night and day, is not power over things, but over men.’ O’Brien paused, and for a moment assumed again his air of a schoolmaster questioning a promising pupil: ’How does one man assert his power over another, Winston?’
     Winston thought. ’By making him suffer,’ he said.
     ’Exactly. By making him suffer. Obedience is not enough. Unless he is suffering, how can you be sure that he is obeying your will and not his own? Power is in inflicting pain and humiliation. Power is in tearing human minds to pieces and putting them together again in new shapes of your own choosing.’

     Indeed once again.

***

     We speak of them as “public servants,” but the reality is almost diametrically the opposite. (“If there’s anything a public servant hates to do, it’s something for the public.” – Kin Hubbard) They seek power because power is what they value most. When we’re unwise enough to give them power, they exercise it to the fullest extent we permit – and in these latter days of the Republic, we permit them to get away with virtually anything.

     We’ve tried, at odd intervals, to rein them in. We’ve failed at almost every turn. Constitutionalism, the concept intended to limit a government to its delegated responsibilities, was predicated on the premise that We the People would be the restraining force: first through elections; secondarily through nullification and civil disobedience; third and last through armed revolt. And in each case we’ve failed our responsibilities. We relied upon words on paper, and refused to heed Herbert Spencer’s prescient warning: “Paper constitutions raise smiles on the faces of those who have observed their results.”

     I keep telling people: Reason backward: from tactics to strategy to objectives to motives. Do not believe the pious proclamations about “the public good.” Few have listened. None of us have acted as we should. And now they can have their way with us.

     And they do not mean well.

Jul 02 2022

Fight Fiercely, Like Harvard…But Lose!

     Concerning the never to be adequately damned betrayal of conservatism by the pseudo-conservative NeverTrumpers, a.k.a. “Conservatism, Inc,” Ace captures the core of their mindset:

     They live in very leftwing Blue Cities in which ultraleft governance is the norm, in which ultraleft social norms are the norm, in which ultraleft political imperatives are the norm.

     They are used to very leftwing government and have no visceral objection to it. They see it as merely a cost to pay for having easy access to the the-a-tre and tastefully ethnic restaurants.

     On the other hand: they absolutely fear and despise conservatives, and would never agree to live in conservative-dominated regions.

     They have remained “on the right” under one condition: The condition in which they control the actual conservatives and keep them out of actual power and keep conservatives from achieving the conservative priorities conservatives seek.

     It could not be put better or more succinctly.

     The uber-label that matters more than any of the pretend labels is Establishment. “We’re people who count, unlike you unwashed types who cling to your guns, religion, and so forth.”

     Their organizations and think tanks are failing. So are their fundraising cruises and publications. They’re personae non gratae at gatherings of genuine conservatives. They curl their lips at the fighters, the Ron DeSantises, the Lauren Boeberts, and the Marjorie Taylor Greenes. And they’ve had to go hat in hand to Leftist plutocrats for support – and isn’t the willingness of those plutocrats to prop them up rather revealing?

     The point here, though, isn’t just to tell you what you probably already know. It’s this:

     We should be ashamed of ever having supported them. We should have known to watch what they do rather than what they say. For what did they do, other than fight for talk-show billets and appeal piteously to us for funds, over and over, for decades?

     They were always a tamed and leashed pseudo-opposition, lapdogs that barked only on command by their masters. The signs were always there, but we wished them away. The fault for having allowed them to posture as leaders is ours.

Jul 02 2022

Astonishment ensues.

Astonishment among the clueless, vicious, arrogant bastards at the U.S. Department of State, that is. If only we had had some warning. Some inkling of trouble. Some premonition. [Shrug emoji.]

I could point out that in all of Putin’s public statements during the months preceding the special operation, there is not the slightest evidence that he was going to seize Ukraine and make it part of Russia, not to mention attacking other countries in Eastern Europe. Other Russian leaders, including the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs and the Russian Ambassador to Washington, also stressed the key role of NATO expansion in the emergence of the Ukrainian crisis. Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov put it succinctly at a press conference on January 14, 2022, when he said: “The key to everything is to guarantee that NATO will not expand to the east.”

Nevertheless, attempts by Lavrov and Putin to force the United States and its allies to abandon attempts to turn Ukraine into a stronghold of the West on the border with Russia have completely failed. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken responded to Russia’s demands in mid-December by simply saying, “No change. There will be no changes.” Then Putin launched a special operation in Ukraine to eliminate the threat he saw from NATO.[1]

U.S. theft of Syrian oil and pointless, aggressive war on Syrian nation temporarily on hold.

US troops absent on southern border as of the official lunar noon hour we note. Mention of the magic word “asylum” has turned official bowels to water and vaporized quaint notions of national preservation. But Ukraine now . . . there’s a righteous national endeavor.

Notes
[1] “History Will Judge the United States and Its Allies.” By John J. Mearsheimer, South Front, 7/2/22 (emphasis added).

Jul 01 2022

The Dollars-and-Cents Of Abortion

     First, snippets from two excellent novels:

     “The women’s rights movement had three goals. First, it got women into the workplace where their labor could be taxed….So, with more women entering the workforce the supply of labor increases and wages are depressed….

     “Now couples need to have two careers to support a typical modern lifestyle. We can’t tax the labor in a home-cooked meal. We can tax the labor in takeout food, or the higher cost of a microwave dinner. The economic potential of both halves of the adult population now largely flows into the government where it can serve noble ends instead of petty private interests….

     “The second reason is to get children out of the potentially antisocial environment of the home and into educational settings where we can be sure they’ll get the right values and learn the right lessons to be happy and productive members of society. Working mothers need to send their children to daycare and after-school care where we can be sure they get exposed to the right lessons, or at least not to bad ideas….

     “They are going to assign homework to their students: enough homework to guarantee that even elementary school students are spending all their spare time doing homework. Their poor parents, eager to see that Junior stays up with the rest of the class, will be spending all their time helping their kids get incrementally more proficient on the tests we have designed. They’ll be too busy doing homework to pick up on any antisocial messages at home….

     “Children will be too busy to learn independence at home, too busy to do chores, to learn how to take care of themselves, to be responsible for their own cooking, cleaning, and laundry. Their parents will have to cater to their little darlings’ every need, and their little darlings will be utterly dependent on their parents. When the kids grow up, they will be used to having someone else take care of them. They will shift that spirit of dependence from their parents to their university professors, and ultimately to their government. The next generation will be psychologically prepared to accept a government that would be intrusive even by today’s relaxed standards – a government that will tell them exactly how to behave and what to think. Not a Big Brother government, but a Mommy-State….

     “Eventually, we may even outlaw homeschooling as antisocial, like our more progressive cousins in Germany already do. Everyone must know their place in society and work together for social good, not private profit….

     “The Earth can’t accommodate many more people at a reasonable standard of living. We’re running out of resources. We have to manage and control our population. That’s the real motive behind the women’s movement. Once a women’s studies program convinces a gal she’s a victim of patriarchal oppression, how likely is it she’s going to overcome her indoctrination to be able to bond long enough with a guy to have a big family? If she does get careless with a guy, she’ll probably just have an abortion….

     “All those Career-Oriented Gals are too busy seeking social approval and status at the office to be out starting families and raising kids. They’re encouraged to have fun, be free spirits., and experiment with any man who catches their fancy….And by the time all those COGs are in their thirties and ready to try to settle down and have kids, they’re past their prime. Their fertility peaks in their twenties. It’s all downhill from there….

     “In another generation, we’ll have implemented our own version of China’s One-Child-Per-Couple policy without the nasty forced abortions and other hard repressive policies which people hate. What’s more, there’ll be fewer couples because so many young people will just be hedonistically screwing each other instead of settling down and making families. Makes me wish I were young again, like you, to take full advantage of it. The net effect is we’ll enter the great contraction and begin shrinking our population to more controllable levels….

     “It’s profoundly ironic. A strong, independent woman is now one who meekly obeys the media’s and society’s clamor to be a career girl and sleep around with whatever stud catches her fancy or with other girls for that matter. A woman with the courage to defy that social pressure and devote herself from a young age to building a home and raising a family is an aberration, a weirdo, a traitor to her sex. There aren’t many women with the balls to stand up against that kind of social pressure. It’s not in their nature.”

     [Hans G. Schantz, The Hidden Truth ]

     They talked to a woman from New York City. While still young, she had thrown herself wholesale into the corporate world. “One moment I was just graduating from law school,” she said. “I looked down at my desk, blinked, looked up, and suddenly I was an old woman with nothing in the world but money and work.” She had had brothers who were dearer to her than life itself, but had lost contact with them after college and somehow never managed to reestablish it.

     [From The Sledgehammer Concerto ]

     If that hasn’t yet tired you out, read on. There are further connections ahead.

***

     On Wednesday evening’s Tucker Carlson Tonight, the eponymous host provided his viewers with a connection between corporate American personnel policy and the rise of abortion among American women these past five decades:

     Corporate America wants you childless and this is a big change. A 100 years ago, big companies built housing for the families of their employees and then schools and libraries to educate them. It was the humane thing to do, but it also seemed to make good business sense at the time. If you wanted workers you could count on, you had to take care of them and their offspring, but over time, that arrangement got expensive.

     Employees with families demanded higher wages to support their children, and in many cases, they formed unions to get those raises. So, labor costs soared. So corporate America, in response to this, developed a new model: hire single women. At many big companies, including in the traditionally male banking sector, young women now make up the majority of new employees and you can see why they do. They work hard, they’re reliable. They tend to be loyal to the companies they work for. The one downside to hiring young women is they can get pregnant.

     If you’re running the H.R. department at Citibank, that is the last thing you want. Children make your health care plan more expensive. Worse than that, they tend to compete with an employee’s attention. Responding to after work emails seems less pressing to most new moms than putting their own kids to bed.

     That’s a huge problem for big companies, so they have every incentive to prevent their workers from having children. You can’t say that out loud, of course. It would it be too obvious. Give us the best years of your life and in exchange we’ll pay you what’s effectively a subsistence wage in whatever overpriced urban hellscape we’re based in and then take from you the one thing that might give your existence meaning and joy in middle age, which is having children. That’s the deal we’re offering. That is the deal they’re offering, but they can’t say that. It would sound like what it is, which is exploitation, no better than what the cotton mills once did to 14-year-old girls.

     So, instead of saying that, which is the truth, corporate America uses the language of the social movement it created, feminism, to spin the entire arrangement as some sort of progressive liberation movement. “Fight the patriarchy. Have an abortion. It’s got nothing to do with lowering our labor costs, we promise.” But of course, it does have everything to do with lowering their labor costs. Across the country they are making that case: abortion as liberation. Many of the biggest American companies are now paying female employees to have abortions, to end their pregnancies.

     Compare Carlson’s insight with the fictional snippets and draw your own conclusions. Mine can wait a few minutes while you do so.

***

     It strikes me as unlikely that the corporate model Tucker Carlson delineates above was any part of the original driving force for Roe v. Wade. However, a combination of three factors:

  1. The destigmatization of premarital and extramarital sex;
  2. The massive inflation of the Seventies;
  3. The concomitant huge increases in taxation at all levels;

     …gave rise to a state of affairs in which a great many more women needed to work for wages than was previously the case, while they were simultaneously being encouraged to emulate irresponsible young men in their sexual behavior. (The “encouragements” included the removal of the disincentives to sex outside of marriage.) A new model for American womanhood emerged, in which young women were drawn by present-moment needs and satisfactions to put working for wages ahead of marriage and motherhood. This change in incentives and disincentives, combined with the percentage of women who gave inadequate thought to contraception, made a surge in “unwanted pregnancies” inevitable.

     Simultaneously, corporate America took notice of the greater focus on work and dedication to it exhibited by unmarried and childless workers. The nature of corporate existence plainly favors such workers over people with children, to say nothing of the ever-expanding legal mandates for maternity care and maternity leave. Human resources departments and corporate treasurers’ offices smiled upon this new approach to getting more out of the workforce for the same (or less) money.

     It doesn’t matter that Andrew Carnegie, George Pullman, and Thomas Watson Sr. would spin in their graves over this shift in corporate attitudes and policies. The bottom line is the only thing that counts in corporate reckoning. Responsibility to the shareholders and creditors demands it. And so a fourth force was added to the enumerated three. This one operates to keep young, sexually active women childless, if necessary through the mechanism of abortion.

***

     No one can reasonably be sure of the sequence of events and the changes in attitudes they evoked. What we can know with certainty is “how it all fits together.” At this time, there are powerful forces militating toward childlessness in America, and relatively weak ones – some might even be called vestigial – encouraging the bearing and rearing of children.

     As I’ve written here and elsewhere, it’s exceedingly difficult to persuade people to reproduce against the incentives and disincentives. The present-moment needs can seem overwhelming; the present-moment satisfactions from high incomes and footloose sex are undeniable. The joys of parenthood and family? Security in old age? The future of the human race? These seem rather insubstantial when there are bills to pay, an ever-rising tax burden, and one really needs a new car.

     Note that all the influences I enumerated that urge young Americans toward childlessness have accelerated and intensified these past three years. Note also that the principal driver has been insane if not utterly malicious federal policy. And ask yourself where American business will find its workers and purchasers for its products should current trends continue. It’s a question that seldom occurs to HR functionaries.

Jun 30 2022

First California, Now New York

     Remember what I said about the “may issue” states and their opposition to the right to keep and bear arms?

     Administrative processes can be made so painful and expensive that they deter effectively everyone from exercising their rights.

     California is tightening the screws one way:

     “Legal judgments of good moral character can include consideration of honesty, trustworthiness, diligence, reliability, respect for the law, integrity, candor, discretion, observance of fiduciary duty, respect for the rights of others, absence of hatred and racism, fiscal stability, profession-specific criteria such as pledging to honor the constitution and uphold the law, and the absence of criminal conviction.”

     New York will do it another way:

     New York’s Democratic leaders aim to preserve as many restrictions as possible on carrying a handgun in public after the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down key portions of the state’s gun-licensing law.

     State and New York City officials are zeroing in on specifying “sensitive locations” where concealed weapons could be forbidden, including a concept that would essentially extend those zones to the entire metropolis. Other options under consideration include adding new conditions to get a handgun permit, such as requiring weapons training.

     Gov. Kathy Hochul, a Democrat, vowed to call the Democrat-led Legislature back for a special session to pass new rules.

     If “sensitive locations” is interpreted broadly, the term might encompass the whole state. If the required “weapons training” is made sufficiently expensive and exhausting – easily done, as the state could certify a single organization as qualified to perform it, and could mandate that it include an arbitrary list of requirement – it could deter permit seekers from even applying. Neither tactic is beyond the imagination of the anti-gun Left.

     Yet we speak here of a Constitutionally recognized and protected right. What other right is hemmed in in such a fashion? For what other right do we have to satisfy faceless persons about our personal capabilities and qualities?

     Stay tuned!

Jun 30 2022

A Month Of Free Fiction!

(Scroll down for new posts.)

     Smashwords, where I first listed my fiction for sale, is having a Summer Sale that will extend from July 1 through July 31. My novels will be part of it:

The Realm of Essences Series:

  1. Chosen One
  2. On Broken Wings
  3. Shadow of a Sword
  4. Polymath
  5. Statesman

The Spooner Federation Saga:

  1. Which Art In Hope
  2. Freedom’s Scion
  3. Freedom’s Fury

The Futanari Saga:

  1. The Athene Academy Collection
  2. Innocents
  3. Experiences
  4. The Wise and the Mad
  5. In Vino

The Onteora County Romances:

  1. Love in the Time of Cinema
  2. Antiquities
  3. The Discovery Phase

Plus:

All Are Free Downloads Throughout July 2022!

     Every popular eBook format is supported. So if you’ve been silly-dallying about reading the works of the nuttiest fiction writer of our time, grab the opportunity while it’s free!

     Tell your friends! Tell your relatives! Tell your co-workers! Hell, tell your enemies! (How much more could they dislike you, right?) And enjoy!

Jun 29 2022

What Do the Changes in Supreme Court Decisions Mean?

It does NOT mean that they will be “swinging right”. I don’t seriously see the SP Justices dragging their colleagues over to the other side, in the short term or the long term. Most of them have kept their basic philosophy intact through changes in government or changes in the court.

What it MIGHT mean is that, in contrast to the years when the so-called “Swing Vote Judges” cravenly sided with the currently popular crowd, Justices feel freer to vote their conscience. Such as the recent Dobbs and gun decisions.

NEITHER of them are particularly ideological. What Dobbs does is send the decision-making back to the individual states, along with all of the time-consuming and divisive work that the Supreme Court had picked up over the years. By using Dobbs to abdicate their authority, they probably dropped their workload by 1/3.

Same with the gun case – (Corrected to identify the correct decision by Name) Bruen – that sets some firm guidelines about SHALL vs. MAY, as it affects state-issued permits for weapons. Will that flood cities with guns? Unlikely. What it WILL do is give Mr. and Miss/Mrs/Ms/Mx Average Person the ability to cut the red tape, to allow them to have a gun for their own protection. Many are the would-be criminals who will hesitate to attack someone who might be carrying. The Equalization Factor – that a gun evens the playing field for smaller and weaker people against well-muscled thugs – will likely, in time, be appreciated by Asians, Women, and other smaller but law-abiding residents.

So, will the Supremes continue to enrage the Left with their decisions?

Probably, but not because they become even more slanted away from the Left, but because Outrage is what the Left does best.

What does seem likely to follow is that Justices will no longer be bullied by threats to change or modify their decisions. No more twisting, as in the Obamacare decision, to allow the legislation to remain. No more decisions that attempt to please everyone, or, at least, the Left.

And, as is proper, the Court is doing it by returning to the States what is THEIR business. It’s a clear signal that they will be sending cases back to the States, rather than ruling by Judicial Fiat.

Jun 29 2022

Back By Popular Demand?

     The most recent Supreme Court decisions to make the national news have me thinking very rosy thoughts. Possibly they’re completely unrealistic ones, but at least they’re a change from my usual grumblings over “government” in these United States. All three — Bruen, Dobbs, and Kennedy — upset a significant Leftist applecart, which the Court is not known for doing casually. And all three are based on original-intent / original-interpretation Constitutional jurisprudence.

     Could President Trump’s three SCOTUS nominations be the Constitutional lifesaver we in the Right have been waiting for?

     Let that thought tickle you for a moment or two as I struggle to put my thoughts into comprehensible order.

***

     The expansion of federal power that began under Woodrow Wilson and accelerated under FDR was largely founded on two phrases found in the Constitution and one word that isn’t there. Let’s look at each of them in turn.

     The first portentous phrase, which appears in Article I Section 8, is “the general welfare.” The phrase has been interpreted to mean “Congress can do whatever it thinks will make things generally better.” Needless to say, if the Founding Fathers intended Congress to have unbounded authority to legislate on any and every subject imaginable, there would have been no reason to enumerate the seventeen legitimate legislative powers that appear in that Section. But as with most things that are “needless to say,” saying this, over and over at the top of one’s voice, has become imperative in this era of heedless, thoughtless nonsense.

     The second phrase is “To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes.” This one has been abused so brutally that virtually no one is aware of the Founders’ original intent. “Commerce,” then as now, meant the process by which goods are bought, sold, and transported. It did not and does not embrace all productive activity. Moreover, a reading of the Federalist Papers elucidates the intent behind “regulat[ing] Commerce…among the several States:” preventing the erection of tariff barriers and other impediments to commerce that crosses state lines. That Congress has become the principal impediment to such commerce is an irony lost on far too many.

     The third item, the “word that isn’t there,” belongs in the Tenth Amendment, which currently reads thus:

     The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

     Had the Founders anticipated the greed for power of later politicians, they might have written:

     The powers not explicitly delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

     For later Courts would casually accept the notion of “unenumerated powers,” particularly in “emergencies.” (One of those “unenumerated powers,” Congress’s assertion that it can delegate its lawmaking powers to unelected executive-branch bureaucrats, is the subject of West Virginia et al. v. Environmental Protection Agency, which the Court is poised to decide quite soon.) This directly contradicts James Madison’s statement that the powers of the new federal government would be “few and defined:” the rationale under which the state governments were persuaded to ratify the Constitution.

     Quite a lot of agony has come from two phrases and one missing word. But an originalist majority on the Court could salve the wounds rather nicely.

***

     But how likely is it? As I said at the outset, the most recent portents give us cause for hope. However, it must be remembered that no Justice pledges his fidelity quite so much to the Constitution as to the Court itself. It’s a body with immense power, and like most powerful agencies it will tend to act in its own interest when possible.

     The five originalist-leaning Justices on the Court:

  • Clarence Thomas,
  • Samuel Alito,
  • Neil Gorsuch,
  • Brett Kavanaugh,
  • Amy Coney Barrett,

     …can’t help but be aware of the attention on them at this time. A lot of that attention is threatening: the Dishonorable Charles Schumer’s threats; the many calls for the Usurpers to pack the Court; and of course the threats to the lives and families of the Justices themselves. That kind of pressure can bend just about anyone. It has in the past.

     Add to that a phrase that’s being shouted with increasing frequency and stridency: Stare decisis! That phrase, which means “let the decision stand,” has been a Court guideline for many decades. Unfortunately, it’s being invoked against a return to originalism. Originalist reinterpretations of Constitutional constraints would upset a great amount of case law – too frequently called “settled law,” as if no Court had ever overturned a previous Court’s decision. (Dred Scott v. Sanford, anyone? How about Plessy v. Ferguson?) And there is something to say for a “conservative” approach to Court jurisprudence: overturning previous decisions can cause convulsions to ripple through American society as private citizens and companies adjust to the changes wrought.

     Still, if the Constitution is the supreme law of the land, to which all other law must conform, stare decisis must be set aside. This is especially important in the application of Constitutional constraints on the federal government. The question of the hour is whether the Originalist Five will have the courage to continue as they’ve begun, especially in addressing cases such as the one mentioned here.

***

     Thanks to the Trump Justices, we in the Right have more hope for a return to Constitutional government than we’ve had at any moment in the century behind us. But hope, as the saying goes, is not a strategy. Neither is the Court protected against the many enemies who seek to bend it to their will. Those two pernicious phrases and that one missing word continue to be thorns in America’s flesh. Extracting them will take more than one Court. Removing the Usurpers from the corridors of power remains imperative. They will not sit idly by should the judicial winds continue to blow toward freedom.

Jun 29 2022

SCOTUS On A Roll?

     Terresa Monroe-Hamilton, whose work I first encountered at Noisy Room, has a blockbuster article at Biz Pac Review:

     It seems overturning Roe v. Wade may not be the biggest decision to come down from the Supreme Court as its ruling on West Virginia v. the Environmental Protection Agency could strip the government and alphabet agencies of their unfettered powers.

     The case asks whether pressing policies that have an impact on the lives of all Americans should be made by unelected bureaucrats or by Congress. The ruling could decide that governing by executive agency fiat is unconstitutional, according to Fox News.

     The case takes direct aim at President Biden’s climate agenda and involves the Clean Power Plan. That plan was put in place under former President Barack Obama in his efforts to combat climate change. If the plan had been implemented it would have cost roughly $33 billion per year and reordered the nation’s power grid. Two coal companies and the state of West Virginia sued the EPA alleging the plan was an abuse of power….

     If the high court decides in West Virginia’s favor, that could throw a wrench into the powers of the alphabet agencies in D.C. The power to decide important issues that affect all Americans would be returned to the legislators who are elected. In other words, the power to make such decisions would be returned to the states just as the abortion decision was. Federal agencies would no longer be empowered to write our laws.

     Even Court-watchers might not appreciate the significance of this case. One of the Left’s favored work-arounds, by which it keeps the heat off its elected officials, is having the unelected, largely anonymous bureaucrats of the “alphabet agencies” do its dirty work:

     Democrats have buried the actual costs of abandoning oil and gas in favor of their green agenda. Once consumers see what wind and solar power actually cost, they are likely to balk at the whole inane concept that Biden calls the “Great Transition.”

     Private citizens and private companies are almost completely disarmed by this transfer of properly Congressional powers to persons unknown, who cannot be punished in any way for their arrogations of extra-Constitutional authority. Court battles to redress such excesses are invariably long, expensive, and difficult to force to a definite conclusion.

     Government by bureaucracy is something the Constitution does not embrace. Neither does it permit Congress to delegate its lawmaking powers to other parties. A firm, wide-ranging decision in this case could reverberate throughout the federal government – at long last, in the cause of freedom.

     The late Dr. Clarence Carson, author of The American Tradition, proposed an anti-bureaucracy amendment to the Constitution:

     No one shall be punished for the violation of any federal law except that it shall have been specifically enacted by Congress in all its details.

     Perhaps rather than by such an amendment, we’ll be rescued from the rule of faceless totalitarians by the Supreme Court.

Jun 29 2022

California’s War On Guns Continues

     Looky here:

     California gun owners have been put at risk by the Attorney General’s office after a new dashboard leaked their personal information.

     The California Department of Justice’s 2022 Firearms Dashboard Portal went live on Monday with publicly-accessible files that include identifying information for those who have concealed carry permits. The leaked information includes the person’s full name, race, home address, date of birth, and date their permit was issued. The data also shows the type of permit issued, indicating if the permit holder is a member of law enforcement or a judge.

     The Reload reviewed a copy of the Lost Angeles County database and found 244 judge permits listed in the database. The files included the home addresses, full names, and dates of birth for all of them. The same was true for seven custodial officers, 63 people with a place of employment permit, and 420 reserve officers.

     2,891 people in Los Angeles County with standard licenses also had their information compromised by the leak, though the database appears to include some duplicate entries as well.

     Leftists never play by the rules. They will use every imaginable tactic, however low and outside it may be, to get their way – and what they want above all else is to render common citizens defenseless. The Bruen decision hasn’t changed that; it’s merely forced them to dig deeper in the pile of manure they mine for ideas.

     A left-leaning newspaper in New York State tried this, a few years back. The outcry from New York’s law-abiding gun owners very nearly blew their paper away. But the damage had already been done. There have been no reports on the consequences.

     As has been said more than once, why would they want to take our guns so badly, if they weren’t planning to do something we’d shoot them for?

Jun 28 2022

Evidence, Inference, and Faith

     What statement is aimed at you more often than any other?

     For me, it’s “You must be crazy.” or some variation thereof. And more often than not, the stimulus is my religious beliefs. The person casting the aspersions on my sanity deems them “irrational,” the great majority of those who hold them as “stupid and gullible,” and your not-terribly-humble Curmudgeon Emeritus as willingly deluded – insane.

     People differ about what constitutes insanity, and what constitutes persuasive or conclusive evidence thereof. Antitheists have regarded religious convictions, especially Christian religious convictions, as evidence of lunacy for a long time now. It makes them a little nutty to confront a Christian of demonstrably high intelligence and a record of achievement. That a devout Catholic, arguably the most mystically oriented of all Christian denominations, can argue with them calmly makes them froth at the mouth.

     I tried to capture a little of this in a segment of Polymath:

     “Quarter for your thoughts?” Redmond said.
     “Huh? I thought it was ‘penny for your thoughts.’”
     “Time was. I’ve adjusted it for inflation.”
     “Mmph. Okay. Well, I was just wondering about…” His courage failed him.
     Redmond turned a final corner, pulled into the Iversons’ driveway, set the parking brake and turned toward him. “About me and the church, right?”
     Todd blushed and nodded.
     “Because you don’t believe.”
     Another nod.
     “And you’re smart and you know it. But by now you know that I’m at least as smart, and it flummoxes you. Because you just can’t imagine how anyone with half a brain could buy into such a load of total nonsense, much less someone who’s as smart as you.”
     Todd remained silent. He fought to keep his expression from revealing his thoughts.
     Redmond smiled gently. “What would you say were the most important words in that little speech, Todd?”
     “Hm?”
     “Would you like me to repeat it?”
     Todd shook his head. “Uh, no, it’s just that…”
     “You’d rather not think about it?”
     Todd’s discomfort deepened further.
     Redmond’s smile turned impish. “Or maybe you’re a wee bit off balance from my having read your mind like a large-print book?”
     Todd started to laugh. He couldn’t help it. In a moment he’d surrendered to a gale of laughter, holding his sides against the spasms from his own guffaws.
     When he’d regained control of himself, he shook his head and caught Redmond’s eyes with his own. The engineer was still smiling gently.
     “Wasn’t it like that for you?” Todd said. “I mean, from everything I’ve heard about you—”
     “From your classmates?”
     Todd nodded. “Sideways, mostly. Some from Rolf and the others in the group. You had to have had the same reaction to…to this stuff that I had. It can’t be true!”

     “Can’t.” Hold onto that word. Scrutinize it. Plumb its implications. Then ask the critical question:

“Why not?”

     Replies fall into the following categories:

  1. “It just can’t,” which speaks of a lack of mental agility;
  2. “Well, nothing like that has happened since then,” which is a claim that singular events, which human power cannot replicate, are therefore impossible;
  3. “It’s irrational,” which is an evaluation similar to #2 above.

     Now things get interesting.

***

     Human power is formidable. Our aggregate capital of knowledge and technology enables us to do many things. Yet we have limits. Moreover, there are reports of events that appear permanently beyond our aspirations. Some of those reports concern the miracles, Passion, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth.

     In the physical sciences, a report of something is not considered evidence; the thing must be directly observed to count as data. However, historians take a different approach. They look for contemporaneous reports, eyewitness testimonies, and other sorts of confirmation. Enough of these and the report of an event, however incredible, garners some credence. The Gospels, which are the primary testimonies to the life and works of Christ, have been multiply confirmed by roughly contemporaneous non-Scriptural sources. While those non-Scriptural writers did not witness Jesus’s miracles, nor his Passion and Resurrection, they were able to gather eyewitnesses to some of them, most critically Jesus’s return to life after His Crucifixion. That entitles the Gospel accounts to a degree of credibility.

     Is it possible that the Gospels and the events they relate are mere fantasies? Yes. Is it likely? That’s a personal decision. But the Gospels themselves are evidence. He who accepts them as true and trustworthy is in no worse a position, rationally, than is he who rejects them.

     The implications of the evidence are equally open to dispute. Moreover, some of those implications are rather strong – too strong for many:

  • That Jesus was what He said He was: the Son of God.
  • That therefore He possessed divine authority.
  • That therefore, his preachments are also authoritative.

     To puzzle out and accept the implications of a collection of evidence is to perform an act of rationality. Indeed, it’s the quintessential act of rationality.

***

     Where, in all this, is faith?

     Faith – the willingness to accept a proposition that can neither be falsified nor verified – lies in the acceptance of the evidence as trustworthy. The consequent willingness to accept its implications is merely rational. However, the rational believer must be ready to confront counter-evidence if it should arise. Counter-evidence is evidence in its own right, and must be evaluated on its own merits. Its implications are subject to the same standard.

     The determined antitheist could argue that counter-evidence to the Gospel stories is impossible at this late date. However, historians determined to disprove the Gospel narratives have access to the past on the same basis as do those who accept the Gospels. If there are accounts from the classical era that would tend to dispute the Gospel accounts, they should be subject to the same evidentiary standard as the Gospels themselves. Confirmations should be sought, eyewitness testimonies aggregated, and so forth.

     As a sidelight, consider this statement from the Koran:

     The Messiah, son of Mary, was nothing but a messenger; [other] messengers have passed on before him. And his mother was truthful. They both used to eat food. Look how We make the signs clear to them; then look how they are deluded. (Surah Al-Ma’idah, 5:75)

     That assertion was made by Islam’s central figure, the prophet Muhammad. Does it constitute counter-evidence to the divinity of Jesus? Christians, aware that the Koran is filled with dubious assertions (and many exhortations to violence against “unbelievers”) reject it – among other reasons because it was penned six centuries after the events recorded in the Gospels. However, Muslims accept the Koran as the literal Word of Allah; that’s their act of faith. They infer other things from it that are beyond the scope of this rant. But one cannot argue with either group’s premise – i.e., whether the statement is to be accepted as true or rejected as false – for that is a matter of faith.

***

     Rational argument requires that the contenders agree on a set of common premises, especially what constitutes evidence. But the premises of a faith are peculiar to those who hold that faith. This puts the Christian and the disputant in a pickle. They might want to argue, but as they differ on premises – specifically, their attitude toward the evidence – they’re stopped at the starting gate. What’s possible thereafter is only disagreement.

     Much of the disagreement has been disagreeable. It’s unnecessary, unfortunate, and avoidable. But those are subjects for another time.

Jun 28 2022

So, Non-Americans With No Criminal Conviction…

Just HAPPEN to have their cases dropped – those are the cases for crossing the border illegally – just in ltime for them to be registered, and vote (or, have some OTHER person/organization do so for them) in the Congressional elections.

Why, who could be against THAT?

Haters, that’s who.

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