On FB, Wretchard introduced an Elon Musk tweet to the video below with the comment:
Some ideologies see ‘no people’ as the most humanitarian outcome.
Naturally such a line caught my attention.
Then this was how Musk introduced the video:
Pretty good summary, although national pride is underweighted relative to economics. Latter serves former, not other way around.
The foundational issue imo, which this video doesn’t ignore, is low birth rate. After all, what good is land with no people?
This video definitely fits with my following of history and, if true, fills in more than one blank. Definitely worth a half hour at normal speed, or at least 18 minutes at 175%. As for the death toll potential of the conflict, I have heard no world leader actively opposing ideologies favoring large body counts.
Indeed, there are whole years. And 2021 was one such. This year isn’t shaping up to be better.
But this is Ash Wednesday, the first day of the special liturgical season of Lent. It moves around from year to year, as it depends on the date of Easter. For those with an interest, the date of Easter is determined thus:
The first Sunday,
After the first Full Moon,
After the Vernal Equinox.
Despite its calendric variability, Lent is a massively important season to Christians. It’s the time when we strive most ardently to prepare for the Passion, Crucifixion, and Resurrection of Jesus of Nazareth: the Christ, the Son of God and Redeemer of Mankind. We fast, increase and intensify our prayers, and through those and other sacrificial measures attempt to grow closer to Our Lord in His upcoming time of trial, and to better appreciate His triumph over death.
I’ve heard the jokes. “Get your sinning in early, friends; Lent is just around the corner!” “Go from Mardi Gras beads to Rosary beads in a single day!” “What, again? Sheesh! Christ only had to go through it once.” “Couldn’t we have had Saint Patrick’s Day at some other time of year?” And so forth. Not bad, really.
Nevertheless, Lent is important. It’s especially significant this year, there being so much suffering in the world – nearly all of it the work of political malefactors. They should be reflecting on their own mortality, and their prospects in the next life. “Remember, man, that thou art dust, and unto dust thou shalt return.” Or as that noted philosopher Jim Morrison put it, “No one here gets out alive.”
I might be back later with something more, but for now, have a few lines from Thomas Stearns Eliot.
***
Ash Wednesday / T. S. Eliot
I
Because I do not hope to turn again
Because I do not hope
Because I do not hope to turn
Desiring this man’s gift and that man’s scope
I no longer strive to strive towards such things
(Why should the agèd eagle stretch its wings?)
Why should I mourn
The vanished power of the usual reign?
Because I do not hope to know
The infirm glory of the positive hour
Because I do not think
Because I know I shall not know
The one veritable transitory power
Because I cannot drink
There, where trees flower, and springs flow, for there is
nothing again
Because I know that time is always time
And place is always and only place
And what is actual is actual only for one time
And only for one place
I rejoice that things are as they are and
I renounce the blessèd face
And renounce the voice
Because I cannot hope to turn again
Consequently I rejoice, having to construct something
Upon which to rejoice
And pray to God to have mercy upon us
And pray that I may forget
These matters that with myself I too much discuss
Too much explain
Because I do not hope to turn again
Let these words answer
For what is done, not to be done again
May the judgement not be too heavy upon us
Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care Teach us to sit still.
Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.
II
Lady, three white leopards sat under a juniper-tree
In the cool of the day, having fed to sateity
On my legs my heart my liver and that which had been
contained
In the hollow round of my skull. And God said
Shall these bones live? shall these
Bones live? And that which had been contained
In the bones (which were already dry) said chirping:
Because of the goodness of this Lady
And because of her loveliness, and because
She honours the Virgin in meditation,
We shine with brightness. And I who am here dissembled
Proffer my deeds to oblivion, and my love
To the posterity of the desert and the fruit of the gourd.
It is this which recovers
My guts the strings of my eyes and the indigestible portions
Which the leopards reject. The Lady is withdrawn
In a white gown, to contemplation, in a white gown.
Let the whiteness of bones atone to forgetfulness.
There is no life in them. As I am forgotten
And would be forgotten, so I would forget
Thus devoted, concentrated in purpose. And God said
Prophesy to the wind, to the wind only for only
The wind will listen. And the bones sang chirping
With the burden of the grasshopper, saying
Lady of silences
Calm and distressed
Torn and most whole
Rose of memory
Rose of forgetfulness
Exhausted and life-giving
Worried reposeful
The single Rose
Is now the Garden
Where all loves end
Terminate torment
Of love unsatisfied
The greater torment
Of love satisfied
End of the endless
Journey to no end
Conclusion of all that
Is inconclusible
Speech without word and
Word of no speech
Grace to the Mother
For the Garden
Where all love ends.
Under a juniper-tree the bones sang, scattered and shining
We are glad to be scattered, we did little good to each
other,
Under a tree in the cool of day, with the blessing of sand,
Forgetting themselves and each other, united
In the quiet of the desert. This is the land which ye
Shall divide by lot. And neither division nor unity
Matters. This is the land. We have our inheritance.
III
At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitul face of hope and of despair.
At the second turning of the second stair
I left them twisting, turning below;
There were no more faces and the stair was dark,
Damp, jaggèd, like an old man’s mouth drivelling, beyond
repair,
Or the toothed gullet of an agèd shark.
At the first turning of the third stair
Was a slotted window bellied like the figs’s fruit
And beyond the hawthorn blossom and a pasture scene
The broadbacked figure drest in blue and green
Enchanted the maytime with an antique flute.
Blown hair is sweet, brown hair over the mouth blown,
Lilac and brown hair;
Distraction, music of the flute, stops and steps of the mind
over the third stair,
Fading, fading; strength beyond hope and despair
Climbing the third stair.
Lord, I am not worthy
Lord, I am not worthy
but speak the word only.
IV
Who walked between the violet and the violet
Who walked between
The various ranks of varied green
Going in white and blue, in Mary’s colour,
Talking of trivial things
In ignorance and knowledge of eternal dolour
Who moved among the others as they walked,
Who then made strong the fountains and made fresh the springs
Made cool the dry rock and made firm the sand
In blue of larkspur, blue of Mary’s colour,
Sovegna vos
Here are the years that walk between, bearing
Away the fiddles and the flutes, restoring
One who moves in the time between sleep and waking, wearing
White light folded, sheathing about her, folded.
The new years walk, restoring
Through a bright cloud of tears, the years, restoring
With a new verse the ancient rhyme. Redeem
The time. Redeem
The unread vision in the higher dream
While jewelled unicorns draw by the gilded hearse.
The silent sister veiled in white and blue
Between the yews, behind the garden god,
Whose flute is breathless, bent her head and signed but spoke
no word
But the fountain sprang up and the bird sang down
Redeem the time, redeem the dream
The token of the word unheard, unspoken
Till the wind shake a thousand whispers from the yew
And after this our exile
V
If the lost word is lost, if the spent word is spent
If the unheard, unspoken
Word is unspoken, unheard;
Still is the unspoken word, the Word unheard,
The Word without a word, the Word within
The world and for the world;
And the light shone in darkness and
Against the Word the unstilled world still whirled
About the centre of the silent Word.
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Where shall the word be found, where will the word
Resound? Not here, there is not enough silence
Not on the sea or on the islands, not
On the mainland, in the desert or the rain land,
For those who walk in darkness
Both in the day time and in the night time
The right time and the right place are not here
No place of grace for those who avoid the face
No time to rejoice for those who walk among noise and deny
the voice
Will the veiled sister pray for
Those who walk in darkness, who chose thee and oppose thee,
Those who are torn on the horn between season and season,
time and time, between
Hour and hour, word and word, power and power, those who wait
In darkness? Will the veiled sister pray
For children at the gate
Who will not go away and cannot pray:
Pray for those who chose and oppose
O my people, what have I done unto thee.
Will the veiled sister between the slender
Yew trees pray for those who offend her
And are terrified and cannot surrender
And affirm before the world and deny between the rocks
In the last desert before the last blue rocks
The desert in the garden the garden in the desert
Of drouth, spitting from the mouth the withered apple-seed.
O my people.
VI
Although I do not hope to turn again
Although I do not hope
Although I do not hope to turn
Wavering between the profit and the loss
In this brief transit where the dreams cross
The dreamcrossed twilight between birth and dying
(Bless me father) though I do not wish to wish these things
From the wide window towards the granite shore
The white sails still fly seaward, seaward flying
Unbroken wings
And the lost heart stiffens and rejoices
In the lost lilac and the lost sea voices
And the weak spirit quickens to rebel
For the bent golden-rod and the lost sea smell
Quickens to recover
The cry of quail and the whirling plover
And the blind eye creates
The empty forms between the ivory gates
And smell renews the salt savour of the sandy earth
This is the time of tension between dying and birth
The place of solitude where three dreams cross
Between blue rocks
But when the voices shaken from the yew-tree drift away
Let the other yew be shaken and reply.
Blessèd sister, holy mother, spirit of the fountain, spirit
of the garden,
Suffer us not to mock ourselves with falsehood
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still
Even among these rocks,
Our peace in His will
And even among these rocks
Sister, mother
And spirit of the river, spirit of the sea,
Suffer me not to be separated
Human action is guided and constrained by two and only two factors:
Incentives,
Constraints.
Sometimes the changes to those things come in a form we fail to recognize at once. Sometimes we aren’t paying attention. And sometimes they stroll up and bite us on the nose:
After years of delinquency to meet its NATO obligations, Germany, the economic powerhouse of Europe has finally committed to spending at least 2 per cent of its GDP on defence spending.
Speaking before the Bundestag on Saturday, Chancellor Olaf Scholz said: “From now on, more than 2 per cent of our GDP will be invested in our defence,” announcing that the German government will commit an additional €100 billion in this year’s budget towards the German military, the Bundeswehr.
While Germany has increased its defence spending over recent years, it has consistently failed to reach the NATO threshold, spending just 1.53 per cent on defence last year, according to NATO figures.
The state of the German armed forces was lambasted last week by the chief of the army, Alfons Mais who wrote that “the army that I am allowed to lead, is more or less bare.”
“The policy options we can offer in support of the Alliance are extremely limited. We all saw it coming and were unable to get our arguments through to draw and implement the conclusions of the Crimean annexation. That doesn’t feel good! I’m [disturbed]!” the army chief continued.
My, my! Germany – one of the foremost “at all costs keep the idlers comfy” welfare states under the American defense umbrella called NATO – has decided that a nontrivial defense just might be a good thing to have around. All it took was an invasion of Ukraine by the very power that once subjugated half of Germany, reduced it to poverty, and shot anyone who tried to leave. Who would have guessed?
Mind you, one doesn’t defend a nation with mere money. It takes men with guns, tanks, aircraft, and a competent command cadre. At one time, Germany had those things. Perhaps the experiences of the World Wars soured them on their military traditions. They’d better hope they can resurrect their earlier expertise before the Russian bear gets hungry again, because Ukraine isn’t likely to sate its appetite.
A reminder: Vladimir Putin, who has ruled Russia essentially singlehanded for a couple of decades now, once said, quite publicly, that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was among the greatest geopolitical tragedies in all of history. If the possibility that the hour has arrived for reversing that “tragedy” isn’t uppermost in his thoughts, I can’t imagine what would be.
***
President Trump was aware of how NATO, and the incentive it created toward flaccidity in the European members, was draining the United States and creating a culture of “defense dependency” in Europe. He wasn’t the first to see it, though others of similar penetration never reached the White House. Since FDR there hasn’t been even one president who frowned upon the “entangling alliances” about which George Washington warned us so vividly. Indeed, nearly all of America’s heads of state since the New Deal have sought to entangle the U.S. ever more firmly. The exception was the man who shocked the political Establishment by breaking their hegemony over the White House: Donald J. Trump. That should tell you something.
Trump’s critics slandered him in all the usual ways, most relevantly for this subject as an “isolationist.” But Trump was nothing of the sort. He valued America’s international standing, but was adamant that in all dealings with foreign powers, America and Americans come first. He resented the notion that other wealthy nations had made themselves into America’s defense clients, and had used the funds that should have gone to military preparedness to fatten their layabouts. His demand that European NATO increase its funding to its continental militaries was consistent with that conviction.
Trump understands incentives and what they do to the thinking of executives. It’s been his meat and drink for fifty years. He learned in the most complex and difficult market in all the world: New York City real estate. The lessons apply nicely to foreign dealings – and they don’t stop with the enervation of the European members of NATO. Their relevance extends to America’s own military. The recent treatment of our fighting forces as a laboratory for social engineering is bringing them ever nearer to impotence.
Predatory governments – that is, all governments, past, present, and future — look upon a fat and lazy neighbor with avid eyes. Tom Clancy summarized the matter nicely in Debt of Honor when he described warfare as “armed robbery writ large:”
“War is the ultimate criminal act, an armed robbery writ large. And it’s always about greed. It’s always a nation that wants something another nation has. And you defeat that nation by recognizing what it wants and denying it to them.”
You needn’t be a fan of his fiction to appreciate the penetration in that statement. It echoes the thoughts of an American Founding Father: John Jay:
Nations will go to war whenever there is a prospect of getting anything by it. – John Jay, co-author of the Federalist Papers.
We have a relevant observation by a more recent figure of note, as well:
The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence. – Mohandas K. Gandhi
A predator that sees potential prey weaken their defenses, whether deliberately or through neglect, will not trouble to restrain its natural impulses. Six thousand years of human history should be evidence enough.
***
The United States cannot defend the whole world. The “world policeman” notion was always a farce. If the nations of Europe come to understand this as a consequence of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, it will be a lesson dearly bought, though the brunt of the price will be borne by others.
The American foreign-policy establishment must be brought to heel. It will be a prodigious undertaking, for it would imply a great diminution of its importance in national and world affairs. Persons and institutions both inside and outside the corridors of power will fight viciously to retain their perches, their prominence, and their profits. All the same, the invasion of Ukraine has made the necessity clear. It’s time and past time to start withdrawing America from its guardianship, explicit or implicit, over the sovereignty of other nations and the peace of the world.
“The poor” have been one of the principal flails the Left has wielded against the Right for over a century. Innumerable policy initiatives have been called for and justified under the rationale of “helping the poor.” They go by other names, now and then: the “disabled;” the “structurally unemployed,” the “historically marginalized;” the “homeless;” and so forth. But underneath the labels is always the implication of personal economic insufficiency, which renders them dependent upon the charity of others.
I have no doubt that in a nation of 340 million persons, most of whom are here legally, there will be some who cannot, for reasons beyond their personal control, meet their own needs and the needs of others for whom they’re responsible. Yet the American welfare state of today is so generous that the federal definition of “poverty” – the condition that qualifies one for federal assistance – applies to households that many Europeans of the working and middle classes would envy.
A great libertarian economist, Nobel laureate Friedrich Hayek, has argued that an advanced society must make some provision for the relief of genuine need. In his book The Constitution of Liberty, Hayek declaims thus:
In the Western world some provision for those threatened by the extremes of indigence or starvation due to circumstances beyond their control has long been accepted as a duty of the community…. The necessity of some such arrangement in an industrial society is unquestioned—be it only in the interest of those who require protection against acts of desperation on the part of the needy.
So let us stipulate that “something must be done.” But let us not descend to this farce:
Something must be done.
This is something.
Therefore we must do this.
(As an apocryphal professor once said about a paper submitted by an apocryphal student, “This is so bad it’s not even wrong.”)
The other historically important rationale for governmental intervention into the economy is the Marxist notion of “the exploitation of the workers.” This proceeds from Marx’s absurd notion about “surplus value.” He argued that the difference between what production workers are paid and the market value of the goods they produce, less some obvious allowances for production costs, properly belongs to the workers and not to those who employ them for wages. That they don’t get the “surplus value” in their pay packets constitutes “exploitation.” Some very smart people have signed onto this lunacy, often under the shibboleth of “equity.”
Any time you hear someone prattling about “exploitation,” the ghost of Marx is cackling in the distance.
But all that is prefatory. My real subject this morning is that celebrated former Congresswoman and presidential candidate, Miss Tulsi Gabbard.
***
I like much that I’ve heard about Tulsi Gabbard. She’s friendly, gracious, and approachable. She speaks well, is willing to treat with her political opponents as people with rights and interests they naturally want to defend, and looks great in yoga pants. That’s a lot of political assets, especially in these times.
We in the Right have longed for opponents who’ll treat us with respect for our intelligence and our positions. Such persons are largely absent from today’s conversation. The appearance of one such is cause for a modest celebration. But let us not forget that what starts in a friendly, let-us-reason-together fashion need not end that way.
Miss Gabbard’s political stance remains tilted well over to the left. She supported Bernie Sanders for the Democrat nomination for president in 2016. Whether anyone has asked for her opinion of the Usurper Regime’s economy-destroying policies, I do not know. Given her previous stances, I’d guess that she’d heavily qualify any criticism she might have for them.
“So as long as we’re committed to this foundation of freedom that’s enshrined in our constitution and our Bill Of Rights, we can recognize our differences and work together based on that common ground,” Gabbard said. “Coming from that common foundation of freedom we can overcome the great obstacles and challenges that we face, but if we are not committed to this freedom that is so clearly spelled out in the Bill Of Rights, we are doomed to fail as a country.”
“Unfortunately, we have too many Americans including leaders in positions of great power in our country who are not at all committed to upholding the Constitution, we have many Americans who don’t even know that the Bill Of Rights are,” she added. “They think free speech is something that should only be left to those who agree with them saying ‘hey, you know what, if your speech offends me or if it offends anyone, then you should not be allowed to say it.’ This is where we are as a country.”
“We have too many people in positions of power whose foremost responsibility is to protect our freedoms and uphold our God-given rights, and yet they are the ones who are actually trying to take these rights away from us,” she said. “This is the biggest threat to our country, it is not coming from some foreign country, it is coming from power elites here at home and their co-conspirators in the mainstream media and the security state who are working to undermine our freedoms from within.”
So she’s good on freedom of speech, but has anyone asked her about her socialist policy positions lately? She’s easily the most genial Democrat around, so it shouldn’t be an occasion of hazard. How does she rationalize her attachment to policies that have produced impoverishment and persistent dependency every time they’ve been tried? Is it “for the poor?” Or would we hear a bit of reheated Marxism about “the exploitation of the workers?” Or would she say something else, something I can’t even imagine at this hour of the morning?
Herein lies the second stage of the aisle-crossing adventure.
***
Conversation between political adversaries is important to our Constitutional republic. (Note the “our,” please. I’m not talking about Hope here, as much as I wish I were.) But to be constructive, conversation must proceed from a foundation of mutually agreed premises and principles. People who differ dramatically at the level of premises and principles hardly speak the same language.
Miss Gabbard spoke eloquently of America’s Constitutional basis and the principles it enshrines. Let’s assume that she was entirely sincere about it all, rather than just putting on a good show for the CPAC crowd. As the fundamental principle enshrined by the Constitution is that of “the supreme law of the land,” how would she defend government interventions into the economy that are nowhere authorized by the Constitution? Such interventions are part of Bernie Sanders’s platform, which she endorsed. Would she claim that the approval of Congress, or of the electorate, would be sufficient to sanctify it? If she were to recur to that ancient argument of tyrants, “necessity,” could she defend that based on the objective conditions which she characterized as constituting the necessity, and the conditions that have followed such measures in other places and times?
This is not mere polemics, nor is it an attempt to disqualify a gracious woman from receiving our respect. It’s about what it’s possible to achieve in a cross-aisle conversation. There must be agreement on fundamentals – individuals’ rights and responsibilities; the proper sphere of government; the sinister nature of alliances between governments, and between a government and private organizations – before positive outcomes are possible. In the absence of such agreement, differences are insoluble. Yea verily, even when our interlocutor is as well-mannered and gently spoken as Tulsi Gabbard.
Through the first and second pieces, the news has all been bad. Now it’s time to review the other consequences of the sociocultural assault on American norms: the ones that hold out some hope for a future of freedom and decency.
***
As I’ve written before, word gets around. What people need to know, they will know, albeit not always in time to stave off nasty consequences. Now that we have two years’ worth of COVID-19 hysteria to survey, we can trace the patterns that run through it and reach some fairly confident conclusions about it all.
And Gentle Readers, be aware: when I write we in this context, I mean to include you. Yes, I have a gift for spotting causal connections, but anyone who pays adequate attention to developments will spot them just as readily…and of course, will recognize them when someone else points them out, as well. Indeed, at this point only the willfully blind could miss the patterns that political skullduggery has made in its peregrinations in our recent past. Have a list of significant elements:
Open encouragement of left-wing violence, especially in major cities;
Valorization of black criminals entirely because of their race;
Assaults on law enforcement and the administration of race-blind justice;
Aggressive promotion of racialism, transgenderism, and sexual deviance;
Distortion and disparagement of American history and values;
Propagandistic slanders of President Trump and his Administration;
“Gaslighting” and perverting or destroying the meanings of words;
Coordinated efforts to magnify alarm over the COVID-19 virus;
Contemporaneous efforts to impede research into the virus’s origin;
Resurrection of an undeservedly respected medical bureaucrat to champion the “crisis;”
Unprecedented restrictions imposed in the name of “fighting the pandemic;”
Use of the “pandemic” as a rationale for destroying the integrity of the 2020 elections;
The theft of the elections themselves, with the collaboration of the mainstream media;
Use of slander and intimidation to obstruct serious investigation of the frauds;
Treatment of the 1/6/2021 protest at the Capitol Building as “terrorism” and an “insurrection;”
Immediate crippling of the American energy industry by the Usurper Regime;
Recourse to extreme deficit spending by the Regime, thereby weakening the dollar;
Coordinated action by the Regime, the media, and Big Tech to suppress dissenting opinions;
“Cancel culture,” promoted by the Regime and assisted by the media;
And most recently, the frenzied beating of the war drums over Ukraine.
That list might not contain everything you’ve noticed. Feel free to add to it.
Not everyone has been alert to the significance of this train of abuses. However, the more alert have drawn the lesson: the Regime intends our subjugation. It will use a string of “emergencies” to “justify” the suspension of Constitutional constraints and guarantees of individuals’ rights. In particular, it will suppress protests against Regime overreach and foolishness through whatever means are expedient. It’s reaction to the “Freedom Convoy” aimed at Washington will prove highly instructive.
Combine the above with the sociocultural poisons enumerated in the first two essays. In sum, we have tolerated the intolerable: socially, culturally, technologically, and politically. The consequences were swift to arrive. The Intolerable, in all its awful majesty, now stands over us: censoring our speech; restricting our movements, associations, and commerce; degrading our culture; and destroying our society, our economy, and our standing among the nations.
At this point, only three choices remain to us:
Accept serfdom;
Stage an armed rebellion against the Regime;
Withdraw from the hostile culture – perhaps even physically – into protected spheres.
The third choice is the one an increasing number of intelligent Americans have been making.
***
I’m acquainted with a number of persons who’ve executed such a withdrawal. In a way, I and my wife are among them. We’ve cut off all contact with the channels of cultural corruption. For news, we ignore the ones with the loudest voices and look to sources that have proved reliable. We do business only with persons of like mind, to the extent possible. Our entertainment is carefully selected – and none of it comes from the broadcast media.
Others find that they must do more, especially families with minor children. Children are more susceptible to propagandization than adults. Removal from the schools in favor of homeschooling or “learning pods;” vetting of the kids’ associates; refusing them smartphones; and careful supervision of their entertainment choices are all important measures for the protection of their minds. Even physically moving the family away from corrupting influences may be necessary.
Some persons are building physical retreats from the chaos. I know of at least two such efforts. The organizer of one compound has invited us to join. I’ve been thinking about it, though it would involve considerable difficulty and expense.
Hopeful in a way that requires contemplation is the widespread, intensified recourse to Christianity, and to parishes and ministries that have remained faithful to the teachings of the Redeemer. Christianity has always been hated by the power-lusters, for it proclaims strict limits on what they can justly do. Many “fallen away” Christians have returned to the pews, seeking there a refuge from the madness outside and a renewed armor with which to resist its assaults. There is more hope here than one might suppose after a casual glance.
The refusal to be polluted or subjugated is gaining speed. It’s a good man’s part to get behind it and push.
***
Action equals reaction. Thrust equals recoil. Newton was talking about bodies clashing with one another, but the pattern applies just as well to social, commercial, and political developments. The despoilers have made a mighty thrust against traditional American society. In consequence, it’s granulating into a number of smaller societies, each of which offers a degree of protection from the influences beyond its borders. Not all such mini-societies have visible form. Indeed, some of the formless ones are of the greatest value.
The despoilers will pursue us, of course. That’s in the nature of power-lust: it cannot be sated and so must perpetually seek new targets for subjugation. In particular, they’ll strive to corrupt and destroy our channels of communication with one another and the alternative media we prefer to theirs. But the burgeoning awareness of the agenda involved will assist us in preparing to resist and counter further assaults…if we remain alert and flexed to react wherever a new front might arise.
So while the fraying will continue, individual segments of the American braid will retain their integrity, learn from experience, erect defenses, and prosper. At least, we can hope so.
An anecdote has it that an admirer once asked fabled economist Ludwig von Mises to describe what he foresaw for the future of the market economy. Von Mises smiled and said “I don’t know…but whatever it is, it will be different.” So also with a society under stress and in transition. We cannot foresee its ultimate shape; we can only know that it will differ from what we have today. The challenge is to ensure that the differences will be to the good.
During repeated visits after 1909, the two commandants became fast friends even to the extent of [British General Henry] Wilson being admitted into the French family circle and invited to the wedding of [French General Ferdinand] Foch’s daughter. With his friend “Henri,” Foch spent hours in what an observer called “tremendous gossips.” They used to exchange caps and walk up and down together, the short and the tall, arguing and chaffing. Wilson had been particularly impressed by the rush and dash with which studies were conducted at the War College. Officer-instructors constantly urged on officer-pupils with “Vite, vite!” and “Allez, allez!” Introduced to the classes in the Camberley Staff College, the hurry-up technique was quickly dubbed Wilson’s “allez operations.”
A question that Wilson asked of Foch during his second visit in January 1910, evoked an answer which expressed in one sentence the problem of the alliance with England, as the French saw it.
“What is the smallest British military force that would be of any practical assistance to you?” Wilson asked.
Like a rapier flash came Foch’s reply, “A single British soldier—and we will see to it that he is killed.”
The militaries of the Old World aren’t what they were seventy years ago, China excepted. Today’s Europe is lightly armed. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact left few clear lines of demarcation – few places where it could be confidently said that “If war breaks out, it’ll be X against Y.” Yes, there were some regional conflicts, most notably among the former republics of Yugoslavia, but those were of relatively minor significance and have had no lasting effect geopolitically.
The North Atlantic Charter, which created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), arose from Western Europe’s fear that the Stalin regime, having succeeded in subjugating ten Eastern European nations, would next look lustfully at the Western ones. It was a reasonable fear. Not only was Europe getting back onto its feet only slowly and painfully, America’s wartime aid to the U.S.S.R. had made it into a power comparable only to the United States. The millions-strong Red Army remained half-mobilized. Few would forget its role in the conflict in Spain. It was reasonable for the remaining unshackled European powers to seek protection from the sole remaining force that could plausibly provide it.
There were both desirable and undesirable consequences. The former included a rapid economic resurgence of the Western European nations, owing in large measure to the injection of American funds through our military presence there. The latter, which may prove to be more significant, included the military enervation of the nations under our protective umbrella. In other words, with America standing watch, the European members of NATO gradually let their own militaries slip into desuetude. Funds that would otherwise have gone to military procurement and preparedness were diverted to “social programs.” This gave rise to an opulently generous European welfare state.
President Trump’s determination to get the European states to become more serious about their own defense highlighted the matter. The Europeans were unwilling to spend on their militaries at the expense of their social programs. Trump cajoled them as best he could, with a few juicy consequences for nonperformance included, but the effect on European defense postures was limited. Today the best armed, best equipped military of “Europe” is that of the United Kingdom – and that should ring a few alarm bells.
***
Now we have a war between Russia and Ukraine. Ukraine is definitely holding the dirty end of the stick. Present trends continuing – in warfare as in all else, a chancy assumption, but one a prognosticator will make nevertheless – Ukraine will be “Finlandized:” turned into a tacit client state of Russia. The one thing that could materially change that forecast would be a massive intervention by outside powers to counter Russia’s military thrust.
But who would commit to such an intervention? Leave aside the Europeans’ distaste for armed conflict. In concert, the militaries of Europe could barely match the Russian forces. Moreover, the consequences of going to war for Ukraine’s sake would be devastating to the economies of the NATO powers. The prospect of losing access to Russian oil and gas is frightening enough to paralyze Germany all by itself – and without Germany’s participation the rest of Europe might as well stay home.
Still, European NATO would really like for someone to step in and halt Vladimir Putin. In his ambition and resolve, he poses more of a threat to Europe than any Russian potentate since Stalin. He’s openly said that in his view, the disintegration of the U.S.S.R. was the greatest geopolitical tragedy in history – and there can be little doubt that he would act to reverse it if he believed he could. So Europe has cast its eyes westward, to the United States.
The fruits of the NATO tree have ripened to full bitterness.
***
That’s not all, of course. America’s most powerful special interests include its defense establishment: what Dwight Eisenhower called “the military-industrial complex.” When the federal budget dedicates nearly $800 billion per year to military spending, the folks to whom that money goes get very determined to keep the valuta flowing. Their determination to influence American foreign policy in directions favorable to their firms cannot be overstated.
A good war every so often is vital to keeping the money pipeline full. Of equal relevance is the military’s need for some action every so often to stay sharp…and to provide command experience for its officer corps, without which promotions can be hard to come by. Trouble is, since the end of World War II there haven’t been a lot of wars that commanded a strong majority of popular sentiment. There was a little skirmish early in the Fifties, over in Korea, that started the downtrend. Our subsequent warring hasn’t produced a lot of victories the American people felt were worth what they cost us. The recent debacle in Afghanistan is representative, not unique. (Can you say “Vietnam?”)
And so here we are, with various influences pressing America to involve itself in the Russia / Ukraine conflict for their various reasons. The drumbeats are intensifying. Will they prevail? Unclear. But even less clear is the question of the American national interest. I, for one, would like to know what conceivable gains could accrue to the U.S. that are worth the possibility of triggering a nuclear exchange.
***
If you hearken back to the segment from The Guns of August that opens this piece, you will now see the relevance, if you hadn’t already. General Foch wanted Britain fully committed to its alliance with France, such that if France should go to war, Britain would automatically and fully commit its military to France’s assistance, with all that implies. Foch believed that a single British soldier killed in combat would be sufficient. Things were not so clear in London, but that’s merely an illustration of the gulf that divides the military from the diplomats.
What would cause the United States to commit fully to the defense of Ukraine against Russian aggression? Would it require American servicemen on the front lines? Or American warplanes patrolling Ukraine’s skies? Or perhaps merely an injection of weapons and funding for Ukraine’s forces? At what point would America see itself as a principal combatant in this affair?
More to the point, what degree of involvement would get Vladimir Putin to see us that way…and how would that conviction cause him to act?
Putin is, for all intents and purposes, the autarch of Russia. In foreign affairs, at least, he alone makes the decisions. He looks across the Atlantic today and sees Joe Biden, a senile figurehead for a gang of Usurpers actively hostile to American values. Does he fear what he sees? It seems implausible, especially given the destruction the Usurpers have already wreaked on America’s military.
So it seems unlikely that Putin would back down before an American gesture in support of Ukraine. It seems equally unlikely that American participation in the conflict would do more than amuse or anger him. Maybe it’s just me, but I don’t see anything good for Americans coming out of that scenario.
Especially if our nation commits to war under a half-conscious, reality-challenged Commander-in-Chief whose highest priority is to avoid answering questions from the White House press corps.
***
War is sometimes forced upon a nation. We were forced into World War II by the Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor. But the majority of wars in this era are “elective:” nations go to war because of Ludwig von Mises’ “axiom of action:” i.e., in the hope of securing favorable conditions or averting unfavorable ones. The decision to enter such a war is therefore economic.
Regardless of the evil of the Putin regime’s aggression against Ukraine, the United States need not commit itself to involvement. Ukraine has no alliance with us. Therefore, the question reduces to whether the consequences of involvement would be better or worse than the consequences of non-involvement.
Few aspects of that calculation are certain. Our men at arms who would die under fire would be worse off. Our economy, already staggering from Usurper policies, would be burdened still further. But the Usurpers themselves could foresee political gains: increased power and increased likelihood of retaining it despite the depredations of the two years behind us. Seldom does a nation at war change horses before the war’s conclusion.
Ahhh, Friday. Just as with Mondays, even retirees still look forward to them. No, it doesn’t make sense. Does it need to?
Have a few squibs before I sit down to compose the main event for today.
***
“Experts”
Gerard Van der Leun has done so much good stuff for so long that we who know him have been conditioned to expect his level of quality. Even so, now and then he reaches a new zenith:
In the past, you became an expert within a specific domain. For men, that meant farming, war, or governance. You spent most of your waking hours perfecting your skill in those fields, and trusted other experts for matters which you did not know. Today, the experts are liars. They will say anything the oligarchs want to keep their jobs and maintain a pleasurable lifestyle. We don’t have experts anymore, only shills, marketers, and traitors to mankind. The “experts” have declared this additive to be safe in food, but they lie for profit, and I must search online for the real story.
The old joke about an expert is that he’s “a person who knows more and more about less and less.” There was some substance to that jibe. Yet in times not all that far behind us, we could expect an expert to know something about his chosen domain, even if it were so narrow that 99% of us would be amazed to learn that it was an actual field of study. No longer.
Expertise has been ousted by credentialism – and the State awards the credentials.
***
More on “Experts”
Pace the preceding segment, I’ve often wondered if the principal function of the broadcast media is to promote ersatz “experts.” Their commentators seem to do little else, though there remain a couple of exceptions. Whatever the case, comparing the emissions of broadcast-media figures with those of truly intelligent and thoughtful persons, like Eliot’s “Streets that follow like a tedious argument / Of insidious intent,” leads me to an overwhelming question:
WTF, over?
Whoops! Excuse me, Gentle Reader. I have my moments, both good and bad. I’ll leave it to you to decide in which category the above belongs. But I do have an example for you:
Have you ever seen a brain so completely programmed with slanders and insults? So thoroughly cleansed of anything resembling rational thought? Yet this man went to the verge of hysterics when he saw that Donald Trump would win the presidency. Told us to “brace for impact,” as I recall. Of course, he had plenty of hysterical company.
***
Still More on “Experts”
Everybody’s got to have a thing. Some like pizza, others masturbation. I like complicated puns, Steven Seagal movies, and Harvey’s Bristol Cream sherry. But today this matter of “experts” and expertise is on my mind, and it must be purged before I can get down to serious work. You, Gentle Reader, are the, ah, beneficiary.
Time was, the title of “expert” was conferred upon a man by others after he’d repeatedly demonstrated his knowledge or competence in some field. Credentials had little or nothing to do with it. Those others had recognized that he’d acquired knowledge or competence and could bring it forth at need. Nothing else mattered.
This has given rise to a few jokes. One of the standards is that “he who last made a two-sided copy successfully shall be deemed the expert on the office copier.” Quite a few copier repairmen have dined out on that one. Yet it hearkened back to the older conception of the expert: he who has demonstrated knowledge or competence.
Given the plague of ersatz experts, and the increasingly urgent need among ordinary Americans to detect fake expertise and dismiss its purveyors, I’d like to suggest a handy discriminant. It’s served me well over the years, and I hope it will do the same for you:
The true expert is humble.
A genuine expert is aware of how often his predecessors and colleagues have been proved wrong. He expects no better record of accuracy for himself. He doesn’t present his opinions on carven stone tablets. Rather, he will allow that “this is what I’ve deduced from the available data.” When he’s revealed to have been in error, he admits it without resistance or rancor.
By contrast, a man who proclaims his conclusions in stentorian tones, with the implication that anyone who differs must be either an idiot or a villain, is ninety-nine-to-one a fake expert. Any shibboleths he invokes provide additional giveaways: “science,” “experts agree,” “the consensus,” and so forth. He never willingly admits to uncertainty error. When he’s shown to have been wrong, he does his best to avert any discredit. Nor will he apologize for misleading you.
Keep that one handy.
***
You Too Can Be An “Expert!”
Just yesterday a dear friend called me with a question. The call was unexpected, but the question was even more so:
“Do you split infinitives, Fran?”
It got me laughing so hard that I did an unprecedented thing: despite being in the middle of writing a complex, critically important passage of dialogue, I answered the phone. We had a nice conversation, to which the thing about infinitives was a mere grace note, made nearly irrelevant by the end of the chat. But my friend’s call and his choice of subject have stayed with me.
People still choose their own experts. They note demonstrations of knowledge or skill and remember them. At subsequent times of uncertainty, they will recur to the man who has shown them “how it’s done” and solicit his opinion. And if he remains reliable in that field, they’ll hang on to him, praise him, and recommend him to others. After all, isn’t that how we choose and treat our favored vendors of services?
That, too, is one to keep handy.
I hope to be back later with “Fraying Part 3.” Until then, be well.
PS: Feel free to split infinitives. Compound verbs too. Just because it’s impossible in Latin doesn’t mean it’s forbidden to you. You’re a mature, taxpaying American, for God’s sake, so go out there and act like it! 😁
He is threatening to invade Ukraine because he want democracy to fail — and not just in that country. ~ Anne Applebaum.[1]
Wasn’t the objective of the 2014 U.S. regime change operation in Ukraine designed to remove the elected president of the country? I mean, I’m just asking here. And I have it on good authority that it was the U.S. State Department that selected Arseniy Yatsenyuk as the next prime minister in early 2014. I seem to be missing the parts where these changes came about by means of anything faintly “democratic.” And boy were we energized about removing Bashar al-Assad in Syria, whose people seem to vote for him as president with some regularity. But, right, Mr. Putin wants democracy to fail. Got it.
“Democracy” is one of those words or terms that have impereceptibly taken over political discourse like “gender,” “impact,” “choice,” “women’s health,” “voter suppression,” “privilege,” “underprivileged,” “underserved,” “disadvantaged,” “racism,” “privacy,” “affirmative action,” “inner city,” “central city,” “youths,” “baby mama,” “poor schools,” “food deserts,” “gun violence,” “rape culture,” and “prison industrial complex.” Of course, the U.S. is not a democracy but a constitutional republic whose avowed purpose is to secure the blessings of liberty, inter alia, by restricting federal powers vis-à-vis the states and dividing those powers between the three branches of government. The idea that we have supposedly become a democracy would have horrified the Founders, Ratifiers and citizens of that generation.
Liberty requires restraint on government excess but democracy bypasses that vital feature. Rather it is the citizen’s sacred right to go through the futile motions of casting a ballot that makes leftists swoon. As Ben Bartee reports
“Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organised groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on US government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence.”[2]
So lifting up voting as the crowning glory of our system is a bit much. Not to mention Pelosi weeping crocodile tears about “the temple of our democracy” while living in a deep snooze about the disgraceful abuse of the 1/6 “insurrectionists” and the summary execution of Ashley Babbitt. But it is clear, isn’t it, that the payoff for this linguistic distortion is that the erosion of our liberty disappears from public perception?
Come to think of it, I want democracy to fail too, but serious failure is in the works as we speak anyway, so what I think about that is beside the point. Do let it be noted, however, that supposed serious people are utterly clueless about the essentials of our system, such as it was. It ended up that very smart people were too clever by half and contributed nothing more than your average drug-addicted street person.
There are times when I have doubts about how I spend my time. Keeping a hawkeye on the politicians, not only of our country, but others, as well. Taking the time to write out posts explaining just WHY we should care. Spending time on social media, promoting discussion of government overreach abuses, and urging others to spread the word.
Wading through official documents – proclamations, rules, legislation – analyzing the effect on ordinary citizens, and looking for anti-Constitutional effects.
Looking for ways to bring up aspects of government abuses that even the Woke can agree are Just Too Much.
And, now, seeing the result of a relatively small group of people, firm in their resistance to the vaccine mandates, bring the Trudeau government to reverse course.
Win!
Kudos, Canadians! Sometimes, the Mild-Mannered Triumph!
We interrupt this series of “Fraying” essays to address the question that seems to be on a majority of Americans’ minds at this time:
Is Biden Out Of His BLEEP!ing Mind?
Warning! Spoiler Alert! Yes.
But this leads to a larger and ultimately more important subject: foreign policy and what constitutes the “national interest.”
***
Undefined and terminally vague phrases have dominated the foreign-policy debates since the formation of NATO. The Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch have already seen me froth at the mouth over ”national defense” and “national security.” But the title phrase of this piece is at least as portentous, in part because it lends itself to so many interpretations, each of them a slight departure from the others.
When we speak of an individual’s interests, the matter is acceptably clear: the preservation and furtherance of those things and conditions that make his life survivable and pleasant. That would naturally include his health, his honestly acquired property, the well-being of those he loves, and the overall condition of his neighborhood. While we might haggle a bit at the margins of these things – is the maintenance of the current zoning laws included in that list? – we can generally reach an agreement on his interests with a single clarifying question: Which of these things is he morally permitted to defend by force?
Force is the standard. It divides the moral universe into Go and No-Go zones. It also compels cost-benefit analyses: If I pull my guns, will I come to regret it on net balance? Many a citizen has faced that question in real time, when the answers are most pertinent and painful.
But try to apply that standard to “national interest.” Matters become far slipperier. Agreement is hard to achieve. And rather often, the federal government of these United States will plow right on ahead without bothering to acquire such agreement.
This could become a discussion of the morality of third-party decision-making: in particular, who bears the costs for Washington’s decisions. That’s beyond my intentions this morning. When a politician starts waving “the national interest” in support of his demands, you may rest assured that if he gets his way, someone else will be doing the bleeding for his cause.
***
“Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn’t control all those conditions. If he did, he’d never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he’s compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not.”
“What conditions can do that to you?”
His mouth quirked. “Yes, what conditions indeed?” Oops. Here we go again. “Weather could do it.”
“How?”
“By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion.”
“Good. Another.”
“Economics. Once the economy of your country’s been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you’re running out of resources.”
“Excellent. One more.”
She thought hard. “Superior generalship on the other side?”
He clucked in disapproval. “Does the opponent ever want you to fight?”
“No, sorry. Let me think.”
He waited. Conditions. Conditions you can’t control. Conditions that…control you.
“Politics. The political leadership won’t accept retreat or surrender until you’ve been so badly mangled that it’s obvious even to an idiot.”
The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.
“It’s the general’s worst nightmare,” he whispered. “Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry’s charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads–to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.
“It hasn’t been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills.”
In our time, politicians are often more avid for combat than the men who’d be doing the fighting. One of the reasons, of course, is the one Malcom Loughlin, grandmaster of all things martial, gives to his student Christine. Another is the payoff to the politicians involved in fomenting warfare.
They would never admit to this, of course. Instead they make vague assertions about the “national interest.” The phrase has been used to defend the indefensible on several occasions. Even “good” wars – i.e., the ones we generally agree are against an evil force that should be put down – contain episodes no decent person could justify. Such events have punctuated all the wars since Christ walked the earth.
From the politician’s perspective, that changes nothing. With tragically rare exceptions, he’s thinking exclusively about his bank balance, his prospects for higher office, and his “image.” But don’t you dare question his assertions about the “national interest!” He’ll call you a poltroon, a stooge, a traitor…in a phrase favored by a friend, “everything but white.” What he won’t do is offer a reasoned argument for why a military intervention to inflict “regime change” upon Whackistan or to protect the “sovereignty” of Upyourassov would conduce to any objective gain for the people of these United States.
***
I rant a lot about the need to use words and language accurately and precisely. It’s in the gravest of the political trenches that the need becomes most acute. These vagaries – “national defense,” “national security,” “national interest” – have been used over and over to insert American forces into places where there was little or no chance that anything good could come of the intervention for Americans. Indeed, some Americans would die. All of us would bleed from the wallet. And other unpleasantries would follow, as foreign politicians, satraps, and tyrants eager to “do business” with President Him or Senator Her strive to induce an American military expedition in their favor.
Granted that decisions to go to war cannot be subjected to a national plebiscite. They will always be made by political bodies. But We the Put-Upon have a duty to ask sharp, clarifying questions about the wherefores of such a decision before the decision becomes irrevocable. Surely Vietnam, Afghanistan, and Iraq have taught us that much.
Yesterday’s rather melancholy piece provoked some contention, but there was less of that than there was of dour, semi-resigned agreement. Quite a number of my correspondents wrote to say “I wish you were wrong, but I fear you aren’t,” albeit not in so many words. Nearly all of them asked me not to mention their names here, which is consistent with the current climate of intimidation and fear.
But of course, no phenomenon as portentous and sweeping as the collapse of the greatest civilization in history can be adequately addressed in one brief essay. It takes at least two. And so here we are, grim of aspect, girded of loin, fully prepared to address the questions that are on the mind of the typical Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch:
“How did this happen?”
“What comes next?”
No, it won’t be any more fun than yesterday.
***
Yesterday, I enumerated four sociopolitical influences:
Socialism,
Atheism,
Moral relativism,
Solipsism,
…and styled them “intellectual pathogens.” And yes, I had a disease analogy in mind at the time. The explication has arrived.
The living human body possesses an immune system that responds to the introduction of inimical bacteria and viruses. It’s not perfect, but half a million years of practice has rendered it pretty good. With only modest conscious support from the host – i.e., eat the right things; get enough rest; exercise now and then; avoid cranky neighbors, door-to-door solicitors, and prime-time television – it manages to keep him reasonably healthy and capable for seven or eight decades. It does this by producing antibodies that will locate the invading microbes, close with them, and destroy them.
A similar set of mechanisms is available to the mind, though few conceive of them in such terms. When faced with a disturbing social or political proposition, a healthy mind responds by activating its reasoning center, which then:
Confronts the proposition’s implications for the alteration of the status quo,
Marshals the available evidence;
Uses logic to deduce what would follow from the acceptance of the proposition;
Measures those consequences against moral-ethical precepts and the existing order of things.
Each step in this amassing of intellectual antibodies must be performed with due respect for the reality principle: What is, is. Objective evidence must be granted its due. The identity and convictions of its discoverer are irrelevant. How we feel about it is irrelevant. Samuel Johnson knocks out Bishop Berkeley in the first round. Full Stop.
The process must also acknowledge human fallibility. Any of us can be wrong. Therefore, no conclusion should be regarded as immune from reconsideration, especially if fresh evidence emerges that calls it into question.
For many years, that process, evoked by education and bolstered by experience, protected Americans from the devastating effects of the pathogens I cited. Only recently in historical terms has it faltered.
There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root. – Henry David Thoreau
The intellectual pathogens have always had their advocates. Early in the Twentieth Century, those persons, aggrieved by how little progress their pet nostrums had made, communed in several centers of evil – the best known is probably the Institute for Social Research / Frankfurt School — and analyzed the defenses of the free nations of the world. Being good strategists, rather than just continuing in their established course but “doing it harder,” they sought a point of attack that would undermine the philosophical structure of Western thought. The one they found was the concept of objective truth.
Truth is an evaluation: a judgment that some proposition corresponds to objective reality sufficiently for men to rely upon it. The weakening of the concept of truth cuts an opening through which baldly counterfactual propositions can be thrust into serious discourse. Smith might say that proposition X is disprovable, or that it contradicts common observations of the world; Jones counters that X suits him fine, for he has dismissed the disprovers as “partisan” and prefers his own observations to those of Smith. Unless the two agree on standards for relevant evidence, pertinent reasoning, and common verification — in other words, standards for what can be accepted as sufficiently true — their argument over X will never end.
An interest group that has “put its back against the wall” as regards its central interest, and is unwilling to concede the battle regardless of the evidence and logic raised against its claims, will obfuscate, attack the motives of its opponents, and attempt to misdirect their attention with irrelevancies. When all of these have failed, its last-ditch defense is to attack the concept of truth. Once that has been undermined, the group can’t be defeated. It can stay on the ideological battlefield indefinitely, preserving the possibility of victory through attrition or fatigue among its opponents.
I distinguish truth, at least rhetorically, from fact. By truth, I mean to address propositions of cause and effect, especially in the social, economic, and political realms. Remember that every statement about cause and effect has preconditions – required context – whose absence or violation nullifies the statement. That makes it possible for an attacker to “change the game” subtly by introducing deviations from the required preconditions without saying openly that he’s doing so. It’s a lot harder to get people to ignore or dismiss the evidence of their senses than it is to get them to entertain a proposition such as “It might not work like that for everyone, everywhere, in every era.”
All the same, to arrive at truth is the objective of sound reasoning. We may not possess many absolute truths, which require no preconditions whatsoever and always operate in exactly the same fashion, but we must do our best to study the evidence, formulate hypotheses, design tests for the cause-and-effect proposition involved, and dispassionately observe and record the results.
***
Some years ago, a deceitful book, I, Rigoberta Menchu, was published to international accolades. It affected many and was widely praised as a real-life narrative of the life of an Indian peasant in Guatemala. Yet, as anthropologist and Guatemalan expert David Stoll discovered after considerable research, it was mostly a fabrication.
The book’s defenders were many among the glitterati. They leaped on Stoll en masse, impugning his personal motives and proclaiming his research fraudulent. Yet they never refuted Stoll’s central assertion: that the majority of the incidents related in the book had not occurred. When challenged to do so, they retreated to a position that should be familiar to contemporary readers: “The facts may have been wrong, but the narrative was right.”
Facts are important barriers to the intellectual pathogens. “It might not work like that for everyone, everywhere, in every era” is best met by “Perhaps not, but it did work like that in every case in recorded history.” The pathogen advocate sometimes replies, “Well, there may be unrecorded instances in which it didn’t,” to which the rebuttal should be “Until you can present verifiable evidence, we’ll stick with what we know.” However, not many people are willing to riposte that way today. It sounds as if you’re challenging the other guy’s honesty…which you are.
The availability of verifiable facts makes reasoning possible. Thus, the pathogen advocates must somehow cast doubt on the facts or render them inadmissible. They strive to do this at every turn.
***
No assault on verifiable facts and reliable, if context-dependent, truths could capture everyone, of course. The strategists of the Left knew this. They selected their targets on the basis of their innocence and susceptibility: American youth. This folded nicely into Antonio Gramsci’s advocacy of a “long march through the institutions.” But not every institution would be attacked simultaneously. The big prizes, the engines of cultural formation, had to come first:
Education,
Journalism,
Art,
Entertainment.
If these could be colonized, they would provide a beachhead from which assaults on the rationality of American youth could be launched. And of course, that has proved to be the case.
Educators and journalists were the first to be corrupted: in part through appeals to their vanity, and in part through the distortion of what they were taught. It didn’t take long before a quite substantial fraction of each occupation had been convinced that “we decide what constitutes important information and real knowledge.” Who was there to contradict them? Other members of their trades? Most were too courteous, or too averse to confrontation. Ad hominem counterblasts would serve to deal with the rest.
The arts and entertainment came next. If the young could be persuaded that there’s something wrong with artistic standards – e.g., that representational art is outdated; that rhyme and meter in poetry are disposable conventions; that music need not conform to structural rules or please the ear – they could be made to listen to critics and reviewers rather than to their own esthetic sensibilities. The coarsening of the art and entertainment worlds paid off spectacularly in the coarsening of young Americans themselves, especially after America’s public schools were integrated. The consequences continue to blossom to this day.
***
The vector sum of the influences mentioned above was a thoroughgoing destruction of the reality principle. The facts of history were “whatevered;” established truths about human nature and society became “your truth / our truth.” The maturing influence of education and cultural familiarization was replaced, incredibly, by the self-esteem movement. It ceased to matter whether little Johnny knew about the principles behind the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution. Indeed, it ceased to matter whether he could read them. Could he sing or play a scale? Could he appreciate the great painters and sculptors of the Renaissance and what made them great? Of course not. So what? Did he feel good about himself? Nothing else mattered.
In retrospect, we were blind to far too many evil trends. We’re reaping the consequences today:
The misunderstanding of principles;
The rejection of prudence and temperance;
The unwillingness to delay personal gratification;
The belief that human will can override natural laws;
The unwillingness to consider incentives and their effects;
The inability to discriminate between right and wrong, or better and worse;
The elevation of trendy “gurus” over persons of demonstrable wisdom and accomplishments.
It’s not obvious that each of these things opened an avenue for the introduction of the aforementioned pathogens. Yet all of them have contributed. Consider how the dismissal of natural laws makes atheism and moral relativism more plausible. Consider how insistence on the immediate gratification of desires dovetails with the socialist premise. And consider how important confusion about right and wrong, why they matter, and how to tell them apart play into solipsism.
These corruptions have not captured the entire country. However, they are pronounced among young Americans – and tragically, when challenged on any of the above, those misled, miseducated, malformed young folks mainly look to their corrupters for guidance. The assumptions insinuated into them are too deeply rooted to elicit serious contemplation of where the went wrong…even among those who concede that yes, they have gone wrong and things have gotten very, very bad.
***
Many of us who’ve been uninvolved in any of the above must nevertheless accept a dollop of culpability. For example, we in the realms of technology did not think things through. We were frequently too entranced by our own gee-whizzery to think seriously about the consequences of what we were unleashing upon the world. We paid too little attention to how the corrupters would exploit our developments. They used much of what we produced to destroy our children’s ability to think and discriminate.
You thought television was a bad influence? Think about what Facebook, Twitter, and TikTok have done to America’s youth, and shudder.
***
I expect that there will be many cries of dismay over this piece. Some will see reflections of their own misdeeds and defaults, and will recoil from the implications. Others will argue that they had no power to countervail what was being done, even to their own children. And yes, we’re all limited beings, and we all have to earn a living. Well, you can’t please everyone. At any rate, I gave up trying before I turned forty.
Yes, there will be a third essay. It will cover still more consequences of what I’ve been delineating. Some of them might be pleasant, so stay tuned.
This will be a rather sad piece, I fear. Still, hang in there. You never know when a ray of light might come through the clouds.
***
Unreal City, Under the brown fog of a winter dawn, A crowd flowed over London Bridge, so many, I had not thought death had undone so many. Sighs, short and infrequent, were exhaled, And each man fixed his eyes before his feet. Flowed up the hill and down King William Street, To where Saint Mary Woolnoth kept the hours With a dead sound on the final stroke of nine. There I saw one I knew, and stopped him, crying: “Stetson! “You who were with me in the ships at Mylae! “That corpse you planted last year in your garden, “Has it begun to sprout? Will it bloom this year? “Or has the sudden frost disturbed its bed? “Oh keep the Dog far hence, that’s friend to men, “Or with his nails he’ll dig it up again! “You! hypocrite lecteur!—mon semblable,—mon frère!”
Among the Modernist poets, Thomas Stearns Eliot stands supreme. His superb images and allusions were made possible by great perspicacity and a wealth of learning to which few others of the era could aspire. His mastery of hidden rhyme and metric schemes spoke of a singularly sensitive “ear.” Yet much of his work is terribly depressing, daunting to read in quantity, and troublesome to recommend to others for that reason. His magnum opusThe Waste Land is emblematic of his sensibility.
The Waste Land speaks of post-World War I Europe: the devastation and enervation the Great War wrought upon it. Physically, Eliot’s Britain suffered somewhat less than the Continental nations. Yet Britain’s exhaustion was as deep as that of France or Germany, if not deeper. As the center of “advanced” sociopolitical thought for the West, its malaise would have unequaled consequences for our civilization.
Eliot could sense this. Indeed, with the symptoms of civilizational decay all around him, one of his intellect could hardly deny it. Nevertheless, he worked tirelessly to record his perceptions, in poems of exquisite structure and power. But I wonder if he could have withstood the rot that is upon us of today.
***
Among the things a civilization requires for cohesion is a set of near-unanimously agreed norms. They don’t necessarily have to agree with the norms or principles of other times and places, though to be sure, some norms are more stable than others, and bring more practical advantages to the civilization that adopts them.
There are other features common to successful civilizations, of course. But its norms are a necessary feature. The civilization of classical Sparta held to its norms better than the rest of the world around it. Until it was overrun by superior force, it was the stablest state of its time and place – even though its norms would elicit horror if they were imposed upon a contemporary people.
When a sufficient percentage of the populace disaffiliates from the common norms, the civilization is in trouble. It develops insular sub-populations: enclaves and exclaves in which persons from the larger society would be uncomfortable, even endangered. Historically, for the greater part of the nation to reassert and reimpose the norms by force upon such sub-populations has seldom worked. What matters, then, is the allegiance itself: the emotional bonding to the norms by the overwhelming majority.
Though a society’s norms may appear as mere customs to an outside observer, their operational character is that of moral boundaries. Some things are compulsory; some things are forbidden; and some things, though not proscribed by law, are simply “not done.” To conform to the norms is to be “a citizen in good standing.” Violators are punished, whether by legal penalties or social ones.
The norms of pre-World War I Europe were Christian and optimistic. The century before the War had brought unprecedented economic, technological, and social progress to every nation of the Old World. The ninety-nine years from the conclusion of the Battle of Waterloo to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand were the greatest era of peace and civilizational development Mankind had ever witnessed.
Note: I said progress, not “perfection.” There are no perfect eras and no perfect societies, and there never will be. Mankind is fallen. Our propensity for serious errors and outright evil is ineradicable until the Second Coming. Besides, find me two people who agree on what would constitute a “perfect” society. Defining “perfection” in any context is like trying to sculpt steam.
The unprecedented destruction of the Great War shattered Europe’s confidence in its norms, and thus in its future. Socialism, atheism, moral relativism, and solipsism – intellectual pathogens that had been held in check by the principles of the Christian Enlightenment – were freed to wreak destruction upon a generation of disaffected and unmoored young Europeans. Their elders were mostly too tired and disheartened to check them.
***
A civilization’s norms are often best expressed in compact imperatives:
Obey the law.
Be considerate.
Respect life.
Defend the family.
Stay clean.
Avoid excess.
Love your neighbor.
Really, could a torrent of words express those values any better? I think not, though I’m willing to entertain arguments to the contrary.
These ideas, which were once considered so fundamental as to constitute a complete moral-ethical education, were nearly universally accepted and observed in both America and pre-Great War Europe. The “lost generation” that prevailed artistically after the War largely dismissed them as “failed” – without having argued successfully against them. They regarded the War itself as an unimpeachable refutation.
Note that even though several of the premier artists of that era were Americans, the sense of civilizational enervation and decay hardly touched the United States. Americans were willing to consume the products of Hemingway, Faulkner, and Steinbeck without taking them as panoramic descriptions of the nation as a whole. American society had its problems – the Great Depression would teach us that — but we continued to believe in ourselves. We remained a nearly-unanimous Christian-Enlightenment society. Dissidents were few; deviates did their best to stay hidden. The insular sub-populations among us were not significantly influential.
Initially, World War II appeared to do no greater damage to our norms and our fidelity to them than had World War I. The thinkers and commentators of the first two postwar decades remained optimistic. They foresaw unending social and economic progress, this time with America lighting the way for the rest of the world. But they may have been mistaken about that.
***
He looked unwell, not in the body but in the spirit. His face was slack and his mouth hung partway open. I could hear his breathing when he was still ten yards away. He tramped through the remnants of the spring snow as if he had lost his strength, or his will to use it. “What’s up, Louis?” Even his shrug spoke of a bone-deep weariness. “Nothing. Out for a walk. Are you busy?” I am never busy, as he reckons it. “Not at the moment. Coffee?” “Sure.” We went inside, fetched coffee and sat at my dinette table. It’s about large enough to set a TV dinner on and still have room for the salt and pepper service, but I don’t need more. “Are things not going well?” I said. “No, no real changes. Life goes on.” That it does. “You don’t look your best.” “I know.” He wrapped his hands around his mug and hunched over it, as if he sought words it wouldn’t take too much effort to speak. I’ve never been happy to wait, but I have learned to wait for him. It has never been time wasted. “They’re killing themselves, Malcolm.” “Who is?” He jerked an arm at nothing. “All of them. All the ones you thought I could protect.” The mug quivered in his hand. “How so, Louis?” He told me the story of Celeste and Alex and their baby. When he wound down, he waited for me to tell him he was wrong, in whole or in part. I had nothing to say. He was right.
Of the seven imperatives that lead the previous segment, which would you say are still accepted and observed by the overwhelming majority in today’s America?
I’d have a tough time arguing that any one of them retains its previous force. If they were important to the cohesion of American society, then what ought we to have expected from the weakening of allegiance to them?
The norms of the Christian Enlightenment cannot sustain themselves without allegiants, and their number declines daily. No other norm – that of Cthulhu excepted – has arisen to cement us together. Whence, therefore, should we expect to go, other than to Eliot’s Waste Land?
[With applause and deep gratitude to Anthony Esolen for his highly relevant essay of yesterday.]
Hey, it’s Monday. Never imagine that that doesn’t distress a “retired” guy quite as much as a still-working stiff. Actually, I had more free time when I was working for someone else…and I’m not the only retired engineer who would say so.
***
1. What’s so important about this “freedom” crap?
If you’re a Washington Post editor, it might not be entirely clear to you:
Political freedom is the central concept of the Enlightenment. Yes, the Enlightenment was largely propelled by white European thinkers. So what? Is the Post trying to tell us that persons of other races have no desire to be free? Or do its editors have something more sinister in mind?
Yet this paper, once regarded as a jewel of American journalism, is owned by the founder of Amazon. Go figure.
Charles Thomas Munger (born January 1, 1924) is an American billionaire investor, businessman, former real estate attorney, architectural designer, and philanthropist. He is vice chairman of Berkshire Hathaway, the conglomerate controlled by Warren Buffett; Buffett has described Munger as his closest partner and right-hand man. Munger served as chairman of Wesco Financial Corporation from 1984 through 2011. He is also chairman of the Daily Journal Corporation, based in Los Angeles, California, and a director of Costco Wholesale Corporation.
Clearly, this is a man who knows a little something about money. Here’s additional evidence to that effect:
When a billionaire who’s one of Warren Buffett’s longtime lieutenants speaks on the subject, it’s wise to listen.
An Airbnb user who never intends to leave. Tenants not paying enough rent to keep up buildings. A roommate temporarily renting a room who later decides not to move out.
Under the Legislature’s misleadingly named “Good Cause Eviction” bill, these occupants can all remain in their apartments forever and the property owner has virtually no recourse.
“No Eviction Ever” would be a better name for an absurdly vague, sweeping proposal that would place strict new limits on rent increases and evictions for nearly 1.6 million New York renters.
While some revisions are likely, the business community and real-estate industry nonetheless fear it’ll become law with its devastating core elements intact.
The bill broadly defines nearly anyone who pays another person to occupy real estate in New York as a “tenant” and expressly prevents landlords from removing them except in the narrowest circumstances.
New York City’s insane rent-control and rent-stabilization ordinances have destroyed the confidence of landlords in the Big Apple. Many of them have been frantically striving to get out of that role. The conversion of apartment buildings to condominia is one approach; another is just to sell the BLEEP!ing building, tenants and all, to some ignorant fool who’s unaware of what the city will do to him. A few landlords, driven to despair, have simply abandoned their properties…and have found in the aftermath that the city will pursue them wherever they might flee.
Now we have this – statewide.
Don’t sign up with AirBNB or the Hospitality Exchange. The downside is too steep.
A spokesman for ACT Policing has confirmed that LRADs were deployed during the anti-vaccine protests.
Last weekend in Canberra the Australian Federal Police Commissioner Reece Kershaw complained that the grassroots movement against forced jabs were a “challenge” for law enforcement. Videos from the march show huge crowds rising up against their government’s dictates which is why pro-mandate government officials retaliated.
The police deployed long-range acoustic devices (LRADs), which transmit at high volumes and frequencies. Even if they are referred to as “non-lethal weapons”, Canberra protesters (including women and children) were badly burned by directed microwave energy beams, complaining of blisters on their faces, arms, and torsos. Concentrated microwave radiation can inflict painful burns on the skin from long distances away.
Protesters were also reporting feeling nauseous, and suffering from vertigo and dizziness – outcomes associated with acoustic crowd control weapons.
This is nasty stuff. It can kill, cripple, sterilize, and generally ruin your day. I have personal experience to this effect, having worked on EM weapon systems for many years.
Why are the governments of two important AngloSphere nations so averse to admitting to error? Have their ruling classes gone insane, or is it merely a case of “the worst getting on top” — ?
Beware, America. We’re as afflicted as the Canadians and the Australians, and sooner or later it will bite us. Indeed, it’s already taking some hefty nibbles.
Some argue COVID-19 vaccine mandates are human rights violations. Not really, say experts on actual human rights violations.
In fact, some point to the more fundamental right of everyone to be protected from COVID-19 – particularly as variants continue to disproportionately impact the unvaccinated.
You’ve got to love it. “Experts on actual human rights violations.” “More fundamental right.” “Disproportionate impact.” How did this clown manage not to work in “minorities and the poor will suffer most” — ?
Forcing something into an unwilling person’s body under any other circumstances is an act of rape. No one and no government has a “right” to do that to anyone. Full Stop.
But that phrase “fundamental right” was carefully chosen. It’s one of the entering wedges of the Left in their campaign against human freedom. Have a few other instances:
“We have a fundamental right to be safe from gun violence.”
“We have a fundamental right to affordable housing.”
“We have a fundamental right to non-GMO food.”
“We have a fundamental right to a living wage.”
“We have a fundamental right to health care.”
“Fundamental rights” “Fundamental!” Don’t you dare claim your rights to your life, liberty, and your honestly acquired property are superior to these, you damnable freedom weenie! These are FUNDAMENTAL!
This is the sort of talk that makes me look longingly at the Barrett .50 and the stash of Oreo Double-Stufs®. As one my favorite Heinlein protagonists said, “Some people talk better if they breathe vacuum.”
***
That’s all for today, I think. I have other responsibilities to meet, a novel straining to be born, and a need for a nap. Enjoy your (ulp) Monday.
It’s amazed me the extent to which many Western governments during the “pandemic” adopted the identical hostility to alternate prophylactics, palliatives and treatments and had the identical fixation on so-called vaccination, lockdowns, economic destruction, statistical distortion,[1] and general viciousness. The following is from an article that suggests what the common thread is:
Pharmaceutical companies such as Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Moderna, and Astra-Zeneca were actively lobbying governments to buy their vaccines as early as February 2020, supposedly less than a month after the genetic sequence (or partial sequence) was made available by China.
As a person who spent his whole professional career in pharmaceutical and vaccine development, I found the whole concept of going from scratch to a ready-to-use vaccine in a few months simply preposterous.
Something did not add up.
I knew of the names with which everyone has become familiar. Bill Gates, Neil Ferguson, Jeremy Farrar, Anthony Fauci, and others had either been lobbying for or pursuing the lockdown strategies for many years. But still, the scope of the actions seemed too large to even be explained by those names alone.
So, the fundamental questions that I have been asking myself have been why and who? The “Why” seems to always come back to issues besides public health. Of course the “Who” had the obvious players such as the WHO, China, CDC, NIH/NIAID, and various governments but there seemed to be more behind it than that. These players have been connected to the “public health” aspect but that seemed to be only scratching the surface.[2]
Spoiler alert: the World Economic Forum (WEF) and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation are extremely active and successful in recruiting a lot of people around the world in and out of government. And the number of major corporations signing on to the WEF is amazing. Serious money is behind the WEF.
I don’t think Mr. Koops goes far enough in emphasizing the destructive purpose of the WEF and its astonishing totalitarian, revolutionary objectives that we, the mole people, are to end up owning nothing, frolicking among the daisies, and touching our cap to our betters. Build back better with “better” defined by whom? Do those elitist scum think that we’ll all just give up our houses and bank accounts voluntarily because of the sheer brilliance of the Great Reset that has issued from the mind of Klaus the Great? This will happen by democratic means?
Still, it’s a terrific article if for no other reason that he knows vaccines and blows the whistle on the absurdly short development process. The reasonable suspicions of the mole people about a deeply hidden depopulation agenda are another thing entirely but that would require another article addressing the statistical fraud and the concealment of the amazing adverse reactions seen post injection. The times are so absurd that absurd notions need to be addressed as well.
Notes [1] “Died of covid,” “infection survival rate > 95.5% = immense peril,” “adverse reaction < 14 days after injection not vaccine related,” “omicron variant deadly deadly,” “infants need vaccination.” [2] “The Next Step For The World Economic Forum.” By Roger Koops, ZeroHedge, 2/20/22 (emphasis removed).
Forgive me, Gentle Reader. Because of the graphic above, which I found over at 90 Miles From Tyranny, my memory has assaulted me again, and so I find that I must do a terrible thing. How terrible it is, I shall leave for you to decide.
About thirty-five years ago, Long Island’s regional disgrace published an op-ed piece from some socialist flack who argued that socialism is superior to capitalism because it’s “more democratic.” The words democracy and democratic have been used as the cover for a multitude of sins, but that one struck me with particular force. And so I wrote an angry letter to the rag dissecting the fallacies presented in that op-ed. It appeared on the Letters page a few days later.
In the usual case, diatribes such as mine result in nothing much. However, that letter was an exception. A day or two after the letter appeared, I received a call from a very pleasant gentleman named Leslie Ramsammy, who was at that time running for the presidency of Guyana. It proved an illuminating encounter for us both.
Those who hate capitalism will do anything to slander, undermine, and destroy it. This has been demonstrated repeatedly since before World War II. Below, I present a compact review of the major attempts, taken from the late Dr. Murray Rothbard’s book For A New Liberty:
Let us consider the record of recent decades:
1. In the late 1930s and early 1940s, the liberal intellectuals came to the conclusion that capitalism was suffering from inevitable “secular stagnation,” a stagnation imposed by the slowing down of population growth, the end of the old Western frontier, and by the supposed fact that no further inventions were possible. All this spelled eternal stagnation, permanent mass unemployment, and therefore the need for socialism, or thoroughgoing State planning, to replace free-market capitalism. This on the threshold of the greatest boom in American history!
2. During the 1950s, despite the great boom in postwar America, the liberal intellectuals kept raising their sights; the cult of “economic growth” now entered the scene. To be sure, capitalism was growing, but it was not growing fast enough. Therefore free-market capitalism must be abandoned, and socialism or government intervention must step in and force-feed the economy, must build investments and compel greater saving in order to maximize the rate of growth, even if we don’t want to grow that fast. Conservative economists such as Colin Clark attacked this liberal program as “growthmanship.”
3. Suddenly, John Kenneth Galbraith entered the liberal scene with his best-selling The Affluent Society in 1958. And just as suddenly, the liberal intellectuals reversed their indictments. The trouble with capitalism, it now appeared, was that it had grown too much; we were no longer stagnant, but too well off, and man had lost his spirituality amidst supermarkets and automobile tail fins. What was necessary, then, was for government to step in, either in massive intervention or as socialism, and tax the consumers heavily in order to reduce their bloated affluence.
4. The cult of excess affluence had its day, to be superseded by a contradictory worry about poverty, stimulated by Michael Harrington’s The Other America in 1962. Suddenly, the problem with America was not excessive affluence, but increasing and grinding poverty—and, once again, the solution was for the government to step in, plan mightily, and tax the wealthy in order to lift up the poor. And so we had the War on Poverty for several years.
5. Stagnation; deficient growth; over-affluence; over-poverty; the intellectual fashions changed like ladies’ hemlines. Then, in 1964, the happily short-lived Ad Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution issued its then-famous manifesto, which brought us and the liberal intellectuals full circle. For two or three frenetic years we were regaled with the idea that America’s problem was not stagnation but the exact reverse: in a few short years all of America’s production facilities would be automated and cybernated, incomes and production would be enormous and superabundant, but everyone would be automated out of a job. Once again, free-market capitalism would lead to permanent mass unemployment, which could only be remedied—you guessed it!—by massive State intervention or by outright socialism. For several years, in the mid- 1960s, we thus suffered from what was justly named the “Automation Hysteria.”1
6. By the late 1960s it was clear to everyone that the automation hysterics had been dead wrong, that automation was proceeding at no faster a pace than old-fashioned “mechanization” and indeed that the 1969 recession was causing a falling off in the rate of increase of productivity. One hears no more about automation dangers nowadays; we are now in the seventh phase of liberal economic flip-flops.
7. Affluence is again excessive, and, in the name of conservation, ecology, and the increasing scarcity of resources, free-market capitalism is growing much too fast. State planning, or socialism, must, of course, step in to abolish all growth and bring about a zero-growth society and economy— in order to avoid negative growth, or retrogression, sometime in the future! We are now back to a super-Galbraithian position, to which has been added scientific jargon about effluents, ecology, and “spaceship earth,” as well as a bitter assault on technology itself as being an evil polluter. Capitalism has brought about technology, growth—including population growth, industry, and pollution—and government is supposed to step in and eradicate these evils…. The great economist Joseph Schumpeter put the whole shoddy performance of liberal intellectuals into a nutshell a generation ago:
Capitalism stands its trial before judges who have the sentence of death in their pockets. They are going to pass it, whatever the defense they may hear; the only success victorious defense can possibly produce is a change in the indictment.
I trust that the matter is adequately elucidated.
***
One more thing before I close for the morning. Bad ideas seldom simply vanish, even after repeated, progressively wearying demonstrations of their horrors. The above was motivated not merely by the graphic at the top, but by how Dr. Ramsammy, an intelligent and highly educated man, accepted the “socialism is better because it’s democratic” premise almost reflexively.
If anyone still fails to understand why the words democracy and democratic have begun to make me violently ill – emphasis on the violent part – see me after class. I’ll pick out a new switch just for you.
In the early morning – obscenely early by most Americans’ standards – is when the ideas that spur deeper contemplation usually occur to me. Perhaps that’s because the more recently awakened is one’s mind, the more likely it is to perceive without distraction. The world certainly provides a wealth of distractions, but at 4:00 AM most of them are still abed and asleep. At any rate, I’m less likely to focus on them.
This morning I have a striking parallelism in mind. It concerns the way in which certain things – in one case certain words and ideas; in the other certain human actions – have been driven from acceptability to virtual criminality. The links between them are disapproval and our dislike of being disapproved.
***
After the conclusion of World War II, agencies that had been at work among American liberals began to attack the prevailing notions about the races. Let there be no ambiguity about this: the great majority of American Caucasians were uneasy when around Negroes, thought little of their capabilities, and wanted to live apart from them. Moreover, typical American Caucasians were unabashed about saying so. For example, until the Brooklyn Dodgers signed the greatly talented Jackie Robinson in 1947, the professional sports leagues made no allowance for them. But sentiment toward treating the members of all races according to their merits was growing.
During roughly the same period, there arose a tumult, originally concentrated at certain colleges, over “free speech.” I don’t have all the details, but from what I’ve read the University of California at Berkeley was where matters came to a head. The student-led movement claimed that students’ freedom of expression was abridged by university rules that strictly forbade political activities. The University eventually capitulated to the movement’s demands, but matters didn’t rest there.
In both cases, the critical wedge was disapproval. American Caucasians generally were shamed out of prejudging Negroes according to their racial category. To suggest that Negroes were somehow less able than Caucasians became effectively unspeakable; to utter such a conviction would get you tossed out of “polite society.” Similarly, the student activists shamed university administrators out of their staunch prohibitions against on-campus political action. They became embarrassed at the suggestion that collegians should have fewer rights than adults in the society beyond, simply because of their ages and educational status. The suggestion that “those kids” were “too immature” to be permitted political postures and activities became as unspeakable as any talk about differences between white and black.
The politicization of university campuses and the movement toward “desegregation” both blossomed from those sources. In both cases, what had previously been common was de facto shamed out of existence.
***
In the late Fifties, other sentiments were changing as well. Owing to the rise of certain entertainers, notably including Lenny Bruce, words and phrases previously deemed publicly unspeakable – mainly vulgarisms about sex and biological waste products – were entering our common lexicon. What had previously been an offense that would get one bodily ejected from a social gathering slowly crept into ordinary verbal behavior. A 1971 Supreme Court decision, Cohen v. California, actually ratified the use of the word fuck in public, such that it would henceforth be under First Amendment protection and immune to action by law enforcement. People became unembarrassed, in the main, about such language.
Concurrently, the broad-spectrum “coming out of the closet” of the whole range of sexual and parasexual behavior had begun. According to some commentators, the animating developments were highly reliable contraception – in particular, the birth-control pill – and the ongoing secularization of American society. What had previously been considered enormously shameful – adultery; premarital sex; homosexuality; polyamory; multiple-partner sexual encounters – gained a foothold and slowly overcame the prior inhibitions and statues against it.
In these cases, personal inhibition was the primary barrier against those forms of self-indulgence. “Decent people don’t talk or behave that way,” was the sentiment…and persons who held themselves to be decent would have no truck with those who did. As regards sexual conduct, was also a degree of fear of being “found out,” especially about adultery and homosexuality. Adultery could get a husband judicially stripped of all his possessions, his right to see his children, and in some states his right to marry. Homosexuality could get the practitioner lynched.
The process here was a gradual decloaking of the previously forbidden speech and actions by disparaging inhibition about them. “We’re all adults here.” “Come on, you’ve been around.” “What are you, some kind of prude?” All in the name of “tolerance.”
***
There are many similar cases of disapproval and tolerance as political wedges, but an all-encompassing treatment of these things would require a multi-volume history of American life and society since World War II. Let those mentioned above stand for the rest.
The critical development is one I have not yet mentioned: the transition of these behaviors and movements from suppressed to accepted through assertive to aggressive. What for hundreds of years had been in statu quo, once it was released from the general level of inhibition, swiftly turned on us who had released it.
Today, the mere suggestion of speech and behavior codes for the young is considered obscene. High-school students routinely get away with speaking to their teachers and administrators in the vilest imaginable terms. Punishment for such disrespect is rare, even when it verges on violence. The schools themselves have been completely politicized, such that only one political viewpoint is acceptable in any one of them. To express the contrary view can get one assaulted, even mortally.
Similarly, few dare to state openly what had previously been the common conviction: that there are differences between the races, at least statistically, and that people have a perfect right to live and do business “among our own.” We went from a normal state of affairs, no different here from what prevailed – and still prevails – in other lands, to a condition of enforced mixing of the races, especially in our schools and our businesses. The consequences have been dire. They certainly haven’t been confined to the playing fields.
Our common speech has been vulgarized. To refrain from the use of words previously considered “unspeakable” now gets one labeled a bluenose: “Do you think you’re the second coming of William F. Buckley?” Please don’t think this is an exaggeration. I get hit with this sort of disparagement every fucking day.
And need I really detail the explosion of public sexual license: the celebrations of abortion, the “pride” parades, the public fornications, the in-your-face assertion – and demand not merely for tolerance but for actual approval — of one’s sexual orientation or “identity,” however bizarre?
***
The point here is not that I deplore these developments. I do deplore them, and I’ve said so on other occasions. The point is rather that what kept some of them “in the closet” – i.e., vulgar language and sexual license – was widespread and longstanding disapproval, which induced inhibition and privacy. The others – i.e., a preference for one’s own race and disapproval of politics among the immature – have been forced “into the closet” by the incitement of disapproval, especially through the major media, such that widespread prior convictions and preferences became “unspeakable” and in some instances criminal. Once the bottle had been uncorked, what emanated from it could no longer be restrained to any degree. It became ever more aggressive, until today it threatens to unmake ordinary interactions among persons of divergent views.
The Victorians could have told us what lay ahead. However they might speak or behave in private, when the doors were locked and the children were asleep, they always behaved properly in public. They impressed the importance of those public norms onto their children; not to do so was to be regarded as an unfit parent. Those who would not so conduct themselves were relegated to the slums and the lower orders, for no one else would have them.
Disapproval and inhibition might have limited some of the Victorians’ excesses, though it would be difficult to conclude that definitively. What it did do was more important: it stabilized the social order. It rendered public society – the streets, the commerce, and the open institutions of that time and place — safe. This, in an era when virtually everyone of adult years went about armed at all times.
Do you work in a “service” trade? That is: rather than making or enhancing physical goods, do you merely provide a convenient service to others, sparing those others the chore of doing whatever it is for themselves? No need to be shy about it. Many Americans are in that category.
The “service economy” is largely a provider of luxuries. A luxury, colloquially speaking, is something you could forgo without impacting your ability to survive. You might not want to do without it – you might regard yourself as poorer for having lost it – but you’d get by even so.
There’s a gray area between luxuries and necessities, of course. For example, many of us couldn’t keep our homes warm during the winter without the services provided by heating technicians. We don’t know how to service our furnaces. The knowledge of how they work and what they require to keep working has become a specialty of sorts. It isn’t secret, mind you, just not widely studied or acquired.
Some services are pure luxuries. The folks at the fast-food joint who make hamburgers for you. The guys who deliver stuff from nearby stores right to your door. The gentleman who fills out your 1040A for you. You could do all that yourself, couldn’t you? Except for those who are physically or intellectually handicapped or wearing ankle monitors, of course.
When times get tough, people cut back on their purchases of luxuries. Sometimes whole industries collapse for that reason. People who labor in those industries can have it very tough indeed, especially if they don’t have a second bow for their fiddles.
Might you be one such?
***
Things sometimes “move” – in people’s minds, at least – from the luxury to the necessity category. Consider Internet search engines, for example. Twenty-five years ago the phrase was understood by a handful of computer scientists. Today, if you were to need a phone number that you don’t currently have, how would you go about getting it? Phone companies no longer publish phone books, and people mostly don’t memorize phone numbers these days. Lack of access to a good search engine would be a major impediment.
Now consider the Internet itself. The ‘Net makes so many kinds of commerce and communication effortless today that society itself would totter if we were deprived of it. I sell my novels over the ‘Net, with the help of Amazon. The C.S.O. does 80% of her work via the ‘Net. And may God help us if we were ever to run out of reading matter; we’d have to get into the car and drive to a bookstore. Are there any bookstores remaining? For that matter, will the car still start?
Rich societies begin to lose the distinction between luxuries and necessities. It’s one of the unintended consequences of the division of labor, which is a great part of what makes a society rich in the first place. There is no escape:
“Our clan had heavy-lift capacity at one point, didn’t it?”
She nodded. “Yeah, but we sold the plane when Adam’s dad set up shop here. Charisse said she was happy to get rid of it. It made more sense to hire it out, so we wouldn’t have to maintain a plane and train pilots.”
She glanced at the entrance to Morelon House. The old mansion looked as sturdy as ever. It presented an appearance of immutable strength to all who saw it. Yet it had begun to seem to her that the clan had undermined that strength in several ways, with several decisions. None of them had been fatal; indeed, when each was made, it had appeared to be the obvious choice. Yet in combination, they had rendered Clan Morelon massively dependent upon the wills and skills of a multitude of outsiders…persons who might not be as available or dependable as one would hope. —That’s the downside of the division of labor, Al.
Yeah. I can see that, Grandpere. But how could we have avoided it?
—By resisting all the temptations to specialize and to make use of specialists. By purchasing absolute self-sufficiency at the price of economic advantage. Which, incidentally, no clan or society known to history has ever managed to do.
The incentives are too strong, aren’t they?
—Judge for yourself, dear. Put yourself in Charisse’s place at the point when Jack Grenier moved into the area and started offering his services around. Would you have done as she did, knowing only what she did at the time?
Probably. If there’s a lesson in this—
—If there is, Al, no one has ever drawn it. The division of labor is the one and only path toward general prosperity. It can go to an incredible depth. A frightening depth. And it is utterly reliant upon the character and good will of the specialists. Let one critical specialty be corrupted by political forces, or conceive of a grudge against some other group, or even decide that it can rape its customers without fear of reprisal, and the destruction spreads faster than anyone can act to check it.
Judge for yourself.
***
Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau has arrogated to himself a set of “emergency powers” that include, de facto, the absolute control of the nation’s banks. He plans to use that power to strangle the Freedom Convoy that has expressed the massing dislike of his mandates and decrees. That would seem to put the truckers, and whatever institutions have backed their play, in a tight spot.
It does, really. There’s no point to trivializing it. But it might just cause a showdown between one set of seeming necessities – digital access to one’s savings – and another, far more material set – the ability to move goods from point to point. The truckers could cut Trudeau’s legs out from under him simply by going on a sit-down strike. If he thought the Honkening was an annoying disparagement of his rule, what will he think of the paralysis of Canadian commerce in toto? What will he say to the captains of industry who come knocking at his door, demanding relief?
If the truckers can hold out for two weeks, they could bring down the Trudeau government. Whether they can, I cannot say. But I’d love to see the proposition tested in reality…and not just among our cousins to the north. It might remind us of the relative importance of things – and about what we’d really, truly rather not do without:
Any Convention would be infiltrated by the Left, subverted by special interests, and make it very difficult to get out of this mess. What we need to do is to:
Shrink the bureaucracy – agencies, departments, and entitlements. Start with unnecessary agencies, such as the Consumer Affairs cr@p, Eliminate the Education Dept., HUD, HHS, and Energy.
Make a deal with the states – we’ll reduce the amount your citizens have to send to Washington, if you will take over providing the services – Welfare, Social Security, and other entitlements. National educational mandates dropped, in return for reduction in money sent in the form of block grants. EPA out of your face, with encouragement to work with other states, mostly regional (the prairie states can set up a regional structure, the Great Lakes already have a Compact that has them working in concert, New England states can do the same). And, for example the Coastal states can arrange to have their representatives meet to set up cooperative agreements on fishing, flood control, a regional Coast Guard intercept of smuggled goods. States along the Mississippi could work together, as well.
Some services would remain, such as national defense. That would have a SMALL core of regular military, augmented with state and regional National Guards (I’m anticipating that the smaller states will work together). National Weather Service, which would provide the monitoring with the assistance of local reporters (as the ARES, manned by amateur radio operators, does). Each state would provide a portion of the cost, depending on the number of residents, legal or not. All states would pay the same per-capita amount.
States would be free to allow cross-state purchasing of insurance. That would do a lot to reduce the cost.
Smaller states could purchase services from larger ones, rather than set up the structures themselves. One example is the IOWA testing service. I took the IOWA tests when I was young. They were a fair assessment of what basic skills the students learned each year. The tests have been validated over many years, unlike many of the newer state tests.
We won’t win by making a Big Push to solve this, for once and for all. It’s necessary to work incrementally, chipping away at the Encrusted Left’s Damage. This mess is not like a party your kids held while you were gone, that can be repaired with a whirlwind effort. It’s more like termite damage. It’s going to require a lot of money, work, and time to fix it.
(I don't endorse any of these sites. I list them to marvel at how many people and organizations want to run a "news site," but have no idea what that entails. -- FWP)
