Your Most Informative Two Minutes Of The Day

     This little video will tell you everything you need to know about the “vaccines” being pushed upon us for COVID-19:

     Told you so!

Systemic Claptrap

     [NOTE: This will be a linkless piece. Either you’ve been keeping up with the news, in particular the developments in left-wing agitprop, or you haven’t. The former group will know what I’m talking about and therefore will need no links. The latter might as well play Solitaire. — FWP]

     Among the highest contributions of the late Sir Karl Popper was his work on falsifiability as a criterion of quality in a proposition about cause and effect – i.e., about “how things work,” the meat and potatoes of science. In brief, to be taken seriously as a potential explanation for some phenomenon, a hypothesis must be objectively testable, with at least some of the possible outcomes of the test proving it false. The hypothesis must be formed so that a test – a prediction of an objectively observable outcome – is possible. If the prediction fails, the hypothesis has been falsified. If a hypothesis is stated in such a way that it cannot be falsified, Popper argued, neither can it be verified. It’s valueless as a statement of causality.

     “Thinkers” with theories that by design cannot be falsified were made furious by this. It blasted their pet theories out of the realm of science and into the domain of faith. They argued against Popper’s contention, often by claiming that truly objective tests of a worthwhile hypothesis are impossible. Nevertheless, Popper’s falsifiability criterion is regarded today as the cornerstone of all legitimate investigation.

     Yet even today there are persons advancing theories that are unfalsifiable by design. The one that’s received the most popular attention lately is “systemic racism.”

     In simple terms, “systemic racism” is a proposed explanation for the statistical differences in various categories between the Negro race and the others. As statistical aggregates, Negroes have not done as well educationally, economically, or socially as Whites. “Civil rights” laws and other statutes intended to counteract deliberate racial discrimination against Negroes have had little influence on those differences. Affirmative action, Head Start, school lunch programs, and so forth have all failed to produce the improvements their proposers expected from them.

     The sole as-yet-unfalsified hypothesis about the causes – i.e., a statistical difference between the races in intelligence, work ethic, aggression, and law-abidingness – is displeasing to the race-hustlers of our time. It cuts the legs out from under their ambitions. Therefore, they proposed that racial discrimination is literally embedded in the fundamental structures of America’s institutions, practices, and customs: i.e., systemic. Moreover, this “systemic racism” is uncorrectable for an appalling reason: the creation and organization of those institutions by Whites. Nothing can be done for the Negro without first “getting Whitey out of the way.”

     But the “systemic racism” hypothesis is unfalsifiable. No imaginable event or outcome, starting from any imaginable initial conditions, would constitute a disproof of the thesis. Thus, while it is safe from being disproved, it is also impossible to confirm by empirical results as long as Whites continue to be the largest American demographic cohort. By the assumptions built into the “systemic racism” hypothesis, Whites’ mere presence in these United States guarantees that it cannot be falsified. It’s an article of faith, quite as much as my belief in God.

     The point of “systemic racism,” of course, is to create grounds for massive governmentally imposed discrimination in favor of Negroes over Whites. Its proponents argue for this on the grounds of “equity:” achieving the equal outcomes that the racism supposedly built into the foundations of our organizations and institutions makes impossible. All our conceptions of individual rights must give way to the drive for “racial justice.” Freedom must be relegated to the dustbin of history.

     That’s the consequence of accepting the “systemic racism” faith. Mature Whites who want only to be left alone and in peace are unlikely to accept it. But those for whom power over others is the Holy Grail think it’s a dandy idea. That’s why it’s being promoted in the government-run schools. As a side effect, it deflects attention from why those schools are no longer worth a damn as educational institutions.

     Other angry activist groups see the “systemic” approach as valuable to their own causes. We will soon see protests about “systemic patriarchalism,” “systemic heterosexualism,” “systemic cisgenderism,” and whatever other causes manage to form a compatible bludgeon-phrase. Success always inspires emulation.

     But as I said recently, success also breeds failure. Americans generally happy with “the way things are” are no longer vulnerable to imputations of unearned guilt. We’re growing calluses over our sensitivities. The consequences won’t always be just or pleasant.

     The late Walter Williams argued that racism is only important when it involves a denial of rights. As such denials are well in the past, Williams contended that what remains of racial attitudes and preferences are, if not entirely harmless, nevertheless not correctable by law without doing even greater harm. Sadly, his reasoning has not received the attention it deserves…and who will ultimately be saddest remains to be seen.

The Vampire And The Caretaker

     [For today I have an agenda that strongly resembles chattel slavery, so have a short story. I wrote it just after seeing 30 Days of Night. It’s the story that gave birth to Evan Conklin, the co-protagonist of Antiquities. — FWP]

***

     Gavin’s alarm clock buzzed with its usual peevish insistence. He cracked an eyelid, noted the hour and the pervading darkness, and pulled the covers over his head, hoping against hope that it wasn’t really his least favorite morning of the week yet again.
     It was not to be. Within seconds came his father’s usual sharp knock.
     “Come on, son.” Even at three-thirty in the morning, Evan Conklin always sounded as relaxed and jovial as a man who’s just finished a fine meal in the company of his best friends. “We’ve got work to do.”
     Gavin grumbled an obscenity and flung back the bedcovers with a sweep of his arm. The winter chill was upon him at once, singing along his spine loudly enough to make his teeth chatter. He slapped at the alarm clock with one hand while he groped for his robe with the other and hurried off to the bathroom for a shower and shave.
     Gavin couldn’t linger over his toilet if he was to set out at the appointed hour. Evan allowed him to sleep half an hour later than he allowed himself. It was hurry, hurry, hurry from the moment his feet touched his bedroom floor to the moment he buckled himself into the passenger seat of their car. The work, his father explained more than once, would not permit it.
     Their destination was only a few miles away, but in the wee-hour blackness of a continental New York winter it seemed like an hour’s ride. It was long enough for Gavin to fall back to sleep, but he didn’t permit himself. One awakening per morning was more than enough. He forced himself to full alertness, stretching out his lower back, loosening the muscles in his arms, hips, and legs, and working his lungs open by steadily deepening his breathing. His father merely drove and said nothing.
     Our Lady of the Pines was completely dark. Evan pulled a ring of keys from his coat pocket, thrust one into the lock that had only last spring been installed in the tall oaken doors, and shepherded them inside, flipping light switches as he went. The nave of the church blossomed into brightness. Evan headed directly for the mop closet, while Gavin went to fetch the vacuum cleaner.
     Gavin had almost finished vacuuming the little church in preparation for the early Mass when the vampire fell upon him.

***

     The creature was tall and evil of aspect. Its grip was cruelly tight. Its breath upon Gavin’s neck stank of ordure and rotting flesh. Despite its form, it was hard to believe that something so foul could once have been a man.
     It had him at its mercy, yet it did not strike. Its attention was fastened upon his father, who stared from the altar steps, mop dangling from his hand.
     “Well?” the creature snarled. “Aren’t you going to plead for mercy? Aren’t you going to offer me your blood in place of your son’s? It’s customary, you know.”
     Evan smiled slightly. “No need.”
     “Oh? You’ll concede me your son’s life if I agree to spare yours, then?”
     Gavin squirmed in terror, but the vampire’s grip was inescapable. Evan shook his head. “Not at all. You won’t be killing anyone this morning.”
     The vampire cackled. “Really? How do you plan to stop me?”
     “I don’t.” With his eyes, Evan indicated the crucifix suspended above him. It evoked a snort of derision.
     “Yet you see that I am here, in the heart of your imaginary God’s house where I’m not even supposed to be able to enter, doing as I will with your boy.” Gavin shuddered as the creature’s talons ruffled his hair. “He looks a tasty morsel. I expect I will enjoy breaking fast more than usual this morning.”
     His father’s gaze remained perfectly serene. “Go ahead, then. Feed on him.”
     A stillness forged of cold iron descended upon the church. Nothing moved nor stirred.
     “Well?” Evan said. “What are you waiting for?”
     The vampire did not respond.
     “You have your victim,” Evan pressed. “He’s helpless in your grip. You know I can’t stop you. Why haven’t you struck him?”
     “What makes you so sure I won’t?” the vampire snarled. It crushed Gavin to itself with lung-emptying force, and he gasped in pain.
     “It’s perfectly simple,” Evan said. “You won’t because you can’t. You don’t really exist.”
     “What?” the vampire roared. “I stand here in your holy place, your son my helpless captive, mocking your Savior as the phantasm you take me to be. I hold your boy’s life in my arms, and you deny my existence with such ease?”
     “Of course,” Evan said. “If God is real, then you are not. A just God would not permit the existence of a creature that could suck the soul out of a man’s body and subject him to eternal torment, he having done no wrong of his own free will. And God exists. Therefore, you do not.”
     The vampire’s grip loosened, and Gavin’s fear was tinted with puzzlement.
     “You see me before you,” the creature said slowly. “You hear my voice and smell my odor. Your son feels my claws upon his flesh. Yet you refuse to believe in me, preferring your faith in a being you cannot see, hear, smell, taste, or touch. What gives you such confidence in your delusion, in the face of mortal peril?”
     “It’s quite simple,” Evan said. “The characteristics assigned to your kind contradict all right and reason. Such creatures could not exist without destroying themselves. In a word, you are implausible. No, wait,” he said. “Not implausible; impossible. A creature of supernatural strength and speed that feeds on human blood, yet cannot endure the light of day? A creature that converts its prey into competitors, ensuring both a geometrically increasing number of predators and a dwindling supply of fodder? The laws of nature as God wrote them literally forbid you to exist.”
     Gavin twisted again, and broke free of the creature’s grip. He stumbled back and gazed upon the thing. But he could not reconcile what his eyes saw with the superhuman monster that had held him helpless a moment before. It seemed to have become insubstantial, ghostly, a mere appearance projected on the screen of reality by some unseen mechanism.
     “You truly believe this?” The vampire’s voice had fallen to a whisper.
     Evan Conklin said, “I do so believe.”
     And the thing faded from sight.
***

     Gavin awoke in a tumult of fright. He could not remember every detail of the dream that had catapulted him from slumber, but the overpowering sense of helplessness and terror, of being at the mercy of something merciless that no human strength could oppose, still pulsed within him. He sat up, switched on his bedside lamp, and breathed as slowly and deeply as he could manage, struggling to calm himself.
     His door opened slowly. His father’s head poked out from behind it.
     “Everything all right, son?”
     Gavin nodded, unwilling to trust his voice. Evan entered and sat beside him on his bed.
     “Bad dream?”
     Gavin nodded again, and Evan grinned.
     “I know how rugged they can be. I used to have some pretty vivid ones, at your age.” He rose and made for the door. “A shower will help. We’ll hit the diner after Mass.”
     Gavin extracted himself from his bed and plunged into his Sunday morning ritual. When he’d buckled himself into the passenger seat of his father’s car, and Evan had backed them out of the driveway and onto Kettle Knoll Way, he said, “Dad? Do you ever…doubt?”
     “Hm? Our faith in God, you mean?” Evan kept his eyes on the dark ribbon of road unwinding before them.
     “Yeah.” Gavin braced himself for the answer. What he got was not what he expected.
     “Now and then,” his father said. “It’s hard not to doubt something you can’t see or touch. But faith isn’t about certainty. It’s about will.”
     “So you…will away your doubts?”
     Evan chuckled. “That would be a neat trick, wouldn’t it?” He pulled the Mercedes Maybach into the small side parking lot of Our Lady of the Pines, parked and killed the engine. “No, I simply command myself to do as I know I should do. Faith is expressed just as much by our deeds as by our words. As long as I can consistently act from faith, I can keep my grip on it, regardless of my doubts.” He nodded toward the unlit church, barely visible in the darkness. “You might say that’s why we’re here.”
     Gavin marveled. “And all this time I thought it was because the parish was too poor to pay for professional cleaning staff.”
     That brought a snort and a guffaw. “Get serious. Though the way you vacuum, I don’t wonder that Father Ray would rather have our money than your labor. No, it’s that hiring your chores done distances you from them. You can’t afford to do too much of that if you want to remain connected to life. I pay a cleaning lady to look after our house, but doing this for the parish keeps us involved in parish life, and mindful of…well, of a lot of things.” He cuffed his son affectionately. “Let’s get moving. We’re already behind schedule.”

==<O>==

     Copyright © 2010 Francis W. Porretto. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

Media Strategies And Tactics

     “Your enemy is your teacher.” – Orson Scott Card, Ender’s Game

     There’s vast insight in those five words…and most people miss it completely. How is your enemy your teacher? His objectives are antithetical to yours. Surely he isn’t trying to teach you how to beat him! And yet, in a combat situation, he’s the best teacher you could possibly have.

     Allow me a very brief snippet from one of my own novels:

     “My mentor liked to say that success breeds failure. You tend to repeat your old, successful moves because they worked, while your enemy is developing a new one to clobber you with. I guess he had a point.”

     Your enemy, if he’s at all intelligent and observant, will remember what you’ve done in the past that’s succeeded in thwarting him. He’ll study those moves until he comes up with a countermeasure – and so also must you do with his previously successful tactics.

     We in the Right have railed against the Mainstream Media until we’re breathless and hoarse. Yet we’ve learned relatively little from them. What does that say about our intelligence and percipience?

     It’s time to change that.

***

     When the two-way World Wide Web first appeared, it was mainly a retailing mechanism plus a way to popularize jokes. It didn’t look as if it would amount to much. But the explosion of personal sites – mostly “blogs” – made a huge difference in the transmission and preservation of information and opinion. At peak, there were over 57 million blogs, each of them purveying a particular viewpoint and a selection of items to ponder.

     The wild popularity of the blogging medium caused the barons of the media to sit up and take note. Their control of information was being shaken by the new medium. In particular, they could no longer count on being able to suppress a story their editors disliked. They had to come up with counter-tactics…and they did.

     Their counterattack was multi-pronged:

  • A campaign against “fake news;”
  • The emergence of supposed “fact-checkers;”
  • Cosmetic broadening of op-ed voices: the “token conservative;”
  • Alliances through which to share emphases and preferred modes of expression.
  • A new approach to news obfuscation: a deluge of stories in which casual readers would be lost.

     The old method of restricting coverage of events that cross-cut their preferences remained in the media’s playbook, but coupled to the “deluge” tactic. The combination has proved unusually effective, even synergistic. With hundreds, even thousands of ever-changing “news items” coming at you continuously, how could you possibly retain enough to know which ones are important?

     Many news consumers simply stopped reading and watching. Others developed “focuses:” particular areas of interest to which they paid the greater part of their attention, allowing the rest to pass them by with a glance. Focus can be valuable…if the thing focused on is itself valuable. However, in many cases the focus was on some variety of entertainment. The consequences to date have been mixed, with an edge for the mainstream media.

     The rise of Facebook and Twitter further assisted the media by reducing the desirability of the blogging medium. After all, blogging requires expense and work. It’s so much cheaper and easier to use Facebook, where you can follow others you find simpatico and ignore the rest. For those whose thoughts could be compressed into 140 characters, Twitter provided an even easier method of communication. The blogs dwindled almost as swiftly as they’d arisen.

     The mainstream media quickly formed a covert alliance with the masters of Facebook and Twitter. It proved most salutary…for them.

***

     We haven’t yet learned much from our enemy. Still, there’s time. One of the most important things to study is the “deluge” tactic. It’s been remarkably effective at indirectly suppressing widespread consciousness of developments that the media would prefer we not think about. With relatively few blogs remaining, and those hard pressed to gain attention from significant numbers of readers, important stories are getting less attention than they deserve.

     One of the major weapons in the Right’s arsenal is the ability to keep important stories alive. Consider this item, which ought to have enraged the entire country but is being deluged out of general attention:

     A parent who was arrested during a June school board meeting in Loudoun County, Virginia, is accusing the district of trying to cover up an alleged bathroom sexual assault by a gender-fluid individual against his daughter in order to further its transgender rights agenda.

     Scott Smith was found guilty of disorderly conduct and resisting arrest in August after he was filmed being dragged by police from the Loudoun County School Board meeting on June 22. He was sentenced to 10 days in jail, all suspended, contingent on a year of good behavior, Loudoun Now reported at the time.

     Smith’s image went viral among left-wingers as an example of parents run amok, and the National School Boards Association cited his arrest in a letter last week requesting the Department of Justice to provide federal law enforcement to respond to an increase in violence against school officials across the country. Attorney General Merrick Garland later pledged to have the Department of Justice and the FBI investigate harassment of school board members.

     Now, Smith says there’s much more to his story, telling The Daily Wire that his behavior at the June 22 meeting stemmed from an incident weeks earlier at his ninth-grade daughter’s school, Stone Bridge High School in Ashburn, in which he said a boy wearing a skirt entered the girls’ bathroom and assaulted his daughter on May 28.

     “We can confirm a May 28, 2021 case that involved a thorough 2-month-long investigation that was conducted to determine the facts of the case prior to arrest,” the sheriff’s office told Fox News. “This case is still pending court proceedings. The Loudoun County Sheriff’s Office is not able to provide any documents that pertain to a pending case.” The sheriff’s office confirmed that the case involved sexual assault.

     All juvenile records are sealed, but Smith’s attorney Elizabeth Lancaster told The Daily Wire that the boy was subsequently charged with two counts of forcible sodomy, one count of anal sodomy, and one count of forcible fellatio.

     An immense amount of attention has gone to “transgender rights.” Oughtn’t this development to receive a similar amount of attention? Is it part of a developing pattern or a “one-off?” Compare media coverage of the event with the bias the media show toward stories of anti-Muslim “hate crimes” and away from stories about Islam-powered atrocities. See the parallels there?

     A week from today, how many Americans will remember that Scott Smith and his sexually violated daughter exist?

***

     One of the most admirable figures in the neojournalistic environment is writer and vlogger David Rubin. This recent interview with Sara Carter is a noteworthy demonstration of his acuity and courage:

     Author and pundit David Rubin warned that the leftist media is getting further and further from the truth lately. Soon, Americans will not know what’s true and what isn’t. Rubin talked about the future of media on the latest episode of the Sara Carter Show….

     “That chasm between what we can now expose and what they show us, that has gotten so wide. That’s what I’m worried about,” Rubin said. “Because everybody’s sort of falling into the space between those things now where it’s like, we don’t know what’s true anymore.”

     “I think there was this elitist belief, not that they weren’t truthful,” Carter said. “I think that in their own way, they become this elitist group of people that believe they know what’s appropriate for the American people.”

     Rubin is entirely correct. Much of his work has covered significant figures in the Right, what they truly believe and are working toward, and how those things differ from what the media have been promulgating. However, the most important thing about Rubin is his dedication to genuine objectivity: to let events and people speak for themselves. He maintains that there is an entirely objective reality – “what’s true” – and that the mission of the true newsman is to report it.

     We in the Right “should” share that attitude. It’s integral to the rest of our convictions. But to return to the central point: We must be aware of the strategies and tactics the media has used in its victories against us, and we must use the information. In particular, we must find the important stories, the true outrages that deserve to be spread far and wide, and hammer them home so relentlessly that they cannot be downplayed or “deluged” away from popular attention.

     Learn from your enemy. It’s his gift to you.

We own you.

At the same time, Treasury Secretary Yellen insists the IRS needs to step up, inspecting all transactions over $600: wouldn’t a central-bank digital currency make it easier, he asked, recognizing a Trojan horse when he sees one? Yellen also admitted in an interview that the $600 mark is not where tax evasion is happening. That’s in the Pandora Papers which, just as I expected, are fading from public view as rapidly as all the other piles of steaming elite malfeasance elephant-dung in the room.[1]

$600 might cover my weekly alcohol payment but, maybe it’s just me, it seems like the transaction is a private thing. The Fourth Amendment provides that

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

And last I heard that hadn’t been repealed. Pinky swear.

To me, my bank transactions seem as much a part of my “papers and effects” as anything in my file cabinet or under the mattress but the lawyers who work for the IRS and the Congress seem to think that legislation trumps the clear provisions of the Constitution. I’m fine with the “no expectation of privacy” approach to interpretation of the Fourth Amendment but I bristle at the thought that a letter I seal in an envelope and deposit in the mail requires the government to show probable cause before it can get a search warrant to open that envelope yet an email I send has no such protection because I have no expectation of privacy because it’s in plain text and can be read by technicians at every node of the internet on its way to delivery if they have a mind to do so.

Really? A Supreme Court that had any kind of hot anger about infringements on our liberties would find that the internet is the envelope and that the mere possibility of a technician along the way deciding to randomly dip into the hourly flow of billions of emails and out of boredom or idle curiosity pick out one email to read is not enough to entitle the government to argue that I had no expectation of privacy in the message after I hit “send.” The technician and any other person with access to the guts of internet could easily be deemed to have the same right to read, extract, deliver or report what is in my message as my mailman, USPS truck driver, or clerk have, to wit, none.

Similarly, the fact that my bank records are in digital form in the custody of the bank in no way transforms them into hard copy records that I nailed to every tree down mainstreet for public inspection. Clearly this $600 threshold proposed infringes on a highly private matter and the clear language of the Fourth Amendment didn’t get deep sixed just because the world went digital in a big way.

Well, the Supreme Court has groveled at the feet of big government ere since as witness its slobbering approval of a grotesque transformation of the federal government into a monstrous, untouchable juggernaut. So no help from that quarter most likely. Instead, we’ll get a clump of digital age haruspicy from the chin strokers. A giant load of more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger BOHICA flapdoodle that comes with a rechargeable 200V battery. Obey, suckers!

At Gettysburg, Lincoln said we the living highly resolve that the nation “shall have a new birth of freedom.” It seems like what we got was a Long March to tyranny and servility where piss ants infest the Congress, the Court, the executive branch, and most state governments and delight in the fleecing and oppression of the people.

Notes
[1] “Rabobank: Today What Is Passing Is The Glorious Lie That Inflation Was Transitory.” By Michael Every, ZeroHedge, 10/13/21 (emphasis removed).

“A Decent Place To Live”

     Fairly recently, a dear friend became troubled about the way his neighborhood was changing. He was reluctant to speak of it at first, because it involved the anthropological and sociological third rail of American public discourse: race. Several homes near him had recently been purchased by Negro families. After that, several more homes in the neighborhood went on sale. My friend was alarmed, as he saw an influx of black families as destabilizing to what had been a peaceful, safe environment for his wife and children.

     I agreed with him. Even prosperous, seemingly stable black families can bring with them the problems for which their race is known: noise, disruptive behavior, drug abuse, high traffic of nonresidents into and out of the neighborhood, fights and petty crime. The problems arrive with the youth of their race. Many of the same phenomena accompany the arrival of Hispanic families.

     The above are established facts. Charles Murray has put hard numbers to them in his recent book Facing Reality. If my friend wanted to secure his family and home against a degradation in their quality of life, he would have to move. He was reluctant to do so, as it would involve accepting new debt, but in the end he saw that it was the best course.

     Which brings us to today’s topic.

***

     Among the mechanisms prosperous communities have used in attempting to secure themselves, zoning is preeminent. A neighborhood that excludes all but residential properties on large lots has guaranteed that anyone moving into it will at least possess the financial wherewithal to do so. The desirability of the neighborhood will then make the price of such lots high. The exclusion of multiple-family structures raises another significant barrier to entry.

     So-called minority-rights groups have attempted to pierce the barriers created by zoning with “lawfare.” To this point, they’ve been largely unsuccessful. However, the Left is attempting a Samson-smash of the walls around such neighborhoods by outlawing single-family zoning:

     [In Virginia,] in the midst of the high-stakes McAuliffe vs. Youngkin race for governor, the conservative group Frontiers of Freedom Foundation is running an ad that highlights Terry McAuliffe’s support for Joe Biden’s plans to undercut single-family zoning.

     The ad, which I found powerful, reminds voters that attacks on local control of zoning can come from states as well as the feds. In fact, this has happened in California which recently abolished single-family zoning. The anti-McAuliffe ad pointedly reminds Virginia voters of this news from California.

     As commentator Paul Mirengoff notes:

     Few issues matter more to voters than the character of their neighborhoods and the character of their schools. The second issue — schools — has become a high-profile one. Maybe now the first one — neighborhoods — will come into prominence.

     Possible – but expect massive blowback in the form of racism-shouting and claims of “discrimination” and “exclusion.” As it has become an act of extreme courage to reply to such attacks by saying “You bet your ass I want to exclude your kind. You bring trouble wherever you go,” those attacks have more power than usual. Nevertheless, that is the intention, and a perfectly valid one it is.

     In the past, the attack on protective zoning has come via the courts. A case that reached the U.S. Supreme Court in 1974, Warth v. Seldin, is illustrative. Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong noted it in The Brethren:

     In one case (Warth v. Seldin) civil-rights activists in Rochester, New York had challenged a nearby suburb’s zoning law. The ordinances required all homes to be single-family residences on large lots, in effect barring low-income minorities. The challengers sued to overturn the ordinance as discriminatory. Two lower courts had denied them standing and refused to hold a hearing on their claims. [Associate Justice Lewis] Powell was assigned the majority opinion for his fellow Nixon appointees and [Associate Justice Potter] Stewart, who agreed with the lower courts that the activists didn’t have standing to sue in federal court. His opinion said that the challengers had failed to allege and prove they could not buy a particular residence; the case was hypothetical; the alleged injuries were intangible and speculative….

     As Stewart explained it to his clerks, the case called for a value judgment, not a legal one. The challengers were asking the courts to rule on economic differences that kept low-income minorities from living near affluent whites. “What they are actually asking us to do is to overrule the capitalist system,” Stewart said….

     [Associate Justice William] Brennan’s dissent argued that Powell was using legal technicalities to prevent the disenfranchised groups from pressing their claims. And there was a Catch-22. In order to have the standing to sue, you had to have the money to begin building a low-income housing project and be willing to go to the inconvenience of filing a plan so the local zoning board could reject it. In order for the poor to sue, they had to be rich. Brennan found the whole idea absurd and deceitful. It was the ordinance being challenged—not neutral economic factors—that insured that the housing market would never change….

     Brennan saw this as the extension of a disastrous trend. The lower courts would get the message that the poor must prove precisely how they were affected before they would even have standing to bring suit in federal court. The Court would no longer be the final protector of rights, the guarantor of fair play.

     Those paragraphs from The Brethren express a tremendous amount: first about legal principles and judicial procedures, second about the attitudes and orientations of the Justices. Potter Stewart, a moderate conservative, was aware of the underlying intent of the suit, but in voting on the verdict stayed within the established rules of jurisprudence: The plaintiff must prove that he has been injured, or definitely will be irreparably injured, to have standing. As there was no provable injury from an ordinance that effectively prevented low-income residents from becoming close neighbors to high-income residents, the plaintiff lacked standing and the suit was without merit.

     William Brennan, a left-liberal, saw things differently. He felt the exclusion of low-income people from high-income neighborhoods was itself an injury: a moral wrong. He saw the zoning ordinance as a denial of “minority rights.” That this is an extreme, wholly unjustifiable creation of a right, which Brennan sought to assign to “low-income minorities” against more affluent persons, is at the heart of the greater part of today’s racial and ethnic conflicts.

     Compare Brennan’s implied assertion of a “right” for low-income persons to live cheek-to-jowl with high-income persons with the outcries of exactly the same persons against “gentrification.” Could the hypocrisy be any clearer? But more pointed still is a John Derbyshire essay about the “theory of magic dirt:”

     In the past couple of decades we’ve seen the rise of one particular explanatory strategy. That strategy recently acquired a name—or possibly it’s had the name for a while and I only just recently noticed. Whatever, I really like the name: Magic Dirt.
     The core idea is that one’s physical surroundings—the bricks and mortar of the building you’re in, or the actual dirt you are standing on—emit invisible vapors that can change your personality, behavior, and intelligence.
     That’s why, for example, you read so much about “bad schools” or “failing schools.” The thing to be explained is that schools whose students are overwhelmingly non-Asian minorities—blacks and mestizos—get much worse results on academic tests than schools whose students are majority white and East Asian. This has been so for decades, defying even extravagantly expensive efforts to change it, like the Kansas City fiasco of the 1990s.
     Parsimonious explanation: innate differences in behavior, intelligence, and personality between the races.
     Magical explanation: Bad schools! The bricks and mortar of these schools, the asphalt of their playgrounds, are giving out invisible noxious vapors that enstupidate the kids!

     Gentle Reader, it cannot be said better than that. If one’s physical surroundings or neighbors determine one’s one “behavior, intelligence, and personality,” then pace William Brennan, it would be at the very least unkind to deny “aspiring” low-income Americans the chance to improve themselves by living next door to high-income Americans. But unkindness has no legal weight, so the Left has to represent the claim as a denial of “minority rights.”

***

     Most people would prefer not to live among criminals, drug addicts, the dissolute and irresponsible, or politicians. These persons tend to “lower the tone” of a neighborhood, rendering it displeasing to those of us who like order, responsibility, and privacy. Thus we save as much as we can from what we earn, use it to buy “a decent place to live” when the opportunity presents itself, and thereafter do our best to protect our new homes and their environs from the kind of maltreatment that comes from criminals, druggies, etc. This is in keeping with the American conception of private property rights: You can have what you want as long as:

  1. Someone is willing to sell it to you;
  2. You have the means to pay for it.

     But groups do not have rights as such. Neither do “neighborhoods.” So when a prosperous district coalesces and the residents resolve to limit what changes can occur there, the usual recourse has been zoning ordinances. While the decisions of zoning boards are not always received with approval, preserving the character of neighborhoods for their existing residents is the predominant use of zoning.

     Zoning ordinances can legally specify:

  1. Permitted uses (e.g., single-family residential; multiple-family residential; commercial; light industrial; heavy industrial; mixed);
  2. Minimum lot size.

     They may not say “No parcel in this zone may be sold for less than $X.” And they may not make any mention of race or ethnic heritage. So it’s at least possible, if against the odds, to find a parcel in a “prosperous” neighborhood that’s available dirt-cheap. Legally, if the owner is willing to sell it to you, your neighbors-to-be can do nothing about it no matter what they think of you or yours.

     But dirt-cheap parcels in affluent neighborhoods are exceedingly rare. The demand for such parcels is high. The Law of Supply and Demand functions to make them dear. And your neighbors-to-be probably like it that way, so you’d better have the means.

     As matters stand, Negroes are less likely than Whites and Asians to possess the means to purchase parcels in very affluent neighborhoods. That’s been the case for many decades. Often the minimum lot size dictated by the zoning ordinances is part of the reason. Other things being equal, large lots are more expensive than small ones, for the same reason that large diamonds are more expensive than small ones: there just aren’t that many of them. If the zoning ordinances forbid breaking up such a lot and selling the fragments, there’s nothing to be done about it.

     But the key is not race nor ethnicity; it’s finances. Low-income Whites and Asians face the same barrier to entry. Affluent residents are no more eager to live next to low-income Whites or Asians than next to low-income Negroes– and there are a lot more low-income Whites than low-income Negroes. But you don’t hear them on the six o’clock news. “White trash” is dispreferred by the rights activists as a group to champion.

     All that having been said, this remains: when a formerly all-White neighborhood is first penetrated by Negro families, the residents look to their defenses. Even if the initial penetration is by solidly middle-class Negroes with intact families, homes will swiftly go on the market, often in great numbers. The demographics of the neighborhood tend to change rapidly, as does the prevailing level of law-abidingness, public order, and general civility. Whites have learned to fear what comes with a Negro incursion, and all the wishes of the bien-pensants will not prevail against that hard-won lesson. Good intentions are powerless before the desire for “a decent place to live.”

     See also the meaning of the venerable term blockbusting.

America’s stock in trade — propaganda and repression.

Edward Bernays and his clique contributed heavily to this trend [the neutering of democratic forces] from 1915 onwards: they used public relations and propaganda techniques to give the impression that the USA was free, democratic, open, etc. when it was none of those things. And today the unholy alliance between state and corporations – the definition of fascism, according to Mussolini – has clamped down hard on every trace of individual freedom.[1]

Do you object to open borders, complete anarchy in the streets, attacks on dissident voices, scraggle beards and femadactyls deciding how you should live your life and what you can read or say, or judicial betrayal? Tough. Go pound sand, muchacho.

Notes
[1] Comment by Tom Welsh on “Things Go Awry.” By Israel Shamir, The Unz Review, October 12, 2021.

When A Nun Says Something Like This

     You’d bloody well better listen:

     Note that she explicitly called out Pope Francis as a component in the globalist / Great Reset campaign — and capped it by reminding us that “I’m not telling you anything that hasn’t already been revealed.”

     Is this a second “hour of the power of darkness” — ?

An Echo From Better Times

     I saw this story via AoSHQ:

     Lily Roberts is a pitcher for the Adairsville JV Softball Team. The team they were playing against a couple of weeks ago was about to lose when their pitcher got sick.

     “They were struggling and I knew if I didn’t step up, the game would have to end and they would have to forfeit. So I just thought, I would love to step up,” Roberts told 11 Alive.

     So that’s exactly what she did. Roberts stepped right up to the mound and pitched for the opposing team.

     And she wasn’t lobbing easy balls over the plate against her teammates, she was firing them across home plate for strikes.

“She would smile at them and throw them a strike,” Coach Kelly Abernathy said. “She was pitching like she was pitching in a championship game.”

     Even while Roberts was striking out her own teammates, the girls on both benches were cheering.

     “I think the other team was really supportive of me coming to pitch for them. I did hear them cheering for me when I was pitching, and it made me feel good,” Roberts said.

     Coach Abernathy said it’s not winning that makes him proud, it’s how the players act and the lessons they learn on the field.

     “If we could be as positive as Lily is, there would be a lot less problems in the world,” he added.

     This reminded me of a story I heard from a much older ice hockey fan, about the days when the NHL had only six teams, before the players started wearing enough protective equipment to stop a round from a Vulcan cannon. In those far-off years, the teams played as much for love of the game as they did for fortune and glory. Accordingly, certain practices, not exactly mandated by NHL rules but expected of every franchise, arose to cushion teams against on-ice injuries and other unpredictable events. One of these was “goalie lending.” If Team X’s two goalies were both sidelined by injury or other unfortunate developments while Team Y’s two goalies remained healthy and ready to play, Team Y would “lend” Team X its backup goalie for the duration of the game. That goalie would be expected to play his best – and he did.

     That’s the sort of thing you get from authentic sportsmen. It’s a verdict on our time that nothing of that sort would be imaginable today – in any “professional” sport.

Irony Meters Are Shattering Across The Nation

     It comes as little surprise that Russia’s strongman president – who, whatever you may think of his tactics, clearly loves his country – should castigate the American federal government for violating the rights of its citizens and undermining the security of the nation. Given the developments of recent years, that was almost inevitable. But I never expected this:

     “Real Time” host Bill Maher blasted the “outrageous” harassment Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, D-Ariz., faced when she was followed into a restroom earlier this month by activists at Arizona State University….

     “I think this is outrageous,” Maher reacted during a panel discussion on Friday, about the intrusion on Sinema. “You may not like the politics, but when this s— starts to happen, I don’t know where the safe space is in America. And I don’t know where it ends.”

     Did I wake up in the “Bearded Spock” universe?

Just Because I Feel Like It

     I’m in something of a mood this evening, so have a couple of songs from two of the paramount singers of the Twentieth Century. First, from the late, great Stan Rogers:

     And for dessert, the two pieces that made Tom Rush a legend:

     I suppose the Twentieth Century wasn’t all bad, after all.

Interdependency of a GOOD Kind

Horizontal Relationships, and how they contribute to self-sufficiency.

Many on the Right talk of self-sufficient families; some broaden that to the extended family, as well.

The Left prefers to think of “The Global Village”, and have a preference for a top-down approach (i.e., “the Government” should run things”).

Click on the link to get a more nuanced essay that acknowledges the need for individuals to take responsibility for their own destiny, along with arguments for working in small, local groups to reinforce the efforts of those individuals/families.

I’ve been reading and thinking about preparedness for the last few months. When I moved into my new house, I realized that I would need to prepare for emergencies, natural and man-caused disasters, and security – on a limited budget. I’ve been making lists, and prioritizing purchases (There’s a local thrift store that is my new favorite place – and, Mondays are 1/2-off day, so guess where I will be heading tomorrow?).

I chose the SimpliSafe system, in great part because I could inexpensively install the base system, and add on other components as I was able. It was flexible enough to accommodate my needs, and allow me to adapt as I had more experience.

I’m working on shoring up weak spots (locks, outside access, getting to know my neighbors). I’m also working on building up my pantry supplies, a little at a time. I’ll probably be using the Flipp app (for mobile devices), that allows you to enter desired items, and get a side-by-side comparison of local stores/pricing. I’m getting back to a habit that I developed when I first moved to SC; that of bunching up my purchases into a single-trip expedition. We did that in the Low Country, as local stores were pricey and often didn’t have what we needed. At that time, in 2005, Katrina’s landfall meant that gas prices skyrocketed (as they are now). By combining shopping trips, we reduced the need for gas.

And, when I say ‘we’, I mean that I took the trip with a friend, and we made a fun day of it – shopping, a little tourism, and a nice lunch/dinner, before heading home. We did that about every 3-4 weeks. I will likely not wait that long between trips (unless the winter weather makes travel hazardous), but I could, if I had to.

To keep the cost down, I’ll first hit the resale shops, then the places with advertised specials, then online. My goal is to reduce the online purchases to a minimum (Alas, for some electronic components, the only source is Amazon/China).

I’m already beginning to plan to lay in the components (seed, soil, grow lights) for gardens – mostly vegetable, but also some landscaping. I want to use prickly bushes to limit access to windows, bug-repelling flowers, and some indoor plants, just for the soul’s health.

I’m also making a point of being more active, and building up muscle strength. Gardening and home care are labor-intensive, and I plan to do as much as I can myself.

The final stages of the universal franchise.

The fools in Washington strut around threatening China and Russia while Americans see Washington as the enemy. Who is going to fight for Washington? No one.

Not even the Chairman of the US joint Chiefs of Staff will fight for Washington. The traitor promised his Chinese counterpart advance warning of a US attack on China . . . .[1]

The worship of the universal franchise has made elected officials beholden to the dregs most ignorant people with the foresight of a giraffe. In defense of giraffes let us note that they at least have mastered the skill of grazing upon trees with formidable thorns but without injury to their tongues or lips.

No such skill exists in majority of the electorate of “our democracy” who can’t even recognize Supreme Court evisceration of the Constitution, foreign invasion, theft of their jobs, the astonishing betrayal of the off-shoring of our industries, the putrid propaganda that passes as “news” dispensed by our monopoly media, and the obvious campaign to replace the majority population with third-world people who hate us and wish to abuse our charity and institutions. (I’m not sure about that “our” charity deal.) The electorate cannot even see the thorns let alone avoid them or summon the will to eradicate them.

The result is elected officials who are morons and grifters who need never fear the anger of their constituents so long as they dispense sufficient cash provided by productive citizens, cater to popular ignorance, and hose the nation down with vile propaganda and filth. In what sane world would a freak like Nancy Pelosi rise to a position of legislative leadership? In what sane world would Maxine Waters have a say on anything more complicated thant operation of a toaster? In what sane world would George Soros, Bill Gates, Nelson Rockefeller, Bush ’43, Obongo, or Bill de Blasio do anything more than write letters to the editor?

“Our democratic values” ensure that men and women who are our natural aristocrats and leaders are excluded from political power, if not smeared and neutralized. The result is that the currency can be debased, small businesses destroyed, free speech destroyed, elections stolen, statues of felons raised up, sluts worshipped, privacy destroyed, and decency and common sense abandoned. The United States became hated around the world for its inexplicable drive for empire, its aggressive wars, its arrogant fascination with “regime change,” and contemptible, inexplicable demonization of Russia — all enabled by the patent upending of the clear constitutional scheme for state supremacy and federal emasculation. And by betrayal of all oaths to protect and defend the Constitution.

And while this happened the so-called homeland — home to whom? — collapses into the continental equivalent of a California homeless encampment.

We really are on a trajectory of destruction and the clowns and devils couldn’t care less. The ameliorative, somewhat rational trajectory of the West bent dramatically downward when the franchise was extended to the parasitic, rejectionist, ignorant bottom. So now we have a burgeoning, fatal loss of legitimacy in “the exceptional nation.” And nothing — NOTHING — can or will reverse that short of catastrophe.

Notes
[1] “The Collapse of the American State Is Underway.” By Paul Craig Roberts, The Unz Review, 10/8/21.

Something You Won’t See On YouTube

     The Powers-That-Be will not tolerate any dissent from the Gospel Of The Holy “Vaccine.” Yet the casualty count is high and still rising. Beware!

Destruction Tests Are Destructive

     The only way to learn just how much abuse an item will accept is to test it to destruction. Such a test should start gradually, with mild abuse, and escalate by small increments through higher and higher levels of abuse until the thing being tested is a pile of rubble. Any other approach would not yield accurate information about exactly how much battering the thing can absorb without losing form or function.

     Built into this procedure is a reality that must not be overlooked: at the conclusion of the test, there will be a pile of useless shards in place of the tested item. It will have only scrap value, if even that. Daimler-Benz’s testers are aware ab initio that when they ram a new Mercedes into a solid wall at highway speed, it won’t be a saleable product afterward. It’s the price of that kind of knowledge.

     Societies sometimes undergo destruction tests as well. The willingness of a normally tolerant people to tolerate deviance can only be gauged through a destruction test. Weimar Germany fell in part because its deviates and libertines didn’t know where to stop. The normal German majority saw the Nazis as a path back to pre-World War I norms, although they got something quite different in the sequel.

     I’m beginning to think American society is undergoing a test of that sort.

***

     Let’s start with the most obvious symptom: the acceleration of tacitly state-sanctioned violence. The “BLM / AntiFa” riots of the past two years have made it plain that the supposed forces of order in America’s cities will not – and perhaps cannot – act to quell the disorder, pursue the rioters, and bring them to justice. I’ve been expecting the return of Nineteenth Century vigilance committees. Indeed, I’m somewhat surprised that we haven’t seen any yet. They’re the usual public response to inanition and inaction by law enforcement.

     The reverse of that anarcho-tyrannical coin, of course, is the use of “law enforcement” to tyrannize the peaceable and law-abiding. We’ve seen this escalating as well:

  • The prosecution of Kyle Rittenhouse;
  • The maltreatment of the January 6 protestors;
  • The pillorying of Roger Stone, Michael Flynn, and most recently Lt. Col. Stuart Scheller;
  • Merrick Garland’s tasking of the FBI to suppress parental dissent against “critical race theory;”
  • The semi-covert use of supposedly private organizations to suppress communications through fora such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube.

     Together these and other events have us on an express train to civil war. That war might be “traditional,” conducted with guns, bombs, and flying lead; or it might be Gandhiesque, using only nonviolent resistance to the State to gain its ends. Whichever way it goes, that will be the consequence of further intensification of the above trends. What follows won’t look like the society we’ve known these two centuries past.

***

     Consider now the intensifying, entirely unConstitutional exertions of federal and state power over law-abiding citizens in the name of the “pandemic.” Many recognized rights have been infringed or abridged in the name of “public health.” The Center for Disease Control has postured as a lawmaking body. Several governors, and the “president” himself, have attempted to exert powers that contradict the guarantees of the Bill of Rights.

     Americans have wondered how long they must endure such tyrannies in the name of suppressing a disease that’s not even as dangerous as common influenza. Many of us have decided to ignore the ukases and behave as if nothing had changed since 2018…and in the main we’re getting away with it. But if carried too far, the diminution of respect for “legitimate authority” will have consequences well beyond merely flipping off our self-nominated autocrats.

***

     Finally for today, we have the personal-deviance movement. There are many elements to this:

  • Drug use;
  • Sexual variations;
  • Body modification;
  • Gender-identity stuff;
  • Unusual living situations;

     …and other deviations from former American norms. To some extent such variations must be tolerated – but not to disruptive extremes. Consider only as an example what would become of organized employment were employees to claim the “right” to psychedelic-drug use or sexual indulgence on the job. Could such an “office” hold together for any imaginable interval? I doubt it.

     But the destruction point might be closer than that. If allowed to become compulsory, the “pronoun craze” could trigger a devastating reaction. I included a passage in Love in the Time of Cinema about exactly such an incident:

     “What was the cause?” I murmured.
     “You’ll laugh,” she said. “We didn’t do a lot of laughing that evening, though.”
     “Well?”
     “The country was deep in the grip of the ‘diversity and inclusion’ fad. It started before you were born, and was pretty much a bad memory by the time you were old enough to notice. Noisy minorities were at their noisiest—and since a history of oppression was the legal and social coin of the realm, every one of them claimed to be ‘oppressed.’ The one getting the most attention at the time was ‘trans.’”
     I wasn’t sure I’d heard her correctly. “A transportation company?”
     She chuckled. “No, biological men who wanted to be women, or to be treated as women. A very few biological women who wanted to be men, or treated as men. They called themselves ‘transwomen’ or ‘transmen.’”
     I barked a laugh. I couldn’t help it. I caught hold of it quickly, and forced myself back to seriousness.
     She smirked. “You can laugh because you have no idea how bad it was. But there was nothing funny about it. Even though there were only a few thousand of them all together, they were unbelievably successful at bending governments and institutions to their whim. They won privileges that very few people can imagine today.
     “Tim’s employer’s Human Resources department was run by a gaggle of vicious women—real ones, not ‘trans’—who’d already succeeded in enacting weird ‘sexual harassment’ rules and rules about how to treat persons of differing sexual orientations. You could get fired for daring to defy the company line…so naturally the company’s vicious women and vindictive homosexuals used the rules like a club to subjugate or flat get rid of anyone they pleased.
     “Well, these insane HR harpies needed new worlds to conquer, so they decided to make ‘trans tolerance’ their next campaign. But they didn’t mean ‘show tolerance for the deluded.’ They meant to make differing with a delusional person—calling a ‘trans’ person by his birth name, or referring to him as ‘he’ when he claimed to be a ‘she’—a hangin’ offense.
     “They rewrote the personnel policies for the company for the umpteenth time. Corporate management gave in without a fight. The new policies included mandatory ‘sensitivity training’ seminars for the entire company. Until Tim was herded into one, he had no idea what was coming.
     “He sat through about twenty minutes of their harangue before he couldn’t take any more of it. He felt someone had to take a stand against the lunacy. And Tim being…well, Tim, he wasn’t going to wait for someone else to do it. So he stood up.
     “He told them their nonsense had gone far enough. He said the ‘trans’ types are obviously detached from reality. That they need therapy to help them accept themselves as they are, not reinforcement for their delusions. That we should treat the mentally ill with compassion but that it’s wrong to cooperate in their lunacy. And he said he wouldn’t bow to any rule, from HR or anyone else, that compelled him to think or speak or act otherwise. And he walked out.
     “His supervisor fired him immediately after the seminar. He didn’t have anything against Tim. In fact, he agreed with him. He just didn’t want to tangle with HR.”

     Such an incident actually cost the career of someone I know. Indeed, the only fictional aspects of the above are the names. If such events became commonplace, the consequences could be dire. The same is true for “diversity” laws and regulations that have the potential to force employers to ignore ability and work ethic in favor of skin color, sexual orientation, or handicaps.

***

     People will tolerate a great deal before they snap, but they will snap. Especially if they’re being told that they must tolerate personal abuse or oppression, the abuse of their loved ones, or the destruction of something they love. And if Americans should snap, the reverberations will circle the globe. As Larry Correia and others have observed, we’ve got two and only two settings: Vote and Shoot everybody. Governments, law enforcers, bureaucrats, and activists should beware. Day by day we move ever closer to throwing that switch.

Maintaining Important Distinctions

     One of the little tricks by which the Left has made steady inroads into American life is the effacement of important distinctions. While this is largely a matter of linguistic chicanery, its effects often eclipse those of any other political tactic. That makes it an important front in our political combats.

     Unfortunately, many intelligent and benevolent persons unwittingly assist the Left in this regard. They do so by failing to exercise adequate penetration into the issue under discussion.

     Yes, I have an example in mind. But it will take more coffee to address it adequately.

***

     Have a snippet from John Wilder’s latest:

     I can take a $100 bill and go and buy some beer and cigars and PEZ®. I could also do that with a gun, but the fact that everyone will go along with the deal means that the dollar really is money.

     John has effaced an important distinction indeed.

     Before I proceed, allow me another snippet: this one from the first edition of Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics As If Freedom Mattered:

     Money: A medium of exchange and a store of value.

     The greatest fraud and confusion perpetrated by governments has been the substitution of unbacked currency for money. People now believe that currency is money. Nothing could be further from the truth.
     There can be no compromise to the definition of money. Many things can have one of the traits of money. Currency is a medium of exchange and land can be a store of value, but neither one is money, especially currency, because no currency in history (not one) has ever retained its value. There is no currency in the world today (including the Swiss franc) that is not losing purchasing power every year.

     In his snippet, John has described the “medium of exchange” function of money, which currency, a substitute for money, can fulfill. But owing to inflation, a government-controlled process I’ll delineate at a later time, the $100 Federal Reserve Note of which he speaks has far less purchasing power today than it did at any previous point in history. Thus, it fails to perform the “store of value” function of money.

     The first question I usually get when I present the above distinction to a class goes roughly thus: “Well, why did the shopkeeper accept the $100 bill if it isn’t money?”

     There are two reasons, above all others. First, anyone in a retail business would intend to replace the goods he’d just sold for that $100 bill – and the retailer’s vendors would, in exchange for that $100 bill, ship him more goods to sell. Of course, that merely begs the question by transferring it to those notional vendors. Why would they accept the $100 bill for the goods they ship?

     The answer appears in the corner of every Federal Reserve Note ever printed:


THIS NOTE IS LEGAL TENDER
FOR ALL DEBTS, PUBLIC AND PRIVATE.

     Pull one out of your wallet and look. It’s in very small font, but I guarantee that it’s there. Use a magnifying glass if you must; you’ll find it.

     The “legal tender” provisions of the Federal Reserve Act make the acceptance of such notes legally mandatory. No one who sells his wares for prices denominated in dollars is permitted to refuse them. It’s a federal offense. Never mind that in recent years the Treasury Department has at times declined to enforce that law.

     If you have one of the older notes that, instead of “Federal Reserve Note,” says “Silver Certificate” at the top, you’ll find much different verbiage on it. That’s because until 1968, the law mandated that any bank in the Federal Reserve system was legally required to give you a silver dollar for it, should you demand it. The Treasury stopped printing Silver Certificates in 1964. Here’s an image:

     Incidentally, if you have any silver coins – actual silver, not the cupronickel sandwich coins imposed upon us since 1969 – you should store them somewhere safe. There’s quite a market for such coins, as they’re worth considerably more than their face value in dollars. So the distinction between money and currency matters very much. It must never, ever be effaced.

***

     The above is just one example, a current one of particular interest to me. There are many others. Consider the federal debt as an example. Recently, an elected cretin strove to efface the distinction between payable debts – the sort you and I routinely accumulate on our credit cards, which the law will enforce upon us should we seek to evade payment – and bad debts: the sort which will never be paid, because they’re owed by governments which will not enforce collection upon themselves. Quoth Murray Rothbard:

     If the government has incurred a huge public debt which must be paid by taxing one group on behalf of another, this reality of burden is conveniently obscured by blithely saying that “we owe it to ourselves” (but who are the “we” and who the “ourselves”?).

     In point of fact, the phrase “we owe it to ourselves” has fallen into desuetude, because the public is generally aware that “we” don’t owe it to “ourselves.” Federal debt instruments – T-Bills, mostly – are now owned principally by the Federal Reserve Bank and by foreign governments. Moreover, the interest on that debt is paid out of tax revenues: funds collected under threat of punishment from private persons and institutions. Call me naive if you like, but I see certain problems in taxing myself to pay myself, which I why I don’t own any T-Bills or Savings Bonds.

     Clearly, the distinction between payable debts and bad debts matters quite a lot.

***

     I could go on, and sometimes I do. Critical distinctions matter. When you hear someone say “Oh, that’s a distinction without a difference,” put one hand on your wallet, the other on your sidearm, and back slowly away, never taking your eyes off him. More often than not, the speaker will be trying to obscure a critical distinction, in the interest of some rapacious scheme he seeks to advance. While that’s not the case with John Wilder, it’s as important for good persons not to collaborate in the destruction of such distinctions as it is for us to be aware of attempts to do so.

     See also this vital Baseline Essay on the nature of money and currency.

Conversations

     When you reach a certain age, it becomes unwise to trust your memory absolutely. Now, I’ve always had a near-perfect memory, so it distresses me when I fail to remember something that, upon investigation, I really should have remembered. (Note to married men: This is why it’s both important and hazardous to keep a diary, especially in these days of the Internet. However, carrying a voice-activated recorder at all times can be advantageous.) But then, there are those things that glitter brightly in memory that it seems no one else remembers – and by “no one else,” I mean the C.S.O.

FWP: (singing) ♪ My mommy said not to put beans in my ears…beans in my ears…beans in my ears… ♪
CSO: Would you please?

FWP: Whassamatta you? Too low for you to harmonize with?
CSO: No, it’s just that dead things should stay dead!

FWP: You know, this was a hit on AM radio back when we were kids.
CSO: Come on! I don’t remember any such thing.

FWP: Honest to God, sweetie.
CSO: Well, why don’t I remember it?
FWP: I have that kind of memory for music and you don’t.
CSO: Well, you’ll have to prove it to me.
FWP: And if I do?
CSO: (Walks away.)

     As I am unable to resist a challenge, I immediately went to the “world memory:” i.e., the Internet. And look what I found!

     I might just learn how to play this on my electric piano. (It’s got a really nice amplifier.)

Where You Might Place Your Biggest Efforts

I was perusing random sites, and found this one, referred by Instapundit.https://commodity.com/blog/us-local-debt/.

If you look at the breakdowns, it appears that LOCAL debt is a bigger problem than state debt, for many states. That actually makes some sense, as:

  • State governments usually have a balanced budget as part of their constitution, limiting the amount of debt that they can incur.
  • For the city and county governments, there are few controls over their budgeting process, other than interested private citizens. Often, they run up a huge tab with little oversight.
    • In the largest cities, it’s pretty much All-Democrat, all the time. They control every facet of government and school expenditures, leaving the taxpayers one choice only – Leave.
    • The county boards – County Commissioners, Zoning Boards, Water Boards, and all the other ‘small’ boards, have a huge amount of discretion in spending. The members of those boards are often unknown among the public. The positions are not generally a stepping-stone to electoral greatness, but they are secure perches for the rapacious and power-hungry. Tim Hagan, a Kennedy-connected Democrat, was a long-time Cuyahoga County Commissioner. (Also formerly married to Kate Mulgrew, the captain of Star Trek, Voyager). From that position, he and his fellow commissioners controlled a large number of contracts – both in number and dollar amount. Perhaps not coincidentally, the FBI came calling in 2008, and swept up a whole lot of people in bribery and corruption charges.

So, it would seem to be more important than ever to keep a wary eye on the shenigans at the local level. The Left, and the Crooked (often the same groups), have embedded their people in positions from which they are hard to dislodge, and that provide opportunities for both imposition of Leftist agendas, as well as copious opportunities to siphon off public cash.

Although I will not be able to vote in this year’s elections locally (moved too late to manage a timely registration), I will be spending a fair amount of time getting to know who the local players are, their voting patterns, and their financial backers.

What do they say?

Put all your eggs in one basket, and KEEP AN EYE ON THAT BASKET!

This is a Lorain, OH landmark, located in Oakwood Park, along the Lake Erie shores.

A Cardiographer Speaks Out

     There are some brave people in the medical sector:

     Perhaps the logjam is breaking.

All COVID All The Time

     That’s the news for you. At least, it can seem that way. COVID, the “vaccines,” various companies’ mandates, other companies’ refusals, health-care workers being fired, Florida’s policies, Ivermectin…it’s a long list. I’d have thought people would be sick of it by now. I certainly am.

     But that’s the news.

***

     First up, apparently there are people who think the virus can spread via Zoom. Some of them work for universities:

     What can anyone say about such lunacy? Has anyone from the university offered any kind of rationale? Will the student be given a refund of his tuition payment? I’d bet against it.

     It really is time to wall off the universities. From the available evidence, they’ve been filled with madmen – and the madmen are doing everything possible to rid them of the few remaining sane.

***

     Second, Canada appears to have gone as cuckoo over the COVID “vaccine” as the United States:

     A Canadian emergency room physician has been banned from practicing medicine in Alberta after he defied the province’s COVID treatment protocols by prescribing Ivermectin to three patients.

In a powerful speech last week, Dr. Daniel Nagase vented about the shoddy way COVID patients were being treated in a rural hospital in Alberta, and concluded that “something malicious is going on.”…

In his speech Friday, the doctor shared what happened when he tried to treat three patients in a small rural hospital with Ivermectin during the weekend of September 11. He blasted doctors and surgeons “who are standing in the way of life-saving medicine.”

     This is a mandatory read-it-all article. The two most salient features are:

  1. The Ivermectin treatment seems to have healed two of Dr. Nagase’s three critical patients;
  2. The Alberta provincial government appears to have studied under Bill DeBlasio.

     Is it really a surprise that Our Neighbor To The North, which has instituted socialized medicine, has become so dictatorial? That’s in the nature of socialized anything. It’s one-size-fits-all, and if you don’t like it, tough. If there’s a startling aspect here, it’s that the news has been allowed to get out.

     Of course, it’s also possible that the Alberta authorities are now in the pockets of Pfizer et alii. After ponying up to buy the compliance of the federal government of the United States, the “vaccine” makers probably looked at a Canadian provincial government as a Dollar Tree purchase.

***

     To round out this Tuesday’s offerings, have something only partly COVID-related:

     US Attorney General Merrick Garland has instructed the FBI to mobilize against parents who oppose Critical Race Theory (CRT) and Covid mandates, citing ‘threats.’
     Merrick Garland’s letter to the FBI follows the National School Board Association’s request to classify protests as “domestic terrorism.”
     “Threats against public servants are not only illegal, they run counter to our nation’s core values,” wrote Attorney General Garland. “Those who dedicate their time and energy to ensuring that our children receive a proper education in a safe environment deserve to be able to do their work without fear for their safety.”…
     Curiously, Garland’s letter didn’t actually specify any credible threats.

     Remember that the Obamunists wanted Merrick Garland to take Antonin Scalia’s vacated seat on the Supreme Court.

***

     That’s all for the moment, Gentle Reader. I might be back later, but for the present, be well.

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