Conditioned To Deference

     Allow me to open this piece with a snippet from Frederic Bastiat’s great pro-freedom treatise The Law:

     [A celebrated traveler] arrived one day in the midst of a tribe of savages, where a child had just been born. A crowd of soothsayers, magicians, and quacks — armed with rings, hooks, and cords — surrounded it. One said: "This child will never smell the perfume of a peace-pipe unless I stretch his nostrils." Another said: "He will never be able to hear unless I draw his ear-lobes down to his shoulders." A third said: "He will never see the sunshine unless I slant his eyes." Another said: "He will never stand upright unless I bend his legs." A fifth said: "He will never learn to think unless I flatten his skull."
     "Stop," cried the traveler. "What God does is well done. Do not claim to know more than He. God has given organs to this frail creature; let them develop and grow strong by exercise, use, experience, and liberty."

     Give that a moment to sink in while I start a second pot of coffee.

***

     The patterns that run through human history are of many kinds. Some are distinct and easy to trace; others are less so, even if they’re equally critical to the understanding of Mankind and his societies. I’ve harped on the political ones frequently enough to be sick of them... as you might be too, Gentle Reader. But there are others that require more patience and more perspicacity to tease out. One of them is exemplified in the Bastiat snippet above.

     Virtually all societies recognize a class of experts,distinct from other members. The expert is conceded certain privileges, even if they’re never publicly specified. One of those privileges manifests as a social predisposition in favor of letting him have his way, at least on subjects where his expertise is acknowledged.

     What’s insufficiently discussed in this regard is the expert’s predisposition toward intervention: his active insertion into the affairs of others, often contrary to those others’ preferences. In modern societies, the law has been shaped to put many experts’ prerogatives over those of the others. He gets to intervene in their affairs whether they like it or not.

     In some cases, private, non-expert citizens manage to resist the intrusions of even the most assertive experts. But they must fight a strong, socially reinforced current – the presumption that the expert knows best – to pull it off.

     Courtesy of N.C. Renegade, we have this instructive tale:

     The midwife's words hang in the delivery room air like a casual afterthought: "We'll just give baby the vitamin K shot now." Just a vitamin. Nothing more than what you'd find in your morning orange juice. The language itself is the first deception - calling a synthetic blood-clotting agent manufactured by Pfizer's subsidiary Hospira a "vitamin" transforms an industrial pharmaceutical intervention into something as wholesome as sunshine.
     In those first raw hours after birth, when parents are overwhelmed by the miracle of new life, the medical system strikes with practiced precision. The entire infrastructure - from the delivery nurse to the pediatrician, from the hospital protocols to the documentation systems - has been calibrated for this moment. Every medical professional in that room has been trained, not in the science of whether a newborn needs synthetic phytonadione, but in the art of securing compliance. They've learned to frame it as routine, to present it as universal, to make refusal seem like dangerous eccentricity.
     Murphy's father, one of the few who came prepared, discovered what awaits those who dare say no. After his daughter was delivered using vacuum extraction five times - creating a visible blood-filled sac on her head - the red-shirted pediatrician entered within three minutes. Not to examine the baby. Not to celebrate the birth. But to begin the assault. When Murphy's father cited the Australian Paediatric Surveillance Unit study showing only six deaths from vitamin K deficiency bleeding in five million babies over 25 years, with none occurring in hospital births where vitamin K was refused, the doctor didn't engage with the data. Instead, he turned to the mother: "Do you feel differently?"
     The pattern revealed itself through escalation. First the doctor. Then the nurse lecturing about irresponsibility. Then the NICU admission - not for medical necessity, but for "monitoring" a baby whose parents had refused the injection. Then the failed attempts to insert cannulas, the repeated heel pricks for blood tests. Strange behavior for medical professionals who claim the baby cannot clot blood properly. If she truly couldn't clot, why were they so eager to make her bleed?

     Please read it all.

     My purpose in citing this upsetting piece is to underscore the exercise of “medical authority,” to which we have been conditioned to defer. The physician is an expert: specifically, in neonatal care. He only wants “what’s best” for the baby, right? No physician would deliberately harm a newborn, would he? Surely we should let him do as he pleases!

     Maybe not. Quite a lot of “routine” medical interventions are anything but good for the patient. When the patient is a helpless infant, the odds of an uncorrectable error are much higher than otherwise.

     But as the cited article indicates, physicians and the like dislike to be balked. They become officious. They strive to convince you that if you don’t defer to their judgment, you’re committing a sin against your child. Sometimes they invoke the weight of the law. At other times, they perform what amounts to a kidnapping to get their way without your interference. They seldom suffer any penalty for any such action, while the parents of the newborn are often subjected to humiliating interrogations by “child welfare” bureaucrats.

     Fighting the pressure to defer can take everything a parent has. Should the law become involved, it could destroy the family. Their newborn might be taken from them, to disappear into “supervised foster care.” It happens more often than most people are aware.

***

     That’s just the medical aspect of things. Arrogant, brutally assertive experts are everywhere today. They all expect deference from the rest of us. Many are capable of enforcing their will with police assistance. And we, trained from birth to defer to “authority,” more often than not tend to go along as the easiest course.

     Give this a long think, Gentle Reader. How many kinds of “expert” have tried to contravene your will? Did you resist successfully? What were the consequences? I’d like to hear about it.

Dawns

     I can’t imagine a reason that you “should” know Evan Barker. She’s worked in left-liberal / progressive political circles for some time. That involvement recently soured on her, with unfortunate consequences.

     You see, Miss Barker committed a faux pas. She said something that made her friends and acquaintances – all left-liberal Democrats – doubt her fidelity to the Good, the True, and the Beautiful. Here’s the nub of it, in her own words:

     When I decided to go to the DNC in 2024, I wasn’t entirely sure if I was ready to move on from politics completely, or if I’d find myself re-inspired. After I got home, I went to a dinner party in San Francisco, and when a friend asked me how the DNC was, excited to hear about it, I decided to say how I really felt about the party, finally unafraid to do so. “I’m not sure if I’ll be voting for Kamala. I hated the DNC.” I watched as a familiar expression of moral superiority began to spread across her face. “You’re saying that from a place of privilege” she chided me.
     A lot of people have asked me what the exact moment was at the DNC that made me realize I wasn’t on board with the party I’d worked for nearly half of my life. The truth is, it was everything. The crowd that mindlessly chanted “joy”, the vasectomy van offering free tacos, the coronation of a candidate with zero policies or platform available, and the final straw: Oprah Winfrey. Her tone deaf lecturing turned me off so much, I left the building, getting an uber straight to my hotel, where I booked a flight home a day early, not even staying for Kamala’s acceptance speech.
     I left the dinner party early too, heading straight home, where I made a selfie video airing my true thoughts. On August 24th, 2024, I hit upload, announcing to my meager following of sixty people, many of whom were former colleagues and friends in politics, that I wouldn’t vote for Kamala Harris.

     Please read it all. It’s both eye-opening and heartbreaking.

     Miss Barker frames her decision in terms that we’ve heard from former Democrats before this: the party has “lost touch;” it’s “left its base;” and so forth. That treats the Democrat Party a bit too kindly, but it’s understandable: it also exculpates Miss Barker for her protracted association with the party. But as a certain writer I quote far too often wrote in a similar case:

     But it occurred to [Ransom] that this was possibly the first occasion in his whole life in which Weston had ever acknowledged himself in the wrong, and that even the false dawn of humility, which is still ninety-nine per cent of arrogance, ought not to be rebuffed—or not by him.

     [C. S. Lewis, Perelandra]

     So let’s be kind.

     The title of Miss Barker’s piece is most significant: “One Year Ago Today I Ruined My Life.” Ruined her life? Really? But what happened?

     In the past year, nearly all of my old political friends have stopped speaking to me. One of them said: “fascism doesn’t look good on you”, another said “why couldn’t you have waited until after the election?” The social ostracism has trickled out into my non political life, too. I’ve lost friends I’ve known for fifteen years. My toddler stopped getting invited to birthday parties. He was rejected from preschool. We even had to move to a new town.

     Those are all unpleasant and unjust consequences of her decision to disaffiliate herself from the Democrats. But properly regarded, they actually strengthen her case for having done so. A party whose members treat a departing member in such a fashion is diseased. It doesn’t represent anything that could be defended with reason and evidence. It’s a specimen of what Eric Hoffer called “a compact and unified church” – and outside that church there is no salvation.

     Miss Barker will surely reflect on that in time. So should we in the Right, for it shows us a pitfall we must avoid. Any of our fellows who announces that he’s moving to the Left should be treated courteously, however much we may deplore his decision. Political positions are not faiths, and political realignments are not some kind of secular apostasy.

Our Role In Times Of Darkness

     I just encountered the following awesome statement from Tulsi Gabbard:

God is love. The very essence of God is love. Therefore, during times of hardship, sadness, pain and suffering, we naturally and spontaneously take refuge in Him — in love itself — because we know in the core of our hearts that it is only the power and light of God’s love that…

— Tulsi Gabbard 🌺 (@TulsiGabbard) August 29, 2025

     I beseech you: please, please read it all. Reflect on it. The simple truth contained in Tulsi’s words is the weapon that has brought down tyrannies.

     Hardly the sort of emission you’d expect from a politician, is it? Yet there it is. It says much that must be said – that needs to be said – if the madness that has come close to ruining the world is to be quenched. Then compare its message to the scorn high-profile Democrats and other leftists have poured on prayer in the aftermath of Robert Westman’s mass murder of Catholic schoolchildren.

***

     From our origins to our present time, Mankind has known evil. That’s not because we’re evil; we’re not. We’re what God made us: temporal creatures with individual desires and free will. In every generation there will be some who misuse their free will to prey upon others. A great part of the human struggle is to come to grips with evil when it manifests among us.

     Some have more ability than others to confront evil directly. Those of us who aren’t so equipped must do what we can: we must safeguard our characters and those of our children. When evil strikes, we must rely upon our understanding of our fallen state, and be prepared to explain it to our children.

     Prayer is critical at such times. Character is formed from a host of influences. Prayer – regular, humble submission to the will of a loving God – is essential to it. Children must be brought to the understanding that it’s not just a way of wishing for a new pony. To pray is to recognize our limitations. To pray is to say to the One who has no limitations, “Thy will be done.”

     But as Tulsi said in the tweet above, politicians and hangers-on who denigrate prayer will have none of that. They cannot defer to God without admitting to their own fallibility and limitations, which is anathema to them. Why else would the very idea that others are praying for love and understanding upset them so? What are they really saying in their scorn? “Don’t trust God; trust us!”

     Their vision, however misty, is of themselves on the throne of the universe. Their will, not God’s, as the determinant of all things.

     Once more, with feeling: Put not your trust in princes. (Psalms 146:3) Trust God. Trust in your conscience, for it is He who speaks to you through that channel. And trust in the words of the Redeemer:

     But when the Pharisees had heard that he had put the Sadducees to silence, they were gathered together. Then one of them, which was a lawyer, asked him a question, tempting him, and saying, Master, which is the great commandment in the law?
     Jesus said unto him, Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind. This is the first and great commandment. And the second is like unto it, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.

     [Matthew 22:34-40]

     I’ll probably be back later. Have a nice day.

Whither Britain?

     The courageous Mayah Sommers, who has been called “The Young Queen of Scots:”

This brave young lady was chasing off Muslim attackers from her sister.

Her name is: Mayah Sommers "Queen of Scotts"

Share it and let the world know. pic.twitter.com/0jh1jkbmAF

— Cynthia Holt (@Ghostofcynthia) August 26, 2025

     ...is still very much in the news. Mike Hendrix has some thoughts about the matter. So does el gato malo. Both are worth reading. And of course there are these irrelevancies immediately below.

     My thoughts this morning run in another direction: How did Britain fall this low? It’s worth a lot of thought, though I doubt it will get even a fraction of the thought it deserves.

     From anyone else, that is.

***

     Let’s have a little music before we proceed to the analytics – no, wait; I think the thoughts expressed below deserve to be part of the analytics:

Another suburban family morning
Grandmother screaming at the walls
We have to shout above the din of our Rice Crispies
We can't hear anything at all
Mother chants her litany of boredom and frustration
But we know all the suicides are fake
Daddy only stares into the distance
There's only so much more that he can take

     Many miles away
     Something crawls from the slime
     At the bottom of a dark Scottish lake

Another industrial ugly morning
The factory belches filth into the sky
He walks unhindered through the picket lines today
He doesn't think to wonder why
The secretaries pout and preen like cheap tarts in a red light street
But all he ever thinks to do is watch
And every single meeting with his so-called superior
Is a humiliating kick in the crotch

     Many miles away
     Something crawls to the surface
     Of a dark Scottish loch

Another working day has ended Only the rush hour hell to face
Packed like lemmings into shiny metal boxes
Contestants in a suicidal race
Daddy grips the wheel and stares alone into the distance
He knows that something somewhere has to break
He sees the family home now looming in the headlights
The pain upstairs that makes his eyeballs ache

     Many miles away
     There's a shadow on the door
     Of a cottage on the shore
     Of a dark Scottish lake
     Many miles away...many miles away...many miles away...

(Sting, “Synchronicity II,” 1983)

     Yes, I’ve used it before. It’s potent. It’s penetrating. It asks the same question I posed above: How did Britain fall this low? And it asked it forty-two years ago.

     Forty-two years before Synchronicity was released would be 1941: the year of The Battle of London. Britain was still in decent shape before the Nazi bombing campaign. It wasn’t as well off as the United States, but its economy wasn’t yet dismissible and its men included a fair number of actual men. The American-British alliance that won World War II’s Western European Front was powerful. It suggested that British men were still masculine, a force to be respected.

     But appearances can deceive. Britain was already sinking into the Slough of Despond. In part, that was because its economy hadn’t progressed as far as the American and German economies. In another part, it was because of the deaths of so many British men in World War I, up to then called “The Great War.” And in a third part, it was because of the sense that the ineptitude of His Majesty George VI’s government was responsible for Britain’s involvement in the new war that was devastating their homeland.

     The sense of having been battered by events and bad governance was already at work on the minds of the British. Popular will had begun to wane. When socialist Clement Attlee took the reins from the Churchill government, it received further “humiliating kicks in the crotch:”

     Attlee led the construction of the first Labour majority government, which aimed to maintain full employment, a mixed economy and a greatly enlarged system of social services provided by the state. To this end, it undertook the nationalisation of public utilities and major industries, and implemented wide-ranging social reforms, including the passing of the National Insurance Act 1946 and National Assistance Act 1948, the formation of the National Health Service (NHS) in 1948, and the enlargement of public subsidies for council house building. His government also reformed trade union legislation, working practices and children's services; it created the National Parks system, passed the New Towns Act 1946 and established the town and country planning system.

     There was no disguising the direction of Attlee’s program. He aimed to make Great Britain – soon to be renamed United Kingdom – into a socialist state.

     Nothing enervates a people as swiftly, or as thoroughly, as socialism.

***

     Other things must be sketched in for a complete picture: the rise of the trade unions and the accompanying violence; the deterioration of Britain’s “public services,” especially the NHS, from the administrative bloat and underperformance characteristic of a socialized system; the flowering of the various “rebel” movements: “punks,” “skinheads,” “rude boys,” and the like; the decline in marriage and fertility; the retreat from Christianity; the “brain drain;” the opening of Britain to unlimited immigration from the Third World; and so forth. Many causal threads are intertwined there. Suffice it to say that none of the trends that emerged after World War II favored the development of a masculine, self-reliant British man. He was being transformed into a villein.

     Villeins seldom rebel against their masters. They depend on those masters for far too much.

     Today, Britain’s “law enforcement” targets Britons who dare to resist the forces of depredation and degradation. Mayah Sommers was arrested for her courage. As for the multitudes of rapists and despoilers The State has allowed into the Sceptered Isle, they’re under official protection. Their numbers are still increasing, despite Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer’s declaration that immigration be slowed. The Muslims among them have become arrogant, publicly assertive, and impossible to discipline.

     Popular will is supposedly being expressed by Operation Raise the Colours. Yet those flags are being ripped down as fast as they’re put up. Who stands against that counter-movement? Who will stand against it? One might surmise that the flag-raisers are waiting for Mayah Sommers to do it.

     Talk is not enough to save Britain. Neither are flags.

     It’s been suggested, by Larry Correia among others, that American arms makers go to emergency production levels, and their output be airdropped over Britain. Yet British hoplophobia is so advanced that it’s likely that the airdropped weapons would remain untouched until “trained firearms officers” should arrive to “safe” them.

     A recent email from my dear friend Margaret Ball contained this gem:

     I've been reading a lot of British mysteries lately. The cultural differences are sometimes amusing. Recently, for instance, I read one which started with 3 chapters of the cops agonizing because they've learned that in a certain house in Leeds there may exist...
     A GUN!
     Leads me to suspect that if a bunch of British cops were suddenly transported to the US they'd have a collective nervous breakdown.

     Britain needs men. Have any survived Britain’s century-plus of degeneration? Or are they waiting for Mayah Sommers to lead her sisters and her neighbors’ daughters to save them?

     Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Chronicles Of The Death Cults 2025-08-28

     It’s been a while since I last touched on this subject. However, the processes in motion have remained in motion. They won’t stop politely to allow us to catch our breath. To misquote Robert A. Heinlein, since they don’t take long lunch breaks, neither should we.

     My dear friend and frequent commenter Pascal, in referring to yesterday’s emission, sent this:

     That Mayah was immediately arrested for brandishing a weapon is the most important lesson to be driven into thick, sheepish human skulls of the subjects of that decadent realm. The most influential seats of UK law-makers are occupied by even more deadly death cultists than the Islamists they continue to import and protect. These rulers are so passively evil and cowardly they don't bother bloodying their own hands. Instead they simply continue to write laws that are not only quick to condemn those who defend themselves or the vulnerable, but consistently remove all obstacles to, and any fear of facing justice by, active psychopaths.
     When the justice system is officially turned on its head in this manner, how much more proof is needed that the country's law makers are even more evil than the common criminal?

     This is an indirect swipe at a phenomenon that was once commented on by someone whose name I’ve forgotten. The essence of it was as follows:

The State demands a monopoly on violence.
Yet violent criminals are seldom prosecuted,
While persons who defend themselves violently
Often face The State’s wrath.
Therefore, the criminal is an agent of The State.

     In the United Kingdom, which seemingly grows less united with each passing day, this appears incontrovertible. It also applies to parts of these United States.

     Give that some thought while I fetch more coffee.

***

     This is a few weeks old. It’s on my mind today because of the “death cults” theme:

     This is not a parody. Two bioethicists have argued in the prestigious professional journal Bioethics that we should breed ticks to cause more infections of a condition that causes an allergy to red meat. Seriously.
Why would anyone want ticks to become more dangerous? Meat-eating is wrong, and so anything (apparently) that causes fewer of us to eat meat is “beneficent“:

1. Eating meat is morally wrong.
2. If (1), then eating meat makes people morally worse and makes the world a worse place.
3. So, people would be morally better and the world would be a less bad place if people didn’t eat meat.
4. If an act makes people morally better and makes the world a less bad place than it would otherwise be, then that act is morally obligatory. [Corollary of consequentialism]
5. Promoting tickborne AGS [a tickborne syndrome that causes a meat allergy] makes people morally better and makes the world a less bad place.
6. So, promoting tickborne AGS is morally obligatory.

     “Bioethicists” -- ? How much would you be willing to bet that these... persons’ ethics stop short at ethical mandates such as “Thou shalt not kill,” eh? When “bioethicists” make statements such as “Life should end at seventy-five” (Ezekiel Emanuel) or “The elderly should not receive medical care” (Daniel Callahan), they forfeit any claim to being dispensers of “ethics.” They are death cultists, pure and simple.

     I could go on about this, but as I’ve done so before, and at length, I’ll spare you. Allow me one quick mention of my collection of essays on this subject, and I’ll allow us both to pass on to happier thoughts and climes.

     I may be back later. Stay tuned.

A Glimmer Of Hope

     A couple of days ago, something unusual happened Across the Water: A Briton dared to defend another Briton against the threat of rape by an immigrant.

     If you aren’t familiar with the details of the event, the defender was a 14-year-old Scottish girl named Mayah Sommers. The intended victim was her 12-year-old sister. The would-be rapist was from... somewhere else, probably the Middle East or Africa. Mayah protected her sister by brandishing a large knife and a hatchet at the immigrant. Apparently that was enough to daunt him, and thank God for that.

     The story is resounding throughout the U.K. I have no idea how much currency it’s achieved here or elsewhere. Young Mayah is drawing comparisons to Boadicea, to Joan of Arc, and to other courageous women known to history. She deserves as much praise as she’s received, and more.

     However, her courage has had other consequences, not all of which were easy to foresee.

     The one that’s drawn the most cries of outrage was Mayah’s immediate arrest for brandishing a bladed weapon. In emasculated Britain, that’s a criminal offense, and never mind the wherefores. The probability is high that popular sentiment will compel the dismissal of that charge, but as in all such things we must wait and see.

     After that comes the dawning recognition that the U.K.’s laws against even the most minimal personal armament – even carrying pepper spray is outlawed, barring specific police permission – are utterly insane. They amount to a license for the would-be predator to do what he likes to less aggressive and weaker prey. Horror at the idea that innocent Britons – men and women both – are forbidden to possess and carry the means of self-defense has taken a long time to ripen, but today it’s fully upon the Sceptered Isle.

     Third is the de facto position of The State: protect the predator from the consequences of his deeds, especially if he’s an immigrant, a Muslim, or both. Put baldly, it seems incomprehensible. Yet U.K. governments maintain that posture so consistently that one must infer that it was deliberately chosen. It lends weight to the suggestion that The State values the immigrants above the lives and well-being of native Britons.

     Fourth and last is the rising hope that some measure of masculine courage and native pride might be kindled in the larger British populace by Mayah’s actions. I must admit that I hope for that as well. Britain deserves better than to be Islamicized and removed from the brotherhood of Western civilization. But the odds are against it, for a simple reason.

Britons fear weapons more than their invaders.

     The technical term for a fear of weapons is hoplophobia. It seems endemic in the U.K. The suggestion, made by Larry Correia among others, that we should mass-produce and air-drop handguns to beleaguered Britons has been met with rejection by Britons themselves. They fear the consequences of mass armament more than what’s being done to them by the invading hordes.

     Robert A. Heinlein was adamant that a slave must free himself. What of the slave who prefers slavery to freedom?

     This saga may have a few more stanzas to run. Mayah Sommers is being hailed as a symbol of reborn British courage and defiance: a Mockingjay, if you will. Her example may yet galvanize what masculinity and defiance remain buried in the British soul. If it’s simply too ironic that a young teenage girl must teach those things to British men, then so be it. The Sceptered Isle needs her example too badly to quail at the disgrace of it.

Crimes Against Clarity

     Perhaps a few of my Gentle Readers will be familiar with this classic bit of George Carlin:

     Carlin and I share that particular dislike. However, he doesn’t address the most flagrant insistence on euphemisms today. It’s an understandable omission, as he “passed away” in 2008. That insistence is promoted almost exclusively by the Left.

     We turn thence from a great comedian to a vital essay by a professional editor:

     Words are code for the mind. Change the word, and you change the thought; change the thought, and you change the action that follows.
     This was the logic behind the “person-first” language that emerged in the nonprofit world. A disabled person became a person with a disability. A homeless man became a person without shelter. At its best, this reminded us that individuals deserve dignity. At its worst, it twisted language into unwieldy shapes. But even in this early form, the seed was planted: words were not just descriptions, they were instruments of perception.
     From there, the seed grew into something else entirely. What began as a courtesy metastasized into a strategy. Illegal alien became undocumented immigrant — later even person without papers. Crime was reframed as a clerical mishap, trespass as missing paperwork. The reality did not change, but the story around it did.

     Please read it all.

     I’ve written about the importance of clarity so many times that I’ve lost count. But perhaps the most powerful statement about clarity – let’s be quite clear about that: Clarity is the attribute of the man who says exactly what he means in a way that guarantees that he will be understood – was an indirect one made in a mighty work of fiction:

     “Mr. Rearden,” he had said once, “if you feel you’d like to hand out more of the Metal to friends of yours—I mean, in bigger hauls—it could be arranged, you know. Why don’t we apply for a special permission on the ground of essential need? I’ve got a few friends in Washington. Your friends are pretty important people, big businessmen, so it wouldn’t be difficult to get away with the essential need dodge. Of course, there would be a few expenses. For things in Washington. You know how it is, things always occasion expenses.”
     “What things?”
     “You understand what I mean.”
     “No,” Rearden had said, “I don’t. Why don’t you explain it to me?”
     The boy had looked at him uncertainly, weighed it in his mind, then come out with: “It’s bad psychology.”
     “What is?”
     “You know, Mr. Rearden, it’s not necessary to use such words as that.”
     “As what?”
     “Words are relative. They’re only symbols. If we don’t use ugly symbols, we won’t have any ugliness. Why do you want me to say things one way, when I’ve already said them another?”
     “Which way do I want you to say them?”
     “Why do you want me to?”
     “For the same reason that you don’t.”
     The boy had remained silent for a moment, then had said, “You know, Mr. Rearden, there are no absolute standards. We can’t go by rigid principles, we’ve got to be flexible, we’ve got to adjust to the reality of the day and act on the expediency of the moment.”
     “Run along, punk. Go and try to pour a ton of steel without rigid principles, on the expediency of the moment.”

     [Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

     Have a nice day.

Quote Of The Day

     From the great John Hinderaker:

     If you are going to share a country with fellow citizens [with] whom you disagree on important policy issues, it is vital that both sides believe their opponents are acting in good faith. When good faith disappears, no written document can preserve a republic.

     I could not have put it better myself.

The Globalist Reach And Grasp

     I’m sure my Gentle Readers are already aware of British media regulators’ attempt to bend 4chan to their will, under the aegis of Britain’s Online Safety Act. I’m sure you’re also aware that 4chan has “given the Brits the finger.” It was delightful to see the 4chan response, defiant in the face of a threat from an essentially powerless foreign entity. Other American companies threatened by the European Union have bent the knee almost at once. You don’t have to be a fan of Internet porn to applaud 4chan’s boldness.

     While I hope 4chan’s reply will embolden other American companies threatened by foreign busybodies, my main interest here is in whether the episode will teach said busybodies the limits of their ability to assert power. The globalist agenda is to eliminate all such limits. But limits are inherent in all human undertakings, from the septuagenarian desperately straining to thread a needle to the superbillionaire aiming at establishing a human colony on Mars. They’re imposed by our finitude and the laws of Nature.

     Baldly speaking, some people have to be clouted across the chops before they realize that they’ve gone too far. This is demonstrably the case with globalists and political forces. Our reluctance to administer such an update is one of the reasons the national and world situations are as they are. Yet it appears that while they may be late in arriving, appropriate clouts are being delivered to persons who need them. A look at the explosion of patriotic displays among Britons in recent weeks provides powerful evidence. American enterprises that refuse to bow to pressures to “conform” to the “norms” proclaimed by the globalists provide additional support.

     It’s no accident that the “norms” proclaimed by the globalists are virtually identical to the demands of the American Left. The aims of the two are highly compatible, at least in the near term. Were they to succeed in achieving those aims, they might then slug it out for supremacy, but for the moment they’re “fellow travelers.”

     But there’s a larger point to be made in this connection: The “norms” purveyed by those groups require the surrender of individual and national sovereignty. The individual must forfeit his independent power of judgment and decision. The nation must forfeit its jurisdiction – remember the etymology of that word – to supranational bodies unconcerned with national traditions, cultures, and preferences. In that context, the drives for a universal “right” to abortion and the elimination of national borders become comprehensible.

     The Westphalian nation-state was supposed to put an end to such nonsense. Clearly, there’s still some work to be done.

If You Yearn To Understand RussiaGate

     Sundance at The Last Refuge has produced a penetrating capsule analysis of the maneuverings and machinations that constitute the “prequel” to that extraordinary episode. It’s worth reading slowly and digesting in its entirety.

     To many American patriots, still reluctant to believe that even a Democrat would have stooped that low, the RussiaGate scandal can seem incomprehensible. To put it as briefly as possible, they don’t want to believe that a sitting president and a former First Lady could have been that vile. Yet the behavior of other Democrats has made it plain that there is no lower bound to their perfidy. For them, power is everything. Therefore, no tactic is too scrofulous to be considered.

     Mind you, many Republicans are no better. It’s in the nature of a political system that the worst, in Friedrich Hayek’s phrase, will rise to the top. In the United States, a nation steeped in Christian ethics, that dynamic was curbed for many decades by the restraint imposed by conscience in both its forms: i.e., both the inner awareness of wrongness, and “the inner voice that warns us that someone may be looking.” (H. L. Mencken)

     Put not your trust in princes. (Psalms 146:3) The letter after a politician’s name should be taken only as a guide to the direction of his villainy. Don’t allow exceptions such as Donald Trump to blind you to the general rule.

Still Sick

     I’m still laboring with bronchitis, and unlikely to be eloquent today, so allow me a brief commentary and a day of rest.

     I’ve long admired Canadian “public intellectual” Jordan R. Peterson. He has a talent for expressing fundamental ideas in penetrating ways. Also, he doesn’t shy back from the distasteful conclusion, which is something I cannot say about most opinion leaders today. In the video below, he makes a basic point without flinching. It’s a point that must be hammered home, for today, owing to “progressive” historical forgetfulness, we face a resurgence of one of the most evil ideas that any people has ever adopted:

     In this connection, see also this baseline essay.

Perhaps The Right Way To Engage The Left...

     ...is not to engage at all.

     Note the switcheroo exercised in this piece:

     Meher Ahmad: I'm Meher Ahmad, an editor in the New York Times Opinion section. There's been a resurgence in explicit "be thin" messaging and culture. With the Ozempic boom, we see the body-shaming of actresses like Sydney Sweeney and red carpets that were already filled with thin actresses becoming even thinner.
     On the right, there's been a focus on body size that's been bundled up not just with health and wellness but with religion, morals and politics. And so when everything is political and we're more divided than ever, should the size and shape of our bodies be any different? I'm here today with the Opinion writer Jessica Grose to understand why the right is obsessed with thinness and why that message is winning over women.
     Jess, I want to start first by asking you what the messaging on diet and thinness coming from the Christian influencer spaces is -- what do you see there?
     Jessica Grose: So it's really encapsulated by some things that the wellness influencer Alex Clark said at the Young Women's Leadership Summit.

     Audio clip of Alex Clark: Look around this room, let's just be honest. It's never been hotter to be a conservative. You are in this room and you are witnessing a cultural revolution. We've got the girls who lift weights, eat clean, have their hormones balanced, have their lives together. Less Prozac, more protein. Less burnout, more babies. Less feminism, more femininity.
     Grose: And by contrast, liberals are TikTok activists with five shades of autism, panic attacks and a ring light. So it's really defining what is "normal" as a very narrow ideal of womanhood. It's all tied up with not just body size, but also behavior.

     Ahmad: Even in that clip, Alex Clark is sort of describing a foil to what she describes as a liberal body type. How much of this is a reaction to a left version of a body type, and what even is that?
     Grose: So I think it's a reaction to the body positivity movement, which I would say peaked about 10 years ago. It was the idea that weight is not tied directly to health and that you can be healthy and not rail-thin.

     Grose is conflating health with thinness. She attempts to reframe the “body positivity” movement as a reaction to that, when in truth it was an attempt to defend obesity as perfectly consistent with health.

     Outrageous. And of course, since the Times is a left-wing organ, Grose also strives to politicize the pro-health, pro-femininity movement in progress, such that left-leaning readers will be inclined to shy away from it without further consideration. She might as well have shouted “Don’t strive to be healthy and attractive! It will make you a bad person!”

     The Left’s whole appeal to its members is its assertion of moral and intellectual superiority. It’s the most blatant of circular propositions: “If you’re smart and moral, be one of us! Then you can tell others, ‘I’m smarter and more moral than you, because I’m a leftist and you’re not.’”

     Of course, all this is “previous work.” Thomas Sowell has covered it extensively. Nevertheless, these points must be made repeatedly for a simple reason: The Left is relentless. It never ceases to campaign. It’s especially effective upon the young and as-yet-unformed, to whom the Siren song of superiority is singularly seductive. Its subtext is “Politics uber Alles,” a barb on the hook that seeks to exclude any alternative approach to living and relating to others ab initio.

     Something for my Gentle Readers to reflect on when they’re more awake.

Warning!

     Daniel Greenfield deposeth and saith:

     The Online Safety Act was sold to the British public as a way to protect children from adult content, but fighting porn proved to be a trojan horse over fighting what the regime cared about.
     Any Britons trying to read the Act probably never made it to Chapter 7 at which point the wooden horse legislation listed a ‘Committee on Disinformation and Misinformation’ and began handing out matching orders on how internet services are supposed to deal with the bogeys of unfettered speech. What does disinformation have to do with keeping kids from accessing porn?
     Recent court hearings revealed that officials had stated that the real purpose was “not primarily aimed at … the protection of children”, but regulating “services that have a significant influence over public discourse”. There’s only one kind of censorship the British government is really into.
     Rather than blocking pornography, the Online Safety Act was used to block videos of parliamentary debates about the Muslim sex grooming gang crisis in the UK. Not only wasn’t the Online Safety Act protecting children from being exposed to sexual content, it was being used to censor revelations about the complicity of the authorities in the sexual abuse of children.

     Yes, that’s Across the Water in our “brother nation” the United Kingdom, but it has some prospects for being replicated here.

     The American left has the same goal as the British Left: unbounded and absolute power in perpetuity. They know, as do my Gentle Readers, that there are three absolute requirements for the maintenance of freedom:

• Education,
• Communications,
• Weaponry.

     No free society can withstand the loss of any of those three,

     The Left has made deep inroads into education in the U.S. I’m sure I need not present the Bill of Particulars all over again. Weaponry is a battlefield: Washington and the state governments have done their damnedest to limit a right guaranteed in the Constitution, and though we of the “gun culture” have had some recent successes in rolling back those incursions, there’s still a long way to go. Communications, thanks to the Internet, was a bright spot for freedom lovers... but the UK’s Left is showing our domestic vermin the path to follow on that front: “safety,” especially for “the children.”

     If there’s anything we ought to have learned beyond all possibility of refutation, it’s that when a Leftist starts talking about “the children,” he’s reaching for power. “The children” is now a shibboleth, a bludgeon-phrase intended to foreclose argument on the current subject, whatever that may be. The Left has no interest in children’s well-being. How on Earth would any concern for children be consistent with “gender fluidity” ideology and “drag queen story hour?” Or allowing Muslims into the United States, come to think of it?

     But as Greenfield notes, the UK’s power-lusters have dropped the mask. Don’t allow our domestic variety to pretend to be different.

Good Advice Dept.

     I just saw this on X:

     I wanted to applaud. The cult of celebrity has done great harm to these United States. It’s time for it to end. Perhaps a mass exodus of “celebrities” to countries they prefer – North Korea, perhaps? – would start the trend.

     Few remember how it started. Television was the enabling medium. Instead of having to “go to a show,” you could have entertainers of all sorts in your living room. Athletes – really, just another species of entertainer – soon followed, as local television stations started to broadcast the games of local teams. The media collaborated in foisting these intrusions upon us, perhaps in the hope of boosting their own “celebrity” status.

     Quite recently, a friend spent $7,000 – that’s seven thousand US dollars — to take her granddaughter to a Taylor Swift concert. (Please don’t ask for the details; I’m already on the edge of nausea.) If that isn’t a symptom of a severe illness, I can’t think of a better one. It’s an illness that must be headed off while the target population – young Americans – is most susceptible. Once it takes hold, the disease usually proves incurable. The afflicted stumble through life worshipping singers, actors, power hitters and quarterbacks. Sometimes they take their values and political positions from those... persons. Take note, parents.

Mantras For 2025

     I’ve been repeating two lines a lot lately:

• Islam is toxic to human life.
• You can’t take the savagery out of the savage.

     I get some agreement, and some pushback. Yet the evidence continues to accumulate:

     Stories similar to those two are multiplying. The innate toxicity and savagery of certain creeds and peoples is becoming ever more apparent. The media can no longer sweep all of it under the carpet.

     I could go on a long tirade about this, but I’ve already done so many times:

• Islam
• Race

     So I’ll simply refer you to those occasions.

     To those who’ve wondered: Yes, I intend that the better pieces from Liberty’s Torch V2.0 will be brought here. It will be a slow process, and just now I have a bad case of bronchitis. Please be patient.

Versailles 2025 Part 2

     If the following is accurate:

     ...perhaps Zelenskiy has been denying “the will of the people” this whole time.

     Popular self-determination was a theme of some importance in 1919 at Versailles. Lloyd George and Clemenceau showed it little respect. They sewed nations together according to their preferences, no matter what the affected peoples would have preferred. But the ultimate determinant of what governments can get away with is what people will “suffer, while evils are sufferable:”

     Power concedes nothing without demand. It never did, and it never will. Find out just what people will submit to, and you have found out the exact amount of injustice and wrong which will be imposed upon them; and these will continue until they have been resisted with either words or blows, or with both. – Frederick Douglass

     None of the nations patched together at Versailles has survived into the 21st Century. All have fissioned or otherwise mutated. There’s been a lot of violence in the process.

     Volodymyr Zelenskiy is a dictator. All dictators cling to power, for a reason as old as The State itself:

     Living in the public eye had always entailed increased risk. Historically, whenever some troublemaker had roused the rabble to a greater pitch than the Establishment of that time and place could tolerate, it had disposed of him with no compunction and extreme prejudice. There were parts of the world where that was still the inevitable price of rising to power—places where a dismissal from high office was always administered with high-velocity lead. Power seekers in such lands arrived in their palaces with their death warrants already signed and sealed; they merely awaited delivery. [Shadow of a Sword]

     That’s the fate awaiting Zelenskiy, should his grip on Ukraine slacken and fail.

Versailles 2025

     No doubt Liberty's Torch’s Gentle Readers are aware of the enormous gaggle of “leaders” gaggled in Washington on Sunday to “help” with the Russia-Ukraine “peace talks.” No doubt you’re also aware that this is being treated as something that “should” happen. And finally, you’re aware that a lot of the contention is over which parts of its former self Ukraine must concede to Russia as the purchase price of peace.

     All I can think of the whole dreary matter is “It's 1919 in Versailles all over again.”

     You know your history, don’t you? The famous Pan-European Peace Conference of 1919, that was supposed to draw a line under the recently concluded unpleasantness? The one that redrew nearly every national border in Europe, according to the preferences of British prime minister Lloyd George and French potentate Georges Clemenceau? The one where Woodrow Wilson harped endlessly on his “Fourteen Points,” prompting Clemenceau to remark “The Lord God had only ten!”

     Well, they missed the centennial, but I suppose this is as close as they could come.

     The Russia-Ukraine War, which seems to have begun with an act of aggression by Russia, need not have involved any other nation. Yet it did. From nearly its inception it involved the United States, because the Grey Council that really exercised the powers of the presidency under Puppet-in-Chief Joe Biden saw opportunities for power and profit. It was a large part of the reason Donald Trump regained the presidency. No one wanted to imagine Biden negotiating with Vladimir Putin, much less confront the reality.

     Putin’s vision of a reborn Russian Empire could not tolerate the prospect of Ukraine joining NATO. Regardless of the demographic realities of the Donbas and Crimea, he would have attacked that reason alone. Even so, it was never a conflict that needed American involvement... any more than was World War I.

     Woodrow Wilson so greatly desired to involve the United States in the Great War that he seized on the slenderest possible pretext – the soi-disant “Zimmerman telegram” – to do so. Perhaps he would have done so anyway, after the Lusitania affair. I have little doubt that he saw himself as a world-historical figure, destined by God to bring American standards of justice to the Old World. He saw himself as divinely destined to become the President of the United States:

     After the election he told William F. McCombs, chairman of the Democratic National Committee: "Before we proceed I wish it clearly understood that I owe you nothing." Surprised, McCombs reminded him of his services during the campaign, but Wilson exclaimed: "God ordained that I should be the next President of the United States. Neither you nor any other mortal could have prevented that!"
     Wilson never doubted that he was a foreordained agent, "guided by an intelligent power outside himself," with important work to do in the world. For him the League of Nations, his most famous enterprise, was not simply a human contrivance for ordering international relations; it represented God's will and, in rejecting it, the United States was trying futilely to resist its Providential destiny. As Wilson told some friends toward the end of his life: "I have seen fools resist Providence before, and I have seen their destruction.... That we shall prevail is as sure as God reigns." To Raymond Fosdick, a former League official, he exclaimed, with tears in his eyes, a few weeks before his death in 1924: "You can't fight God!"

     [Paul F. Boller, Presidential Anecdotes]

     There’s a lot of danger in thinking yourself a divine agent. But there can be a great deal of power (for some) and profit (for some) in warfare. Lloyd George and Clemenceau wanted their slices. They thought they’d got them... for a while.

     I hope President Trump doesn’t involve the United States any further in this. We don’t need another “security guarantee” that would imperil – possibly spill – the blood of our best yet profit us nothing.

     Let’s conclude with a little music:

I'm here sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
Spread out in a hall of Versailles
And every single nationality and principality
have come for a piece of the pie
I'm sitting in the wreck of Europe
With a map of Europe
And the lines and the borders are gone
We've got to do this jigsaw puzzle
It's an awful muddle
But somehow we've got to go on

Lawrence of Arabia is waiting in the wings
He's got some Arab sheikhs and kings
And we're in debt to them somehow
Lawrence of Arabia has got this perfect vision
Gonna sell him down the river
There's no time for him now

I think I'm gonna take a piece of Russia
And a piece of Germany
And give them to Poland again
I'll put together Yugoslavia and Czechoslovakia
And hope that is how they'll remain
Then I'll take a bit of Turkey
Then a lot of Turkey
This is all quite a heady affair
There's Persia and Iraq to pick up
And there's Churchill's hiccup
And we can't leave it up in the air

Woodrow Wilson waves his fourteen points around
And says "The time to act is now
Won't get this opportunity again"
Woodrow Wilson has his fourteen points
But Clemenceau turns to Lloyd George
And says "You know that God himself had only ten"

Today I'm carried by a league of notions
(It's a league of notions)
By a league of notions
I don't think I quite understand
(I don't think I understand)
I only know from this commotion
(From this commotion)
There's a chance that we could turn
The world in the palm of our hands
(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)

Voices in the corridors of power
Candles burning hour by hour
Still you know that to the victors go the spoils
Such a great responsibility to make it fair
And there must be some reparations now
And don't forget the oil

Today I'm carried by a league of notions
(It's a league of notions)
By a league of notions
I don't think I quite understand
(I don't think I understand)
I only know from this commotion
(From this commotion)
There's a chance that we could turn
The world in the palm of our hands
(We can turn the world in the palm of our hands)

Pax vobiscum
Wo-Oh, Pax vobiscum

[Al Stewart]

Is This Correct?

     Gentle Readers whose memories are long enough will remember the hurricane of questions that erupted over the use of a large SWAT team to effect a late-night arrest of Trump advisor Roger Stone. You’ll also remember that before that SWAT team arrived on-site, a full CNN camera crew was in place around Stone’s home, ready to film the action from start to finish – which it did. It was so clear that CNN had been tipped off about the raid to come that the network didn’t bother trying to deny it.

     That was scandal-of-the-week, for a time. But the foofaurauw over it didn’t last very long. It was already generally agreed that American law enforcement had been politicized, especially at the federal level. Americans took a “What can you expect?” attitude toward it. Of course, such a “What can you expect?” attitude segues naturally into “What can you do?”

     But there’s a new contestant on the scandal runway:

     Is this true? Can anyone verify or falsify it?

     If it’s true, it would be the scandal of the century. It would suggest that CNN had advance notice that there would be an assassination attempt on then-candidate Donald Trump. Where would such notice have originated? Does it lend any credence to the assertion, mostly made in fringe circles, that the Secret Service wanted Trump to be assassinated?

     No one has ever provided a credible answer to the penetrating question why Trump’s Secret Service detail was so low-quality and its performance so lax. It appears that with Trump’s return to the White House, such matters have been shrugged aside. I doubt the family of murdered Corey Comperatore is over the agony.

     CNN’s editorial policy is left-of-center. The network has shown Trump no love. But to have prior notice of an assassination attempt, and to condone and cover it as if it were just another news item, would be beyond forgiving.

     If the above claim can be verified or falsified, it’s vital that it be done. But who has unquestionable access to the raw facts of the matter?

A City In Insurrection

     I dislike being this exercised on a Sunday morning, but here it is:

New: illegal alien Tatiana Martinez is a TikTok influencer (tatianamartinez_02) with 30k followers was arrested today. This woman focused on alerting crazy protesters to disrupt, harass and disrespect ICE and law enforcement officers in California. She is also a nominee for… pic.twitter.com/PFJCvAkkt1

— hernando arce (@hernandoarce) August 16, 2025

     There you have it, Gentle Reader. The City of Los Angeles is towing the cars of ICE agents whenever they stop to make an arrest. That’s not accidental. That’s city policy. It puts Los Angeles, once a great city, into a state of insurrection against the federal government.

     So what now? Will this policy even draw a rebuke? Will the Department of Homeland Security send Mayor Karen Bass a strongly worded letter? And what about that blowhard in Sacramento? You know who I mean: the one who fancies himself a future president! What will he do to demonstrate compliance with federal law on immigration?

     There’s no chance of California “authorities” doing anything to comply with the law. California needs its illegals to retain all those juicy seats in Congress. Besides, they vote Democrat.

     Stay tuned.

A Deeper Look

     A mostly “outrage” article at American Greatness concludes with this offhand assertion:

     The global demonstrations against Israel, violence against Jews on U.S. campuses, and Israel’s diplomatic isolation are rooted in rampant antisemitism and Marxism.

     While anti-Semitism is a significant component of the worldwide agitation against Israel, it’s far from the whole story. That story begins after World War I, when Europe’s nations mortgaged their economies by becoming dependent on Middle Eastern oil. It remains a key driver of hostility toward world Jewry even today.

     Today, there’s an additional element in the anti-Israel stew: the massive influx of Muslim migrants to Europe. All over the Old World, there are now significant populations of Muslims within the nations of what was once called Christendom. The Islamic demographic is the most restive and violent portion of the populations of those nations that have let them in.

     As has been stated many times, including by me, Muslims do not immigrate to Christian countries to assimilate; they come to conquer. Islamic doctrine both forbids assimilation and commands conquest. Even a single-digit percentage of Muslims in an otherwise peaceful country can credibly – albeit sotto voce – present that country’s political elite with a threat of unacceptable violence and public disorder. Note that when the percentage of Muslims in a nation reaches double digits, the political class finds itself forced to spend a large fraction of its time and resources on placating them.

     This completes the explanation for worldwide indifference to the plight of Israel and its people. It’s an important step, for bigotry of any sort is personal; we can hope, at least, that the bigots will wear out, age out, or disappear. Indeed, bigotry is the preferred explanation for Western hostility to Israel. It’s the easiest influence to combat.

     But oil supplies and the threat of Islamic riots are a much graver matter.

You Get A Certain Feeling

     We know the wire services are as politicized as the media that consume their offerings. Still, now and then one must wonder whether they care whether anyone is paying attention:

     “People over-assign [climate-change] impact to actually pretty low-impact actions such as recycling, and underestimate the actual carbon impact of behaviors much more carbon intensive, like flying or eating meat,” said Madalina Vlasceanu, report co-author and professor of environmental social sciences at Stanford University.
     The top three individual actions that help the climate, including avoiding plane flights, choosing not to get a dog and using renewable electricity, were also the three that participants underestimated the most. Meanwhile, the lowest-impact actions were changing to more efficient appliances and swapping out light bulbs, recycling, and using less energy on washing clothes. Those were three of the top four overestimated actions in the report.

     Now, being a former scientist and a rational man, I’m on the “denier” side of the “global warming” / “climate change” “debate,” so none of that would have been on my agenda under any circumstances. But here’s a supposed “professor of environmental social sciences” hectoring the warmista faithful that You’re doing the wrong things!

     You get a certain feeling about these people and the ones who hearken to them. You can sense that it troubles them that those who believe their bilge aren’t sufficiently devout. Why, look at them! They’re happy! How can they allow themselves that luxury when the Cause isn’t yet triumphant?

     A priest I knew, back in my fond and foolish youth, called this “calling for the hairshirts.” And indeed, if the bull goose loonies at the pinnacle of the “global warming” / “climate change” lunacy could have their way, we’d all be wearing hairshirts 24/7 and sleeping on beds of barbed wire. They aren’t nearly as concerned about the supposed plight of the planet as they are about extinguishing the very last embers of human happiness and flourishing.

     I’ve said it before (and I type that phrase so much lately I should have a macro for it):

They hate you.

     Do not take advice, much less commands, from people who hate you.

     BY THE WAY: If you aren’t yet aware of it, Mike Hendrix has granted me contributor’s privileges at Cold Fury, so if you want more Fran – there’s no accounting for tastes, but some do, you know – you can find more there.

Enemy Of The State

     The years have made one fact utterly clear: The State hates Christianity – especially the Catholic variety – above all other things. Christianity is the State’s foremost opponent.

     I needn’t recount the reasons for my Gentle Readers. Any system of belief that holds that there is a higher authority than the political would draw the State’s enmity. Christianity doubles down by putting that Authority beyond the State’s reach. And to celebrate human freedom as well! The nerve!

     So wherever you find the State, you will find it scheming to do damage to Christianity. The Soviets tried their damnedest to eliminate it completely. I’m sure you know how the Red Chinese treat Christians. And let’s not discuss the North Koreans; it’s too nice a day.

     But what of our free and “tolerant” Republic?

BREAKING: In a nationwide ruling against a Trump Administration religious conscience rule, a federal district Court today ruled against the Little Sisters of the Poor. The Court sided with Pennsylvania and New Jersey in their years-long effort to force the Little Sisters of the…

— BECKET (@becketfund) August 13, 2025

     Please read the whole thread.

     The game here “should” be “obvious.” The absolute sanctity of human life, including that of the unborn child, is fundamental to Christian belief. The Catholic Church is the foremost defender of the right to life in the whole world. If the State can force the Church to yield on that point, it will have made a fatal breakthrough. Think about it: If one crucial tenet of the faith can be compromised for Church-State amity, why would the others be immune? Pretty soon, Church teaching would be hollowed out completely.

     The governments of the United States of America would have succeeded where the Communists and totalitarians failed. Quite a feather for the gradualists’ cap, eh?

     Of course the Little Sisters of the Poor will appeal. They might win at the Circuit Court level, but it’s even money that the case will go all the way to the top. It’s a case to be watched closely. Defenders of human life should take note – and provide what support they can.

     I wonder if the Institute for Justice could be persuaded to get involved?

Back To That, Eh?

     The Left, terrified that it’s losing its bastions in the executive branch of the federal government, has revived the “global warming / climate change” scam for one more run on the boards. In light of this, I would recommend that my Gentle Readers review three articles:

• The PDOOMA Series
• You’re Getting Colder!
• Breakthrough!

     The screaming may not have peaked yet. But one who is armed with data and logic will have an easier time coping with the screamers. Remember that a great part of their distress – all of it, in some cases – arises from their being out of power. To the Left, that’s like having their church closed, locked, and posted for demolition.

     No, don’t sympathize with them. Don’t try to comfort them. Remember what they think of you.

Dissent Requires Courage

     I have an admission to make, Gentle Reader: I'm not terribly courageous. There are times when I back away from saying plainly and explicitly what I think about a particular proposition. It's normally in those cases where I could expect a storm of denunciation from persons who agree with me on most other things: a consequence of the polarizing and hardening of opinion on innumerable subjects. So my "courage of convictions" is a good distance from perfect.

     But I'm nearing the end of my life. If I'm ever to correct that deficiency, it must be soon.

     Those readers who have respected my views on matters of faith and the spirit are the most likely to feel what follows as a "gut punch." If you proceed from here, don’t claim afterward that I didn’t warn you.

---

     I'm a Catholic. That doesn't mean I agree with the totality of Church teachings. The Church has been wrong on a number of occasions and subjects. I've been called a "cafeteria Catholic" for that. Whatever! I stand by my convictions.

     On a variety of subjects, clerical doctrinal overreach has been rampant. Church teaching has at times seemed designed to benefit the Church hierarchy and the clergy generally, rather than to explain and explore the will of God as it was elucidated to us by His Son. This was at its most dramatic in the years near to the end of the First Millennium, when clerics routinely exploited the millenarian fears of European Christians to enrich themselves.

     About thirty years ago, the Church added two remarkable "sins" to its catechism: income tax evasion, and "excessive" sexual pleasure even between husband and wife. Never mind that the income tax itself is a form of armed robbery, or that "excessive" is always a matter of opinion. Never mind that many a State is blatantly oppressive, even murderous, or that the marital bed is supposed to be a place of fulfillment and joy. The Church condemned these things; we're supposed to feel guilty about them and plead for absolution from them.

     To which I replied, "Where is your authority for these pronouncements?"

     (...crickets chirping...)

     For "baseline" thoughts on clerical overreach, see this essay.

---

     It is unacceptable for a human institution to arrogate authority that belongs only to God. The moral-ethical rules are His rules. We cannot legitimately alter them, nor can we extend them into realms where they don't apply. Neither teleology nor "good intentions" can justify it. Yet the Church has done so repeatedly.

     In recent years, fearing that its doctrinal overreach has endangered the allegiance of its flock, the Church has tried to "have it both ways:"

     Catholics believe that an individual's conscience is the ultimate determinant of what is wrong or right for that individual. Moreover, God will judge us according to the fidelity with which we have followed our conscience. Nevertheless, this conscience needs to be formed by objective standards of moral conduct. The Church provides us with just that -- moral norms based on Jesus's teachings, the inspired scriptures, centuries of tradition, and the laws of nature.
     These moral standards may seem at times to be inhibiting or restrictive. The fact is, that quite to the contrary, they release or liberate us. These norms both make us free, and lead us to the deep happiness that comes from following God's plan. Jesus underscored that point when he said: If you live according to my teachings, you are truly my disciples; then you will know the truth, and the truth will set you free." (John 8:31-32)

     [Father Joseph M. Champlin, What It Means To Be Catholic]

     The attempt to tread the narrow line between "Let your conscience be your guide" and "We know better than you do" could not be more obvious. Yet there is no avoiding the primacy of conscience. Conscience, once supplemented with reason, provides us the tool for knowing right from wrong, the "land of sin" from the "land of liberty."

     For what is the conscience? It's the "knowing with" that God provides to every human soul: the "knowing with" God, through the faculties He has awarded us. I had a character in a novel explain it better than I could:

     The word ‘conscience’ means ‘knowing with.’ But knowing with whom? As we can’t read one another’s consciences, or transmit into them, it can only be God. Conscience is the channel God uses to help us make our judgment calls—which does not mean that if you and I make a particular one differently, then one of us is ‘wrong.’ You can never know what another person’s conscience has told him...or whether he’s really paid attention to it as he should.”

     The hard-and-fast rules that must undergird the operations of conscience are set out by Christ Himself in Matthew Chapter 19:

     And behold one came and said to him: Good master, what good shall I do that I may have life everlasting?
     Who said to him: Why asketh thou me concerning good? One is good, God. But if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments.
     He said to him: Which? And Jesus said: Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness. Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. [Matthew 19:16-19]

     Note that Christ's pronouncement comes close to the Noahide Commandments. These are the lightest requirements any faith has ever laid upon Mankind. As they were enunciated first by God the Father and then by His Son, we may trust the Authority behind them. Moreover, they are fully consistent with two even higher Commandments:

     But the Pharisees hearing that he had silenced the Sadducees, came together: And one of them, a doctor of the law, asking him, tempting him: Master, which is the greatest commandment in the law?
     Jesus said to him: Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with thy whole heart, and with thy whole soul, and with thy whole mind. This is the greatest and the first commandment. And the second is like to this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.
     On these two commandments dependeth the whole law and the prophets. [Matthew 22:34-40]

     I hold that these rules and these alone are the original authority to which the Church must cleave. The Church's authority is derived from those rules. I've never met a challenge sufficient to make me doubt it.

     Much of my fiction has been aimed at elucidating the rules by which a Catholic – or any other person who wants to see himself as good – must live. Dissent if you please; I stand by what I've written, here and elsewhere. I'll do so when I face God at the Particular Judgment, without fear.

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     Why is this on my mind, you ask? Mainly for two reasons. First, in these later years of life I've become more judgmental of myself. I've always promoted clarity in thought and expression. To fall short of that standard lowers me in my own eyes. Second, because there are innumerable persons who lack a sense for the limits of their authority, and not all of them are in Holy Orders.

     I could go on, but I don't want to become tiresome. Let that stand for the moment. Love God with your whole heart, listen always to your conscience, and do have a nice day.

Quote Of The Day

     Julie Kelly, whose work appears at American Greatness and elsewhere, has become a personal favorite among journalist-commentators. Her writing is forceful, to the point. More, she has a talent for the “wait, what?” phrase that I can’t help but admire. Here’s an example from a recent article:

     Former government apparatchiks and their media fluffers, however, aren’t the only ones in panic mode.

     I went into a gale of laughter over “media fluffers.” The term fluffer has nothing to do with pillows; it’s a term from the pornography industry. If you don’t know what it means, look it up. In the context of the article, which covers the recent criminal referrals against various Obama / Biden associates and others connected to the Clintons, it is appropriate as well as hilarious.

     Applause for Julie Kelly!

It’s Alive… It’s Alive…

     Greetings, Gentle Readers! I’ve decided, after the decline and fall of Liberty’s Torch V2.0 — I assure you, you really don’t want to know the reasons – to return to this site, keep it alive, and post here from time to time. However, any new work I produce will appear first at Cold Fury, where Mike Hendrix has graciously granted me contributor’s privileges. (If you think he was being wise and generous, see your brain-care specialist at once!)

     This blogging schtick is a hard habit to break!