Some Advent Thoughts

     [This piece first appeared at the old Eternity Road blogsite on December 4, 2005 – FWP]

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1. The Haunting

     Via the worthy Lane Core -- welcome to the Eternity Road blogroll, Lane -- comes this inspiring take on the conversion of C. S. Lewis to Christian faith:

"Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless." With these words C.S. Lewis, the great Christian apologist who wrote the Chronicles of Narnia, described the early years of his life. The story of his pre-conversion self, however, is much more than the autobiography of one 20th-century Englishman. It depicts the spiritual torpor of modern man, namely post-Christian man.

     For the first time in the history of humanity, man does not believe in the supernatural. The supernatural was natural to the pre-Christian age. The sun and the stars, trees and rivers, everything that surrounded them was inhabited by dryads and nymphs and all sorts of mythological creatures. Everything bore the trace of the divine. Modern man may smile at the primitiveness of their beliefs. In the best case, he will admit that it would make a good fairy tale for children.

     Lewis did not think so; to him it was the twentieth century that was regressive. By reducing the world to the material reality which one can experience with one’s senses, man has turned the world into a vacuum in which men spend their time, as T.S. Eliot would say, "dodging [their] emptiness." Surprisingly enough, it was pagan mythological literature, permeated as it was with the intuitive belief in the supernatural, which set Lewis searching for God. He became a theist and his conversion to Christ followed later. Pagan literature–Greek myths, the sagas and eddas of Norse mythology and the epics of classical antiquity–acted upon him as a preparatio evangelica. His imagination and his sensibility were "baptised" first, which proved to be a pre-requisite for the conversion of his heart. The material reality around him was the same but his gaze had been converted. Like the post-conversion T.S. Eliot, he ended up revisiting the ordinary experiences of his daily life and saw a transfigured reality:

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.

     I doubt there remains a reader of this site who doesn't know of my admiration for Lewis, by far the greatest of the modern polemicists for Christianity. But it becomes deeper as I acquaint myself with the details of his journey out of the darkness.

     Lewis was not merely a persuasive writer and promulgator of the teachings of others; he was also the possessor of a mighty intelligence and a fertile imagination. Among other things, he conceived the central need of the modern mind -- accurately, in my judgment -- as a fusion of the spiritual yearning naturally inborn in all of us with a revived, freshly vivid vision of what lies beyond the mundane realm through which we plod. For this reason above all others, his Ransom and Narnia books are among the most powerful of all tools for the opening of the weary, battered, spiritually malnourished human heart. He'd "been there," and had divined what it takes to get from "there" to "here."

     But where is "here"? Perhaps it was put best by Father Andrew Greeley when he said that "Catholics live in a haunted world." (Substitute "Christians" for "Catholics" for, uh, best catholicity.) We are perpetually mindful of a realm beyond the one that's evident to our senses. Our choices are formed as much, if not more, by our consciousness of that realm as by their probable consequences in this one. For us as for no materialist of any stripe, the world is alive and immanent with promise.

     With the help of another great genius, Professor John Ronald Reuel Tolkien (upon whom Lewis's hero Dr. Elwin Ransom was based), Lewis found his way, and then his voice. Then he bestowed it upon us.

    

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2. Our Pride And Our Burden.

     Curt at North Western Winds presents an interesting citation today from Joseph Cardinal Ratzinger's (Pope Benedict XVI) Introduction to Christianity:

The fact that when the perfectly just man appeared he was crucified, delivered up by justice to death, tells us pitilessly who man is: Thou art such, man, that thou canst not bear the just man - that he who simply loves becomes a fool, a scourged criminal, an outcast. Thou art such because, unjust thyself, thou dost always need the injustice of the next man in order to feel excused and thus cannot tolerate the just man who seems to rob thee of this excuse. Such art thou. St John summarized all this in the Ecce Homo ("Look, this is [the] man!" of Pilate, which means quite fundamentally: this is how it is with man; this is man. The truth of man is his complete lack of truth. The sayings in the Pslam that every man is a liar (Ps 116 [115]: 11) and lives in some way or other against the truth already reveals how it really is with man. The truth about man is that he is continually assailing the truth; the just man crucified is thus a mirror held up to man in which he sees himself unadorned. But the Cross does not reveal only man; it also reveals God. God is such that he identifies himself with man right down into the abyss and that he judges him and saves him. In the abyss of human failure is revealed the still more inexhaustible abyss of divine love. The Cross is thus truly the center of revelation, a revelation that does not reveal any previously unknown principle but reveals us to ourselves by revealing us before God and God in our midst.

     Now, the Holy Father's emphasis on God's identification with Man is quite important. Still, there's more here: a fundamental insight of the sort we overlook until we've stumbled over it...after which, we call it "obvious."

     Rational consciousness, the defining characteristic of Man, is the ability to form abstractions and to use them in reasoning. But every abstraction is an incomplete rendition of the reality it seeks to model. In other words, no matter how sincerely we try to make our conceptions accurate representations of the world, they will always lie, if only by omission.

     But the human mind is unsatisfied by the incomplete. It yearns toward fullness; toward transcendence; toward God. So we tend to take such things and "fill in the blanks," sometimes arbitrarily, and sometimes willfully. But even the best of us is incomplete himself, particularly in his knowledge. And even the best of us is inclined to see the world not as it is, but as we would like it to be.

     This is Man's glory and his cross. Being creatures made in God's image and destined to be reunited with God, we are conscious, yet partial. Conjoined, these characteristics compel us to fantasize...and some of the fantasies are wrong.

    

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3. Certainties.

     The word "if" has received quite a bit of, ah, critical attention. (Myself, I think that most of it should go to "should," but that's a subject for another screed.) In his novel An Odor Of Sanctity, Frank Yerby called it "the saddest word in any language." In Godel, Escher, Bach, his exposition on the roots of consciousness, computer scientist Douglas Hofstadter called it "the push into fantasy." Our constant need for "if," the indication of a condition upon which other propositions might be found true, is a potent expression of the uncertainty in which we live.

     It's difficult, this job of living. What make it difficult are uncertainty and change.

     Uncertainty keeps us tense. Change wears us out. In combination, they leave us gasping for breath and ever more desperate for surcease.

     The hell of it is that there's so much uncertainty. Indeed, it seems to be everywhere. Even the propositions upon which ordinary people rely in the course of the most ordinary of their days are uncertain. Wait! Stop! How do you know that floor will bear your weight? Yes, yes, you've walked across it before, but things do change. Mightn't it have weakened fatally since the last time you tested it -- at the risk of your life, one might add?

     Uncertainty rules the physical world. Uncertainty is the ruling principle of the fundamental insights of physics. If the quantum physicists can be believed, Heraclitus was essentially correct: everything is fire, and nothing is truly stable. Heisenberg said it, I believe it, and that settles it.

     But we hunger for certainty and stability. So we create them in our heads.

     Create them? Excuse me. Do we really? We don't create anything else! Everything we make is a blend of pre-existent stuffs with the labor of our bodies and minds. Rather, we extrapolate from the order and persistence we can see to wider, deeper degrees of order and persistence, beneath the bottom-most of which lies a Will that governs all?

     Men being partial and limited, we cannot grasp the whole of Creation. Therefore we cannot be certain that there are any truly immutable truths, or any permanence even to the laws our best minds have deduced from what they can see and touch. This recognition has turned many a man to despair.

     Nevertheless, certainty and stability are available, as and where they've always been:

For I know that my Redeemer liveth,
    And that he shall stand,
        at the latter day, upon the Earth. [Job, 19:25]

     We can't be certain of what we believe, but we can be certain that we believe it. The Advent season, which opens the liturgical year, reminds us that the coming of Christ was foretold by the prophesies of Isaiah and others who came before him, and heralded at last by "the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness, 'Prepare ye the way of the Lord'":

John the baptizer appeared in the wilderness, proclaiming a baptism of repentance for the forgiveness of sins. And people from the whole Judean countryside and all the people of Jerusalem were going out to him, and were baptized by him in the river Jordan, confessing their sins. Now John was clothed with camel's hair, with a leather belt around his waist, and he ate locusts and wild honey. He proclaimed, "The one who is more powerful than I is coming after me; I am not worthy to stoop down and untie the thong of his sandals. I have baptized you with water; but he will baptize you with the Holy Spirit." [Mark, 1:4-8]

     Job could not be certain of what he foresaw. Neither could Isaiah, and neither could John. They were men, like us, and certainty about factual things is not available to men. But they trusted the visions they had been given. They were firm in their belief -- and they were right.

     For the next three weeks, Christians everywhere will prepare for the arrival of their Certainty, from whose Will flows the inexhaustible stability of all-healing grace.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Edges

     "A man once said to the universe, 'Sir, I exist.'
     'However,' replied the universe, 'that fact has not created in me a sense of obligation.'"

     [Stephen Crane]

     “Utopia is not one of the options” – David Bergland

     The wave of detentions and deportations are having an effect that could easily have been predicted:

A 79-year-old grandfather, in the United States since he was five, was detained by ICE for not complying with a deportation order issued nearly 60 years ago.https://t.co/7QwjcNQN3s

— reason (@reason) November 28, 2025

     Did no one expect that some such cases would arise? I knew they were coming. I also knew that opponents of the deportation policy would strive to capitalize on them. That’s politics, Gentle Reader.

     The above is only one. There are surely others. But that’s in the nature of a rule-based system.

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     Charles Murray noted in his early work Losing Ground that no matter the “rules,” a rule-based system – i.e., the kind of policy whose decisions could be programmed, given the appropriate dataset – will always irrationally include some cases it should exclude and / or exclude others it should include. He was analyzing welfare policy, but the effect touches every kind of policy a law-based State might implement. The deportation orders President Trump has implemented are no exceptions.

     Every law creates a rule-based system. Even a law as simple as the one against burglary will have edge cases of the sort that make an observer say “That isn’t just.” (I happen to know someone who was snagged on such an edge.) Occasionally, legislators will try to install provisions in the law, or in the system that will implement and enforce it, to “soften” its edges. But that’s not always possible.

     Prosecutorial and judicial discretion soften the edges of the penal law. Those provisions allow human judgment to temper the applications of the penal law. They were undoubtedly well meant. Yet they too have their drawbacks, as politically-minded prosecutors and judges have demonstrated for us recently.

     The quote from David Bergland above covers all such matters. That’s why the appropriate way to evaluate a law or policy is “Has it made things better or worse?” Perfection in law is no more available than perfection in Mankind.

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     I could go on for days about this. It’s inherent in the nature of things, for a simple and unchangeable reason:

All actions have side effects.
One or more will always be undesirable.

     Physicists call this the Second Law of Thermodynamics. It operates at all scales and in all things. Law and its enforcement are not exceptions.

     To close: Another argument has arisen over the decision of many states to decriminalize the use of cannabis-based products (e.g., marijuana). This has surely had both desirable and undesirable consequences. Some see the negatives as outweighing the positives. It’s unfortunate that there are negative side effects, but whether they mandate returning to the previous state of affairs is a matter for legislators to decide. Should they decide that way, we would shed those undesirable side effects... but we would also lose the positive consequences of cannabis decriminalization: the decreased burdens on law enforcement and corrective institutions, the extra tax revenue, and so forth.

     Edges are like that. They’re never perfect and they’re never infinitely sharp. There will always be persons who seek a way to exploit them for personal benefit.

     It’s a cruel cosmos. But as I typed that, I realized that I need more coffee. Perhaps I’ll be back later.

“Why So Racist, Fran?” Part 2: Let Them Sink

     Appeals such as the following are everywhere, especially in December:

Black children are suffering all over the world.
Imagine if it was a white child pic.twitter.com/r6r0Y0rVxj

— Fighter Rakgadi 🇿🇦 🇧🇫 (@Rakgadi_EM) November 25, 2025

     Oftentimes, they’re proximate to statements such as this: “You stole everything from us.” Of course, you means Whites, and us means blacks.

     Such claims are clearly nonsense, yet they’re repeated endlessly by black racialists and propagandists. They can’t be refuted; they’re utterly counterfactual and nonsensical, so there’s nowhere to start. What is there to say in response?

     Nothing. Silence, cold and absolute, is the proper response. Yet Whites continue to try to reason with them.

     Blacks claim to be our superiors. Yet not one of the advances in science, technology, philosophy, or society came from the Dark Continent. They say we owe them “reparations” for historical slavery. Yet slavery is still practiced in Africa; only in White nations was there an end to it. More, blacks in this country alone have absorbed trillions of dollars in “public assistance,” to say nothing of the many preferential treatment laws and programs that have awarded them privileges over Whites.

     Our forebears were mistaken ever to listen to them.

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     On this Black Friday, among the things I’m thankful for is the surging White anger and resentment toward blacks – and their sad-sack White apologists – that blacks’ claims and demands have elicited. We’re finally getting close to the cold stare and folded arms that say “Watch out. We’ve had enough of you and won’t tolerate your savagery any longer.”

     Of course, there’s a lot of social and political inertia to be overcome. If blacks had intelligent representatives, they’d know better than to “double down.” They’d turn to their own and say “Cool it! You’re about to provoke a pogrom, with us on the losing end.” But they are doubling down. Violence against Whites, shoplifting and destruction, disruptions of White-owned and operated stores, restaurants, shopping centers, and so on are all on the increase.

     I’ve written before that there’s a race war in progress. The “It’s On” pieces are clearest in that regard:

• It’s On
• It’s On: What Now?
• It’s On Part 3: Where Explanation Remains Required
• It’s On, The Ongoing Saga
• It’s On: No Longer Just My Mad Notion

     It doesn’t have to be a flying-lead war. Indeed, it shouldn’t be. It can and should be conducted with Whites’ traditional weapons: exclusion when it suffices, and impersonal, objective enforcement of the law when it’s required. That would leave the Negro race to its own devices: i.e., to whatever order or chaos / prosperity or squalor it could maintain in the absence of interaction with (or support from) Whites.

     The cessation of the war wouldn’t necessarily be evident to everyone. There wouldn’t be an armistice, or a peace treaty. There would only be a steady diminution of offenses against law and propriety, and a lessening of screechy demands from black racialist mouthpieces. It would take a while, and afterward there would be some ugliness. Unless the radical solution is applied, Whites would still have to endure some savagery. Hopefully, it would fall to an irreducible minimum that ordinary law enforcement can handle.

     But blacks might not permit Whites such a peaceful war.

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     “No one wants war” is a phrase we’ve heard many times. It’s one of the perennial lies, a pleasant dream that’s utterly false-to-fact. Many people have wanted war over the centuries. They’ve usually gotten their wish.

     Good people have never wanted war; it’s practically a defining characteristic. Yet they’ve been forced to fight wars many times. They haven’t always prevailed.

     To say that “no one wants a war” when we’re demonstrably already embroiled in a war is the height of folly. It’s like closing one’s eyes and chanting “Make it go away.” Once a war has begun, it must be fought to a conclusion.

     If there’s a race war in progress, it must be fought. To refuse to fight is to surrender pre-emptively. Unless you want to live in a nation in which Whites are a designated rightless victim class, to be abused and expropriated by blacks whenever the urge comes upon them, you must fight.

     If you choose not to fight, don’t expect to keep the respect of others who’ve taken up arms to defend you and yours.

Giving Thanks 2025

     It’s here once more: Thanksgiving Day. Also known as the Feast of St. Gluttony here at the Fortress. I’m of two minds about this holiday.

     On the one hand, it’s entirely appropriate for Americans to be thankful for our country – and in that phrase lies a powerful truth: it’s our country. No one else anywhere has anything like it. Our forebears built it, but we, its citizens, operate it and keep it going.

     On the other hand: only one day for giving thanks? Seems a bit... spare. Niggardly. As if we were too busy to remember and celebrate all we have and enjoy, day after day. “Sorry, can’t stop and give thinks just now; I’ve got emails to answer. What’s that you say? We should pray? Who has the time for that?”

     On the gripping hand (All right, make it three minds.) (Cf. this seminal novel) not everything around us is to be celebrated. No, I shan’t enumerate all the burrs under my saddle; it’s Thanksgiving Day. Anyway, you probably have your own set.

     But today, on the 73rd Thanksgiving Day of my life, I have something new to be grateful for. You may find it odd. Eccentric. But remember who’s writing this.

     I’m grateful that I’ve been conned enough, and in enough different ways, that I’ve unlearned my gullibility sufficiently to have evaded the biggest con of my life.

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     I have no real idea whether my would-be con artist is a man or a woman. As she represented herself as a woman, I’ll treat her as such. Call her Jane.

     Jane has held a long conversation with me over Google Chat. She claimed to be a retired actress of minor stature. Either she boned up on that actress, or she really is that person; it doesn’t matter much.

     After about eight weeks chatting me up, including compliments of the most flattering kind, Jane cast her line: a former husband who was using a shared financial obligation to abuse her and her son. It was a good cast: poignant, sorrowful, adequately protracted and detailed... everything required to lure in an old softy like your humble Curmudgeon. And I, being that old softy, bit the hook.

     Jane let me know, indirectly, that she needed money to exclude that former husband from her life. She didn’t come out and say “Can you help me?” She merely implied, quite adroitly, that help would be welcome. Low key. Lots of half-suppressed suffering. I could imagine the Sorrowing Madonna look on her face.

     ...and I immediately offered to help.

     We pause here for raucous laughter from those Gentle Readers who must vent it.

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     A tiny current in my forebrain redirected my limbic reaction just in time: Are you certain this is really someone who needs and deserves your help? After all, I hadn’t done much research on Jane. As a former actress, there should be plenty of material on the Web about her, but I had yet to look for any. So I did.

     It developed that Jane – i.e., the retired actress she claimed to be – has a net worth in eight digits, that she’d recently purchased an expensive home in a glamorous part of California, that she controls at least two companies, including a production company, and that she employs a management team and a personal assistant. The financial obligation she’d lamented to me was, if not dismissibly trivial, at least minor.

     That sent me back over some other curious behavior Jane had displayed. I re-examined it with clearer, more skeptical eyes. It followed a familiar pattern: one characteristic of a Con Under Construction. I chided myself for not seeing it previously.

     One such curious behavior was part of Jane’s current appeal. Once I’d detected the conformance-to-pattern, the scales fell from my eyes. I was being had. Jane had discerned in me the key attributes of a con-victim: the willingness to trust and the urge to help.

     Mind you, “Jane” was a stream of characters from over the Internet. A TCP/IP packet stream. I hadn’t seen her in real time. I hadn’t even heard her voice. And I was about to send her money.

     It’s true, Gentle Reader: There’s no fool like an old fool.

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     I’ve backed away, of course, but I feel terrible about it even so. Yes, I kept a swindler’s fingers out of my wallet, but before that I’d ignored many warning signs that I could now recognize. Worse, I’d disclosed information about myself that persuaded Jane to see me as a target! What was I thinking?

     Answer: I wasn’t. But I woke up in time, and for that, on this fourth Thursday of November in the Year of Our Lord 2025, I give thanks.

     I’ve written many times about the decline in trustworthiness and trust among us. It’s cost this nation dearly. Yet I hadn’t done my personal part in responding to it: I hadn’t become appropriately suspicious and defensive. That is the required response to the plague of deceit that’s upon us, and I had yet to accept my part in it.

     I have now.

     May you all, wherever you are in the world, enjoy a happy and appropriately filling Thanksgiving Day. And may you remember that predators lurk among us. Many wear winning, appealing faces. Strive not to attract their attention. Should one solicit your attention, do your research. Be skeptical, even cynical, for in those attitudes lies survival.

     May God bless and keep you all.

“Why So Racist, Fran?”

     People have asked me that very question.

     There are a number of reasons. Some, I’ve expressed in these pieces. Others arise from personal experiences of which I’m reluctant to speak. But all arise from a pattern that, over time, I grew weary of trying to deny.

     American blacks – i.e., residents of this nation descended from sub-Saharan African ancestors; henceforth simply blacks – are hostile to Whites and Asians. Many of them are openly, violently hostile toward us. The danger is more evident in some places than others, but nowhere that blacks reside is it absent.

     Thomas Sowell and others have pointed out that starting after the Civil War / War Between The States / Late Unpleasantness, blacks had an ascending history: steadily rising economically and socially. Of course if the baseline is rightless slavery, ascent is to be expected. However, even during those ascending years, unwed motherhood was much more prevalent among blacks than Whites: roughly 19% compared to Whites’ 6%. Today black illegitimacy stands at approximately 72%. Nearly three-quarters of all black infants are born to an unwed mother.

     Fatherlessness being an excellent predictor of future crime, blacks’ participation in crime figures has always been out of proportion to their numbers. It’s at its highest today; slightly more than 50% of all violent crimes and crimes against property can be attributed to black perpetrators. Ann Coulter has noted that the great majority of incarcerated offenders – of all races – were born out of wedlock; many never knew their bio-fathers.

     Black participation in various federal and state welfare programs is disproportionate to their percentage of the population. So is black employment by state and federal governments. Despite many subventions, including “equal opportunity” laws and similar preferential-treatment provisions, blacks are net-negative participants in the American economy.

     Heavily black neighborhoods are known to be disorderly and unsafe for Whites or Asians to visit or pass through. “Casual” assaults and harassment of Whites and Asians by blacks are commonplace. Disorderly behavior by blacks, including pointless vandalism, in retail establishments is becoming a major detriment to the retail sector.

     Black youth are highly resistant to education of any kind. This open letter by a White schoolteacher depicts a degree of disorder and pointlessness that’s almost never observed in a classroom of Whites. A typical case:

     Anyone who is around young blacks will probably get a constant diet of rap music. Blacks often make up their own jingles, and it was not uncommon for 15 boys to swagger into a classroom, bouncing their shoulders and jiving back.

     They were yelling back and forth, rapping 15 different sets of words in the same harsh, rasping dialect. The words were almost invariably a childish form of boasting: “Who got dem shine rim, who got dem shine shoe, who got dem shine grill (gold and silver dental caps)?” The amateur rapper usually ends with a claim—in the crudest terms imaginable—that all womankind is sexually devoted to him. For whatever reason, my students would often groan instead of saying a particular word, as in, “She suck dat aaahhhh (think of a long grinding groan), she f**k dat aaaahhhh, she lick dat aaaahhh.”

     So many black girls dance in the hall, in the classroom, on the chairs, next to the chairs, under the chairs, everywhere. Once I took a call on my cell phone and had to step outside of class. I was away about two minutes but when I got back, the girls had lined up at the front of the classroom and were convulsing to the delight of the boys.

     In sum, blacks’ propensity toward aggression, their lack of impulse control, and their unwillingness to accept responsibility for themselves impose a heavy toll on American society. Yet they forever demand special preferences and special programs to cater to them. Black racialist mouthpieces never cease to “blame Whitey,” as if the crimes and destruction blacks perpetrate would never occur had there never been slavery in the United States. And of course there’s the drumbeat for “reparations,” which appears likely to go on to the end of time.

     Charles Murray, the bravest sociologist of our time, put hard numbers to some of the above in his recent book Facing Reality. Others, both credentialed and informal, have added data to the pile. Particularly notable is the late Colin Flaherty’s contribution: White Girl Bleed A Lot, which documents the epidemic of black-on-white violence. The work of Jared Taylor and others also deserves recognition.

     In response to all this, the black activists and racial promoters simply scream “racism!”

     Call it what you will. It’s a response to the depredations and social toll blacks have imposed on America – particularly on Whites. Many have tried in vain to explain those burdens away. Many have declared themselves done with all such efforts.

     Including myself.

A Sulvan Future

     The sex doll is now the sex robot:

The end of problems

In a few years, everyone will be single! pic.twitter.com/FaFFmEg415

— Fun Viral Vids 😊 (@Fun_Viral_Vids) November 24, 2025

     ...and Mankind is in grave danger.

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     My regular Gentle Readers already know about my little quirks, so the following is for the newcomers in the audience: I’m a white Catholic libertarian-conservative with traditional views on such matters as love, marriage, fidelity, and reproduction. Having read that, it’s likely that those newcomers are thinking they know what’s coming. My regular Gentle Readers know better.

     There’s a crisis of sorts in progress. It goes by many names. Its central filament is an unprecedented level of distrust, and no small amount of hostility, between men and women. Distrust and hostility are seldom good things, but these instances threaten human survival.

     Unless you’ve spent the last three decades in a drug-induced coma – if you did, check your savings account before reading onward; priorities, don’t y’know – you’re aware that there’s been a sharp decline in reproduction rates in the U.S. and other industrialized nations. Americans aren’t producing children rapidly enough to sustain our population numbers. Other First World nations are doing even worse that way, but my attention is on the U.S.

     Until recently, there was only one way to produce a human baby: a human spermatozoön had to get cozy with a human ovum and produce a viable human zygote. That procedure required a man to have conventional sexual intercourse with a woman. But today we have sperm and ovum banks, such that sperm and ova can be introduced to one another at “mixers” in test tubes. The resulting zygote can then be implanted into a woman’s womb for further maturation.

     While it hasn’t happened yet, researchers are attempting to clone a human, possibly after some genetic manipulation. That abomination threatens to reduce children to products, something one can order from a “vendor,” perhaps with specifications for the desired “item.” It might serve to keep population numbers up, but it would assuredly destroy the nuclear family, one of the pillars of civilized society.

     But let’s leave those considerations aside. The following passage, which I’ve used more than once before, comes from C. S. Lewis’s masterpiece That Hideous Strength:

“Who is called Sulva? What road does she walk? Why is the womb barren on one side? Where are the cold marriages?”

Ransom replied, “Sulva is she whom mortals call the Moon. She walks in the lowest sphere. The rim of the world that was wasted goes through her. Half of her orb is turned toward us and shares our curse. Her other half looks to Deep Heaven; happy would be he who could cross that frontier and see the fields on her further side. On this side, the womb is barren and the marriages cold. There dwell an accursed people, full of pride and lust. There when a young man takes a maiden in marriage, they do not lie together, but each lies with a cunningly fashioned image of the other, made to move and to be warm by devilish arts, for real flesh will not please them, they are so dainty (delicati) in their dreams of lust. Their real children they fabricate by vile arts in a secret place.”

     Did God grant Lewis a glimpse of one possible future – perhaps the one toward which we’re headed?

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     The video at the start of this piece tells us of a development that seemingly cannot be headed off. The emphasis recent decades have placed on sexual sensation and “satisfaction” has helped to power the production of many pleasure-enhancing devices. Sometimes such devices are mockingly advertised as “marital aids.” What role they have in “aiding” a marriage, I cannot imagine.

     Those “marital aids” are entirely focused on pleasure. They have no relation to marital bonding, unless – I must allow for the possibility – that a really good orgasm can make one fall in love with its “provider.” But how often is a second person involved with the use of such devices? I could be wrong, but I don’t think the answer is “very often” or “most of the time.”

     The sex robot is the “marital aid” completed and matured:

• It can produce the sensations that lead to orgasm;
• It’s housed in an attractive humaniform body;
• It’s equipped with an artificial-intelligence module that mimics the behavior of a willing sex partner.

     I doubt that AI module is equipped with a behavioral pathway that would allow the robot to refuse sex to its owner. Once again, I could be wrong, but if I were, what would the point of the robot be?

     Such robots, regardless of their target market, reduce the probability that their owner will seek a human sex partner. Need I spell out the consequences for reproduction?

     Given the no-man’s-land that dating and mating have become, I predict that once those robots come down a bit in price, they’ll prove very popular. Demand will outstrip supply immediately.

---

     I’m not an idiot. I know that the sex robot is a response to conditions that predated the possibility of such a thing. I also know that the great majority of us don’t decide to have children “for the future of the country.” Finally, I know that exhorting people to have (more) kids for the sake of the future is the worst imaginable way to go about encouraging reproduction. I’m really just shaking my head and wondering if this is a sign that the Last Days are upon us.

     I think I’ll schedule a talk with my pastor. As for you, Gentle Reader: have a nice day.

     And pray.

Choices

     Good morning, Gentle Reader! I know, I know: “What’s good about Monday?” Well, I suppose it depends on your perspective. If you still work for wages, perhaps a certain dreariness is to be expected. On the other hand, if you work for no wages, as does your humble Curmudgeon, it’s just one day among seven: as pleasant or vile as any of the other six.

     But we do have some interesting material for you, so have a look:

1. Energy.

     The most recent estimates I can find of annual American energy consumption hover around 94 quadrillion British Thermal Units (BTU). If you prefer the metric system, which I do under these circumstances, that’s approximately 94 quintillion joules: 94x10¹⁸ newton-meters.

     If you have no feel for such magnitudes – and who does? – that’s a whole honkin’ lot of energy. Threats to various portions of our energy-supply system have people looking at all sorts of adjustments and alternatives. Here’s a very interesting one:

     By dropping a nuclear reactor 1.6 kilometers (1 mile) underground, Deep Fission aims to use the weight of a billion tons of rock and water as a natural containment system comparable to concrete domes and cooling towers. With the fission reaction occurring far below the surface, steam can safely circulate in a closed loop to generate power.
     [...]
     Deep Fission’s small modular reactor (SMR), called Gravity, is designed to stand 9 meters tall while remaining slim enough to fit inside a borehole roughly three-quarters of a meter wide. The company says its modular approach allows multiple 15-megawatt reactors to be clustered on a single site: A block of 10 would total 150 MW, and Deep Fission claims that larger groupings could scale to 1.5 GW.

     This is an exciting prospect. However, if we divide that 15 megawatt output into the 94 quintillion joules yearly consumption, we find that that little reactor would have to labor for 6.26 trillion seconds to meet the annual consumption figure. As there are only about 31 million seconds in a day, it appears we’d need more than one. About 200,000 of them, in fact.

     That’s a lot of reactors and a lot of uranium in a lot of mile-deep boreholes. A lot of regulatory bodies to sweet-talk. Well, no doubt someone is working on it.

---

2. Marketing.

     The summary below of chain-gas-station / convenience store Buc-ee’s marketing and design strategy strikes me as the greatest stroke of commercial genius since the drive-through fast-food place:

Did you know Buc-ee's business model is essentially based on our bladder? pic.twitter.com/URlF2amMCA

— Sovey (@SoveyX) November 19, 2025

     That struck me very nearly speechless. (If you’re a regular Gentle Reader, you know that nothing strikes me completely speechless, but this came close.) But like most great insights, it’s perfectly simple once you understand it.

     Buc-ee’s target customer profile is a woman in an automobile. The entire thrust of its design was to cater to her. She might not be alone, but her presence is the key. So attracting women commuters and women traveling with their families were the Buc-ee’s target. The results speak for themselves.

     There are no Buc-ee’s in the American Northeast. Maybe someday. They actually sound like they’re worth patronizing for any reason or none. Hint, hint, Buc-ee’s management!

---

3. Relations Between The Sexes.

     You’ve probably seen images of “bachelor pads” that look like this:

     In truth, that’s a rather upscale “pad,” but it will serve. Such living arrangements have been the targets of sarcastic women for decades. But what if it’s trending upward, owing to the declining interest in marriage and family among men?

     Please view it to the end. This gentleman has thought through the implications of at least some “men going their own way.” If young Smith were to elect such a life path early enough, he could reach his mid-forties in a state that makes retirement achievable then and there. Yes, he would forfeit marriage, children, and the possibility of a McMansion, but those are goals no one is required to pursue.

     No, it doesn’t appeal to me. Nor would it have appealed to me when I was in my twenties. But it’s an open choice that some men, at least, will find palatable, with the consequences the video delineates.

     Women plaintively asking “Where are all the men?” (Variation: “Where are all the good men?”) should ponder this. If you want to mate, you must make the lifelong bachelor / early retirement choice depicted above less appealing to men than mating with you. As you can’t change us... well, what does that imply?

     We have choices, too.

---

     That’s all for the present. Have a good day and perhaps I’ll be back later with another serving of drivel. Until then, for best results in living, adhere to the mighty Precepts of the late Nelson Algren:

• Never eat at a place called “Mom’s.”
• Never play cards with a man named “Doc.”
• And never bed a woman who’s got more troubles than you.

     Smart guy, wasn’t he?

For The Feast of Christ The King

     [Today is the Feast of Christ The King, which falls on the last Sunday before Advent. It’s a unique holy day for several reasons, and one that I find particularly personally significant. It first appeared at Eternity Road on January 6, 2008. I find that I cannot improve upon it, for which reason I've made a habit of reviving it each year on this special day. -- FWP]

    

---

     Let's talk about...Zoroastrianism!

    

***

     The ancient creed called Zoroastrianism predated the birth of Christ by about a millennium. Its founder, Zoroaster, laid down a small set of doctrines:

• There is one universal and transcendental God, Ahura Mazda, the one uncreated creator and to whom all worship is ultimately directed.
• Ahura Mazda's creation — evident as asha, truth and order — is the antithesis of chaos, evident as druj, falsehood and disorder. The resulting conflict involves the entire universe, including humanity, which has an active role to play in the conflict.
• Active participation in life through good thoughts, good words and good deeds is necessary to ensure happiness and to keep the chaos at bay. This active participation is a central element in Zoroaster's concept of free will, and Zoroastrianism rejects all forms of monasticism.
• Ahura Mazda will ultimately prevail, at which point the universe will undergo a cosmic renovation and time will end. In the final renovation, all of creation — even the souls of the dead that were initially banished to "darkness" — will be reunited in Ahura Mazda.
• In Zoroastrian tradition, the malevolent is represented by Angra Mainyu, the "Destructive Principle", while the benevolent is represented through Ahura Mazda's Spenta Mainyu, the instrument or "Bounteous Principle" of the act of creation. It is through Spenta Mainyu that Ahura Mazda is immanent in humankind, and through which the Creator interacts with the world. According to Zoroastrian cosmology, in articulating the Ahuna Vairya formula, Ahura Mazda made His ultimate triumph evident to Angra Mainyu.
• As expressions and aspects of Creation, Ahura Mazda emanated seven "sparks", the Amesha Spentas, "Bounteous Immortals" that are each the hypostasis and representative of one aspect of that Creation. These Amesha Spenta are in turn assisted by a league of lesser principles, the Yazatas, each "Worthy of Worship" and each again a hypostasis of a moral or physical aspect of creation.

     I find nothing objectionable in the above, except that only God, by whatever name He might be known, is worthy of worship; the most a lesser being is entitled to is veneration. But the word "worship" has had many meanings and subtleties over the years, so I'm inclined to let it pass. More important than Zoroastrianism's harmless mythos is its ethos, which Zoroaster himself encapsulated in a unique and memorable command:

    

Speak truth and shoot the arrow straight.

     Unlike the overwhelming majority of other pre-Christian creeds, Zoroastrianism was -- and is -- rational, humane, and life-loving rather than life-denying. It emphasized human free will, moral choice, and the need to defend truth and order against lies and chaos. These attributes made it the dominant religion of classical Persia and environs, though Zoroastrians' numbers are far reduced today.

     (No, I haven't converted to Zoroastrianism. You can all relax.)

     In the Western world, the Zoroastrians were the first practitioners of the pseudo-science we call astrology. They reposed a fair amount of confidence in it, for the creed had had its own prophets, beginning with Zoroaster himself, and among the prophecies were several tied to events foretold to happen in the night sky. The Zoroastrians therefore took great interest in the stars, and made careful records of occurrences therein, for comparison to the utterances of their prophets.

     One of those prophecies involved the birth of God in mortal flesh.

     The Magi of the Incarnation story were three esteemed nobles of Persia, wealthy in gold, wisdom, and the admiration of their societies. In contrast to the pattern prevalent among the nobilities of later times, these three, whose names have come down to us as Caspar, Melchior, and Balthasar, were deeply religious men whose involvement in the investigation of the Zoroastrian prophecies was sincere. When they spied the famous "star in the east" -- quite possibly a nova in Draco now known to have occurred at about that time -- they resolved to follow its trail, to find the divine infant and pay him homage.

     I shan't retell the whole of the story. It's accessible to anyone reading this site, in both secular and liturgical versions. The most salient aspect of the story is that these three exalted nobles -- kings, in the most common accounts -- of a faraway land came to pay homage and present tokens of vassalage to a newborn infant.

     Of course! What else would be appropriate, before a King of Kings?

    

***

     I will pause here to draw an important distinction: "King of Kings" is not the same as "Emperor." "Emperor" is a title appropriate only to a conqueror; that's more or less what it means. Atop that, an emperor is not necessarily concerned with justice, whereas a king, of whatever altitude, is obliged to make it the center of his life:

     The saber gleamed in the muted light. I'd spent a lot of time and effort sharpening and polishing it.

     It was a plain weapon, not one you'd expect to see in the hand of a king. There was only the barest tracing on the faintly curved blade. The guard bell was a plain steel basket, without ornamentation. The hilt was a seven inch length of oak, darkened with age but firm to the touch. There was only a hint of a pommel, a slight swell of the hilt at its very end.

     "What is this?"

     "A sword. Your sword."

     A hint of alarm compressed his eyes. "What do you expect me to do with it?"

     I shrugged. "Whatever you think appropriate. But a king should have a sword. By the way," I said, "it was first worn by Louis the Ninth of France when he was the Dauphin, though he set it aside for a useless jeweled monstrosity when he ascended the throne."

     Time braked to a stop as confusion spun his thoughts.

     "I don't know how to use it," he murmured.

     "Easily fixed. I do."

     "But why, Malcolm?"

     I stepped back, turned a little away from those pleading eyes.

     "Like it or not, you're a king. You don't know what that means yet. You haven't a sense for the scope of it. But you must learn. Your life, and the lives of many others, will turn on how well you learn it." I paused and gathered my forces. "What is a king, Louis?"

     He stood there with the sword dangling from his hand. "A ruler. A leader. A warlord."

     "More. All of that, but more. The sword is an ancient symbol for justice. Back when the function of nobility was better understood, a king never sat his throne without his sword to hand. If he was to treat with the envoy of another king, it would be at his side. If he was to dispense justice, it would be across his knees. Why do you suppose that was, Louis?"

     He stood silent for a few seconds.

     "Symbolic of the force at his command, I guess."

     I shook my head gently.

     "Not just symbolic. A true king, whose throne belonged to him by more than the right of inheritance, led his own troops and slew malefactors by his own hand. The sword was a reminder of the privilege of wielding force, but it was there to be used as well."

     His hands clenched and unclenched in time to his thoughts. I knew what they had to be.

     "The age of kings is far behind us, Malcolm."

     "It never ended. Men worthy of the role became too few to maintain the institution."

     "And I'm...worthy?"

     If he wasn't, then no worthy man had ever lived, but I couldn't tell him that.

     "There's a gulf running through the world, Louis. On one side are the commoners, the little men who bear tools, tend their gardens, and keep the world running. On the other are the nobles, who see far and dare much, and sometimes risk all they have, that the realm be preserved and the commoner continue undisturbed in his portion. There's no shortage of either, except for the highest of the nobles, the men of unbreakable will and moral vision, for whom justice is a commitment deeper than life itself."

     His face had begun to twitch. He'd heard all he could stand to hear, and perhaps more. I decided to cap the pressure.

     "Kings have refused their crowns many times, Louis. You might do as much, though it would sadden me to see it. But you could break that sword over your knee, change your name, and run ten thousand miles to hide where no one could know you, and it wouldn't lessen what you are and were born to be." I gestured at the sword. "Keep it near you."

     [From Chosen One.]

     Note further: a mortal king cannot and does not define justice; he dispenses justice, according to principles drawn from a higher authority. The King of Kings, from whom the privilege and obligation to mete justice flows, is the definer. In the matter of Law, all lesser kings are His vassals.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of gold.

    

***

     The pre-Christian era knew few, if any, rulers who claimed their jurisdiction solely on basis of might. Nearly all were approved and anointed by a priesthood. In that anointment lay their claim to be dispensers of true justice, for God would not allow a mortal to mete justice that departs from His Law. Let's leave aside the divergence between theory and practice for the moment; it was the logical connection between Divine Law and human-modulated justice that mattered to the people of those times.

     But the King of Kings would need no clerical approval. Indeed, He would be the Priest of Priests: the Authority lesser priests would invoke in anointing lesser kings.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of frankincense.

    

***

     We of the Twenty-First Century are largely unaware of the obligations which lay upon the kings of old. They were not, until the waning years of monarchy, sedentary creatures whose lives were a round of indulgences and propitiations. They were expected not merely to judge and pass sentence, but also to lead the armies of the realm when war was upon it. The king was expected to put himself at risk before any of his subjects. Among the reasons was this one: the loss of the king in battle was traditionally grounds for surrender, after which the enemy was forbidden by age-old custom to strike further blows.

     The king, in this conception, was both the leader of his legions and a sacrifice for the safety of his subjects, should the need arise. He was expected to embrace the role wholeheartedly, and to lead from the front in full recognition of the worst of the possibilities. Not to do so was an admission that he was unfit for his throne:

     "We have talked," he said, "about all the strategies known to man for dealing with an armed enemy. We have talked about every aspect of deadly conflict. Every moment of every discussion we've had to date has been backlit by the consciousness of objectives and costs: attaining the one and constraining the other. And one of the first things we talked about was the importance of insuring that you don't overpay for what you seek."

     She kept silent and listened.

     "What if you can't, Christine? What if your objective can't be bought at an acceptable price?"

     She pressed her lips together, then said, "You abandon it."

     He smirked. "It's hard even to say it, I know. But reality is sometimes insensitive to a general's desires. On those occasions, you must learn how to walk away. And that, my dear, is an art form of its own."

     He straightened up. "Combat occurs within an envelope of conditions. A general doesn't control all those conditions. If he did, he'd never have to fight. Sometimes, those conditions are so stiff that he's compelled to fight whether he thinks it wise, or not."

     "What conditions can do that to you?"

     His mouth quirked. "Yes, what conditions indeed?"

     Oops. Here we go again. "Weather could do it."

     "How?"

     "By cutting off your lines of retreat in the face of an invasion."

     "Good. Another."

     "Economics. Once the economy of your country's been militarized, it runs at a net loss, so you might be forced to fight from an inferior position because you're running out of resources."

     "Excellent. One more."

     She thought hard. "Superior generalship on the other side?"

     He clucked in disapproval. "Does the opponent ever want you to fight?"

     "No, sorry. Let me think."

     He waited.

     Conditions. Conditions you can't control. Conditions that...control you.

     "Politics. The political leadership won't accept retreat or surrender until you've been so badly mangled that it's obvious even to an idiot."

     The man Louis Redmond had named the greatest warrior in history began to shudder. It took him some time to quell.

     "It's the general's worst nightmare," he whispered. "Kings used to lead their own armies. They used to lead the cavalry's charge. For a king to send an army to war and remain behind to warm his throne was simply not done. Those that tried it lost their thrones, and some lost their heads -- to their own people. It was a useful check on political and military rashness.

     "It hasn't been that way for a long time. Today armies go into the field exclusively at the orders of politicians who remain at home. And politicians are bred to believe that reality is entirely plastic to their wills."

     [From On Broken Wings.]

     But the King of Kings, intrinsically above all other authorities, would obviously be aware of this obligation. More, His sacrifice of Himself must perforce be for the salvation of the whole of the world -- indeed, the whole of the universe and every sentient creature in it. Nothing less could possibly justify it.

     The Magi conceded this explicitly with their gift of myrrh.

    

***

     On the first Sunday after the New Year, Christians celebrate the Feast of the Epiphany, called the Theophany by some eastern Christian sects, when the Magi prostrated themselves before the Christ Child and made their gifts of vassalage to him. A vassal is a noble sworn to fealty to a higher authority: a higher-ranking noble or a king. The obligations of the vassal are to enforce justice as promulgated by the vassal's liege, and to support and defend the liege's realm by force of arms as required. To the King of Kings, God made flesh in the miracle of the Incarnation, every temporal authority is properly a vassal, obliged to mete justice in accordance with the natural law and to defend the Liege's realm -- men of good will, wherever they may be -- against all enemies, whenever the need might arise. To do less is to be unworthy of a temporal throne, palace, official office, or seat in a legislature...to be unworthy of Him.

     He took on the burdens of the flesh to confirm God's love for Man and to open the gates of salvation. He went to Calvary in testament to the authenticity of His Authority. The Magi knew, and in their pledge of fealty to Him, made plain that He had come not merely to succor Israel, but for the liberation of all Mankind.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Giveaway Time

     I warned my Gentle Readers that I’d be moving somewhat away from political blogging, at least doing less of it. So please don’t be too put out by the increasing frequency of posts related to fiction, faith, and other (hopefully) non-political subjects.

     Today’s post is for other fiction writers, as I find that I have an idea to give away. I have too many to exploit, so why not leave them for others who might find them appealing? And this one strikes me as unusually fertile.

     It’s essentially this: a researcher, at first involved in the search for a way to record memories directly from the brain, happens upon a technique for transferring pain from one person to another. The donor – i.e., the person previously experiencing the pain – loses it; the receptor – i.e. the person who will suffer in the donor’s place – gets it instead.

     Clearly, this would be a valuable service. Many a donor would pay handsomely for such relief. And, as Mankind is full of all types of people, there would be many willing receptors... if you were to pay them enough. The company’s revenue, if any, would be in the difference between the fee paid by donor and the one paid to the receptor.

     But donor and receptor must be linked to the device simultaneously. Thus, commercial viability requires skill not only in finding desperate donors and willing receptors, but in matching them and getting them together. It’s here that the complexities arise, for several reasons:

• Not all receptors are willing to accept every kind of pain, regardless of intensity.
• Not all donors can pay enough to attract a receptor willing to endure the pain for a slightly lower fee.
• Donor and receptor will probably be most willing if neither knows the other’s identity.
• They must be “co-schedulable:” i.e., available at the same times, and with all money matters agreed.

     Those are merely the immediate practical problems. They can be solved, with a little work. But the second-order effects would be far more troublesome:

• Medical insurance companies will be pressed to cover the “treatment.”
• Donors will want it to be covered by Medicare.
• “Victim” groups will agitate for free or deeply discounted access. (“It’s our right!”)
• Some donors will claim that their pain returned; therefore they’ll sue for a refund.
• The federal government will seek to regulate or nationalize the device.
• Foreign governments will claim it “should” be available worldwide – and for free.

     That’s probably not the end of the list. But it’s still early in the morning.

     Anyone who thinks he can do justice to the possibilities that flow from such a device is welcome to use the above. It’s yours for free, though an acknowledgement in your Afterword would be nice. And as I wrote this, a new possibility occurred to me: What if the pain-transference device cannot be duplicated? What would follow from that?

     The world is full of untold stories, Gentle Reader. One is probably floating your way as you read this. Grab it and tell it!

"We The People," Who?

     [The piece below first appeared at the Eternity Road website in June of 2007 -- FWP]

---

     In mid-2004, there was born a Website which proposed to hold an international plebiscite on the upcoming American elections. The thesis was that since what the United States does "affects" the entire world -- yes, those are "sneer quotes" -- then the world should have as much say in the selection of American officialdom as the American citizens do. Say what you will about the "logic" behind such a proposition, we must grant its audacity at the very least.

     That campaign season also featured a letter-writing campaign by British glitterati, including rabid anti-theist Richard Dawkins and hack novelist David Cornwell (a.k.a. "John LeCarre"), to voters in selected American "swing states." The writers urged their American targets to vote for the Democratic presidential nominee, John Kerry -- say, did you know he served in Vietnam? Imagine that! -- on the grounds that President Bush was "stupid," a "bully," a "theocrat," was "universally hated," was waging "an illegal war," or any possible combination thereof. And with that, your Curmudgeon's sneer-quote key has breathed its last, at least for today.

     The supranationalist assumptions behind these phenomena are easily destroyed. Yes, America has great influence in the world; we Americans, a mere 5% of the population of the world, generate more than 30% of its wealth and wield armed forces that could defeat all the other nations of the world in concert. But that's not because of our government, but because of the governments of all the other nations of the world. Our government, despite its many flaws and violations of its Constitutional contract, doesn't exercise the kind of power over American enterprise that other governments do over the productive efforts of their subjects. America's magnificent military is the consequence of the wealth that flows from our largely free economy and relatively restrained welfare system. Heavily regulated and bureaucratized economies, which must also carry the burden of much larger welfare states, can't afford worthwhile militaries, which is why ours is so frequently called upon to deal with tyrants and terrors.

     (Nota bene: A citizen is one who retains his individual sovereignty despite his allegiance to a particular polity. His distinguishing characteristic is his right to keep and bear arms. A subject is one who has no individual sovereignty, having surrendered all ultimate decision-making power to the State. His lack of a right to keep and bear arms, which renders him defenseless against incursions on any of his other rights, is the most prominent giveaway. The United States has citizens; most of the rest of the nations of the world have subjects. Food for thought.)

     But we can't expect to defeat supranationalism -- broadly, the premise that nation-states are inimical to the general good and should be done away with -- with mere logic. The supranationalist is adroit. He argues from his good intentions. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone had a say in everything that affects him in any way? And since every slightest thing that anyone does, anywhere in the world, affects all of us in some way, however small, doesn't that imply that democracy should be unbounded by these Westphalian fossils we call nation-states?

     Well, if you buy the premise, you buy the conclusion. But the premise is itself unsound. Indeed, it's about as risible as the arguments made for slavery, with which it has a great deal in common. And Eternity Road readers are unlikely to accept supranationalism anyway, so what's the big deal?

     The big deal is this: whenever a government compromises its nation's integrity for the sake of another nation, or the subjects of another nation, it's acting from the supranationalist premise. In so doing, it degrades the interests of its own people, implicitly or explicitly to favor other peoples. It ceases to act as its citizens' delegated agent, and assumes the prerogatives of their owner, who may dispose of their rights and prerogatives as it pleases, without their consent.

     Two particularly egregious cases of this are in motion today.

     In the Middle East, the Palestinian irredentists of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank are engaged in a particularly bloody civil war. Their quarrel with one another is purely over power. Neither side deserves the support of a decent man; both are committed to the ultimate destruction of Israel. If Israel's statesmen regarded themselves as the servants of Israel rather than its masters, they would seize this opportunity to perfect the quarantine of the Palestinian zones. They would cease all quasi-diplomatic intercourse with the Palestinians "for the duration," a period of convenient elasticity. They certainly wouldn't look for guidance to the supranational United Nations or European Union, both of which have displayed uncompromising hostility toward Israel for many years. But the Olmert government is behaving in precisely the opposite way, attempting to conciliate and buttress Mahmoud Abbas and his Fatah faction in the hope that it will prevail and reach a peace accord with Israel in the aftermath. This is like taking sides in a knife fight between murderers; the only decent course is to root for both sides to lose.

     Here in the West, we have the spectacle of a majority of our Congressmen and Senators, and our president himself, bowing to the demands of our neighbor to the south that we not fortify our mutual border. Legislation from 2006 mandates a border fence, but there's been little funding provided for it and little to no work on it. The disproportionate participation of illegal aliens in felony crimes is widely known, yet there've been scant efforts to impede the movement or employment of illegal aliens already in our land. The infamous immigration reform bill gestating in Congress even offers a cheap amnesty to the estimated 12 million illegals to whom we're already hosts, conciliating them above 290 million born and naturalized citizens to whom our government is supposedly subordinate.

     One can suspect corruption and venality, of course. No doubt they play some part in both cases. But the arguments used to rationalize the objectionable postures are almost explicitly supranationalist. It's the people that matter, not the borders. And anyway, think of the kids.

     Wrong, wrong, wrong.

     Borders matter because people matter. Borders are important because there must be a limit on every man's responsibilities for others, and on every nation's, too. Every political system binds its citizens in a web of mutual responsibility. Not for everything, but for the really big things commonly delegated to government: the defense of the realm, the maintenance of order in the streets, a common, generally comprehended legal system, and above all the protection of individuals' rights to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Israel granted the Palestinians autonomy within their zones, or, as Eric Frank Russell once put it, "the right to go to Hell in their own fashion." Now that they've chosen their course, they should be allowed to follow it to its conclusion, out of respect not only for their right to do so, but the right of Israelis not to be involved in it. Likewise, America did not agree to shelter or employ the whole world. If our borders were better secured, not only would our streets be safer, but Mexicans' interest in reforming their own polity would be greatly increased.

     Don't say any of that to a supranationalist, though. He'll accuse you of being hard-hearted, a jingoist, possibly a racist. He'll call you an ingrate for spurning the innumerable contributions of undocumented Americans to our great nation, though if these contributions go beyond cheap lawn care and abundant convenience-store clerks, your Curmudgeon has yet to discover it. He'll stride away filled with moral superiority and reinforced in his conviction that we grubby conservatives have nothing of substance to say, and must be re-educated or destroyed.

     Be not afraid to reject the supranationalist premise. Be very afraid of what might follow in supranationalism's train. Its advocates are mobilized as never before. Their agenda goes well beyond what's currently under discussion. We shall see.

Locating The State Part 2

Drive your cattle to the woods, Francois,
The lord is looking your way.
Hide your women and your goods, Francois,
They’re coming around to make you pay.
Hide if you can, poor little man,
Think of a prayer to say.
Hide if you can, poor little man,
Think of a prayer to say.

[Tom Paxton, “When Princes Meet”]

     In the previous piece, I focused on the question of who actually wields the power of the State, especially in those instances when it impinges on common citizens. For those are the times when State power is impossible to ignore: the times when the peasants drive their cattle to the woods, hide their women and valuables, and do their best to become invisible.

     A dear, departed friend named Ed who shared my detestation of the State once hauled me up short as I ranted. “Abolishing the political State would be nice,” he said, “but it wouldn’t be the end of the thing. States exist because there are people who love power. Take the political State away from them and they’ll just change colors. They’ll adapt! Humans are good at that, remember?”

     Ed then cited vigilance committees and lynch mobs. “They wielded the same power as an ‘official’ State. They just did it informally, and for a shorter time. Then there’s guilds and trade unions. Even when there was no ‘official’ State to back them up, they wielded State powers. Wherever you have a local preponderance of force and the will to use it, you have a State.”

     I didn’t argue the point. Ed was right. It shed a new and fresh light on the matter.

     Where would we find such “local preponderances of force” today?

---

     Everybody’s got his own pet peeve. Some of those peeves arise from the “busybody” impulse that’s more prevalent among us than ever. For there are many persons whose whole lives revolve around their desire to interfere in others’ lives and businesses. They know “how things ought to be.” All too frequently they find like-minded souls to collaborate with them.

     One of the premier examples of this in our time is the “homeowners’ association” or HOA.

     I was greatly amused to note the proliferation of stories, on YouTube in particular, about battles between homeowners and the tiny totalitarians who always seem to dominate an HOA. I suspect that they’re largely generated by AI composition. Still, the number of them speaks to the superfluity of the meddling impulse. The phenomenon moved Eric Hoffer to comment thus:

     A man is likely to mind his own business when it is worth minding. When it is not, he takes his mind off his own meaningless affairs by minding other people's business...The vanity of the selfless, even those who practice the utmost humility, is boundless.

     Indeed.

     Yet HOAs, no matter who dominates them constitute States de facto. They wield coercive power. All too frequently they go unopposed, even when their demands are unjustified by the organization’s charter. They who run them and the others who back them, actively or passively, are doing State work.

     Completely informal groups that arise to put pressure on others have the same character, even if they refrain (or are prevented) from using force. One such figured in my own young life:

     A family not far from us had domestic troubles. She slapped him one night, and he responded by shoving her through a screen door, which occasioned a visit to the local hospital for her, a visit from an impromptu decency committee for him, and departure from town for the two of them, soon afterward.

     Such incidents might seem trivial at the time, but the desire for power over others – to insert oneself and one’s convictions into another’s life and make him behave — that animates them is anything but trivial. Even when the great majority agree with the necessity of wielding or threatening coercive force, that desire must be recognized – and curbed.

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     I’ve said at other times and places that the American mantra should be Mind your own business, as it once was. These days, There ought to be a law is heard more frequently. That speaks to the ascension of a poisonous proclivity: the belief that interfering in others’ lives is right and proper as long as you can get a majority to back you.

     Rather than beat this into the magma layer, allow me to suggest only this: Try each phrase in your own mouth and mind. Which tastes better? Which strikes you as a better prescription for a peaceful society?

     The choice, Gentle Reader, is yours.

A Tale For Our Time

     This comes from a British writer who has asked that his name be withheld:

It snowed last night...
8:00 am: I made a snowman.
8:10 - A feminist passed by and asked me why I didn't make a snow woman.
8:15 - So, I made a snow woman.
8:17 - My feminist neighbor complained about the snow woman's voluptuous chest saying it objectified snow women everywhere.
8:20 - The gay couple living nearby threw a hissy fit and moaned it could have been two snow men instead.
8:22 - The transgender man... women... person asked why I didn't just make one snow person with detachable parts.
8:25 - The vegans at the end of the lane complained about the carrot nose, as veggies are food and not to decorate snow figures with.
8:28 - I was being called a racist because the snow couple is white.
8:31 - The Middle Eastern gent across the road demanded the snow woman be covered up .
8:40 - The Police arrived saying someone had been offended.
8:42 - The feminist neighbor complained again that the broomstick of the snow woman needed to be removed because it depicted women in a domestic role.
8:43 - The council equality officer arrived and threatened me with eviction.
8:45 - TV news crew from BBC showed up. I was asked if I know the difference between snowmen and snow-women? I replied "Snowballs" and am now called a sexist.
9:00 - I was on the News as a suspected terrorist, racist, homophobe sensibility offender, bent on stirring up trouble during difficult weather.
9:10 - I was asked if I have any accomplices. My children were taken by social services.
9:29 - Far left protesters offended by everything marched down the street demanding for me to be arrested.
By noon it had all melted.

Moral: There is no moral to this story. It is what we have become, all because of snowflakes.

     I cannot attest to the veracity of this story, but it certainly sounds true!

Something New And Quirky

     Many people think of boredom as a curse. I can’t imagine why. Boredom has been the source of all my best ideas... well, all right, some of my worst ones, too. Still, I find it a fertile medium for new and unexplored possibilities.

     Some time ago, Smashwords, where I first published my books, offered its writers space in which to post “interviews.” Mind you, Smashwords personnel didn’t conduct any interviews; they just gave you a space for one. Being a whimsical sort, I posted an “interview” with various of my fictional characters:

    Q: Mr. Porretto, just what is going on here? I didn’t ask to have my office jammed with all these bodies.
     Fran Porretto: Rather than do a “straight” interview, which tends to bring out my discursive nature, I thought I might change things up a little. So I rounded up some of my favorite characters and brought them here so you can talk to them. Enjoy! I always do.

     And so on.

     Well, just a few days ago, I got into a conversation with writer Abigail Lakewood, who also reviews books on Substack. Somehow, she caused Substack to start another account – for my old protagonist Armand Morelon, of the Spooner Federation Saga. It probably happened because I masquerade as Armand on X.

     Well, I was just a little bored at the time, so I wrote this:

     Good morning / afternoon / evening / night / whatever. If you’ve never made the acquaintance of a planetary Overmind before this, it can be a little overwhelming. But then, think of me! I have the whole of Hope to supervise. It can be quite busy, now and then.
     But enough of that. Hope, if you’re not yet aware of it, was settled in the Terrestrial 27th Century by a group of anarchists. They were driven from Earth under the threat of extinction by the States that oppress that unhappy world. They had to re-engineer a wandering planetoid into a starship to do so.
     It was quite a trip...

     And so on.

     But that got me thinking: Why not have Armand’s site be a place where characters from fiction – my own and perhaps that of others, as well – can get together to shoot the breeze? It could be good exercise for the imagination. Mine could use some, just now.

     So hold onto this link, and visit every so often. You might get a few laughs out of it. A laugh is something we can all use, no?

Locating The State

     Brownstone Institute president Jeffrey A. Tucker has produced a wide-ranging, yet notably compact essay that addresses several questions at once:

1. What is the State?
2. Whence does it arise?
3. Who really wields its powers?
4. Where do we look for its governor?

     I use governor above in its original, mechanical sense: a mechanism that limits the action of another mechanism. For those who insist that the State is “a necessary evil,” this is a critical consideration. Those who pursue power most successfully want it for its own sake. It follows that once they have it, they’ll delight in exercising it. But throughout recorded history, there’s always been something that limits such exercises of power. Where shall we look for it?

     America’s Founding Fathers believed it to be the consent of the governed. They sought to equip “the governed” with a written Constitution and a guarantee that “the right to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Their counterparts in the several colonies followed in their train. Thus, the great body of the public would always be capable of reining in the State, and – hopefully – correcting its excesses.

     Any fairly observant American will know that it hasn’t worked out quite as the Founders hoped. But owing to our heavily armed populace and our rather firm notions about right and wrong, the State in North America hasn’t succeeded as wildly as have those on other continents. The masters of “our” State – local, state, or federal – are repeatedly thwarted in their aims. Now and then they find that, little though they like it, they must accept reductions in their power and scope. Why?

     (Rubs hands together while cackling fiendishly) Heh, heh, heh!

---

     Let’s agree, as a working postulate, that the practical meaning of the State and its power is the use or threat of coercive force. That’s the traditional approach. Who wields that force? Who decides that that force shall be wielded?

     Dr. Tucker notes the peculiar locus to which State power and functions have devolved:

     Cabinet-level appointees frequently complain in private that they face intractable bureaucracies with all institutional knowledge. They often feel like stand-ins or mannequins. Trump is the unusual president who has even attempted to be in charge. Most are just happy for the emoluments of office and the plaudits that come with it.

     In the great majority of cases pertinent to Americans’ common conception of freedom, the decision-makers are bureaucrats: usually faceless souls difficult to locate or identify. This is the great discovery of power-seekers throughout the First World: if the decision-maker is essentially anonymous, he can get away with a lot more. Therefore, political power is least constrained when its wielders are not known to those they rule.

     The seeker of public office is seldom fully aware of this relocation of the political power. He usually puts himself forward in the belief that he can “get things done.” The discovery that the opposite is the case has frustrated and angered many a President and Congressman. Quoth (yet again) retired United States Senator for Oklahoma David L. Boren:

     Boren, formerly a state legislator and governor, went to Washington expecting to make some changes. "What impressed me most is the great power of the bureaucracy compared to that of elected officials. All the talk about growing control by the bureaucracy is not exaggerated. The shift in power is very real.... There is almost a contempt for elected officials."...
     Senator Boren found, to his surprise, that a Senator has great difficulty even getting phone calls returned by the "permanent" employees, much less getting responsive answers to his questions.
     The voters can't "throw the rascals out" anymore, because the main rascals are not elected but appointed....
     Regulatory bureaucrats have extra power because they can outlast the elected officials. "Often," Boren explains, "I've said to a bureaucrat, 'You know this is not the president's policy.'
     'True, Senator, but we were here before he came, and we'll be here after he leaves. We're not in sympathy with his policy. We'll study the matter until he leaves.'"

     [From Armington and Ellis, MORE: The Rediscovery of American Common Sense.]

As I wrote in this piece: Look upon the naked, if anonymous, face of your true master, and be afraid.

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     Dr. Tucker surveys the various approaches to the genesis and development of the state put forward by the great thinkers of the past three millennia. This is good material to be conversant with. It stimulates thought about political path dependency, which is one of the least well addressed of all subjects that touch upon the emergence of the State.

     The path by which the State emerges among men is specific to those men: i.e., to their existing social arrangements and institutions before power-seekers start to swell among them. Those things also condition the form of the State, both immediately and further on. The divergences among the theses of such as Hobbes, Hume, Locke, and the rest point to that without making the larger and more nebulous patterns explicit.

     When your society is armed and generally freedom-minded, the critical need of the State is to deny potential rebels a clear target. Bureaucracy satisfies that need. But all things have their downsides; this is as true of bureaucracy as of any other mechanism for wielding power. Bureaucracy’s downside is that it’s made up of people who generally share the desires and convictions of those they rule. Thus, they are partially inhibited by those common convictions, especially if one of them is the “mind your own business” ethic that characterizes the great mass of Americans.

     That brings us full circle to the “popular consensus / consent of the governed” element in the political dynamic. Thomas Jefferson explicitly stated this basis for a legitimate State in the Declaration of Independence. However, he was thinking of traditionally overt governments: visible, identifiable decision-makers who could therefore be targeted by a populace in insurrection. Yet he identified the forebears of the bureaucracy in these United States:

     At home, fellow citizens, you best know whether we have done well or ill. The suppression of unnecessary offices, of useless establishments and expenses, enabled us to discontinue our internal taxes. These covering our land with officers, and opening our doors to their intrusions, had already begun that process of domiciliary vexation which, once entered, is scarcely to be restrained from reaching successively every article of produce and property. If among these taxes some minor ones fell which had not been inconvenient, it was because their amount would not have paid the officers who collected them, and because, if they had any merit, the state authorities might adopt them, instead of others less approved. [Second Inaugural Address, 1805

     Even so the bureaucracy is upon us. It took time – roughly 150 years from the founding of the Republic before it began to expand in earnest – but it’s upon us nevertheless.

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     Many commentators have suggested remedies. Some have been tried. All have failed. Even famously freedom-minded Ronald Reagan allowed the bureaucracy to expand. President Trump is bearing down on the effort to corral it, but it’s unclear, given current Civil Service law, that he can achieve more than Reagan did.

     If we omit the possibility of a true anarcho-capitalist revolution – I do try to be realistic, but I can’t help but hope! – in the near term, whatever restraint of the State there may be, in all its 88,000-plus instantiations, will arise from the consciences of those who staff it and their cultural commonalities with us private citizens. That and only that will impose any curbs on bureaucrats’ exercises of power over us. Not that the alphabet-dwellers will ever renounce any fragment of their essentially unbounded power! Our hope is not for freedom de jure but freedom de facto.

     Elections and who wins them won’t matter nearly as much.