It’s going to be one of those days. I’m very tired, have chores up the wazoo, and no desire whatsoever to address them. So please, enjoy your Monday... if that’s not a contradiction in terms... and check back tomorrow.
Monday, November 17, 2025
Sunday, November 16, 2025
A Day To Remember
There are many dates on our calendars with historical events attached: the birthdays of presidents; the birthdays of nations; the anniversaries of invasions and the conclusions of the wars they started; and the day Harvey Glumph finally got Jeannie Frizzkopf to agree to go out with him. We celebrate on such days in remembrance of those mighty events and the men who brought them about. That’s part of what it means to know the history of your people. But not every event of great import has a day associated with it. Some such days are forgotten, except for the few fortunate souls who were directly involved in them.
November 14 in this Year of Our Lord 2025 was such a day:
today I used a wire I’ve kept in my box of cables since 2011. please applaud pic.twitter.com/JRUE94A9IT
— Peyman Milanfar (@docmilanfar) November 15, 2025
This hero of technology has shown us the fruits of foresight and endurance. We who have our own boxes of cables, and who cherish the memories that reside therein, should praise him. We salute you, Peyman Milanfar! The Fourteenth of November shall be your day henceforth and forevermore.
Saturday, November 15, 2025
Nightmare Visions
Is this true?
The world is run by people who are more cruel and more obscene than you can fathom. They're all pathetic in ways that feel like satire, and monstrous beyond your wildest imagining.
— Alana McLaughlin🏳️⚧️ (@AlanaFeral) November 14, 2025
Sometimes I can believe it. At other times I can’t.
My first difficulty stems from “The world is run.” What does it mean to say that someone or some group runs the world? “The world” is a rather vague phrase, and “run” is the most overloaded word in the English language. One dictionary lists more than 800 meanings for “run.” Is it possible that “the world is run” has no exact meaning?
George Carlin would have agreed:
...but George Carlin was an entertainer. If you let entertainers form your opinions, you’re fishing in a sewer. Entertainers aren't much good at anything but entertaining – and a lot of them aren’t even much good at that.
Let’s have a close look at that “the world is run” assertion. What do you suppose the speaker meant to express by it?
She probably had big stuff in mind: the major institutions of our time. Big governments, big businesses, big media, and so forth. Yes, there are people, or small groups thereof, who control each such institution. And yes, they direct the large-scale orientations and policies of such institutions. However, they cannot control private citizen Smith. Though if Smith chooses to interact with their institution, his decisions will be influenced by theirs.
But does that amount to running the world?
Let’s move on to “people who are more cruel and more obscene than you can fathom.” I can fathom quite a lot, so omit the hyperbole. Are the people who control major institutions cruel and obscene? What evidence do we have for that proposition?
In the usual case, a man must have control of himself before he can rise to the management or direction of others. But to say that Jones has control of himself does not automatically mean Jones is virtuous. He may simply be skilled at keeping his evil desires reined in until he’s safe to indulge them. And indeed, we have seen enough evil uncovered among the great and powerful to suspect that there’s much more we have yet to see.
Moreover, we have the dynamic of power to cope with. That dynamic does favor the elevation of evil persons. But when the lust for power is opposed by another dynamic – e.g., in commerce, the constraints imposed by profit and loss – power-lust doesn’t always win.
Some large institutions are run by evil persons. It’s the case with most governments. But other large institutions, in which the desire for power over others is tempered by other considerations, are run by persons no worse than you or I. If their desires sometimes clash with ours, what of that? Is CEO Jones obligated to get private citizen Smith’s approval before he decides on Acme Corp.’s next venture?
So the notion that “The world is run by people who are more cruel and more obscene than you can fathom” isn’t uniformly true. Neither is George Carlin’s “big club” thesis. People move in and out of the seats of power: the positions from which they can “run” things. Those who fall aren’t always corrupt, and those who rise aren’t necessarily corruptible.
Just some early-morning thoughts.
Friday, November 14, 2025
Marital Expectations
Have a gander at this:
thoughts? pic.twitter.com/BPS6W4K5xG
— Barefoot Pregnant (@usuallypregnant) November 13, 2025
Give it a few seconds to horrify you before continuing on.
Marriage in these Unted States has devolved from an alliance of loving partners to a high-stakes adventure. This isn’t a new subject, here or elsewhere. You’d think we would have learned something by now. Yet I continue to be appalled at the behavior of individuals whose spouses thought they loved one another. The above example is one of many.
About twenty years ago, we were astonished at Iowa man Travis Frey and his “Contract of Wifely Expectations.” I can’t find the “contract” any longer, though there are still numerous news stories about it on the Web. It was a remarkable document, and not in a good way. It expressed possibly the most extreme demands a man might make on his wife short of felonious conduct. Suffice it to say that when it became public, it met with general disapproval.
Shortly after Frey and his notions made the news, there came a counterstroke from the distaff side. What’s just below was told to Dr. Helen Smith a.k.a. Mrs. Instapundit:
I met a woman that I was sure was my soul mate. I was deeply in love and so, I thought, was she. All this changed when I lost my high paying job through downsizing. To my credit, I went to work immediately and had two jobs, but still only made about 80% of my old income. My wife gave me a year and then began sleeping with a man who hadn’t lost his job in my bed while I was at work. She left with him, taking almost all of my savings and anything else she could carry. Her explanation was that she was “an expensive bitch” and she was unhappy because I worked so much. The adultery doesn’t seem to matter to the court and she got essentially everything. Besides the financial losses, I was so devastated by the betrayal that I could barely function for months. She treated me like garbage and I never worked harder at any endeavor in my life.
The tale at the start of this piece doesn’t look so unusual after all, does it? It makes me wonder: why would anyone marry, given hazards like the above and the general diminution of good will between the sexes?
It seems that marriage still holds the promise of some highly desirable things, despite the possibilities depicted above.
I could go into a long dissertation about the institution of marriage, how it began, what ends it was intended to serve, and what’s happened to it since. I’m not in the mood. Besides, I doubt my Gentle Readers are hungry for such a piece, and anyway I have other matters to attend to.
I hope the material above will stimulate some reflections among younger Americans. At the very least, the marriage-minded should try to ask themselves the following questions:
- What do I expect out of marriage?
- How likely am I to be disappointed?
- What will I do if it “doesn’t work out?”
Note that I said try. Most young people are indisposed to candor about such things, even in the privacy of their own thoughts. There’s a reason for that old German saying “Ve get too soon old und too late schmart.”
Let’s transform the questions above just a wee bit:
- What does she expect out of marriage?
- How likely is she to be disappointed?
- What will she do if it “doesn’t work out?”
What are the odds that your prospective spouse would be candid with herself about the answers? If she were to bridle at the suggestion that she consider them, what would that do to your willingness to marry her?
Quite coincidentally, a friend and I were talking about some of her marital experiences just yesterday. She’s had three husbands, and had the following to say about all three:
[Mr. X] really was a nice man at first, Fran — charming, funny, thoughtful. I never would’ve seen what was coming. But over time, he changed; it was like watching someone harden from the inside out. Now he’s bitter, controlling, and mean just for the sake of it. I honestly hate dealing with him — it’s like he takes pleasure in twisting the knife every time we talk....
Like all my ex-husbands did — kind, attentive. But over time, they changed.
My unnamed friend is a genuinely good woman: kind, thoughtful, generous, and accomplished. I cannot believe that she was the reason... but incredulity has no evidentiary value, as the lawyers tell us.
And now, with the Omnipotent State telling us that marriage doesn’t have to be between one man and one woman, that it comes with no particular obligations, and that it can be dissolved for any reason or none, what are we to predict for it: the oldest human institution, the bedrock of every stable society known to history?
Just a few early-morning thoughts.
Thursday, November 13, 2025
Daring To Dream
Unless you’ve spent the last several decades in a coma, you’ve surely heard your quota of “doom talk.” You may even have contributed to the supply. There’s always something to fear, isn’t there? An American with no apocalyptic forebodings is unequipped for cocktail-party conversation. If you’re the sort who throws such parties, or is occasionally invited to one, that’s something to ponder.
Terror of nuclear war was the bug-bear of my youth. Have the head-under-the-desk practices continued to this day, or have they lapsed since the Soviet Union bit the big one? I haven’t kept in touch with scholastic fashions, and there are no minors conveniently near. If they’ve lapsed, perhaps the “yellow peril” could be used to make them fashionable once again.
Eco-catastrophism dominated the Seventies and Eighties. We were running out! Of what, you ask? Well, it changed with the seasons. At one point it was oil. Then it shifted to iron and other metals. Then it was the ozone layer, or acid rain. Then it was species. Did you know that 43 trillion species go extinct every day? No, really!
(Nota Bene: If you want to sling bullshit without sounding like a jerk, begin your baseless proclamations with “Did you know that.” It has an immediate and powerful effect on the credulous. Also, it prods know-it-alls into either arguing with you, or amplifying your statement with a dollop of their own bullshit. Great for breaking the ice at parties!)
The decades have marched on by without any of the older phantasms coming to pass. There’ve been successors, of course. Overpopulation. Plastic in the oceans. Global warming. The homeless crisis. Invasive species. Impending plagues of Marburg or Ebola. (Eat your heart out, COVID!) And everything gives you cancer.
At any given time, there’s some nightmarish-if-nebulous eventuality the doom-talkers insist that we must fear to the depths of our souls. And the Omniscient, Omnipresent, Omnipotent, and Omnibenevolent State is supposed to combat it, whatever it is, with all its forces.
I won’t speak for anyone but myself, but I’m worn out. My supply of fear energy is down to zero. The doom-talkers can prattle on as they like. I’m done listening to them.
Not that I ever paid them much attention, really.
Today’s chapter in doomerism is the failure of the “American Dream.” Few people bother to make that vision specific, which probably aids the doomers in their campaign to make us fear its disappearance. In any case, the doom-talk is out there and plentiful.
Broadly conceived, the American Dream is about ever-advancing prosperity for one’s family and one’s progeny. It’s future-oriented: however well you’re doing at the moment, you hope for more and better in the days to come, both for yourself and for your children. The doomers rant that the Dream has dissolved – that the realist’s outlook isn’t for more but for less. Young Americans who have labored in the hope of realizing the Dream are out of luck; their predecessor generations have “used it up.”
Sounds a lot like the oil-depletion talk of the Seventies, doesn’t it?
The reality is quite a bit different. Americans are already living the Dream. The Gross Domestic Product is over $42 trillion. Divide that by 330 million Americans; what’s the quotient? $127,000 per man, woman, or child, isn’t it? No, it’s not uniformly distributed, but only about 10% of the national population – yes, counting the illegals, too – is left out of the mix. Nearly all the rest of us partake of the greatest explosion in productivity in human history. By historical standards, nine Americans out of every ten are rich, rich, rich.
What’s that you say? You don’t feel rich? You’d rather not have to work? You’re aggravated that you have bills to pay? Junior is giving you static because you won’t buy him new $200 jeans and $300 sneakers? Buck up, dude. When did you last miss a meal? Was it good food or leavings from a dumpster? Is your home well heated? How many cars does your family have? How old are they and how well do they run? Is your wife’s closet anywhere near to empty? How about her shoe collection?
The Dream was never about each of us becoming as rich as Croesus. It was about getting to where 90% of us are now: comfortable, secure, and able to afford some modest luxuries. Yes, we still have to work, but that was always part of the bargain. And about that work: unless you’re a coal miner or an open-ocean fisherman, it’s probably less strenuous and far less dangerous than anything our predecessors had to endure.
A big part of disappearing-Dream fear arises from our worries for our kids. Some of them lack initiative. Others lack direction. Some of the occupational possibilities we faced seem to be less open to our young. And of course, we have some quite realistic fears about their safety.
I could go into detail about to deal with those things, but I’ll spare you. The salient point is that they have you to protect and inspire them, and time to get their wheels on the track. You did it; ergo, they can do it. These days, there are even more avenues by which to pursue one’s chunk of the Dream than you and I enjoyed as callow youths.
Ironically, the biggest hurdle America’s young people must surmount is the torrent of will-sapping, soul-destroying doom-talk. If you can teach them to ignore that, you’ve done your job.
There will always be work to do and choices to make. Every choice carries a cost, even if only in the opportunities one must forgo to make that choice. You can’t do it all. (I tried.) Neither can you have it all. Filet mignon or veal? Corvette or cabin cruiser? Saint-Laurent or Ralph Lauren? Sydney or Gstaad? You must choose, and forgo what was not chosen. That’s why we call economics “the dismal science,” and never mind the closet-space problems.
All that having been said, this is the American Dream. Unless you’ve been drinking rotgut out of a brown paper bag and sleeping in an alley under a blanket of old newspapers, you’re living it today. You’re a blessed participant in a historic miracle. With a little focus and discipline, your kids can have it too.
Don’t let the doom-talkers take it away from you.
Wednesday, November 12, 2025
Serfdom in 2025
How common are employment policies as explicit as the following:
Let’s leave aside the contradiction of “voluntary mandatory shift coverage” for the moment. Doesn’t this look like a form of slavery?
In some places and times, medieval serfs were attached to the lands they farmed. They were forbidden to leave for a better deal. The land baron asserted ownership over them as well as over their homes and produce. How different is it to be shackled to one’s job via a telephone?
It has been said, and truly, that men were freer when their phones were attached to the wall.
I suppose that were a prospective employee to be informed up front of the “on call 24/7” requirements of the position he’d been offered, it would be a legally acceptable sort of deal for an employer to offer. But for the boss to spring it on him after he’d taken the offer would be a form of fraud. Yet that’s been happening with increasing frequency to persons in certain occupations – and the higher the stress associated with the occupation, the more likely it is.
Other, similar conditions have been sprung on new employees. I worked briefly for a firm whose VP believed he had first call on every one of his subordinates’ waking hours. I worked for another who had no compunctions about demanding six days per week, ten hours per day from his people “in emergencies.” And nearly all supervisors feel perfectly justified about calling their people during off-shift hours, should the demands of the moment warrant it.
There are occupations where a demand for that kind of round-the-clock responsiveness can be justified. Some positions in the police come to mind; so do command-level positions in the military. But most white-collar occupations “should” be more relaxed. How did we reach the current state of affairs, in which every salaried employee is tethered to his job by his cell phone?
It doesn’t seem like an advance to me.
“Gentlemen, progress has never been a bargain. You’ve got to pay for it. Sometimes I think there’s a man behind a counter who says, ‘All right, you can have a telephone, but you’ll have to give up privacy, the charm of distance.’” – Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee, Inherit the Wind
I remember thinking that Star Trek “communicators” would be a marvel to possess. To be in touch with family and friends at all times! Never unable to summon aid in an emergency! Yet they were a pale shadow of today’s “smart” cell phone.
The cell phone is progress of a sort. Being able to contact others no matter where you – or they – are is certainly handy now and then. Add the multifarious features of the smart phone, and wonder of wonders! Instant access to all the information and entertainment in the world rests in one’s hand. But the loss of privacy is a serious counterweight to those things. The inability to say to another that “I have no access to that right now” puts all one’s knowledge and expertise at the disposal of the caller.
Employers have been ruthless about exploiting that bit of progress. The abuses are most common in “employment at will” states, where an explicit labor contract is not required and the terms of one’s employment are nebulous. Salaried workers are deemed available, de facto, at every instant of their lives. Differences of opinion about that are usually resolved in the boss’s favor.
And there is absolutely nothing to be done about it.
Tuesday, November 11, 2025
For Armistice Day
[I first posted this in 2013, when it appeared to me that the world was hurtling toward Armageddon. We survived; we eventually shook off the Obamunists and the Bidenites. The terrors that ravaged the Old World did not visit us. We found a peacemaker and raised him to the Oval Office. For a while, things looked, if not good, at least bearable.
But what are Mankind’s prospects, really? Given the currents of hostility, avarice, and lust for power plainly visible throughout the world, how do things look to you today? – FWP]
World War I remains the greatest man-made tragedy in all of history: a brutal, pointless, utterly avoidable conflagration that ended a century of peace and destroyed the optimism and confidence that had created the modern free world. Twenty million died during the war proper, including most of the young men of France and Germany. Twenty million more died in the influenza plague that followed.
Fixated on symbolism, the Allied Powers demanded that the Germans sign the armistice agreement at exactly eleven o'clock on November 11, 1918: The eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month. One year later, the Treaty of Versailles that supposedly ended the war and established peace proved to be, in the words of General Ferdinand Foch, "an armistice for twenty years." Perhaps it's for the best that no one remembers the "Great War" as a thing of patriotic glory.
Which is why, on this Armistice Day in the year of Our Lord 2025, I've decided to memorialize it with a poem few can bear to read, and those who’ve read it can hardly bear to remember:
Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind.Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.-- Wilfred Owen, 1918 --
Pray for peace.
Monday, November 10, 2025
Flashes Of Insight Dept.
We all have them. The trick is recognizing them and making proper use of them. Have a typical sample:
I was reminded of the debt slavery system last week when I fully paid off an account and the next day got a warning that paying the account off was going to drop my credit score.
— Rae ❤️🔥 (@FiatLuxGenesis) November 9, 2025
They don't want you to pay off debts, they want you to just manage it.
This woman was “clued in” by an institution that had been profiting from her indebtedness. Not everyone is that fortunate. Perhaps she had a subliminal instant of “What if everyone?” – that quick, massively disturbing recognition of a pattern previously uncontemplated. It happens now and then, even to people barely conscious of their own existences.
Patterns exist because of the commonalities among us. We all hunger. We all want. We all fear. We all respond to “carrots and sticks:” incentives and disincentives. He who detects a strong motivator, shared widely among us, that he can exploit has taken his first step toward wealth, power, fame, or all three.
Sometimes that recognition carries another in its wake.
Professional money managers learn things about the ebb and flow of investment that most people never realize. This is something of an “of course” matter; one couldn’t make a living managing others’ assets without some amount of special knowledge. Yet bits of that knowledge are useful to the rest of us as well. One such item is this: Contrarians nearly always make money.
The contrarian, in the equities markets, is one who studies market behavior for its current trends, and then deliberately plays against them. Everyone is buying? The contrarian sells. Everyone is selling? The contrarian buys. Given the old aphorism that “The trend is your friend,” how does that work?
A trend is a temporary thing. “Trees do not grow to the sky,” as Baron de Rothschild has told us. Every trend will end at some point. While it lasts, its dynamism provides opportunities to those with available capital. The key question is how the current trend will end.
Take an arbitrary equity: say, the stock of that perennial titan of American industry, Acme Corp. Is it going up, perhaps propelled by some dramatic recent development? If contrarian Smith already has some Acme stock, he’ll sell at a point where its price reflects an unusually high price-to-earnings ratio (P/E). That way, when Acme peaks and falls back toward a historically stable P/E, Smith can buy it back. That gives him both a profit on the sale plus continuing returns on Acme shares.
The same applies if Acme is “in trouble:” that is, if its share price is declining. Smith waits until Acme is significantly below its historic P/E, then buys. When Acme rebounds, he can profit by selling. (A “value investor” such as Warren Buffet might choose to hold the stock instead.)
The contrarian’s assets are patience, liquid capital, and confidence that “the trend will end,” usually without taking all his money with it. And he nearly always profits.
“Don’t run with the herd” is advice frequently given to young people by their parents and other respected advisors. It’s hard advice to follow. There’s always that suspicion that “the herd” knows something you don’t. That might be true... but going in the opposite direction is more likely to get young Smith something his contemporaries will not.
“The herd” tends to conceal the identities and characteristics of those in it. We see the rushing crowd; we overlook the individuals. That’s no way to attract the attention of others with something special to offer. If you want to be noticed, run the other way.
Several patterns are current among young Americans. Nearly all young adults borrow, thus shackling themselves to an obligation that will last several years. Why? They want something: a house, a car, a vacation, or some other expensive item. But whatever it is, they seldom need it. And since they’ve borrowed to “afford” it; they’re committed to paying more for it than its nominal purchase price. Young contrarian Smith lives beneath his means, saves his money, and waits until he can afford what he wants without paying interest.
Young Americans today “play around” for years before choosing a mate and “getting settled.” That’s herd behavior too; it’s fueled in part by sexual hunger and in part by the subconscious need to “have someone.” Young Smith, who wants to be noticed and desired by a truly exceptional young woman, keeps himself to himself. Oh, he socializes, but he doesn’t date a lot of women, and he certainly doesn’t “sleep around.” The young women who know him will take notice. It will intrigue them... much to his benefit.
It’s practically self-explanatory. The exceptional are those whose behavior is exceptional: the contrarians! They don’t “run with the herd;” they note which way the herd is going and run the other way. And they almost always derive an exceptional benefit from doing so.
Of course, being part of “the herd” does confer something as well. Many people actively want the anonymity, the obscurity, and the freedom from independent judgment that come from losing oneself in the crowd. But those are drives I don’t share.
Sunday, November 9, 2025
The Pillars Of Power
Many are the laws that go unenforced, or are selectively enforced according to the whim of “the authorities.” Many are the laws written to target particular institutions or individuals, who are thus made “enemies of the state” in fact if not in name. Many are the laws written so obscurely that even those who wrote them cannot explain their intent nor their effect. Many are the laws that have advanced injustice rather than justice.When those who claim to represent the law decide, arbitrarily, when it applies and what degree of enforcement it deserves, then there is no law. When they decide, for whatever reason, that the law binds some persons but not others, then there is no law. When the law is written in such a fashion that no one can be certain what it compels or forbids, then there is no law. And when the law is “interpreted” to override the natural rights of individuals to their lives, liberties, and honestly acquired properties, then there is no law.
I meant it then, and I mean it now.
I’ve also written, on several occasions, that the pillars of freedom are three: education, communications, and weaponry. Power-seekers know that quite well. In every society on Earth, the State strives to control all three: to impose itself upon them; to thwart alternatives to them; and to prevent escape from the State’s versions of them. I challenge you, Gentle Reader, to cite an exception. Thus, what serves the freedom-seeker can serve the power-seeker equally well.
Let’s have a quick survey of those things in these United States:
- Education is almost completely controlled by governments. Their tool for imposing State-controlled “public” education upon us is principally economic: high levels of taxation that demand two incomes per family and discourage expenditures on educational alternatives. The escape of homeschooling compels serious economic compromises by families that choose it.
- Armament in private hands is obviously suppressed by governments to the maximum possible extent, despite the “protections” of the Second Amendment. Yes, you can buy a surplus tank or howitzer, but only after rigorous investigation by the State and rendering the thing impotent for conflict.
- Private persons’ ability to communicate is where we retain the greatest latitude. However, it’s also where the State is most active today, principally through lawfare, anti-“hate speech” campaigns, and the seduction of Big Tech into its agenda.
All that, despite the “protections” of the Constitution! No need to imagine where we’d be without the Constitution; just look at what’s been done to the peoples of Europe.
So we see that the pillars of freedom serve equally well as the pillars of power. To the extent that the State controls them, it controls us. It denies us and our progeny what we need to retain even a shred of freedom. Flee? To where?
Have a bit of Orwell for dessert:
If there is hope, wrote Winston, it lies in the proles.
If there was hope, it must lie in the proles, because only there in those swarming disregarded masses, 85 per cent of the population of Oceania, could the force to destroy the Party ever be generated. The Party could not be overthrown from within. Its enemies, if it had any enemies, had no way of coming together or even of identifying one another. Even if the legendary Brotherhood existed, as just possibly it might, it was inconceivable that its members could ever assemble in larger numbers than twos and threes. Rebellion meant a look in the eyes, an inflexion of the voice, at the most, an occasional whispered word. But the proles, if only they could somehow become conscious of their own strength. would have no need to conspire. They needed only to rise up and shake themselves like a horse shaking off flies. If they chose they could blow the Party to pieces tomorrow morning. Surely sooner or later it must occur to them to do it? And yet-!
He remembered how once he had been walking down a crowded street when a tremendous shout of hundreds of voices women’s voices — had burst from a side-street a little way ahead. It was a great formidable cry of anger and despair, a deep, loud ’Oh-o-o-o-oh!’ that went humming on like the reverberation of a bell. His heart had leapt. It’s started! he had thought. A riot! The proles are breaking loose at last! When he had reached the spot it was to see a mob of two or three hundred women crowding round the stalls of a street market, with faces as tragic as though they had been the doomed passengers on a sinking ship. But at this moment the general despair broke down into a multitude of individual quarrels. It appeared that one of the stalls had been selling tin saucepans. They were wretched, flimsy things, but cooking-pots of any kind were always difficult to get. Now the supply had unexpectedly given out. The successful women, bumped and jostled by the rest, were trying to make off with their saucepans while dozens of others clamoured round the stall, accusing the stall-keeper of favouritism and of having more saucepans somewhere in reserve.
There was a fresh outburst of yells. Two bloated women, one of them with her hair coming down, had got hold of the same saucepan and were trying to tear it out of one another’s hands. For a moment they were both tugging, and then the handle came off. Winston watched them disgustedly. And yet, just for a moment, what almost frightening power had sounded in that cry from only a few hundred throats! Why was it that they could never shout like that about anything that mattered?
He wrote:
Until they become conscious they will never rebel, and until after they have rebelled they cannot become conscious.
“The proles” are us, Gentle Reader. We quarrel over potholes, zoning laws, the noise from this one’s barking dog and whether that one’s hedge violates community standards. We joust over school buses, and after-school programs, and trivial differences in property tax rates. We contend over “inequality.” We’ll fight to the death over that last saucepan.
What would we do, were we actually conscious of what’s been done to us? What’s still being done to us? Would anyone dare try to smash any one of the three pillars of power? Who would risk his life and fortune to try?
Perhaps I’ll be back later. Just now, it’s time for Mass.
Friday, November 7, 2025
The Terrible Power Of ‘If’ Part 2
Writer R. G. Ryan deposeth and saith:
New York just elected a communist as mayor. OK fine. What if instead of running around with our hair on fire screaming about the demise of the Republic we just let it play out. Maybe view it as a huge social experiment. I don’t think it will take us all that long to see whether this version of socialism works or not.
It’s a suggestion being made in several quarters. Such an experiment will affect the lives of millions, many of whom would rather not be involved in it. But it appears that socialism’s next trial run will take place whether they wish it or not. That returns us to the questions posed in the previous piece.
There’s quite a bit of danger here. Not all of it is visible.
The asymmetrical and elevated taxation newly elected Mayor Zohran Mamdani has in mind to power his agenda is of concern, of course. During his campaign he said that he wants to lay heavier taxes on “richer, whiter” areas. New York City’s income tax, like the state and federal versions, allows for “progressive” rates that bite harder as one’s income increases, so given the cooperation of the city council, he could get away with it. But the persons who live in those “richer, whiter” districts are more mobile than many other New Yorkers. They might choose not to stay and be shorn.
Mamdani hasn’t yet suggested the expropriations characteristic of communist regimes, but it’s a good bet they’re not far from his thoughts. When the State goes into competition with private enterprises, that measure becomes ever more attractive to the regime. Big Apple businesses could feel Mamdani’s clutching fingers at any moment, especially in the food sector, which he’s openly targeted. Other businesses will be endangered simply from increases in the city’s cost of living and operating.
There’s also a looming prospect for the suppression of dissent. Socialist and communist regimes dislike to have their failures discussed. Mamdani might follow the example currently being set by Britain’s Labour government: declare any public statements it finds uncongenial “hate speech” and deploy the police against the speakers.
But those are the easily seen dangers. There’s a less visible one that deserves mention: the possibility that with adroit maneuvering and heavy support from the donors that financed his campaign, Mamdani might contrive a “honeymoon” that makes his version of socialism look workable.
The 1988 serial A Very British Coup dramatized such a possibility. Freshly elected Labour prime minister Harry Perkins, by dint of personal charisma and financial support from the Soviet Union, had engineered a state of affairs in which the United Kingdom appeared to have achieved a version of socialism in which the country was economically stable and at peace. The premise of the drama was that various titled Tories would not have it: they counter-engineer a clever, almost entirely bloodless coup against the Perkins government. The series ends with Perkins addressing the nation with the outline of the coup: he challenges Britons to choose between his elected government and the Conservative plotters.
Mamdani has already begun to solicit financial support for his intentions from those who backed his campaign. Will those donors ante up to fuel his schemes, thus providing a grace period during which the inherently unworkable appears to work? What would ensue? Would New York State’s government be induced to support his agenda?
These are all hypotheticals, of course: “if” statements. But they delineate dangers and possibilities that deserve some thought.
Thursday, November 6, 2025
The Terrible Power Of ‘If’
Good morning, Gentle Reader. I hope you got more sleep than I did. Anyway, here we are, with Hallowe’en and Guy Fawkes Day comfortably behind us, it’s time to proceed to the really urgent questions of our time, such as this one:
What if Mamdani’s social experiment actually turns out to be a success?
— Sarah Luna (@sarah_luna_1111) November 6, 2025
I think the lady who asked that question did so to gauge the astonished outrage in the reactions. Apparently, she wasn’t disappointed. But the question itself is worth thinking about, for a very simple albeit troubling reason:
If Enough Of Those Subjected To It
Accept And Believe In It.
...with the murmured codicil:
Those who find the above confusing should read the title of this tirade a few dozen times.
Some words have more power than others. “If” is one such. In Godel Escher Bach, Douglas Hofstadter called it “the push into fantasy,” and it is so. What follows “if” can be as bizarre and outrageous as you please, else why would we use it?
Sarah Luna’s innocent-looking question compels us to probe for what “success” – just another way of saying “would work” – would mean to a socialist regime. For we know all the following, from both theory and history:
- Socialism is economically inefficient.
- It requires coercion to bring it about.
- The great majority endure a lower standard of living than under capitalism.
- The ruling elite acquire wealth and power unavailable to anyone else.
- That creates emigration pressure, which must be quelled by force.
- It also encourages military expansionism.
All that having been said, a socialist system can be said to “work” if the overwhelming majority of those subjected to it voluntarily accept its constraints and conditions. That requires the elevation of socialism to a moral precept: i.e., that any other sociopolitical system is morally wrong.
By any other standard, socialism is a failure. Only if those subjected to it accept it as a moral code – a faith — can it be stabilized.
The great Gregory Benford summarized this problem in his novel Against Infinity:
“The Marxists thought that under socialism, alienation and class warfare would stop. They ignored the fact that the dialectical model of change never predicted an end to contradictions, or to evolution. Socialism requires a bureaucracy, and that means an administrative class. The administrators faced a problem Marxism never discussed: how well socialism works, versus capitalism. What is the good of being exactly equal to everybody else, if that means you have to be poor? The last century has taught us—or rather, Earth—that socialism is less efficient than capitalism at producing goods.”
In other words, if the standard is an unquestionable moral precept that “capitalism is wrong and socialism is right,” socialism “succeeds.”
Mamdani’s vision of a socialist New York City has only that one chance of survival: persuading the overwhelming majority of Big Apple residents that the conditions he seeks to impose upon them are morally mandatory. Is that even thinkable, in the city that’s been the commercial and financial hub of the world for a century – the city that’s been called “the capital of capitalism?”
It doesn’t seem likely, but stranger things have happened. Perhaps all the “diehard capitalists” will “emigrate” to friendlier cities and states. Perhaps the remaining residents will accept the much lower standard of living socialism provides as the price for being “right” while the rest of us are “wrong.” It’s just a moral stricture, qualitatively the same as Christianity’s requirement that married men remain faithful to their wives.
But it’s not likely. Big Apple residents are accustomed to high wages and affluence. Mamdani will face pressure to raise revenues without raising taxes appreciably. He’ll appeal to the state government, and possibly the federal government, for aid. And it’s not entirely impossible that he’ll get it. Remember the Great Default of 1975 under Mayor Abraham Beame?
Concerning the possibility of a fiscal collapse, Manhattan Institute fellow E. J. McMahon comments:
Could New York City ever go broke again? The answer is no—or at least, not in the same way as it did in the 1970s, because of financial guardrails set up by the reforms of that era. The prosperity that lifted New York out of virtual bankruptcy, however, also seeded new versions of the political impulses that gave rise to the crisis in the first place. The elected officials who nowadays dominate city hall and Albany exude a sense of fiscal entitlement and economic invulnerability, an aversion to any suggestion of limits on government ambitions, strikingly reminiscent of the Wagner and Lindsay eras. The city’s sprawling network of tax-subsidized nonprofits—a political force that didn’t exist a half-century ago—lobbies relentlessly for higher spending while serving as an organizational network for progressive activists and politicians. Nearly one-quarter of New York’s private-sector employment—twice the share of 30 years ago—is now concentrated in the publicly subsidized health-care and social-assistance sector, which accounts for all the city’s post-pandemic job growth. The municipal labor unions are as powerful as ever, if not more so.
In short, New York City is poised for another epic fiscal fall. A moderately severe recession is all it would take to push it over the edge. This time, the climb back to fiscal stability could be considerably more difficult.
Those “political impulses” have come to fruition with the election of socialist Zohran Mamdani.
Wednesday, November 5, 2025
The Solution Is Neither Obvious Nor Pleasant
I keep seeing queries such as this:
What tool can store owners own to stop this from happening?! 🚨pic.twitter.com/cOKcoVFkZn
— Anti Left Memes (@AntiLeftMemes) November 5, 2025
My first thought was for stores to invest in security doors. But storefronts almost all incorporate display windows; thieves that know they won’t be opposed by superior force will smash through them. It’s already been done several times, sometimes with a vehicle. Even armor glass will shatter under that kind of force. So that’s no solution.
My second thought was for stores to close their retail storefronts and go “delivery only.” But a thief can follow a delivery truck, assault its driver wherever he stops to make a delivery, and make free with the truck’s contents. Once again, the absence of a superior opposing force is what matters.
So there must be a superior opposing force. Such a force must possess lethal armament that it can and will use at need. A sufficiently high probability of death will deter most thieves, even those that travel in packs. But where are we to find such a force?
Only the readiness to deal death to attackers has any prospect of success. But even that falls short of perfection. Armored cars with armed guards have been successfully attacked, too. If the thief (or gang of thieves) is heavily armed and willing to risk counterfire, he’ll take his chances.
Amazon’s delivery trucks have been attacked many times. The driver is usually helpless before such an attack. He may even have been instructed not to resist. In a quiet residential neighborhood, most of its residents at their jobs, where would his protection come from?
Perfection cannot be the standard. Even were all of us to go armed at all times, there would be some forcible thievery. Ironically, many states deem the protection of property an inadequate justification for the use of lethal force. In New York, a homeowner is forbidden to shoot a burglar unless he can convince a jury that his own life was in danger. Else he may spend several years in prison as the price for stopping the burglar. Never mind that such legal protection of the thief’s “right to life” practically licenses home invaders to do as they will.
Rose Wilder Lane, in The Discovery of Freedom, noted that what protects most of us is other people’s respect for our rights, rather than the prospect of arrest, trial, and incarceration. But when that respect declines, so does the invisible defense of our persons and property it once provided.
Americans must become a people in arms once again. Yes, there will be consequences. Some people will die – and some of those will be good people. But with the general understanding of and respect for rights of all kinds having declined so sharply, the time has come for Nemesis to return to the stage and teach the villains once again what follows from Hubris.
Tuesday, November 4, 2025
Muslim Privilege
A reckoning is due:
Is there anyone out there who wants to discuss “privilege?”
Islam is an aggressive, imperialist creed. Little about it is even quasi-religious. When Muslims do things like congregate in the street to “pray,” what they’re really doing is asserting their superiority over secular law. Any other fool who would dare to block a public thoroughfare would swiftly be arrested for obstructing traffic, and possibly disturbing the peace as well. When Muslims do it, the “authorities” pretend it isn’t happening. Taking official notice and dispatching law enforcement to clear the obstruction might have... consequences.
Don’t mumble “freedom of religion” at me. No other creed would be permitted such disturbances of public order. But our lily-livered “authorities” are either too intimidated by Islamic propensity to violence, or find it useful for keeping the rest of us cowed.
But ordinary Americans find that we’ve had quite enough. Some of us own trucks with plow blades on them. And a whole lot of us own firearms.
You may be familiar with the following passage:
“What I actually am, Mr. Rearden, is a policeman. It is a policeman’s duty to protect men from criminals—criminals being those who seize wealth by force. It is a policeman’s duty to retrieve stolen property and return it to its owners. But when robbery becomes the purpose of the law, and the policeman’s duty becomes, not the protection, but the plunder of property—then it is an outlaw who has to become a policeman.”
It’s from Atlas Shrugged, of course. “Pirate” Ragnar Danneskjold is explaining his peculiar occupation to Hank Rearden. But stolen property is only one form of lawbreaking that requires a forcible response. Stolen freedom of transit and stolen public order are no less deserving of our attentions.
President Trump has approved of the use of significant force when it’s needed to apprehend illegal aliens. Perhaps someone should ask him about these Islamic “street prayers” and what he would approve in response to them. Tear gas, perhaps? Rubber bullets? Or maybe firehoses?
They must be quelled, and swiftly. If the “authorities” won’t act, private citizens must. Else the law is meaningless, and Islam reigns de facto over these United States.
Monday, November 3, 2025
Important Truths Dept.
Did you know that millions of people will believe anything at all, however absurd, if it begins with “Did you know that...” -- ?
No, really! 😉
Could We, Should We Dept.
Actor Kevin Sorbo asks:
Muslim militants post selfies with thousands of dead civilians after conquering major Sudanese city! So what are we going to do about it??
Hm. Sudan, you say? That’s in Africa, isn’t it? What we used to call the “Dark Continent?” Doesn’t Sudan, a sovereignty with a seat in the United Nations General Assembly, have its own military? Couldn’t they do something about the violence? Or is the Sudanese government disinclined to act?
If that last is the case, an American expeditionary force would have to contend with both the Muslim militants and the Sudanese army. We might have to destroy the latter before we could confront the former. What then? More “nation building?” Perhaps another massive occupation force, to give our precious diplomats and experts time to teach the Sudanese to be civilized members of the global community? That worked out well in Afghanistan, didn’t it?
And there’s this question to answer: What American interests would be served by intervening in Sudan’s internal chaos?
Yes, I’m being a bit heavy-handed here, but the impulse demanded some air. We forget so swiftly what our other foreign interventions have wrought. We overlook the savagery that characterizes all of Africa. We think ourselves too powerful to be gainsaid... and too benevolent to be wrong.
But maybe this time it will be different, you say? What evidence exists for that proposition? And what degree of bloodshed on the part of young Americans would you be willing to invest in the possibility?
I am so tired of this shit.
Intervenors of every variety call for America to fix other peoples, other nations, other continents. Some of them are genuinely benevolent. Some of them sincerely believe in America’s omnipotence. And some of them see an opportunity for power or baksheesh. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter. We can’t do it.
With all our power and wealth, we cannot raise savages to the level of intelligence and clarity required for the job. I wrote about this long ago:
America is what it is because it is a made society, founded on clearly understood principles by a pioneer people. The societies of Africa are legacy societies, weighed down by the tribal traditions, superstitions and animosities of thousands of years, unleavened by the Enlightenment from which our core concepts sprang. Until Africa renounces its past, there will be no room in which to build a new future.But Africa will not renounce its past. It hasn't yet outgrown its belief in magic. Combatants in the Liberian nightmare are eating their slain enemies' vital organs, in accord with the ancient voodoo belief that this will add the strength of the vanquished to their own. So Liberians look across the Atlantic and cry, "Help us, Lady Liberty! Feed us! We are poor and terrified, you are rich and strong! Bring your breadbasket and your gun and deliver us from the darkness!"
You cannot have a civilized nation without civilized people. You cannot have a civilized people without both Christian ethics and the Enlightenment. Haven’t our previous ventures into civilizing other lands made that clear yet?
But that do-gooding impulse can be so strong.
The West can’t help Africa. Nor should we. The record speaks for itself. – Kim Du Toit
Painful truths are the most aggravating kind. Where’s the Advil? Never mind that; where’s the Oxy? Let’s forget our record of failure at uplift, roll up our sleeves, and get on with it! After all, we’re Americans! And this time, we have experience to draw on, right, guys?
Experience is supposed to teach. And it does: it tells you why you’ve just busted your skull... after you’ve busted it. But the test comes first; the lesson comes afterward. We’ve had the test several times. We’ve “busted our skull,” figuratively at least, on each occasion. Yet many have failed to absorb the lesson.
Christian missionaries have strained to bring Christianity to the Dark Continent. Their successes were mostly in European colonies. When the colonial powers retreated, Christianity and its influence began a steady retreat. That wasn’t (and isn’t) because there was something lacking in those missionaries’ efforts, or in Christianity itself. It’s Africa itself: the African mentality in the African environment. Kim Du Toit’s essay, quoted above, delineates the matter too well, and too painfully, for an intelligent reader to miss it.
Islam found a fallow field in Africa. It appeals to the savage mentality: conversion by the sword! If they won’t accept Allah, kill or enslave them! Scant wonder Islam is sweeping through the continent. Africa couldn’t be more suited to Islam if they’d been designed for each other.
Continuous tribal warfare is equally well suited to Africa. It’s returned in force in every country where Europeans once ruled and have retreated. Only watchful, unrelenting, greatly superior power can keep the peace when the natives’ fondest wish is to slaughter one another. Well, yes: first they go after any whites that were foolish enough to remain. Then, the fun really begins!
Islamic forces are rapidly expunging Christianity from Nigeria and any other parts of Africa where it’s hung on. The Enlightenment finds few fans among Africa's savage, bloody-minded natives. There’s one and only one cure:
So here’s my (tongue-in-cheek) solution for the African fiasco: a high wall around the whole continent, all the guns and bombs in the world for everyone inside, and at the end, the last one alive should do us all a favor and kill himself.
Kim may have intended that facetiously, but it’s no less true for that.
Sunday, November 2, 2025
In Praise Of Ordinary Life
Recently, I read the following from a supposedly sane and well-balanced young woman:
“I want to marry the man who gets more excited about my birthday than I do.”
“I want a man who plans little surprises to make my eyes light up.”
“I want a man who never treats my joy as an inconvenience.”
“I want a man who asks how my day is and actually waits for the answer.”
“I want a man who celebrates my wins louder than anyone else.”
“I want a man who is proud of me on the days I’m not proud of myself.”
“I want a man who knows I like my coffee sweet.”
“I want a man who warms up the car while I tie my shoes.”
“I want a man who hears me talk about my dreams and then turns them into plans.”
“I want a man who chooses ‘us’ even when life gets loud.”
“I want a man who makes ordinary moments feel like magic.”
That wish list drew a lot of negative commentary. Of course, wish lists are often impractical, but the impractical ones are usually materially oriented. This one demands a fantasy creature for a mate. But, as my favorite late-night TV philosopher has said, wait: there’s more.
The fantasy mate is expected to deliver a fantasy existence as well.
I can only speak for myself, but I’m unaware of anyone who enjoys a magical life. Even the very rich have fairly ordinary lives. Granted that they may do less housework than the rest of us. Even so they rise in the morning, spend their days dealing with the necessities of their lives, retire to bed in the evening, sleep through the night, and – if they’re really fortunate – rise the next day to do it again.
And what on Earth is wrong with that?
Many may dream of a life filled with adventure, excitement, and reward:
I didn't want to go back to school, win, lose, or draw. I no longer gave a damn about three-car garages and swimming pools, nor any other status symbol or "security." There was no security in this world and only damn fools and mice thought there could be.
Somewhere back in the jungle I had shucked off all ambition of that sort. I had been shot at too many times and had lost interest in supermarkets and exurban subdivisions and tonight is the PTA supper don't forget dear you promised.
Oh, I wasn't about to hole up in a monastery. I still wanted—
What did I want?
I wanted a Roc's egg. I wanted a harem loaded with lovely odalisques less than the dust beneath my chariot wheels, the rust that never stained my sword. I wanted raw red gold in nuggets the size of your fist and feed that lousy claim jumper to the huskies! I wanted to get up feeling brisk and go out and break some lances, Then pick a likely wench for my droit du seigneur—I wanted to stand up to the Baron and dare him to touch my wench! I wanted to hear the purple water chuckling against the skin of the Nancy Lee in the cool of the morning watch and not another sound, nor any movement save the slow tilling of the wings of the albatross that had been pacing us the last thousand miles.
I wanted the hurtling moons of Barsoom. I wanted Storisende and Poictesme, and Holmes shaking me awake to tell me, "The game's afoot!" I wanted to float down the Mississippi on a raft and elude a mob in company with the Duke of Bilgewater and the Lost Dauphin.
I wanted Prester John, and Excalibur held by a moon-white arm out of a silent lake. I wanted to sail with Ulysses and with Tros of Samothrace and eat the lotus in a land that seemed always afternoon. I wanted the feeling of romance and the sense of wonder I had known as a kid. I wanted the world to be what they had promised me it was going to be—instead of the tawdry, lousy, fouled-up mess it is.
...but such are dreams. Such are the inventions of professional fantasists. Were it otherwise, there’d be no market for fantasy.
Nobody promises anyone such an existence. A good thing, too. It would be next to impossible to deliver on such a promise.
Some soldiers sometimes have excitement-filled lives. For a few years, anyway. Ask them what it costs. Don’t forget to factor in those who paid the ultimate price.
Ordinary American life, with all its compromises, frustrations, and vicissitudes, is the best bargain going.
The dreams of young women are often extravagant. The young – both sexes – are like that. But there’s a shortage of unmarried handsome princes just now. (Please don’t demand a government program to address the shortfall!) And even the handsomest princes usually come unequipped with magical powers.
Time was, women – even young women – understood that. They aspired not to adventure, excitement, and the life of a fantasy princess, but to love, comfort, and security. They knew from the start that what they sought would demand work, prioritization of desires, and prudence in their choices. They thrilled to the “demon lovers” they found between the covers of gaudily decorated paperbacks, just as do contemporary American women – but they knew that between those covers was where they must remain.
It appears that something has gone wrong with the upbringings of young American women. I haven’t raised any myself, so rather than discourse further on it, or prescribe a method for its remediation, I believe I’ll stop here.
Cadences
Are there any former piano students among my Gentle Readers? Those of you who had to endure piano lessons in your youth will be familiar with a fiendish device called a metronome. That Satanic contrivance was supposed to teach us to respect the time signatures in the pieces we were learning. Get out of sync with the metronome’s peremptory beat and get rapped across the knuckles – usually those on your left hand – until you could catch up again.
I grew to hate that device. I felt that it was holding me back. But then, I’ve always been in something of a hurry.
The metronome’s beat was only the most obtrusive of the cadences we learned to respect. There were others that came more “naturally:” the rising and setting of the sun; the regularity of mealtimes; the start and end times of school, and later, of work; the schedule of TV shows; and so on. People have adapted to those cadences for centuries, and have seldom thought much about them. But just this morning one such cadence has been disturbed, which is the justification for this screed.
When a habitual cadence “jitters,” such that one is briefly “out of step,” it can disturb other things as well. This morning I rose when my bedside clock said it was 4:00 AM. But upon rising I realized that today is “Fall-Back Sunday,” when the nation reverts from Daylight Savings Time to Standard Time. Grumble; time to reset all the BLEEP!ing clocks built into all our BLEEP!ing digital devices. When will this madness end, anyway?
But that’s just what got me thinking about this subject. What followed was a somewhat more unsettling question.
Which of the cadences by which our lives are structured are inescapable? Which are chosen by those who prefer them? And which are imposed upon us by forces we cannot hope to oppose?
Most people allow their lives to be rhythmically structured. Some, personally disinclined to be ruled by any metronome, refuse to respect any beat. World Chess Champion Emanuel Lasker was like that: he declared himself unwilling to be “tyrannized by Time.” He ate and slept when he pleased, regardless of the hour. His disdain for all schedules caused him some grief during tournaments.
We the Cadenced view such individuals as disturbances. Those such who are important to us seem to compel us to conform to their atemporal idiosyncrasies. That’s not really the case, of course, but the way our cadences bind us can distort our perspectives.
Yet there are lessons to be learned from the clash between us who strive to keep to the beat and those who disregard it.
Today is All Souls Day, the third day of the All Saints Triduum. Today, Catholics pray for the relief of our departed who, at their passing from this life, were deemed to require purification in Purgatory before they can enter heaven. I have no idea what percentage of souls ultimately bound for heaven must suffer for a time in that “waiting area.” At a guess, it would be nearly everyone who dies without mortal sins on his soul. We are sinners, after all, and even those of us who manage to avoid (or expiate) all mortal sin probably die carrying some spiritual burden. Those who loved us in life are supposed to pray that our term in Purgatory will be short, for once we’re there, we cannot pray for ourselves.
That’s only one of the reasons to cultivate the love and good will of others while we live, but if you’ll pardon the phrasing, it’s a damned good one.
All Souls Day comes regularly on November 2 each year. That’s the Church’s decision rather than our own. It’s only a reminder, really. Why shouldn’t we pray for the release of our departed into heavenly bliss every day of the year? But of course, human memory is fallible. The living are compelled by so many “important” cadences that something discretionary like prayers for the souls of our departed loved ones can “fall off the back of the stove.”
Even so, it’s something to ponder, and not just on November 2.
I’ve lost people I’ve loved. I have so many things on my mind that even remembering my morning and evening prayers can be a struggle. So my departed loved ones often go “unserviced.” And every year on November 2, I’m reminded – painfully – that I’ve promised to pray for them yet have failed to do so all year long.
Once again in this Year of Our Lord 2025, the cadence of the liturgical year has reminded me of that promise. And once again I’ve resolved to do better than in previous years. Perhaps this is the year I’ll finally make good on that resolution.
Now if Congress would only put an end to this damned clock-shifting business! Please!
Friday, October 31, 2025
Backing Away
Beware: I’m furious. I’m about to launch a “rant.” It might turn ugly. All the same, I’m not going to hold anything back. Consider yourselves forewarned, Gentle Readers.
Large-scale conflicts all have the same genesis: the politicization of some idea or practice. I’ve said this. So has my beloved colleague Linda Fox. We gave the subject our best, but too few of you have taken it to heart. A saddening percentage of you have adopted politicization tactics, not understanding that it will make you indistinguishable from the Left.
As I’ve made it a working assumption that the politicization of an issue will bring conflict, I’ve been trying to stay clear of such things. Another working assumption is that he who politicizes knows what he’s doing; therefore he seeks the conflict it will bring. And we have no more room for conflict in this conflict-ridden age.
So I’m distancing myself from politics and political advocacy.
What? That distresses you? Come on! Surely you don’t read my interminable tirades just to get your glands in a lather. Who needs the agita? I’d rather believe that I’ve made you feel better. I intend to set my fingers to these BLEEP!ing keys with only that in mind henceforward.
Feel better, Gentle Reader. Feel at ease, at peace. “Peace on Earth and good will toward men,” as the angels sang to the shepherds at Bethlehem. To get that precious feeling, you must back away from anything and everything that’s been politicized. Make all things private, as they were before that noxious nonsense that’s called The State started throwing its weight around.
Even if you can only do so for yourself, think and act as if no such lunacy as some people ordering others around (and jailing or killing them for disobedience) had ever arisen among us.
Ten years ago, I wrote:
Virtually every op-ed writer currently blathering has chosen to align himself with some political ideology. Virtually all such persons routinely cheerlead for one or the other of the two major political parties. They might well be sincere in their convictions. They might well be benevolently inclined toward the rest of us: they might sincerely believe that the political agendas they promote and support would be for the best, and that once they’re in place, we would all be as happy as kings.
It doesn’t matter. They’re pushing politics – the pursuit of power over others – as the cure for everything that ails us. Even those who argue solely for the repeal of this or that oppressive law are pushing politics.
I was echoing another brilliant thinker and writer:
This must be said: There are too many "great" men in the world — legislators, organizers, do-gooders, leaders of the people, fathers of nations, and so on, and so on. Too many persons place themselves above mankind; they make a career of organizing it, patronizing it, and ruling it.
Now someone will say: "You yourself are doing this very thing."
True. But it must be admitted that I act in an entirely different sense; if I have joined the ranks of the reformers, it is solely for the purpose of persuading them to leave people alone. I do not look upon people as Vancauson looked upon his automaton. Rather, just as the physiologist accepts the human body as it is, so do I accept people as they are. I desire only to study and admire.
“Great men.” Have you reflected on the inanity of that phrase lately? What qualifies a man as “great?” Is it personal achievement, or is it the ascent to political power? Time was, we honored the first sort; we endured the second, as men have done since States first emerged to bedevil us. Today it’s rather the reverse.
George Herron had something to say about that:
The possession of power over others is inherently destructive both to the possessor of power and to those over whom it is exercised. And the great man of the future, in distinction from the great man of the past, is he who will seek to create power in people, and not gain power over them. The great man of the future is he who will refuse to be great at all, in the historic sense; he is the man who will literally lose himself, who will altogether diffuse himself in the life of humanity.
That is greatness. That is humility: the great and underappreciated Christian virtue. It’s required that a man be humble, if he is to submit himself to the will of God. And damned near no one for whom the trumpets sound their fanfares exemplifies or exercises it.
I shan’t claim to be an exemplar of humility. I know better. My tendency to think myself superior to others has caused me most of the grief I’ve known. That doesn’t mean that I don’t appreciate its importance; rather the reverse. It’s one of the hardest-learned of all my lessons.
Paradoxically, for Smith to tell Jones to “be humble” usually has the opposite effect. It produces anger, even fury. Imagine telling any of today’s “great men” that they should be humble. What sort of response would you expect? “Guards! Throw this person down the steps. Make it hurt.”
Time was, it was actually a crime to tell a “great man” to be humble. It was called lèse-majesté. It could get the offender summarily beheaded. Don’t take my word for it; look it up. Look into the history of monarchy; you’ll find it.
Tells you something about the relationship of humility to “greatness,” doesn’t it?
Draw the BLEEP!ing moral.
I’ve known a genuinely great man. He was my friend, for a time. He’s passed away, one of the most painful losses of my life... and indeed, one of the greatest recent losses of this world, though the world be unaware of it. Yet his greatness went unrecognized by nearly everyone. That’s as he would have wanted it, too.
He didn’t care what others were doing. He didn’t care what others said or thought. He simply lived, loved, worked, and created. He made a specialty out of the employment of “obsolete” technologies to build useful, even innovative things. He joked that his mantra should be “There has to be a harder way to do this.” Really, I attach more importance to something else he said once:
“I have my wife and my mountain. What else does anyone need?”
As far as I know, he had no political involvements, beyond talking to me – and I’ve often regretted the time we wasted on political subjects. He wanted nothing but to create, to build, and to be left alone with the woman he loved and the few men he held as friends. By dint of great intellect, great imagination, and great labors, he got his wish.
I could go on, but I’ll spare you. I’d originally had a specific example in mind of how the politicization of some phenomenon – i.e., turning it into an “issue” that requires mass approval or disapproval – destroys our peace, but I’m worn out. I suppose I’m sparing myself, too.
I wish you peace. It’s rare and precious today, like freedom. But they’re complementary assets; each, once achieved, brings the other. Their common prerequisite is the abjuration of all political involvement, however well-intended. The implications are for you to draw.
Happy Hallowe’en. Feel free to leave the candy corn for me. I like it.
Wednesday, October 29, 2025
In The Beginning...
“Live fast. Die young. Leave a good-looking corpse.” – Originally from Knock on Any Door. Also, motto of the Pagans motorcycle gang.
...there was a lot of scurrying around and trying to “look busy.” But apart from that, we’re told that God instructed Adam and Eve to “Be fruitful and multiply.” (Genesis 1:28) If He ever countermanded that dictum (“Okay, that’s enough multiplying. You can stop now. Please!”) the Bible doesn’t record it.
It doesn’t really matter whether you take the Bible literally as the Word of God. (I don’t. It was written by men. They may have been divinely inspired, but they weren’t God Himself.) Reproduction, like survival, is hard-wired into our natures. It takes a lot of disincentive to suppress that impulse.
Youth culture plus feminism have provided that disincentive, in quantity.
Youth culture strikes me as the ultimately self-defeating agenda. It literally cannot be fulfilled. Except for those like the persons in the quote at the top of this screed, we will get old. Our bodies will age and weaken. Our faces will wrinkle. And of course, one way or another, we’ll die. All of us. (Yes, you too, Gentle Reader, though I hate to think it.)
Feminism, once severed from its Susan B. Anthony / Elizabeth Cady Stanton egalitarian roots, coupled to the perversity of youth culture with a tragic synergy. It made women neglect their characters and personalities in favor of obsessive concentration on their bodies and faces. Though it’s seldom labeled as such, that is actually a variety of gluttony.
It also made women averse to child-bearing.
This is of particular interest to me just now, owing to my current novel-in-progress.
The possibility of a complete worldwide cessation of child-bearing was broached by the late P. D. James in her quasi-apocalyptic novel The Children of Men. James narrates the consequences for Britain in her usual adroit, subtly gripping manner. It’s a powerful story, well worth reading, though the premise that one day human fertility just ends is rather fanciful.
Dreams of Days Forsaken revolves around two core ideas: a worldwide decline in birthrates, partly due to a plague of infertility; and the invention of a wholly automated artificial womb. The personal, institutional, and geopolitical consequences would be dramatic, to say the least. I hope my tale delivers on them.) Though I don’t go very deeply into them in the novel, I’m mesmerized by the incentives The Womb would offer to women:
- Those whose marriages are endangered by infertility, whether voluntary or otherwise;
- Those determined to protect their bodies and careers from pregnancy and parturition.
For there’s no question about it: child-bearing changes a woman. It changes her body, of course, but it also changes her drives. The new person in her life must become a part of her priority structure. Other individuals in that structure will be affected. So will any organizations in which the new mother is a participant.
Herewith, three vignettes about women whose thinking is being altered, none too subtly, by the prospect of The Womb:
Susan read the employment contract carefully. Her prior experiences with such things had convinced her that they deserve special scrutiny.
She found herself willing to accept its terms until she came to the clause titled Standards Of Performance. It didn’t take her long to find the scorpion’s sting. She looked up at her interviewer. The gray haired matron’s face was impassive. Her hands were steepled before her.
“What about pregnancy?” Susan said.
The interviewer raised an eyebrow. “What about it?”
“The performance clause makes no provision for it. A gravid woman could never sustain the kind of performance specified here.”
The interviewer’s nod skirted the edge of perceptibility.
Adam wants children.
So do I.
“I think…” She paused. “Under current labor law, this contract is challengeable at the very least.”
The interviewer’s smile did not touch her eyes. “Perhaps.”
But I’d have to sign it and commit to its terms to find out, wouldn’t I?
“I don’t think I can agree to this, Ma’am.”
“A shame,” the interviewer said. “Your experience and references made you one of our top picks for this position. But the contract is a condition of employment. Best of luck with your job search.”
The interviewer rose and held out a hand. Susan passed the stapled pages back to her, rose in her turn, and slipped the strap of her purse over her shoulder.
“Well, thank you for your time.”
The interviewer did not offer to shake hands or see her out.
Adam was nonplussed.
“Really?” he said. “I thought contracts like that died with the Nineteenth Century.”
“Apparently not.” Susan sipped at her rapidly cooling coffee. “They wouldn’t back away from it, either.”
“‘They?’”
“Sorry, my interviewer. An older woman. Perfectly polite and pleasant, but there was no give in her at all.”
“Damn. I know this was the one you wanted.” He refilled his mug and took his habitual seat at their kitchen table. “Well, what’s next?”
She shrugged. “Keep looking. Engineering shops don’t all require labor contracts. Anyway, this is the first one I’ve hit.”
Adam didn’t answer. He’d gotten the faraway look she knew meant that he’d gone into problem-solving mode. She clamped her lips tightly together.
Wait it out, Suzy Creamcheese.
“Do you really want that job?” he said at last.
“I… did,” she said, “before I read the contract. I don’t think so now.”
“But what if we could finesse our way around the contract?”
She peered at him. “What are you thinking?”
“The Womb.”
Her hackles went up at once. “Nope. Never.”
He frowned. “Why not?”
“Think about it! No pregnancy means no antibodies for the baby and no lactation from me. He’d be vulnerable to a thousand nearly extinct diseases and bottle-fed from the instant of his, uh, birth. Plus, I wouldn’t get the health bonus women get from going through pregnancy.”
Or the maternal bond from having him inside me for nine months. Peg said it’s real, and after five kids she’ll know. And I want it!
Adam’s expression had gone flat. “There might be ways to compensate.”
“Do you know of any?” Despite her effort to control it, her temper had risen. “This is our child and my life we’re talking about. I’m already thirty-two. He might be the only child we’ll ever have!”
For sure it’s the only life I’ll ever have.
“Besides,” she continued, “I want to be home with a new baby. The performance clause didn’t mention any reduction in standards for the post-partum period. The mandated leave is only twelve weeks. I could return from maternity leave and get fired for substandard performance a couple of weeks later.”
“A lawsuit…” he said, and trailed off.
“Forget it. A company like that will have lawyers up the wazoo. They might even have fought this battle before.”
Her husband appeared stricken. She could sense the but on his tongue, barely restrained by his lips.
She blinked and bore down to fight off a sudden rush of tears.
“I have to chalk this one up and keep looking,” she said.
“You don’t have any other possibilities lined up?”
She shook her head. “Not yet.”
“What about that place back East that cold-called you?”
“You mean Arcologics?” He nodded. “We’d have to move and you’d need a new job.”
“Don’t they have a marketing department?”
Not if Iverson is as smart as everybody says.
“I don’t think so.”
“Damn.”
Adam’s gaze remained hooded for the rest of the evening. Susan knew The Womb was still uppermost in his thoughts… as it was in hers.
Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad after all.
Laura’s three years as the Hanford Agency’s top model had not prepared her for Bill Hanford’s explosion.
“Are you out of your mind?”
She gaped at him, all the words blown out of her.
“I can’t believe you’re even considering it,” he said. “It wouldn’t be ‘just for a few months,’ stupid. No matter how carefully you restored your figure, it would change everything. Your tits, your skin tension, your posture, the way you move and hold yourself. It would ruin you for anything but fully clothed, and we have practically no demand for that. Are you willing to throw away the rest of your career for a baby?”
“My career…” She faltered.
“Indianapolis might not be the big time, but damn it, girl, you own this city. This state!” He turned away and started to pack up his equipment. His movements were staccato, jerky and angry, uncharacteristic for such a poised photographer. It was plain that she had unsettled him. “You want to leave all that on the table for some other girl to pick up just so you can have a baby?”
She could not answer him. But I want a baby was the only thought her mind could hold. He fulminated silently as he packed the rest of his equipment. She shed her bikini and resumed her street clothes. They left the studio silent and empty behind them.
Carlos was not pleased.
“He’s right,” she said. “I asked around. Models don’t… come back from pregnancy.”
“So no son,” he muttered. His arms were crossed like swords over his chest.
She hung her head.
“We have to choose, love,” she said. “Besides, without my income—”
“Is that what matters to you? More than a family?” His Salvadoran accent became more pronounced.
I don’t want to go back to the escort service.
“We wouldn’t be able to meet our bills without it.”
He scowled at her. “Yes we could. You know it.”
I don’t want you to go back to dealing, either.
“Carlos,” she said, “I want a baby as much as you do. But we have to be practical.” She rose from her seat at the kitchen table, but she did not dare to approach him. “You came this close to going to prison. The cops had you dead to rights. You were lucky that they were so sloppy. The chain-of-custody issue the D.A. missed was the only thing your lawyer had to work with, even if that was enough to spring you. Don’t you think the cops will have their eyes on you now? I may not want to end my modeling career, but I want to raise a baby alone even less!”
He glared, but he had no comeback for her.
A protracted, tension-laden silence ended when he muttered “I must think about this,” grabbed his windbreaker, and stalked out of the apartment. She wandered loosely around their home, uncertain what to do next, until the phone rang and Jill Timman invited her to join her at their favorite after-work watering hole.
“He’s furious.” Laura swished her swizzle stick idly through her pina colada.
“He’s a tough cookie.” Jill smirked. “But so are you. Stick to your guns, girl. It’s your body and your career.” She looked up and scanned the other patrons in the crowded bistro. “I don’t see anyone who has more right to make those decisions than you do. Not for you, at least.”
“What if he decides he wants a son more than he wants me?”
Jill shrugged. “Then you lose him. So?” She paused for a sip from her Cosmopolitan. “You’ve been together what, eight months?” Laura nodded. “Don’t you think you’d find someone else fast enough?”
Laura swallowed past her fear.
She doesn’t know. Keep it that way.
“I know, Jill. ‘Always more fish in the sea.’ I could find someone else. But it’s hard. It’s tiring. I’m tired all the time as things are now. And…”
Jill nodded in sympathy.
“And you love him.”
“I… think I do.”
“So?” The model-turned-event-planner grinned. “What about The Womb?”
Helen stripped off her apron and tossed it into the back seat before slumping into her car. Ten hours on her feet left her exhausted. It would have done the same to anyone. But her tuition was due at the end of the month, and she’d be damned before she’d let the water and electrical utilities send her any dunning letters.
She cranked the engine, waited for it to settle into a smooth purr, pulled onto Grand Avenue, and drove through the darkness toward her Amherst Estates apartment.
At least I know I’ll come home to a clean flat and a hot meal.
Alicia was a clean freak of the best kind. Rather than see a domestic chore done imperfectly, she’d take it upon herself. She’d assumed their apartment’s cleaning and cooking duties immediately upon moving in. It was a great part of why Helen was happy to support the two of them.
Well, that and that she thinks my stretch marks are cute. And how good she is with her tongue.
Theirs was a no-bullshit relationship. They liked each other well enough, but there was no love talk between them, and no mutterings about marriage. Alicia stayed for Helen’s support, and would do so as long as Helen would maintain her in an acceptable style. Helen was willing to pay the bills, and would do so as long as the sexy Latina’s attentions to her needs remained enthusiastic and unflagging.
It’s just these down periods between surrogacies that spit in the soup. But I have to have them. The agency wouldn’t have it any other way.
At first, surrogacy had provided Helen a more-than-comfortable living plus substantial savings. With Alicia’s arrival, her lifestyle had swelled to include luxuries and pleasures she’d never before indulged. Helen suspected that an attempt to return to her prior, more modest standard of living would endanger their arrangement. She was too accustomed to Alicia’s services to risk that.
I can’t take another contract until March. I can hardly wait. Until then it’s short skirts, high heels, “Are you ready to order, sir?” and “Is everything satisfactory, ma’am?” Ten hours a day, six days a week. Dear God.
Well, my feet haven’t fallen off yet.
As she turned into the parking lot for the residents of the two Amherst buildings along Arnulfson Way, she noticed that Alicia’s car was not in its assigned spot. She frowned.
Did she go shopping?
She unlocked her apartment door and stepped inside. Her gaze arrowed to the answering machine nestled in the entryway bookcase. The messages light was flashing steadily. She pressed the Play button.
BEEP! “Miss Riordan, this is Marion Michaels at Dreams Fulfilled. Due to recent technological developments, we’re experiencing a retrenchment in our in-vitro and surrogacy operations. In consequence, we don’t expect to engage you as a host mother this coming year. Thank you for your services to this date. You have our best wishes for your continued success.” BEEP!
The messages light went out and the machine fell silent.
Helen was still gawking at it when Alicia returned.
“It’s the Womb, babe.” Alicia forked up a bite of roast beef, chewed and swallowed. “If it works as advertised, host mothers will go the way of buggy-whip factories.” She glanced at Helen’s untouched plate. “Aren’t you eating?”
Helen forced a smile. “Waiting for my stomach to settle.”
“Oh. It hit you that hard, eh?”
Helen nodded. “Second semester tuition is due soon. It’ll clean me out. If I can’t bag a surrogacy, I don’t know how I’ll pay for my junior year.”
Alicia shoveled up some peas. “Can’t you promote your services on your own?”
“I’ve never tried it. I wouldn’t know where to start.”
“Ah. Could you use social media?”
Helen shook her head. “They don’t accept ads about anything related to sex.”
Alicia grinned. “But there’s no sex involved.”
“They don’t see it that way. They nix anything that even hints at it, to stay out of trouble with the law.”
“Well…” Alicia laid down her fork and sat back. “You have other things to sell.”
“Hm? What are you—”
“If the Womb really works,” Alicia said, “new industries will spring up around it. New markets. So think sideways. You were selling space in your uterus. What else have you got that the Womb might make marketable, you gorgeous five-foot-nine, hundred and fifteen pound blue-eyed blonde with a killer figure and a one-forty IQ?”
Helen started to answer, bit it back.
“Maybe the genes that gave you that stuff might prove marketable,” Alicia said.
“Maybe…” Helen pondered it, shuddered. “But I’d have to let a man put his thing in me.”
“Not necessarily, babe.” Alicia’s expression turned sly. “You’ve got plenty of eggs, don’t you?”
“Yeah… wait a minute! If they’re so valuable, how come Dreams Fulfilled never offered to buy any?”
Alicia shrugged. “Did you ever hint that you were open to the idea?”
It stopped Helen’s thought process for a second time.
Is it legal to sell ova in New York? Was Michaels waiting for me to suggest that mine were available?
“You… might have something there.” Helen picked up her fork to address her dinner, set it down again. “Maybe the first move has to be mine.” She beamed at her housemate. “Thanks!”
“De nada. Eat!”
Helen chuckled and picked up her fork again. “Yeah.”
She’s smarter than I realized.
How did she know about my IQ?
We don’t have The Womb today, but it’s in prospect. There are teams working on developing one as you read this. Don’t kid yourself: feminism plus youth culture would play into the reactions to such a development. If it were to be made price-competitive with the costs of pregnancy plus childbirth, it would be a powerful influence.
And with that, we return to contemporary reality.
There’s been a resurgence of interest in what might be called prewar femininity: i.e., the model for female decision making held up to them by their mothers, which was followed by most. Marriage, wifedom, homemaking, and motherhood are becoming freshly attractive to some number of young women. What’s propelling that resurgence is, in part, the failure of feminism to satisfy many of its adoptees. They’ve reached middle age; they have careers but no kids; they sense that they’ve “missed out” on a critical feature of the female experience. (Some of them don’t have men, either.) That makes the alternative denigrated by militant feminists decades ago loom large in younger women’s thoughts. But what if the young aspirant to “tradwife” status confronted the prospect of remaining unaltered physically by pregnancy and childbirth: i.e., the prospect held out by The Womb?
Just some early-morning thoughts from a novelist trying not to think about his novel.
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