"Keep clear of the dupes that talk democracy,
And the dogs that bark revolution.
Drunk with talk, liars and believers.
I believe in my tusks. Long live freedom and damn the ideologies!"
(Robinson Jeffers)
It’s a tug at the heartstrings. The poor child had no idea what was going on when her mother decided to wetback the border. She’s lived 18 years in the comfort and security of the United States, with all its riches and opportunities. In all justice, can we deport her for what her mother did?
The empathetic response is to say “No, we’ll find another way.” Which is what the propagandist wants you to say. But that has implications. Back the child’s age off a wee bit. What if she’s 14? Or 10? Or 6? Or still in the cradle? The inclination of the empathetic is still not to penalize the child for the sin of her parents. That naturalizes her parents right along with her. You wouldn’t want the poor tyke to be shorn of her parents, would you?
For that matter, what if Mom didn’t get knocked up until after she’d illegally entered the U.S.? Once again, her daughter is a helpless bystander in the matter. Birthright citizenship makes her a citizen from the instant she emerges from the womb. Add the humanitarian position that a child should not be unnecessarily parted from her parents, and that hauls her parents into legality right along with her.
The law is supposed to be definite as many human propositions are not. It’s supposed to have a hard line around it, such that any person of ordinary intelligence can always know on which side of that line he stands. That isn’t always the case, of course. Contemporary “law” is filled with ambiguities. They’re often put there by lawmakers deliberately, to expand the powers of the State. Immigration and naturalization law is only one such case.
The debates about illegal migration may bring about a change in how citizenship and legal residency are determined. But this aspect of the matter will continue to bedevil us. Children are especially vulnerable to the misdeeds of their parents. Americans are second to none in their inclinations to protect children. If we write new immigration and naturalization laws that do have hard lines around them, but preserve the tradition that one born within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States is a citizen from birth, then in cases such as the above, we’ll be compelled to separate children from their parents. Some of those children will become wards of the State.
I cannot find a compromise position that would deal “fairly” with all cases. But as a departed friend liked to say, “fair” is just a sound that humans make now and then. It has no fixed meaning. Ask any minor child prone to shrieking that “It’s not fair!” Don’t expect an answer you can rely on in all cases.
Time was, I thought I was a pretty smart guy. I believed that I saw things clearly and reasoned accurately. Lately, I’ve become unsure.
The human mind seeks categories. It looks for ways to classify people, things, and events into discrete boxes that partition experience into neat clusters with hard edges. That’s not a bad thing, in most cases. But it can run away from you, especially if you forget:
That we all reason from premises;
That the source of our premises ought to be questioned.
We don’t acquire our premises by a logical process. A lot of us get them from indoctrination. Some of us are bludgeoned mercilessly for many years, until finally we conclude that the only way to stop the pain is to accept what we’re being told.
When the pain stops and we’re free to think again, we must be ready to revisit those doctrines and deal with them as rational men.
* * *
The above is very abstract: as abstract as I could make it. That’s so that it will be maximally useful to any Gentle Reader who thinks he understands it. Among our premises are some that have signs hung about them that scream “DANGER: Do Not Inspect Too Closely” in large block letters. If you recoil from addressing any of your premises, it’s likely that the memory of pain is what repels you. Indoctrination is intended to have that result.
Robert A. Heinlein wrote a huge novel in which he used a “man from Mars” as his vehicle for examining certain common premises. It’s his most popular, most widely read book, in part because it seems to grant the reader permission to violate certain norms that are near-universal to the First World. Yet anyone who looks closely at the author’s life is struck by how far from the seeming exhortations of Stranger in a Strange Land Heinlein’s own conduct lay.
Heinlein’s novel has value in that it questions premises and implies that the reader should do likewise. That is not the same as refuting them by an impeccably logical process. Moreover, to the extent that we of the late 20th Century set those premises aside, we only reaffirmed their importance. The consequences have all but shattered our societies. They have spoken in a voice of thunder.
I could go on about this. On occasions I’ve done so. But I’ve lost the strength for it. More, I don’t think it’s necessary any longer.
* * *
By now you’re probably wondering about what gave rise to this. As it’s an ugly subject, I’ll try to be brief.
Tom Kratman, whom I esteem highly, has posted a set of assessments and predictions for the future of the West. His observations, premises, and expectations are much like mine, at least when I’ve had enough wine to be candid within myself. A brief, thematic taste:
I think, in the first place, that those future saviors have probably added a capital crime, Civilizational Treason, to the books, that looks a lot like our definition of treason, but with an expansive view of "making war upon" and "giving aid and comfort."
The implications of a crime of “civilizational treason” are endless. The core of the concept of treason is opposition to that to which one’s loyalty was premised. But Tom’s term requires that we ask what it means to be loyal to a civilization… and that compels us to ask what sort of foundation lies beneath the civilizations of the West.
That’s a study to which men have given whole careers. It cannot be fruitfully approached entirely in the abstract. It requires a great deal of knowledge about the history of Western Civilization. It also requires the courage to be honest about the currents that threaten to sweep them away.
The threats to any civilization are those ideas that cross-cut its premises, no matter how those premises were arrived at. But ideas don’t hang in the void, Victor Hugo’s notions notwithstanding. They require carriers dedicated to them and willing to invest their lives in propagating them.
If our civilization is founded on certain premises, it behooves those of us who value it to know what those premises are, and to be prepared to defend them with our lives if necessary. The shortfall of persons who meet those criteria is why the enemies of Western Civilization are currently in the ascendant. Worse, a great many young Americans and Europeans have been trained like circus animals to deride those premises. That puts them in league with our enemies.
As Thomas Sowell has said, the barbarians are inside the gates. As Marcus Tullius Cicero has told us, there is no greater danger to what we hold dear than the traitor.
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.
But knowledge doesn’t hang disembodied in the void, either. It requires acceptance: your acceptance. If you reject the knowledge required to win, you’ll lose. Apologies for being so blunt about it.
The critical knowledge comes from plain answers to these questions:
Who is my enemy?
What makes him my enemy?
Those are precisely the questions we of the West have been most forcibly discouraged from asking.
It is common among Americans generally that we are reluctant to name our enemies and to take up arms against them. Not our overt military enemies; we’re usually pretty good at identifying those. The enemies of Western Civilization: they who are actively working to smash the pillars of the Western temple. But to identify our enemies demands that we identify the pillars themselves. We’ve been irrationally reluctant to name and defend those.
* * *
The above requires that we re-examine certain doctrines that have been beaten into us for many decades. Foremost among them is this one: that the greatest of all crimes is making others uncomfortable. To cleave to that commandment, we have restrained ourselves from defending the fundamental canons of the West, even as the Civilizational Traitors now among us have chipped away at them.
If the West is to survive, we must overcome that doctrine. We must perform an othering. We must say, in a great and terrible voice:
“You are the enemies of individual rights and responsibilities, of human freedom, and of the imperishable teachings of Our Lord Jesus Christ. On these things our civilization is founded. Therefore you are our enemies. Therefore we will remove you, by whatever means may prove effective. No quarter will be given.”
[I’ve had a supremely trying week, and find that I’m “tapped out” of fresh blather. Accordingly, please enjoy – if that’s the right word – the following piece, which first appeared here on December 30, 2016 – FWP]
* * *
I’m a former – i.e., retired – engineer. These days, engineers come in a multitude of varieties, but there are nevertheless commonalities among us. One of those commonalities, perhaps the most important of them all, is this one:
Form Follows Function
Aesthetic considerations cannot be permitted to eclipse functional considerations. If the device won’t perform according to its assigned function and specifications, it’s useless no matter how pretty it is. That much, at least, is easy to grasp.
What’s harder to grasp is this: That which is functionally effective and efficient will also be aesthetically pleasing. Behind the human eye stands the human mind. It qualifies what the eye sees according to its comprehension of what lies within surface form. Thus many an object one would dismiss on purely aesthetic grounds becomes attractive, even beautiful, when one comes to grips with what it’s intended to do.
An example: Just yesterday, the C.S.O. commented that in every science fiction movie we’ve seen that features a deep-space vessel, the ships have all possessed certain visible characteristic. She couldn’t imagine why that would be so. So I gave her the short course in interstellar vessel design – “Colony Starships 101,” with prerequisites in nuclear fusion and special relativity – proceeding from the absolute requirements of the undertaking:
Must gather its fuel from space;
Capable of attaining near-lightspeed velocity;
Supports living spaces and functions that must not impede one another;
Must endure continuous bombardment by tiny particles impacting at near-lightspeed.
I did so as concisely as possible. The C.S.O. being bright, she grasped the requirements and what they mandated at once...and began to see the design of the starship in Passengers as inherently beautiful.
The late, much lamented Steven Den Beste once wrote of how, once he penetrated to the functional requirements and design of even the most mundane device, it would appear beautiful to him. I submit that this is inherent in the mind’s aesthetic judgments – that an object with an assigned function will impress aesthetically in proportion to its efficacy and efficiency at that function. Inversely, an object without any function must stand on its form alone.
Much of what we call “pop culture” offends me. I’m sure I’m not alone in that. Nor ought we to wave the matter aside with a grunt, mutter “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” and pass on. Ugliness that pervades a society, displacing what men have cherished for ages as beautiful, isn’t a transient thing but a destructive force: an invasion of our minds and sensibilities.
So when I happen upon a display such as this, my commentator’s side rears up on its hind legs with the need to emit a denunciation. Were those...persons really clothed? Not by any standard for clothing that I can imagine. For what, after all, are the possible functions of clothing?
It can keep the wearer warm, or acceptably within the “blue laws;”
It can conceal his sex characteristics;
Alternately, it can emphasize those characteristics;
It can enhance physical attractiveness;
It can convey an allegiance, an intention, or a desire.
(Note that I omit consideration of costumes, whose function is to evoke a story or story-setting, and of armor, whose function is to prevent or mitigate wounds. Those are quite separate categories and must not be judged according to the requirements of clothing.)
Do the “garments” in the pictures at the linked site fulfill any of the possible functions for clothing? If your answer is no, then what are they intended to do?
Take a few moments over it.
I’m a curmudgeon, which is a subspecies of crank. Accordingly, it’s commonplace for me to compare current events and trends that offend me with ones from my experiences that I find more acceptable. That’s also an aspect of the conservative disposition: to prefer that to which one has become accustomed to that which is shriekingly new. When I write about aesthetic matters I try to quell my natural crankiness in favor of objectivity. Sometimes I even succeed.
This time around, I consider the obligation to run in the opposite direction. For what you saw in the piece linked above illustrates something I’ve grown to regard as insidiously dangerous: the cumulative assault on what Camille Paglia calls “the Western Eye:” the aesthetic sensibility that has accompanied and perfused Western thinking for two centuries at least, and which is inseparable from our convictions about individual worth and dignity. The apostles of our hideously vulgar pop culture hate that sensibility and are engaged in a wide-spectrum effort to destroy it: with ugly, pointless “clothing,” “music,” “art,” “sculpture,” “fiction,” “movies,” and trends in locution.
Why? Because Western thought supports and is supported by Western aesthetics. Because the ongoing assault on Western precepts:
the sanctity of human life;
the rights and dignity of the individual;
the appropriate constraints on public conduct;
the suspicion and limitation of power and those who seek it;
the foundation of all that is truly beautiful on Truth Itself;
...cannot succeed unless the Western aesthetic sensibility is destroyed in tandem.
A dear friend once pointed out to me that among the barbarizations inflicted upon us by contemporary television is a habituation to seeing a human body defiled in some fashion. Perhaps the best example is the regular use of autopsy scenes by shows such as CSI. The reduction of what was once a living, breathing person with rights, ideas, emotions, and aspirations to a bag of battered organs and leaking fluids does harm to our sensibilities in ways we hardly even notice as it occurs. Yet the harm is real. It goes horribly deep.
Look for the parallels in “music” that lacks melody and harmony but is replete with obscenities and calls for violence; with “art” that depicts nothing and requires no skill to produce; with “fashionable” clothing that’s often obviously torn and otherwise distorted; and with “fiction” that focuses on humiliation, degradation, pain, and the reduction of the human person to something even the lowest of the animals would disdain.
I’ve only scratched the surface here. There’s infinitely more to be said on the subject. However, I trust that my Gentle Readers, being Gentle Readers, will manage to carry the ideas forward for themselves.
John Keats once wrote that “What seizes the imagination as beauty must be truth.” That statement has had a profound effect on my considerations of aesthetic matters. But its converse has been no less significant: What is true beyond disputation is inherently beautiful, as nothing that lies, distorts, or mocks the truth can possibly be.
Just some food for thought for your Friday morning.
I’ve just finished one of the best and most daring novels I’ve read in many a year: Nym Coy’s Mumbai Singularity.
This novel is extraordinary. It’s hugely daring; it speaks of beings and things well beyond the human plane. Writing gods and pseudo-gods into a novel is always tricky, even when they’re really just imitations, such as the “gods” in Roger Zelazny's “Lord of Light.” But “Mumbai Singularity" goes beyond Zelazny's conception, into places no reader would expect.
Three planes of existence and activity are depicted in this novel:
The strictly material plane: the grubby reality of 22nd Century Mumbai;
The “augmented reality” plane of the Mesh, which connects the people of Mumbai, and to which two persons of power and wealth seek to “ascend;”
The divine plane where dwell the gods of the Hindu pantheon.
The interaction among those planes is intense. Each resident of the teeming city of Mumbai is equipped with a spinal antenna that connects him to the Mesh continuously. But when the Mesh is married to Hindu piety, prayer, and the “distributed processing” of the minds of millions of Hindus, something unexpected arises: consciousnesses abstracted from other material expressions. Some of those were once human; others never were.
Wounded first-person protagonist Krishna Mehta is genuinely attractive and affecting. His mother’s love for him comes through without distortion. The irony of her repeatedly nudging him toward piety and to find a wife is capped perfectly by his situation at the book’s end.
The novel's Supporting Cast is more substantial than is usual for a speculative tale. Rahul is especially sympathetic. Captain of industry Arjun Malhotra and fading actress Aishwarya Kapoor make for good antagonists. Dr. Iyer, whose determination to hold onto her dead daughter Aanya kicks off the action, deserves mention as well.
The gods depicted are just ambiguous enough. Are they “real?” One of them takes umbrage at the suggestion that they aren’t. But is their reality human-contrived, sustained solely by the beliefs and prayers of worshippers? Unclear! And what of still higher gods? Without the prayers of millions of Hindu faithful, would they exist at all?
The resolution will stun anyone, regardless of which theocosmogony he was reared in. Yet it is entirely appropriate.
I can’t praise this book highly enough. It’s the best tale I’ve read in years. If it faces an obstacle for achieving a wide and admiring readership, it would only be the profusion of Hindi terms. An American reader who wants full value for the experience would be advised to read it at his computer, so that he can Google the unfamiliar terms as he encounters them.
Yet this is the author's first novel! What on Earth -- or off it -- could she do in a second one?
This business about the Pentagon making its “UFO files” public has a lot of Christians in a lather. What will become of our Faith? What will it imply for the Nicene Creed? If there really are sentient aliens, will they have their own tentacled pentapodal Redeemers, or will they demand to share ours? If the latter, will depictions of Him as a standard human upset them or exalt them?
I don’t get it. I especially don’t get the fears that the discovery of sentient aliens might invalidate Christian doctrine. But there appear to be a lot of people who fear exactly that.
Some of the more militant atheists are strutting around, preening themselves over Christians’ fears and doubts. Never mind that as far as I’ve seen, nothing in the “UFO files” can be taken as strong evidence of alien visitations. Still, I must admit that I get a little amusement out of the panic over it, myself.
Why the jitters? Why wouldn’t sentient aliens just be more of God’s children? And why insist that the existence of such aliens would throw the core story of Christianity, the ministry, Passion, and Resurrection of Christ, into dispute?
I don’t get it, but I must admit that there’s a lot I don’t get, these days.
Look, my brothers and sisters in Christ: God’s ways are not ours. In particular, He can do a lot of things we can’t. He created our universe: every scrap of matter-energy in it. In doing so, He created time itself. For time will only exist and have relevance in a matter-filled cosmos.
It’s possible that we are His only sentient children. But it’s also possible that we’re not. We’re fallen, and needed to be Redeemed, so maybe other, nonhuman civilizations needed – or need – that too. But maybe, as in C. S. Lewis’s Space Trilogy, those other civilizations are un-fallen. Wouldn’t it be a kick in the head to learn that humans are the “black sheep” among God’s children?
If our contemporary understanding of physics remains as it is, we’re unlikely ever to encounter another sentient race. Science-fictional speculations aside, we’re about as unlikely ever to be sure we’ve heard from one. Those speculations can be fun, but unless and until the highly improbable happens and we receive a delegation from Ophiuchus or Aldebaran, we shouldn’t trouble ourselves over them.
But you know what would be maximally disturbing, something that would floor even your humble Curmudgeon? Being visited or contacted by humans in another solar system. Humans exactly like ourselves, who could interbreed with us. Add this to the pot: They already know about the Passion and Resurrection. No, Christ didn’t come to their world as He did to ours. We of Terra revolving around Sol are the lucky ones who had Him visit in human flesh. But it was the greatest Event of all history, and all sentients everywhere know about it.
Which implication would weigh heavier: that only Terra was privileged to have the Son of God walk among us, or that of all the humans in the universe, only we of Terra fell so far from grace that we needed Him and His Sacrifice of Himself?
In this connection, there’s a delightful novel: Space Princess, by Jon Mollison. Give it a look. Among other things, it establishes beyond doubt that I’m not the only crazy Catholic writing fiction today.
Well, as much fun as such imaginings are, what ought to matter to a Christian, alive here and now on Terra, is the state of his own soul. We can confidently leave the souls and salvations of sentients elsewhere in the cosmos to God, don’t you think?
Good morning, Gentle Reader. As you know, I’m a Catholic Christian, so the statements and deeds of prominent Catholic clerics are of concern to me. Of course the highest of those clerics, the Supreme Pontiff of the Church, gets a lot of attention for his statements. After all, no one can claim to have more “followers,” or more influence, than the Pope. Even Protestants pay attention when he speaks.
That suggests that a Pope should be extremely circumspect in his emissions. A casual remark from him can sway the opinions and decisions of a billion-plus people. Yet the late Pope Francis seemed to disagree. He’d opine on any subject, as if he were just another neighborhood boozer holding forth at the corner pub.
Dare I say that the world is riven by sufficient strife that we do not need the greatest religious leader on Earth to add to it?
No one is suggesting that papal infallibility should be held to apply to papal political opinions. Nevertheless, the Pope’s opinions have power. His words can sway elections and topple regimes. Granted that some regimes deserve a good toppling, that is not a course of action to be lightly undertaken.
Pope Leo XIV, our current Supreme Pontiff, appears to be following in the late Pope Francis’s train. He’s emitted opinions about American foreign and immigration policy that, to me at least, seem unwise. They’ve put American Catholics in quite a dither. (Incredibly, he’s also suggested that Christians and Muslims can “get along” and “be friends.” On that last count, let it suffice to say that both history and current events disfavor that prospect.)
Why is he saying such things? He hardly needs more attention than he gets in the usual course of things. He may feel strongly about his opinions, but men with strong opinions have restrained themselves before this, when it struck them as prudent. As his office guarantees that he’ll listened to by billions, I’d have hoped he’d be similarly guarded. The more influence you have, the more careful you should be about using it.
But dare to say that on a social medium, and you’ll get a lot of unpleasant attention. You can’t criticize the Pope! He’s the head of your Church! He’s infallible! I’ve had other Catholics – and I shan’t name them nor criticize them for it – people who don’t know me at all, tell me I should go to Confession at once.
That sort of discord within the body of the Church is enough to say to me, at least, that for the Pope to declaim on politics and foreign policy is a dangerous business. But there’s more to say than that. Some of it strikes me as imperative.
Christianity is not like other faiths. Its Founder emphasized that each of us is responsible for his own moral-ethical stature. Saying “I was misled” at the Particular Judgment will not save you from Hell. Our individual decisions to speak or not, to act or not, are what matter, and they are solely ours.
Politics and the decisions of governments are quite different things. God will hold the masters of the State responsible for their words and deeds in their turn, but the actions of a State are collective actions. They are undertaken on behalf of a nation – and in all cases, there will be some who benefit and others who are harmed. We must hope, often against the odds, that those decisions and actions will do net good rather than net harm.
The decision to use military force is only the most dramatic such case. Nearly all military actions involve death and destruction. But a head of State sets out on such a course on the basis of the information available to him, which isn’t always available to anyone else. He acts in the belief that it serves a greater good. At least, that’s what we hope – and let’s be candid: we may be fools to hope so. The history of warfare among States is not kind to our hopes.
A Pope who condemns a military action probably won’t be equipped with all the information that head of State had before him. The Pontiff may be right that an invasion or aggression is condemnable. But even in egregious cases, for him to say so openly can have unforeseeable costs. Some of those costs may be paid in blood.
Many Catholics will disagree, but the matter is too fraught with peril not to speak my mind. The proper role of any Christian cleric, high or low, is to conserve and promulgate the Gospels, to counsel individuals on their decisions and actions, and to administer the Sacraments at need and upon request. He must not insert himself into the world of statecraft. Christ Himself said so:
Then went the Pharisees, and took counsel how they might entangle him in his talk. And they sent out unto him their disciples with the Herodians, saying, Master, we know that thou art true, and teachest the way of God in truth, neither carest thou for any man: for thou regardest not the person of men. Tell us therefore, What thinkest thou? Is it lawful to give tribute unto Caesar, or not?
But Jesus perceived their wickedness, and said, Why tempt ye me, ye hypocrites? Shew me the tribute money. And they brought unto him a penny.
And he saith unto them, Whose is this image and superscription?
They say unto him, Caesar's. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's; and unto God the things that are God's.
[Matthew 22:15-21]
A Christian cleric must not go against the plain words of the Son of God.
Good morning, Gentle Reader. It’s a lovely day here on Long Island, New York: bright sunshine, gentle spring warmth, a sweet breeze redolent from the mulch pile around my front hedge. Yuck. With all that to be pleased by and thankful for, I thought I might say a few words about today’s plague of vipers: online scammers and their methods.
The Internet is a marvelous development, but it does have a downside. Time was, if you wanted to defraud a man, you had to get close enough to him that he might just knife you. No longer! Today, scammers from around the world can ply their trades on targets from every land and clime. The victim doesn’t have a Chinaman’s chance to get him back.
The predominant type of scammer offers his target something that’s too good to be true: easy money, in the usual case. “Guaranteed 100% return in just ten days! Just sign here. Oh, and we’ll need your bank account information so that we can forward your winnings to you.” Of course, if it’s too good to be true, what do the odds favor?
Some scammers are “sympathy scammers:” “I can’t pay my rent! I can’t feed my baby! I can’t put gas in my car so I can get to my minimum-wage job putting panties on lamb chops! Please just send me an Apple gift card for $500!” I don’t think this variety fools many people, so why are they constantly bugging me? Must be my goofy looking face.
But there are other subspecies of scammers operating today. Some don’t offer you easy money or the chance to “do good.” Instead, they tout their skills at doing something you wish you could do, but know that you can’t. The payment for those skills must be in advance, of course. Don’t expect to hear from them afterward.
Indie writers are particularly promising targets for the skill-scammer. Even those of us who can actually write a decent tale are usually complete failures at selling our works. He who can persuade us that he’s ready, willing, and able to do that job for us looks like a dream come true. His come-on is an impressive-looking multi-stage “campaign strategy” that looks like something culled from an MBA program’s marketing textbook. Consult this weird Al Yankovic video for a taste of the “look and feel.”
I have an email folder into which I put solicitations from such “promotion and marketing experts.” It’s bulging at the seams. I’ve asked other indie writers about their experiences, and they parallel mine: all buzzwords, no performance.
But here’s a fresh one: a radio station wants to interview me! Wonder of wonders, a respectable format, interested interviewers, and an immediate audience to which to prattle about my books. Wait… what’s this? There’s a price? To “defray production costs?” Uh, thanks but no thanks, guys. Better luck next time.
I’ve received two radio-station-interview solicitations this week already. I’m sure more will arrive with the morning dew.
None of this strikes me as at all surprising. What does is that even with all the experience I’ve already garnered – some of it remarkably painful – the scammers are still coming up with ways to elicit my interest. Fresh new pitches! Fresh new offers! Fresh new plans! And for the low, low price of only $49.99!!
At least they haven’t yet tried the late-night-TV commercial stinger: “If you act now we’ll double your order at no extra cost! Operators are standing by! Pay only separate shipping and handling.” But I suppose I should give them time.
If an old Curmudgeon can feel tempted by such things after all this time, no one is safe. Consider this your heads-up:
They’re out there.
They’re clever.
They’re hungry.
They’re swarming.
And they’re looking at you!
Happy Cinco de Mayo to all you Mexicans out there among my Gentle Readers. To the rest: don’t go out for Mexican food tonight. Trust me on that.
Now have a snippet of dialogue from an unnamed story:
"Why is there a herring duct-taped to the ground wire?"
"Sir, I don't question your methods."
"That's not a method, that's madness. Witchcraft."
"Look, sir. Do you want to be right, or do you want results?"
"Well, results, of course."
"Then don't touch the fucking fish."
That made me howl with laughter, not just because of the exceptionally clever phrasing, but because I’ve been there.
In my years in engineering, I was often responsible for meeting a tight, rigid deadline: one which allowed for no slip-ups. On a couple of occasions there was a large pot of money at stake. Once it was in the tens of millions of dollars. Defense engineering can be like that.
No one in his right mind would commit to such a deadline without the certainty that he can meet it. In the world of military procurement, there are no second chances. If Company A fails to meet the time and budget targets, Company B will be ready to step forward.
But once you’ve committed, the watchword becomes No Experimenting! You must insist on proven methods only. The development team leader must resist any attempt to insert an attractive but unproven method with immovable firmness. Yes, the attractive but unproven method might later be proved better, faster, cheaper, or some combination of the three. But you can’t risk it with all those bucks on the line.
That’s akin to blasphemy to a bright young engineer, only a year or two out of college, who’s sure he has a silver bullet chambered and ready to fire. The team leader was educated in the Sixties or Seventies; he’s hopelessly out of touch with what’s been happening since then. And boy, can that bright young engineer pout! He’ll also talk to his colleagues about his old fuddy-duddy of a boss. “Isn’t engineering about doing things the best way?” he’ll protest.
It’s a sad lesson, but it’s one that must be administered and driven home with as many hammerblows as necessary. No: engineering is not about doing things “the best way.” It’s about meeting the specification within the given constraints, especially the constraints of time and budget.
Getting that across to subordinates has been among the toughest and most thankless tasks of my career. I’m sure I’m not alone in that.
But there’s worse: that bright young engineer might not be a subordinate. He might be a “compliance officer” assigned by the customer. Again, that’s common in defense engineering. You have to listen to him; he can throttle the money flow at his whim. And it’s amazing how intrusive and extensive his whims can be.
There was one such occasion where a compliance officer wanted to have my team develop a very large program in a language none of us knew. I fought him off, but it was a memorable tussle. We delivered on time and within budget, but I never got another polite word out of him. Fortunately he was reassigned to another defense contractor after that.
In such situations, when you have a love of knowledge and technology, the temptation to “go along to get along” is amplified by your own predilections. Here there be tygers! What a victory it would be, your subconscious whispers, to improve on the prevailing state of the art – even if no one knows you did it! Maybe the shiny new method will work!
Well, yeah… but what if it doesn’t? What if you can’t get it debugged in time? You’re the point man; when you miss the deadline, the avalanche will fall on you. You won’t get to point at anyone else and say “Well, he said it would work.”
So consider engraving this exquisitely concise and pointed motto on a nice piece of mahogany, inlaid with mother-of-pearl:
Don’t Touch The Fucking Fish.
Hang it where all your people will look upon it daily. And do have a nice day.
Did you play it? Did you listen with attention? It’s one of the most moving odes to freedom ever put into song form. It’s musically brilliant as well. Every syllable and every note speak of the passage of time, the uninterruptible progression toward death, for a creature denied the freedom that belongs to it by nature.
Yes, we make pets of birds, dogs, cats, rabbits, hamsters, ferrets, turtles, wombats, aardvarks, tree sloths… oh, never mind. And it’s arguable that in some cases, their lives improve from domestication. But they’re still captives, held in thrall by a more powerful and capable species. The poignancy of birds kept in cages is particularly striking, considering how flight is possible to them but not to us except by artifice. Yet flight figures pre-eminently in our dreams of freedom:
There she stood, her eyes screaming hatred and fear, like a trapped raptor – hawk eyes, he thought, which you better never look into. I learned that early, he reflected; don’t look into the eyes of a hawk or an eagle. Because you won’t be able to forget the hate that you saw…and the passionate, insatiable need to be free, the need to fly. And oh, those great heights. Those dreadful drops on the prey; panic-stricken rabbit: that’s the rest of us. Funny image: an eagle held prisoner by four rabbits.
The MPs, however, were not rabbits. He made out the kind of grip they had on her – where they held her and how tightly. She couldn’t move. And they would outlast her.
Ponder that passage for a moment. It’s one of Dick’s best.
* * *
Humans don’t make pets of other humans. At least, not often in the First World. It’s one of those things that’s “not done.” Our civilizations have progressed sufficiently that we understand the wrongness of such a practice. Captivity is conferred on a man only by the force of law, as a punishment.
Unrestricted mobility, limited only by the property rights of others, is regarded as a human right. We build roads and highways, cars, trains, boats, and planes, to actualize that right. It sits at the core of our concept of freedom: room to move.
But we do endure some limitations of mobility. Fuel, money, time, and competing responsibilities keep us within a short distance of some home point most of our lives. We accept those limits as the price of things we want: comfort, security, information, diversions, and so forth. They don’t hold us captive, really. They just keep us close to home, for the greater part of our lives.
Yet look at how we cherish the machines that can take us away! Americans, above all other peoples, have known the mobility of personal transportation: the automobile. Walter Chrysler called autos “The most wonderful machines ever made by Man.” Whether we use them to go near or far, and often or seldom, they continue to be one of our foremost tangible symbols of freedom.
That’s why those who despise individual freedom and seek to eliminate it want to take our cars away.
The utter abolition of the private car wouldn’t be accepted by the American people. The power-seekers know that, so they use “salami tactics:” minor, seemingly modest infringements on our mobility, often in the guise of environmentalism. Increases in fuel and mileage taxes. Changes to the formulation of fuels. Ever-stiffening emissions and safety regulations. And think for a moment about the electric car, which has been touted so stridently as environmentally beneficial. Who controls the fuel for that?
The “15-minute city” concept was a blatant stroke against personal mobility. It would have made the ownership of a car too burdensome to contemplate, for those within its limits. Give thanks that it’s been rejected so soundly.
The ability to transact in privacy, such that only the seller and the purchaser are aware of the transaction, is an aspect of individual freedom that too many fail to appreciate. For quite a long time, most transactions were simple: you give me the product; I give you the price – in cash. Occasionally we’d write a check for things such as the mortgage or the phone bill, but the greater part of our commerce was in cash.
But cash, it seems, has problems. The government agency that prints our currency is reporting losses. It just ended the production of pennies: they cost too much to make! Whether the rest of our coinage is endangered, I can’t say. But the penny’s demise has already been decreed.
Then there’s our paper currency. Those steel engravings, produced with elaborate care, are a problem too! It seems that no matter how hard it tries, the Bureau of Engraving and Printing can’t quite make them un-counterfeitable. There are ways to make it harder, but every such tactic comes up against Porretto’s First Law of Engineering:
For every engineer,
There is an equal but opposite engineer,
And he’s straining to undo your work as we speak!
Do not doubt this, Gentle Reader. Anyway, from the standpoint of a government economist, that means only one thing: physical currency must be obsoleted. Abolished. Supplanted by some electronic scheme of credits and debits that can’t be hacked. Something like credit and debit cards, but better, more secure.
What could be better than credit and debit cards? Only a device that ties your balances, who owes you and whom you owe, directly to your person: an implanted identity chip! Your thumbprint would thereafter suffice to complete any transaction. The “reader” would access the ID chip, use it to inquire of the entirely-on-line Money Mesh, and issue a request for payment from whatever account you the purchaser designate. The seller would have to put his thumb on the device to “receive” the payment, of course. Sauce for the goose and all that.
What’s that you say? Who would validate the transaction? Who would maintain the Money Mesh and certify its accuracy? Why, the government, of course, through the Federal Reserve System!
And all privacy in transaction would vanish in a puff of smoke from a bonfire of twenties.
* * *
I’ve written about these things before, of course. This piece addresses the hostility to personally-operated cars. This one addresses the threat to cash. But many a reader has told me I’m conjuring phantasms.
I’d like to believe that. I hope I am. But I don’t think so.
Hold onto your car and your cash, Gentle Reader. Shy away from these latest cars that transmit everything about your driving to a distant entity. The ones coming next year can rule you unfit to drive. As for cash, I hope there’s no need to advise you further.
If you’re a regular reader of Liberty’s Torch, you’re surely aware that we here at the Fortress of Crankitude are animal lovers. Not in the “PETA sense,” mind you; just as persons who cherish innocent lives. We’ve had pets of several kinds: dogs, cats, rabbits, turtles, hamsters, a white rat, a raccoon, and briefly an opossum who’d “tied one on” and couldn’t make it home after his bender. It always hurts when we lose one.
Wherefore, upon reading about an egregious case of animal abuse, I did some research and discovered that aggravated animal abuse is a felony in all 50 states of the Union. However, it seems that prosecutors are as reluctant to try animal abusers as felons as judges are to put black felons in prison. Why? If the law is clear, why not enforce the law? Are our “enforcers” afraid of something, or are they just lazy?
I suppose that’s a subject that needs further research. But this one doesn’t:
Abuse of the helpless is vile.
Including those helpless that aren’t human.
Western civilization is distinct from all others in several ways, but this one is particularly notable: We condemn all abuse of the helpless. We don’t tolerate it in any form or under any rationale. When we see it, the decent among us – and that’s very nearly all of us – move against it.
Wait, what did I just write? All abuse? All of us? Hm. That might demand a bit more thought.
We permit Muslims abusive practices in the preparation of “halal food.” We permit them cruelty in their treatment of wives and children that no other Americans would be permitted. We permit black fathers to abandon their children, and black mothers to neglect them. We permit Hispanics their cockfights, as long as they “keep it to themselves.”
Fury against the abuse of the helpless is a White thing. If you aren’t White, you might not understand.
Even Whites make an exception, of course: abortion. Third-trimester and partial-birth abortions are demonstrably abusive, even barbaric, yet they don’t receive uniform condemnation. We’ve been told that that would be “judgmental.” God apparently forgot to include that sin in the Decalogue. Funny that we’re allowed to be “judgmental” about so many other things.
There’s a continuum here. Abuses of humans don’t stand isolated in the realm of moral evaluation. The abuse of helpless subhumans touches them at the low end. Tolerating those abuses makes it easier to tolerate the abuse of humans. But the reverse is also true: tolerating the abuse of humans makes it far easier to turn aside from the abuse of subhumans.
If I may inject a bit of black humor here, we’ve had a declaration on the subject from a voice of years past:
If once a man indulges himself in murder, very soon he comes to think little of robbing; and from robbing he comes next to drinking and Sabbath-breaking, and from that to incivility and procrastination. Once begun upon this downward path, you never know where you are to stop. Many a man has dated his ruin from some murder or other that perhaps he thought little of at the time. – Thomas de Quincey
That’s quite enough humor.
Wasn’t the nasty little boy who pulls the wings off flies once held up as the prototype of the abuser-to-be? Have we forgotten how “great oaks from little acorns grow?”
Man is at the top of the Terrestrial food chain by virtue of his intellect, his adaptability, his skills at fabrication, and his moral sense. Animals may kill and eat one another, but with vanishingly rare exceptions they don’t abuse the helpless members of the animal kingdom. Are we really superior to our animal brethren? Shouldn’t we be?
I’d like to see our awareness of the abuse of the helpless – human and subhuman – restored to full horror. I’d like to see our censoriousness, our judgmentalism, directed unflinchingly at it. It seems to have slipped a bit. And should some judgmental type go a bit overboard and cripple an abuser he caught in the act, I’ll vote to acquit him. Maybe strike him a medal, too. A few examples would help to keep our less civilized fractions in line.
I just received an email from Megha Lillywhite, who runs a Substack titled Classical Ideals. In it she invites attention to this piece. A brief appetite-whetter:
To deny one’s moral disease is the primary symptom of it, so those who have the worst judgements of beauty, are the most morally diseased, and the most vociferous in their claims to the idea that judgements of beauty are “subjective”. They claim that what is ugly to one person may be beautiful to another so there is really no meaning to beauty and ugliness anymore. One of the most morally diseased people in the world, Frida Kahlo, expressed her malaise best when she said “La belleza y la fealdad son un espejismo” meaning, “beauty and ugliness are a mirage.” It is because of this disease that Kahlo never made a single work of beautiful art in her life and is another charlatan pushed on the population to demoralise us with the ugliness of her work.
If you have any interest in art and what’s happened to it in recent decades, I exhort you to read the whole piece.
I wasn’t conversant with Frida Kahlo, other than as a Mexican Communist activist. Miss Lillywhite’s evaluation of her as “One of the most morally diseased people in the world” made me sit up and take notice. So I surfed through a few online reproductions of Kahlo paintings, and I came to agree with Miss Lillywhite: Kahlo was an enemy of beauty, in intent and effect.
He had a look at the pictures.
Some of them belonged to a school of art with which he was already familiar. There was a portrait of a young woman who held her mouth wide open to reveal the fact that the inside of it was thickly overgrown with hair. It was very skilfully painted in the photographic manner so that you could almost feel that hair; indeed you could not avoid feeling it however hard you tried. There was a giant mantis playing a fiddle while being eaten by another mantis, and a man with corkscrews instead of arms bathing in a flat, sadly colored sea beneath a summer sunset. But most of the pictures were not of this kind. At first, most of them seemed rather ordinary, though Mark was a little surprised at the predominance of scriptural themes. It was only at the second or third glance that one discovered certain unaccountable details—something odd about the positions of the figures’ feet or the arrangement of their fingers or the grouping. And who was the person standing between the Christ and the Lazarus? And why were there so many beetles under the table in the Last Supper? What was the curious trick of lighting that made each picture look like something seen in delirium? When once these questions had been raised the apparent ordinariness of the pictures became their supreme menace—like the ominous surface innocence at the beginning of certain dreams. Every fold of drapery, every piece of architecture, had a meaning one could not grasp but which withered the mind. Compared with these the other, surrealistic, pictures were mere foolery. Long ago Mark had read somewhere of “things of that extreme evil which seem innocent to the uninitiate,” and had wondered what sort of things they might be. Now he felt he knew.
If that gets you thinking about the degeneration of art from classical subjects and standards to the presentation of mounds of filth in museums, you’re not alone.
* * *
I hold to an admittedly minority view: i.e., that there are objective standards for beauty. By implication, there are objective measures by which to discern beauty from ugliness. The prevailing “eye of the beholder” view crashes against Robert M. Pirsig’s demonstration that there is a reality to Quality:
When I say, “Quality cannot be defined,” I’m really saying formally, “I’m stupid about Quality.”
Fortunately the students didn’t know this. If they’d come up with these objections he wouldn’t have been able to answer them at the time.
But then, below the definition on the blackboard, he wrote, “But even though Quality cannot be defined, you know what Quality is!” and the storm started all over again.
“Oh, no, we don’t!”
“Oh, yes, you do.”
“Oh, no, we don’t!”
“Oh, yes, you do!” he said and he had some material ready to demonstrate it to them.
He had selected two examples of student composition. The first was a rambling, disconnected thing with interesting ideas that never built into anything. The second was a magnificent piece by a student who was mystified himself about why it had come out so well.
Phaedrus read both, then asked for a show of hands on who thought the first was best. Two hands went up. He asked how many liked the second better. Twenty-eight hands went up.
“Whatever it is,” he said, “that caused the overwhelming majority to raise their hands for the second one is what I mean by Quality. So you know what it is.”
Pirsig, in his “Phaedrus” persona, had touched what C. S. Lewis called the Tao: the absolutes that are the bedrock of reality itself:
The Chinese also speak of a great thing (the greatest thing) called the Tao. It is the reality beyond all predicates, the abyss that was before the Creator Himself. It is Nature, it is the Way, the Road. It is the Way in which the universe goes on, the Way in which things everlastingly emerge, stilly and tranquilly, into space and time. It is also the Way which every man should tread in imitation of that cosmic and supercosmic progression, conforming all activities to that great exemplar. ‘In ritual’, say the Analects, ‘it is harmony with Nature that is prized.’ The ancient Jews likewise praise the Law as being ‘true’.
This conception in all its forms, Platonic, Aristotelian, Stoic, Christian, and Oriental alike, I shall henceforth refer to for brevity simply as ‘the Tao’. Some of the accounts of it which I have quoted will seem, perhaps, to many of you merely quaint or even magical. But what is common to them all is something we cannot neglect. It is the doctrine of objective value, the belief that certain attitudes are really true, and others really false, to the kind of thing the universe is and the kind of things we are.
From here I could spin off into an exhausting ramble about things versus events, and what modern physics tells us we can and cannot know, but I’ll spare you. The point is a simple one:
There are real things.
We know them by their qualities,
Which reflect Quality – The Tao – in greater or lesser measure.
Among those real things are beauty and ugliness.
* * *
Artists, like the rest of us, are purposive beings. What they do, they do for a reason or reasons. It’s not always easy or pleasant to infer their reasons.
Contemporary visual art has largely turned away from depictive art: i.e., art that attempts to show the viewer something real or plausible, though perhaps in a heightened or dramatized degree. Some “artists” have departed altogether from art as derived from artifice. Have a tale of a museum janitor who “destroyed” an exhibit by such an artist, because he took it to be trash:
“The most delicious news to emerge from the art world this year,” I wrote at the time, “came in October, courtesy of the BBC.”
Under the gratifying headline “Cleaner Dumps Hirst Installation,” the world read that “A cleaner at a London gallery cleared away an installation by artist Damien Hirst having mistaken it for rubbish. Emmanuel Asare came across a pile of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays and cleared them away at the Eyestorm Gallery on Wednesday morning.”
I went on to express the hope that Asare would be immediately given a large raise. “Someone who can make mistakes like that,” I noted, “is an immensely useful chap to have about.”
I also daydreamed about this paragon of the cleaning industry being taken on by some large metropolitan paper, the Daily Telegraph, for example, since he clearly demonstrated sounder aesthetic judgment than most of the fellows calling themselves art critics.
Alas, Asare’s good work was soon undone.
John Q. Smith, the Celebrated Man in the Street, coming upon a heap of “beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays” in the street would unhesitatingly classify it as garbage and ask why it hasn’t been cleared away. Put that same detritus on the floor of a museum and he’d all but certainly react the same way. But what happens when the museum puts a placard on it, naming it and attributing it to an artist? Would it change Smith’s reaction? More pointedly, should it?
Smith is either in harmony with the Tao or he isn’t. If he is, garbage is self-evident to him. If he isn’t, he can be bamboozled, propagandized, led by the nose… trained to celebrate offenses against the Tao. Which brings us, via Miss Lillywhite’s observations through Pirsig and C. S. Lewis, capped by Roger Kimball’s tale, to the point I had in mind.
We have been admonished in stentorian tones not to ask “What is art and what is not?” But unless we insist upon answering that question, we cannot discriminate – we cannot rule some things out of consideration as artistic efforts. A firm answer to the question would make it possible. It would also dethrone quite a number of “artists” and the critics that celebrate them.
The above focuses on visual art, as I intended, but similar questions must be asked about other art forms: sculpture, musical composition, storytelling, poetry, dance, and so on.
* * *
There’s a snippet from “Individuality,” a poem by 19th Century poet Sidney Lanier, that comes to mind here:
What the cloud doeth,
The Lord knoweth,
The cloud knoweth not.
What the artist doeth,
The Lord knoweth;
Knoweth the artist not?
I submit that the question is an imperative one. We must answer it. Why is the artist doing what he does? What is his intent? Does he have an agenda – and if so, is it for good or for ill?
Many an artist of times past spoke of himself as an instrument: a tool being used by some remote power. For some artists, such talk was a form of “humble-brag.” But some were sincere. George Friedrich Handel said something of the sort when an admirer asked what drove him to compose The Messiah.
But there are powers and powers. Might some self-styled artists be tools in the hand of Satan? Might the filth and degradation they present as “art” – all too often celebrated as “transgressive” by a gaggle of critics – be something more than a jest at our expense? Consider the passage I cited from That Hideous Strength. Perhaps Lewis had seen such “artwork;” he wrote about it piercingly enough.
Do such “artists” know what they’re about?
Do they know what they serve, and do they serve it willingly?
And can we the audience afford not to ponder the implications?
I hadn’t intended to write anything today, but I just had an encounter with something both brilliant and concise. When you find those two attributes in a single package, applause isn’t just appropriate; it’s damn near mandatory.
First, have a quote that’s rather popular among atheists:
“I contend we are both atheists, I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.” – Stephen F. Roberts
Appended to that slogan is this summary of a particular pseudo-argument against belief in any god:
As a dear departed friend liked to say, “It has a certain syrup, but it doesn’t actually pour.” He had a way with words, even if most of us didn’t have a clue what he was talking about, much of the time. But enough of that. What do Roberts’s statement and the appended image actually contend? Do they concern themselves with anything factual or logical?
Of course not. They don’t offer an argument, but a rejection of argument. “These previous claims are substanceless; therefore all other claims that have certain specific similarities to them can be dismissed without examining the associated logic or evidence.” That looks a lot like “It never happened before, therefore it can’t happen.”
Now on to the good part:
It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. If you don't keep your feet, you may end up regurgitating unhelpful slogans that obfuscate reality.
> The "absence of discriminating evidence" is the entire game. Taking me on this journey only gets us to where we already… https://t.co/8YKdXic0Fn
— Limit and Mind | Know the Times (@limitandmind) April 27, 2026
Allow me to repost the really striking portion, as I don’t want my Gentle Readers to stop short:
The "absence of discriminating evidence" is the entire game. Taking me on this journey only gets us to where we already were...evaluating the evidence for and against different god claims. Otherwise we are collapsing into the same boring mantra that we hear all the time "there is no evidence for god."
Parsimony is misapplied if explanatory power is not equal. If you hold that the universe is brute, as many atheists do, the theist has an explanatory advantage, and I don't have to believe Zeus is real or treat his claim of divinity as equally serious as the Christian God to get there. Which feeds into the next point.
All deities are obviously not in the same reference class. The slogan treats them as if they are. The Greeks never considered their deities to be the sufficient ground of their existence. Overall, I think it's clear how unhelpful to the conversation the slogan is.
When both atheists and theists are saying it's time to retire this one, it may be time to retire it and move on.
Extraordinary. I’m in awe.
I’ve ranted before about the widespread misunderstanding of Occam’s Razor, alternately known as the “Principle of Parsimony.” (Please read that earlier essay if you’ve forgotten.) The universe is decidedly not simple. We probe for simplicities beneath the complexities we can see, but we’re not guaranteed that the understratum is any simpler than the layer of reality we can perceive. That’s why we keep probing.
As the embedded tweet says, you cannot validly use “parsimony” to dismiss an explanation for a phenomenon without examining the evidence for it. It’s an especially egregious violation of logic to do so when no other explanation has demonstrated validity – even conditional validity. If we maintain that existence itself demands an explanation, we must be dispassionate in our consideration of any candidate explanations.
Even those atheists who claim that no explanation is required continue to probe. They seek to reach and know that understratum as avidly as theists seek to know God. That makes their militancy against theism, especially Christianity, particularly ironic. If they could accept that our explanation is no worse logically or evidentiarily than their “it just is” dogmatism, and allow us to go our own way, an awful lot of bad feeling could be avoided.
What’s that you say? You want to know why they can’t allow us to go our own way? I wish I knew. But ultimately, it’s irrelevant. We all believe what we prefer to believe. Our respective choices in that regard are a great part of what defines us.
Don’t take the title too literally, Gentle Reader. There’s a dollop of sarcasm in it.
I’ve ranted many times about how the Left’s assumption of moral and intellectual superiority seems to license it to do all manner of vicious, amoral things. History offers us many examples of its big crimes. Its lesser sins against honesty and decency tend to go unnoticed, except by those who are the targets thereof.
In the early 1990s, I was the opinion pages editor of the Oceanside Blade-Citizen in San Diego County. We were a 30,000 circulation daily serving Oceanside, Carlsbad, Vista and Encinitas. At that time, California and a few other states were pioneering new laws that required financial institutions to share with customers the files they kept on us - and to provide a process for challenging inaccurate information.
The editorial board - publisher Tom Missett, managing editor Rusty Harris, and myself - were in favor of this development, and wrote a series of editorials in support of it. Then we went a step further, and in another editorial argued that political and activist organizations that keep files on American citizens should also have to disclose those files on request, and have a process whereby inaccurate information could be challenged.
Please read the rest.
There’s a curious tension in there. The notoriously brutal tactics of the Southern Poverty Law Center were already well known, at least among conservatives. Yet that organization clearly felt that it had to maintain the secrecy of its operations. From Trageser’s tale, the SPLC’s masters regarded anything that might breach that secrecy to be a threat to it. Yet there could be no question about the magnitude or the direction of the SPLC’s activism; it made its accusations quite publicly.
Would the exposure of the SPLC’s files have done it harm? Probably, though I can’t see that harm being mortal or near-mortal. Its orientation and agenda were too plain. But as Trageser tells us, it was willing to use its methods to bludgeon a relatively small and local newspaper, rather than allow even the suggestion that activist groups of its kind should be transparent about their recordkeeping.
I must conclude that the SPLC’s masters were aware that what they were doing was wrong, despite their belief in themselves as morally superior to those they were targeting. That awareness didn’t seem to have any effect on their behavior. They went on righteously denouncing anyone to their right as purveyors of “hate.” The recent revelation of their funding of public demonstrations of “hate” and “racism” surprised few conservatives.
Cognitive dissonance doesn’t quite cover this. I don’t know what would.
This is one of those “How can they possibly sleep at night?” questions that arise repeatedly about left-wing organizations and activists. It’s not far from the usual run of such things, apart from its blatancy. Still, add it to the catalogue. Keep it handy for the next time some leftist blathers about the Trump Administration’s “lack of transparency.”
(Thank you, Firesign Theater, for anticipating this need.)
Quoth Matt Walsh:
Matt Walsh “Almost all of the arrests that happen in a given year are from like 5% of the population”
“Cause you take out the 70% who are never arrested, you take out the 25% who are arrested one time in their entire life, and you're left with 5% of the entire population that's… pic.twitter.com/NnTeztc84n
Yes, those are valid statistics. They may mix misdemeanors with felonies, but I’m unable to resolve that at this time.
Time was, there were “three strikes” provisions on the law books in several states. Those laws constrained the sentencing practices of judges: a criminal convicted of a third felony offense was automatically sentenced to life without parole. For a while, those states locked up felony recidivists permanently; the public was permanently protected from their proclivities.
I’m not sure what happened to those three-strikes laws. This article sheds some light, but not enough to be sure that the three-strikes provision is still enforced. Among the facets of criminal law that would bear on this is the propensity of judges and prosecutors to alter an indictment on their own authority. A judge who dislikes the three-strikes provision might unilaterally dismiss a felony indictment to keep an accused criminal from suffering permanent incarceration.
There is also the racial aspect to consider. If we go by national demographics, American prison populations already overrepresent blacks and Hispanics. The implications are not hard to grasp. Neither is the message a further concentration of imprisoned blacks and Hispanics would send to the White majority.
The hawkers of “diversity, equity, and inclusion” are violently hostile to an accurate representation of blacks and Hispanics among felonious criminals. It’s the statistic they dislike most. So they screech about “social justice” and “the legacy of slavery,” as if those were valid justifications for allowing habitual felons to continue to prey on the rest of us.
However, another statistic is on my mind this morning: the population of these United States. That’s estimated at 330 million persons. If we were to imprison 5% of that number, that’s 16.5 million permanently incarcerated persons. I don’t know if enough prisons could be built and staffed to accommodate that many permanent residents. A far smaller number of persons are imprisoned today – about 1.25 million – and cries of “prison overcrowding” already resound nationally.
An old friend, a far harsher person than I, advocated not lifelong incarceration for the habitual felon but execution: “Three strikes and you’re dead.” Given the way the death penalty is treated today, that wouldn’t relieve the pressure on our prisons. But Tom is a forthright fellow; he envisioned the application of the penalty to occur immediately after the third conviction.
That calls to mind a scene from Neal Stephenson’s early novel The Diamond Age:
“Congratulations, Bud, you're a pa,” Judge Fang said. “I gather from your reaction that this comes as something of a surprise. It seems evident that your relationship with this Tequila is tenuous, and so I do not find that there are any mitigating circumstances I should take into account in sentencing. That being the case, I would like you to go out that door over there”—Judge Fang pointed to a door in the corner of the courtroom—“and all the way down the steps. Leave through the exit door and cross the street, and you will find a pier sticking out into the river. Walk to the end of that pier until you are standing on the red part and await further instructions.”
[…]
The pier did not turn red until the very end, where it began to slope down steeply toward the river. It had been coated with some kind of grippy stuff so his feet wouldn't fly out from under him. He turned around and looked back up at the domed court building, searching for a window where he might make out the face of Judge Fang or one of his gofers. The family of Chinese was following him down the pier, carrying their long bundle, which was draped with garlands of flowers and, as Bud now realized, was probably the corpse of a family member. He had heard about these piers; they were called funeral piers.
Several dozen of the microscopic explosives known as cookie-cutters detonated in his bloodstream.
Efficient, yes, but I’m fairly sure our anti-death-penalty activists would disapprove, to say nothing of the social-justice crowd.
Among the things that tire me most severely are comments to the effect that this, that, or the other thing “isn’t perfect.” Given the general lack of understanding of what constitutes “perfection,” I’m tempted to launch into a lecture about the speaker’s choice of words and the failure of comprehension they reveal. But in these later years of life, I restrain myself, so as not to add to my already unfortunate “body count.”
One observation, pithily phrased by the late, great C. Northcote Parkinson, puts the whole subject to bed:
Perfection is finality, and finality is death.
It seems that too few persons are sufficiently acquainted with the Great Lawgiver to have encountered that one, so here we are.
Just this morning – yes, I know it’s early – a French commenter at X, in the midst of a spirited defense of market capitalism, said this:
Market capitalism isn’t perfect.
That lit my boiler, and moved me to resurrect the following piece from 2015. But don’t hurry away if you remember it, for I have a trailing comment to make.
No doubt every Gentle Reader has encountered, at least, someone who constantly and vociferously denounces the status quo for some perceived flaw. Such a person will be known to complain constantly about his personal lot in life, as well. It won’t matter how well off he is, or how well supplied with friends, lovers, opportunities, or comforts. The comparison of his situation to that of far less fortunate others will not affect his malaise. Anything he perceives as a defect, whether in his circumstances or “The System,” will be enough.
To which the recently deceased Lawrence Peter “Yogi” Berra, he of the ten World Series rings and endless records, deposeth and sayeth:
If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be.
Many people have chuckled over Berra’s supposed malapropisms, thinking only that the Yankee great had intended to say something plain and obvious, but that it was muddled by his low facility with the English language. For my part, I find an immense practical wisdom in many of them. The above is a case in point.
There are two piercing insights to be had here. The first is the more general of the two. That which is perfect is finished, complete, at the terminus of its evolution. It cannot be improved. It requires no changes. Indeed, it tolerates no changes, for any change rendered to a perfect thing or context would destroy its perfection.
Therefore, if “the world” were perfect, it would deny Man any latitude for action. Any sort of change at all would deface it. Since Man, as Loren Lomasky has put it, is a “project pursuer,” a “perfect world” would destroy a fundamental requirement of human life: opportunities for action in pursuit of improvements to oneself or one’s condition. A “perfect world” would find Man intolerable. We would shortly be extinct.
The second insight is more personal. It’s highly unlikely that any two persons would agree on what constitutes a “perfect world.” Our personal priorities and preferences vary too greatly for that. Indeed, for some of us, “perfection” equates to absolute hegemony over others. But what of the others? Are they to be allowed no say in the matter?
The old pastimes “What would you do with a billion dollars?” – yes, it used to be a million, but prices are higher these days – and “What would you do if you were king?” cast additional light on Berra’s truth. Your billion would not be mine; your monarchy would limit my sphere of action. Your use of either of those things would deprive me of something I value: in the first case, the ability to afford whatever pleasure or luxury you’ve gobbled up, thus raising the price above my means; in the second, the freedom to live and act as I see fit, without a requirement for anyone’s permission or approval.
And so, if “the world,’ however conceived, were “perfect,” however conceived, it wouldn’t be. Quod erat demonstrandum.
I find it fitting that such wisdoms should have come from Yogi. Perhaps the American Philosophical Society should confer an emeritus membership upon him. By the way, does anyone know when they hold the balloting for the Philosophy Hall Of Fame?
A nice trip down Memory Lane, wouldn’t you say, Gentle Reader? But wait: there’s more! For we see defenders of the free market say it “isn’t perfect” with appalling frequency. That raises two questions:
Why do they do it?
What usually follows?
The answer to the first question is that the speaker feels compelled to admit that free markets don’t solve all the problems of the world. Now, if you’re of a rational but sarcastic bent, as is your humble Curmudgeon, you might say “Well, what would?” But that is exactly what the Leftist dueling with you wants you to say. He has this “solution,” you see…
That’s the answer to the second question. Admitting that there are imperfections in the world provides an entering wedge the Leftist can use to go on the attack. The Left strives always to be on the attack. (Note how vituperative Leftists become when forced onto the defense.) Any admission by a Rightist that there are “problems” gives him an opportunity to mount an offensive against “the System.”
Never mind that the Left’s prescriptions have always produced poverty, oppression, and hopelessness. Leftists don’t want to address the record of socialist and communist systems. Force them to do so and their mildest rejoinder will be to call you “heartless.” (That usually follows their perennial deflection: “That wasn’t real socialism.”) Their whole aim is to attack freedom’s “imperfections” and claim that they can be remedied by their methods.
Don’t fall into their trap. Free markets don’t exist to fulfill Utopian objectives. They can’t; nothing can. The existence of marginal people, less well off than the rest of us, does not indict capitalism. Nothing but copious charity could raise their lot to that of an American middle-class wage earner… and we have learned the limits of large-scale charity:
We shall not get rid of pauperism by extending the sphere of State relief...On the contrary, its adoption would increase our pauperism, for as is often said, we can have exactly as many paupers as the country chooses to pay for. – Thomas Mackay, Methods of Social Reform
So have done with the “capitalism isn’t perfect” crap.
Yes, yes, yes: My “output” is declining. But then, so am I, and not slowly. Please bear with me. These days it takes a lot more effort for me to produce something worth my Gentle Readers’ time and attention.
Nevertheless, if you’ll keep reading, I’ll keep trying.
* * *
Just this morning, I encountered this on X:
When training for a mission in space, people are judged on their psychological ability to work as a team. They can hardly afford someone who is not part of the team and wants to do it their way only. That could spell disaster for a mission in space. Yet here we are on spaceship…
The “spaceship Earth” motif isn’t new, of course. The conception of Earth as a vessel rather than a static environment goes back several decades. While it can be used tendentiously, as it is above, there’s also some value in it for directing one’s attention.
One of Earth’s features that spaceships lack is room. The land area of Terra is about 50 million square miles. Every one of those square miles enjoys a breathable atmosphere. While some of those square miles are less hospitable than others, there are at least 25 million square miles of land surface that are habitable, or can be made so with time and effort.
If we approximate Earth’s current population as 8 billion souls, the average human density of our world is no greater than 320 persons per square mile. 320 persons per square mile does sound ominous. It becomes less so when we figure human density per acre.
There are 640 acres in a square mile. Thus, that 320 persons per square mile figure equates to two acres of land per person.
Have you ever had to mow a two-acre plot? I have – and with a push-mower, at that. You don’t want that experience; trust me on that.
Humans prefer to cluster at far greater densities than one every two acres. Consider Manhattan: an island of 22 square miles with a population of about 2.2 million persons. That’s 100,000 persons per square mile, If we figure Manhattan’s human density per acre instead of per mile, we get approximately 160 persons per acre. Roomy? No, yet the great majority of Manhattan residents live there by choice.
The most densely populated major nation, India, has approximately 1.4 billion residents on approximately 1.2 million square miles of land. That’s still only about 1200 persons per square mile: less than two persons per acre. The great majority of Indians live in population centers much denser than that.
Consider SpaceX’s Crew Dragon capsule, which usually carries a four-person complement. I don’t have exact figures, but I’d be shocked to learn that there’s 100 square feet of floor space in that capsule. I doubt the crew holds any cha-cha contests in there. That 100 square feet figure would give the Crew Dragon, as it’s normally manned, a human density of 1600 persons per acre. In all probability, it’s higher than that.
Therefore the Crew Dragon, when manned, is at least ten times as dense as Manhattan Island. The astronauts are all there by choice. There’s no “astronaut draft,” at least for the moment.
In nearly every case of social, economic, or political importance, we choose to cluster with others.
* * *
There will probably never be a “vessel” as roomy as “spaceship Earth.” Yet people do complain about crowding. Rush-hour traffic congestion, retail stores during major holidays, even the construction of new housing in relatively sparse districts draw muttered forebodings about “running out of room.” But the complainers seldom seem inclined to move to more spacious environments. The reasons are many, but nestled among them is this one: We like one another’s company, as long as we can take it or leave it at our personal whim.
Granted, some of us prefer to be alone. There are also some people no one wants to be around. Still, they’re not the products of intolerable crowding. As long as each of us has a place of our own to which he can retreat at need, undesired and undesirable company isn’t an “issue” that demands a “solution.”
The need to cooperate with others – colloquially speaking, to get along – arises from the need to be with others. When there is no such need, the imperative of cooperation vanishes. This has two implications above others.
First, the preservation of privacy depends on the preservation of private property as Americans understand it. For the principal feature of private property is that its owner has the legal and moral right to exclude others. That has always been the basis every kind of property, real or movable.
Second, individual mobility must be preserved at all costs. He who can “get away” has the power to seek refuge from others, at least for a time. That idea is of course violently opposed by the promoters of “15 minute cities” and similar chimeras. For individual mobility means that you can get away from them. No would-be dictator, determined to decree every last aspect of others’ existence, can abide that.
Watch for the doom-shouters of “overpopulation.” Their arguments don’t matter. Their enemy is privacy itself. They are uniformly hostile to private property and to the ability to “get away” at will via individual mobility. Only when privacy has been effectively eliminated can they rule us absolutely, with no escape possible.
Orwell knew it:
The telescreen received and transmitted simultaneously. Any sound that Winston made, above the level of a very low whisper, would be picked up by it, moreover, so long as he remained within the field of vision which the metal plaque commanded, he could be seen as well as heard. There was of course no way of knowing whether you were being watched at any given moment. How often, or on what system, the Thought Police plugged in on any individual wire was guesswork. It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live — did live, from habit that became instinct — in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
[…]
WAR IS PEACE
FREEDOM IS SLAVERY
IGNORANCE IS STRENGTH
He took a twenty-five cent piece out of his pocket. There, too, in tiny clear
lettering, the same slogans were inscribed, and on the other face of the coin the head of Big Brother. Even from the coin the eyes pursued you. On coins, on stamps, on the covers of books, on banners, on posters, and on the wrappings of a cigarette Packet — everywhere. Always the eyes watching you and the voice enveloping you. Asleep or awake, working or eating, indoors or out of doors, in the bath or in bed — no escape. Nothing was your own except the few cubic centimetres inside your skull.
Today, the Third Sunday of the Easter season, is the day Catholics read about the encounter on the road from Jerusalem to Emmaus:
And behold, two of them went, the same day, to a town which was sixty furlongs from Jerusalem, named Emmaus. And they talked together of all these things which had happened. And it came to pass, that while they talked and reasoned with themselves, Jesus himself also drawing near, went with them. But their eyes were held, that they should not know him.
And he said to them: What are these discourses that you hold one with another as you walk, and are sad?
And the one of them, whose name was Cleophas, answering, said to him: Art thou only a stranger to Jerusalem, and hast not known the things that have been done there in these days? To whom he said: What things? And they said: Concerning Jesus of Nazareth, who was a prophet, mighty in work and word before God and all the people; And how our chief priests and princes delivered him to be condemned to death, and crucified him. But we hoped, that it was he that should have redeemed Israel: and now besides all this, to day is the third day since these things were done. Yea and certain women also of our company affrighted us, who before it was light, were at the sepulchre, And not finding his body, came, saying, that they had also seen a vision of angels, who say that he is alive. And some of our people went to the sepulchre, and found it so as the women had said, but him they found not.
Then he said to them: O foolish, and slow of heart to believe in all things which the prophets have spoken. Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and so to enter into his glory? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the scriptures, the things that were concerning him.
And they drew night to the town, whither they were going: and he made as though he would go farther. But they constrained him; saying: Stay with us, because it is towards evening, and the day is now far spent. And he went in with them.
And it came to pass, whilst he was at table with them, he took bread, and blessed,
and brake, and gave to them. And their eyes were opened, and they knew him: and he vanished out of their sight.
And they said one to the other: Was not our heart burning within us, whilst he spoke in this way, and opened to us the scriptures?
And rising up, the same hour, they went back to Jerusalem: and they found the eleven gathered together, and those that were staying with them, Saying: The Lord is risen indeed, and hath appeared to Simon. And they told what things were done in the way; and how they knew him in the breaking of the bread.
[Luke 24:13-35]
What a good thing it was that they were two together! For miracles that occur in the presence of a single witness are easily waved away. But when two or more give witness an event, it becomes harder for others to doubt it. It’s still possible, of course, but disbelievers’ accusations must change from hallucination to conspiracy.
* * *
I have no quarrel with sola scriptura Christians. After all, the Church’s proper authority depends upon the Gospels, so he who prefers his own interpretation of Christ’s words is welcome to it. However, the sola scriptura Christian is frequently alone. That can be an uncomfortable condition.
Those of us who occasionally entertain doubts are comforted by the knowledge that we’re not alone in our beliefs. Really, how many Christians are there who never have a moment’s doubt? After all, the key events are far back in time. Surely it’s possible that the history is inaccurate, as histories have sometimes been. And there’s always the (remote) possibility that it’s pure fiction – that Jesus of Nazareth was an ordinary man like ourselves, or even that He never existed at all!
Doubt can creep into any man’s soul. Pope Benedict XVI was unabashed in admitting that doubt had sometimes afflicted him. In his book Introduction to Christianity, he declared doubt an unavoidable part of human existence. I feel that he is correct. Moreover, doubt can work most powerfully upon one who is alone in his faith.
What really holds faith fast is the determination to go on living it:
Gavin extracted himself from his bed and plunged into his Sunday morning ritual. When he'd buckled himself into the passenger seat of his father's car, and Evan had backed them out of the driveway and onto Kettle Knoll Way, he said, "Dad? Do you ever...doubt?"
"Hm? Our faith in God, you mean?" Evan kept his eyes on the dark ribbon of road unwinding before them.
"Yeah." Gavin braced himself for the answer. What he got was not what he expected.
"Now and then," his father said. "It's hard not to doubt something you can't see or touch. But faith isn't about certainty. It's about will."
"So you...will away your doubts?"
Evan chuckled. "That would be a neat trick, wouldn't it?" He pulled the Mercedes Maybach into the small side parking lot of Our Lady of the Pines, parked and killed the engine. "No, I simply command myself to do as I know I should do. Faith is expressed just as much by our deeds as by our words. As long as I can consistently act from faith, I can keep my grip on it, regardless of my doubts." He nodded toward the unlit church, barely visible in the darkness. "You might say that's why we're here."
But even that determination can falter in the face of severe temptation – and never doubt this, at least: it’s the best among us who are most severely assailed by their tempters.
A companion in faith is a kind of armor against doubt. If you have one, you can’t doubt your own intellect or sanity without doubting his as well. Cleophas and his companion on the journey to Emmaus saw the same thing: the risen Christ, briefly revealed to them in His glory. Neither doubted for that same reason.
Perhaps you don’t have a companion in faith. Perhaps you don’t feel you need one. But if there’s room in your life, why not see about making the acquaintance of someone like yourself who’s willing to talk about his faith now and then? He’ll be a fallible human believer, who’s subject to doubt from time to time. But at such times he’ll have you, and vice versa. Each of you, in living your faith, will help to protect the other.
