“While The Balance Of His Mind Was Disturbed”

     Boromir strode up and down, speaking ever more loudly. Almost he seemed to have forgotten Frodo, while his talk dwelt on walls and weapons, and the mustering of men; and he drew plans for great alliances and glorious victories to be; and he cast down Mordor, and became himself a mighty king, benevolent and wise.
     […]
     He rose and passed his hand over his eyes, dashing away the tears. ‘What have I said?’ he cried. ‘What have I done? Frodo, Frodo!’ he called. ‘Come back! A madness took me, but it has passed. Come back!’

     Surely you know where that’s from.

     In that scene, Tolkien exploited the idea that the One Ring could overwhelm those near to it with power-lust. There had to be a flaw in their characters for it to take firm hold, but if the Ring could find such a chink in their moral-ethical armor, lust for it would penetrate and take command of them. In this fashion, Tolkien did several things concurrently:

1. He displayed Boromir’s pride and ambition;
2. He depicted the Ring’s technique for corrupting those near it;
3. Through contrast, he emphasized the character of the other members of the Fellowship.

     Fortunately for us fallible, corruptible mortals, there is no One Ring of Power to tempt us thus. But there are other powers in the world. Any of them could disturb the balance of a mind, given the right circumstances. Some of them even come with rings.

* * *

     The possibility of seizing power over others is irresistible to some. Once they have sensed it, they become fixated on it. Some are consumed by it, such that nothing else in this world matters to them. And as I’ve written on previous occasions, for the worst power-lusters there’s no such thing as enough.

     But there are many situations that involve an inequality of power. Some are transient; others persist. One arises in literally every household into which a child is born.

     It’s never been my lot to have to raise a child from the cradle. Still, I know of some of its aspects. The early months, while the baby is learning to sleep through the night, must be very stressful. For a couple of years at least, parent-to-toddler communication is exceedingly difficult. Then come the Terrible Twos, when Junior decides it’s time to assert himself against parental authority. Those continue roughly until puberty, when adolescent rebellion enters the fray. If you can get the miserable ingrate out from under your roof without having threatened him with death even once, you have earned the Medal of Parental Forbearance, with an “F for Freedom” cluster.

     Given that parents are held to be responsible for their preadolescent children – for their care and feeding, for their supervision, for their education, for any harm they cause, and so forth – while the children are deemed to be free of any responsibility under the law, who has the power in that situation? Who is capable of tormenting whom, and who would be required to bear any consequences for succumbing to it?

     We don’t condone mothers killing their children. It’s not nice. But when the little tyrants start to “pile it on,” fantasies of relief through homicide will sometimes arise. If Mom isn’t quite well – postpartum depression can be a serious condition, especially when there’s no other adult around to help – terrible things can happen. We get the Susan Smiths and the Lindsay Clancies.

     I refuse to excuse women who kill their kids. I’m interested in preventing as many infanticides as possible. And I think that recent trends in economics and family structure have been wholly negative in this regard.

* * *

     The multigenerational household is rare today. There are reasons for that, but among its consequences is that a couple that elects to have kids is frequently – perhaps usually? – without the assistance of the grandparents of those kids. That puts Mom “eyeball to eyeball with a screaming infant” (Robert S. Mendelsohn) ten to sixteen hours of every day for months, perhaps years. It’s got to be hard to take.

     Of at least equal importance is the virtual disappearance of the “neighborhood mothers club.” That was seldom a formal organization with officials and a charter. But when mothers didn’t need to work for wages, they could provide one another with a considerable degree of support in their domestic duties. Even just the ability to chat over the back fence with a kindred soul was worth something to a mother nearing the end of her tether. But the kindred soul isn’t there any more, even if the fence is.

     Add the intense pressures to earn money, the heightened expectations placed upon the families of minor children, the deteriorating social environment, the increasingly competitive nature of child-rearing itself, and fathers who come home more exhausted and more burdened than ever before, and what would be more likely than a rash of infanticides?

     There’s more to the collapse of First World fertility rates than mere self-centeredness.

* * *

     Once more: I will not excuse the murder of children. But we ought to be thinking hard about the vise that’s tightening on parents, especially the newest parents. Their power to manage and improve their situations is close to nil. While it’s not mensurable, the burden children place on their parents appears to be greater than in any previous generation of Americans. They cost more, demand more, and inflict more worries and fears on their parents than previous litters did.

     Parents need help. The best source of such help is other parents, especially other mothers. Yet we have contrived a situation in which that help is nearly absent.

     I don’t like what I foresee.

The Madness Has Gone Too Far

     Much, much too far. Via Red Pill Jew comes a report of an unthinkable outrage:

     August 12, 2020 (LifeSiteNews) – Yesterday, a Dallas judge took away Jeffrey Younger’s say in his son James’ medical, psychological, and psychiatric care, giving that power to James’ mother, who wants to “transition” him into a “girl.” After receiving national attention in October 2019, the bitter parental dispute had ultimately resulted in both parents getting a say in decisions regarding James and his twin, Jude; this ruling effectively reverses that.

     James Younger’s mother, Dr. Anne Georgulas, will now be able to enroll the eight-year-old in school as a “girl” named “Luna” and subject him to transgender medical procedures.

     This is child abuse. Vicious, flagrant child abuse. What sort of “mother” would even conceive of doing such a thing to a defenseless eight-year-old boy? And what of the judge who has permitted it?

     Yesterday, Judge Mary Brown, who was appointed to the case in January, granted Georgulas’ requests to force Mr. Younger to pay for counseling for James and Jude and attend family counseling. Mr. Younger previously objected to both of these requests as he was not allowed a say in the selection of the boys’ counselor or the family counselor....

     Judge Brown’s ruling came without the hearing that was scheduled to take place yesterday. There was no explanation why Judge Brown issued her order without the proper hearing.

     Please read it all – and thereafter, shower this “judge” with your most candidly expressed opinions.

Digital Slugs

     I found this at Brock Townsend’s place:

     There’s a “pincer movement” involved here. Worse, really: a pincer movement normally has only two active elements. This problem has more than that.

     First, parents are more burdened than ever before, especially by our economic situations. Consequently, they’re less involved with their kids than ever before. The “glass teat,” whether it’s a TV, a tablet, a game console, or a phone, is a burden reducer for the parents. They lack sufficient incentives to change the pattern.

     Second, the makers of digital diversions are very, very good at making them psychologically addictive. Kids are easy to hook, especially kids who are already disinclined to exercise or are averse to the outdoors. Their preferences tend to strengthen with the repetition of their chosen behavior.

     Third, the world beyond the front door, whether or not it’s actually getting more dangerous, is being billed as more dangerous than ever, especially for children. That’s another disincentive to shoving Junior outside and requiring him to find something to do.

     Fourth, many of the pastimes kids of previous generations adopted were ones they acquired from their parents. Today’s typical parent probably doesn’t have any pastimes he could share with a pre-teen. Very few maintain gardens, or build treehouses, or go walking regularly, even in districts where there are inducements to such things. In part that’s because of Item #1 above – contemporary American parents lack time and energy owing to their economic burdens – but in part it’s because the many habit-forming digital diversions that surround us have affected us too. I know a considerable number of people whose smartphones are never out of their hands. In fact, I’m married to one.

     Fifth – and this one may strike you as paradoxical – there’s been a sharp decline in the activity from which kids and their parents once acquired their interest in new activities and pastimes: reading. Reading has been called “the key to power,” and it is exactly that. It opens the world to you, to a far greater extent than watching TV or YouTube videos. So while reading is a quiet, non-physical “indoor” activity, it’s a spur to the inquisitive mind that prompts such a mind to investigate new activities...and what’s more inquisitive than the mind of a pre-teen?

     I could go on. For example, I haven’t said anything about the role of the schools in this, and they do have one. But the above five elements strike me as the most important ones. Moreover, they’re coupled in a fashion that makes them mutually supporting. It’s possible that they must be solved concurrently or not at all. Think about it.

     All that having been said, we must start somewhere, and my preference is here:

If you have young children, don’t give them smartphones.

     That’s where the addiction most commonly originates. The smartphone, with its embedded access to diabolical contrivances such as Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and a plethora of games, is probably the worst thing a parent could inflict upon a defenseless child. The cost ain’t trivial, either.

     Take it seriously, Gentle Reader. Think about it. There will be consequences either way – and some of them could be for you. Would you want a noodle-muscled slug, a useless lump of flesh who probably can’t even think of changing a flat tire without giving in to the shivers, to be responsible for your care when you’re an aged invalid? Wouldn’t you prefer to have a moderately competent, strong, and resilient son or daughter to haul you around, change your nappies, and keep you company when you need to vent about “the old days?” Or would you rather be a pig in a nursing home, surrounded exclusively by indifferent orderlies who walk right past you, and other octogenarians, none of whom will stop talking and listen to you for just one minute?

     Verbum sat sapienti.

The Pennsylvania Report

     Quite a number of readers have written to ask me whether I intend to write about this. A few have sent me articles and op-ed columns about it. I completely understand why they’ve addressed me. I’ve been looking into the matter as deeply as is possible for a layman, and I believe I’m ready to comment.

     But I don’t delude myself that everyone who reads what I have to say will stand up and cheer about it.

---

     The Pennsylvania grand-jury report on the sexual abuse of children by Catholic priests contains statements that would shock even the most hardened consumer of crime news. It states that over 300 priests have been accused of such abuse. It states that the accused’s victims exceeded 1000 children and young persons. It states that 25 different bishops had been involved in concealing such behavior and protecting those accused of it. It states that the Vatican itself was complicit in some of those concealment operations.

     This is horrible stuff. Even though the time span covered by the report is more than 40 years long, it shocks and dismays parents who routinely entrust the safety of their children to Catholic clergy and Catholic institutions. It’s close to being enough to elicit attacks upon the Church itself. At least it’s enough to evoke popular fury upon parishes and dioceses where child abuse has been concentrated.

     But as with all reports of this kind, there are more facts to be assessed than the stories circulating have room for...or inclination to report.

---

     The report makes frequent use of the words accused, alleged, and accuser. Far less frequently found in its pages, though they occur here and there, are the words confirmed, confessed, and convicted. This is consistent with the allegations of concealment by Church prelates. But it’s also consistent with the possibility – whatever one might prefer to believe – that some of the accusers are lying, or more kindly, have been misled by their own memories or the exhortations of therapists.

     A man accused of a heinous crime should have the opportunity to defend himself before a jury. Stipulate that some of the accusations are confirmed as true. If any are untrue, it follows that the accuser should be required to present them to a jury for disposition. A felony accusation should not be allowed to hang in the air over a man, destroying his life without having been proved beyond a reasonable doubt. Indeed, such a claim gives the accused a good case for a libel action.

     The American tradition of presuming the accused to be innocent until he’s been convicted by a jury should not be set aside merely because the accused wears a cassock and a Roman collar.

---

     It has frequently puzzled me that, though child abuse can be found in all religions, denominations, and sects, only charges against Catholic priests get significant air time and column-inches. Indeed, I can’t remember even one case of a Protestant minister or a rabbi being reported as are charges made against Catholic clerics. Why? What makes such a heinous deed more newsworthy if the accused is a Catholic priest?

     The Church does impose certain rules on its priests that other denominations, etc. do not:

• The requirement for clerical celibacy;
• The requirement that priests live in rectories, apart from their parish congregations.

     These are severe restrictions. A healthy heterosexual man will be taxed to obey them no matter how firm his will. Perhaps most priests remain within them; I have no way of knowing, and neither does anyone else. But it is equally certain that some do not.

     It seems that the contrast between the acceptance of those rules by an ordained priest and his willful decision to ignore one of them makes a Catholic priest’s sexual excursions more glamorous, more attention-grabbing. Editors must think they’re more likely to sell advertising space. If they do reason thus, they’re probably correct. At the very least, America’s managing editors seems to agree about it.

     Still, I’d like to know the rate at which accusations of child sex abuse are lodged against certain other occupations that are routinely given responsibility for the well-being of the young:

• Protestant ministers;
• Rabbis;
• School teachers and administrators;
• Day care center operators and staff.

     I’d also like to know how often such persons face a jury trial, how many are convicted, and what’s done with such persons by those to whom they report, when there is such a higher authority.

---

     "A mechanical process can reverse a bit at random, but motivation acts like a field -- the elements won't change unless the field does." -- James Tiptree, Jr., "Faithful To Thee, Terra, In Our Fashion"

     The torrent of accusations, both confirmed and unconfirmed, correlates strongly with other social phenomena:

• The Sexual Revolution;
• The rise of homosexual activism;
• The development of oral contraception;
• The destigmatization of both adultery and divorce;
• The explosion of personal automobile ownership and motels.

     Correlation is not causation. No one could credibly argue that the incidence of child sex abuse would be markedly less were the above phenomena never to have occurred. However, social trends frequently engender attitudinal changes even among persons who are supposed to ignore them. Moreover, the incentive structures to which they point will have effects even on those who “aren’t paying attention.”

     Consider in this light another trend that correlates strongly with the five mentioned above: the radical decline in vocations to the priesthood. When it became apparent that the decline was not a momentary thing, many bishops became alarmed. The Church needs priests, but where was it to get them?

     The world had turned into a sexual playground. Everybody, seemingly, was “getting some”...except the men who had vowed lifelong celibacy in the service of Christ, the Church, and their flocks. The previous regime, in which a man was expected to marry at an early age, to remain faithful to his wife lifelong, and to support and protect her and her offspring no matter how many or how unruly, was far less attractive. Indeed, as a pre-teen I knew at least one priest who might have chosen his profession in part to avoid immuring himself in family life. Among other things, celibacy was less expensive and less a trial of one’s patience. Clearly, by the mid-Seventies that was no longer the case. The seminaries were emptying out in consequence.

     What sort of man would view the priesthood as more attractive for reasons of sexual access than the larger, overwhelmingly heterosexual lay milieu? And among persons of that inclination, would the proportion to whom pre-teen and teenage boys are a strong temptation be larger than in the heterosexual populace, smaller, or about the same?

     You can answer those questions for yourself, Gentle Reader.

---

     All the above having been said, the Church cannot permit the current plague of pedophilia – more than 90% of it pederasty -- to continue. Neither can it continue to think that incidents of that crime should and can be covered up.

     Highly orthodox Catholic writer Matt Walsh, with whom I share many sentiments, cites these measures as imperative:

1. All homosexuals must be banned from the priesthood.
2. Evil must be condemned from the pulpit.
3. The laity must wield its power.

     I have three problems with treating those measures, taken alone, as an adequate response. All of them pertain to incentives.

     First, it’s far easier to say that homosexuals have been expelled from the priesthood than actually to do so. (“Change is hard, and difficulty makes people impatient.” – Arthur Herzog) Many a bishop would succumb to the temptation to give it lip service rather than to “endanger” his diocese by emptying it of so many priests. Besides which, how is a bishop, or the administrator of a seminary, to verify that a young man who has not been blatantly sexually active is or is not a homosexual? The problem has defeated others.

     Second, while the laity has power and could, in theory, inflict severe financial penalties on parishes that tolerate homosexuals in the rectory, the prevalent inclination among Catholic laymen is to treat the matter as the clergy’s problem to be solved. Moreover, there’s both clerical opprobrium and the difficulty of making use of a new parish to be considered. When so many priests are less disinclined to condemn homosexual conduct than to condemn lay “judgmentalism” — often in the name of keeping congregants in the pews – it is likely that the power of the disincentives will prevail.

     Third, in the absence of other changes to the institution of the Catholic priesthood, the incentives that have drawn so many pedophiles – once again, more than 90% of the time the crime is pederasty — into the clergy will persist:

• Owing to clerical celibacy and the rule against the ordination of women, the priesthood will remain more attractive to homosexuals than to heterosexuals.
• The paucity of priestly vocations will induce bishops and seminary officials to downplay homosexual orientation as a disqualification for ordination;
• The priesthood confers a kind of authority over lay people, including their children.
• Priests are routinely given unsupervised responsibility for groups of children, especially young boys.

     The perpetuation of those incentives guarantees that as homosexuals and child predators are seined out of the clergy, others will filter in, albeit slowly.

---

     The Church has not always demanded that its priests be celibate. Indeed, the strict enforcement of that rule began in the Eleventh Century, so for half its history the Church accepted married men as priests. As there is no theological reason why a priest must be celibate – Christ certainly didn’t demand it of His Apostles – this strikes me as a practice ripe for reversal.

     Neither is there a theological reason that women cannot be ordained. The usual cant response is “a priest must be in the image of Christ.” But surely the willingness to labor humbly and lifelong, and to subordinate oneself through vows of poverty and obedience, is not confined to the male half of our species. Those virtues are more in accordance with “the image of Christ” than the mere possession of a Y chromosome.

     The Vatican has absolutely forbidden its clerics to discuss these possibilities openly with the laity. Nevertheless, several priests have spoken to me privately about such possibilities, even though in doing so they’ve endangered their status with the Vatican, and perhaps with their bishops as well.

---

     The subject has many facets. I’ve touched here on the ones that seem most in need of an analytical airing. Let it not be imagined that I regard myself as an unchallengeable authority on it. As always, I set down my thoughts first to clarify and organize them for myself, second for others’ consideration. And with that, I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

A One-Way Door

     Some time ago, seized by fear over the escalation of racial hostility – 99% of which emanates from blacks toward whites – I wrote a story about the probable endpoint of the trend, should it continue unabated. If you’ve read it, you know immediately what I mean by the title of this piece. If you haven’t, I exhort you to read it before continuing on. Read the Afterword as well.

     The all-time classic one-way door is death. (I sometimes wonder whether the Grim Reaper was the true inventor of the diode, but...well, never mind.) The dead can’t affect the living, except through the influence of memory. Neither can groups, clans, tribes, or whole societies that have died, whether from plague, extermination, or by auto da fe.

     Races, nations, and generations currently stand before a one-way door. Some of them have laid their collective hands on the knob. Large groups stand behind them, ready to shove them through. You’d think it would be deemed more discussion-worthy than is currently the case.

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     The future belongs to those who show up for it. – Mark Steyn

     The Industrial Revolution had many consequences for Mankind’s demographics. Most obviously, it provided Europeans of the Caucasian race with greatly increased wealth. Slightly less obviously, it conferred upon them the ability to range much farther in safety and (relative) comfort than their ancestors. And still less obviously though at least as important, as the Industrial Revolution progressed and expanded, it reshaped couples’ attitudes toward children.

     In a preindustrial society, where work is essentially a matter of manual labor (sometimes augmented by animals), children are an economic asset. They can share at least some of the labor. Moreover, since preindustrial couples produce greater numbers of children, and since preindustrial conditions of life result in a greater percent of deaths in childhood, such a society will value the lives of children less than would an industrialized one. The thought might be unpleasant, but it is so: supply and demand condition even the bonds of family and parenthood.

     As powered machinery grows and increases its capabilities, children become less economically valuable. Should the medical arts progress as well, fewer children will die of the diseases of infancy. The liberation of adults from manual farm labor will also increase their time apart from their kids, as parents use enhanced travel capabilities to work farther from home. These and other effects of industrialization will result in lowered birth rates and, over time, a transition in adults’ attitudes toward children: from economic assets to luxury goods.

     While there’s no clear causal connection between industrialization and the increase in the cost of childbearing and child-rearing, that has happened in every industrialized society on Earth. As people protect the things they value, and tend to value things according to scarcity and cost, parents will become far more protective and indulgent toward their children as time passes.

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     Certain competences must be acquired young. Particular aspects of dexterity of body and mind are far more easily mastered by a child than by an adult. For example, few persons of mature years are able to master new languages, or learn how to write in cursive. Mastering the special disciplines of algebra, geometry, and analytical mathematics in adulthood is even less likely. If these skills are not acquired young, the odds are heavily against acquiring them at all.

     Developments that have become visible over the past couple of decades have impeded children’s acquisition of various skills that their parents and grandparents absorbed as a matter of course. Not many kids acquire a legible cursive hand these days. Indeed, some groups discourage the teaching of cursive as “no longer relevant.” Other groups, as incredible as it seems, have protested the traditional curricula of mathematics as unnecessary if not “racist.” If the prima facie skills themselves were of critical importance, the gravity of the matter would be far plainer than it is. However, in all candor, the ability to write neatly in cursive and the ability to find the maxima and minima of a function are of little immediate importance to all but a few Americans.

     What really matter are the meta-disciplines that lie beneath them: precise control of one’s body, the ability to learn in an organized fashion, and the ability to reason logically from postulates and evidence.

     Ironically, the decline in our fertility rate has correlated with a decline in our willingness to take up cudgels in defense of these time-honored roads to learning critical disciplines. Perhaps we’re overawed by the cultists of “educationism,” who’ve been haranguing us that they’re “outmoded.” Perhaps we figure that, considering what we’re paying for the schools, the people who run them must know what they’re doing. Or perhaps we’re simply too tired to wrench Junior away from his Xbox.

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     A dear friend has often speculated about “what will happen after the crash.” He’s convinced that an event of some sort will strip us of all the technology we’ve developed over the past century or so: what we have and our ability to make more of it. Though those technologies have become self-sustaining, they were bootstrapped from far more basic knowledge, skills, and tools: pencils, slide rules, soldering irons, and extensive knowledge of the sciences. Many of those who were part of the bootstrapping are gone now; the rest will disappear in a generation or two. Should our progeny lose what we’ve bequeathed them after we’ve vanished, would the kiddies be able to recreate it?

     My friend is of the opinion that they won’t – that there will come a long Dark Age during which our posterity will have to clamber slowly up from the mud, much as the Cro-Magnons did. He has a good case for it. By indulging our children in the “right” to be ignorant of anything except how to use their smartphones and Google, we’ve denied them the bootstrapping competences that were required to produce our current technologies. Never mind that it was with the kiddies’ willing cooperation; the effect will be no less crippling for that.

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     No sensible man would want to see the above trends continue. Worse, they tie into the larger demographic trends, in which the most primitive and intolerant segments of Mankind are swiftly out-reproducing the most advanced and tolerant ones. Worse still, the primitives, owing to contemporary, highly pernicious notions about “equality” and “cultural relativism,” are invading and degrading our advanced societies in the process, often with the connivance of influential Marxist and Frankfurt School activist groups.

     These processes constitute a red-carpeted path toward a giant one-way door. The legend over that door is easy to read:

Goodbye To The Christian Enlightenment

     ...but few are willing to read it.

     Some additional reading and viewing for you:

• “The Marching Morons,” by C. M. Kornbluth
• Search the Sky, by C. M. Kornbluth and Frederik Pohl
• Idiocracy, written and directed by Mike Judge

     ...and don’t tolerate anyone calling you “Racist!” for any of it.

They Know What’s Best. Just Ask Them!

     After an unconscionably long time away, laughingly blamed upon such trivia as a crushing workload, the birth of a daughter, and the imminent transformation of his neighborhood into a ghetto, Dystopic / Thales has at long last returned. As usual, it’s well worth your time:

     “It’s for the children” was a tactic employed by the media during the Syrian refugee crisis, often by showing carefully staged bodies of children, or as in one particular example, showing an injured child in an ambulance. In the latter, the child was dirty and bleeding, but journalists still found time to sit him in the otherwise clean ambulance and take a carefully-considered photo to push their political points.

     However, today’s tactic is, perhaps, even more insidious. In this case, Progressives are using the gullibility and lack of experience of children to push for their political goals. One individual of some notoriety, whose name escapes me at the moment (it made the rounds on Twitter, if one of my readers has a name please drop it in the comments), mentioned that children are often wiser than their parents on social and political issues. And they are supposedly less gullible, too. And while Democrats want to raise the age required to purchase a gun, they simultaneously want to lower the voting age. Surely there’s no self-interest in that, right? After all, it’s easier to talk a child into Socialism with a basic “it’s not fair” kind of argument.

     Look, the fact is children just don’t understand. That’s why they are children, not little adults. They don’t have the life experience to make such weighty decisions yet.

     Thank God someone has finally said so.

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     One of my blessings / curses is a very clear remembrance of my youth. For reasons beyond the scope of this tirade, I had to “grow up young.” Part of the experience was the shocking discovery that what I’d previously believed, in my youthful ignorance of that ultimate confounder of unfounded opinions, reality, was...not so. At odds with the observable facts. In a word, wrong.

     It was embarrassing, but far less embarrassing than if my father had permitted me to spout off in public, as so many young folks do today.

     You see, back then, when the “older and wiser heads” were still weighing the merits and demerits of descending from the trees, adults had a saying: “Children should be seen and not heard.” It was based on what I call a “sturdy wisdom:” Kids don’t know shit. How could they? We learn the greater part of what we need to know to survive and flourish by observing consequences. Childhood is a period during which one is allowed to be safely irresponsible. Children are insulated against the harsher consequences of their beliefs and actions. As we mathematical types like to say, quod erat demonstrandum.

     Children – a loosely defined term; today I’d say the irresponsible puerility that defines it isn’t guaranteed to be over and done until Junior’s 35th birthday – don’t possess sound perspective or good judgment. But they will exploit any unwarranted attribution of wisdom to preen themselves and offer you all sorts of opinions. Rarely are those opinions worth more than what they once left in their diapers.

     But kids make great foils for evoking tender emotions in the unthinking. Note that I didn’t say “the unthinking adult.” He who can’t or won’t think clearly – i.e., who won’t associate decision and action with consequences and learn from the latter – will only survive if he’s protected from the consequences of his actions by more responsible persons. He remains a child, no matter how old he is.

     The promotion of ignorant, emotion-dominated children — some taller than others — as founts of sociopolitical wisdom is one of the great follies of our era. But it’s massively useful to the Left, whose strategists and tacticians know full well how tender we are toward the kids…and how, as the kids-to-adults ratio continues to shrink, that effect will only become stronger.

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     One final thought: Children are more susceptible to appeals to envy than are adults. They’re more likely to wish harm on others who have something they don’t. And they’re quite inventive about justifying demands that arise from their envy.

     Socialism is denotatively defined as a politico-economic system in which “the workers” own “the means of production.” Mind you, many a “socialist” would quarrel with that definition, but that’s the way it was defined by Karl Marx, and that’s the definition that appears in the dictionary:

     Socialism, n: a theory or system of social organization that advocates the vesting of the ownership and control of the means of production and distribution, of capital, land, etc., in the community as a whole.

     However, the propulsive impulse toward socialism is envy: the desire to see others who have more brought low. How could it be otherwise? No socialist economy has ever done anything else, and socialist advocates and agitators know it. But children, equipped with neither adequate intellectual knowledge nor real-world experience, can easily be led into it through their propensity to envy.

     It’s been said, though I forget from whom I first heard it, that if the transmission of civilized values and accumulated social capital were to be interrupted for just one generation, Mankind would revert to savagery. The Left is ardent to manipulate us through the uninstructed and inexperienced: our children. Draw the moral – and keep your kids out of their clutches.

Good Books for the Next Generation: Young James Bond

In the spirit of my previous post on Hans Schantz's excellent The Hidden Truth we turn to another good book for young people, the first volume  of the "Young Bond" series, SilverFin by Charlie Higson.


When my son checked this out of the school library I was mildly interested, having very much enjoyed the original series by the great Ian Fleming, but since it was published in 2009 I assumed it was either dumbed down, "politically corrected" or, Lord help us, both. However, he and I regularly talk about the books he reads and he was very positive about this one, so I decided I'd read it, too.


What a revelation. Not only is the book not PC'd at all, it's realistic about life, the Good, the Bad and the Ugly. It retains a hint of the menace of Fleming's world, the fact that all endings aren't happy and sometimes good people are hurt and killed by evil. Most especially, it emphasizes the importance of mental toughness, "grit" as the current term has it, planning, intelligence and courage as the ingredients of fighting and winning. It's a book about a winner, and why he is such.


I don't give story retellings or plot details in my reviews, but Higson has caught the spirit of Fleming with the larger-than-life villain(s), the touch of the grotesque and the science fictional, and the inexorable determination of the Bond character. The details of the Britain of the 1930s, the ins and outs of Eton and the class-consciousness seem well done to this American reader.


Mr. Higson has followed up SilverFin with four more volumes in the series. Volume 2, Blood Fever, is in my stack and I'm interested to see if it can stand up to his first effort. In any case, I found SilverFin to be a big, pleasant surprise. Quite entertaining, it also illustrates the kind of toughness and character that I think the readers here want in their children. seemingly aimed at the 10-15 age group, but you adults would probably enjoy it, too!

Creating children vs. protecting them

Thanks to a post a few days ago at Western Rifle Shooters, which revealed the Nanny-Statist mentality to me in a whole new way, I reacquainted myself with the NRA's "Eddie Eagle" four step gun-safety program. Here's where I discuss the UK's "Stay Safe," guncrime safety program. All the pertinent links can be found below the YouTube video.