The Return Of The Unacceptable

     Consider this episode, which has “gone viral:”

A Phillies fan retrieves a home run ball for his son and this woman is furious she did not get the ball pic.twitter.com/kDMMJrw2R5

— Jomboy Media (@JomboyMedia) September 6, 2025

     There has never in the history of the National Pastime been a rule, formal or otherwise, that when a baseball lands in the stands it belongs to the person nearest to it. The woman who raised a stink about getting to it late had no grounds for doing so. Yet she got away with her brazen display of entitlement.

     Her behavior falls into the category decent societies categorized as “not done.” It should not have been tolerated. It certainly shouldn’t have gained her a souvenir baseball.

     Herewith, a reprint from 2022.

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“Not Done”

     Historically, much that is not illegal by statute has been restrained by an unwritten social code. Nineteenth Century England, the closest approach to a classical-liberal polity in Europe of that era, had extensive codes of that sort. Because English society was stratified by class, there were several such codes, which included rules by which Englishmen interacted within their class and with members of other classes. Indications of this come through in the fictions of the time. John Galsworthy’s magnificent Forsyte Chronicles are probably the best example.

     As the early United States was largely populated by persons of English descent, some of those codes made their way across the ocean and took root here. For a while you could hear Americans condemning certain kinds of behavior, actual or proposed, with the classically English phrase “It’s just not done.” The associated social opprobrium had a degree of force contemporary Americans – and contemporary Englishmen, for that matter – can hardly imagine. (“Enforcement” by dueling had only a little to do with it.)

     Today there’s damned near nothing that “isn’t done.” The greatest imaginable outrages are performed shamelessly and in public. They who perpetrate them upon the rest of us do so precisely because they are outrages. The social codes that once restrained them no longer have force. They certainly aren’t respected by the outrageurs.

     Some of this is attributable to “anti-discrimination” laws, but a far greater portion arises from cowardice among better men.

     Yesterday evening, I cited the disturbance at Los Angeles’s Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels by pro-abortion protestors determined to disrupt Sunday Mass. The brief video embedded in that tweet depicts what occurs when a few good men find a scintilla of courage: enough, at least, to act against those who would ruin something precious to others. It was heartening to see...moderately so, at least. For I had to note a visible shortcoming: only a half-dozen of the Mass attendees rose to the occasion.

     Why so few? There was no physical danger involved. I can’t see how there would have been any legal consequences to forcibly expelling the protestors. Yet only a handful of Angeleno Catholics rose to oppose the desecration of a sacred Catholic rite that involves the Body and Blood of Christ. Where was the righteous anger appropriate in response to such a profanation?

     If we want such scurrilities to return to the status of “not done,” we’ll have to muster exactly such righteous anger – in quantity.

***

     The matter is grave. Such invasions of the prerogatives of others, even when nominally within the law, are massively destructive to the sense of social order and public peace. That, of course, is why they occur. The perpetrators want to convey exactly that message: “Give us what we want or you will know no peace.” It’s their mantra.

     What goes undiscussed is why such persons get away with their obscenities:

• It’s nominally legal for them to do so;
• The rest of us do nothing but wring our hands.

     But the law does not reserve unto itself the punishment of all infractions against the social order. It cannot. What’s done that’s “not done” must be punished by those offended by it – and by punished, I mean the infliction of actual pain, embarrassment, and ostracism.

     Minority groups determined to disrupt our lives, our gatherings, and our rituals will only get away with such behavior for as long as it fails to draw retaliation. We the Decent Majority must impose consequences so painful, embarrassing, and isolating that no one will be minded to repeat the offense ever again. Moreover, we have to be imaginative about it, for any tactic too often repeated can be countered, given time.

     Imagine if those protestors at Our Lady of the Angels had been stripped bare, spanked to a bright red, and thrust out of the cathedral entirely unclothed. Possibly after having been figged, as well. And perhaps doused with a blend of caffeine and DMSO, for good measure. Do you think they’d have dared to repeat their impertinence?

     Of course, preparation would be required, but that goes without saying.

     Sounds outrageous, doesn’t it? “Not done!” But what lesser measures would ensure a return to public peace? The organs of the law either have no authority in such matters or refuse to use what they have. This is what is left to us.

     Other commentators have spoken of a “cold civil war” in progress. Their perspective grows more applicable by the day. The Left has delved deeply into the “not done,” confident that We the Decent will not respond with more than words. When only one side is willing to fight, the outcome is foreordained.

     The explosions of outrages in recent years have made this Curmudgeon yearn for “the good old days” when such violations of the public peace were constrained by the possibility of being challenged to a duel. Unfortunately, when dueling was accepted, women were regarded as immune to challenge. Perhaps the custom could use a spot of innovation.

     Have a nice day.

Illiberal Liberations

     There’s probably no word in the English language whose meaning is subject to more divergent or more contentious interpretations than decency. It comes from the Latin word decens, which means “fitting.” Fitting to what? Why, to the circumstances that pertain, of course! And thereby we reach the contemporary contretemps over public norms.

     Be not deceived: every society that ever has existed has had public norms: standards of conduct for those who go into or through public places, as colloquially understood. Such a standard prescribes certain aspects of conduct and proscribes others. Some of those prescriptions and proscriptions are enforced by law; the rest are “enforced” by the commendation or condemnation of others. The extent to which they’re enforced will determine, roughly, the extent of popular compliance.

     Often these past few decades, some aspect of a prevailing public norm has been challenged, even defied, under the pretext that those who dismiss it were “liberating” themselves. This is not wholly inaccurate. To liberate is to free from constraint, and a norm is a constraint even if not enforced by law. Even so, many such “liberations” have a ludicrous aspect when compared to the struggles of genuinely oppressed peoples to throw off their yokes of subjection. Still, the phrasing persists.

     But no action is without side effects, and no gain is without cost. Indeed, the norms whose binding power comes solely from the opinion of others can shield a society from costs far larger than those who demand to be “liberated” from them might imagine.

---

Anna: [reads from a book] In 1857, it's estimated there were 80,000 prostitutes in the county of London.
Mike: Yeah?
Anna: Out of every 60 houses, one was a brothel.
Mike: Hoo, hoo, hoo.
Anna: At a time when the male population of London of all ages was one and a quarter million, the prostitutes were receiving clients at a rate of two million per week.
Mike: Two million?

[From the movie adaptation of The French Lieutenant’s Woman]

     Don’t take the above as well-verified data, for heaven’s sake. It’s a line from a movie. Having said that, it’s well verified that Victorian era London did have a lot of brothels and a lot of prostitutes. Mike’s subsequent rough calculation that the average male Londoner was getting “about 3.4 fucks a week” outside of marriage was intended as a laugh-line to contrast with a rather more somber backdrop. (Incidentally, the movie is excellent. Jeremy Irons turns in the best performance of a stellar career.)

     The public norms of Victorian England were very strict. They covered just about everything one might do in the company of others. Sexual conduct of even the mildest variety was one of the things they forbade; for example, for a man to allow his gaze to linger on a woman other than his wife was regarded as grounds for expulsion from polite society. But they were far more extensive, touching upon virtually everything that might be said or done in the company of others.

     But in private – including the privacy of a brothel – things were quite different. For example, it’s been theorized that the extreme public constraints on sexuality were in part responsible for the extent of private debauchery. However, there were certainly other factors of importance, especially the upbringings of Victorian girls to disdain sexual intimacy and to resist sexual accommodation even after marriage.

     The norm itself is the important phenomenon. Because it bound Victorian men so tightly, it became a part of their responsibilities as fathers to inculcate its seriousness in their sons. While that pattern endured, the public places of London remained remarkably peaceable despite the frictions occasioned by the intermingling of persons of all social classes and altitudes.

     As the norm lost its binding force, the streets of London grew steadily rougher. Once again, there were other factors in play, including the anomie and futurelessness that followed Britain’s disastrous experiences in World War I. Yet the weakening and ultimate disintegration of that public norm correlates well with the rise of disorder and incivility. Similar progressions can be observed in many other First World cities.

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     The most common term for observance of an agreed-upon norm is decency. Decent conduct is that which conforms to the norm and upholds it; indecent conduct flouts the norm and implies that it’s optional, arbitrary, or worse, silly.

     A society’s norms develop to protect what that society has come to value. The general attitude toward those values must be that they’re worth defending, even if no one consciously thinks of them. Whatever price the norm exacts, it will last only so long as a strong consensus holds that what it protects is even more valuable. “Decent behavior” will of course persist even once the norm has fallen, but without whatever mechanisms once enforced it, indecent behavior, whose “price” has fallen with the norm’s removal, will rise in frequency and intensity.

     And whatever values the norm was defending will find themselves threatened. Some might be destroyed completely...including in their observance in private places and times.

---

     The above thoughts were stimulated by this poignantly lyrical essay by Leslie Alexander. (Applause to Brock Townsend for the link.) Miss Alexander, “a Louisiana girl” who’s “accustomed to pleasant greetings and warmth,” finds herself in a place where the norms to which she was raised are not observed. It pains her greatly, to say the least. She yearns to return to the norms and traditions of her youth. But she senses a threat to them even in the environs of her girlhood:

     All over America, in small towns and large—but Southern towns are bigger targets—leftist transplants are scheming with dreams of transformation. They know how we should live, what our mode of transportation should be, what we should eat, how much property we should own, where we should park, how many children we should have (not many), how they should be educated, and whom we should befriend. The list is endless. There is, of course, a policy for each important item, if we could just wake up and recognize their genius.

     Read it, Gentle Reader. Please read it. Let its melancholy wash over you. Then reflect on the many norms and traditions – and what is a tradition but a norm of remembrance and honor? – the Left has attacked with intent to destroy, always under a banner of “liberation.” Reflect on what has become of social order and peace in places where the Left is in the ascendant, and what it would cost these United States should they prevail utterly.

     And do have a nice day.

The Shootings: A Requiem For Peace And Civility

     Given the events of last night, I fear we’ve lost our last chance to maintain a peaceful society. Perhaps men of good will tried but failed. Perhaps it was hopeless from the start. Now that the race war has “come out into the open,” we’ll never know.

     It certainly wasn’t the fault of the police, our “official” forces of order, who appear to have been scrupulous in their attempts to maintain the peace and order of the streets. Much odium belongs to the “protesters.” Still more belongs to their white enablers and supporters. And some, surely, should go to any American who’s watched the run-up to this outbreak and said, whether to himself or to others, “Nah, they don’t really mean it.”

     Perhaps the greatest share of the blame should go to Barack Hussein Obama. This master practitioner of the politics of identity and division has systematically acted to exculpate black perpetrators of violence at every turn – preferring to blame the deaths of five Dallas, Texas police on guns, rather than on their wielder and the evil he represents.

     There is no longer any possibility of neutrality. Decent blacks had their chance to rein in their unruly fellows. They didn’t take it. Henceforward every white American must regard every black with extreme suspicion until he can prove his bona fides. Nor can a single proof of good faith be regarded as proof in perpetuity.

     Unfortunately, it’s also incumbent upon us to distrust anyone to the left of center politically. As they’ve been enabling this nonsense for decades, there’s no way to know where their true loyalties lie.

     Once again and with much regret, events have deflected me from the topic I’d had in mind. Perhaps later.

The Fraying

     This piece will be somewhat out of the ordinary for a Fran Porretto essay here at Liberty’s Torch:

• It won’t link to any news stories.
• It won’t embed any illustrative videos.
• It won’t present a reasoned analysis of contemporary events.
• It will vibrate with unpleasant emotions, particularly anger and fear.
• It will probably contain more profanity than my usual helpings of verbiage.
• And with luck, it will be “out of my system” and not to be repeated...at least not soon.

     You have been warned.

---

     There’s a great and terrible evolution in progress in the world. You know it; I know it. Yet we do our best, day by day, not to take notice of it. We have to; if we were to allow it to impinge upon our consciousness, it would probably freeze us in place.

     Men are becoming beasts once more.

     No, not literally – and here I will pause to regret, briefly, my opening pledge not to embed a video, as the “Of Mice and Men” Monty Python sketch would be fully appropriate – but in terms of the mental and spiritual characteristics that distinguish us from the lower orders.

     Man’s mental and spiritual advantages can be summarized thus:

1. He can reason out the causes of things through observation, inference, and judicious experiment.
2. He can inhibit himself from action on moral and ethical grounds.

     Both faculties are experiencing a decline in employment. Don’t ask me for the examples I have in mind; you can find plenty for yourself. Besides, I’m bloody tired of amassing links to stories about people claiming to be the wrong sex, or puppies, or the possessors of the secret to effortless riches, or holders of a “license to rape.” Such stories are everywhere. The violence and insanity have mushroomed near to the point of being no longer exceptional.

     The blood-dimmed tide has been loosed.

     Beast-men don’t look at one another and see opportunities for collaboration or trade. Beast-men don’t seek like-minded fellows with whom to develop or advance a set of social or political ideas. Beast-men don’t create art of any kind. Beast-men are incapable of maintaining a complex technological civilization, much less advancing it.

     And the numbers of the beast-men are growing more rapidly than the numbers of the sane and civilized.

---

     Brace yourselves, Gentle Readers. I’m about to do something that will shock you. Something the bien-pensants will say is intolerant and disrespectful – of them, mostly. Something that will probably get me banned in Boston.

     I’m going to define.

     In recent years, sanity has been regarded as whatever state of mind conduces to survival within one’s chosen environment. I dislike that definition; it’s relativistic and therefore not useful to one who looks and sees widely rather than provincially. By my lights, sanity is that state of mind which accords with the reality around one.

     A sane society is one whose laws, norms, customs, and institutions align with reality and are maintained thus by the overwhelming majority of the participants.

     Civilization is a tougher nut to crack. Here’s a typical swing at it, from Princeton University’s WordNet:

     Civilization n: a society in an advanced state of social development (e.g., with complex legal and political and religious organizations.)

     I call bullshit. A civilization is a society whose ruling norm is civility: a state of affairs governed with the irreducible minimum of violence. Complexity is no way to measure civility. Indeed, it’s no way to measure anything but complexity itself.

     Sanity and civility are both retreating from American society. It should provide no salve to our self-regard to observe that we’re still doing better than the rest of the world. We’re losing what our forebears achieved and passed on to us, mostly by refusing to defend it against the lunatics and the thugs.

     While we huddle behind locked doors and distract ourselves with “Survivor” and “American Idol,” the lunatics and the thugs are taking our country from us.

---

     Part of our devolution can be attributed to the nice-guy trap. Today’s adult is less likely than ever to defend reality, civility, or common decency, in part because “common decency” has been redefined to include never uttering a sound that might offend or disturb someone else, however deranged he might be. Today’s youngsters are ruthlessly conditioned away from asserting themselves in the face of lunacy and thuggery. Against such feeble defenses, even a weak aggressor can score victory after victory.

     But part of it – possibly the larger part – arises from cowardice about one’s own perceptions and convictions: the willingness to concede even an iota of plausibility to those who blatantly contradict the realities around us. That cowardice has been nurtured in us by the Left. Having conquered the educational, journalistic, and media structures of the West, Leftists have exploited them to purvey a relativism that goes all the way to the demand that we deny the evidence of our senses rather than cause the slightest of commotions.

     Never before in human history has such a philosophy gained significant sway among men...but never before has it had the law and all the prevailing customs on its side.

---

     Feel free to ignore this tirade. I’m venting and I know it. Indeed, I told you right up front that I’d be venting, so no refunds.

     But I take some solace from the small but growing numbers of men who do call a spade a spade...when they’re not so completely exercised by the bullshit that they’re moved to call it “a fucking shovel.” I take some solace from the even smaller numbers of those who, even at risk to themselves, will stand up to the bullies and thugs, beat them back, and (in the cases I find most heartwarming) beat them down.

     I’m an old man, and an unhealthy one. I have little to contribute to the righting of our nation other than words. Hopefully my words are worth something, but I don’t delude myself that words are all it will take. The time for talk is behind us. The time for an uprising of the sane and civilized is at hand. The men remaining among us must gird themselves for battle. Unless they can beat back the beasts, confine the lunatics and definitively expunge the thugs, the already frayed rope of American civilization is guaranteed to snap.

     That’s enough for the present. It’s time for Mass. Have a nice day.

Enough Is Enough: A Sunday Tirade

     I have had it with supercilious militant atheists. It’s time to start awarding them the backs of our hands – figuratively, at least.

     Freedom of thought is the one freedom that cannot be taken away, at least until the Omnipotent State perfects artificial telepathy. And in case you haven’t noticed, the overwhelming majority of Americans believe in a Supreme Being, a.k.a. God. Even many who attend no religious services and subscribe to no recognized religion will tell you, quite candidly, that they believe in God. Their belief impacts no one else. It certainly doesn’t affect the beliefs of those who differ.

     Yet militant atheists routinely deride believers. The worst of them attempt to squelch believers’ expressions of faith. Here’s a recent and particularly odious case of such:

     September 29, 2013, is a day Lindsey and Brent Sharpton will remember forever. It’s hard to forget the day you held a miracle in your hands. But to understand the end of this story, we need to start at the beginning …

     Like most young couples, Lindsey and Brent, who live in Asheville, North Carolina, had dreamed of the day they’d add a child to their family, of precious moments when they’d kiss sweet baby cheeks and run their fingers across downy soft hair. But things didn’t go as planned. They tried for a year before doctors told them they didn’t think they could have children, so they visited a specialist and looked into various procedures they could do.

     However, it developed that this young woman could not carry a child to term. Let’s skip the intermediate material about their efforts and their attempts to adopt, and get right to the good part:

     Months went by and nothing happened – until Sept. 29, 2013, when something unusual occurred, something miraculous. Pam Ledford is women’s ministry director at the church where Brent grew up. At the end of the Sunday morning service, a church member, Tonya, walked up to Pam and said, “I know this is going to sound crazy, but I felt like God told me to bring this baby to you. It needs a home.”

     That’s the heart of the story: the couple were presented with a baby they could love and raise as their own at their church. Needless to say, they thanked God for the blessing of a child, and have continued to do so in the years since then.

     But soft! What feces-coated comment is this that through yonder website breaks?

     Whether or not you accept it, it is a fact. We have evolved from earlier species. Whether you believe in god or not.

     I agree - great story for this couple. Meanwhile my friends wife just was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer. When she reads a story like this, attributing this couple's good fortune to god, I wonder how she must feel about herself (also a believer in god).

     If you want to believe god did it, maybe it is in better taste to keep it to yourself.

     I was ready to chew girders and spit rivets. I have nothing against atheists – their faith is as unverifiable and unfalsifiable as mine – but when they posture as superior to those of us who believe, especially when they strive to make an expression of faith in God unspeakable, it brings me near to exploding.

     This is the most appalling demonstration of crudity I’ve seen in quite a while – and under the aegis of “good taste,” no less! Who authorized this...person, who clearly thinks himself both more intelligent and more mannerly than the woman he catechized, to educate the rest of us both in “fact,” which the theory of evolution is not, and in “good taste,” which he wouldn’t recognize if it were to creep up behind him and bite him on the ass?

     Before all else: the theory of evolution cannot be proved to be the genesis of Mankind, nor of anything else that currently walks, crawls, swims, or flies the Earth. Neither can it be disproved. It is a possible explanation for the variety of life we see around us, but it’s neither verifiable nor falsifiable for a simple reason: the experiment cannot be repeated. The same, of course, is true for any other possible explanation for life on Earth, including creation from scratch by God. And while we're on the subject of evolution, suppose it to be a proven fact, strictly for the sake of argument. Who shall say that God Himself didn't employ it to achieve the results He sought?

     Time was, religious persons were the forward ones. We committed many offenses against charity and humility in our relations with those who did not believe as we do. We learned better, mainly through the pain that arose from the consequences. Pain and frustration are excellent teachers...if we deign to pay attention to them.

     Today it’s the militant atheists who are the arrogant ones, the ones who’ve made it their mission to “instruct” us. The worst of them simply can’t allow any expression of faith where they can hear it or read it to go unreproved. Yet they preen themselves on their superior intellects and characters – a superiority that flows entirely from their embrace of atheism!

     Quite a resemblance to left-liberalism, eh what? I don’t think it’s a coincidence. What about you, Gentle Reader?

     It is vital that decent persons, regardless of their personal beliefs, take it upon themselves to rebuke the arrogance and discourtesy of such militants. What was wrong for us is just as wrong for them, and just as likely to result in painful consequences. Worse, considering how much comfort many take from their faith in times of trouble, deriding them for it is monumentally unkind.

     The great challenge is contriving to do this effectively, thus preserving some shred of the standard of public courtesy and civility that Americans once observed, without succumbing to the uncharity and arrogance we seek to deter. I hope my Gentle Readers have some thoughts about how to go about this, because the time has come for it.

     May God bless and keep you all...whether you believe in Him or not.

The Degraded Culture: An Explanation

     “Politics is downstream from culture.” – Andrew Breitbart

     Time was, America’s large cities were its safest places. Their residents routinely walked the streets even at night, without fear of the consequences. Assaults on the law-abiding were infrequent, and those that occurred in public would elicit an intervention by those who witnessed them.

     Time was, Americans routinely left their doors unlocked. They didn’t feel the subliminal fear most of us suffer today about being robbed or invaded. Some would even leave the car key in the ignition, for really, who would be so venal as to steal a car?

     Time was, Americans were polite toward one another, even toward those they disliked. Deliberate insults weren’t rendered in public. No one would crow audibly at an enemy’s bad fortune. There was a sense of obligation toward one’s community that expressed itself openly and naturally toward those suffering times of trouble: with casseroles, and gifts of clothing and heating oil, and occasionally with direct monetary assistance. Men rendered jobless by an economic downturn were expected to “pound the pavement” until they’d found new work. Their wives were expected to pull the oars alongside them, in whatever ways they could, to help keep the family afloat.

     Time was, Americans expected their public officials to be honest – at least, that peculation and corruption, once discovered, would be punished.

     I’m old enough to remember the tail end of those times.

     Yes, things are different today. The differences are broad and deep. Nor can they be eliminated by any simple, cleanly applied remedy. The situation calls to mind something Garet Garrett wrote about a different, but analogical situation:

     Now regard the credit reservoir as a lake fed by thousands of little community springs, and at the same time assume the point of view of a government hostile to the capitalistic system of free private enterprise. You see at once that the lake is your frustration. Why? Because so long as the people have the lake and control their own capital and can do with it as they please the government's power of enterprise will be limited, and limited either for want of capital or by the fact that private enterprise can compete with it.

     So you will want to get rid of the lake. But will you attack the lake itself? No; because even if you should pump it dry, even if you should break down the retaining hills and spill it empty, still it would appear again, either there or in another place, provided the springs continued to flow.

     [From Garrett’s essay “The Revolution Was”]

     The striking lack of fear and anxiety among Americans of that earlier time was not a primary phenomenon but a consequence: specifically, of the widespread American faith in God and belief in the obligatory nature of the Ten Commandments.

• Children’s moral education began about when they were toilet trained and explicitly incorporated their parents’ faith.
• Religious schooling was far more common than today.
• No public-school teacher dared to mock, much less condemn, Christianity or Judaism.
• Divorce was uncommon and cast a stigma upon the couple, especially if there were minor children.
• Our popular culture didn’t celebrate, promote, or otherwise tolerate departures from the general standard for moral, respectful behavior.
• When some child or teen’s public conduct merited criticism or correction, any proximate adult would step in to supply it – and the sprat’s parents wouldn’t dare to object.
• Radio and television frequently broadcast “public-service pitches” that exhorted the audience to “Go to the church of your choice,” and posited that “The family that prays together stays together.”

     I could go on, but I think the point has been established. Up to about half a century ago, the American culture was profoundly Christian. There were warts on it, of course. There was a deep distrust of atheists and agnostics, surely more than they deserved. Neighborhood gossip could ruin an individual without just cause. The few members of minority faiths often had a hard time gaining acceptance in their communities. But there was also general public tranquility: an astonishing degree of it by contemporary standards. As Rose Wilder Lane observed in The Discovery of Freedom, people’s lives and property weren’t protected by the police and the threat of discovery, indictment, and trial, but by the overwhelmingly general respect everyone felt for life and property.

     The wellspring from which that respect flowed was Christianity.

     Yet we weren’t a “preachy” people. Our Christianity was expressed in deeds rather than words. The televangelists were yet to come. Perhaps they were a reaction to the diminution of our Christian observance and ethics. It’s impossible to be sure.

     Things are certainly different today.

---

     A couple of days ago I commented on things “to be deplored.” It was a bit whimsical of me, but it was stimulated by an essay that touched a particularly sensitive nerve. It’s on my mind again this morning for two reasons.

     The first stimulant is a recent comment posted against that essay, which was about outright piracy of a writer’s work and the financial hardship he’d suffered thereby:

     I’m glad to hear the author is back in the day job market. Now maybe he’ll do something that’s actually useful rather than writing mindless SF/Fantasy books. A very good reason to get rid of fiction copyright entirely – at least some will still get written, but the practitioners will also do useful work.

     Never mind whether the commenter has ever been stolen from; that’s irrelevant. What on Earth possessed him to write something so mealy-mouthed and mean-spirited, as a comment to a subject in which he can’t possibly have an interest?

     The second is a backlash I received from a comment on this PJ Media piece. A fellow who described himself as “A Christian and so far left that when I enter the room Republicans turn into stone” ridiculed me for defending Sarah Palin, saying in closing that she “spreads hate” and therefore receives it in reply. I was dumbfounded – on what occasion has Governor Palin ever promoted or promulgated hatred? – but more by the fellow’s claim of Christianity while himself promulgating hatred of a Christian woman.

     It left me in a state better imagined than described.

---

     I’ve written before, on several subjects and in several fora, that you can’t get people to change their ways for the sake of a future they don’t expect to see. But it appears that in cultural terms at least, “the future” is now. We’ve become so degraded that nothing gets any respect. Certainly the norms of public conduct once so scrupulously observed by Americans two generations ago are no longer deemed binding. How could anyone be surprised that Rose Wilder Lane’s observation has lost so much of its force?

     How could anyone be surprised that our public streets are unsafe, that homes’ doors are now locked nearly all the time, that workers routinely steal from their employers in various ways, that men and women no longer respect one another, that first marriages are called “starter marriages and divorce is regarded as virtually unavoidable, that preteens experiment with oral sex in school bathrooms, and that while parents must live in fear of being denounced to the Child Welfare and Protection fascists, the public schools for which they’re mulcted so severely that they cannot afford any of the alternatives have become the most dangerous places any child could go?

     How could anyone be surprised that American public officials are now assumed to be liars and thieves?

     Si rationem requiris, circumspice, Gentle Reader. Where has America’s Christianity gone? Where, now that He has been judicially expelled from the public square, is Christ? Do we still honor Him and keep His Commandments? Is He even respected in the majority of our churches today?

     More anon.

The Letter And The Spirit Part 2: Moral Surgery

If you’ve been reading my drivel for any length of time, you’re probably familiar with these sentiments:

Though your Curmudgeon disbelieves in left-liberal doctrines, he believes strongly that they should be argued for -- that men of wit and knowledge should undertake to defend them with all the logic and evidence they can muster. This is important precisely because they are opposed to the ideas of freedom, the free market, inviolable individual rights to life and property, and a system of justice founded on objective law, objective evidence, and unbending rules of procedure. We must know how to defend these things logically. If we're never required to do that, we will forget why they're important, and will fail to do them justice when they're attacked by force or guile.

There is this as well: the Starkman paradigm, which accuses conservatives of sealing themselves off from facts and theses that contradict their beliefs, whether by intention or incapacity, actually puts left-liberals in far greater danger of that pitfall. It is not possible to dismiss one's opponents as either stupid or evil, yet still grapple with their contentions in full sincerity. If we on the Right are correct and the left-liberals are wrong -- it doesn't matter about what -- the left-liberals will never learn it....

Leftists have assumed their moral standing to be significantly above that of others. Over the century past, they've had to confront an avalanche of evidence that their prescriptions are less than effective; indeed, that they're utterly unwholesome, toxic to human life and happiness. Were they not to wall the evidence irretrievably out of bounds -- were they not to dismiss all arguments against their notions presumptively, as the whisperings of Satan -- the earthquakes that have toppled their political edifices would topple them from their moral pedestals as well.

So they demand to have their intellectual and moral superiority deemed unchallengeable. They exhort us to subordinate our moral and political opinions to the "experts" -- care to guess who those are? -- and to dismiss counter-evidence and counter-argument with prejudice. They seek to sweep their opponents from the field by disqualifying us morally, before battle can be joined.

Perhaps the height of irony is Hellie's conclusion that "all that left wing political writers need to do is report the truth." Clearly, if that were so, his demonization of us as conscious agents of injustice would be unnecessary, as would the campaigns of calumny the Left is conducting against anyone to the right of John Kerry.

In a way, the sentiments of Neal Starkman and Benjamin Hellie are not exceptional. It’s been a longstanding pattern for left-liberals to dismiss their political opponents as “stupid or evil.” But in light of the most recent developments in left-wing arrogance and deliberate mendacity, it’s worth revising the subject to contemplate what those attitudes allow us to infer about their moral standing...and how they live with it.

---

The “stupid or evil” pattern in leftists’ political rhetoric has only grown stronger as the years have passed. They simply can’t abandon their intimations of idiocy, venal motives, or bigotry when confronted by a dissenting conservative. Perhaps that’s because the Main Stream Media have accorded those calumnies their approval...and their promulgation, of course. Or it might be that they’ve become “grooved,” and find the habits involved too hard to break. Whatever the utilitarian case, the tactic became blatant during the Bush the Younger Administration, has continued to intensify during the Obama years, and will probably continue to strengthen should a Republican take the White House in November next year.

It hasn’t done a thing for the efficacy of their prescriptions, of course. But the combination of their slanders with the consequences of their policies casts doubt on their own intellectual and moral standing.

We must start by assuming that the left-liberal who employs “stupid or evil” rhetoric is himself neither stupid nor evil. He might be badly misinformed. He might never have acquainted himself with critical aspects of history, economics, or human nature. His own motives, despite the chaos and destruction his preferred policies have produced, might be entirely benign. All of that is possible even for an American with an advanced education and an occupation that puts him among others of diverse backgrounds and views.

Of certain things we can be sure:

1. He thinks more of his ability to gauge intelligence and judge character than is warranted.
2. If he’s familiar with the Golden Rule, he doesn’t think it applies to political discourse.
3. He’s never received the sort of verbal lambasting that would suffice to get him to doubt his premises.
4. When he confronts a conservative, he doesn’t “see” a person of equal intellectual and moral standing.

In consequence of those four conditions, he awards himself an exemption from the rules of courtesy and civility when fencing with a conservative. He doesn’t reciprocate the conservative’s assumption of mutual benevolence.

In a way this is all quite logical. Why employ reason when one faces an irrational opponent? It would be wasted, wouldn’t it? When one is assured, a priori, that to dissent from left-liberal orthodoxy implies evil motives, why grant the dissenter’s assertions and arguments the respect of sober consideration? Surely the Devil, who “can cite Scripture for his purposes,” should get absolutely no slack.

The problem, of course, is in the premises...but very few persons, once they’ve allowed themselves to assume an attitude of intellectual and moral superiority, ever dare to question the premises that underpin it.

---

I’ll allow that the assumption of intellectual and moral superiority can be a hazard for conservatives as well. Yet it doesn’t seem to be nearly as widespread, nor as venomous and unrelenting in action, on the Right as it is on the Left. Perhaps that’s because conservatives are more likely than leftists to be believing Christians, but it’s an untestable hypothesis. At any rate, we haven’t sunk nearly as far into the disease, as one can verify for oneself merely by watching the talking-head shows for a few weeks.

Yet the problem is a serious one that threatens both camps, for as Tom Kratman has told us, over time we will come to resemble our adversaries ever more strongly:

[I]t has been said more than once that you should choose enemies wisely, because you are going to become just, or at least, much like them. The corollary to this is that your enemies are also going to become very like you....

If I could speak now to our enemies, I would say: Do you kill innocent civilians for shock value? So will we learn to do, in time. Do you torture and murder prisoners? So will we. Are you composed of religious fanatics? Well, since humanistic secularism seems ill-suited to deal with you, don't be surprised if we turn to our churches and temples for the strength to defeat and destroy you. Do you randomly kill our loved ones to send us a message? Don't be surprised, then, when we begin to target your families, specifically, to send the message that our loved ones are not stationery.

Tom isn’t the first writer to note that progression:

The great strength of the totalitarian state is that it forces those who fear it to imitate it. – Adolf Hitler

Hitler imposed himself upon the world both by promoting Nazism and by forcing the democracies to become zealous, intolerant and ruthless. Communist Russia shapes both its adherents and its opponents in its own image. – Eric Hoffer

...but we’ve seldom needed to ponder the premises involved quite as much as we do today.

---

Ayn Rand made the exhortation to “Check your premises” famous, at least among persons who’ve admired her thinking. When the premise is that the person with whom you’re arguing is on a far lower intellectual and moral plane than you, such that you need not grant him the respect due a putative equal, the consequences can be disastrous:

• Persons too stupid to be reasoned with can legitimately be deceived and coerced “for their own good.”
• Persons who lack an adequate moral sense can legitimately be forcibly re-educated, confined, or eliminated “for the greater good.”
  
• Worst of all, persons who, though assumed to be your intellectual and moral inferiors, turn out to be right when you were wrong, can make you look like a fool.

I submit that it’s that last possibility that poses the greatest hazard to the body politic.

---

Once the gentleman’s code ceased to bind a significant number of persons engaged in political activism or discourse, and once enough of us who still adhere to the code lost the moral confidence required to enforce it, it became inevitable that “stupid or evil” rhetoric would proliferate. To beat it back requires a massive campaign of “moral surgery:” the willingness to reprove the behavior founded on the pernicious premises, brutally if necessary.

Of course there’s a need for this in the home, in the rearing of one’s children, but the need to do so in public, among other nominal adults, is far greater:

• Never tolerate being treated like an intellectual inferior.
• Never allow anyone to imply that your motives are venal or corrupt.
• Never allow a conversation in which the “stupid or evil” premises are visible to go unchallenged.

Wrap your good right hand around those premises and rip them out roots and all, perhaps as follows:

Miscellaneous Arrogant Leftist: [Insert some insulting statement founded on the “stupid or evil” premise here.]
Offended Conservative: Tell me, do you think I’m your intellectual inferior?

MAL: Well, no, but...
OC: Do you think I’m morally deficient?

MAL: Well, I wouldn’t say so, but...”
OC: Because what you’ve just said implies either or both. It’s extremely offensive, the sort of remark that once led to pistols at dawn. As I always assume an adult has said what he meant to say, you can continue this conversation by yourself. [Turns and strides away.]

Among other things, it’ll make you feel better than you can imagine.

Civility Watch

Say, remember being harangued about civility? About how important it is to respect the other guy’s point of view and restrict ourselves to courteous methods of disagreement? Most of that came from the Obamunists. It was especially concentrated around the shooting of Gabrielle Giffords by a creep who proved to be a deranged left-wing nut. If memory serves, it was aimed almost exclusively at those of us who dared to criticize the president or his covey of fellators. You know, at us “racists.”

Let’s have a quick survey of civility-relevant incidents of the past few days:

This one actually strikes me as positive:

Overnight, Queens' Park Rangers players observed a moment of silence on the pitch ahead of their English Premier League match against Crystal Palace in London. The team is chaired by AirAsia CEO Tony Fernandes.

The folks on that AirAsia flight probably hadn’t done anything to deserve their demises. That a soccer club should take a moment over their deaths is a nice touch, regardless of whether the CEO of AirAsia runs the club.

But that’s only the first of the morning’s entries. This one should disturb anyone familiar with the famous New Year’s Eve celebrations in Times Square:

On New Year's Eve, as the clock winds down on 2014, the powers that be will hope to be ringing in a new year that carries forward business as usual. That must not be allowed to go down because business as usual in Amerikkka includes wanton police murder of Black people. The refusal of grand juries in Ferguson and Staten Island to indict the cops who murdered Michael Brown and Eric Garner made this clear. So the powerful, beautiful and necessary outpourings that have disrupted this society's normal routine must continue and escalate on New Years Eve and into the New Year.

Kerry Picket at Breitbart adds:

The website urges protesters to bring signs, banners and whistles and links to the cities where New Years Eve celebrations should be crashed. New York, Houston, Los Angeles, New Haven, San Francisco, Cleveland, St. Louis, and Boston will endure a mass influx of anti-cop agitators.

Some protesters are already making threats for New Years Eve, according to The Gateway Pundit. One Twitter user declared: “F*ck 12 and u. PICK A sidE or die with em. #Ferguson #VonderritMyers Shawtown 211MOB New Years Eve Massacre Kill A Pig Night 12/31/2014.″

Just lovely...but perhaps not well thought out. New Yorkers have a very low tolerance for such things. City revelers are likely to greet such...protests in kind, if not worse. We shall see.

Let’s not neglect those lovable guys, the Muslims:

Three Muslim groups joined forces to organize a Saturday protest in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania invoking Koran scripture and the words of Malcolm X in announcing the “Muslims Mobilized Against Police Brutality” protest.

Muslim groups who coalesced to lead the protest charge were Muslim Wellness Foundation, Muslim Anti-Racism Collaborative, and United Muslim Masjid, a south Philadelphia mosque.

Ferguson National Response Network also promoted the Saturday demonstration. The group has promoted hundreds of protests and has been connected to Ferguson Action which recently held a “Transition and Transform” mass meeting.

Aren’t Muslims just the neatest possible addition to our melting pot? Considering that they don’t melt and never intended to?

Meanwhile, Bill de Blasio, the very first openly socialist mayor of New York City, wants you to know that the problem isn’t his policies or his pronouncements, it’s the media’s cheek in daring to report on them:

“What are you guys gonna do? Are you gonna keep dividing us?” de Blasio demanded of reporters, angry at them for daring to report the ugly behavior of certain demonstrators. You can tell from his body language that de Blasio feels the wall pressing hard against his back. He needed a scapegoat, fast, and chose one of the few institutions less respected than he is at the moment. That might not have been a smart pick, as politicians often learn when picking fights with the folks who buy ink by the barrel and pixels by the gigabyte.

To me, it appears that de Blasio, who’s already lost the support of the police, the firemen, and the municipal-employees unions, has reloaded his revolver and blown off all the toes on his other foot. But what else could we have expected from a left-wing politico who openly tried to ban horse-drawn carriages from the city so one of his cronies could seize the real estate that hosts their stables for redevelopment?

Finally, no round of vituperation would be complete without a roundhouse swipe at law-abiding firearms owners:

What country fetishizes, lionizes, valorizes, idolizes, and sacralizes guns as much as does our United States? OK, possibly Mozambique — the only country with an AK47 on its flag, but really, it's long past time to end this obsessive "My Precious" attachment of Americans to instruments of death.

This morning of Dec. 25, 2014, of the nine top stories from US Reuters, six were about shootings — four new ones and two about the national movement against shootings of citizens by police. This pandemic of sick violence, punctuated by mass killings of children, has gone on far, far too long. It is long past time to repeal the stupid Second Amendment....

Repeal the Stupid Second Amendment. Surround it, grab it, bring it in the back room, pull down the shades, and end it. OK, petition for it, get it on the ballot, and get it done by enough of the US populace, by enough people in enough states, to get it consigned to the dustbin of history.

The author of this remarkably tone-deaf editorial, which implicitly argues for the outlawing of some 80 to 100 million law-abiding Americans, is “PeaceVoice Director and teaches in the Conflict Resolution program at Portland State University in Oregon.” He clearly has no knowledge of history...or no interest in the inevitable sequel to a mass disarming of a nation’s citizenry. Or perhaps he has plans for the aftermath; most leftists imagine themselves as commissars rather than serfs. Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

Well, that’s civility for you. Why be civil toward persons you’re utterly certain are either stupid or evil? Especially as their enthusiasms are the one and only firm control on a government creeping ever nearer to open totalitarianism?

Happy New Year, Gentle Reader. Myself, I’m off to the armory. The voices have told me it’s time to clean and oil all the guns.

Otherers Part 3: A One-Sided Total War

Standards of civilized behavior are generally conceded to be falling back under heavy attack, not even mounting a rear guard for their retreat as the F-bombs and S-strafes rain down upon them. The devolution is multiply attributed, and in all likelihood cannot be isolated to a single causative influence. Only the long, melancholy, withdrawing roar is beyond dispute.

In our public discourse, we get examples of the malady such as this one:

Representative Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) decided the way to rally women against Governor Scott Walker (R-WI), who is running for reelection, was to use outrageous hyperbole making him into a Neanderthal.

“Scott Walker has given women the back of his hand,” the dipsy Dem said in Milwaukee. “I know that is stark. I know that is direct. I know that is reality.”

It’s also not true.

The Journal-Sentinel quoted her as also saying that “what Republican tea party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”

A worthy successor to Howard Dean's "I hate the Republicans and everything they stand for," eh? But it comes from a long lineage:

"It's not 'spic' or 'nigger' any more. They say 'let's cut taxes.'" -- Charles Rangel (D, NY)
"These are people who are performing genocide with a smile. They're worse than Hitler." -- Major Owens (D, NY)
"They're gonna put you all back in chains." -- Joe Biden (D, Vice President)

I can't help but compare such scrofulous behavior to an event long ago, where the combat wasn't mediated by votes but by fists.

Many persons most strongly associate legendary boxing great John L. Sullivan with his famous line "I can lick any man in the house!" Yet another story reveals something else about Sullivan, and about the times in which he lived and fought.

In 1888, Sullivan, who had been stung by criticisms of his avoidance of European contenders for his (informal) title as boxing's heavyweight champion, journeyed to Chantilly Race Track in France to box English champion Charley Mitchell. As was customary in those days, the fight took place on turf, and the contestants wore steel-spiked shoes to assure their footing. Mitchell, determined to wrest Sullivan's status from him, tried on three separate occasions to stamp on Sullivan's foot. Had he succeeded in doing so, he would have injured Sullivan grievously, possibly securing a decisive advantage. After his third attempt, Sullivan stood back for a moment, fixed Mitchell with an indignant glare, and said "Try to be a gentleman, Charley, you so-and-so." The spectators gasped, Mitchell was stung, and the bout continued without further footplay.

The contest had rules even then. As bloody and debilitating as it was -- at the end of the bout, both contestants were unrecognizable for the damage they'd done to one another, and were too tired even to lift their arms -- boxing had rules that contestants could break only at the price of public derision and humiliation.

A standard of behavior is a set of rules about what must and must not be done, and in what contexts. There may be separate standards for public and private behavior, but in each case there will be musts and must-nots. Such standards, except for penal codes, are enforced entirely by the opinion of others: their willingness to admit others to their company and to grant them their approval. Should the enforcement slacken, the standard will ultimately fail to hold.

The opinions of various microcephalic idiots notwithstanding, enforcement is necessary. The reason is simple: Barbarous behavior comes with pleasures of its own.

The pleasures of admission to civil society are considerable. Just about everyone wants access to them, if he can get it. But imagine a would-be barbarian who could have every delight civil society offers and all the pleasures of the most appallingly uncivilized behavior as well. What would hold him back from indulging himself to whatever extent he pleases?

This is the case even among the barbarously inclined who believe themselves to be intellectually and morally superior to others. They employ a more sophisticated rationale than the simple "I can get away with it, so why not?" In their conception, persons "below" them intellectually and morally deserve no consideration such as they would grant to "one of us." Such benighted ones can be treated as if they were vicious animals, entirely without incurring odium...odium, that is, from "one of us." Which is entirely adequate to explain the state of contemporary political discourse.

But no decision nor action comes free of unintended consequences. This one -- i.e., the elevation of "us" to a presumed superior plane of insight and morality -- creates an incentive structure that attracts persons whose sole aim is to share in the pleasures of barbaric speech and conduct. Such persons will flock into the public arena in ever increasing numbers, and will behave with ever decreasing restraint. Over time, the degradation becomes so pronounced that any and all standards effectively cease to operate. Which is entirely adequate to explain the state of political exchange on the World Wide Web.

There's an enormous irony in there: the behavior loosed by "one of us" becomes indistinguishable from that of persons whose intellects and moral standing would compare unfavorably to a houseplant. It seeps into every context and every sort of human intercourse. Presently society is divided into persons who wouldn't emit an opinion even at gunpoint and persons who'll say whatever pops into their heads, no matter how vicious or vulgar....and the latter, among their other sins, will presume to lecture the former about civility.

No, Gentle Reader, you're not crazy. It's the rest of the world. Engage it at your peril.

Strifings

No, that's not a misspelling.

Two remarkable articles came my way early this morning. They touch upon the same subject from different perspectives. What they reveal is critical to the quality of American life.

First, let's have some plaintive commentary from a sweet woman better known for her beauty and her acting:

What has happened in America?

When did we stop listening to those with whom we disagree? When did we stop respecting the opinions of those with whom we disagree?...

We hate — we love. There is little — or nothing — in between.

We have taken unmovable positions about everything. We’ve nailed our feet to the floor and angrily refuse to move left or right or (God forbid) to the center. There is no longer a center for anything. You are or you are not, period. End of story.

How did this happen so quickly? Why are we not talking to each other? Why do we not respect and honor the opinions of those with whom we disagree?...

Where are the Ronald Reagans and the Tip O’Neills of today? We are in desperate need of leaders who will bring us together and talk to each other, so we can all begin to talk to each other once again.

I have no doubt that many Americans are just as upset over it all as Suzanne Somers.

Now hearken to the great Photon Courier, David Foster:

One reason why American political dialog has become so unpleasant is that increasingly, everything is a political issue. Matters that are life-and-death to individuals…metaphorically life-and-death, to his financial future or the way he wants to live his life, or quite literally life-and-death…are increasingly grist for the political mill....

When everything is centralized, the temptation to deal with dissent in a draconian manner becomes overwhelming. Just as Rubashov (at that stage in his thought process) justified Stalin’s ruthless suppression of dissenters on agricultural policy, so do many American “progressives” today seek the silencing of those who disagree with their ideas. It will not be surprising if they escalate their demands to insist that dissenters should not only lose their jobs or be imprisoned, but should actually be killed.

Yet again, an "obvious" point that virtually everyone overlooks.

Politics is strife. Every subject that becomes a political subject therefore becomes a battlefield as well.

It's not hard to see the dynamic. Let some subject be politicized: for example, the physical sustenance of persons who can't support themselves, a.k.a. "the poor." What follows from the decision that this is properly a responsibility of some government?

• Decisions about "who:" i.e., what criteria shall determine who is eligible to receive sustenance.
• Decisions about "where:" Shall the State go to "the poor," or shall they be requred to come to State facilities? (i.e., outdoor vs. indoor relief systems) If the latter, where shall those facilities be situated, what should they offer, and so forth?
• Decisions about "how much" and "until when."
• Staffing decisions.
• Choices of vendors and the acceptable range of contractual arrangements.

Those are just the important ones that spring immediately to mind. Alternately, consider education:

• Who shall be taught?
• Who shall teach him?
• What shall he be taught?
• When and where shall it take place?
• To what standard of achievement shall he be held?
• What resources shall be put to this task?

And so forth. Each of these will become a subject of contention in the polity that's been charged with the decisions. Given that a political decision inherently creates "winners" and "losers," we may expect the losers to fight to reverse the decision and the "winners" to labor to solidify and enlarge their gains.

Now apply that dynamic to a society in which nothing is deemed a private matter -- where all personal choices and all modes and manners of interaction with others, regardless of motivations are considered political, at least potentially. Over what shall we not quarrel?

"The personal is the political." -- Leftist slogan

When there was general agreement on the borderline between subjects that belong in public discourse and subjects that are properly private, our combat was restricted to the former and the latter was a zone of peace. The sense that others had no license to talk about anyone's "personal business" was general, and generally respected. But candidly now: Are there any subjects that haven't been politicized in recent years? Is there anything Americans might choose to do or not do that isn't considered grist for the political mill?

The "orthodox" conservative tends to politicize matters he deems pertinent to "national security," moral choices, and cultural traditions. The "orthodox" liberal tends to politicize economic and commercial matters, which he usually extends into such realms as "labor law" and "discrimination." (To be fair, in recent years many self-nominated conservatives have recognized the importance of privacy and have striven to reintroduce it as protection against political interference, even on subjects they previously deemed fit for legislation and law enforcement. To be as fair as possible, there are some self-nominated liberals who recognize a zone of privacy, but unfortunately they keep shrinking it under pressure from those further to the left.) There isn't much of a No-Man's Land between them.

Many a head of household has declared his dinner table a "no-politics zone" precisely to avert fusillades over the pork chops. It can work, if he's firm enough and commands sufficient sway over the kids. But when every subject of consequence to anyone has been politicized, that can make family dinner an awfully quiet affair.

Worse yet, he who steeps himself in politics and political discourse will frequently find himself becoming more combative regardless of the subject or venue. That's certainly happened to me, and as much as I regret it, deplore it in myself, and pray for relief from it, that conditioned-in pugnacity can get the better of me when I'm not vigilant about holding it down. I doubt my experiences are far from the norm.

We will not be able to get along with one another until we resurrect the concept of privacy -- and even then, we will continue to quarrel over whatever remains in the political sphere, because politics is strife and can't be anything else. For maximum peace, the zone of politics should be very small, and the zone of private decision making very large. The Founding Fathers understood this, but their insight is shared by few persons of our time.

The Prideful: A Highly Personal Tirade

Probably my worst failing -- definitely my most persistent one -- is pugnacity. Eagerness to blow the bugles and charge into battle ill becomes one striving for the degree of humility appropriate to any fallible man. What has made me this way, I cannot be certain, but it seems to me that it must be coupled to another of my longstanding shortcomings: pride.

There is such a thing as just pride: sincere pride in one's achievements that makes room for the equally just pride of others. A pride that refuses to exalt oneself above one's fellows or to denigrate others of lesser attainments. There's a gray zone between that and the sort of self-worshipping pride that renders one obnoxious, but all the same it's usually possible to be certain that one is on the "right side" of that boundary.

Now, as it happens, I'm a Christian. That is, I accept the theology stated in the Nicene Creed. The code of ethics that accompanies that theology preaches against (excessive) pride as one of the seven capital sins: the seven dispositions of attitude and emotion that can easily lead one to commit a mortal sin. However, I'd like to think I'd appreciate the dangers inherent in excessive pride even without the Church to tell me so.

But not everyone appears to be aware of that danger:

So long as you believe in a magical man in the sky and that the existence of government is a necessary evil you do not get to call yourself a freedom weenie. Sorry!

That comment, attached to this essay, was of course submitted by "Anonymous." It's the reason for this screed, which is likely to be more a purgative for me than entertainment or edification for you.

---

I don't look down on anyone who declines to believe in God. I maintain that atheism is as defensible a posture as theism, for a simple reason: It's impossible to prove or disprove the existence of God. One can adduce a variety of observations as potential evidence for either position, but it will always be acceptable, for us who dwell in Time, to proclaim oneself unpersuaded by any or all of them. Proving the existence of the entity monotheists refer to as God is impossible because Man's knowledge and capabilities are finite, whereas by postulate, God's are infinite. Proving His nonexistence is impossible for an even simpler reason: proving that any individual thing does not exist is impossible.

We can prove the existence of specific categories of objects -- i.e., objects defined to possess certain characteristics -- by finding examples of them and demonstrating their possession of the characteristics demanded. Inversely, we can disprove the existence of such a category by demonstrating that the characteristics demanded contradict one another. But in the case of a hypothesized entity postulated to be:

• Unique;
• Outside our material reality;
• Omniscient;
• Omnipotent;
• Benevolently disposed toward Man;

...such tasks are simply beyond us. Indeed, they would be beyond any intelligence that dwells in Time, for God by necessity must stand outside Time itself, having created it as He created all the rest of the reality we know.

All of which makes both theism and atheism matters of faith rather than logically impregnable conclusions -- and which makes insults and denigrations founded on belief or nonbelief in God an obvious example of excessive pride.

---

Notably, the great preponderance of those who hurl insults for holding to a faith are unwilling to confront the impossibility of proving their own position. The usual exchange runs roughly as follows:

Atheist: Prove that God exists.
Theist: I can't. It's a matter of faith.
Atheist: Come on! There is no God and you know it.
Theist: You mean you know it. Can you prove it?
Atheist: I don't have to. It's obvious.
Theist: But you can't prove it, can you? I believe in God for my own reasons. I don't insist that you agree. You're the one asserting your belief as a fact that I must accept -- but you can't prove it.
Atheist: You believe in God because of your upbringing, no other reason.

Note the evasion. Nearly all of them do it. The pseudo-Objectivists are among the worst. But in some cases there comes a bombshell:

Theist: Sorry. I was raised in an atheist household. I became a Christian as an adult.
Atheist: What? Then why did you...?
Theist: We call it faith: the acceptance of a proposition without a demand for proof, for personal reasons that need not be persuasive to others. But you should be familiar with that. Atheism is a faith too.
Atheist: (Usually unprintable.)

The degree of pride that usually accompanies dogmatic atheism makes that last observation absolutely unpalatable, even though it's absolutely correct. But the blow to the dogmatic atheist's intellectual self-exaltation is impossible for him to shrug off. In short, he hasn't the necessary humility to allow it.

---

Concerning government and whether it is or isn't a "necessary evil," this too admits of a range of defensible opinions. Philosophically, anarchism -- the rejection of the necessity of formal institutions of government -- is very attractive. There have been anarchic societies that managed quite well for long periods, most notably pre-classical Sumer, medieval Ireland and medieval Iceland. However, one can argue that the conditions that made those anarchisms viable no longer exist and might never exist again. Like the existence of God, it's an argument that cannot be settled.

Among the more interesting aspects of the debate are these:

• A government need not exist for some specific minimum length of time.
• Neither does it need to cover some specific minimum area on the globe.
• Neither does it have to adhere to some specific set of processes for reaching its decisions and actions.
• Neither -- and this is the hardest part to accept -- does it have to concern itself with justice.

A government is an entity which possesses the privilege of wielding force and the threat of force against individuals and other organizations, and which is pre-indemnified for doing so, over a delimited group of persons, or a delimited region of space, or both. But a lynch mob possesses all those characteristics. So also does a vigilance committee. Indeed, though we could argue the case of the Mafia for decades, it is well established that in several American cities the Mafia was for decades more important to the administration of justice than the "real" government.

Clearly, not everyone would willingly bestow the title of government on lynch mobs, vigilance committees, or urban organized crime families. Yet all these exhibit the defining characteristics of governments, at least in some region and for some interval. Since such organizations don't have a constitutional or other formal basis, I maintain that arbitrarily denying them the title is merely an expression of provincialism: a baseless attachment to relatively recent forms and conventions which would never have troubled those who ruled over most of Man's recorded history.

Accordingly, if you dislike "necessary evil," try "inevitable," though I doubt it will improve the flavor.

---

I don't expect everyone to agree with the logic of the arguments above; there aren't that many skilled logicians in the world, and few of them bother to read Liberty's Torch. But I'd rather not have my still troublesome tendency to scream and leap (see below) evoked by cowards who have nothing to offer but insults. It's bad for my blood pressure, which I have to watch carefully these days.

So, "Anonymous" who thinks himself smarter and more realistic than me: All you have done is flick me on the raw and compel me to demonstrate why I consider you an arrogant idiot. Nevertheless, Christ has told us to take pity on the less fortunate we find in our path. Therefore, I'll be praying for you. I hope it helps.

"It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt." -- Multiply attributed

    "Louis Gridley Wu, I found your challenge verbose. In challenging a Kzin, a simple scream of rage is sufficient. You scream and you leap."
    "You scream and you leap," Louis said. "Great."

[Larry Niven, Ringworld.]

Keeping The Hate Alive

My word, the things that turn up in the referrer log!

I'm essentially a nobody in the world of fiction. Yes, I write, but I self-publish. I have a substantial number of readers -- about 100,000 readers, if I can believe my sales figures -- but as an "indie," I'm considered a non-entity by writers (and associations thereof) who've gone to press through the conventional route: i.e., through Pub World. So it surprises me to get attention from such sites as this, especially about a contretemps that's nearly a year old. Give it a glimpse if you have a strong stomach.

Remarkable, isn't it? All that vitriol. All those collectivist, gender-war-feminist tropes. All the hatred for Mike Resnick and Barry Malzberg, two old men with long and distinguished careers behind them. And over what? It appears to concern the following mortal sins against political correctness:

• Referring to female writers and editors as "lady writers" and "lady editors;"
• Making note of how attractive one particular lady editor was / is.

These don't seem to me like hanging offenses. Yet the shrieking is still going on a year later. Nastiness aside, if viewed analytically, with attention to other developments in contemporary political discourse, it tells us quite a lot.

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"The worst thing you can do to the liberals is to deprive them of their grievances." -- Bill Moyers, at the 1980 Democratic National Convention

Left-liberal / "progressive" politics -- I know, I know; it's neither genuinely liberal nor at all interested in progress -- is collectivist politics. Its core strategy is a strategy of division:

• Identify groups with a characteristic important to their identity;
• Search for interests that are common to the members of those groups;
• Elevate the incomplete satisfaction of those interests to group grievances;
• Even if wildly inappropriate, demand political remediation of those grievances.

Such groups can be assembled into a coalition that makes the Left politically formidable. It's allowed the Democrat Party to maintain major-party status despite the total and unconcealed failure of its policy prescriptions whenever and wherever they've been put into practice. But the failures have a weight of their own...a weight that presses upon the coalition in a fashion that can only be mitigated in one way:

Forbid any discussion of them.

Until the Left manages to seize totalitarian control of these United States, such "forbidding" will consist of the sort of vituperation and vilification the linked article exemplifies. The intent is clear enough: those who dare to offend against some Leftist mascot-group's grievances must be intimidated into abject apology and subsequent silence. The only voices permitted are those that are in perfect accord with the Left.

The process is greatly assisted by the tendency of persons with common occupations or avocations to assemble groups that can be taken over by persons with a political agenda. There's a form of Gresham's Law that functions here: A group that equally values its most civilized members and its most vitriolic members will soon possess a preponderance of the latter. The good, self-respecting members will disdain to remain among persons who hurl insults and epithets at them, leaving the group populated by only the insult-hurlers, plus a smattering of generally decent persons with inadequate self-respect.

The progression won't stop there. Such a group, now dominated by "the worst of the worst," will gradually fail to return an adequate "profit" -- in money, volunteer labor, prestige, fellowship, or anything else one might value -- to its members, most especially those who've taken control of it. The typical response to such enervation is for the leaders to strive to whip up the enthusiasm of the group by artificial means; i.e., to "keep the hate alive."

At this time, the viragoes who've agitated for a purge of the Science Fiction Writers of America, to rid it of naughty male language, and thus to extirpate naughty male thoughts, are attempting just that. Nor are they the only ones determined to forbid men to speak as they prefer.

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"Don't you see that the whole aim of Newspeak is to narrow the range of thought? In the end we shall make thoughtcrime literally impossible, because there will be no words in which to express it." -- Syme, in George Orwell's 1984

We haven't had Newspeak fastened upon us quite yet, but we do have a great many shamans, quite a few would-be shamans, and no shortage of adjunct shamans who have taken to anathematizing one word after another. My irritation at such persons is the reason for many of the words and phrases I use commonly; it's vital to the continued freedom of speech and thought that they be defeated at this contest.

So it is with the SFWA viragoes. Whatever success they have in "cleansing" SFWA will prove self-defeating. If they persist, it will degenerate to a backwater, an occupationally-oriented sewing circle of gender-war-feminist self-and-mutual-congratulation that bears no relevance to science fiction, its quality, or its popularity. But that's all secondary to the core mission of keeping the hate alive.

The larger point should be obvious: Wherever they're found, such agitators must not be permitted to impose their preferred Newspeak on us "by the back door." Most important of all, I maintain that the whip-wielders are more interested in cementing themselves into power than they are with anyone's sense of grievance. The most important datum in this regard is the wholesale acceptance of female writers and editors in the genre by the only contingent that truly matters: paying customers.

If there were any authentic prejudice among genre consumers against "the ladies," they wouldn't be selling so many books. They wouldn't have come to dominate the shelves at Barnes & Noble. That alone is sufficient to demonstrate the vapidity of their grievance: The market has already deprived them of it.

(What cruelty!)

Ultimately, the whole affair is about self-respect. If you have it, you'll avoid such persons, and the groups they dominate, without having to think about it. Inasmuch as it's a clear demonstration of Robert Conquest's Second Law of Politics, the implications could hardly be clearer:

Don't Be A Joiner!

CPAC, 2016, And Pseudo-Conservatives' Viciousness

No, I didn't attend the recent Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC). I don't go to conferences of any sort; I develop all sorts of tics and socially unacceptable behaviors when compelled to endure the company of more than four persons at a time. But I did follow developments there...and the reactions of nominally conservative persons to what might be the most significant of news items from there.

In the convention-closing straw poll of possible Republican nominees for president in the 2016 election, Senator Rand Paul (R, KY) handily outdistanced the field, garnering nearly thrice the votes of second-place finisher Senator Ted Cruz (R, TX). Even though such straw polls are of only tenuous relevance to a nominating convention more than two years distant, the result has evoked considerable commentary from interested parties. Some of that commentary, to put it mildly, has been both stupid and hateful.

In response to this Roger Simon column, in which he expresses both interest in and (otherwise) general approval for Senator Paul, we find this clinker:

Unfortunately for Paul, in this area in particular he is in a position where the most minor of his tea leaves will be read. I was concerned, for example, that he referenced lyrics by Pink Floyd, and therefore Roger Waters, in his CPAC speech, when Waters has been closely associated with the anti-Semitic BDS movement in the last few years. I sincerely hope this was a mistake or an oversight.

Gentle Reader, I've seen a great deal of foolishness in my travels through American politics, but this imputation of guilt by rock-lyric association has added a new page to the book. Worse, the early comments to Simon's column focus almost exclusively upon this ridiculous intimation of anti-Semitism. Worst of all, several of those commenters added to Simon's fatuous worries over rock lyrics the seemingly mortal sin of Senator Paul's choice of a father: retired Congressman Ron Paul, who was frequently slandered as an anti-Semite on guilt-by-association grounds.

No one can produce even a single statement from Senator Paul that can credibly be interpreted as anti-Semitic or hostile to the future of Israel. So those who want to diminish his stature among potential presidential candidates must resort to this sort of idiocy. But what's the real issue?

Senator Paul does oppose foreign aid as outside the Constitutional powers of Congress. He's openly called for the gradual phasing-out of all foreign aid, regardless of the recipient. Israel does receive foreign aid from the U.S., largely in the form of purchase credits for American-made military goods. Thus, when Israel procures such goods from American defense companies, the bill is paid, in part, from the U.S. Treasury. And of course, the defense companies on the receiving end of those dollars are very happy to get them, and would like to go on getting them.

Le's not forget, amid the torrents of Democrat cronyism and corporatism we've endured these past five years, about Republican cronyism and corporatism. There might be somewhat less of it; it might be focused mainly on military matters; it might even be partly defensible, if we allow the defenders certain dubious postulates about contemporary military needs and international tensions. All the same, it exists, and it bears the same moral and utilitarian taints as the Democrats' variety.

Does any Gentle Reader think that might just have a connection to these attempts to paint Senator Paul as a closet anti-Semite?

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I make no secret of it: I feel a great contempt for persons who vent caustic opinions onto the Web from behind pseudonyms or anonymizing monikers. I have never done so, and I never will, because I stand behind my own words. I want to be associated with them. This is most important on those occasions when I'm proved wrong, because I consider it a moral obligation to admit to my mistakes.

Nearly all the comments imputing anti-Semitism to Senator Rand Paul are made from the shelter of anonymity. This is a vicious and indefensible practice. Indeed, it would be no better were the target some scrofulous leftist. He who imputes evil motives or deeds to another should be willing to do so openly, that he might be compelled to prove his case or apologize, and perhaps pay damages. But in our day, the notions of justice and civility having been battered into whimpering submission to the demands of political combat, the anonymity afforded by the Web makes this sort of thing de rigueur.

That supposed conservatives should be doing such things is worse than disgusting. It's to be expected from the Left, whose morality reduces to do anything to win. But conservatives routinely proclaim an attachment to traditional moral norms about the treatment of others. Surely that includes not bearing false witness, especially about someone with whom they're not personally acquainted. Such persons deserve to be publicly stripped naked and flogged, that they might experience some of the pain they inflict upon those whose reputations they besmirch and whose prospects they undermine.

Yes, I stand behind those words as well. Make of them what you wish.

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It's certain that we'll see more of this. We can expect the Left to deploy all its forces against whichever Republican candidate moves to the front of the pack. We can also expect intra-party sniping, as each candidate jockeys for position against the others. All of that is to be expected, given the state of politics in this year of Our Lord 2014. But for conservatives to fling accusations of racism or anti-Semitism at other conservatives, without the best imaginable substantiation, should be grounds for ostracism, at minimum until the offender learns the error of his ways and publicly apologizes for them.

If we want the general public to prefer us to the Left, we'd be well advised to leave such scurrilities to the Left. To do otherwise is self-destructive madness.

Assorted

Yes, yes, I know it’s neither Tuesday nor Friday, but...well...!

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1. More Than Coincidence?

Have a few monitory tidbits from Freedom Outpost:

#21 The U.S. government has spent an astounding 3.7 trillion dollars on welfare programs over the past five years.

#31 If you assume that the labor force participation rate in the U.S. is at the long-term average, the unemployment rate in the United States would actually be 11.5 percent instead of 7 percent.

#47 After accounting for inflation, 40 percent of all U.S. workers are making less than what a full-time minimum wage worker made back in 1968.

#48 When Barack Obama took office, the average duration of unemployment in this country was 19.8 weeks. Today, it is 37.2 weeks.

#63 Back in 1950, more than 80 percent of all men in the United States had jobs. Today, less than 65 percent of all men in the United States have jobs.

#82 Back in 1972, 46 percent of all Americans believed that “most people can be trusted”. Today, only 32 percent of all Americans believe that “most people can be trusted”.

We are being impoverished, made into clients of the State, and driven apart from one another -- simultaneously. Does it matter at all whether this is the intended outcome?

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2. Civility Watch.

Apparently, the newest Obamunist hire, John Podesta, doesn’t like conservatives or Republicans and doesn’t care who knows it:

Today, Politico confirmed that governing-by-executive-fiat is exactly what Podesta has in mind. The only shocking part of the story is Podesta's justification for shredding the Constitution:

In effect, I was told, it represents the clearest sign to date of the administration’s interest in shifting the paradigm of Obama’s presidency through the forceful, unapologetic and occasionally provocative application of White House power. Podesta, whose official mandate includes enforcement of numerous executive orders on emissions and the environment, suggested as much when he spoke with me earlier this fall about Obama’s team. “They need to focus on executive action given that they are facing a second term against a cult worthy of Jonestown in charge of one of the houses of Congress,” he told me.

That's right. Obama's new counselor, the man in charge of saving his presidency, believes the Republican Party is a murderous cult and that this justifies Obama's extra-constitutional use of executive power.

Let’s have a few pictures of Podesta’s face with a crosshairs over it and see how he, his masters, and his buddies in the media react.

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3. Did You Really Believe It’s Just A Myth?

The 2012 presidential election wasn’t one of the very closest in American history – Hayes v Tilden was a lot closer, as was Bush v. Gore – but one side definitely did what it could to widen its margin of victory:

Ohio Secretary of State Jon Husted announced Wednesday that his office found 17 non-citizens illegally cast ballots in the 2012 presidential election -- and has referred the case for possible prosecution....

"I have a responsibility to uphold election law, and under both federal and state law you must be a citizen to vote," said Husted, a Republican who has aggressively tried to investigate voter fraud cases in his state....

As part of Ohio's efforts to clean up the voting rolls, election officials discovered that more than 257,000 dead people were still listed as active voters. Their names and status, Husted said, have since been removed.

In addition, election authorities note they have drastically reduced the number of duplicate registrations, from 340,000 in 2011 to just four this past November -- and that more than 370,000 Ohio voters who have moved have been contacted to update their voting information.

Remember that the federal Department of Justice, under that great American Eric “A Nation of Cowards” Holder, did its best to prevent the cleansing of illegitimate entries from the states’ voters’ rolls before the 2012 elections.

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4. Beware The Enraged Pansy!

When Duck Dynasty’s Phil Robertson said the following:

“It seems like, to me, a woman’s vagina would be more desirable than a man’s anus. That’s just me,” Robertson told the magazine. “I’m just thinking: There’s more there! She’s got more to offer. I mean, come on, dudes! You know what I’m saying? But hey, sin: It’s not logical, my man. It’s just not logical.”

When the reporter asked Robertson what he found sinful, he said “Start with homosexual behavior and just morph out from there. Bestiality, sleeping around with this woman and that woman and that woman and those men.”

The self-proclaimed religious convert then went on to paraphrase Corinthians: “Don’t be deceived. Neither the adulterers, the idolaters, the male prostitutes, the homosexual offenders, the greedy, the drunkards, the slanderers, the swindlers—they won’t inherit the kingdom of God. Don’t deceive yourself. It’s not right.”

...many commentators noted that the Arts & Entertainment network, which is heavily supported by homosexual-activist groups, would be put under intense pressure to penalize him.

Well, looky here:

On December 18th A&E suspended Duck Dynasty patriarch Phil Robertson "indefinitely" for comments he made regarding his views on homosexuality.

The comments came during an interview appearing in the January issue of GQ magazine.

According to the Chicago Tribune, A&E released the following statement in response: "We are extremely disappointed to have read Phil Robertson's comments in GQ, which are based on his own personal beliefs and are not reflected in the series Duck Dynasty."

Duck Dynasty is the most popular show on television today. You’d think that would lend its stars a certain amount of clout. Apparently those Panjandrums of Sodomitic Perversion, the American Association of Fudge-Packers and Meat-Smokers -- i.e., the homosexual-activist groups -- are stronger. There’s a lesson in there, somewhere.

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5. Stick To The Scripts You’re Handed, Sweetie.

Cate Blanchett is a gifted actress, a beautiful woman...and a complete and total air-head:

Cate Blanchett, who is paid a reported $10 million to appear in perfume advertisements, would like to discuss the sacrifices made by herself and other planet-saving celebrities:

We need to keep switching up the language around climate change. For so long we’ve talked about sacrifice and people get discredited for what they haven’t given up. [Celebrities] get criticised for taking flights, but the truth is someone like Leo [DiCaprio] takes fewer flights than he’s asked to. If we want it to stay on the radar, we need to focus on the fact there’s a lot of opportunity.

We truly do not appreciate their suffering.

Miss Blanchett is entitled to her opinions, but apparently she doesn’t have enough mental horsepower to recognize the damage her comments are doing to the very cause she champions. Well, if actors were brainy, they’d be quantum physicists, right? Right?

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That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. Good night and have a pleasant tomorrow.