The Blindness Of The Secular

     “It’s your own blindness that deludes you,” Jamethon said. “You see nothing, and so believe no man can see. Our Lord is not just a name, but all things.” [Gordon R. Dickson, Soldier, Ask Not]

     I’ve known people, including some reasonably intelligent people, who actually became offended at any mention of God, faith, or religion. One particularly memorable example was an arrogant fellow who was forever prattling about his own achievements. He would actually interrupt a conversation between others to announce his disapproval of a belief in God. While it didn’t sit well with me, I forbore to engage him about it, figuring that the Holy Spirit needs more time to work on some than on others.

     It’s a kind of closed-off-edness: a rejection of the possibility that there may be more than our senses and our unaided reason can encompass. There’s very little one can say to someone who has precluded such possibilities. Indeed, it might be a grievous mistake to try.

     Yet measured in terms of what it has animated, faith is the strongest force known among men. You might have to squint a bit to see some of its achievements, but once you’ve seen them, they can never again escape your notice.

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     My late friend Joe sought on two occasions to introduce me to people he saw as kindred spirits. One of them was John Whitehead of the Rutherford Institute. Whitehead and I never met, though I did acquaint myself with his work, much of which is exceedingly impressive.

     Today, via ZeroHedge, my attention was drawn to this Whitehead essay. In it, Whitehead makes several references and comparisons to one of my all-time favorite video productions: Patrick McGoohan’s The Prisoner. He also cites this little-known statement by McGoohan himself:

     Think for yourself. Be an individual. As McGoohan commented in 1968, “At this moment individuals are being drained of their personalities and being brainwashed into slaves… As long as people feel something, that’s the great thing. It’s when they are walking around not thinking and not feeling, that’s tough. When you get a mob like that, you can turn them into the sort of gang that Hitler had.”

     Yet it’s difficult to see the connection between this pithy observation and the central thesis of Whitehead’s essay, which is “the panopticon:” the overwhelmingly successful efforts of the State to be not only Omnipotent but Omnipresent and Omniscient: to be all that anyone sees or hears, and to see, hear, and record everything every last individual says or does:

     Government eyes are watching you.

     They see your every move: what you read, how much you spend, where you go, with whom you interact, when you wake up in the morning, what you’re watching on television and reading on the internet.

     Every move you make is being monitored, mined for data, crunched, and tabulated in order to amass a profile of who you are, what makes you tick, and how best to control you when and if it becomes necessary to bring you in line.

     When the government sees all and knows all and has an abundance of laws to render even the most seemingly upstanding citizen a criminal and lawbreaker, then the old adage that you’ve got nothing to worry about if you’ve got nothing to hide no longer applies.

     This government effort to be all-knowing proceeds in collaboration with the technological masters of the digital realm and those who exploit our dependence on it for information and entertainment. The collaborators get away with it by being “water to a fish:” so ubiquitous as to become our whole environment, rather than merely one feature of it.

     Whitehead is quite correct that this is anathema to individuality. However, to see the connection in all its horror requires something more than awareness of the problem.

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     I’ve written on several occasions about the importance of distinguishing between what you are – your human nature, which you share with all of us – and who you are – your individual identity, personality, and character. Individuation requires the formation and conservation of something entirely secular persons seldom think about: an interior life properly partitioned off from the external environment. Without such a realm into which one can retreat for reflection and the drawing of life-critical lessons, the external environment acquires complete control.

     Success by the Omnipotent State and its nominally non-political collaborators requires the elimination of the interior life, or its reduction to a husk of no importance. To expand:

• What we do must continually be engaged with the State or its collaborators;
• What we think about must be dominated by State-approved channels of communication and entertainment;
• What we decide must never arise from the interior life: i.e., from private ponderings or the promptings of conscience.

     This seems “obvious,” doesn’t it? Yet the bombardment of our senses with unending political and commercial messages, day in and day out, is in large measure an attempt to distract us from it. Thou shalt focus on our messages, and the goodies we parade before thee, to the exclusion of all else.

     But to the resolutely secular mind, the exterior world is all there is. Whatever reason there is for continuing on must lie in it: its necessities, its imperatives, its satisfactions and diversions. No question of higher or unseen things ever occurs to such a person. At every encounter he will thrust it away as “a meaningless distraction” from the “real world” that he can see, hear, and spend his wages on. For surely the “real world” is all that “really” matters.

     While a completely secular person can have an interior life, it will inevitably be overshadowed in significance by the beckonings of the “real world” around him.

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     I began this tirade with some observations about persons hostile to God, faith, and religion. It’s to there – and to Patrick McGoohan and The Prisoner — that I shall now return.

     In a discussion of a bit of my fiction, I recently wrote to a friend that:

     There is nothing for Mankind that isn’t part of one of two realms: Reason, and Faith. We are unequipped to cope with matters that neither of those two facilities can address. Everything I write grapples with the opportunities and challenges of both, as I’m sure you’re aware. Yes, I create heroes, some of them so massively improbable that they make Superman look like John Q. Public, but that’s because they’re my “solution to the simultaneous equations.” One who has the powers of Reason can solve mighty problems…but without Faith he can never penetrate beneath his premises, assuming he even realizes he has premises. One who has the foundation of Faith has a firm foothold upon life, something that will sustain him regardless of his travails…but without Reason he will be helpless before life’s challenges, even the smallest of them. But one who has truly mastered both Reason and Faith is prepared for anything.

     He who has mastered both Reason and Faith possesses an armor against deception, distraction, and delusion that nothing can breach. He has achieved the ultimate in individuation. His interior life is safe from being overwhelmed by The World – and a mighty thing that is, for The World – in John Whitehead’s formulation, “the panopticon” – is one of the three great sources of temptation away from the dictates of conscience.

     In this essay for PJ Media about The Prisoner, I wrote:

     McGoohan's perspective on freedom-as-myth partakes critically of the concept of purposeful self-command as the negation of freedom. This is underlined by contrast: through the condemnation, in the final episode, of Number 48 -- "uncoordinated youth; rebelling against nothing it can define," -- and Number 2 (Leo McKern) -- "an established member, turning upon and biting the hand that feeds him."' For all revolts against control will be either thematic or unthematic. In the former case, the rebel defies an external locus of control; in the latter, there is none. The sole unaddressed alternative is internal control: self-command in obedience to values and priorities one enforces upon oneself....

     In this connection I will note something most commentators on The Prisoner have neglected to consider: the influence of McGoohan's lifelong Catholicism. The Catholic faith emphasizes self-command as do few others. We are encouraged to develop it early and to strengthen it at every opportunity, that it will serve us against the temptations of temporal life. From that perspective, individual freedom, though not precisely a myth, is nevertheless an ambiguous thing: a panorama of opportunities to do well or ill. Self-command equips us to choose the former and decline the latter, even when the former is stark and difficult while the latter promises endless delights.

     To insist on self-command -- Catholics call this a well-formed conscience -- is to impose an authority upon oneself to whom no excuses for deviation can ever be convincing. For it is the cameras of that Village inside us that we can never escape nor evade. Note that when Number Six has just been shouted down by "the delegates" to whom he'd attempted to explain the ethical grounds for his "rebellion" against the Village and its conditioners, he is introduced at last to the long-sought Number One, and finds himself staring at his double.

     One’s capacity for self-command – i.e., to hear and obey the voice of one’s conscience – is an expression of his interior life. Indeed, nothing else could express it nearly as well. To reject the enticements of The World in obedience to the conscience is the ultimate assertion of individual freedom, and of individuality itself:

I will not be pushed, filed, stamped, indexed, briefed, debriefed, or numbered.
I am not a number; I am a free man.
I shall not be turned from the way I have chosen.

     And who shall say, with complete confidence, that the conscience – the “knowing with” that operates even when we strive most determinedly to ignore it – is not the voice of God? The resolute secularist will attempt to dismiss the notion by referring to “religious indoctrination” or “early conditioning.” Yet men who’ve known neither of those influences have heard the voice of conscience. It appears to be the one element of the interior life that no one can squelch.

     Which brings me to the only fitting conclusion for this essay:

O come, let us sing unto the LORD:
Let us make a joyful noise to the rock of our salvation.
Let us come before his presence with thanksgiving,
And make a joyful noise unto him with psalms.
For the LORD is a great God, and a great King above all gods.
In his hand are the deep places of the earth:
The strength of the hills is his also.
The sea is his, and he made it: and his hands formed the dry land.
O come, let us worship and bow down:
Let us kneel before the LORD our maker.
For he is our God;
And we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand.
Today if ye will hear his voice, harden not your heart, as in the provocation,
And as in the day of temptation in the wilderness:
When your fathers tempted me, proved me, and saw my work.
Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said,
It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways:
Unto whom I sware in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.

[Psalm 95]

     May God bless and keep you all.

Masculinity And Individualism

     This piece at Ace’s place got me thinking:

     President Trump is their worst nightmare of an Alpha Male; he gets the hot chicks, he has lots of money, he is physically imposing, and worst of all, he doesn't run away from a fight the way they were taught by their mothers. That's why they snipe at him behind the anonymity of Twitter, and the protection of the crowd during press conferences.

     But deep down in their frightened and intimidated hearts, they know that Donald Trump and his immense shock of hair would punch the bully and bang the prom queen...and they wouldn't and couldn't.

     Alpha-male masculinity has been condemned by the Left for several decades. And of course, they’ll have no truck with my notions about the manly virtues. That’s threatening stuff. It proclaims an absolute standard of right and wrong. Worse, it locates the responsibility for publicly upholding that standard in folks with Y chromosomes: men. I dealt women out of that game – as I intended.

     If you ever hear someone use the phrase testosterone poisoning, you’ll know the utterer is a leftist. Testosterone is the quintessential male hormone, responsible for masculine initiative, drive, and aggression. Without it, a man will get nowhere.

     Note that initiative, drive, and aggression are individualistic qualities. They don’t animate groups; they animate individual men in their individual circumstances. The Left, which hates individualism even more than it hates traditional masculinity, is forever promoting the very opposite – “consensus” – while concealing an all-important fact:

If an issue is to be decided by “consensus,” it is the strongest and most determined personality who will determine the course of events.

     Sometimes that’s a mannish woman – a virago, a mockery of the feminine virtues — and sometimes it’s a man (if there are any men in the vicinity willing to take command in such a context).

     “Consensuses” don’t lead. Individual leaders do...and such leaders, both historically and in today’s milieu, are overwhelmingly male. Exceptions are few and notable.

     At this time America has a masculine, individualistic, alpha male for its president. We’re fortunate in that, especially considering that the alternative was Hillary Rodham Clinton. But on November 3, the Left intends that he be displaced by a womanish, mentally deteriorated, boughten creature of the Establishment, who would be operated thereafter like a marionette in furthering the Left’s anti-American agenda. If that comparison doesn’t make the magnitude of the stakes crystal clear, I can’t imagine what would do it.

The Individualist Collectivist

     Once in a great while, someone asks me a question that deserves its own article. It happened fairly recently, and I’ve been chewing over the appropriate treatment ever since.

     The question, as best I can recall it, ran thus:

     “You’ve embraced all these ugly collectivist labels: racist, sexist, Islamophobe, and so on, but you also call yourself an individualist. How does that work?”

     That question, asked with no trace of the “Hah! Gotcha!” attitude that it would carry from the lips of an adversary, brought a broad smile to my face. The recognition of the apparent contradiction involved indicated that the asker is open to the possibility of new knowledge. However, rather than answer it at once in the compressed fashion that a conversation-on-the-run would demand, I asked my interlocutor to be patient with me: “I’ll get back to you.”

     And here I am to do that very thing.

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     In discussions over politics and related subjects, it’s supremely important never, ever to assume any shred of the responsibility for other people’s preconceptions. I made use of that notion in a different context in Polymath:

     Presently Todd said “You think I talk too much, don’t you?”
     Redmond, caught in mid-bite, gave himself a few seconds to chew and swallow. He set his slice of pizza down carefully and caught Todd’s eyes with his own.
     “I can see why you might think so, but no, not really.” The engineer’s expression grew pained. He appeared to be casting about for words. “It’s more...well, forgive me, Todd, but every now and then you say something that would be better lived than said.”
     Todd peered at Redmond in confusion. “I don’t follow you.”
     Redmond’s look of chagrin deepened. “Todd, these days there are very few people who really can do all they say they can do. That includes most of the most capable people alive today. There’s a notion going around that self-promotion is expected, even demanded of us. That it’s not enough to be good, that we have to constantly talk ourselves up so that everyone will know we’re good, and so people who already know it can’t possibly forget it. You know what comes of that when your ordinary human fallibility gets its vote in?”
     Todd bit his lip. “I can guess.”
     “I’m sure you can.” Redmond shook his head bemusedly. “So why can’t anyone else? Reticence about your abilities is a better policy no matter how confident you are about them for precisely that reason. Don’t trumpet them; simply use them. Others will notice, and they’ll notice your taciturnity as well. They’ll start to speculate about what you can do that they haven’t seen yet, always in your favor. It’ll do more for your reputation than any amount of bragging or any number of PR agents.”
     Todd mused over it in silence for a few seconds before a realization struck him. He opened his eyes wide and jabbed an index finger at Redmond. The engineer’s eyebrows rose in surprise. “Hah! Gotcha!”
     “What? What do you—”
     “That gets people thinking that you can do anything, that you have no limitations at all. But everyone has limitations. So what happens when his legions of admirers discover that Louis Redmond can’t leap tall buildings in a single bound?”
     A delighted grin spread across Redmond’s face for the second time that day. “That’s the fun part, Todd. You don’t say a word. You just give them this look. You make it say ‘Where on Earth did you get such a crazy notion?’ You shake your head a little, and you walk away. And your reputation gets better still.”
     Todd’s mouth dropped open. “You’re a manipulator.”
     “Absolutely not. I just prefer to let other people reach their own conclusions.”
     “And their own illusions, too.”
     “Especially those. Why would I want to be responsible for them?”

     Preconceptions can be murder. If you assume anything about your conversational partner (or if he assumes anything about you), it had better be accurate. The terrible damage that’s been done to our language, especially the terms we use in discussing politics and the things relevant to it, has made conversations about them, even conversations with good friends begun in total innocence, into a minefield, largely because of the preconceptions associated with those terms.

     Consider the terms racist and sexist. What do they really mean? Some time ago I allowed that under the current [ab]usage, I qualify as a racist and a sexist. But note the specifics – originally set forth in this essay — and ask yourself whether you would use those terms in that fashion:

     Before we proceed, allow me to state a few things very, very plainly.

1. I am a Caucasian of Irish and Italian descent, whose parents were immigrants from those lands.
2. My loyalties are to my family and the United States of America. I would defend either or both to the death. Apart from a mortgage and a car loan, I owe nothing else to anyone.
3. What matters most to me about others is their character: their willingness to respect the rights of others and to discharge their proper responsibilities, without whining about any of it.
4. I believe that there is an American culture, and that it is infinitely superior to all the other cultures of the world, past or present. More, I believe that Americans are the finest people in the world -- that no other land produces anything remotely comparable to our general standard of decency, justice, generosity, or good humor.
5. I believe that the races, as conventionally defined, differ in various ways. The importance of those differences is topical and contextual.
6. I believe that the sexes differ in various ways. As with racial differences, the importance of those differences is topical and contextual.
7. I believe that homosexual sodomy is self-destructive, but that, at least in certain cases, sexual orientation can be changed.
8. I believe that there is such a thing as general intelligence, that it is at least partly inherited, and that it varies widely.
9. I believe that the handicapped should receive our sympathy and compassion as individuals to other individuals, but that they are not entitled to more as a matter of right.
10. I believe that laws that mandate preferred treatment for the members of any group, however defined, are both unConstitutional and destructive.
11. I hold these convictions not because anyone else holds them, but because the evidence of my senses and my own powers of reasoning have led me to them.

     According to the major taboos of our time, this makes me a racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic chauvinist abuser of the physically challenged. By copping to all this, I've violated all the major, politically correct taboos of our time: about race, gender, sexual orientation, the handicapped, and multiculturalism. Needless to say, the enforcers of those taboos would like to see me boiled in oil.

     They can dip their outrage in beaten eggs, roll it in crushed walnuts, and shove it up their asses.

     See Items #5 and #6 specifically: I believe there are statistical differences among the races and between the sexes. Actually, I don’t merely believe it; I know it. Those differences have manifested themselves in various observable patterns. The patterns are available for anyone to study and contemplate. But under current conditions, merely to note the existence of the patterns, much less to suggest that race and sex might have a causal connection to them, will get you called racist and sexist more often than not. Don’t take my word for it; ask John Derbyshire or Charles Murray.

     John Derbyshire’s treatment of the matter as it pertains to race is characteristically well considered and well phrased:

     (4) The default principle in everyday personal encounters is, that as a fellow citizen, with the same rights and obligations as yourself, any individual black is entitled to the same courtesies you would extend to a nonblack citizen. That is basic good manners and good citizenship. In some unusual circumstances, however—e.g., paragraph (10h) below—this default principle should be overridden by considerations of personal safety.

     (5) As with any population of such a size, there is great variation among blacks in every human trait (except, obviously, the trait of identifying oneself as black). They come fat, thin, tall, short, dumb, smart, introverted, extroverted, honest, crooked, athletic, sedentary, fastidious, sloppy, amiable, and obnoxious. There are black geniuses and black morons. There are black saints and black psychopaths. In a population of forty million, you will find almost any human type. Only at the far, far extremes of certain traits are there absences. There are, for example, no black Fields Medal winners. While this is civilizationally consequential, it will not likely ever be important to you personally. Most people live and die without ever meeting (or wishing to meet) a Fields Medal winner.

     (6) As you go through life, however, you will experience an ever larger number of encounters with black Americans. Assuming your encounters are random—for example, not restricted only to black convicted murderers or to black investment bankers—the Law of Large Numbers will inevitably kick in. You will observe that the means—the averages—of many traits are very different for black and white Americans, as has been confirmed by methodical inquiries in the human sciences.

     Derbyshire, a serious student of mathematics, is scrupulous about his uses of statistics, knowing how easily they can be put toward a sinister agenda. Moreover, he writes right up front that in individual encounters, the default principle of normal courtesy and respect supersedes all statistical considerations. Treat individuals as entitled to the presumption of dignity and respect until they demonstrate otherwise, but when dealing with an aggregate, be guided by the patterns known to prevail among them! What could be more evenhanded – more respectful of the norms that must be observed in a free society that operates under a Rule of Law?

     The same logic applies to the sexes, to the followers of Islam, to self-segregating ethnic groups, and so forth -- as statistical aggregates. But to say so in public is currently an act of considerable daring.

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     The great Walter Williams once discoursed on racism in a refreshing fashion. His take on it was that whatever one might believe about differences between the races, the sole important aspect of such a belief arises in one’s attitude toward rights. Dr. Williams proposed that the charge of “racism” should be reserved for the conviction that one race should have more or higher rights than others. He argued that only that conviction could give rise to true sociopolitical conflict. So long as every recognizably human individual is conceded the same rights as any other, dangerous conflicts can be averted.

     How refreshing! How wise. To concede that aggregates, however defined, need not be identical under all measures, but to insist that individuals, who are all equal before God, must be treated that way by the mechanisms of politics and government! That whatever we may learn about any particular aggregate, we must never deny an individual the natural human rights to his life, his liberty, or his honestly acquired property because of his skin color, his sex, his ethnicity, his creed, or his membership in any other aggregate!

     The simplicity and power of Williams’s approach are astonishing. We wouldn’t have to have quotas for black concert cellists or Jewish NBA forwards. We could let people find their ways to what they do best without interference – and without feeling guilt that there aren’t “enough” female coal miners or male midwives. But the Left, which is responsible for essentially all the brutalities inflicted upon our lexicon, refuses to allow it.

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     Rather than let this drag on interminably, I’ll state my position plainly:

I’m an individualist when I deal with individuals;
I’m a collectivist when I discuss collectives.
I’m a believer in individual liberty and justice for all.

     If there’s a more rational way to cope with the dizzying variety of challenges to intellect, ability, courtesy, and safety contemporary American life presents us, I can’t imagine what it might be.

     Food for thought.

Oaks And Acorns

     If you’ve been following the campaign news as obsessively as those who are paid to do so, by now you’ve read and heard enough lies, ranting, screaming, and repetition to deafen a herd of elephants. As I normally follow the news, including the political news, that closely, I can testify to the efficacy of its Nauseaction^® factor. In consequence, I’ve become unwilling to write about it. Indeed, I try to deny it any space in my thoughts.

     So it evokes a smirk from me when I get email that asks “Why aren’t you writing about the campaign?” In a way, it’s flattering, as it suggests that my insights are of value comparable to those who are writing about the campaign. All the same, mens sana in corpore sano and all that. If I want a clean mind – and I do – I have to keep the campaign garbage out of it.

     That’s not to say the outcome of the campaign won’t matter. It will, at least to some of us. But the campaign itself – the stump speeches; the debates; the mechanics of vote solicitation and turnout manipulation; the constant jockeying for position in the major media; the influence of the earlier primaries on the later ones – is of so little real value to a thinking American that I feel I can justify dismissing it, at least to the extent of leaving the subject to others.

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     At this time there are several seemingly small matters scattered about the landscape, any one of which could be the genesis of titanic events. It’s seldom possible to say which of these acorns will acquire the layer of topsoil and dash of water that will allow it to produce an oak. Generally, when someone claims a posteriori that “I foresaw this,” he’s fibbing. (If he claims to have predicted it beforehand, ask him for his next prediction. Then ask him how much he’s willing to bet on it.) That’s one reason it’s worth one’s time to develop a breadth of interests.

     Consider, for example, the recent death of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum at the hands of Oregon state police. There’s a federal investigation under way into this incident. Though Oregon state officials have already trumpeted that the shooting was “justified,” there’s no guarantee that the FBI will reach the same conclusion. But either conclusion has the potential to touch off larger events, possibly including a populist insurrection against ongoing land-grab machinations in the Northwest.

     Consider also this Maryland state senator’s drive for ever more stringent gun control. Maryland’s already severe gun-control statutes have done nothing to reduce violent crime. Those states that have relaxed their gun-control efforts, in contrast, have benefited thereby. The disjunction is becoming more and more obvious even to traditionally anti-gun-rights populaces along the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. Could a sea change be imminent? No one can say.

     As a final example, consider Zimbabwe’s announcement that it might need to cull its lion population. This is a must-read story for anyone who’s ever harbored anti-hunting sentiments. Were the essential importance of Man to maintaining the balance among populations of large predators to be widely accepted, what kind of future would the environmentalist movement face?

     Any of these currently minor stories could germinate into something much larger – potentially earth-shaking. Should that occur, many would scratch their heads and say “I wonder how this got started?”

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     Among the reasons we study statistics is that they assist us in getting past the problems presented by micro-causality. Individual minds, dominated by personal and narrowly parochial concerns, wobble and weave; large movements, which respond to “field-like” incentives, exhibit far steadier behavior. Robert A. Heinlein dramatized this difference in his early short story “The Year of the Jackpot.”

     But statistical assays can only tell us so much. They often reveal influences we didn’t see beforehand. Why we didn’t see them is beyond the power of statistical techniques. That has much more to do with our perceptual and cognitive filters: our tendency to emphasize data that conform to our prejudices and to dismiss data that point in nonconforming directions.

     There could be storms brewing right now for which we’ll wish, later on, that we’d been better prepared. The extent to which we want to believe in such possibilities will have a great impact on how many of us are braced for whichever of them breaks upon our shores. Our likelihood of being well prepared will depend, in some measure, on the breadth or narrowness of our attention.

     Needless to say, one can’t prepare for every imaginable development. One’s focus can be too wide, as well as too narrow. Atop that, there are possibilities, such as the collapse of the Cascadia subduction zone, for which the only imaginable preparation is being somewhere else should it happen. Acquiring an appropriate focus is the key.

     And every day, more Americans are finding that focus by means of a simple question:

“What matters most to me and to those I love?”

     That question is the antithesis of political. It asks not for power over others but for a list of one’s own needs and how they might be assured. He who makes use of it has turned away from our clangorous national storm to concentrate on his own proper responsibilities. In doing so, he has performed a pro-social act. Indeed, he has rediscovered Americanism.

     Recently, WRSA put this in the most anti-political of terms:

     America is dead.

     Your country is your community.

     Even those of us who still hope for national correction and renewal must allow that our individual influence on that possibility is minuscule. Rather than strain to arrest the fall of our national oak, we would do far better to concentrate on protecting and fertilizing our personal, familial, and community acorns. Our national politics is wreckage from the past: the conclusion of a collapse of institutions and their premises toppling one into the next like dominoes. If we are to have a future, that which lies in our hands will give it to us.

War Assets

The Washington Examiner’s Tim Carney lays it out for you:

After millennia of marriage being uncontroversially a union between one man and one woman, and after a decade of electorates in most states (and President Obama in 2008) upholding that traditional definition, the Left has used the courts to redefine the institution. People are fired for having taken the losing side. On college campuses, the current fights are about banning even the articulation of traditional views.

Amidst this culture-war dynamic, the Hobby Lobby decision and Indiana's RFRA don't represent any slide down a slope towards religiosity or individual liberty. Instead, our culture is speeding down the icy Left slope of the cultural mountain, and a few conservatives are now dragging their hands on the ice to slow the acceleration — and the Left is crying that this will send us catapulting back uphill.

Religious liberty is the terms of surrender the Right is requesting in the culture war. It is conservative America saying to the cultural and political elites, you have your gay marriage, your no-fault divorce, your obscene music and television, your indoctrinating public schools and your abortion-on-demand. May we please be allowed to not participate in these?

But no. Tolerance isn't the goal. Religious conservatives must atone for their heretical views with acts of contrition: Bake me a cake, photograph my wedding, pay for my abortion and my contraception.

Please read it all, and reflect on this: even during the years when virtually every young man was drafted when he reached 18 years of age, the Selective Service Act permitted exceptions on the grounds of “conscientious objection.”

Some total wars are more total than others. One side in this war intends to leave no survivors.

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Remember Donald Rumsfeld saying, some what ruefully, that “you go to war with the army you have” -- ? Well, as it happens, that observation only applies at the very start of a war. If the war is at all protracted, “the army you have” can change dramatically, and in several ways. Look at the transformation of Britain’s army over the course of World War I for an excellent example.

Few of us in the Right would have predicted that the Left would succeed in turning victim status into a war asset. Yet it is so – so much so that even after having won on the legal battlefield, the Left’s forces continue to wield that status as a most potent weapon. It’s the bayonet with which they’re busily killing off our wounded.

Indeed, victim status is so greatly cherished by the Left that even to speak against it is regarded as intolerable. Take note of what the despicable Ed Schultz, having somehow inveighed Heritage Foundation’s Ryan Anderson onto his contemptible program, feels he must do to prevent his opponent from scoring with the audience:

It’s not just on college campuses that the Left seeks to prevent the expression of contrary views. And it will get much worse before it gets better.

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John Conroe’s remarkable recent novel Forced Ascent contains an early, high-impact depiction of a confrontation between protagonist Chris Gordon, who is literally an angel sent among men to protect us from being overrun by demons, and representatives of the federal government:

    “What we have is a national threat to security wielding unknown abilities or technology, operating at random inside the borders of the United States with no checks or balances. Mr. Gordon here has served his country well over the last few years, but there is nothing preventing him from going off the deep end and assaulting that very same country. How do you think the people sworn to protect this nation from any and all threats feel about a rogue operator who can do the things he can do? It’s frankly worse than allowing test tubes of Ebola to be carted about at random by any federal employee that wants one,” Alexis said.
    “Again… what is it you want?”
    “We want controls in place to ensure Mr. Gordon’s compliance,” she said.
    “And those are?” Darion asked while my stomach got tight and twisted.
    “We want young Miss Velasquez in Federal custody. We want a… monitor implanted in Mr. Gordon’s body to track and isolate him. We want him shadowed by government agents at all times.” She sat back, watching us for reaction. I had plenty but I somehow managed to control my initial reaction—or more importantly, Grim’s response. The images in my mind were bloody. Very, very bloody.
    “No, no, and no,” Darion responded. “Why would Mr. Gordon acquiesce to these ridiculous demands?”
    “Because failure to comply will constitute a declaration of intent to commit further acts of terrorism and war against the United States,” McFeeney interjected. He paused for dramatic effect, which was ruined when footsteps thundered down the hallway outside accompanied by howls of pre-teen laughter.
    “And once you’ve decided you’re at war with my client, how do you see that playing out?” Darion asked, smiling at the sounds of the kids.
    “The only way it can, Darion. With the death of Mr. Gordon and all he holds dear. Nobody can hold out against the full weight and power of the United States Government.”

Mind you, Gordon had committed no “acts of terrorism.” He’d exorcised demons, executed werewolves and vampires that had conspired to wreak slaughter among humans, and had destroyed a corrupt, quasi-governmental organization that had kidnapped several innocents, his goddaughter among them. That was of no interest to the federal government; what it wanted was control of his powers. The rest of the novel depicts the consequences of Gordon’s refusal to accept the federal leash.

So also with the Left. If you refuse its leash, its minions will bend all their efforts to destroying you, one way or another. And at this time, the Left is in full and unopposed control of the federal government of the United States.

---

There is only one countermeasure to the Left’s steady elimination of every right except the rights to sodomy and abortion. It’s a costly one, one that most persons – even most persons reading this screed – will recoil from, on the grounds of self-preservation.

We must rehabilitate and reinvigorate discrimination.

To discriminate is to apply a standard and make a consequent choice. It’s to say “That isn’t acceptable,” and to act on one’s verdict. It’s the ultimate expression of individuality, for no one can set your standards for you but you.

Do you make love to your spouse but not to your garbageman? You’ve discriminated against your garbageman.
Do you prefer lettuce and spinach to kale and collared greens? You’ve discriminated against the growers of the latter vegetables.
Do you drink wine but not beer? You’ve discriminated against Amstel, Coors, Heineken and Anheuser-Busch.
Do you choose your own friends? You’ve discriminated against people you find insipid or annoying.
Do you prefer FOX to MSNBC? You’ve discriminated against Leftist propaganda.

This is anathema to the Left. You’ve deviated from its dogma. You’ve dared to chart your own course. You’ve proclaimed yourself a free man. Who could possibly know what you might choose to do next? Off with your head!

John Conroe’s bit of fiction above is coming ever nearer to reality as we speak, except that every free man in America sits in place of Chris Gordon. And none of us have the powers or longevity of an angel. As far as I know, anyway.

---

They who worship power and are determined to have it all – the very definition of the Left – cannot and will not tolerate your individuality. What if it were to infect others? Who knows what might follow? Their entire program could totter and fall. You must be brought into line; failing that, you must be eliminated as a threat to the body politic.

Take it seriously, folks. This is what they intend. It’s what they’ve always intended. And it’s become so clear that to deny it constitutes a willful refusal to see the world around you.

Resist while it’s still possible. No matter the cost.

On Games And Knowing Yourself

I’m in a philosophical mood this morning, owing in part to a short exchange of thoughts I just had with Joseph P. Martino, a retired Air Force Colonel who’s done valuable work in several areas of strategic analysis. In reply to my thoughts here, Joe posted the following:

Granted, it does not make sense to try to estimate the probability that God exists. There's no way it can be done.

My dissertation adviser used to argue against using "expected value" to evaluate bets. He used the example, suppose you are offered 999,999 chances in a million of making a million, and one chance in a million of being shot (zero payoff). Clearly the expected value is almost a million, but the possible catastrophe makes it a bad bet. In any situation where there is a possible catastrophe, maximizing expected value is a poor strategy.

However, in Game Theory there are other strategies besides expected value. Minimax loss is one (minimize the maximum possible loss). Another is minimax regrets, where "regrets" are what you could have won had you had perfect foresight. There are others, but these serve as examples.

Pascal's Wager is clearly a minimax loss strategy, and need not have anything to do with the probability that God exists. It simply asks, "what is the worst that can happen" for each possible strategy, and chooses the strategy with the minimum possible loss. I don't think his recommended strategy is at all unreasonable.

All perfectly true...but it got me thinking about the under-layer of game-playing, which objective analysis never addresses for a simple reason I shan’t insult your intelligence by stating explicitly. That under-layer is worth a few hundred words all by itself.

---

As you probably know, I’m a chess aficionado. One of the things that dismays most contemporary lovers of the game is the attitude displayed among grandmasters toward the possibility of loss. Needless to say, they’d rather not. However, their typical aversion to even the possibility of loss is such that very few of them will take even a small risk – i.e., will adopt a plan of campaign that endangers their ability to force a draw – even if such a risk offers an excellent chance of winning. In consequence, the average top-level tournament is heavy with draws. Current practices set their frequency at about 55%.

An exhaustive objective analysis of the game of chess is currently beyond the powers of computation. Granted that there are programs which can outplay any human player; nevertheless, the state of the art in such programs continues to advance, which implies that there are further frontiers to be crossed. Among human beings, the game is hardly “played out,” despite the predominance of drawn games.

Those draws aren’t because draws are in some objective sense the “right” outcome. They’re the products of a prevalent aversion to losing that dwarfs other priorities.

Several players of the past few decades have become greatly beloved because they didn’t fear to lose. The brightest stars in the chess firmament include at least three such: Mikhail Tal, Bent Larsen, and Garry Kasparov. Their approaches to the game, while not perfectly consistent with one another, all exhibited a degree of risk-taking that many commentators have called romantic or enterprising, while a few have termed them piratical. In short, they were willing to take risks, sometimes large ones, because their highest priority wasn’t to avoid losing.

In a game between humans, whose analytical powers are limited and whose emotions often play at least as great a role as their intellects, the willingness to take risks will have its own rewards. This is especially the case when a Tal, a Larsen, or a Kasparov faces a player whose fear of loss eclipses all else about him.

It’s about priorities and emotions quite as much as about foresight about possibilities and accuracy of analysis.

---

“ If the probability of success is not almost one, then it is damn near zero.” – David Ellis, quoted by Paul Dickson in The Official Rules.

Probabilities matter. The severity of possible outcomes matters as well. No argument. But priorities and emotional proclivities matter even more. Let’s look at Joe’s example once more:

My dissertation adviser used to argue against using "expected value" to evaluate bets. He used the example, suppose you are offered 999,999 chances in a million of making a million, and one chance in a million of being shot (zero payoff). Clearly the expected value is almost a million, but the possible catastrophe makes it a bad bet. In any situation where there is a possible catastrophe, maximizing expected value is a poor strategy.

The final sentence above should get you thinking:

• What outcomes would constitute a catastrophe that absolutely demands to be averted?
• Is there no alternate outcome that might counterbalance such a catastrophe?
• Do the probabilities not matter at all, regardless of their values?

I contend that the answers are other than Joe’s dissertation advisor claimed. If we limit ourselves to spatiotemporal outcomes, there is no catastrophe so bad that some potential payoff can’t be balanced against it. More, the probabilities do matter, as they who dwell in New York City demonstrate every time they cross a city street: A pedestrian in the Big Apple is hit by a car every 20 minutes. That hasn’t put a halt to street crossings on foot. Your probability of being in a fatal auto accident this year is on the order of magnitude of 0.000001 – the probability of being shot in Joe’s example – yet millions of Americans drive to work every morning, despite the rather lower probability of being given a million dollars when they get there.

The deciding factor is your personal “zero threshold:” how small a probability must be, in your estimation, for you to discount it as negligible for your personal decision-making purposes.

Of course, that you’ve classified some probability as negligible doesn’t mean that the associated outcome can’t happen. It only means that you regard that degree of risk as acceptable, given the other possible outcomes and their probabilities. You’ve made a priority decision. You make such decisions every day. Moreover, should you “roll snake eyes” some day and reap a terrible outcome that you regarded as an acceptable risk, it will have very little impact on the priority decisions of other persons.

Some of us “learn,” if alterations of our priorities and our personal risk-aversiveness can be called that, from others’ experiences...and some of us resolutely go our own ways despite the cautions and fears of those around us. And thus shall it ever be, until Man is no more.

---

As my retirement approaches, I’ve given ever more thought to financial planning. I’ve been something of a risk-taker up to now, placing my bets on aggressive growth stocks – high upside and high downside – when I invest. But at all times those risks were buttressed from underneath by my earning power, which has been sizable throughout my working life. More, up to fairly recently I was a glowing specimen of bodily health and personal energy. I was confident that whatever might happen to me, I could swiftly recover from it.

My earning years are about to end, and my health is no longer what it was. Given those developments, does it surprise you to learn that I’ve become more cautious about money than I once was? Don’t all answer at once, now.

The probabilities and the possible outcomes have changed somewhat. At this point a disease or an injury my younger self would have shrugged off might kill or permanently cripple me. I can’t rely upon a stream of above-average income to make up for losses in the equities market. Another person’s well-being is bound to mine. And of course, the political backdrop for all my decisions has darkened considerably since I first became self-reliant.

I’ve adjusted my priorities in recognition of those facts...but they remain my priorities. I know of several persons in roughly the same situation who remain gleeful risk-takers, often to the dismay of those who love and depend on them. And I know of others, again placed approximately the same, who’ve grown more risk-averse than I could ever dream of being.

This is what we are: individual human beings with individual motivations, capabilities, desires, and fears. Individual “zero thresholds.” Individual levels of confidence in our abilities to pick ourselves up, dust ourselves off, and continue onward. Those things might change over time, but they will always remain individual...idiosyncratic...as much a matter of emotion as of reason, if not far more so.

Anyone for a friendly game of Acey-Deucey?

An Instructive Throwaway

Good morning, Gentle Reader. What with all the Sturm und Drang about how those eeeevil heartless Republicans are trying to starve low-skills types to death by opposing an increase in the federally mandated minimum wage, it tickled me considerably to encounter this Instapundit squib, which was almost certainly meant for no purpose but entertainment.

Please sift through the comments to that post. They confirm my overarching thesis that the principal malaise of American society is that we've got too much time on our hands. I know that puts me at odds with all the Anything Authorities on the talk shows, who all swear that we're getting to be too busy and too regimented to live "human lives," but so be it. When so many of Professor Reynolds's readers display that much, ah, topically focused erudition, it leads to certain inferences about how much of their time they've devoted to reading comic books and watching Saturday morning cartoons. The conclusion follows naturally.

All the same, even a bit of fluff such as that one can teach us something. I recall, back in my own younger days, learning that:

• Superman came about as a character during the Great Depression, somewhat before the onset of World War II;
• A significant number of readers demanded to know why Superman didn't participate in the war -- on the side of the Allies, of course;
• The editors of DC Comics replied that their superhero believed the Allies could and should win the war through their own efforts, and that he could do better service to "truth, justice, and the American way" on the home front.

It gave me a chuckle even back then. A comic-book character is supposed to participate in a real-world war? Suppose the war didn't eventuate as the comics would have it? What would that have done to the franchise? C'mon, boys and girls: this is just cheap, colorful, escapist entertainment!

(Yes, I was about this dour and cynical even as a ten-year-old, but I'll bet you'd already guessed that. Curmudgeons Emeriti don't spring full grown from the brow of Zeus, after all.)

Indeed, one of the inexorable constraints upon writers such as myself, who are given to creating larger-than-life heroes and villains, is the requirement that such figures be kept well away from real-world events. For one thing, you run the risk of polluting your tales with contradictions drawn from those events. For another, escapism must allow the reader to escape. But that's tangential at best to my larger point today.

---

A great many of my fiction readers, the preponderance of them female, have written to express extravagant emotions toward two of my characters: Louis Redmond and Armand Morelon. (A somewhat smaller number of readers, mostly male, have expressed equally extravagant though considerably less refined sentiments about Christine D'Alessandro, Althea Morelon, and Helen Leverrier and Martine Arnault, but we'll let that pass for the moment.) In a way that's confirmation that I did what I'd set out to do: to create figures that embody ideals we can and should aspire to attain, even if their fictional embodiments are "too good to be true." People need heroes, and the need is greatest at those times when the darkness seems to be closing in around us, every man for himself, his hand raised against his neighbor out of sheer survival instinct.

The superhero phenomenon is like that. Superman was engendered, in a sense, out of the desperation of the Great Depression. When it seems that ordinary human powers are insufficient to reverse the tide of destruction, we're most prone to imagining, and wishing for, the superhuman to arrive and save us from ourselves. It can provide a species of relief and refreshment that's not available from other kinds of fiction. Yet there are dangers in such imaginings. If we invest too deeply in them, they can blind us to the real-world necessity to act for ourselves, from the dictates of our consciences and according to our best judgment. For there are no superheroes. Neither Superman nor Thor nor any of the others loiters just beyond the margin of sight, awaiting the perfect moment to intervene.

All we have are men: fractious, fallible, corruptible men. Men can achieve mightily, no doubt about it. But we can also screw up mightily, as history tells us we've done repeatedly for six thousand years at the very least.

The Green Lantern Corps will not arrive in the nick of time to thwart Islam, or political evil, or the MERS virus. We're on our own, naked before the laws of Nature and the consequences our screwups entail.

---

This is a dark time, for the United States and the world generally. Totalitarianism of several forms is on the march. The world economy has stumbled and fallen, and might not be able to get up. The races seem to have declared war against one another. Individuals' ethics are less trustworthy than they've been for many years. Americans are more fearful than we've been for a century or more.

The swelling popularity of superheroes correlates perfectly with the rise of those other conditions. It's not all just children's fantasies; quite a number of nominal adults are hooked on them, too.

Yes, we need heroes. But we need to live in reality as well. And reality has laws that not even a superhero could break. Which brings me back to the Instapundit post.

Superman, as postulated by his creators, is so strong that he can make coal into diamonds with his bare hands. So why doesn't he do a lot of that, distribute the results, and thus solve the problem of poverty? There's plenty of coal, isn't there?

You understand why he couldn't achieve any such thing, don't you? Neither could he do so by canvassing the galaxy for all the gold in existence, bringing it back to Earth, and distributing it equitably.

Superman could conceivably win any war single-handed...as long as the enemy could be denied access to Kryptonite, of course. The same could be said of several other superhero characters. But they won't be doing any such thing, the ardent wishes of the Ukrainians notwithstanding.

We're stuck with ourselves, and with one another.

---

"There's only one way to improve society. Present it with a single improved unit: yourself." -- Albert Jay Nock.

When I wrote about conscience a couple of days back, I was in one of the grimmest moods I've ever endured. I've been personally blessed in many ways. A lifetime of thought, study, work, and saving have put me and mine in a position many other families would envy. Yet we are just as vulnerable as anyone else. The least of the tentacles of the darkness enveloping Mankind could dash our little fortress to flinders. I'm all too aware that no man is an island -- that developments well beyond my power to countervail could sweep everything I've achieved into the abyss.

But that's why I wrote that essay:

We are too concerned with what others are doing or not doing, and not concerned enough with what we can do, as individuals and voluntarily assembled groups.

That, in a nutshell, is why the tempers of the politically engaged are so strained, and why such elevated emotions dominate public discourse. We seek to lasso the forces the threaten us and rein them in, and the preponderance of them appear to be political in nature. But what are the limits of political power? What if a Stephen Graham Sumner were to lead a libertarian-conservative tide throughout the nation -- hell, make it the whole world, as long as we're fantasizing -- and free us of Obamunism, Islam, Communism, Eurosocialism, race hatred, welfarism, cronyism, and all the rest of the evils against which we regularly rail here at Liberty's Torch and at many other sites? What if the bells of freedom were to ring worldwide, all oppression and political malice forever extinguished? What then?

You would still need to earn a living.
You would still bear responsibilities for your dependents.
You would still have to contrive defenses against predators, human and otherwise.
You would still grow weaker and wearier with the passage of time, eventually becoming useless.
And you would still depend upon others to produce the goods and services you can't produce for yourself.

Dr. Strange can do nothing about it.

---

It's long past time we stopped awaiting the arrival of a superhero, whether four-colored or political, who'll save us from ourselves, and started listening attentively to the "still, small voice."

All we have are ourselves and one another.
Politicians cannot augment that.
Use what God has given you.
Life is terrifyingly short.
Start now.