Why Go On? A Sunday Rumination

     I hadn’t planned to write one of these today, but something happened just before Mass that’s forced it on me. Indeed, it’s practically pulling an essay out of me.

     Please be patient, as I expect this will take a more circuitous route than my usual – and my usual is pretty damned pretzelly.

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     Everyone gets everything he wants. I wanted a mission, and for my sins, they gave me one. – Martin Sheen’s voice-over the opening of Apocalypse Now

     The recent completion and release of The Wise and the Mad has had all the usual consequences:

• A sense of completion;
• Personal exhaustion;
• Low, slow sales;
• No reviews;
• The inevitable question: “Why do I bother?”

     I’ve been asking myself that question regularly for many years, both over my fiction and my blogging. I’d imagine many other writers suffer exactly this sort of self-doubt. Difficult, sustained labor, we seem to sense from some internal source, “should” produce significant consequences. But there’s my favorite word again! “Should” has no referent in objective reality. Events are governed by Nature’s own laws, none of which we know with absolute accuracy, precision, or confidence. Apparently there is no natural law to the effect that great effort shall bring great results, no matter how often nor how ardently we “should” about it.

     I ask myself “Why do I bother;” I get the usual answer (i.e., none); and I go back to work. And it occurred to me in my pew, which no others dare to approach while I am its occupant, that the question I “should” address is why that sequence, rather than the failure of my writing to achieve anything vaguely resembling success, is so reliable.

     It’s just what I do…and that’s also the only possible answer to that “Why do I bother” question.

     Strange that a man can live sixty-seven years and not trip over that one, eh?

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     All my life I’ve opposed every form of fatalism. I’ve refused to accept that we are limited by anything except natural law, which includes our common human natures. Man’s will is free. Man’s scope for the formation of goals and plans for achieving them is huge. Man’s capacities are great, though not unbounded. By and large, we can do what we set out to do, provided it’s not forbidden by the laws of physics…which, I must repeat, we don’t know in their exactitude.

     Yet there are many things we do, not because it’s the right approach to our current, highest priority goal, but because it’s just what we do. Sometimes “what I do” is inapplicable to the problem or obstacle before one…yet we do it anyway. And sometimes it can be startlingly effective:

Nika Boronina: What are you going to do?
Agent 47: What I do.

[From Hitman]

     Writing, both fiction and nonfiction, is just what I do. I can’t seem to give it up, and for the past two hours I’ve been seriously wondering why.

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     You may have noticed that on the dedications page of my books always appears the phrase:

To the greater glory of God.

     That’s another item in the “just what I do” basket, along with writing, making bad puns, and buying one of every kind of power tool I encounter, the need for one (or lack thereof) notwithstanding. But in this case I do it consciously. I know why I do it. I also know that, in the exact, objective sense, nothing any human being could do would make the smallest difference to the actual glory of God.

     Man’s achievements praise and glorify God to other men. That is, what we achieve, if directed toward a worthy and constructive end, can increase others’ perception and appreciation of God’s glory as it has been instantiated in Man, who (after all) is made in His image. God Himself is not affected.

     It is my hope that what I write evokes that kind of appreciation. It’s good for you. It takes you out of yourself, however briefly, and into a special mental realm in which Man’s distinctive power – the ability to form and reason with abstractions – hints at the infinite love and benevolence of Him who made us what we are. Quite frankly, I have no other reason for writing fiction. Certainly I have no financial one! (My current rate of remuneration for it is well below $0.10 per labor hour.)

     I get that sense of appreciation when I read the works of intelligent, skilled writers of every description. It’s what I most hope to do for others. It’s the variety of service to others I’m best equipped to perform. (Which is not to say that I’m terribly good at it; just that I’m worse at everything else.)

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     These days all my fiction has at least some tangential relevance to Christianity, Christian belief, and my own particular home among the denominations, the Catholic Church. The reason is simple: to whatever extent I can, I seek to promote Christianity as a great and good thing, and Catholicism, properly understood, as its best articulation. I am appalled by secularists’ flip dismissals of the causal connections between the decline of Christianity in Western society and the advance of every kind of discord, dissolution, and destruction.

     I know that my efforts have not garnered much return. That awareness sometimes pains me. It gets me asking myself “Why do I bother?” The answer is always the same: It’s what I do. Nothing else of which I’m capable is nearly as worth doing.

     Yes, it’s a choice. I could have chosen the path of a Nock or a Mencken. That is, I could merely hold myself above it all. I could write “for the Remnant” as Nock did, or for the chuckles to be had from mocking the “booboisie,” as Mencken did. That’s not my way.

     I go on because I must do what I can, as little as it may be, to stem the tides. Were I to hold myself apart, my life would have no value. I would have no reason to go on. Anyway, it’s what I do.

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     A man – that is, a male human being; I shan’t speak for women at this juncture – must have a mission. Without one, he has no reason to go on. It’s a big part of the reason so many retirees just drift away, cut loose from relevance, and lapse into death

     Captain Willard wanted a mission but was unable to choose one for himself. That’s in the nature of an army; everyone except the commanders must wait upon the commanders’ orders. Agent 47 chose his own mission, and was gratified that his particular, highly developed talent for homicide was perfectly suited to its fulfillment. Most of us fall somewhere between the poles those two fictional characters occupy.

     What keeps you going, Gentle Reader? Would you say you have a mission? If so, do you know whence it came? Does it chafe you, or are you content with it? And pardon me for asking, but how well would you say you’re doing at it?

     May God bless and keep you all.

Striking At The Root

     First and above all else, my sincerest thanks to those who’ve written, called, and sent smoke signals and carrier pigeons in my time of troubles. It’s good to know someone cares, even if from far away. Things are gradually growing more stable, and I’m coping adequately with my burdens, at least for the moment. “The moment,” and the light and warmth of God’s love, are where I’m struggling to stay. What the future holds, no one can know.

     Anyway, for now it’s back to the regular drivel.

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     There’s an old Henry David Thoreau quote that’s been much on my mind:

     There are a thousand hacking at the branches of evil to one who is striking at the root.

     (Yes, as annoying as it can be at times, a retentive memory is good for some things.)

     The metaphor embedded in that statement is devastatingly accurate. How does one remove an unwanted tree? Not by pruning its branches, though that might be a required preliminary step to reach the trunk. Neither does one kill a man by cutting off his fingers. You must aim at a vital target, not a peripheral one.

To bring down an enemy, you must strike at what sustains his life.

     The same is true when one’s enemy is a system of beliefs.

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     Recently I’ve been writing about the Left’s assault on the right to life. It’s an important subject that deserves all the attention we can give it. Indeed, it’s more important than the subject of abortion itself – and if you’re a bit startled to see that coming from a Catholic, I’ve achieved my initial objective.

     Don’t just run your thumb under the words. Think about it. What did I just say and why did I say it? A Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch is expected to apply his little gray cells to what he encounters here. Give ‘em a workout.

     There! You’ve got it! The right to life is closer to fundamental than the questions that surround abortion. Before abortion can be addressed morally, we must satisfy ourselves as to whether the developing infant possesses a right to life. The answer to that question would dispose of the abortion question, no matter what it might prove to be.

     My right-to-life Jeremiads are closer to being fundamental investigations than anything else I’ve written lately. And yet, they’re not at “the root.” Not quite, though they’re pointed in the right direction.

     We must go still deeper.

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     When Thomas Jefferson, the sole certified genius among the Founding Fathers – I almost wrote “Fondling Fathers,” and wouldn’t that have delighted Joe Biden? – wrote that the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are “self-evident,” he was working from a philosophical plateau upon which all of Western thought had been built. He believed his conceptual footing reliable, which, given one assumption, it was. But the assumption itself was incorrect.

     Can you spot the assumption I have in mind? Give it a moment. Virtually no one has done so in recent years. It’s a tricky little devil that will squirm out from between your fingers if you’re not both quick and very, very firm. Think hard.

     Getting frustrated? All right, here’s the answer: another quote:

     Either rights exist, or they do not exist. If they exist, they involve absolute consequences...Furthermore, if a right exists, it exists at every moment. It is absolute today, yesterday, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in summer as in winter, not when it pleases you to declare it in force.

     The author, Louis Thiers, was an opponent of the concept of rights. Yet he understood how a right must operate – how it must differ from a permission. A right is absolute, inherent in its possessor. Its existence requires no one’s assent, any more than the effect of gravity requires that we agree to stay stuck to the Earth. And its consequences, as Louis Thiers said, are absolute, whether it is respected or held in contempt.

     Are we at “the root” yet? Very nearly. If fact, I’d say we’re there…but there’s still a little digging to do. Call it a trench for irrigation and protection.

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     Anyone who’s been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for very long will already be aware that I’m a fanatic about exactitude in the use of words. Words are our tools of thought; we cannot think without them. Without words, we cannot form and manipulate generalizations – concepts. To reason usefully, therefore, requires that the words we use to do so have stable meanings that are not subject to “reinterpretation” according to fads, fashions, or the needs of propagandists. If that’s not perfectly clear, draw the analogy to mathematics and the symbols used in expressing an equation to be solved.

     Any attack on the stable, traditional meanings of words – and please don’t mistake me; the meanings of words are always established through tradition – is an attack on the tools we use to reason, and the concepts we’ve used them to form.

     The contemporary attack on human reason and individual freedom began with an attack on our language.

     A single word – rights – will suffice as an example for this morning’s discourse. If a right is and must be an absolute property that has absolute consequences, then the word must not be applied to anything that lacks those properties. Yet it has been, limitlessly, to the destruction of the concept of rights itself. That destruction was the Left’s aim from the outset.

     I’ve written about this many times. Yet the concept eludes a great many persons, including many who have no excuse. Consider the “right to vote.” This is so plainly not a right that there’s no way anyone could finesse his way toward it…except by twisting and torturing the meaning of rights to force voting inside it. I suppose if one is determined to have one’s way, a trivial matter like destroying the meaning of the most important word in all of political philosophy seems no great matter.

     But wait: there’s more!

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     The attack on the concept of rights has not one but two main prongs. The above – the application of the word rights to desires that are not rights – is one. The second is the equally pernicious notion that the exercise of a right can be licensed.

     As I wrote some time ago:

     A brilliant friend of mine once propounded the following scenario: “Imagine that the police have come to your house. Though they have neither a warrant nor “probable cause,” they intend to perform a search of your home for unspecified items. You protest this invasion of your rights, whereupon the detachment commander says ‘Just give us $100.00 and we’ll let you be.’”

     If the police could do that, would Americans possess a true right to “be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects?” Or would it be something the “authorities” could arbitrarily grant or withhold on payment of a “fee?”

     If you still resist the idea that an attack on the meanings of words, especially fundamental words such as rights, is at the base of our degeneration, ponder that a while.

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     We have arrived at “the root.” I can make no better case for where our attention belongs than what you see above. Yet if there’s anything in this spatiotemporal continuum of which I am absolutely certain, it’s this:

Some persons will fail to understand.
Others will refuse to understand.
Still others will call me everything but white for saying so.

     With that, I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Function And Terminology

     Once again I’m “under the gun” – sheesh, I had more free time (and got more and better sleep) when I was still solving other people’s problems for a living – and must shortly be away from the keyboard, so please bear with me if this rant is shorter (or rantier) than most.

     Some species of aberration are more difficult to confront than others. The one I have in mind this fine July morning concerns that hoary old Leftist tradition, the promiscuous spouting of utter nonsense in a frenzied attempt to compel others to accept it:

     Zachary Antolak, a/k/a “Zinnia Jones,” a/k/a “Satana Kennedy,” a/k/a “Lauren McNamara” is a person familiar to regular readers here. An atheist transgender activist and Internet pornographer, Antolak/“Jones” has tattooed himself/“herself” with a symbol used on the cover of Anton LaVey’s Satanic Bible modified with transgender symbols.

     The bizarre semantics by which Antolak/“Jones” claims that the penis is not “male genitals” is a perfect example of the lunatic ideology of the transgender cult. As I noted in the case of Eyrne Daymont a/k/a “Aryn Maitland,” crazy is a pre-existing condition. When confronted by the rhetoric of transgender activists, we must recognize that we are dealing with seriously disturbed people. Their efforts to distort language, to change the meanings of words, and to force the rest of to accept their revised definitions, represent a dishonest attempt to obtain validation by compelling others to ratify their delusions.

     This is getting to be “par for the course” for the more “out there” transgender activists. While I certainly won’t claim that “they’re all like that,” there are enough seriously disturbed TG activists to make big trouble for the ones who merely want to live quietly as they choose.

     For those who are interested in dealing seriously with such lunacy, I present the following:

Terms arise to fulfill specific functions;
They cannot be meaningfully separated.

     That “really” ought to be “obvious,” but there’s that word again.

     We don’t call the penis and testicles “male genitalia” for purely arbitrary reasons. We call them that because they fulfill a function that, very long ago, we deemed “male,” just as we deem the vagina, ovaries, and uterus “female.” The terms male and female are functional designators above all else. They designate the distinguishing properties and functions of male and female bodies that preceded everything else about Mankind and our societies.

     More concisely, male and female are about the function we call reproduction. If your body can fertilize a human ovum, you are functionally male; if your body produces and stores such ova, and is at least potentially capable of sheltering a developing human zygote, you are functionally female.

     To disassociate the terms from their functional origins is to render them meaningless. We cannot use meaningless words: a statement that approaches tautology. But the Left would be delighted to render all our words meaningless. It would make deceiving us far easier.

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     Now that I’ve disposed of the word-mincing of this “Zinnia Jones” person, please allow me a few million words about transgenderism generally.

     Blaire White, a highly intelligent and well spoken young transwoman, has stated that transgenderism is a mental disorder. If we proceed from the function-determines-terminology perspective, she is unassailably correct. He who was “born a man” cannot be functionally a woman; she who was born a woman cannot be functionally a man. Yet the disorder has no cure, and if ignored can lead to much worse problems, both for the sufferer and for those who love him.

     That having been said, contemporary medical and surgical techniques make it possible for one born male to “present and live” as a woman, and for one born female to “present and live” as a man. Some self-designated transgenders make use of the full range of medical and surgical options. Some “stop short” of the complete resculpting of their externals. I know transgenders of both kinds.

     And...girls, hold onto your boyfriends...given a willingness among such transgenders to conform to the appearance and behavioral norms of their preferred genders, there is no harm to the rest of us in it. The entirety of the burden falls upon the transgender.

     Yes, you read that correctly.

     The italicized phrase is the key. A sufficient degree of conformance to gender norms, even though contemporary medicine cannot affect the body's reproductive functions, allows the transgender to “pass.” Problems arise when “transgenders” dismiss or defy those norms: for example, the bearded guy in a dress who insists on using the ladies’ room. It’s entirely justifiable for the rest of us to be upset by that.

     Is there a gray zone? Of course, and such gray zones will undoubtedly become grist for the Left’s mill. In particular, gray-zone cases will be used to attack longstanding arrangements through the law, disturbing the comfort and peace of mind of the rest of us. I don’t know what can be done about that; I’m not a lawyer and haven’t even been asked to play one on TV. But the outriders of the gender-fluidity campaign make it plain that we should be braced for it, especially as regards so-called “public accommodations” law.

     My point is largely that, in observance of The Curmudgeon’s Carbohydrate Aphorism:

Keep thine eye fixed upon the doughnut, lest thou pass unaware through the hole.

     ...we should dismiss cosmetic matters, but take care to preserve the truly important things – and one of the most important things is the reliability of the meanings of the words we use.

     And with that, I’m off to my duties. Until later, Gentle Reader.

What Matters: A Midweek Rumination

     I seldom ask myself whether what I write, whether here or in fiction, “matters.” I do it by choice; it matters sufficiently to me. But I have my moments. One of them arrived yesterday, in the middle of other diverse and troubling cogitations.

     I suppose everyone wants to “matter,” however the word is defined. At least, I’ve never met anyone who hopes that no one is aware of him nor will remember him after he’s gone from their lives. But the intensity of one’s desire to “matter” appears to be roughly proportional to the effort he invests in what he does.

     I’d venture to guess that by that measure, many persons would feel that they don’t “matter” enough. That’s fertile soil for a lot of emotional maladies.

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     “A man who believes in nothing will believe in anything” – Gilbert Keith Chesterton
     “Without God, all things are possible.” – Fyodor Dostoyevsky

     This brief article should get major publicity. I’m not going to excerpt it; it’s far too striking and important. Please read it all before you continue on with my drivel.

     While author Annie Holmquist notes the powerful negative correlation between religiosity and involvement in some secular “cause,” she doesn’t delve into the understratum of the thing. Yet it could hardly be plainer.

Causes lend “meaning” to their adherents.

     Alternately, an activist “matters” to the extent that his cause “matters.” The relentless promotion of a cause as an issue of inherent justice or a matter of life-and-death can make it “matter” quite a bit...at least to those who swallow the promotion.

     People are willing to do an awful lot for that which “matters,” and therefore allows them to “matter.” The word martyr carries immense significance for exactly that reason.

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     The search for personal meaning by investing oneself in a secular “cause” can result in harm to others. Often it does. After all, if the aim is to “matter,” the rights, needs, and prerogatives of others must take second place at best. This is seldom addressed by contemporary analysts of the “cause” phenomenon.

     For example, recently I’ve become moderately friendly with two “transwomen:” biological men who prefer to live and present as women. They’re not the first transwomen I’ve known; however, my previous acquaintances were severely damaged persons, incapable even of looking after themselves. It was illuminating to meet persons of that persuasion who appear well balanced and capable; I began to think that the syndrome might not always be better treated with psychotherapy than with surgery.

     Well known transwoman Blaire White has something to say about it:

     Regardless of all other considerations, these folks are being badly served by those who’ve taken up their “cause” and raised it to the pinnacle of contemporary issue-urgency. Moreover, those who dramatize the subject through fiction are doing them no favors. The villains in their stories are always political conservatives or Christians: the very groups most likely to treat them with tolerance, even if mixed with some degree of disapproval.

     This phenomenon deserves cautious but close analysis. Among other things, a transgenderism activist who smiles upon such groups as “Antifa” or “Black Bloc” because of their opposition to us naughty Righties and Christians should study what happens when such forces attain genuine political power. Few remember that Jews weren’t the only group Hitler targeted.

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     I’ve written before about the desire for meaning that appears to be universal among men:

     “Today” is made “sweet” by an injection of Meaning: something to fill the yawning void created by their abandonment of God and the hope of individual salvation. For Man is the Project Pursuer, the Engineer: he who must have a goal to advance toward and a plausible means for approaching it. His consciousness of time and his own mortality will not abide an empty, hedonistic existence. Without the hope of salvation in an afterlife, the requirements for which really are quite straightforward:

     Now a man came up to him and said, “Teacher, what good thing must I do to gain eternal life?” He said to him, “Why do you ask me about what is good? There is only one who is good. But if you want to enter into life, keep the commandments.” “Which ones?” he asked. Jesus replied, “Do not murder, do not commit adultery, do not steal, do not give false witness, honor your father and mother and love your neighbor as yourself.” [Matthew 19:16-19]

     ...Man will commit himself to some other absorbing Idea, some Cause to which he can dedicate himself. For we all desire immortality, and the variety derivable from the notion that one’s Cause will live after one’s own flesh has returned to dust is, if not wholly fulfilling, at least better than nothing.

     I’ve never been more certain of Man’s utter requirement for a transcendent religious belief system. Of course, the nature of the system “matters,” too. It must be wholesome: beneficial to those who accept it and (at the very least) harmless toward those who don’t. The benefits must include temporal ones as well as spiritual promises, which is why I cite that snippet from the Gospel According to Matthew so often. Once again, Chesterton put it best:

     The truth is, of course, that the curtness of the Commandments is an evidence, not of the gloom and narrowness of a religion, but, on the contrary, of its liberality and humanity. It is shorter to state the things forbidden than the things permitted; precisely because most things are permitted, and only a few things are forbidden.

     Bookworm adds a few thoughts on the matter:

     Islam is not about fun or even happiness. Nor are these missing attributes limited to the reverence associated with direct worship. For example, when we’re in a house of worship we don’t make fart jokes. Instead, the whole point of Islam, at least according to the Ayatollah Khomeni, is to vacuum any possibility of joy out of life:

     Allah did not create man so that he could have fun. The aim of creation was for mankind to be put to the test through hardship and prayer. An Islamic regime must be serious in every field. There are no jokes in Islam. There is no humor in Islam. There is no fun in Islam. There can be no fun and joy in whatever is serious.

     No wonder that the Islamic clerics and their mobs routinely deliver death to people who dare to dance or sing in a sharia-controlled world.

     Contrast this Islamic world view with Dennis Prager’s take on happiness. When his radio show played in my area, I frequently heard him say that, because God gave us the capacity to be happy, we have a moral obligation to be so. He also wrote that true faith should in itself inspire happiness:

     I once asked a deeply religious man if he considered himself a truly pious person. He responded that while he aspired to be one, he felt that he fell short in two areas. One of those areas, he said, was his not being a happy enough person to be considered truly pious.

     His point was that unhappy religious people reflect poorly on their religion and on their Creator. He was right; in fact, unhappy religious people pose a real challenge to faith. If their faith is so impressive, why aren’t these devoted adherents happy? There are only two possible reasons: either they are not practicing their faith correctly, or they are practicing their faith correctly and the religion itself is not conducive to happiness. (Prager, Dennis, Happiness is a Serious Problem, paperback edition, p. 4.)

     “Thou shalt be happy” might not be one of the tenets of the Decalogue, but all the evidence of Creation, particularly that which inheres in Man’s nature, points to the necessity. Happy people don’t involve themselves in ridiculous Causes. They don’t need them for confirmation that they “matter.” They already know that.

     May God bless and keep you all.

Naughty Words Part 2: “But”

     The study of how expressions of any sort give rise to meaning is called semantics. Meaning, of course, arises in the mind of the recipient of a communication when he has received and interpreted it. It might be identical to what the speaker / writer / cartoonist intended to convey, it might vary somewhat, or it might be so far from the originator’s intention as to bear no relation to it. This leads us to a question central to all communication studies:

How Do I Know That’s Exactly What He Meant?

The answer is massively frustrating: You don’t. It’s impossible in the nature of things. All you can do is approach confidence in your interpretation asymptotically. With a handful of important exceptions.

     This essay is about one of the exceptions.

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     First, a particularly piercing Bill Whittle video:

     Whittle has nailed one of the iconic obscenities of our time: the expressive pattern that goes as follows:

[Declarative clause], but [clause that contradicts declarative clause].

     In the matter of freedom of expression, the template goes thus:

“I believe in freedom of speech, but [insert exception here].”

     An analogous, structurally parallel version can be observed in discussions of freedom of anything. However, let’s not stop with a statement of revulsion; let’s consider what meaning the speaker really wants us to derive from his words. I can think of the following possible interpretations:

• “I believe in freedom of speech, except for this one case of it.”
• “I believe in freedom of speech, except for a range of cases that offend me.”
• “I believe in freedom of speech, except for a range of cases to be decided by ‘authority.’”
• “I don’t believe in freedom of speech; I merely want to weasel-word my way around it.”

     Got any others? The point, of course, is that the use of but negates the preceding sentiment.

     To say that one is free in some regard is to say that he has a right to do as he pleases:

1. With no possibility of being punished by any organ of government;
2. Should a private party or organization attempt to punish him, the attempt would be a criminal act.

     Very few persons actually grasp this critical concept. At least, nearly everyone I know wants to make exceptions:

• To freedom of speech;
• To freedom of assembly;
• To freedom of association;
• To the right to keep and bear arms;
• To property rights;
• To freedom of commerce;
• To the right to face one’s accusers in a trial before a jury of one’s peers;
• Even to the right to feed, medicate, and generally use one’s own body as one pleases.

     It’s a better gauge for America’s political devolution than anything else I can come up with at this hour of the morning.

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     Semantics has a hard time coping with “but” expressions. I don’t. When I hear one, I immediately lower my opinion of the speaker by about 50%. I have to strain against a powerful inclination to go on the attack. It’s one of the reasons I tend to keep to myself.

     Government in our time is 99% “buts.” It’s whittled freedom away completely, such that the typical American’s reaction to a proposed course of positive action is to find someone to ask for permission. Yet his great-grandfather would have embraced the idea without a second thought, never imagining that he needs to beg a license from any institution, governmental or otherwise.

     Here’s a pungent example: Is your money really yours? Most persons would immediately reply in the affirmative. But if so, why aren’t you permitted to move it about without being spied upon? Why, if you should arrange your affairs to avert such spying – currently, any transfer below $10,000 is nominally exempt from federal “reporting requirements” – are your funds then subject to arbitrary confiscation, on suspicion of “structuring?” If the test of ownership is whether you’re free to do as you like with your property so long as you refrain from injuring others, why aren’t you free to move your money around as you please?

     Don’t all rush to answer at once, now.

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     George Orwell wrote:

     In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible....Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

     While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement.

     ....But if thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought. A bad usage can spread by tradition and imitation even among people who should and do know better.

     He who makes a statement about freedom / rights is making a political statement. He might not command the many Latinate circumlocutions and periphrases that Orwell condemns in his essay. He might merely say but. That one word is enough to induce the sort of cognitive dissonance in a typical hearer’s mind to make him think he’s heard a reasonable conclusion from a man who’s given the appropriate amount of thought to a weighty matter. That could not be further from the truth. Yet such a statement often becomes gospel among persons disinclined to think through basic propositions about individuals, their rights, and the social order – that is, to think about principles.

     There is no right – no sort of freedom – that admits to exceptions. Either it applies to all persons and at all times, or it is merely a conditional grant of permission from some authority, whether formally or informally constituted. The jihadis who tried to murder Pamela Geller deemed themselves an authority with jurisdiction over her speech and activities. Yet they differ not at all, in principle, from a supposedly “legitimate” government.

But Me No “Buts!”

A Crisis Of Meaning

“The destroyer is not a truth-crisis, it is a meaning-crisis.” – Piers Anthony, Macroscope

Political persuasion specialist Michael Emerling has said that the meaning of a communication inheres in the reaction of the receiver. Unless you have a considerable grounding in epistemology and semantics, that statement can be somewhat difficult to decode. Yet it’s one of the most important statements ever made about political outreach. Recent developments in the strategies and tactics of the Left have made it essential for freedom lovers to grasp it and internalize it.

For openers, consider the following episode:

The Obama Administration, following in the footsteps of another noteworthy Democrat liar (“It depends what the meaning of ‘is’ is.”), has decided to defend the indefensible by arbitrarily redefining the terms of discussion. That this has been viewed – so far, at least – as merely one more outrage to add to the Obamunist ledger suggests that in political discourse words shall no longer be permitted to have enduring meanings. If this is the case, our political degeneracy has reached a terminal stage.

But pause for a moment and reflect upon:

• What Administration spokesdroid Eric Schultz said;
• The meaning drawn from it by those who have heard his words.

No one with three functioning brain cells could imagine that the Taliban, whose operational tactics are indistinguishable from those of other Islamic terrorists in the Middle East, is anything but a terrorist organization. It differs from the others only in once having had control of a nation-state. Calling it an “armed insurgency” cannot change the objective facts of its behavior; it can only provide a tissue-thin rhetorical cover for the Obama Administration’s actions toward it.

So what Schultz said amounted to “Don’t probe us on this or we’ll take some sort of vengeance for it later.” That’s almost certainly the meaning he wanted his audience to derive from it. However, the meaning they drew from it might have included that, but surely also included: “The Obama Administration will do what it damned well pleases when it damned well pleases, without regard for the prior policies of this or any other Administration.”

Ponder the difference for a moment before continuing on.

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Man’s rational capacity requires the use of symbols. The reason is embedded in the nature of reason itself:

• To reason is to make use of abstractions – generalizations from specific cases to general patterns – to deduce effects from causes applied to adequately specified contexts.
• One cannot conceive an abstraction without inserting symbols – each one a placeholder for a generic member of some defined class – into one’s conception.
• Thus, symbols with stable meanings are essential to the conception and employment of abstractions.

(A little deep for a Thursday morning? Blame my snowblower, which weighs twice what I do and was massively disinclined to deal with the load Mother Nature dropped on my driveway Monday night and Tuesday morning.)

This is so fundamental to human mentation that even mathematicians tend to be unaware of it until it’s been proposed to them explicitly. It’s too automatic – too integral to Man’s pursuit of knowledge about the world and the creatures in it. Compelling oneself to think about it involves deliberately inserting oneself into a “strange loop” of the sort Douglas Hofstadter wrote about in Godel, Escher, Bach. Such a loop has no exit point upon which we can rely.

By corollary, if one is forbidden to attribute stable meanings to certain symbols – for example, the words used in political discourse – one cannot make sense of the statements that employ them. A barrier rises between our minds and the truths of reality with which we must grapple.

This is immensely appealing to those who seek to evade the consequences appropriate to their actions.

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I wrote some time ago:

In the ideological clashes of today, the attention of the greater mass of Americans is focused on secondary matters. Arguments over national defense, tax rates, social policy directions, regulatory structures, and so forth continue to rage, but with less prospect of being satisfactorily settled than ever before...because a critical pinion for all argument of any sort has been undermined near to collapse.

The pinion of which I speak is the concept of objective truth.

It's hard for most people to grasp that objective truth is a conception, rather than something self-evident. Yet furious philosophical battles have been fought over it. The negative side has never conceded defeat. They've advanced reason after reason to doubt the existence of objective reality. As each one is destroyed, they shift to another. In a sense, their proposition is its own strongest weapon, for they respond rather frequently to even the most obvious points by saying, "No, that's your truth" -- an implicit claim that it's the not the observation but the observer's willingness to accept it that really matters.

John Q. Public has heard little of this, of course; it's mostly fought in the ivory towers, and in the publications that cater to professional intellectuals. All the same, it matters to him more than he's able to appreciate.

Truth is an evaluation: a judgment that some proposition corresponds to objective reality sufficiently for men to rely upon it. The weakening of the concept of truth cuts an opening through which baldly counterfactual propositions can be thrust into serious discourse. Smith might say that proposition X is disprovable, or that it contradicts common observations of the world; Jones counters that X suits him fine, for he has dismissed the disprovers as "partisan" and prefers his own observations to those of Smith. Unless the two agree on standards for relevant evidence, pertinent reasoning, and common verification -- in other words, standards for what can be accepted as sufficiently true -- their argument over X will never end.

An interest group that has "put its back against the wall" as regards its central interest, and is unwilling to concede the battle regardless of the evidence and logic raised against its claims, will obfuscate, attack the motives of its opponents, and attempt to misdirect their attention with irrelevancies. When all of these have failed, its last-ditch defense is to attack the concept of truth. Once that has been undermined, the group can't be defeated. It can stay on the ideological battlefield indefinitely, preserving the possibility of victory through attrition or fatigue among its opponents.

As the years have flowed past, I’ve come to consider that particular essay the most important of all my emissions onto the Web. Indeed, the importance of its core thesis has risen to the point that no political statement can be assessed without evaluating whether the words it uses are being employed according to their public meanings: i.e., the meanings private persons routinely attribute to them. In other words, we must determine whether the speaker respects the truths those words are used by us common folk to express.

The effort involved in even listening to political gabble has risen proportionately to politicians’ self-defensive reinterpretations of key words and phrases. Such reinterpretations are inherently attempts to evade the facts.

If you’ve wondered why it is that no politician ever answers a yes-or-no question with a yes-or-no answer, wonder no longer. It’s utterly impossible to reinterpret “yes” and “no.” That makes them quicksand for the politician determined to retain the option to “adjust” his positions for subsequent needs.

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Yesterday afternoon, the esteemed Glenn Reynolds wrote thus:

IN JOHN CARTER’S WORDS, I STILL LIVE: Andrew Sullivan is going to stop blogging. No, blogging isn’t dead. And InstaPundit gets more pageviews than pretty much everyone who’s calling blogging dead. But I can understand Andrew quitting. For me, the real strain isn’t the blogging, but having to pay close attention to the news all the time. The news is usually depressing, when it’s not angering, and that’s doubly true for the Obama years. But I’m not going anywhere anytime soon.

I’m pleased that our beloved InstaPundit has resolved to soldier on, but ponder for a moment why “The news is usually depressing, when it’s not angering.” There’s always been a large percentage of bad news in the news; after all, the major maxim of journalism has always been “if it bleeds, it leads.” In earlier decades, we were far more confident that bad news with political import – i.e., negative developments the response to which would appropriately come from an American government – would be confronted squarely and coped with properly. Public confidence in such a response ain’t what she used to be. (If that comes as news to you, congratulations on a really long nap.)

The reason is the increasing – today near to absolute – unwillingness of our political class to confront reality when doing so might make it look bad.

When reality slaps you across the face with a wet mackerel, the only imaginable evasion is rhetorical: “No, no! While it did look like a mackerel, it wasn’t an authentic mackerel, as these variances along the lateral fins and the belly scales should make obvious. Besides, I turned forty-five degrees in the instant of the first impact, so it didn’t get my right cheek, so I wasn’t really slapped across the face. Anyway, we’re still good friends.” Dealing with the evasions and their implications is what I find most wearying and most angering. I’d be surprised if that weren’t so for Reynolds and many other commentators who’ve been tempted to lay down their keyboards.

Politicians’ methods for evading reality increasingly employ redefinitions of common words and phrases, distortions of their meanings, and a refusal to use those terms whose meanings are so strongly established that they cannot be so treated. The marvel of political journalism in our time is that anyone still bothers to ask a politician a question, when we all know that the answer will be self-serving rather than honestly responsive. Why, indeed, should a reporter bother to report on political statements and orations, which are inevitably more deceitful than informative? The temptation must be strong to eschew such wastes of ink and pixels, and merely report on politicians’ deeds as recorded by cameras and microphones.

Our political destroyers – and by that term, I mean our entire political class, regardless of party affiliation – have embroiled us in a meaning-crisis whose consequence is a truth-crisis. They are resolved that we shall never be able to hold them to the least of their statements. (Their promises? Forget it, Jake.) If we can be battered out of our reliance on the meanings of common words and phrases, our yearning for truth, and our belief in objective reality, their paths to absolute power over us will be completely unobstructed at long last.

Food for thought.

Assorted Notes

I don't do this often (for which I hope you're grateful), so please bear with me.

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First, my sincerest thanks to those of you who've written to praise Freedom's Scion. Compared to the op-ed pieces I post here, writing fiction is much harder, but because of the pleasure a completed story can bring to others, it's far more satisfying. However, what's more satisfying still are:

• Favorable reviews at retail outlets,
• Revenue.

So to those of you who've purchased Freedom's Scion, or any of my other books, at SmashWords: If you have the time and the inclination, would you please post a review? It doesn't have to be long or elaborate; just a few words about what you thought of the book will more than suffice. And don't forget to include a "star rating!" Favorable reviews help to sell books, and the more, the better, as one of SmashWords's sorting techniques for customers perusing its offerings is by average review / number of reviews. You'll have my thanks.

And yes, Freedom's Scion will be made available at Amazon, Barnes and Noble, and other retailers, just as soon as my cover artist can produce the permanent cover art. (She's very good, very modestly priced, and consequently very backed up.)

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Second fiction-oriented note: Yes, I'm working on Freedom's Fury -- the sequel to Freedom's Scion and the completion of the Spooner Federation trilogy -- even as we speak. This one will take a while; I expect to have it ready some time in 2014. The confluence of the major threads and themes of the saga will require extremely careful handling. I expect that you'll be surprised by the resolution.

Quite frankly, I've been rather surprised by the passion of the reactions, both to Freedom's Scion and to the first volume, Which Art In Hope. At least, readers who've written to me about them have been quite passionate in their statements. They all but universally celebrate what they see as the core idea of the Spoonerite Hegira and Hope as I've depicted it: the absolute abjuration of the State. The yearnings they've expressed for such a world have been painfully poignant to read.

A goodly number of readers have explicitly asked whether I find the notion of a completely ungoverned world plausible. Up to now I've refrained from answering that question, because the answer is central to the plot of Freedom's Fury as I've conceived and planned it. But perhaps the time has come for a partial answer:

Yes...and no.

Satisfied? Hey, I said it would be a partial answer. If you want the complete, unexpurgated version, with all the necessary elaborations, justifications, exceptions, and footnotes, you'll have to wait for Freedom's Fury. And I expect you'll be surprised by the conclusions: both mine and yours.

---

Concerning the "Debunkings" series: In the first paragraph of the first segment, I made the following statement of intent:

These "Debunking" pieces will have a common aim: to tell you, in no uncertain terms, what you already know but are unwilling to admit to yourself.

I've received a few emails expressing puzzlement over that statement, so I suppose I should expand on it just a wee bit.

One of the most observant, most penetrating statements about our political lexicon comes from that considerable master of the English language, the great George Orwell:

In our time, political speech and writing are largely the defense of the indefensible. Things like the continuance of British rule in India, the Russian purges and deportations, the dropping of the atom bombs on Japan, can indeed be defended, but only by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face, and which do not square with the professed aims of the political parties. Thus political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness. Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification. Millions of peasants are robbed of their farms and sent trudging along the roads with no more than they can carry: this is called transfer of population or rectification of frontiers. People are imprisoned for years without trial, or shot in the back of the neck or sent to die of scurvy in Arctic lumber camps: this is called elimination of unreliable elements. Such phraseology is needed if one wants to name things without calling up mental pictures of them. Consider for instance some comfortable English professor defending Russian totalitarianism. He cannot say outright, "I believe in killing off your opponents when you can get good results by doing so." Probably, therefore, he will say something like this:

"While freely conceding that the Soviet regime exhibits certain features which the humanitarian may be inclined to deplore, we must, I think, agree that a certain curtailment of the right to political opposition is an unavoidable concomitant of transitional periods, and that the rigors which the Russian people have been called upon to undergo have been amply justified in the sphere of concrete achievement."

....Political language -- and with variations this is true of all political parties, from Conservatives to Anarchists -- is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.

I contend that:

• You know this;
• You have always known it;
• You allow it because you don't know how to fight it.

I am trying, most sincerely, to give you the tool you need. It's a simple tool:

Unpack the implications of the evil phrase and hold them up to the light of reality.

This must be done relentlessly, and hurled into the faces of the politicians using the evil, mendacious phrase.

Do you have the courage and the resolve for that? If so, the "Debunkings" series is your training ground. It has one or two more segments to run, but it will by no means complete the task of detoxifying today's political deceits. What I hope it will do is train you in the process involved.

I've done (and am still doing) my part. The rest is up to you.

---

You're probably aware that until recently, my health was in decline. I was pleased to experience a reversal of that trend, which appears to be holding steady...with one exception. Something has "gone wrong" in my left arm and shoulder. The panjandrums -- panjandra? -- of the medical-industrial complex are baffled by this malady; I've had more different diagnoses than Carter has Little Liver Pills. Whatever it is, it makes many physical chores painful to perform, including typing. Indeed, typing might just be the cause of the affliction; after all, I've done quite a lot of it for a very long time.

So I've begun to lean on a resource I'd previously disdained: voice recognition for text entry, in place of entry from the keyboard. Voice recognition software is better than it's ever been -- given what I remember from its early days, thank God for that -- but it's not perfect by any means. And of course, the same applies to me (though I'm willing to allow that I'm not "better than I've ever been"). So now and then, a mis-recognition by the voice-rec software will combine with an oversight by yours truly to produce...something other than I intended.

If you see the occasional howler in my pieces here, please be generous. Let me know about your discoveries in time to correct them before the men in the white coats decide they've finally got evidence enough, hoist their butterfly nets, and converge on Long Island with posters featuring my aged mug. That is, if Homeland Security and the IRS don't get me first.

The Debunking: National Security

It's not generally known how new the phrase "national security" is to our political lexicon. It first made its appearance in the first post-World War II years, when various persons inside and outside the Truman Administration were seeking rationales for retaining the greatly enlarged military that had been mustered and funded to win the war. It was "institutionalized" in the National Security Act of 1947, the very first Act of Congress to define "transnational threats" to the "national security:"

    For purposes of this subsection, the term "transnational threat" means the following:

    (A) Any transnational activity (including international terrorism, narcotics trafficking, the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the delivery systems for such weapons, and organized crime) that threatens the national security of the United States.
    (B) Any individual or group that engages in an activity referred to in subparagraph (A).

[Sections 101.i.5 (A), (B)]

Note that the enumerated "transnational threats" are not all the "transnational threats." More strikingly, though the terms "national security" and "national security interests" occur innumerable times in the text of the Act, the "national security" and "national security interests" of the United States are never defined.

Do you think you know what those sonorous phrases mean?

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When a word or phrase is without a definition, we must infer its meaning from the applications to which it's put. Looking back over the history of its use, what might we deem the "national security" of the United States to be, solely from the subjects to which it's been applied?

My first observation in this regard is that the sitting president is the de facto authority on the matter. In practice, if the president says that such-and-such is "a matter of national security," then it is -- whether the proclamation comes before or after the fact. Therefore, one cannot be sure one has not trespassed into a "national security" matter even long after the fact, for the president's unprecedented ex post facto power over such things is unbounded and has no time limit.

My second observation, which descends from the first, is that the use of the Act's criminalization provisions:

    (c)Whoever, in the course of a pattern of activities intended to identify and expose covert agents and with reason to believe that such activities would impair or impede the foreign intelligence activities of the United States, discloses any information that identifies an individual as a covert agent to any individual not authorized to receive classified information, knowing that the information disclosed so identifies such individual and that the United States is taking affirmative measures to conceal such individual’s classified intelligence relationship to the United States, shall be fined under title 18, United States Code, or imprisoned not more than three years, or both.
    (d) A term of imprisonment imposed under this section shall be consecutive to any other sentence of imprisonment.

[Sections 601 (c), (d)]

...is thus wholly at the discretion of the sitting president, and therefore an offense not defined in statute law.

A sitting president can criminalize an act as a threat to the "national security" many years after the event.
A sitting president can reverse the decisions of a previous president about threats to the "national security."
The only defense that can be mounted against such a charge:

It is a defense to a prosecution under section 601 that before the commission of the offense with which the defendant is charged, the United States had publicly acknowledged or revealed the intelligence relationship to the United States of the individual the disclosure of whose intelligence relationship to the United States is the basis for the prosecution. [Section 602 (a)]

...requires the cooperation of the prosecuting entity.

Still think you know what "national security" means?

---

When the Valerie Plame matter broke on the nation's headlines, opponents of the Bush Administration (i.e., the "disloyal opposition") demanded a witch hunt for the person who had revealed Plame's employment by the CIA. At the time, there was much confusion about whether Plame's status at the CIA was "covert" -- a qualifier normally belonging to field agents -- or whether she was merely one more Washington desk jockey. But the National Security Act made no distinctions between the two, so the revelation was within the scope of Section 601 (c).

It wasn't hard to find the leak: it was Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage, who had disclosed Plame's employment to columnist Robert Novak. But the persons propelling the witch hunt were unsatisfied with that target. They wanted a sacrificial animal more directly connected to the persons they most hated, President George W. Bush and Vice-President Dick Cheney...and they found one in Cheney's chief of staff, Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The nature of Libby's "offense," inasmuch as he was provably not the leaker, remains obscure to this day. He was convicted on exceedingly tremulous grounds for "perjury," "obstruction of justice," and "making false statements to federal investigators." But the connection of the Plame case to "national security" made it impossible for President Bush to rescue him from what was plainly a politically oriented prosecution: the matter had been too luridly publicized, and Bush was too ethical a man to dismiss the verdict of a federal jury when the facts of the matter were honestly quite disputable.

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More recently, President Barack Hussein Obama has used "national security" to deny various materials to Congressional investigators, as in the recent "Operation Fast and Furious" centered contempt hearings against Attorney-General Eric Holder. Indeed, "national security" is the overwhelmingly dominant excuse for refusing to disclose material of all sorts, whether to Congress or to requestors under the Freedom Of Information Act. When released documents are so heavily redacted as to be effectively blank, the reason provided for the excisions is nearly always "national security."

Obama and his henchmen might be the most egregious such manipulators of the fell phrase, but they're not the first. Presidents have wielded "national security" as a shield for their minions in cases reaching all the way back to the Act's passage. The clash between the de facto meaning of "national security" and the misty image of it in the common citizen's mind could not be more stark.

---

The "national security" shibboleth has been used, in the preponderance of cases, for one of two reasons:

• Political persecution, as in the Libby affair;
• The protection of persons within the federal government from exposure of their malefactions.

Concerning objective abridgements of the "national security," such as the disclosure of sensitive weapons and weapons-related technology to enemy regimes, seldom is anything done. We have the occasional conspicuous violator whom the Administration cannot ignore, such as Jonathan Pollard or Bradley Manning, but these are far fewer than the venal uses of "national security" to shield federal officials from the consequences of their actions. Even with the conspicuous violators -- consider Jesse Jackson's and former president Jimmy Carter's representations that they could negotiate with enemy regimes on behalf the United States! -- there's no guarantee that any common conception of justice will be served.

Bluntly, if you read "national security" as having any objective meaning upon which common citizens can expect the federal government to act consistently and reliably, you've been sold a bill of goods.

Why Are We Here?

"Plaaaaaassssstic...assssshoooooles." -- George Carlin

No, no, I don't mean it that way. I mean, why are we here at Liberty’s Torch?

It's Saturday, as if you couldn’t tell.

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Blogging has gone from being the new, exciting method for sharing the significant events of one's day with a circle of intimates, to a proven technology by which total nonentities can vent their spleen onto the World Wide Web for the dubious edification of others, and finally to a hoary old fetish for sexagenarians -- get your mind out of the gutter; that means sixty-year-olds -- who haven't the agility to keep up with Facebook, Tumblr, and Twitter. Surely once the sexagenarians become septuagenarians unable to find their glasses without their minders' help, and presently deteriorate to octogenarians whose walkers prevent them from reaching the keyboard, blogging will cease to command an audience.

Well, all things must pass, as that noted sage George Harrison has told us. But blogging hasn't, and somehow I don't think it will, at least not soon. It's too convenient, and too flexible. At any rate, this sexagenarian finds it irresistible.

We who write here are of several ages, dispositions, and stations in life. We share certain general attitudes, of course, as is usual at most group blogs, though we come at our subject matter from individualized angles. However, none of us can claim an absolutely unique set of perspectives, insights, or opinions. None of us can honestly say to himself, "If I weren't saying these things, in this fashion, no one else would be doing so." So why do we continue on?

It's a question that's been on my mind for a few weeks:

• It's not because there's money in it;
• It's not because we have no other outlets for self-expression;
• It's not because we have much influence over the thinking of others;
• It's not much of an excuse for holding off the wives and kids for an hour a day;
• And it's a really lousy technique for meeting girls.

So why, then?

Whoops! Coffee cup's empty. Back in a flash.

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The Web is an open forum, much like Speakers' Corner in Hyde Park. (Or perhaps like the "prophets' corner" in Life of Brian.) It's a place to say what you like, about whatever grabs you...and equally, a place where others who seek persons of similar views might find you to be a kindred soul, courtesy of Google or some other search engine.

Because no one can compel anyone to attend to his Web blather, those who choose to do so are likely to be persons of similar bent, who may reasonably be assumed to take a serious interest in whatever one has chosen to write about. Potential friends and / or allies. People you can drink with in comradely comfort. This is especially the case with regular commenters, arguably the best indication of whether the writer is regularly and consistently "making sense" to anyone.

Do our readers need us? Possibly. They enjoy us, almost certainly. But it's far more certain that we who blog need them. It's probably the central reason we spend our time this way.

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As an indie fiction writer, I know something about the need to be read. No writer pours hundreds or thousands of hours into the creation of a compelling fiction for the sheer pleasure of the exercise. No writer consigns a completed book to "the trunk" with a smile on his face. And no writer, looking back on a novel that failed to gain an audience, says, "Well, it was worth it for the voyage of self-discovery."

Writing is not speaking. It's not conversation. Stylistic classifications to one side, it is not and cannot be "casual." It's an attempt to weave words into a net that will contain a thought, or a set of thoughts, of importance sufficient to justify the effort. That's the case whether one is writing fiction, or opinion, or exposition, or a daily journal.

Robert A. Heinlein, in the Postscript to his early collection Revolt in 2100, claimed that he wrote "to buy groceries." In The Cat Who Walks Through Walls, he made a flippant comment about the "need to write," and alluded to terrible consequences should that need be forcibly suppressed. Yet paragraph after paragraph, at the risk of alienating a goodly part of his (potential) audience, Heinlein gave the lie to his own claims by expressing and exemplifying some of the boldest and starkest sociopolitical opinions any fictioneer has ever advanced. No doubt his bank balance benefited from his book sales, but he never became wealthy; he did become known as science fiction's equivalent of Ayn Rand.

Everyone who writes is motivated, at some level, by the sense that his chosen subjects, and his insights into them, are important, deserving of more attention than he alone can give them. Were it otherwise, we'd all be standing on our Acme Portable Podia at some version of Speakers' Corner, bloviating into the wind, without any concern for how many listeners we might have...or for whether anyone hears us at all.

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It takes a monumental degree of arrogance to think that one has any significant prospect of changing the world through his writing. This is especially the case with blogging, where every voice raised must compete with many millions of others, some in passionate opposition to oneself. Most of us don't kid ourselves about it, but we write anyway. Indeed, we put a fair amount of time and effort into it.

We do it, in the main, because we hope to find you, the reader.

We need the sense of having kindred spirits around us. We yearn to believe that we're not alone in our priorities nor in our passion for them. Many of us have tried the fleshly world -- the realm in which actual living bodies mill about, speaking and doing and occasionally connecting -- and have found it wanting, at least for our purposes. You can take that as an indication of personal failure, if you like; I see it as a preference for methods with a better chance of success.

One way or another, the only meaning our words have emanates from you who read them, take them seriously, and return for more.

Persuasion specialist Michael Emerling once said that the import of any communication lies in the response of the hearer. As true as that is, a stronger statement is possible: Without a hearer, no communication can occur.

We who blog are here because of our need to communicate.
You who read us are instrumental in meeting that need.
We could not do it without you.
Thank you, most sincerely.

All my best,
Fran

Free World vs. Free Ride

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a problem. The problem is, Truth has been dis-proven  Now I know that a number of folks here will call BS on me and say that I must be talking about Religion, so it is not a valid argument.

I'm afraid I would answer in the negative. This is not about God. This is about Reality. The problem is-- people have ceased to believe in principles. Not that they don't have them-- they certainly don't believe they have them. The problem is, they don't believe that they are real. That is, they feel they understand the fundamental truth that principals are no different from empty rhetoric and the elaborate sophistry they claim to believe in. So you can make the most logical and well balanced-- even persuasive argument that can be made-- and it will have no effect, because your audience will simply ask, with a sneer-- “So what is truth? 

And, what's in it for me?"

You see, the Enemy simply offers the average person what they want, then asks for what they want in return. All they have to do is say, “Ok, we'll give you a free ride. Now, you give us a vote, and we will make those fools who want you to work-- pay for their insolence. We'll keep you safe from guilt, from necessity, from pain. All you have to do is vote for us, and you don't even have to think for your self-- and you can feel virtuous doing it-- because we know what is best for you, and for all.”

The sad part is, because the people don't ultimately believe anything that anyone tells them, the Left doesn't even have to keep their promises.  It is just the promise of the free ride that does all the work.

They already know already that what they use as persuasion is ultimately empty rhetoric. You can see it in the Abortion argument. No matter what side you happen to fall on personally, you can learn quite a bit from it. That is, “So what if we are taking a human life? What are you going to do about it? It's legal and most people agree with us. We are in charge. So there.” It doesn't even have to be a majority anymore. Just enough to count.

THAT is the current core argument for the “pro choice” crowd, who are no longer the pro-choice crowd. Because, now they even admit that what they want you to do is have an abortion-- not have a choice.

Say what you like about my take on this particular argument-- I still say that this winning argument will crop up in other parts of our so-called national dialogue between the Left and the rest of us.

 I'm sorry, we aren't a coalition, and I'm not going to pretend. The only thing that unites us is the knowledge that what is going on here is wrong and that something needs to be done about it. That what the Founding Fathers did was right-- and what is happening here is a flagrant violation of those hallowed principles and ideas. Beyond that we'd fight like hyenas in j-random bar or cafe. But.  At the end of the night, we'd shake hands and go our separate ways. Why? We both believe in America, and our ideas about America are pretty similar, if not identical.

Even so, we can't offer the other side what they want. They don't want freedom, they want free beer. The closest thing we have is free software-- and even that takes work (knowledge and mental effort), so they don't want that either. They don't really understand what we mean by freedom-- and they mostly don't care. Because it's not about getting free stuff, and they don't understand what we get out of what we believe.

That is why universally they have to call us bigots and class oppressors-- because that is the only conceivable benefit they can imagine to our system as we describe it. It must be about power over, because personal power is so much a given that they don't even see it when it is taken away. As long as you don't touch the U-Verse, the endless promise of food, stuff and license-- those laws don't mean squat. After all, someone has to be around to enforce them. If you go to the welfare ghettos, no one really is until someone dies-- and sometimes, not even then.

Who's going to enforce inconvenient laws against those who keep you in office? All the better to extract fines and inconvenience from those whom it is beneficial to harass. We live in a unique period in history where the class that is most protected is the class that is the least important in the grand scheme of things. It is the enemies of Control who are important, and where the attention is spent. As long as they keep sprinkling cash, entertainment and contraception on the throbbing consuming masses they can be left well enough alone. They won't bite the dog that feeds, clothes and protects them from effort.

The Left will not cease to have support until it becomes onerous or inconvenient to support them. Until the point is driven home that their rights are not just vaporous changeable ideas, but things that are profitable to believe in. You know, things that mean something. They have to learn that something means something first, and that's a long row to hoe.

So the only way we are going to make real headway is to come up with the answer that proves false the assertion:

Who wants a free world when you can have a free ride?

I'm afraid they won't recognize the limited nature of reality until it is too late.

This is why freedom is not enough. Or perhaps, I should say, we have to prove that freedom is real. That liberty is a real thing. That sacrifice is not just an empty word. We have to go back to Aquinas-- or perhaps before Aquinas. We can't assume A=A-- that alone is a tough sell these days. After all-- who cares, and why does it matter?

For me, it was all about finding a reason to continue breathing. I discovered that the Leftist paradigm ultimately leads to a futile and meaningless existence in a frustrating perpetual childhood. There is nothing to risk, so rewards don't mean anything. Because you can't believe anything anybody says, there can't be any truth, so even looking is pointless.

But I couldn't stop looking, because deep in my core I knew there just had to be a truth. I wouldn't be breathing otherwise, and there would be no reason not to stop-- save the momentary inconvenience of people who cared for me, loved me and raised me. But my heart screamed that there had to be a bigger reason than that. Don't get me wrong-- despite evidence to the contrary-- I did love them. I had even convinced myself that my being absent would be to their benefit-- and I still loved them. 

But the heart wants what it wants.  We often take on burdens like children for reasons that don't really make sense. That love thing gets in the way of making the sensible choice of living for one's self, and making filling one's gullet and partying until you drop much easier. The problem is-- those sensible things don't satisfy. At the end of the day, you still want more.

NO, I'm still not talking about religion. It is very hard not to, at this point, because that's how I got here. But it's still not where I'm going. But there could be a clue here as to where we might go next to be fishers of the self-motivated.  Because those deeper desires override even laziness, myopia and ignorance-- even the willful kind.

Human beings need reasons. We need concrete things. We have to believe the evidence of our senses, or we become neurotic, reactive and depressed. I believe that the closest the modern child gets to a real risk and reward environment in this day and age-- is the video game. (And, failing that, gang culture. But I digress.) And that is why they are so massively popular-- above and beyond the immersive experience, or the sensation of being in an imaginary world. Because you don't have to use the imagination to get there-- but then, you don't have the freedom to imagine what you want.

Truthfully, I'd rather have a book than a video game. Not only am I old fashioned that way, but I want to control the experience. No one will ever beat the megapixels of my mental images-- no mater how fast our technology grows, nor how reactive to my desires it becomes. It is exactly as real as I want it to be, no more and no less. The fun part is that I don't know where it is going, but I know what the main character looks like. It is even better than a movie, because, while you know only what the author wants you to, you control the camera, and you can blur out the parts you don't want to linger on.

But I am unusual. I don't mind making an effort to get what I want-- even if I am lazy. But knowing that, I can be constructively lazy, and make it work for me. That is what puts me on the nerd/geek continuum.  But there is a reason why the geek/nerd is popular right now-- even among non-geeks. It does relate, to a lesser degree, to human nature.

We all know that the mother of invention is not perspiration or inspiration-- but laziness. It is the latter two that get us off of our couches and into our workshops, so we can spend more time later in our easy chairs. But how will we ever inspire a generation who's biggest accomplishment is collecting a welfare check? Most of these people have never learned to defer gratification for anything more than a twinkie.

Now, I recognize that perhaps even converting a few won't really help us. We also can't really convert those who are at the top, feeding the system either. Because they feed it not only to feel good about themselves, but also to have power over others. They don't believe the rhetoric either. They probably don't believe that truth exists either-- but they will get what they want anyway. Clearly, as they see it, the only way is cheating.

The saddest part of all, is that they don't believe that anyone has the power of creating their own stuff, that the only way to get it is to take it from someone else. That is the grim part behind Obama's “You didn't build that”. Unfortunately, the folks he was actually talking to, believed him and thought he was speaking a profound truth. They don't believe you can build anything. There are whole cultures that revolve around this philosophy, and they tend to get gnarled up in self-perpetuating violence pretty quickly. That is the dark side of most hunter gatherer cultures.

Indeed, I believe that the whole thing is just a ruse-- a fog of talking points to distract us while they take everything away. As long as we are still talking, and we are not doing, they are free to take whatever they want away from us while we do it. We also make ourselves easy targets, and then they know who is too dangerous to live. They can't kill too many of us too soon-- because we feed the system. But some people get impatient-- and making omelets always involves breaking some eggs, right?

Ironically, thanks to contraception and abortion effort, there aren't enough of us to feed the system right now. But as long as no one believes in truth, no one has to see or acknowledge that fact. So the next ten years should be real interesting. Perhaps opportunities will arise for reality to re-establish itself in the minds of man. I just hope we can wait that long.  So I guess, until then, we must demonstrate and try to teach truth as humanity has discovered it.  

Introduction

First, I must say that I am surprised and pleased to be offered an opportunity to post here. I won’t do Fran the disservice of excessive hyperbole and say I sympathize with St. Peter. It more closely resembles the shock that an itinerant preacher may receive when the local pastor applauds his speech, then wordlessly gives him keys to the rectory.

I will try to confine my concerns to a more political nature, and, I guess, as an introduction, discuss myself as a political animal.  Had you asked me ten years ago, I would have told you I wasn’t one. But my deeds belied my words, and also my doxology. I talked like a relativist and acted-- more like an observant pragmatist motivated toward Higher Things.

 Because politics is ultimately about what you do, and why. What I said was more akin to the propaganda in the air all around me. I think it started out as protective coloration-- and in a rash, despairing instant I threw away what I knew to be true in favor of what I wanted to be true.

I was given further 'freedom' in this direction by the gentle assistance of a certain behavioral psychologist, who’s duties included interrogating enemy combatants during Desert Storm.  He taught me that I could not trust my perceptions, therefore I could not trust my conclusions, no matter how ineffably logical they were. I will admit I was a bright and stubborn young teen in his care-- but I had little training in defending myself against those who truly wanted to destroy my essence in  favor of curing religion.  After all, I thought he only wanted to help me.

And people wonder why I so loved the heavy, verbose  Russian authors in those days. Indeed-- I was hardly aware of the reason myself.  My most beloved favorite was two-fold: Crime and Punishment by Dostoevsky and The First Circle by Solzhenitsyn. I still liked the idea that the world had an inexorable order in it whether we acknowledged it or not. I still liked that people believed in Justice-- and had a clear conception of it, and not watered down, half-mumbled niceties that made you feel good inside.   I especially loved Dostoevsky’s ability to lay  Nietzsche bare as a howling narcissist shaking an ordinary, mortal fist at the unfairness of it all.  And to think he was polite and sympathetic to do so in the guise of the arrogant but ultimately likable Raskolnikov.

Nope, this is not a literary commentary either. But I did not have much exposure to politics as a child. One of my earliest exposures to thus  was when my father bought a VCR to record a black economics professor give a talk on 60 Minutes.  These days, that doesn’t seem like much. But in those days, a VCR cost upwards of  $2,000. And that was in early eighties money, meaning far more than a week’s pay.  Some of you might recognize the timing, as the time that Thomas Sowell talked to the world about the errors inherent in price controls for housing in New York City.

So my dad tinkered for hours getting that VCR set up, fine tuning the thing by hand and what have you. Fortunately,  he did that the day before. I wasn’t sure what an economist would say that would be so important-- so ignorant was I of the power of money in those days.  But dad refused to explain, and invited me to watch, instead.

It turns out, that even if I did not remember the principles he discussed, Sowell conveyed a character that riveted itself in my mind, and indeed haunted me all my life.  And I’m not talking about characters in a novel, but character as in the shape of one. I mean as in those fine virtues that no one talks about anymore (save some few cranks in odd corners on the internet).

You see, he wasn’t without controversy in those days. They weren’t content with dismissing Sowell with a few well turned racial slurs.  Indeed, he faced down at least three different journalists on that show who tried to unseat him, tried a wide array of argument, insult and false flattery to assault that calm and sure knowledge that indeed those price controls did aggregate the poverty and homelessness problems in NYC. They tried everything, but his logic was unassailable. I vividly remember that after the last male journalist was red-faced, sweating, and practically reduced to tears by Sowell’s calm and gracious demeanor,  there was a blip in the service, and static.  The static was hypnotic as I absorbed the results. You did not see such vicious fireworks in the average interview in those days.

Soon, after a little tag letting you know your television still worked,  a new face appeared in the interview room.  She was blond, preppy, thoughtful, and actually started asking him intelligent questions. She left off trying to refute him, and gave at least a half-hearted attempt to understand him.  I was blown away by the results. Sowell not only carefully unfolded his fine garment of an argument, but Walters shone as a reporter by being a credible witness. It had gone from one of the worst to one of the best interviews I have personally ever seen.  That was probably the interview that made Barbara Walter’s career.

Because it wasn’t his argument that impressed my young mind. It was the fact that he had tolerated the insult, the rudeness, the hypocrisy, the fury, the panic, and the hatred-- and only returned a loving concern coupled with a determination to deliver truth.  And when offered the opportunity, he took it without remonstrance or complaint. You could believe what he said because he held firm with gracious calm.  That opened the gates in my heart to actually hear the argument-- but it took a fair number of repetitions of this to truly see what was true and what wasn't.  It is too easy to fall into the trap of safely thinking what you'd like to see to put up with the hardship of living up to your principals-- until you realize that your life has an expiration date.

It is always that firm and solid ground that I longed for even in the depths of the best and worst indulgences that the culture has to offer.   Whatever I said, I longed for peace, not only of heart, but of the knowledge that North would stay North, and South would not leave it’s moorings.  But to see the glory of God in front of me, I had to wander the desert for "40 years", whining and complaining about how the Almighty was leading me around in circles. For I did not hold anything that was true enough to follow with a whole heart.

“So, fine,” you say, “now we know why you are a conservative, and why you are a Catholic. Tell us why you believe in Freedom!”

It’s simple. Because with Freedom you can choose to be conservative or not, you can choose to Love, or not.  Without Natural Law, you can’t define Freedom. Without rock-solid definitions and a definable (and defensible) Truth, the word freedom is just a word- a symbol- or a sweet nothing. Those decisions only have meaning if you are truly free.  There is a third side of this triangular foundation-- that's Love, and without it, life is just more toil and hardship-- a useless sacrifice to vanity.  The trouble is, you can't nail down Love without God.

Ultimately, I think that's why Heinlein got Love wrong. He had a fine definition that sounded suspiciously like the religious one, but it went dangerously off the rails because there was no absolute reference to hold it in place. So the principles lead me to Freedom, but it was the delivery-- the demonstration of Love, that led me to truth.  The Love part just proof that the veritably true, and based on something you can use in your own life.  Something worth more valuable than even life itself-- so it shows that even fairy tales held Truth and taught Truth, just as all things that are true.

The point of these stories  and the repetitive axiomatic thinking is to show how one late-comer to Liberty was won. I will grant you that it was not the arguments that did it, but a perception of Truth as evidenced by a particular set of behaviors. No, it is not as simple as just being nice. It was having a set of ideas with the grace of supporters willing to endure great hardship-- and the preponderance of evidence in the face of ever-shifting circumstances.  Everywhere I looked-- from the Constitution, to various commentators, to the Bible, seemed to support this idea of Freedom and hold a consistent definition of Liberty-- even if the knuckleheads in power, or men with MSW degrees did not seem to agree.


I decided eventually that Love was possibly worth making mistakes and relying on my perceptions anyway. I mean-- it was either that or a Thorazine drip. And the people in my life deserved to be loved as they had loved me. And trying to gain knowledge of the world by a fuzzy feel-good consensus Just. Doesn't. Work. Even that annoying relative you can't stand deserves better.

It is easy to be disillusioned by a Democrat. For me, that happened in the Clinton Administration-- and probably before.  (To be fair, it also points to the date I was disillusioned by the Republicans, too.)
The problem is to be Romanced by Truth, when the Truth is hard, and doesn't seem to give dividends until you have already reaped it's benefits.  Which is, for me why the definition of Love is so important, and cannot (I'm sorry) be separated from politics as such.

Because most of the Left and the Great Undecided desperately want principles. They just don't know what they are, how to get them, or why they should bother. And yelling at them won't always help. I have certainly had a wake up call from a friend or a relative who informs me of my bad behavior-- but generally you have to know that you did wrong in the first place for it to have a salutary effect.  They have to know why that it is right and proper to have a right and a wrong in the first place.

Love should be more than sex or being nice, Truth should be more than (even verified) data, and Freedom should be more than license.  Because they are, whether we like it or not.  Life is better, if more difficult, when you know that. For one thing, living has value, even being a person with a small imprint has meaning.

That is why (in more ways than one) I am here today.

FYI: I should be clear that when I use Truth with the capital "T" I am not referring specifically to the Gospel. It certainly includes that, but I mean also that Freedom was a gift granted to us, and from there all that follows out of Natural Law.  From Natural Law, the Constitution is easily seen as an outline to a superior form of government, and from there everything else flows like water.