A Year For Realism

     Not long ago, I wrote a trio of short fiction pieces about a politician in a fictional country who bucked his nation’s establishment to do what he believed to be in the best interests of all. I issued them as a small collection that you can download for free. Ever since, Gentle Readers have written to me to plead for a full-length novel based on those short tales.

     And yes, I’ve started one. It will take a while to complete, as I have to complete an appropriate setting and backstory for it. Nevertheless, have faith: it will arrive sooner or later, always assuming that the Destroyer of Delights and the Sunderer of Societies doesn’t manage to get past the dogs, the spike strips on the driveway, and the claymores on the front lawn.

     But today, as I peer back at 2020 through jaundiced eyes, I realized that a bit of what I’ve already written in that tale is essential for the year to come. Here it is.

---

     Whiteman rose from his seat on the stage as his name was announced. He nodded to the coordinator and moved to the lectern with a confident stride, as if it was an event he’d anticipated with pleasure. He laid his note cards before him, reviewed them quickly, and presented a solemn visage to the audience that filled the district’s public hall.
     “Neighbors,” he said, and winced as acoustic feedback followed the word with a piercing shriek. He reached for the gain control and halved the setting.
     “Forgive me for that, neighbors. I didn’t expect it any more than you. And may it be the last time anything I say or do should displease you.
     “Few of you know me, which is as it should be. Too many of Neastra’s politicians are well known, public men of long standing. Why is that a bad thing, you may ask? It is bad because a long career in politics causes a man to focus ever more narrowly of his own interests. He takes less and less interest in the rights, needs, interests, and prerogatives of those he purports to serve. Our current Member, Gregory Howland, has represented us for twenty-four years. During his tenure in office, nothing of any substance has changed, other than for the worse.
     “I cannot promise you anything. Not jobs, nor improved commerce, nor lowered utility bills, nor reduced local taxes, nor more peace and order in the streets. I will not promise what I cannot be certain I can deliver. The one thing I am certain I can deliver is a fresh voice in Parliament...if you, my neighbors, will consent to send me there.
     “If you will do so, I will strive to my utmost to bring you what I believe will serve the interests, not only of Querendon, but of Neastra as a whole. I will seek to build relations with other Members of minds like to mine. I will endeavor to forge coalitions of Members who believe as I do, that we may work to a common end.
     “Here is what I believe.
     “I believe that the norms of public conduct our forefathers honored must be reinstituted and enforced by law.
     “I believe that legal immigration to this island must be so controlled as to bring net benefits to our commerce and social life.
     “I believe that illegal entry to the nation can and must be halted, and that with the willing cooperation of our Navy, the pride of all the oceans of the world, Neastra has the power to do so.
     “I believe that aggressive creeds, creeds that claim to be above the law, have no place in a nation that values peace and genuine tolerance, and I will work to prevent any further access to this island by allegiants to those creeds.
     “I believe that regulations on commerce must be reduced to the maximum possible extent.
     “I believe that intrusions into the private affairs of private citizens, whether by government or by non-governmental organizations, must be halted, and that non-governmental organizations must no longer be granted the authority of the law.
     “I believe that the value of the aureal can be stabilized, that taxes can be reduced, and that the budget can be balanced.
     “I believe that all those things are possible. Yet I cannot promise you any of them. What I can do is what I have done today: to offer you my services as your Member, and if elected to pursue those ends with all my power.”
     He glanced at his watch, swept up his note cards, and smiled for the first time.
     “I have been allotted thirty minutes for this presentation,” he said. “Twenty-four minutes remain. If you have questions for me, ask them now, and I will answer them as best I can.”
     The questions began. Whiteman answered them. He described himself, his education, and his business. He was candid about his wealth and entirely unashamed of it, but agreed that he would transfer control of it to a blind trust should he be elected. He named his wife, but said nothing more about her. When asked whether he would employ her in his campaign, he replied firmly in the negative. When asked about his children, he demurred; they had requested privacy, and he had promised it to them.
     At last there came the questions he had anticipated from the start. A beefy man, by his looks a longshoreman or in some comparably physical occupation, stood and said, “What’s your party?”
     “The Realism Party,” Whiteman replied.
     “Never heard of it,” the questioner said.
     “No reason you should have,” Whiteman said. “I filed its existence at the council offices, along with my candidacy, this very morning. As of today I am its one and only member and its sole candidate for any public office.” He grinned. “I doubt the national press has taken note of it yet.”
     Several audience members chuckled.
     “Well!” The questioner smirked. “What makes you think your...party can get you elected Member from Querendon?”
     Whiteman nodded. His gentle smile was undisturbed.
     “I believe I can be elected Member from Querendon,” he said in a perfectly unstressed tone, “because I am running for that position against Gregory Howland.”
     Uproar.
     Whiteman let it go on for perhaps twenty seconds before he raised a hand for peace. The audience subsided.
     “As I stand here, I have never broken a promise to you. Having not promised you anything but my best effort, I can be confident of maintaining that record. I shall not recount Member Howland’s many promises. You can recall them yourselves. If so, I exhort you to compare those promises to the achievements that followed.” He panned the crowd, smiling thinly. “I believe the comparison will suffice to carry me to Parliament as your Member.”
     Three months and one day later, on Tuesday, November 9, to the surprise of many including the aforementioned Gregory Howland, it did.

---

     Realism, colloquially speaking, is the attitude that puts facts ahead of opinions and theories. It reposes its trust in facts, and disdains to follow nostrums that fail to account for them. When confronted by demands for the unearned, the impractical, or the absurd, it bellows No! and returns its attention to the facts and what they portend.

     The core of a realistic approach to governance is a simple recognition:

If the end in view is righteous,
Righteous means can get you there.
An unrighteous end cannot be attained by any means.

     It is within our power to make the Year of Our Lord 2021 a year for realism. Like any good engineer, I’ve compiled the requirements for the project as prerequisite to its inception. Here they are:

1. Trust no politician, nor any politician’s promises.
2. Conform to the moral laws codified in the Decalogue.
3. Demand nothing of others that is outside those moral laws.

     (What’s that you say? You’re not a Christian nor a Jew? You’re not religious at all? I don’t give a shit. Either conform to the moral laws as codified in Commandments Six through Ten in the King James list, or begone and don’t return. As for politicians, they’ll promise you anything and everything in exchange for power over you. They’ve done so since the Greeks first experimented with democracy. At this point we should know better than to listen.)

     The moral laws are among the natural laws God has written into the fabric of existence. They cannot be broken without severe, often ruinous consequences. When a nation attempts to set them aside through political action, it seeks its own destruction. We should all know that by now, but...well, hearken to Sir Thomas Carlyle:

     Nevertheless, in the inexplicable universal votings and debatings of these Ages, an idea or rather a dumb presumption to the contrary has gone idly abroad, and at this day, over extensive tracts of the world, poor human beings are to be found, whose practical belief it is that if we "vote" this or that, so this or that will thenceforth be. Practically men have come to imagine that the Laws of this Universe, like the laws of constitutional countries, are decided by voting. It is an idle fancy. The Laws of this Universe, of which if the Laws of England are not an exact transcript, they should passionately study to become, are fixed by the everlasting congruity of things, and are not fixable or changeable by voting!

     And thereafter, to the great Herbert Spencer:

     I asked one of the members of Parliament whether a majority the House could legitimize murder. He said no. I asked him whether it could sanctify robbery. He thought not. But I could not make him see that if murder and robbery are intrinsically wrong, and not to be made right by the decisions of statesmen, then similarly all actions must be either right or wrong, apart from the authority of the law; and that if the right and wrong the law are not in harmony with this intrinsic right and wrong, the law itself is criminal.

     And beware.

---

     I could go on, but among my resolutions for the coming year is to be a bit less wordy. Please, Gentle Readers: reflect on the above. Think about the implications. Think about what you would gain – or lose – were we to forge a Realism Movement founded on the ideas I’ve expressed. Think also about where we might find a John Whiteman or a Stephen Graham Sumner to carry our standard. (Don’t look at me.)

     Then choose a side. For the only middle ground will be no-man’s-land.

     Happy New Year.

Premises Old And New

     It shouldn’t be necessary to say this over and over, but I’ll say it again: He who controls the premises to an argument can predetermine its outcome. Moreover, he probably will.

     Unspoken premises lie beneath every human action. When you walk across the floor of a room, you assume the floor won’t collapse beneath you. Yet that’s exactly what happens now and then. Similarly, when you cross a street (with the lights and at the crosswalk, as the traffic laws prescribe), you assume that no crazed motorist will seize the opportunity to “score a few points” on your tender carcass. Yet that, too, happens now and then. Both of them have happened to me.

     Obviously, our premises matter. Indeed, nothing in the realm of human thought could possibly matter more.

     With that, allow me to direct your gaze to an excellent article by Daniel Thomas:

     Imagine the effect on a patriotic British citizen watching in utter despair as his Prime Minister uses her exalted position to conspire with a foreign political entity to hand over the governance of the country she has sworn to serve.

     Imagine how he feels as she portrays Great Britain and its people as so weak and pathetic, they are incapable of governing themselves so the reins of power must be handed over to a cabal of foreign bureaucrats who have a history of disrespecting and vilifying them and their country.

     Imagine his despair as he stands powerlessly by as the Prime Minister and Parliament hand over control of the country’s laws, borders, trade and money to an organization that is so corrupt its accounts haven't passed an audit for decades and who’s ruling clique cannot be removed by the ballot box.

     Now imagine the devastating effect on his morale as this disenfranchised Briton tunes in to President Trump’s rally in Grand Rapids, Michigan and watches as the President they elected, fresh from defeating the establishment, pledges to continue reversing the managed decline of the Obama years and keep fighting to make America great again.

     Please read it all.

     List the key premises behind Donald Trump’s agenda. Now list those behind Theresa May’s agenda. Can you imagine changing either set without completely changing the positions and goals of the relevant politician?

     Yes, it’s essentially a rhetorical question. Its answer is “Of course not.” (“Are you BLEEP!ing kidding me?” will also receive full marks.) It illustrates how political premises, including the very oldest of them, shape a nation’s fortunes, including its relations with other nations and political entities.

     The American tradition rests on two premises:

• The sanctity of individual freedom;
• The imperative of political independence.

     Those are not notions that can easily be deduced from more fundamental precepts. At least, I’ve met few people who’ve managed it. But they’ve made the United States the crowning glory of human history. Nothing anywhere or anywhen compares to the civilization Americans have built. Even though its legal and political institutions have taken several decades of body blows, America is still the shining light of all Mankind.

     The United Kingdom, formerly the British Empire or Great Britain, and before that the Kingdom of England, has followed another course. It does not include freedom or political independence among its premises. Englishmen’s liberties are considered grants of latitude from the political power, at one time the Crown, and subsequently the Parliament. Neither do the ministers of the U.K.’s government – I distinguish this from the attitudes of Britons themselves – regard political independence as a condition to be conserved.

     Great Britain was once the foremost industrial, commercial, financial, and military power in the world. The United Kingdom is a pitiful fossil from those days of greatness.

     Fortunately for America, we found a champion willing to reverse the destructive course we’d followed over the century behind us. Yet should electoral methods fail us, we will fight the government itself in defense of our freedom; we retain the mindset and the means. Britons were stripped of the means long ago. If any still possess the mindset, much good may it do them.

     Americans have serially rejected the notion of submerging our nation in a superstate such as the U.N. We know what would follow. Britons were sweet-talked into accepting subjugation to the panjandrums of the European Union some years ago. Now that their eyes are open and they’ve screamed to be let out, their own government is trying to deny them what they’ve demanded.

     We might not have needed to be reminded of the supreme importance of our premises. Yet we have had one, from the very nation that provided our Common Law and our first settlers. We should be grateful, even if that’s small consolation to the Britons baffled by the intractability of a government they think of as “theirs,” but which serves no purposes other than its own. As a token of our gratitude I suggest air-dropping weapons and ammunition all over England. Perhaps then we’d see what portion of the spirit of Great Britain remains in the beleaguered subjects of the United Kingdom of today.

Part Exposition, Part Canonization

     I’ve just seen Dinesh D’Souza’s “docudrama” Death Of A Nation, and I thought it important to set down my thoughts about it before they have a chance to fade.

     The primary thrust of the movie is to make plain the parallels, and the outright identities, between “progressivism,” ostensibly the philosophy of the Democrat Party, and the fascism of Mussolini and Hitler. D’Souza does a good job at this, in part by delineating the historical connections that united Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt to Benito Mussolini and Adolf Hitler. Let there be no mistaking it. Wilson, the first U.S. president to decree the federal enforcement of racial segregation, was entirely in line with Hitler’s racialism. Moreover, Wilson used World War I as a lever with which to impose a fascistic system of control on the American economy. FDR, an open admirer of Mussolini who sent several members of his “brain trust” to study Mussolini’s Italy, instituted a fascist economic program much like Wilson’s as the core of his “New Deal.” Hitler saw in FDR a kindred spirit whose program greatly resembled his own. D’Souza draws this out through historical documents and interviews with prominent historians of those eras. He ably establishes the ideological continuity between those “progressives” and those of today.

     However, the movie has a secondary thrust of almost equal importance: to establish Abraham Lincoln, the Great Emancipator, as the ideological progenitor of contemporary free-market conservatism, and Donald Trump as his ideological progeny. This is false to fact. Despite many stirring things Lincoln said about freedom in the abstract, the policies he pursued while in Congress and as president were at best cool toward freedom. He was a supporter of high protective tariffs, a central bank that would have de facto control over the American dollar, and an extensive system of “internal improvements” to be undertaken by the federal government. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus, acted to suppress internal dissent, and instituted the Republic’s first income tax and its original system of conscription. Moreover, while he was a sincere enemy of slavery, Lincoln did not believe in the equality of the races; this can be documented with his own public statements.

     The movie, thus, is split between historical-ideological analysis and exhortation of a completely different kind. In some ways it’s quite valuable; in others it’s somewhat misleading. In particular, it attempts a partisan whitewashing of the Republican Party, by passing silently over the gulf between what Republican officeholders claim to stand for and what many actually do when in power.

     It’s commonplace for a partisan to represent his party as the crown of wisdom and virtue, while depicting its adversaries as deluded at best, evil at worst. The tendency to do so is stronger today than it’s been since Lincoln’s time; in that regard Death Of A Nation provides an important – and sobering – historical perspective. However, uncritical partisanry, in which the other party is made to look like the embodiment of evil, is easily exploited by party kingmakers to create opportunities for its elected ones to get away with all sorts of mischief.

     In short: see the movie and benefit from its depiction of “progressivism” as a soft-focus version of Twentieth Century fascism, but don’t buy all the way into its canonization of Lincoln nor of the Republican Party in our time. While today’s Republicans are preferable to today’s Democrats, Republican officeholders have underperformed on their supposed commitment to free markets, limited government, and the defense of the rights of the individual. To cheer for the GOP uncritically is to condone that underperformance. That guarantees that we’ll receive more of the same.

     Never forget that the one and only goal of any political party is to get its candidates elected. Once they’re in office, the party’s task becomes keeping them there, not enforcing the party’s nominal ideological commitments upon them. The job of enforcement belongs solely to us.

Finding The Middle Ground

     The news is mostly not very newsy, so for this morning’s tirade I thought I might venture into the currently underpopulated realm where contemporary political rhetoric doesn’t willingly tread: the imagined “middle ground” that harmonizes the positions of Left and Right without doing unacceptable damage to either.

     It’s a very small district, actually. Vanishingly small, according to the cynics. So small you could conceal it behind a cat’s whisker. It’s so small that it might not exist at all. A fair number of persons would say so.

     They just might be right about that. But was it always so?

---

     It’s easy to construct a gedankenexperiment in which the non-existence of a middle ground is obvious, whether on moral or on practical grounds. For example, suppose Congressional Democrats were to propose the immediate execution of all male American heterosexuals. Now, I don’t propose to speak for you, Gentle Reader, but I’d be against that. But what would a “middle ground” advocate propose? Execute only half of us? Phase it in over a five year period? Or maybe just take a limb from each one?

     Hearken to Robert A. Heinlein about such fantasies:

     Then there was the tertium quid, the flexible mind, the “reasonable” man who hardly had a mind to change--he favored negotiation; he thought we could “do business” with the titans. One such committee, a delegation from the caucus of the opposition party in Congress, actually attempted negotiation. Bypassing the State Department they got in touch via a linkage rigged across Zone Amber with the Governor of Missouri, and were assured of safe conduct and diplomatic immunity--"guarantees" from a titan, but they accepted them; they went to St. Louis--and never came back. They sent messages back; I saw one such, a good rousing speech adding up to, “Come on in; the water is fine!”
     Do steers sign treaties with meat packers?

     The “titans” mentioned above are sentient slugs with the ability to master a man’s mind and body through any sufficiently substantial connection to his nervous system. They want slaves. What middle ground exists between freedom and slavery?

     When the two sides seek outcomes that are morally opposed, or which for practical reasons cannot be simultaneously served, compromise is impossible. No middle ground exists. But what if the predicate condition above were not to apply? What if the two sides agreed both on moral principles and the ultimate end to be served?

     That would change the landscape dramatically, wouldn’t it?

---

     Consider prosperity / poverty and their simultaneous existence in American society. Imagine if the following web of conditions were to exist:

• Left and Right agree on the objective conditions that constitute poverty;
• They also agree that poverty is not the fault of the prosperous;
• They also agree that the end to be sought is the elimination of poverty, as far as possible;

     Under those conditions – always assuming everyone involved in the matter is sincere about holding the postulated convictions – a middle ground might exist. Moreover, any proposed program for the reduction and/or elimination of poverty would have a built-in test criterion: Is poverty in America declining, or isn’t it? If the answer were “no, it’s increasing (or holding steady),” the program would be deemed to have failed...and both Left and Right would agree to terminate it.

     Unwillingness to terminate a program that has failed its stated objective is incontrovertible evidence of insincerity.

     All that having been said, is the American Left sincere about wanting to eliminate poverty? Has it ever been sincere? Are there any Democrats in Congress to whom we could impute sincerity on this subject with reasonable assurance?

---

     Here’s another one: transgenderism. This is an emotional disorder recognized by the mental health community. However, that same community has conceded that it lacks an effective therapy for the sufferer. For some percentage of those who claim to be “born the wrong sex,” the only alleviation available is to permit them to “transition:” i.e., to live as the other sex, whether merely in cosmetic matters or after some amount of surgery.

     There are hard-liners on either side of this. On the Left, there are those who claim that being regarded and treated as the sex you prefer is some sort of inalienable right, regardless of any other consideration. On the Right, there are those who claim that the desire to represent yourself as other than your birth sex is incontrovertible evidence of a serious mental delusion that mandates your involuntary commitment until you’ve been cured of it. Those two camps are at war over the matter.

     Yet a middle ground appears to be available: If you can “pass” as the sex you prefer to be, and commit no offenses against others in doing so, we’ll tolerate you. That is: we’ll treat you as the sex you prefer to assume. We won’t discriminate against you in any way. Why would we, after all? You look and act as what you want to be. The social cost of such an agreement-to-tolerate would be infinitesimal.

     The “bearded guy in a dress” obviously can’t meet the toleration standard. But Blaire White could – and does. So the matter is soluble without violating anyone’s rights or privacy.

---

     Today there isn’t much middle ground available between Left and Right, mostly for reasons of moral incompatibility. The Left is almost droolingly eager to eliminate what remains of Americans’ freedom and prosperity. The Right – by and large, anyway – is struggling to preserve both. (From that summary of the matter I’d imagine you can tell which side I’m on.) The return of a politics in which middle-ground approaches to agreed-upon objectives can be found requires that one side or the other prevail absolutely. Any attempt to compromise between those incompatible moral stances would be doomed before it starts.

     With that I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.

Status Report

     This one comes from A Nod To The Gods:

     Being a good American assumes a moral code of conduct, a trust that my neighbors won’t break into my house, won’t harm my family, and won’t get in the way of my right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It’s been a moral standard that has served America well for 240 years. That contract has been breached by the very people who should be held to the highest standard of that code.

     There are no laws.

     The author lays out a strong case for his contention. Please read it all.

     Law in the American conception applies equally to all, without regard for anyone’s “protected status.” Neither can it be set aside at the whim of a “ruler.” Yet both those premises and many others have been set aside during the Obama years. Will these obscenities be corrected in the forthcoming administrations, or will they continue until the barbarians burn Washington to the ground?

     Choose wisely.

The Great Disintegration

     Just yesterday, the nominal 240th birthday of our nation, Sarah Hoyt produced a rather optimistic piece that’s excited a fair amount of dissent. (I was part of the dissent.) Now, that’s not newsworthy of itself, but given Sarah’s thesis – i.e., that “the people are all right” – I felt immediately upon reading it that it deserved a rebuttal. Not quite a refutation, mind you; merely a statement of the opposing thesis and some of the more significant bits of evidence for it.

     The problem is, the more I thought about it, the more the negative evidence snowballed. It’s put me in an unenviable position, as July 5 is a special date for me and the C.S.O., and I’d intended to spend it doing something other than writing one of these tracts. Nevertheless, duty calls in a voice of iron; one shirks the summons at one’s peril.

---

     Here is the meat of Sarah’s thesis:

     ...I realized that our “elites” including the presstitutes and the supposed intellectual heights of academia, are among some of the most corrupt in the world, but the people? The people are all right.

     This is the reason why, despite our terrible institutions we’re not Somalia or Venezuela or even Brazil. Our politicians are fully that corrupted, doing and saying anything for the sake of holding on to more power. But we’re different.

     How different? I’ll give you the two ways that made me fall in love with America:

1. For now, in most places — this is changing and it’s a worrying trend — we are law abiding, and more importantly respecting of other’s property.
2. We roll up our sleeves and do what needs to be done.

     This is in sharp contrast to my own observations, which in summary, are:

1. The “worrying trend” that Sarah herself has cited is much farther along than she might think, especially in urban and suburban America;
2. We “do what needs to be done” only under conditions, i.e.:
   • If we judge that the benefits will flow to ourselves, or our loved ones, or to some other entity of personal importance to us;
   • If we assess the costs and risks of “doing what needs to be done” as less than those of not doing so by a significant margin.

     Both of these things are strongly influenced by context. A large part of that context is expressed by the question “Will I get away with it?” The probability that the answer to that question is yes varies inversely with regional population density.

     But there’s a deeper point to be made here, and it deserves to be made in large font:

“The people” does not exist.

     No, there’s no error of number agreement in the above. Give it a few seconds of serious thought.

---

     I have a number of foibles. Perhaps the one most obvious to my Gentle Readers is that I strive to write grammatically correct English. In this regard I am greatly assisted by two other crotchety old farts. Here’s what Professor Will Strunk has to say about “the people:”

     The people is a political term, not to be confused with the public....If of “six people” five went away, how many people would be left? Answer: one people.

     To say that we the assorted citizens, permanent resident aliens, and so forth are “a people” is to aggregate us into a unit. But what’s the justification for that aggregation? We’re gathered into a single geographically delimited country, to be sure, but beyond that? What common characteristics unite us, apart from being homo sapiens? Do we share any beliefs, convictions, attitudes, preferences, practices, or fetishes?

     The question is a daunting one, for the answer has changed dramatically over time. In a sense, the early colonists were united quasi-politically by their desire to get the Hell away from the people around them, and in being willing to accept considerable danger and hardship for the chance. For a brief period after the American Revolution, there was a widespread sense of national comity – not unity, really, but agreeable co-residence and toleration of others of differing ways in the newborn U.S. – that’s sometimes been called “the era of good feelings.” But not long afterward sectional differences produced some rather bad feelings, exacerbated by two issues above all others – slavery and tariffs – and eventuated in a Civil War that even today holds the record for the most Americans killed in combat in a single war.

     Given the immense divisions, the intra-national predation, and the enormous waves of immigration that followed that war, we haven’t been “a people” since.

---

     Distance elicits differences. However, it can also ameliorate the effects, if persons tend their own gardens and refrain from meddling in the affairs of others far away. This is only one of the reasons the centralization of political power is a very bad idea. But there’s more and worse to come.

     In an essay of several important insights, Ace of Spades co-blogger tmi3rd notes another of the pernicious developments that have disintegrated the American “people:”

     Today, “Broadcasting” (other than the Super Bowl) no longer exists. It has been replaced by “Narrowcasting,” in which outlets are cynically designed to appeal to nothing but a tiny sliver of demographic for the purposes of maximizing advertising efficiency. This is destructive enough in the fantasy world of entertainment (no current TV show could even remotely claim to be well-known to a majority of Americans), but this has been absolutely catastrophic in the realm of news.

     Almost all of our news outlets now can be easily identified as having a particular, and often very narrow, political bent and they act like nothing more than TV sit-coms desperately searching for a sellable demographic which will keep them afloat (see Breitbart.com & Donald Trump). This means that most “news” organizations are only interested in stories and truths that their audience will want to hear. Quite simply, nothing could be more antithetical to both the pursuit of truth (which is quite often very UN-popular) as well as the maintenance of a country which has enough “knowledge” in common so as to be able to function as remotely unified society.

     Taking this concept out of the theoretical and placing it into the practical, this is exactly why we saw such deeply divergent opinions among the races regarding the very simple O.J. Simpson murder case (as well as numerous other similar “racial” episodes which have followed) and are currently seeing a civil war among conservatives about the equally clear-cut candidacy of Donald Trump. Each different demographic slice of the American Pie is now simply living in totally separate worlds with completely different realities.

     The ironies here challenge my capacity for elucidation. “Broadcasting,” in which I would include the production of “newspapers” distributed to a national readership, was originally propelled by publishers’ quest for greater profits. The connection is too obvious to require explanation: the more eyeballs, the more revenue. But the differences among us, elicited by distance, heritage, and regional needs and practices, made the profitability of true “broadcasting” – i.e., a uniform product to be distributed to the entire country – less profitable than regional or niche marketing. That caused the “broadcasters” to select – sometimes unconsciously; always unhappily – identifiable niches of taste, habit, and ideology at which to aim their wares.

     (In this connection, I heartily recommend a brief essay by an old friend, Lynn Chesnut: “Why Broadcast Journalism is Unnecessary and Illegitimate.” His insight will surprise you.)

     As far as public perceptions are determined by the media, public attitudes will follow thereby. Having divided us into “niches,” the “broadcasters” have divided us from one another as well.

---

     A “people” can only exist if they agree on certain principles. The birth certificate of the United States lays out such principles. The plan for their implementation attempts to codify the enforcement thereof. But to what extent do Americans, broadly speaking, agree with either?

     In my opinion, out of any randomly assembled ten thousand people, you’d be hard pressed to find one hundred who sincerely agree with either of those documents. Everyone wants to edit them. Everyone wants to make some exception, whether to the Declaration’s ringing statement of the Rights of Man, or to the Constitution’s schematic for their protection and nurturance. Nor are the exceptions at all uniform. If you disagree, just wait till Abortion For Everyone, Transsexual Rights, Black Lives Matter, La Raza, or Occupy comes to your town.

     No, dear Sarah, “the people” is not “all right,” mostly because there is no such thing.

---

     One of the more challenging problems in any social assay is that of deciding when and why to disaggregate. Sometimes disaggregation is tendentious and to be avoided. Sometimes it inverts the conclusion one seeks. But in political systems founded on anything other than the naked preponderance of force, the question will always loom large.

     The time is long past when any analyst can look at the population of the United States and see a “people.” It’s far more accurate to see us as we really are: atomized into contending, uneasily neighboring groups according to a myriad factors, especially political convictions and ethical principles. The greatest of the casualties has been the rule of law: that supposedly overarching principle upon which the polity is based. Kurt Schlichter has some penetrating observations and conclusions about that. I can’t find enough counter-evidence to his position to matter.

     Yet even if “we the people” are generally united in the opinion that our “ruling class” is thoroughly corrupt, we’re entirely disunited on:

1. In what direction to go from here;
2. What principles ought to govern what will follow.

     For which reason I contend that “the people” is not “all right,” because it disintegrated long, long ago, and is now no more than a memory.

Quickies: Parties And Ideologies

     Today, Michael Barone notes a pattern that won’t surprise you:

     Many commentators have noted that the Democrat primary and caucus electorate in the three contests held so far is much more liberal than its counterpart when the Democrats last had a contest eight years ago. That's true: The percentage of liberals among Democratic electorates has increased from 54 percent to 68 percent in the Iowa caucuses, from 57 percent to 68 percent in the New Hampshire primary and from 45 percent to 70 percent in the Nevada caucuses.

     Barone, a cautious and circumspect writer, provides numbers to support his contention. Still, it strikes me as a “dog bites man” story: not newsworthy in the conventional sense of being something the reader wouldn’t otherwise have known. “Democrat == liberal?” Okay, but...isn’t liberalism the Democrat platform? Why would there be Democrats who aren’t liberals? Wouldn’t they belong somewhere else?

     Ordinary people expect a party to be something more than a vote-maximizing machine. The expectation might be incorrect – an institution’s highest priority must be to preserve itself and, after that, to grow – but it’s a natural consequence of political rather than market-style competition. A political position, such as is represented by a political party, is supposed to be ideologically based. That is, it’s supposed to be founded on a set of interlocking values, principles, and convictions, from which its more specific recommendations are derived.

     To me, the notion of a non-ideological political party is inherently contradictory. What would it offer to the electorate? The more photogenic crop of candidates? The richer set? Or perhaps the set with better hair stylists?

     Let us now turn from the Democrats to the Republicans. If the United States has a non-ideological major party, that’s where you’ll find it. “Big tent” nostrums have caused the GOP to embrace so many mutually contradictory positions and their proponents that it’s come to represent approximately nothing. Limited government? Low taxes? A hands-off attitude toward business and commerce? Respect for the right to life? Support for public decency? You’ll find prominent Republicans on every side of each of these, some who’ll espouse one stance in their speeches but when the roll is called will throw their support to the opposite...and a few supposed Republicans who take positions on all of them indistinguishable from the postures of the Democrats.

     It’s as if the GOP lacks a platform, or any common conviction around which its members are united. Perhaps we have an explanation for why the Republican Party can’t seem to produce candidates we can trust to do as they’ve said they would. It would also help to explain the accelerating estrangement of ordinary Americans from the political process.

On Knowing Your Enemies

Facts that are not frankly faced have a habit of stabbing us in the back. – Sir Harold Bowden

Let's face the facts:

1. The country is going to Hell.
2. So is the world beyond our shores.
3. The Left's divide et impera tactics have succeeded brilliantly.
4. So has its use of the country’s educational and entertainment systems.
5. Many persons in federal office are dedicated to nullifying the Constitution.
6. That includes the great majority of those who stridently claim to be "on our side."

There's a civil war in progress. To evade that conclusion and its logical implications takes a degree of willful blindness akin to that required to maintain -- as a number of Japanese will tell you to this day -- that Japan defeated the U.S. in World War II.

What's less clear are the battle lines and what groups are on which side.

---

Before we proceed into the analytics most Liberty's Torch readers come here for, allow me to ask you a question: Which side are you on, Gentle Reader? Are you quite sure? For that matter, are you quite sure "your side" really exists, in a coherent and persistent sense?

I'd bet a dollar to a doughnut that you haven't asked yourself that question in a long time, if ever. You have a powerful sense for where you stand, even if you've never fully articulated it. Your moral conscience -- your sense for what's intrinsically right and intrinsically wrong -- is well developed and has served you faithfully over the years. Your positions on various issues flow from those things, so why imagine even for a moment that you wouldn't "know your side," or that you wouldn't be able to tell those who stand with you apart from those who stand against you?

Perhaps you're right. Perhaps your political vision is as clear and accurate as your moral conscience. Trouble is, we keep putting the levers of power into the hands of our enemies. Given that the electorate has several times elected nominally conservative executive administrations and legislative majorities, and that poll after poll has declared Americans to be fundamentally conservative, that demands an explanation.

Since the New Deal, regardless of which party has held federal hegemony, the federal government has grown monotonically larger, more intrusive, and more expensive. Republican "wave" elections have made no difference. Neither did the much-hyped Reagan Administration, despite the desire of so many conservatives to believe otherwise.

Allow me a quote from a favorite novel:

    "What of this one, this Louis Wu?"
    "For us there has been much profitable cooperation with men. Naturally we choose at least one human. Louis Gridley Wu is a proven survival type, in his casual, reckless way."
    "Casual he is, and reckless. He challenged me to single combat."
    "Would you have accepted, had not Hroth been present? Would you have harmed him?"
    "To be sent home in disgrace, having caused a major interspecies incident? But that is not the point," the kzin insisted. "Is it?"
    "Perhaps it is. Louis is alive. You are now aware that you cannot dominate him through fear. Do you believe in results?"

[Larry Niven, Ringworld]

Well, do you, Gentle Reader?

---

David Limbaugh's column of today sidles up to the problem but refuses to confront it squarely:

I have long contended that the differences between tea party conservatives and the so-called establishment are far deeper than "tactics"; they also involve policy disagreements....

Let's say Republicans then win the presidency and retain control of Congress in 2016. Then what?

I would wager that many of my establishment friends will continue to advise restraint, urging us not to drastically roll back Obama's liberal policies, either because they'll be horrified about the next election or because they have really, in the end, lost their stomach for political battle and their taste for free market principles.

So far, so good, but wait: there's more!

I suspect that many of them have come to accept a large, "energetic" federal government and believe that Republicans should just accept it and instead devise original and creative yet "conservative" policy solutions within the big-government framework. In other words, we should throw in the towel on our founding principles, accept the liberal narrative that Reagan conservatism is extremism, and do the best we can within the new paradigm....

Will Republicans, if they regain power of both political branches, have the political will to begin to unravel the nightmares caused by an abandonment of our founding principles, or will they just nibble around the edges with insignificant modifications because they no longer believe in either conservative principles or their ability to convince the people that our ideas are still superior?

Limbaugh displays a remarkable resistance to the evidence in the above passage. The question isn't "Will they?" It's "How could we possibly believe that they will, given what we've seen from them up to this point?"

Republican politicians' credibility, and our credulity, should both be zeroed out.

---

Americans might be more conservative than not, but when election time rolls around our behavior is much like that of rats that have been forced to run the same maze ten thousand times without respite. We continue to support persons whose conduct when in power diverges dramatically from their rhetoric. They prattle about "limited government" yet allow government to grow without limit. They orate about "Constitutional restraints," and do nothing to enforce them. Should we attend to their words, or carefully note the vectors established by their deeds?

When a more principled, more courageous individual pokes his head up above the general mass of mediocrities, the Establishment does its best to cut it off. Note the hatchet jobs that have been done to Sarah Palin, Rand Paul, Ted Cruz, and most recently Chris McDaniel...all with GOP Establishment connivance and material support. Is that any way to respect Reagan's Eleventh Commandment? Doesn't it suggest that the Establishment is covertly in league with its supposed adversaries?

Even generally intelligent persons have failed to grasp this principle. Hugh Hewitt's book If It's Not Close, They Can't Cheat, while it does contain some points of value, harps relentlessly on the notion that "Only majorities matter," by which Hewitt plainly means partisan majorities. But what good to freedom lovers is a GOP majority made up of the likes of Thad Cochran and John McCain? What could we expect from such a caucus other than what we've already seen: continuing collaboration with the Democrats in expanding federal power over us?

Think it over.

---

The Republican Party will not act to rescue Constitutional government. It hasn't done anything about it for eighty years; why expect it to start now? Therefore, electoral politics, conveniently rigged by law and the collusion of the major media to permit only Democrats and Republicans to bid successfully for high office, is no longer of use to us. Indeed, it has become our enemies' principal tool for keeping us in subjection.

The implication should be clear. As unpleasant as it sounds, only if decent Americans tired of deceit and oppression were to boycott electoral politics completely, thus reducing national vote totals to unprecedentedly low levels, could we emphasize that the political elite has lost all mandate to govern us.

There would be consequences, of course:

1. Government worshippers would elect ever greater majorities of Democrats.
2. Those majorities would go on expanding the power, intrusiveness and expense of the federal leviathan.
3. It would become ever more important for individuals to adopt defensive tactics, whether one merely opts to reduce one's visible profile, chooses to "go Galt," or selects any alternative between the two.

If Americans devoted to freedom were to adopt this approach in sufficient numbers, Washington would be progressively enfeebled despite the Left's apparently overwhelming grip on power. But will it happen? Doubtful. Remember the rats, the maze, and the ten thousand uninterrupted repetitions. We're conditioned to believe that the system can be cleansed by the electoral mechanism. Acting against that conditioning would require more will than most persons possess.

But at the very least we can know our enemies. We can give true coloration to their statements and their deeds when given power. We can cease to deceive ourselves about who's really "on our side."

Given all the above, and all the history on which it's founded, that doesn't seem likely either. But I retain my hope. I must; we who understand and love freedom have little else.

Have a nice day.

Declarations Of War Part 2: Our Supposed Allies

"There are two parties in America: the Stupid Party and the Evil Party, and I'm proud to be a member of the Stupid Party." -- Irving Kristol.

Yes, we are at war, willy-nilly, with "our" federal government. Yet we are told that within that government we have allies: persons nominally pledged to the protection of our individual rights and the constraints imposed upon Washington by the Constitution. They call themselves Republicans.

We hear about Republicans' devotion to our defense, and to unswerving Constitutional fidelity, no less often than every two years, during the six months or so preceding a biennial election. It's then that they strive to remind us that they're our best protection against the evil intentions of the Democrats -- and make no mistake, Gentle Reader: the Democrats really are evil. They've dedicated their lives in "public service" to the advance of American totalitarianism, such that there shall be "everything within the State, nothing outside the State." To the day when everything not compulsory shall be forbidden. It's practically the whole of their platform.

But we have the Republicans to oppose them, to charge fearlessly onto the political battlefield, banners held high, to ask not nor give quarter, and to smite the Democrats hip and thigh. We can rely upon them to give true coloration to the Democrats' schemes, to unearth unmistakable evidence of their perfidy, and by sheer purity of heart to halt the advance of the Omnipotent State. If we put enough of them in Congress, of course. And one in the White House, of course. And a majority on the Supreme Court. Of course.

There's just one little problem with this rosy scenario: from top to bottom, it's a crock of shit.

---

Mind you, there are a few Republican officeholders who appear to walk it like they talk it. Just now a great deal of attention is on the pugnaciously outspoken Ted Cruz, the junior United States Senator from Texas. Cruz has dared to beard two fearsome lions in their respective dens: the Democrat majority in the Senate and the so-called Republican "leadership," whose behavior could stand as the definition for cowardly, un-leader-like conduct in high office. Both would like to see him erased from their little world. Indeed, it's unclear which community fears and despises him more.

But Cruz is treated by the Republican Party's strategists as a distraction from the party's one and only sincere agenda: electing Republicans. (They take the same attitude toward the generally like-minded Rand Paul (R, KY) and Mike Lee (R, UT), and for the same reasons.) Cruz's open, fearless combativeness, they say, makes him "controversial," a detriment to "collegiality" and an impediment to "working together"...with the Democrats, that is. Seldom are those kingmakers required to face the question: "Working together on what?"

The point, we must remember, of a political party is to get its candidates elected. If the Republican Party's core leadership -- its cadre of strategists, pollsters, and rainmakers -- is convinced that taking firm, principled stands during campaign season will best serve that agenda, then that's the behavior the party's candidates will exhibit... during campaign season. But if that very same conduct once in office should seem to the leadership to be a detriment to retaining office, or to adding to the party's caucuses, it will be discouraged, principally by the denial of further organizational and material support to him whose behavior it deems "controversial."

How a leadership cadre with such an outlook got established in the GOP is a topic of interest.

---

Organizations respond to incentives and penalties much as do individual organisms. The systematic application of incentives and penalties to an organization can mold its behavior in an enduring fashion. More, the teacher is often taught by observing the effect of his lessons on his student.

Possibly the seminal event in the re-engineering of the Republican Party was the absolute and total defection of Franklin D. Roosevelt's Administration from the Democrat Party's 1932 campaign platform. Hearken to Garet Garrett on the events in question:

The first three planks of the [1932] Democratic Party platform read as follows:

We advocate:

1. 1. An immediate and drastic reduction of governmental expenditures by abolishing useless commissions and offices, consolidating departments and bureaus and eliminating extravagance, to accomplish a saving of not less than 25 per cent in the cost of Federal government
2. "2. Maintenance of the national credit by a Federal budget annually balanced
3. "3. A sound currency to be maintained at all hazards."

Mr. Roosevelt pledged himself to be bound by this platform as no President had ever before been bound by a party document. All during the campaign he supported it with words that could not possibly be misunderstood.

He said:

"I accuse the present Administration (Hoover's) of being the greatest spending Administration in peace time in all American history—one which piled bureau on bureau, commission on commission, and has failed to anticipate the dire needs or reduced earning power of the people. Bureaus and bureaucrats have been retained at the expense of the taxpayer. . . . We are spending altogether too much money for government services which are neither practical nor necessary. In addition to this, we are attempting too many functions and we need a simplification of what the Federal government is giving to the people."

This he said many times.

Few of the great majority that voted in November, 1932 for less Federal government and fewer Federal functions could have imagined that by the middle of the next year the extensions of government and the multiplication of its functions would have been such as to create serious administrative confusion in Washington, which the President, according to his own words, dealt with in the following manner:

"On July eleventh I constituted the Executive Council for the simple reason that so many new agencies having been created, a weekly meeting with the members of the Cabinet in joint session was imperative....

Mr. Frank C. Walker was appointed as Executive Secretary of the Council."

Fewer still could have believed that if such a thing did happen it would be more than temporary, for the duration of the emergency only; and yet within a year after Mr. Roosevelt had pledged himself, if elected, to make a 25 per cent cut in Federal government by "eliminating functions" and by "abolishing many boards and commissions," he was writing, in a book entitled On Our Way, the following: "In spite of the necessary complexity of the group of organizations whose abbreviated titles have caused some amusement, and through what has seemed to some a mere reaching out for centralized power by the Federal government, there has run a very definite, deep and permanent objective."

Few of the majority that voted in November 1932 for an end of deficit spending and a balanced Federal budget could have believed that the President's second budget message to Congress would shock the financial reason of the country, or that in that same book, On Our Way, he would be writing about it in a blithesome manner, saying:

"The next day, I transmitted the Annual Budget Message to the Congress. It is, of course, filled with figures and accompanied by a huge volume containing in detail all of the proposed appropriations for running the government during the fiscal year beginning July 1,1934 and ending June 30,1935. Although the facts of previous appropriations had all been made public, the country, and I think most of the Congress, did not fully realize the huge sums which would be expended by the government this year and next year; nor did they realize the great amount the Treasury would have to borrow."

And certainly almost no one who voted in November, 1932 for a sound gold standard money according to the [Senator Carter] Glass money plank in the platform could have believed that less than a year later, in a radio address reviewing the extraordinary monetary acts of the New Deal, the President would be saying: "We are thus continuing to move toward a managed currency."

The broken party platform, as an object, had a curious end. Instead of floating away and out of sight as a proper party platform should, it kept coming back with the tide. Once it came so close that the President had to notice it. Then all he did was to turn it over, campaign side down, with the words:

"I was able, conscientiously, to give full assent to this platform and to develop its purpose in campaign speeches. A campaign, however, is apt to partake so much of the character of a debate and the discussion of individual points that the deeper and more permanent philosophy of the whole plan (where one exists) is often lost."

At that the platform sank.

[Garet Garrett, "The Revolution Was"]

Yes, that's a rather long citation. I hope you read it all the way through. FDR and his advisers were determined from the very first to depart totally from the platform on which they'd campaigned. They had a clear objective -- the consolidation of all political power in their hands, possible due to the national sense of crisis and the abdication of Congress from its proper functions -- and they were determined to make their way to it.

The important thing, above all other considerations of that moment in American history, was to persuade the electorate that the New Deal was necessary despite its obvious Constitutional deficiencies. The deliberate inflation of the currency, ultimately reducing the value of the dollar by 40.4%, was one of the key tools the Administration used to provide "evidence" of the New Deal's "success." Add to that the multiplication of federal make-work programs and the manipulation of the agricultural markets to raise the price of farm produce, and the New Dealers contrived to persuade millions that they had the cure for America's economic disease.

A great distance away from the levers of power, the Republicans were watching.

---

To those who lived through the Wilson, Harding, Coolidge, Hoover, and Roosevelt Administrations, the progression must have seemed incredible, massively perverse. The policies of the Harding / Coolidge years were incredibly successful: the quickest, most painless reversal of an economic contraction in American history -- and accomplished entirely by downsizing and restraining the federal government. Hoover's diametrical reversal of those policies, coupled to some incredible blundering by the Federal Reserve and the stock market contraction on October 29, 1929, produced the Great Depression.

It's critical to assert here that the long-lasting miseries that followed would not have occurred except for Hoover's unrelenting interventionism, in defiance of Republican principles. But Hoover, "the Great Engineer," was as disdainful of others' advice as Barack Obama. He'd made a lot of money during his years in business, had successfully operated a huge European relief effort after World War I, and carried himself with such arrogance that even Harding and Coolidge feared to contradict him. In attempting to rehabilitate Hoover's reputation after the Roosevelt years and World War II, portraying him as a champion of free markets and Constitutionally limited government, the GOP made its critical mistake.

There are lots and lots of warnings about the unwisdom of believing your own BS. The Republican leadership cadre, who thought the Democrats had taught them a superior lesson -- something they needed to know to return to power -- failed to heed them.

---

The postwar decades saw a deepening of the Republican sickness. Eisenhower, though he campaigned as a conservative, presided over policies slightly to the left of center. Nixon, moderately conservative of conviction, proved surprisingly irresolute as a president, standing firm in very little -- mainly foreign policy -- and yielding to interventionists in his Administration and Congress in all else. For all practical purposes, the GOP paraded as the "discount alternative" to the Democrats: "the same policies, but cheaper."

The rise of Ronald Reagan, first as Governor of California and later as President, seemed to herald a Republican return to limited-government principles. It proved illusory. Reagan was largely successful at rebuilding the armed forces, reducing taxes, and operating an assertive foreign policy. He proved unable to restrain the growth of the federal leviathan, which expanded by 13% in personnel and 65% in expenditures over his tenure in the Oval Office. Once again, the GOP's leadership made a terrible mistake in portraying the Reagan years as a paradise of laissez-faire. Objectively, the Eighties continued the trend lines of the previous Administrations almost exactly. The Left capitalized on the GOP's reluctance to present the facts honestly by trumpeting about the "Reagan deficits," which were entirely due to Congressional overspending of swiftly increasing tax revenues, made possible by Reagan Era tax cuts.

Reagan himself was a good man, sincere in his espoused convictions and far more courageous than the majority of his Twentieth-Century predecessors. Yet time after time he let his advisers have their way in opposition to his own policy preferences, deferring to what he saw as their "expertise." Those advisers were nearly all bred-in-the-bone "discount Democrats," who believed that reductions in federal activism and expenditure would cost the GOP its hold on federal power. The consequences are before us: the most successful Republican Administration since Coolidge could not be deemed an overall success. Though it succeeded on the international stage, it failed almost completely in attaining its nominal domestic objectives.

With the Presidents Bush, Older and Younger, the march of the GOP into the don't-rock-the-statist-boat darkness would continue.

---

Today's Republican Party continues in the pusillanimous tradition of the post-FDR party that couldn't prevent Roosevelt from winning four consecutive terms, that couldn't unseat the badly weakened Harry Truman, that presided over an ever-expanding federal government even when it had majorities in both houses of Congress. Despite the overt adulation showered upon the Gipper, what the GOP's kingmakers would really like is not a Reagan II, but a figure as attractive and eloquent as the Great Communicator who would nevertheless not dare to lay a hand on the tiller of the Ship of State -- that is, who would agree to let the "discount Democrats" rule in his name, that they might continue undisturbed in their power and perquisites.

The parade of candidates since Reagan -- two Bushes, Robert Dole, John McCain, and Mitt Romney -- should have given the game away. Not one of them was nearly as principled as Reagan about even one issue. All were part of the don't-rock-the-statist-boat Republican Establishment, whose members can't even think of opposing further federal growth or cutting back on Washington's usurped, extra-Constitutional powers without experiencing a sudden, urgent need for a change of underwear. That Establishment remains at the pinnacle of the GOP today, and is working assiduously to neuter the Ted Cruzes, the Mike Lees, and the Rand Pauls before they can upset the apple cart. They'd prefer continued hegemony by the Democrats to that great a perturbation of The Way Things Are.

We have no allies among the political class.

"It's a big club...and you ain't in it." -- George Carlin

Freedom Under Siege

[Please read this article, all the way to the end. If you can reach the end without bursting a blood vessel, feel free to proceed to the following repost of an article that first appeared at Eternity Road on June 20, 2008. -- FWP]

---

About thirty years ago, Professor John Hospers told an audience of young libertarians that though the forces of liberty are on the march, so are the forces of tyranny. Their comparative rates of advance, not the ardency of their allegiants, would determine the future of human freedom.

Professor Hospers meant that statement as a call to engagement and action. Some persons received it as such, but not enough to stem the tide of totalitarian encroachment upon Americans' freedom. Nowhere near enough. The results are before us.

***

Freedom has been under siege since the Wilson Administration, but these past three decades have seen an intensification of the assault -- an accelerating totalitarianization of American society -- to which nothing in our history can compare. We who understand and love freedom are being sorely pressed...and there appear to be fewer of us than ever.

Note that phrase: "we who understand and love freedom." Few enough persons understand it. Still fewer love it -- at least, they don't love it as much as their income tax breaks, their corporate subsidies, their kids' government-run schools and government-subsidized colleges, and the dirty thrill of bossing their neighbors around about things that are none of their BLEEP!ing business.

Liberals would have you believe that freedom means the "right" to vote, and nothing else. They contend that all matters great and small should be subject to governmental prescription and proscription. After all, why would we elect legislators if we didn't allow that they're smarter than we are? Surely our lives will be safer and more comfortable in their hands than in our own, far clumsier and more ignorant ones!

Authoritarian conservatives hold to a similar thesis, but without the voting part. Some of them, such as Ernest van den Haag and Russell Kirk, made it sound attractive by dressing it up with religious references and appeals to tradition. But religion is a matter of individual conscience, not coercive social control -- Muslims in the audience can wrap that in garnet paper, roll it into a cone, and shove it up their asses, with my compliments -- and tradition, while it encapsulates much wisdom, only tells us how our forebears coped with the challenges of their day. Neither of these sources is infallible, and neither will accept responsibility for any failings it might incur when put to a practical test.

Yet both these camps claim to be defenders of freedom. If freedom means only "the right to vote," or "the right to do what you're told and nothing else," then I, for one, want a refund.

The original concept expressed by the word freedom has been under heavy theoretical and practical attack for decades. Let's have a quick restatement of that concept:

Freedom is the absence of coercion or constraint in all choice or action that does not inflict force or fraud on another. ["John Galt," Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics as if Freedom Mattered]

Alternately:

A man is not free because he’s permitted to vote for his political masters. The subjects of the late, unlamented Soviet Union enjoyed that “right.” So did the subjects of Saddam Hussein.

A man is not free because some portion of his earnings is still his to spend on a variety of attractive goods. Not if the government can punish him for choosing goods it has not approved.

A man is not free because the long arm of the law has not yet descended on his neck. That’s more properly called a stay of execution.

A man is free if, and only if, he has the unchallenged right to do as he damned well pleases with his life, his property, and with any other responsible, consenting adult, provided only that he respects the equal freedom of all other men. [Francis W. Porretto, "No Law Abridging!"]

Where does freedom stand today? Where are the truly free of our time? Let's have a look around.

***

Richard Ely, a commentator of note early in the Twentieth Century, said that "Freedom today means more than being let alone." John Dewey, he who gave birth to the government-run school system from which we suffer today, defined freedom as "effective power to do specific things." Franklin D. Roosevelt attempted to redefine freedom for his own purposes, by equating it to "freedom from want" and "freedom from fear," neither of which are within any government's power to create or maintain. Their inheritors have derided classically understood freedom with phrases like "freedom to hate" and "freedom to starve." By relentlessly pursuing the implications of those infamies, their political admirers have saddled the nations of the West with a set of Leviathans whose power and scope would make Thomas Hobbes's skull explode.

It would seem that, by the classical understanding, the West is no longer free. Even we Americans, with all our wealth, are not free, for today we must get permission from the State for just about everything we might take it into our heads to do -- and the State may grant or withhold that permission at its whim.

Yet we continue to call those countries where freedom, classically understood, is at most a memory the "free world." The nations of Scandinavia, for example:

As a final note on this whole sorry state of affairs — the Swedish parliament passed a law yesterday which orders comprehensive electronic surveillance of all citizens:

Swedish lawmakers voted late on Wednesday in favour of a controversial bill allowing all emails and phone calls to be monitored in the name of national security.

This law will make Sweden more totalitarian than even the former Communist dictatorship of East Germany.

A case is often made that in practice, the masters of such a regime permit individuals more latitude than the power they've arrogated would imply. But this argument confuses freedom as a right -- what I call freedom de jure -- with the de facto ability to "get away with it," whatever "it" might be. At any given moment, with regard to any particular issue, the State might lack the enforcement power to impose its will upon its subjects wholly or uniformly. Or its attentions might be elsewhere, resulting in an opportunity for some individuals to do as they please with their lives and property without penalty. This is not freedom; it's only the successful evasion of punishment.

At this time, every government on Earth claims the power to do as it pleases to anyone and anything within its sway, for any reason or none. Governments, including the 88,000 governments that operate within these United States, compel, forbid, and expropriate without regard for any assertion of rights; that's what "compelling government interest" means. Nowhere that a government claims jurisdiction are men truly free. But were you to ask a hundred recent high school graduates whether Americans are free, ninety-five or more would answer in the affirmative. Ask them why, and they would reply, "Because we get to vote!"

So much for the understanding of freedom.

***

Those who still understand freedom are not unanimous in loving it. Many authoritarians and aspiring tyrants understand freedom well enough; that's why they hate it. And many persons who claim to be in favor of freedom understand it equally well; they just want to chisel a little off its edges.

I need not detail how opposed American liberals are to freedom. It screams from every word they say and every deed they commit. They're hostile to every expression of freedom: privacy, property, and life itself. All things must be put under the supervision of the State: production, commerce, family, race and gender relations, religious institutions, and whether you're permitted to dry up that damp spot in your back yard. Their rationales are legion, but in every case reduce to either we can stop you, and we will or you must, and we'll make you. Most are fools; some are well-intentioned dupes; the rest are simply evil. Yes, I mean that exactly as it sounds.

Conservatives are in somewhat better standing with me; after all, I style myself a conservative, though with some reluctance. But even the best of them are all too willing to make exceptions to the principle of freedom, in favor of something they value more. For example, Jonah Goldberg, one of the most articulate of modern conservative commentators, has openly said that he's in favor of censorship -- censorship being properly understood as laws that forbid the expression of certain thoughts or the presentation of certain images, on pain of punishment. More, he claims that you and I are in favor of it, too; we simply differ on what should be censored, in what media, and under what conditions. Some conservatives advocate the return of military conscription -- involuntary servitude, with the added fillip of risk to life and limb. Other conservatives make exceptions to the principle of freedom to ban particular drugs, sex for hire, gambling unapproved by the State, the sale of professional services without a government license, the ownership of certain kinds of firearms, and so forth.

No one in either of these ideological camps is consistently in favor of freedom, as classically understood. Whatever their reasons, whether on some topics or in all things, they're against it.

Genuine libertarians, for whom freedom of the classical sort is the only legitimate end of a political system or political activity, are very few. Nor are all of us united on how best to maximize it and defend it.

***

Just recently, I wrote a series of essays on the unacceptability of the current Republican Party, to which an unfortunate number of Americans look for the protection of what de facto latitude we still possess:

• Mandatory Rebellion
• Mandatory Rebellion: Motivations and Inhibitors
• Mandatory Rebellion: A Necessary Price
• Mandatory Rebellion: A Vignette
• Mandatory Rebellion: The Judicial Question And Long-Term Thinking

Those essays were assailed far and wide as being "unrealistic." John McCain, my detractors said, is appreciably better than Barack Obama; there are enough reasons to vote for him even if he isn't a good conservative or in any other way a friend of freedom. Put McCain in the Oval Office and we'll be spared the immediate communization of the United States, at least. We'll have a few more years to try to rescue the GOP from its statist devolution.

To me, "unrealistic" is exactly what those arguments are: short-term thinking at its worst. Reinforcing a behavior evokes more of it. Reinforcing the statist descent of the GOP by awarding it victory in November would persuade its strategists and kingmakers that that orientation is the key to continued electoral success. Worse, it would allow the new regime to complete the hamstringing of our ability to resist it:

• John McCain is opposed to the private ownership of firearms.
• He co-sponsored a law that censors political expression within 60 days of an election.
• He's opposed to fencing the southern border.
• He's in favor of massive new regulations to combat "global warming."
• He's "reached across the aisle" to thwart the elevation of demonstrably qualified, freedom-friendly jurists to the federal bench.

So if you want to be stripped of all means of self-defense, if you want the country to be flooded by still more illegal immigrants, if you want to be forbidden to campaign for your preferred candidates as you please, if you want American enterprise tied down too firmly to create new jobs and new wealth, and if you want to see the liberals in the judiciary continue to eviscerate the Constitution and the rule of law, John McCain's your boy. And he'll do it all while mumbling every sonorous platitude you've ever heard, including how it's all in defense of "freedom."

If you want an ever more statist, ever more socialist Republican Party, vote for its current crop of candidates. Tell yourself that you're doing the only think you can to preserve what freedom remains to us. But don't come crying to me when your hopes and good intentions turn to gall in your mouth; I told you so, and I won't be abashed about reminding you.

***

So what do you think of it all, Gentle Reader? Are you quite happy with the way things are trending? Do you think the alternatives the major parties have presented us include one that could reverse the tyrannizing trend of the Twentieth Century? Or have you decided that things are as they are for reasons beyond your control, and that no exertion of yours could possibly affect them?

Do you understand and love freedom?

What are you willing to do about it?

---

[Fran here once again. No, John McCain did not prevail in 2008. Neither did Mitt Romney in 2012. Out of utter despair, I rooted (and voted) for Romney. I was wrong to do so -- and should a similarly unprincipled power-worshipper become the nominee in 2016, I pray that I'll have the clarity I lacked two years ago, and the resolve not to repeat my mistake.

The nation has now had the best lesson it could ever receive, short of martial law, in the wages of Government Uber Alles. The events of the past five years have left us with no margin at all. If the American people don't elect principled, freedom-loving men to Congress this coming November, and to the White House two years hence, they will have made an irrevocable choice. It is quite possible that even if the people's choices are good ones, they will nevertheless be overridden: by vote fraud, by voter intimidation, by other political subornations, or by the determination of the Obamunists to remain in power regardless of all else. All the same: short of an actual armed uprising, the elections are all we have.

Use them wisely:

• Get involved with your county and state Republican Party chapters;
• Agitate for the most principled, pro-freedom candidates you can find -- yourself, if necessary;
• Make sure your choices know that you'll be watching, and you'll tolerate no nonsense;
• Support your choices with your money, your labor, and your votes.
• Hold them to the strictest standard imaginable once they've taken their seats.

Start now.]

The Nice-Guy Trap

I was going to take today off from blogging, but perhaps fortunately, I stumbled across an exceptionally important piece from James Delingpole:

In the Spectator recently, my old friend Toby Young described a dilemma which all those of us right-wing persuasion must face up to in the end: should you soften your position in order to find some common ground with people whose stupid political ideology you loathe and despise? Or should you stay true to your principles and risk being marginalised as, at best, unreasonable and, at worst, as a fruitcake, a crank, a dangerous extremist?

Young was talking in particular about his battles with the hard-left educationalists who were trying to sabotage free schools like the one he helped set up in West London. Some parents urged him to take a more emollient line with his attackers. And for a moment Young was tempted:

"Shouldn’t I offer to meet with the school’s opponents, such as the shop steward of the Ealing branch of the NUT [National Union of Teachers], and see if there were any concessions we could make that might secure their support?"

But then he took some advice from Lord Adonis - a fellow warrior in the battle against the progressive educational establishment (aka The Blob). Lord Adonis's view was that with an enemy like this, negotiation was out of the question.

‘They’re not interested in “constructive dialogue”,’ he said. ‘Don’t you get it? If you extend any sort of olive branch to them they’ll see it as a sign of weakness and move in for the kill. I dealt with exactly the same people — the Socialist Workers’ Party, the Anti-Academies Alliance, the National Union of Teachers — for most of my ministerial career and, believe me, they would rather stick pins in their eyes than admit they have common ground with someone like you. Their attitude to free schools is the same as their attitude to academies: they won’t rest until every last one has been razed to the ground.’

This is an insight made all the more striking because Lord Adonis was a member of the Tony Blair government -- a Labourite who, in America's political lexicon, would be termed a centrist-liberal. All the same, the peer recognized something about politics in our time that many American politicians have yet to learn: the difference between clashes over means and clashes over ends.

Delingpole goes on to provide an unpleasant yet colorful and memorable comparison:

So in what way, may I ask, would it be a sensible policy to halve the difference between those two extremes in order to reach some kind of "reasonable" consensus?

It's what I call the 'Dogshit Yoghurt Fallacy'.

On one side of the argument are those of us who think yoghurt works best with a little fruit or maybe just on its own. On the other are those who believe passionately that what yoghurt really needs is the addition of something more earthy, organic, recycled - like maybe a nice scoop of dogshit.

Now you can call me a dangerous extremist if you like, for refusing under any conditions to accommodate the alternative point of view. Or you could call me one of those few remaining brave souls in a cowardly, compromised world still prepared to tell it like it is: that dogshit into yoghurt simply doesn't go, no matter how many expert surveys you cite, nor how eco-friendly it shows you to be, nor how homeopathic the dosage.

Indeed. Or, as I've said on more than one occasion: If you pour a cup of wine into a barrel of sewage, it remains a barrel of sewage, but if you pour a cup of sewage into a barrel of wine, it becomes a barrel of sewage.

The great Marshall Fritz, founder of the Advocates for Self-Government, made that point equally colorfully. In response to those who categorically decried "extremes," he would ask, "How AIDS-free would you like your blood transfusion to be?"

Compromise is potentially constructive only when it's strictly about means: i.e., when the two sides angling toward a compromise sincerely agree on the end to be sought, and are both willing to allow that they might be wrong about what means would best serve that end. Under those conditions, everyone involved will be watching the outcome and judging the means applied by that standard alone. When the ends are opposed to one another, compromise must disserve one or the other. It cannot be any other way.

If your end is political liberty -- the maximum possible freedom from coercion or constraint for peaceable persons -- there's absolutely no reason to "dialogue" with persons whose end is an expansion of State power. Compromising with statists means promoting their end, which is the exact opposite of your end. Yet many a freedom-minded person will feel a tug toward such a "dialogue," and the ideal of compromise, despite the clarity of the above. This is the Nice-Guy Trap in action.

We're indoctrinated practically from birth about the goodness of "sharing," and how Nice Guys should "try to see both sides" -- of everything. Nice Guys mustn't declare others to be The Enemy even when The Enemy has already done so in the plainest possible ways. That's because confrontation is bad, don't y'know. At any rate, it's unpleasant, which in modern "thought" amounts to the same thing.

Hidden beneath the Nice-Guy Trap is a pair of steel jaws that can snap any principle cleanly in half. This is so obvious as to be tautological: He who compromises on principle has surrendered it to some other end.

But then again, most people have no slightest idea what a principle is, either. It's not just something you value. It's not just the way you'd like things to be. It's a fundamental rule about right and wrong. Any given action will stand either on the right side of a principle, or on the wrong side. Even one exception made in favor of a wrong action that's been claimed to produce "desirable" results destroys the principle.

The dark forces of the world -- the collectivists; the power worshippers; the propagandists against all conceptions of natural law -- seek to destroy all principles. Their most effective method is the Nice-Guy Trap: entreating those who stand against them to compromise on principle.

Need I say more than DON'T! -- ? Even at the cost of being declared "not a Nice Guy?"

Food for thought.

Inheritances

There's a wealth of things I could write about today...as usual. But in wandering among them, seeking a common theme, I happened upon one I would not have expected. The more I contemplated it, the more sense it made to me.

I wonder if it will affect you, Gentle Reader, the same way.

---

It was once said of the French -- derogatorily -- that their core problem is that they think they built Paris, whereas they really only inherited it. Granted that, if we except the banlieues, they've done a decent job of preserving that patrimony. But it would be pathetically wrong to claim credit for originating it. I hope contemporary Frenchmen don't give themselves that particular air.

But there are many inheritances in the world. Not all of them are acknowledged. Not all are appreciated and preserved. Some are treated with contempt:

They unwound and flung from them with rage, as a rag that defiled them
The imperial gains of the age which their forefathers piled them.
They ran panting in haste to lay waste and embitter for ever
The wellsprings of Wisdom and Strength which are Faith and Endeavour.
They nosed out and digged up and dragged forth and exposed to derision
All doctrine of purpose and worth and restraint and prevision:

And it ceased, and God granted them all things for which they had striven,
And the heart of a beast in the place of a man's heart was given….

An inheritance of value is not to be treated in such a fashion. The great problem, of course, is that not all of us evaluate by the same standards. It gets worse when one surveys the changes in standards that have occurred over time.

---

Let's start here:

What advice would you give to a retired Air Force Colonel that has three graduate degrees and that cannot even find work as a janitor? 59-year-old Robert Freniere once served as a special assistant to General Stanley McChrystal, and he has spent extensive time in both Iraq and Afghanistan. But now this man who once had an office in the heart of the Pentagon cannot find anyone who will hire him.

The cited article goes on from there to report on several other cases just as tragic. It's a sobering review of casualties of our Obamunized economy. The Obamunists' ordnance continues to reap lives and careers today through ObamaCare, Federal Reserve currency inflation, the never-ending tsunami of regulations, and tax policies that might have been calculated to frustrate a recovery. But I'm particularly struck by the plight of Colonel Freniere, a highly educated, highly regarded combat veteran.

It's possible that except for those who've just read that article, no one who can help Colonel Freniere knows of his situation. It's possible that none of the firms to which he's applied for work are fully aware of his service and his stature. It's possible that the colonel's ordeal is about to come to an end, and that all will be well henceforward. But it doesn't seem likely.

Time was, an employer aware of a veteran in such a plight would refuse to permit it to continue, out of patriotism and simple decency. Time was, Colonel Freniere would have been the subject of a bidding war, so obvious is his immense value to just about any kind of firm.

Time was.

---

    "Have you anything left to loot? If you didn't see the nature of your policy before — it's not possible that you don't see it now. Look around you. All those damned People's States all over the earth have been existing only on the handouts which you squeezed for them out of this country. But you — you have no place left to sponge on or mooch from. No country on the face of the globe. This was the greatest and last. You've drained it. You've milked it dry. Of all that irretrievable splendor, I'm only one remnant, the last. What will you do, you and your People's Globe, after you've finished me? What are you hoping for? What do you see ahead — except plain, stark, animal starvation?"
    They did not answer. They did not look at him. Their faces wore expressions of stubborn resentment, as if his were the plea of a liar.
    Then Lawson said softly, half in reproach, half in scorn, "Well, after all, you businessmen have kept predicting disasters for years, you've cried catastrophe at every progressive measure and told us that we'll perish — but we haven't."

[Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged]

How far back our blindness to our inheritance runs is a matter of some dispute. Some commentators place the beginning of our slide at the inception of the New Deal. Others believe the Wilson Administration was the originator of the trend. Still others look as far back as 1890 for the seminal events. For my part, I remember as a child listening to rumblings from the adults around me about the political depredations and the destruction of the American economy through government meddling and confiscatory taxation. Yet many of those adults worked at jobs or in trades that would not have existed except for federal interventions into the economy -- and they'd fight like cornered weasels to keep their subventions, no matter the cost.

Being a child of immigrants, I was often to hear of the beauties of "the old country." I was often to hear Ireland or Italy compared favorably to the United States. I was exhorted to make visits to "your ancestral homeland" a part of my adult adventures. But I never heard my progenitors say what had impelled them to set forth from those shores to these, never to return.

---

I did learn, much later, about some of the terrors of my parents' birthplaces. I learned about the need for permission for everything, the endless taxes and fees, the arbitrary application of the law, the seemingly absolute immunity of misfeasant and malfeasant officials, and the extraordinary value of being "connected." It made sense to me that persons able to flee such treatment would do so. But now that it's come to our shores, where shall we flee?

A little short of two years ago, March of 2013, I told the story of how California's Franchise Tax Board would confiscate money directly from any bank accounts they can find.

The article starts with a story of someone who had $1343 confiscated from his Wells Fargo bank account for tax year 2006 despite not residing in California in 2006, not filing a State income tax return, not doing any business in the state, not owning any property in the state and not having any known tax issues left from when he did live in the state. As often happens, once such a story surfaces more stories come pouring in. Perhaps the most outrageous, because it's the highest total I know of, the California FTB sued Gilbert Hyatt, the inventor of a microprocessor chip, for $50 Million tax fraud. The problem is Hyatt claimed he wasn't a resident of California when he invented the processor, rather that he lived and worked in Nevada. One can imagine that if you've invented something with a great potential for royalties, they'll try to tax your income saying you thought of it while changing planes in California, or vacationing, or any other excuse they can think of to claim part of it.

In today's comments, I received an update to that story. The corruption is still going on. They provided a link to more stories at Stephen Clark's California Political News and Views.

Have you had the California Franchise Tax Board take your Social Security check or money from your bank without notification or explanation? Did you move out of State without notifying the Board and they continue to take money from your banks accounts, though no longer a California resident—oh, you have no obligation to tell the State you moved.

Just victimized last week. I live in Oregon. Moved from Ca late May, 2000. Never received anything from them. Never had notice of a lien. They told me that because I held a Real Estate License in the year 2000 and didn’t file a CA return in 2000 that they assessed me a tax based upon the average income of a real estate professional in CA in 2000. That average income was $45,000 ! They took my SS, my little savings account, and part of the support from my husband. I am frantic ! to say the least.

Me too! Last week the CA FTB stole almost $2000.00 from my bank account here in Colorado. They took every last penny. I moved out of Southern California in 2006 and did not notify them so according to them they can charge me with not filing a return for 2007 and take my money. I have faxed them proof I didn’t live there but they don’t respond and you can’t reach them by phone unless you have two hours or more to be put on hold. If someone told me this happened to them before it hit me I would have doubted this is legal.

The 92 comments are full of more stories....

...There are no words for the level of scum bag government this sinks to. This is the worst of Banana Republic thuggery.

What California is doing will not long be done in California alone.

This sort of governmental peculation was one of the reasons for the vigilance committees of the Nineteenth Century. Despite the bad press they've received from State-worshipping historians, the vigilance committees were effective and generally as faithful to justice as any "official" judicial process has ever been. No doubt you will be unsurprised to hear that those most opposed to them were the frontier officials delivered to their just deserts thereby.

Americans of those places and times were absolutely unwilling to flee. Indeed, many had gone West because of their hatred of political corruption in the settled East. They appreciated the responsibilities that accompany political freedom. The highest of those responsibilities was -- and is -- the righting of wrongs perpetrated "under color of law" -- i.e., by the State and its agents.

But Americans don't do such things any more. Instead, we beg for mercy. We plead with the Omnipotent State to let us keep what we've earned...what we've managed to retain after a seemingly endless process of taxation and excision. And as any sane man would have predicted from the natures of the agencies and persons involved, nothing of substance changes...just as it was in "the old country."

---

If there's a worst aspect to our disrespect toward what we inherited, it might be this: Even those of us who know what we've lost and are losing largely lack the ability to express it coherently, much less to defend it.

The problem is one of fundamentals. American schools -- grammar schools -- once taught the fundamentals of the American approach to government: individual freedom; constitutionally limited government; the sanctity of free enterprise and private property; the guarantees of the Bill of Rights. Schoolchildren learned about the insights of John Locke and Adam Smith, and why they constituted important advances in human thought. Without those things, comprehending the American way of governance sufficiently well to articulate it is impossible -- and a large majority of Americans lacks those things today.

He who lacks appreciation for the moral imperative and the practical case for freedom will fall back to other "values." He'll defend whatever crumbs he can beg from the Omnipotent State as his "by right," even if they must be snatched from the mouths of persons just like him. He might never discover what he's been denied. He might never learn the principles that built the country he inherited...and which he and so many others lack the wit, and possibly the will, to sustain.

---

Yes, these are gloomy thoughts. I hope you didn't come here today looking for a pick-me-up piece. But these are gloomy times.

The defense of the Republic is failing because too many of us who genuinely understand and love freedom are aging toward oblivion, and too many of our inheritors look upon our bequests, whether material, intellectual, or emotional, with bewilderment.

What, then, must we do?