The Most Inspiring Statement You Will Encounter All Day

...comes from this interview of thriller writer Brad Thor:

First and foremost, I am a steward of the republic — that’s my job as a citizen.

Bravo, Mr. Thor. I salute you.

The Indie Writers' Movement Part 3: Prisoners

Please pardon me, Gentle Reader. The political hot topics of the day are being widely enough addressed that I feel no need to add further words to the torrent. (Besides, not one of them is at all new or fresh.) Atop that, I've just had a rather striking experience, owing to a brief article of mine currently available at PJ Media.

The Prisoner is my long-time favorite among television serials: for its originality, for its consistently excellent scripting and acting, for the presence of Patrick McGoohan, and for its exploration of the meaning of freedom, a thing of inestimable value to me. Over the decades that have passed since McGoohan's iconic production first graced the small screen, nothing even remotely comparable for theme, quality, or style has emerged.

It brought home to me the magnitude of one of the worst sins of modern fiction and its practitioners: our propensity to leap onto the current bandwagon as if we were incapable of an original thought. It's saddening beyond measure that that sin against one's own imagination has become just as prevalent among indie fictioneers as it is among conventionally published writers.

A few years ago, when I was also maintaining Musings of an Indie Writer, I wrote:

Fiction, like other forms of entertainment, is frequently afflicted by fads. Readers of contemporary fantasy are already aware of the fads for vampire and werewolf-oriented stories. Science fiction recently experienced a fad for stories about the extremely far future, and before that, what a friend called the “my artifact is bigger than your artifact” trend. And of course, “high” (medieval) fantasy often seems like one enormous, decades-long fad for quest adventures.

Many a writer will hop onto a fad in the hope of gathering a little of the gravy while it’s still flowing copiously. Being a devout capitalist (among other things), I cannot and shall not condemn such writers; they’re following the star most important to them. But the samenesses of faddish currents in fiction don’t speak well to the creativity of the participating writers.

Of course, a genre can experience two or more fads concurrently. Right now, contemporary (a.k.a. “urban”) fantasy is enduring trends for zombie-oriented stories, along with all the dreck about werewolves and vampires. Possibly it started with the “Resident Evil” series of video games, which were enormously popular and spawned an equally popular movie series starring the beautiful and talented Milla Jovovich. One way or another, we’re being overrun with zombie fiction. It’s become a campy motif: We have parodies such as Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, the hilariously funny movie Zombieland, op-ed essays that use a plague of zombies as one pole of a sociopolitical comparison, and assorted bits of humor such as the bar that posted, as a reason to drink there, that it’s well prepared for the “Zombie Apocalypse.”

...and so forth. But leave aside for the moment the readiness of the reading public to consume mass quantities of fiction about vampires, or zombies, or whatever. What accounts for writer Smith's decision to produce such material, given that there's already so much of it out there?

Smith might be personally fascinated by the central motif of the fad. Or he might think he has a truly original idea for exploiting it. Or he might be a hack, who just wants to slurp up a trickle of the gravy from a booming subgenre. Or -- and this is the part that fascinates and saddens me, because my review of other indies' works makes it seem the most likely explanation -- he might not have any original story ideas, but wants to write anyway.

If you have no original ideas, why write? Why inflict your story on a reading public that has seen too many such already? Isn't the first lesson of success in business -- any business -- that you must "differentiate the product" -- ?

As for the "striking experience," here's the morning's illustration of how desperate many readers are for something they haven't seen before:

I don't wish to comment on the main topic, which I have never seen and do not intend to amend that fact. Your "about the author" made me laugh so loud it made my children come running. Keep writing. You've got your "writers' voice" you just need to find your wider audience. And you will good sir, you will.

The sweet woman who penned that comment wasn't even interested in the subject matter of my article. She was merely surfing PJ Media and her eye caught on my piece: specifically my "About the Author," which I copied from my SmashWords profile page.

What tickled "Katherine in RB" so greatly? She's probably seen as much humorous prose as any casual Web reader. My self-deprecating pseudo-bio -- alright, yes, I do have bad acne and crooked teeth, but I have no effect on local property values...I think -- isn't even all that funny. But it's a contrast to the praise so many indie writers have heaped upon themselves, to say nothing of the plaudits they award their own books.

Lack of imagination and "bandwagoning" even afflict writers' self-descriptions.

Yes, there are considerable risks involved in striking out on a wholly new path. For one thing, you can fool yourself about the degree of originality of your ideas. For another, they might not provide sufficient substance for a novel-length story. And for a third, there might not be any readers interested in the motifs you've employed or the themes you've chosen to highlight; as one who writes explicitly Christian-themed science fiction and contemporary fantasy, I know that particular risk very well. But there's an even greater risk in blandly following the crowd.

The crowd has power but no mind. Its decisions are approximately random, and often randomly destructive. By submerging yourself in it, you surrender your imagination, your latitude of action, and your self-respect. Should the crowd take you somewhere you'd rather not go, there'd be no guarantee that you'd be capable of freeing yourself.

If we eschew original thought for the current fad and its evanescent appeal, we cease to be independent minds. We become prisoners of others' decisions. Is that a status to which an "independent" writer should aspire?

Food for thought.

Lone incompetent.

These lone wolves. These homegrown violent extremists are people who keep me up at night, as well. Trying to monitor them, trying to anticipate what it is they are going to do. And the experience that we had in Boston is instructive. It only takes only one or two people to really do something horrific.

~ Attorney General Holder, 7/14/14.

Had Mr. Holder said "It only takes only one or two Muslims" he would have been on terra firma. As is, his statement is dishonest and ominous. He ignores what we know about Islamic terrorism, domestic extremism, "threatened insurrection," and unpunished, vile murder, the motivation for which is as fresh as the morning dew.

Contrast Holder's laughable description of his greatest worry with the evidence of America's "growing police state apparatus."

Whom should Americans fear most in these days?

Patriotic Americans who served in Iraq and Afghanistan and surly bloggers infuriated by federal excess and lies?

Or a federal government that has broken free of its constitutional moorings and procures huge stores of hollow-point small arms ammunition for the country's premiere civilian "internal security" agency?

H/t: Remus, "Yer Ol' Woodpile Report."

The Potomac Two-Step

I've been writing about "the Islamic Two-Step" for years now. It's a simple little dance: Muslims crying out "peace, peace, we are for peace" occupy our time in bad-faith "negotiations" while alternating their pleas with terror attacks, savageries against non-Muslims, and strident demands for accommodations that no one else has ever requested or would ever be granted. That makes it something of a relief when an Islamic organization such as HAMAS comes right out and says "there will be no peace until we get everything we want," which includes the complete destruction of Israel. At least the pretenses are done with.

Our political elite has been two-stepping quite a great deal, too:

1. The VA Scandals. VA officials' "cooperation" with the investigations into its malfeasances is entirely fake:

Congressional staffers investigating data falsification and whistleblower retaliation at the Department of Veterans Affairs regional office in Philadelphia were given a workspace there that was wired with activated audio microphones and video cameras, the chairman of the House Committee on Veterans' Affairs said Monday.

Committee investigators also glimpsed a notebook used by the agency's regional director that bore written instructions to ignore their requests for information, Rep. Jeff Miller, R-Fla., said during a late-night hearing.

Miller, chairman of the veterans committee, said he is “shocked” by the directives from VA officials to ignore congressional investigators.

“You will not ignore this committee anymore,” Miller said to Allison Hickey, VA's under secretary for benefits, who testified at the hearing.

There are a lot of firing offenses buried in there. Some of them are prosecutable as well. But that's what the investigators are facing -- and the miscreants two-stepping before them are confident that nothing will befall them because of it.

2. The IRS Scandals. The IRS continues to lie blatantly to Congress about the documents that would establish its duplicities:

The Federal Election Commission recycled the computer hard drive of April Sands — a former co-worker of Lois Lerner’s — hindering an investigation into Sands’ partisan political activities, according to the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform.

Sands resigned from the Federal Election Commission in April after she admitted to violating the Hatch Act, which bars executive branch employees from engaging in partisan political activities on federal time and at federal facilities.

The twist is that Sands also worked under Lois Lerner when the ex-IRS agent — who is currently embroiled in a scandal over the targeting of conservative political groups — worked at the FEC’s enforcement division.

Here, all the offenses alleged are felonious. As has been noted by others, merely suggesting such use of the IRS to hamper political enemies got Nixon hounded out of office, even though the IRS commissioner of that time wouldn't cooperate. Once again, the IRS functionaries being "investigated" appear confident that their two-step will cost them nothing.

3. The Border Crisis. There can be absolutely no doubt of what's happening on our southern border, yet the Administration and its most prominent supporters continue to scream "There is no crisis, the border is secure," while Obama himself demands nearly $4 billion in extra appropriations to deal with the influx:

We are watching the destruction of the United States....

[Senator Jeff] Sessions reminded Congress of Major Garrett’s article in the National Journal on July 3rd in which he said that Barack Obama plans to legalize 5 to 6 million illegals using executive power.

Obama met June 30th with open borders and other far-left pro-illegal immigration groups: the Service Employees International Union (SEIU); AFL-CIO; Center for American Progress; Leadership Council on Civil Rights; America’s Voice; the National Immigration Law Center; United Farm Workers; Center for Community Change; and others. The National Council of LaRaza didn’t attend, supposedly not invited.

The groups encouraged him to move ahead with the legalization of people currently here illegally.

When Boehner advised the president that there would be no immigration reform this year, Obama said he responded this way: “Sorry about that. I’m going to keep my promise and move forward with executive action soon.”

While there is a crushing invasion on our southern border, Obama said, to quote Garrett, that “he was going to condemn House Republicans for inaction and set the most expansive legal course permissible to beef up border security, slow deportations of noncriminal aliens, and provide legal status to millions of undocumented workers—all by himself.”

This puts me in mind of an old movie: A Guide For The Married Man. Joey Bishop's wife comes home to find him in bed with another woman and launches a fit: "What are you doing in our bed with that girl?" Bishop and the girl calmly get out of bed and get dressed as his wife continues to scream. After the girl has left, Bishop calmly turns to his wife and says "What bed? What girl?"

The Border Patrol has apprehended "illegal immigrants" at the southern border whose home states are Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, and Yemen.

Yes, Gentle Reader, all of this is actually happening. You haven't dreamed a bit of it.

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It's not that long ago that I cited the critical importance of trust: trust in one another and in our institutions, particularly governments. Trust is a fragile thing:

A thousand truths do not mark a man as a truth-teller, but a single lie marks him as a damned liar....Lying to other people is your business, but I tell you this: once a man gets a reputation as a liar, he might as well be struck dumb, for people do not listen to the wind. [Robert A. Heinlein, Citizen of the Galaxy]

...so you could quite reasonably conclude that elected officials confronted with repeated bare-faced deceits would automatically cease to believe the statements of the deceivers and would behave accordingly. Yet that hasn't happened. Why?

Because the Republicans are the Democrats' dance partners.

The preservation of certain illusions is crucial to the maintenance of our political status quo. The very definition of an establishment is that group which is embedded in and maintains the status quo in its demesne. In particular, our political Establishment is determined to defend the cherished myth that the federal government can be trusted with a degree of power over private Americans and their businesses many orders of magnitude greater than that the Founding Fathers fought a revolution to overthrow.

They who seek to wield power love power. When out of power, they will struggle to regain it. They will not attack power itself. Neither will they attack the institutions through which they might some day wield it. Thus, they will defend even those institutions of power that are in an adversary's grip. They hope to displace the adversary and take the power he wields into their own hands.

To allow the utter and complete corruption of the federal government of these United States to become plainly visible would evoke a popular revolt that would pull it down and destroy it. Never mind that that's exactly what it deserves. Never mind that that government now "rules by naked force." (Glenn Reynolds) Never mind that it isn't even candid about its premises and its agenda. They who seek to wield its powers will protect it from the just consequences of its worst excesses.

With or without music, the Potomac Two-Step will continue until we take the musket down from the mantel and march.

Strifings

No, that's not a misspelling.

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

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

What has happened in America?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Now hearken to the great Photon Courier, David Foster:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Indie Writers' Movement Part 2: Room For Everyone

If anything is likely to promote the independent writers' movement from "promising" to "has hit the big time," it's most likely to be independent publishing's absence of barriers to forms, motifs, and themes disfavored by conventional publishers.

Of course there are no such barriers in indie fiction. Who is there to erect and defend them? Writers won't do so against themselves, while publishers, publishers' editors, and literary agents are completely excluded from the field. So elements and approaches of all sorts that would never be accepted by Pub World will proliferate in indie fiction to the extent the market will bear.

That is: as far as "the market will bear" and no farther. When no one stands between the creator and the consumer, the market is the sole arbiter. Those who attempt to defy the market simply won't sell. Over time they'll cease to try. New entrants, observing what works and what doesn't, will emulate the successful, as is the case in all commercial arenas. And of course, as tastes change, so will the market's winnowing dynamic.

Here's a quick survey of the currently most conspicuous divergences between Pub World fiction and the indie world:

1. Military fiction.

During Tom Clancy's glory years, Pub World grudgingly made room for his sort of military-adventure fiction for a simple reason: it brought millions of men back into the fiction market at a time when all the major publishers were hurting badly. However, it's noteworthy that they had to have their self-inflicted wound rubbed in their faces. Clancy's first, overwhelmingly successful novel of naval adventure, The Hunt For Red October, was rejected by every major publishing house and no small number of lesser ones. Only after it was picked up by the Naval Institute Press and became a multimillion seller were Pub World's major players willing to concede that they might have overlooked a profit opportunity.

But note: since the decline of Clancy's market power -- which preceded his demise by some years, sad to say -- Pub World's attitude toward military fiction has reverted approximately to its previous condition. Whether that's because no one of Clancy's stature has arisen since he, Stephen Coonts, and Dale Brown dominated the field is impossible to say, but with so little military adventure coming from the big houses, we cannot be sure.

2. Masculine protagonists and feminine leading ladies.

Gender-war feminism and Robert Conquest's Second Law have worked upon Pub World's purchasing patterns to eliminate, for practical purposes, traditionally manly men and feminine women from their offerings. This is in part due to the rise of "tough chick lit," in which a heroine with traditionally masculine assets, including physical strength and courage, uses them to prevail in a conflict that would once have centered on a male hero. However, even in stories that lack a "tough chick" protagonist, we seldom see a female Marquee Character who's feminine by the standards that prevailed before the rise of gender-war feminism.

It's not impossible to create a strong, brave heroine who's also feminine in outlook and in her relations with men. I've done so. Indeed, I've done so more than once, not merely to demonstrate that it's possible. But you wouldn't know it from the novels that emerge from the Big Six publishers, nor from most of the smaller establishments.

In this regard, the recent tumult within the Science Fiction Writers of America is highly illustrative. For as I mentioned only yesterday, writers' associations are as subject to Conquest's Second Law as any other kind of organization -- and have the added pressure of assisting their members in marketing their products, as well.

3. Freedom.

Given that freedom has come under attack both rhetorically and in practice, perhaps it shouldn't surprise anyone that novels that celebrate it, or that portray protagonists willing to fight and sacrifice for it, are rare among Pub World's offerings.

Writers to whom freedom is a critical theme get very little shrift from Pub World. Hearken to one such writer, whose cri de coeur just happened, coincidentally or otherwise, to appear on Bastille Day:

Things started changing for so many of us in the publishing industry when there was finally a viable alternative to traditional publishing available to us. No longer did we have to keep our mouths shut about how we felt for fear of having our options dropped or of being blackballed in the industry. Still, it was a slow journey into the light. We’d hidden our political beliefs for so long and had been so indoctrinated with the belief that admitting we were libertarian or – gasp – conservative would lose us readers.

But then events started happening that pushed us to the point where we could no longer hold our tongues. Looking around, authors who had been hiding in the political closet for so long saw the new indie authors saying what they thought in social media and on their blogs. Looking at the best seller lists on Amazon, hearts beat a little faster and a spark of hope flared to see authors who shared the same libertarian values these long-silent authors held not only selling their books but selling well.

Clearly, if we go by population movements, there remains a great hunger for freedom. That hunger extends to entertainment, particularly fiction. Longtime readers will be aware that I have a dear friend named Duyen who risked her life and future on a homemade bamboo raft to escape from North Vietnam and find freedom. You'd expect someone like that to be sensitive to the subject when she encounters it in a story...and she is.

Among recognized publishers, only Baen Books has provided an outlet for freedom-promoting, freedom-celebrating fiction. Baen sells a lot of books. Its roster includes some of the most popular SF and fantasy writers at work today. You'd think that, were profit of great interest to Pub World, it would draw the moral. So far, it hasn't.

4. Christianity and Christian Ethics.

This might be the most tragic of all the exclusions practiced by the major houses, in part because of the way it operates. I don't speak here of "Christian fiction" as such, because, not to put too fine a point on it, most explicitly religious fiction of any kind is narratively abysmal and unbearably preachy. There's another aspect to the thing: conventionally published fiction's treatment of religious clerics and religious characters generally. Protagonists with deep, sincere religious convictions are rare; even honorable Supporting Cast members are exceptional.

As I'm a devout Catholic, I'm particularly sensitive to this, but once again, market indications ought to constitute a corrective force even if simple decency is lacking. Taken together, I've sold over 75,000 copies of Chosen One, On Broken Wings, and Shadow Of A Sword, all of which are explicitly Catholic in protagonist and theme. For that matter, one of the best selling novels of all time, The Lord Of The Rings, is explicitly Christian in theme and treatment -- and J. R. R. Tolkien said so right out in front of God and everybody.

Everything Pub World disdains has flowered in indie fiction, as if it had been waiting for the outlet to emerge. Granted, the indie milieu is equally open to the sort of tale Pub World embraces, but that's only as it should be. The point is that the independent writers' movement has room for everyone, that it spurns no one and no kind of story, and that the success or failure of some new subspecies will depend solely on its progenitors' storytelling ability and the market's reaction to their offerings.

A businessman of acuity knows that the most precious of all things is an underserved market segment. Verbum sat sapienti -- and there are more than 1300 such words here.

The Indie Writers' Movement And "Writers' Guilds."

Yes, the emergence of the independent fiction writers' movement was a brave and promising thing...back about six years ago, when it first gained steam enough to get noticed. I was certainly pleased to become part of it. I've contributed my modest skills to it ever since, and have seldom failed to be gratified by my readers' responses.

But here we are, several years and many thousands of independently published books and stories later, and it's still mostly a promising thing, rather than a full-blooded competitor for the affections and wallets of readers. The reasons are several: inadequate attention paid to marketing, a persistent crudity of appearance in the product, and, sadly, the prevalence of low quality fiction. And those of us who've given it our hearts and our fondest creations continue to search for remedies.

No, I'm not about to back away from the indie movement. (No one in the conventional world of fiction publication would come near me, anyway.) But I keep wondering what it will take to elicit the sort of support structures -- proficient editing services; high-quality cover designers; marketing and publicity consultants; etc. -- that assist "con-pub" writers. Of course, given the greater revenues that the con-pubbies receive for their efforts, the problem might be that the supports are out there, but priced beyond the typical indie's means. That offers no relief, of course; it just sharpens the frustration.

A comment to Sarah Hoyt's latest PJ Media column speaks as plaintively about the problem as I've found to date:

Wanted 'Indie Writers Guild'!

And as a fan, let say one benie for this proposed 'Guild' would be low cost EDITING. Which is my only real quibble with 'Self Pubing'. I've lost count of the INDIES that I've bought, started and set aside unfinished because of lack of an editor (grammar/plot/character/dialog etc. weaknesses) that made reading through to the end just to much of a chore what with SO MUCH MORE on my list else to read...

So just my 2cents.

(written while attending an Indie Writers Banquet{sitting alone in front of a computer eating a bowl of Ramen})

In a bare hundred words, the commenter has accurately pinned the major faults that retard the acceptance of indie fiction by the reading public -- and in an irony beyond irony, he incorporated four spelling errors, three errors of grammar, two errors in punctuation, one badly run-on sentence, and (for lagniappe) a missing "Oxford comma." Clearly, the lack of affordable editing services is quite serious.

Mind you, there are excellent free-lance editors out there who'll happily rake your work over the coals. I've worked with one: Kelly Tomkies of Columbus, Ohio. They're thorough, they probe plot structures and character development in depth, and they express themselves unabashedly about the flaws they perceive. But they tend to charge amounts near to $1000 for a typical novel-length manuscript: an amount that, while it might not "break the bank," would certainly give the typical indie fictioneer pause, considering his prospects for revenue from his novel.

Similarly, there are excellent free-lance cover artists available as well. My favorite is Donna Casey, a.k.a. "Digital Donna," who's done most of the covers of my books. But the best of them are getting to be expensive, too.

The one area where support for indie fiction seems to be lacking is marketing and promotion, but this might be merely a flaw in my knowledge. At any rate, when it emerges, I'd expect it to be as pricey as good editing and cover design services. Supply and demand play no favorites.

An "indie writers' guild" might contribute to the solution of the editing problem, or it might not. It might become a funnel for high-quality cover-design services, or it might no. It might assist its members with their promotion and marketing efforts, or it might not. Regardless of the verdicts, it would do something else, as well -- something writers with pro-American, pro-Christian, and pro-freedom views must beware:

Robert Conquest's Second Law of Politics:
Any organization not explicitly right wing
will, over time, become left wing.

The forces that bring this about are in plain sight: Whereas righties are mainly interested in enterprise, achievement, and profit, lefties are obsessed with power over others. Therefore, when a position that offers power, even of the only influential or indirect sort, is created anywhere, lefties will pursue it far more ardently than righties, who mostly want *someone else* to take the role and "get the job done." In the usual case, a little time is all it will take for the control of the organization to pass to left-wingers, with all that entails.

We can easily see this dynamic operating in the conventional publishing industry. Hell's bells, I could show you examples from suburban critique groups! So a formally organized "indie writers' guild" would be vulnerable to it, as well.

The only approach that doesn't open itself to left-wing corruption is the smallest and most intimate of all: a small, closed "mutual assistance circle," in which all the members know one another and agree on moral, ethical, and political fundamentals, and to which no stranger is ever admitted. The members must bind themselves -- morally, at least -- to perform mutual critiquing and editing, to assist with cover concepts and design, to perform "mutually assured pimping," and other generally helpful chores on request.

Even this approach has drawbacks. For example, when one member is much more proficient, or much more successful, than the others, the asymmetry can cause considerable tension. But at least it's armored against being suborned by persons with a toxic agenda.

At any rate, the problems will persist as we search for alternate approaches. But so will indie fiction. As Sarah Hoyt points out in her Book Plug Friday column, the sense of freedom is inexpressibly valuable to those of us with stories to tell. It's especially important to those of us with relatives, friends, and neighbors whose ears are already callused over from listening to us.

Apropos of which, all my drivel over at Smashwords is free of charge until the end of July. If you appreciate the gesture, why not toss one or two of my novels a nice review? Thanks.

The Worth Of Man: A Slightly Early Rumination

By way of the esteemed David De Gerolamo, I've just encountered a brief but remarkable essay. I'll quote the intro on the condition that you read the rest in its entirety:

Growing up, I heard lots of complaints from parents and teachers about children being conceited, proud, and arrogant. Looking back, it seems to me that most of these complaints were related to a failure to obey. We did have one or two kids who were arrogant jerks, but the rest of us received the same comments they did.

But whatever motivated the adults of my youth, they were mostly wrong -- it's not our overvaluation of ourselves that is the real problem; it's our undervaluation.

Here is a passage from G.K. Chesterton's The Defendant that makes this argument:

There runs a strange law through the length of human history — that men are continually tending to undervalue their environment, to undervalue their happiness, to undervalue themselves. The great sin of mankind, the sin typified by the fall of Adam, is the tendency, not towards pride, but towards this weird and horrible humility.

Go finish it; I'll wait right here.

---

Back so soon? My, my. What did you think, Gentle Reader? I'd especially like to hear from those of you who received conventional Jewish or Christian upbringings. Does this comport or clash with your understanding of the generally noncontroversial virtue of humility?

If my experiences were representative of the Baby Boom, the great majority of us were systematically taught to "undervalue ourselves." It was the prevalent practice in those years that children raised in the Judeo-Christian tradition were continually admonished against taking pride in their abilities and achievements, cautioned against being confident of their capacity to meet challenges, and chastised for "having a big head."

Yet I remember quite clearly that my parents had no problems with self-undervaluation. If anything, they thought more of their abilities and achievements than those things properly deserved. Nor were they exceptional in that regard. American adults from the "greatest generation" carried themselves with pride. They'd been endlessly lauded for all they'd done, particularly their conquests of the Great Depression and America's enemies in World War II.

The contrast seems even starker today than it did back then. I can't help but wonder whether they sensed it as clearly as I did. Whether they received the same conditioning in self-abasement as children, I cannot say with certainty, but let's imagine that it was so. How does one "graduate" from such a "weird and horrible humility" to a properly adult, confident stature? Is it a normal progression for a healthy mind? Most critical of all, how does it bear on our understanding of ourselves as a species and our appreciation of genuine humility?

Ponder that while I fetch a fresh cup of coffee.

---

Many of "our problems" derive from a reluctance to discriminate.

Oops! I used a naughty word, didn't I? "Discrimination" is the cardinal sin of the Twenty-First Century, right? We're all supposed to be exactly the same, precious little snowflakes, of absolutely equal worth yet somehow unique. That this bunch is better at something than that one, or that those folks over there really shouldn't be trusted, are absolutely inadmissible observations in contemporary society...even when they're correct in all particulars.

There are substantial differences among us: between any two arbitrarily selected individuals, and between any two arbitrarily defined groups. You don't even have to look hard to see them. Realism about the variety of Man would seem to follow naturally. Yet hearken to essayist Paul Rosenberg:

We are, since childhood, trained to view ourselves as dangerous creatures, teetering on the edge of error and harm....Bear in mind that I’m not saying all humans are good. Clearly, some of them are violent and vile. But these are a small minority, and we should not lump normal people in with them.

Whatever the size of that minority, once it has been identified and classified, why would anyone deem it just to "lump normal people in with them" -- ?

But that's the crux, you see. We're not allowed to identify a subgroup of Mankind as dangerous or destructive, while exempting the rest of us. We're required to maintain the myth of the Uniform Aggregate: that every last one of us might prove violent, or untrustworthy, or unfaithful at any instant. Because without that myth, the power structures that lord it over us will topple:

Whenever it is that a significant number of people develop healthy psyches, modern systems of rulership, including "law and order," will fail. These systems assume that they will always enjoy instant and unreasoned obedience.

Of course, there are assumptions built into the inverse posture as well:

• That without legislatures and their law, we will know right from wrong.
• That without rulers, men will act on their own to establish justice as appropriate.
• That unruled men's justice will be superior to that of conventional "systems of rulerhip."

Yes, they're assumptions. And yes, recorded history, which is largely about the deeds of governments, tends to ignore the record of Mankind's few unruled societies. But if we start from the accumulated horrors that attach to the record of the State, it seems to me that there is no reason to prefer the Statist assumption -- that men must be ruled by an authority with sole jurisdiction and an overwhelming command of coercive force -- over that of freedom.

But it must begin with the willingness to discriminate -- and to draw the appropriate conclusions.

---

A favorite poem:

The Stranger within my gate,
    He may be true or kind,
But he does not talk my talk--
    I cannot feel his mind.
I see the face and the eyes and the mouth,
     But not the soul behind.

The men of my own stock,
    They may do ill or well,
But they tell the lies I am wonted to,
    They are used to the lies I tell;
And we do not need interpreters
    When we go to buy or sell.

The Stranger within my gates,
     He may be evil or good,
But I cannot tell what powers control--
    What reasons sway his mood;
Nor when the Gods of his far-off land
    Shall repossess his blood.

The men of my own stock,
    Bitter bad they may be,
But, at least, they hear the things I hear,
    And see the things I see;
And whatever I think of them and their likes
    They think of the likes of me.

This was my father's belief
    And this is also mine:
Let the corn be all one sheaf--
    And the grapes be all one vine,
Ere our children's teeth are set on edge
    By bitter bread and wine.

[Rudyard Kipling]

Kipling was, of course, referring to the pressure for the mass admission of persons from the colonies of the far-flung British Empire to England itself. Those who argued for such a policy were relatively few in Kipling's day, but in the end they proved quite persuasive, as the current condition of the United Kingdom makes plain. Yet the central theme of The Stranger is not race or place of origin but trust: one's willingness to repose confidence in the words of others and in their willingness and ability to fulfill the commitments they make.

Benjamin M. Anderson, one of the greatest financial analysts of the first half of the Twentieth Century, wrote in his magnum opus:

There is no need in human life so great as that men should trust one another and should trust their government, should believe in promises, and should keep promises in order that future promises may be believed in and in order that confident cooperation may be possible. Good faith -- personal, national, and international -- is the first prerequisite of decent living, of the steady going on of industry, of governmental financial strength, and of international peace. -- Benjamin M. Anderson, Economics and the Public Welfare: A Financial and Economic History of the United States, 1914 -- 1946

Anderson, a child of Nineteenth Century America, was appalled by what he saw from our federal government in his adult years. He had reason to believe that it should and could behave far better, especially with regard to the economic activities of American citizens and their voluntary associations. But the governmental experiences of Nineteenth-Century Americans were incredibly far from the human norm. The contrast they made with the great mass of human history is so stark as to be white against black.

If we agree to omit consideration of the federal government from roughly 1876 through 1912, the entirety of recorded history screams a single unadulterated message:

The State cannot be trusted.

Which is why those who seek to become the masters of the State encourage us to distrust one another.

---

Few Americans would claim to want power for themselves. However, the moral and spiritual degeneration of the century past has been so dramatic that many of us -- perhaps a majority -- want power to "do something," usually with the aim of "solving a problem."

Here's where the inculcated perversion of the virtue of humility bares its teeth, for it is impossible, in one's heart of hearts, to think oneself a lowly or unworthy creature. Our innermost selves know better, for as Rosenberg tells us, the Bible itself says so:

I [God] have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. [Psalms 82:6]

But one in a certain place testified, saying, What is man, that thou art mindful of him? or the son of man, that thou visitest him? Thou madest him a little lower than the angels; thou crownedst him with glory and honour, and didst set him over the works of thy hands: Thou hast put all things in subjection under his feet. For in that he put all in subjection under him, he left nothing that is not put under him. But now we see not yet all things put under him. [Hebrews 2:6-8]

It is perhaps the most "obvious" [cf. "overlooked"] feature of the Bible that it seldom tells us anything about ourselves that we couldn't have figured out for ourselves. This bit of revelation is no exception.

If I am an ace, but you "should" be humble, it follows that what I think should be preferred to what you think, regardless of the subject. Therefore I should be permitted to dictate to you -- and if my "humility" requires that an intermediary enforce my will upon you, well, that's what intermediaries are for, right?

The State never had it so good.

---

We come at last to the elucidation of humility as it's properly understood: the grasp that would free us from so much that is evil and misdirected in our time. On this subject, I refer, once again, to the great Clive Staples Lewis, through his inverse, that experienced expositor of evil, the demon Screwtape:

You [Screwtape's "nephew," the demon Wormword] must therefore conceal from the patient the true end of Humility. Let him think of it not as self-forgetfulness but as a certain kind of opinion (namely, a low opinion) of his own talents and character. Some talents, I gather, he really has. Fix in his mind the idea that humility consists in trying to believe those talents to be less valuable than he believes them to be. No doubt they are in fact less valuable than he believes, but that is not the point. The great thing is to make him value an opinion for some quality other than truth, thus introducing an element of dishonesty and make-believe into the heart of what otherwise threatens to become a virtue. By this method thousands of humans have been brought to think that humility means pretty women trying to believe they are ugly and clever men trying to believe they are fools. And since what they are trying to believe may, in some cases, be manifest nonsense, they cannot succeed in believing it and we have the chance of keeping their minds endlessly revolving on themselves in an effort to achieve the impossible.

To anticipate the Enemy's strategy, we must consider His aims. The Enemy wants to bring the man to a state of mind in which he could design the best cathedral in the world, and know it to be the best, and rejoice in the, fact, without being any more (or less) or otherwise glad at having done it than he would be if it had been done by another. The Enemy wants him, in the end, to be so free from any bias in his own favour that he can rejoice in his own talents as frankly and gratefully as in his neighbour's talents—or in a sunrise, an elephant, or a waterfall. He wants each man, in the long run, to be able to recognise all creatures (even himself) as glorious and excellent things.

Though we are equals nowhere else, we are all absolutely equal in the sight of the Supreme Judge, He who holds the only unreviewable and irrefutable jurisdiction: God. The root word of humility is humus: soil, the dust from which our flesh arises and to which it will some day return. In that light, what privilege of lording it over you should any other creature formed of clay possess? No matter how many other clay-footed friends he can muster behind him?

Humility thus understood makes room for just pride: pride in one's abilities and achievements that nevertheless respects the abilities and recognizes the achievements of others. It's infinitely distant from the self-abasement we're bludgeoned into pretending from childhood onward:

    A large, raggedly circular clearing took her by surprise. At the center stood a great oak, an enormous tree more than a hundred feet tall and at least five feet through the trunk. The trees that formed the perimeter of the clearing were pines and firs of unusual height: a fitting honor guard for the creature at the center of the circle.
    She went to the great oak and touched it gingerly. It had to be several centuries old, perhaps a thousand years or more. Louis had told her that trees of such caliber were rare, because they grew so slowly. To achieve such dimensions and yet endure against the elements and the pull of the Earth required that their annual increments of height and girth be tiny, such that their growth could only be perceived over a span of decades.
    I bet it's not as old as Malcolm.
    She chuckled to herself. Too long a baseline cheapened the glories of the world. No man but Malcolm could dim the august majesty of this being. Malcolm himself would agree. Yet she knew what else he would say.
    It has no eyes, or ears, or heart or brain. It has endured the years, but it has not witnessed them, let alone affected them. You say it is beautiful, and awe-inspiring, but the beauty is in your appreciation, and the awe is in your heart. It is Man's heart and mind that create beauty and awe. Nothing else in all the world can do it. Nowhere is there anything as great as Man.

[From On Broken Wings]

It also makes room for freedom.

May God bless and keep you all.

The Vacuum Part 2: Benign Or Malign?

"When all the errors are in the bank's favor, you can be forgiven for thinking there's more than sloppy arithmetic at work." -- Me.

I didn't originally intend a follow-up to the previous piece, but some of the comments have been priceless, and the "private" email that invariably outweighs them has urged me to continue. Why, you'd think I might have accidentally illuminated some heretofore undiscovered truth about human nature or something!

Charles Murray pointed this out in his classic Losing Ground:

"People respond to incentives and disincentives. Sticks and carrots work."

When America's foremost social analyst says something that pithy, people should pay attention -- especially as it crosscuts the "received wisdom" of our political class. And they did, Gentle Reader, they did. But when that unsurpassed fount of wisdom Fran Porretto follows with something like this:

"An agreement to sell one's labor is the same as an agreement to sell anything else: the good to be delivered and the payment for it must both be well defined."

...the sky trembles, the Earth moves, the angels weep...and the horde determined to differ with me rushes forward to quarrel, quibble, and declare all manner of exceptions.

I don't mind disagreement, as long as everyone respects the rules of polite argument. Some of my emailers didn't, as you can probably imagine, and as Liberty's Torch is a family-friendly website...well, most of the time, anyway...I shall refrain from elucidating further. But one particular thread that ran through quite a lot of the emails was the assertion that anyone hostile to making working arrangements more flexible must hate business or lack a decent work ethic. With that, I must take serious exception -- serious enough to merit another essay.

---

The joint-stock corporation was originally conceived as a way of amassing capital for a new venture. In that regard it was quite successful. However, that mission was quickly encrusted with others that were, to be gentle about it, less constructive. Today I'm uncertain that the "traditional" corporation, with its paired command and control structures of a managerial hierarchy and a Board of Directors, will survive more than a few decades longer.

The most controversial of all the accretions to the corporate idea was and remains that of limited liability. Stripped to essentials, limited liability treats the corporation as a person in its own right, whose responsibilities may not be offloaded onto uninvolved others. This concept protects individual shareholders from being held liable for damages caused by employees and agents of the corporation. Only the assets of the corporation may be garnished to pay for such damages.

The idea seemed quite reasonable at first. After all, a shareholder typically stands at some remove from corporate operations, interested only in getting a return on his money. He might not have the faintest idea what agents of the corporation are doing. However, the Law of Unintended Consequences was bound to have its say.

The first obviously negative consequences -- the use of limited liability to shield a wrongdoer from the consequences of his deeds -- are difficult to place in time. However, they evoked sharp legal responses: corporate officers, plus persons whose service to the corporation involves fiduciary responsibilities (e.g., lawyers and accountants) were excluded from the limited-liability shield. The change in incentives elicited a swelling of middle management's ranks, to bury ever more decision making below the corporate-officer level so that shenanigans could be plausibly denied. "Shell corporations" and "interlocking directorates" further complicated the picture. As litigiousness by and toward corporations increased, legislatures anxious for clear legal targets enacted "whistleblower laws" intended to protect non-officer employees from retaliation for having reported wrongdoing by their superiors.

But laws can only have such consequences as people's knowledge of the law and faith in its enforcement will sustain. A law that's generally unknown, that's obscure of import, that cannot be invoked for contextual reasons, or that's enforceable only at the discretion of an indifferent or biased authority, will fail of its purpose at best or be turned against its devisers' intentions at worst. This is especially the case as regards enactments intended to elicit candid testimony about wrongdoing behind a corporate facade.

Worse yet is the impact of the SNAFU Principle:

Shea and Wilson [Illuminatus!, 1975] defined an illuminating notion called the SNAFU Principle, which they stated as “communication is only possible among equals.” The basic idea is simple: when two people do not perceive one another as equals, they will slant their communications — unconsciously and without any particular volition — to protect themselves in that disparate relationship....

Wilson and Shea were both writers, and basically literary people; their summary is literate and verbal. But, being a computer scientist and at least somewhat literate in signal theory and information theory, it struck me that the SNAFU Principle wasn’t sufficiently precisely stated. It should be restated as followed:

“In any social hierarchy, the noise added to a communication between individuals in that hierarchy is directly proportional to the distance between them, and the factor of proportionality will be proportional to the perceived risk to them.”

In a corporate-employment setting, the SNAFU Principle functions bidirectionally. Not only will lower-level employees shade the truth when reporting to their superiors; those superiors will condition what they tell lower-level employees out of consciousness of possible hazards to themselves. This effect arises directly from the recognition that inside a corporate hierarchy, power is a two-way street. Yes, the superior has overt power over his subordinate, usually through assignment of responsibilities, salary reviews, and the power to fire. But corporation law as it stands today gives the subordinate power over his superior as well: through the "whistleblower laws," and through the effects of imputation upon corporate well-being.

The result is a systematic bias -- a degradation -- of communication, command, and control that often suits upper corporate management very, very well. It drives the relocation of as much responsibility for decision making as possible to levels in the hierarchy where power-deadlocks can effectively silence all parties concerned.

---

One of the functions of a Board of Directors -- in many analysts' view, the central one -- is protecting the stockholders against the effects of wrongdoing by the officers and agents of the corporation. The most obvious hazard is, of course, stockholders' potential loss of their invested principal. However, as enactments multiply that allow the penetration of stockholders' limited-liability shield, the protection of stockholders' private, uninvested assets becomes ever more important.

The powers of a Board of Directors will be set forth in the company's by-laws. Some such boards will have very narrow powers, limited to decreeing dividends and appointing or removing the chief executive officer. Others will have broader scope. But except for those made up of corporate officers themselves -- a dubious and highly dispreferred arrangement -- all boards have limited knowledge of the internal workings of the corporation, usually conveyed by monthly or quarterly reports. Here again, the SNAFU Principle comes into play.

Chief executive officers are anxious to perpetuate their tenures. Those who report to them are fully aware of the CEO's incentive structure, and will seek to propitiate him by serving it. To the extent possible, bad news traveling "up" the hierarchy will be filtered out, diluted, or qualified to reduce the probability that those required to report it will be made to suffer for it. The CEO will qualify or suppress whatever remains to the extent required to keep his Board of Directors from summarily replacing him. However, at every stop along the way, he who receives bad news will make it known to those who reported it that "you should never report a problem without having a solution already in hand." No one likes to be forced to deceive those who hold his fortunes in their hands; the risk of being found out is never zero and the consequences can be dire.

This creates an incentive that drives management to push the perceived responsibility for decisions that embed a degree of risk -- essentially all decisions of consequence -- ever downward toward persons whose positions effectively prevent them from being identified or interrogated. The more layers of management stand between the CEO and the line workers, the easier and more effective this is. However, perceived responsibility is not necessarily authentic responsibility. Authentic responsibility must be mated to authentic authority over the decisions for which one will be held responsible -- and managers are always reluctant to surrender authority.

How much duplicity occurs in the corporate environment will depend on the ethical soundness of those who populate it. That, of course, will be conditioned by the ethical soundness of the population from which corporate employment is drawn. Time was, the American people being the most ethical of all the peoples of the world, we could count on that soundness being very sound, and therefore on deceit being rare and generally easy to remedy.

Time was.

---

The enslaved Hebrews in Egypt, “their lives made bitter with hard bondage,” were a bickering, back-biting lot. Moses had to give them a promised land before he could join them together. -- Eric Hoffer, The True Believer

Sad as it is to accept, people under pressure will more often serve their personal material interests than obey their moral-ethical conditioning. Contemporary corporate employment places the employee under a kind and degree of pressure unknown to previous generations of Americans. This pressure is exacerbated by those political trends -- e.g., rising taxation; rampant inflation of the currency; regulatory authorities that obey no limits and recognize no regions of personal property or privacy -- that endanger the material well-being of Americans generally.

Long ago, as part of a story, I wrote:

    Everyone who ever works for a sizable company eventually faces an ethical dilemma. Ethical dilemmas are created by middle managers; a company whose top bosses were in direct contact with the peones and knew what they were doing could never have one.

    There’s really only one ethical dilemma for an employee: a middle manager tempts you to suppress something you know you ought to broadcast. He’s invariably trying to advance at the expense of his equals in the organization. Deny him, and he’ll vow revenge. Accede to him, and he’ll own your soul.

    The middle manager is indispensable to the dilemma because you can’t tempt yourself. If you have ethics, then you’ll know what’s right and what’s wrong. If you don’t, then you’re not a man; you’re vermin, and you ought to be crushed.

The protagonist of that story was an unusually clear-eyed young woman. Yet in retrospect, her view fails to account for the general deterioration of ethical conduct in our era of secularism and moral relativism. These days, managers at any level can and will impose ethical dilemmas directly on their subordinates whenever it suits their interests. He whose livelihood depends on corporate employment is vulnerable at every instant of his working life.

Combine that with the "progressive" trend toward "flexible working arrangements" in which one can never be sure when one is "off the clock" -- author and occasional commenter Joseph P. Martino captured this as "Am I working at home or living at the office?" -- and the picture becomes too muddy for the typical working stiff to be certain of anything.

There are still corporations whose mamagements' conduct consistently conforms to Judeo-Christian ethical constraints, but fewer than before. As relativistic moral-ethical rot progresses through our society -- and really, Gentle Reader, what influences are poised to halt it? -- these will dwindle still further. The implications for traditional wage employment are grave.

Food for thought.

The Vacuum: A Monitory Statement

The political stuff has turned monochromatic. Yes, it's all deadly, but it's also become deadly boring, so perhaps you'll excuse me for punctuating it with a rant about a long-time irritation of mine.

We begin with a few quotes from an unforgivably ingenuous article about "work-life balance:"

In theory, the concept of “work-life balance” seems to make sense – splitting your days and weeks between a collaborative and connected working life while also enjoying personal activities and leisure time with friends, family, pursuing hobbies, exercise or just watching TV....

But what if everything you thought you knew about work-life balance was a myth? Alexander Kjerulf, founder of Woohoo, and an international thought leader and author on topics relating to happiness at work, says he believes “work-life balance” as it's traditionally defined doesn't actually exist anymore....

"The modern concept of work-life balance is focused on offering employees the flexibility to work anywhere, anytime -- leaving fewer fixed working hours and more project-driven or service-level deadlines and opportunities for ongoing streams of innovation and communication between team members," [managing partner of AgreeYa Solutions Ajay] Kaul says.

The emergence of cloud-based IT infrastructure and the prevalence of bring-your-own-device (BYOD) policies now allows employees to work from home or remotely and seamlessly continue collaborative efforts with colleagues and team leaders, Kaul says.

"With companies of all sizes becoming more dynamic, flexible and accommodating in their use of enterprise social collaboration tools and solutions and BYOD, the 'mobility effect' will continue to cause an overlap of the workforce’s professional and personal lives," Kaul says.

Soak yourself in that for a minute or two, Gentle Reader. Let it distill itself within you. Let its essence s-l-o-o-o-o-w-l-y pervade your brain. What do you think these "thought leaders" are really trying to say -- without saying it, of course?

In the future they're steering toward, you'll be "on the clock" 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

Oh, they'd protest to the skies that that's nowhere near what they mean. They're offering you freedom! You could choose your own hours, decide for yourself when to work and when to play, without being tied to the Procrustean bed of a standard work day and work week. Do you feel like going on a wine-tasting this Tuesday instead of dealing with the pile of crap in the in-box? Or perhaps you'd rather keep watching the latest episode of 24 than answer your insistently ringing company-issued "emergencies-only" cell phone? No problem! Our future will be all about flexibility: your unchallenged right to do as you damned well please at any instant of the day!

Not a chance, Gentle Reader. As you'd discover the very first time you declined to answer that cell phone while straining to relieve yourself of a particularly stubborn turd.

---

The "mobile worker / flexible workday" canard that article promotes isn't a boon; it's a trap. It would allow management to view your entire existence as being at their disposal. They would regard your in-office hours as being written in the stars, theirs by divine right, with no need to appreciate you for them, nor for the contributions to the company you make during them. Their invocations of your time and attention when you're not in the office would become the balance sheet upon which you'd really be evaluated. Your entire career would depend upon being immediately and unconditionally available for whatever they might choose to ask of you.

I've been there. It brought about the one and only occasion on which I've offered violence to a supervisor. (Believe me, he had it coming and a lot worse.)

The hell of it is, this isn't an entirely new idea. Rather, it's the culmination of a long trend. Telecommuting, which does provide certain advantages to the employee to whom it's available, is just the least part of the puzzle.

The seed idea is that of the salaried / exempt or "white collar" corporate employee.

About half of all office workers in these United States are salaried / exempt. That means:

• Your salary is fixed at a certain amount until management decides to review and adjust it;
• As an exempt employee, it's up to your employer whether to pay you for your overtime;
• As an exempt employee, you need not be paid an elevated rate for overtime or "off-shift" work.

In my field, software engineering, overtime pay is a rare exception. Inasmuch as most software engineers voluntarily work more than the statutory 40 hours per week, it would seem that their employers are getting the better of the bargain. Sometimes that actually is the case. However, the incentives are bad both for management and for the engineering labor force. Management comes to rely upon the availability of overtime at no cost, while the engineer steadily comes to resent management's assumption that no hour of his life belongs exclusively to him.

Adding overtime pay to the equation doesn't improve matters. Suddenly quite a lot of salaried / exempt employees will absolutely "need" that overtime to complete their "urgent" projects before their deadlines. Management will, of course, be dismayed at the increment to its costs, and will fix a limit to the practice -- which will elicit a slowdown with which any union member would be quite familiar.

Absent a rigid insistence on a 40-hour work week that neither side has the right to violate, there is no solution. The "mobile worker / flexible workday" notion, however benignly it might have begun, is an attempt to rupture that bargain irreparably.

---

It can be hard to insist on a rigid work week, especially when times are tough and there are more willing and able workers than there are jobs. That doesn't reduce the importance of the bargain one iota.

About twenty years ago, I went on an interview at a company about which I knew little. (No, I didn't need a job at the time; it was simply my policy not to turn down an interview, especially one to which I'd been invited without my solicitation.) The interviewer was a typical middle manager who hadn't been hands-on for some years, if ever. He spoke glowingly (of course) about the company's plans and prospects, and fetchingly (of course) about the position he had in mind for me. It took him longer than usual to reach the point I'd been anticipating, which was (of course) that "our engineers are available to our customers at a moment's notice, no matter the day or the time."

"Oh!" I said. "I didn't know this was a field service position." I stood. "In that case, I'm not interested, but thanks for thinking of me."

He became alarmed. (Probably never had a really big fish spit out the hook before.) "No, please don't misunderstand me! You'd be running our entire research and development effort. It's just that our market window is so tight that all of us must be immediately responsive to any contingency."

I smiled. "That's a pity. It means that you're more likely than not to miss that window. If [the company's] fortunes are that precarious, I'm only available on a consulting basis. I charge $250 for every hour or part of an hour."

His look of chagrin was classic. "But this is a permanent position, and the career possibilities..."

"Sorry," I said. "If you intend to pay me a salary, I intend to work 40 hours a week for it." I extended my hand, and he took it numbly. "From what you've said I'm really not the man you want, but thanks for thinking of me."

This is a lot easier if you're financially secure and confident of your value. Nevertheless, it's at the core of my understanding of an employment relationship:

An agreement to sell one's labor is the same as an agreement to sell anything else: the good to be delivered and the payment for it must both be well defined.

That definition becomes impossible if your "workday" can be altered arbitrarily by your management and your "workplace" is wherever you happen to be at the moment. Your whole life -- possibly the lives of your spouse and children as well -- will be sucked into the vacuum that results.

Be tough about it. Give an honest day's work for your day's pay, but nothing more. Take it from someone who's looked into the abyss. It's not a pretty sight.

The Naked Face Of Evil

Courtesy of Maetenloch at Ace of Spades HQ comes the link to the most despicable, monstrously evil piece of opinion writing I've read in many years:

They’re huge, they’re ruthless, and they touch every aspect of our daily lives. Corporations like Amazon and Google keep expanding their reach and their power. Despite a history of abuses, so far the Justice Department has declined to take antitrust actions against them. But there’s another solution.

Is it time to manage and regulate these companies as public utilities?...

They were created with publicly funded technologies, and prospered as the result of indulgent policies and lax oversight. They’ve achieved monopoly or near-monopoly status, are spying on us to an extent that’s unprecedented in human history, and have the potential to alter each and every one of our economic, political, social and cultural transactions.

Please read the whole thing...preferably on an empty stomach. From first to last it's a tissue of lies, baseless contentions, and expressions of ravening envy. And it is a perfect illustration of the core agenda of the Left: to ensure that nothing that actually works shall be left in the hands of those who created it.

---

The history of governments' invasions of enterprise is a record of unparalleled, undiluted failure. The reasons should not baffle anyone with a sense for how people respond to incentives and penalties. Milton Friedman boiled it down to a 2x2 matrix:

	The Benefit Will Accrue To Me	The Benefit Will Accrue To Others
The Cost Will Be Borne By Me	I	II
The Cost Will Be Borne By Others	III	IV

The unwisdom of government as a "provider of goods and services" really becomes quite simple when one reduces the question to incentives and their absence:

• When Smith is spending his own money on himself (I), he strains to optimize both the cost of what he buys and the quality of the thing purchased.
• When Smith is spending his money on something for someone else (II), he'll still try to keep the cost down, but the quality of the purchase won't much concern him.
• When Smith is spending on something for himself, but with someone else's money ( III), he'll still be interested in a quality purchase, but the minimization of cost will no longer concern him.
• And when Smith is spending someone else's money on something for someone else (IV), neither cost nor quality will concern him.

An enterprise "owned" by government is a Type IV enterprise. Those who operate it are providing something to persons other than themselves, using tax revenues or fees coerced out of private citizens. They cannot profit -- legally, at least -- from doing it economically or well. Indeed, in the usual case there's more gain to be had from doing it poorly. After all, it's always the failing projects and the overrun budgets that get the biggest increases in staffing and funding, isn't it?

But note! Governments very seldom seek to take over a business that's operating at a loss. They target profitable companies that are appreciably more popular than their competitors. The usual cry is "monopoly" or "exploitation," even when the targeted company has a number of competitors -- Amazon has thousands of them -- or provides its services for free, as does Google. When a government seizes such a concern, it almost immediately runs it onto the rocks, providing ever poorer goods or services at an ever higher end-purchaser cost, in obedience to the incentive structure outlined above. Examples are innumerable.

Given that the advocates of "nationalizing" this or that are seldom deaf-blind idiots who can't grasp the logic above, they must have some other end in view than improving the quality or cost of whatever they seek to seize. And they do, Gentle Reader, they do.

---

I have no previous acquaintance with Richard Eskow, the author of that atrociously evil article above, but the tag line at the end makes him "a Senior Fellow with the Campaign for America's Future," a hard-left "progressive" advocacy group. We may take it as written that his covert aim is the elimination of private enterprise: the overarching agenda of all "progressive" activists and organizations since the word first entered our political lexicon.

"Progressives" -- semi-closeted totalitarian social-fascists -- are animated by envy and power lust. Joseph Sobran and Ayn Rand had a common definition for envy, the one and only sin God forbade in the Ten Commandments: hatred of the good for being the good. Virtually none of them are capable of producing a good or service that others would willingly purchase. Virtually none of them have any substantive achievements of any sort. (No, I don't regard the acquisition of an Ivy League degree in "political science," "social policy," "journalism," or "communications" as a substantive achievement.) And virtually none of them, if pressed with maximum force, could justify the treatment of any enterprise as something that "should belong to 'the people'" -- and that includes all the various "nationalized" and "municipalized" enterprises we endure today.

I used the word justify for a reason. To justify something is to establish that it accords with the principles of justice: that is, with right and wrong as they're encoded in our fundamental laws. Eskow is so far from justifying the nationalization of Amazon and Google that he has to resort to lie after lie even to make a start on it -- the assertion that the development of broadband Internet access was "publicly funded" is only the most risible -- and to what purported end? To reduce Amazon's irreducibly thin profit margin? To make Google's services cheaper than free? Or might he have it in mind to use the information-gathering powers of those giants of the World Wide Web, which he excoriates for "spying on us" -- the term "progressives" invariably substitute for "market research" -- for his preferred political purposes?

Given that the "progressive" pole star is unbounded and irresistible power over all that exists, regardless of the "justification," which would you prefer to know about your purchasing patterns? Your tastes in entertainment? Your affiliations with other online groups and advocacy sites? Your Web-enabled vices, whatever they might be? Amazon and Google, or Richard Eskow and the Campaign for America's Future?

Think it over.

War Over The Documents

Time was, people could both read plain English and could recognize (and would jeer aside) an attempt to distort it. But time was, people were both better educated and less disgusted with politics than they are today.

A quick question for you, Gentle Reader: In Constitutionally enumerating and separating the powers of the executive, legislative, and judicial branches of the federal government, what purpose or purposes were the Founding Fathers trying to serve?

The readers of Liberty's Torch are bright enough and erudite enough to have no trouble with that one. But there are some supposedly smart people writing for major periodicals that would contradict you:

In the May issue of the Boston University Law Review, Joseph R. Fishkin and William E. Forbath of the University of Texas School of Law show that at key turning points in our history (the Jacksonian era, the Populist and Progressive moments and the New Deal), opponents of rising inequality made strong arguments “that we cannot keep our constitutional democracy — our republican form of government — without constitutional restraints against oligarchy and a political economy that maintains a broad middle class, accessible to everyone.”

Their article is called “The Anti-Oligarchy Constitution,” though Forbath told me that he and Fishkin may give the book they’re writing on the topic the more upbeat title “The Constitution of Opportunity.” Their view is that by empowering the wealthy in our political system, Supreme Court decisions such as Citizens United directly contradict the Constitution’s central commitment to shared self-rule.

“Extreme concentrations of economic and political power undermine equal opportunity and equal citizenship,” they write. “In this way, oligarchy is incompatible with, and a threat to, the American constitutional scheme.”...

The idea of a Constitution of Opportunity is both refreshing and relevant. For too long, progressives have allowed conservatives to monopolize claims of fealty to our unifying national document. In fact, those who would battle rising economic inequalities to create a robust middle class should insist that it’s they who are most loyal to the Constitution’s core purpose. Broadly shared well-being is essential to the framers’ promise that “We the people” will be the stewards of our government.

Note the Leftist shibboleths in that passage: "inequality," "oligarchy," "concentrations of economic and political power." These will appear in virtually any tirade that emanates from the Left. Marx was handy with them. So was Lenin. Yet of this you may be very sure: E. J. Dionne has absolutely no objection to any of those things...as long as they're in the hands of people whose views he approves.

"Inequality" has been the goal of every Leftist policy advanced since Woodrow Wilson. the idea is to make an increasing fraction of Americans beholden to the federal government for their material sustenance...if possible, all the way down to food, clothing, and shelter. "Oligarchy" is what we have now: absolute power by a small group, concentrated in Washington D.C., over all Americans and all American enterprise. As for "concentrations of economic and political power," Dionne himself should have recognized that as a belly-laugher. Which is the richest district per capita in these United States? What is the average net worth of a United States Senator? And who has done more to concentrate political power in a single man's hands than Barack Hussein Obama?

Yet Dionne claims the notion of a "Constitution of Opportunity" -- the idea that the federal government exists to create prosperity by positive action rather than to protect the rights of the citizenry -- is more compatible with the Founders' vision than the conservative view of it as a bill of limitations on the mandarins in Washington. Well, he's been spouting this sort of nonsense for a long time now. I have a book of his titled Why Americans Hate Politics, published in 1991, that's chock-full of similar bilge.

PJ Media's Ed Driscoll destroys Dionne and his fellow-travelers with a single sentence:

It’s tough for “Progressives” to reclaim something they’ve spent the better part of five years openly attempting to jettison.

After all, less than two years ago "constitutional law professor" Louis Seidman argued openly that the Constitution is being ignored and should be ignored. To this point Driscoll adduces this pithy exchange between law professor Glenn Harlan Reynolds and economics professor Russ Roberts:

REYNOLDS: Oh, well, then I’m free to do whatever I want! And actually, that is a damning admission, because what that really says is: If you believe Seidman’s argument; if you believe that we already ignore the Constitution anyway, then in fact, the government rules by sheer naked force, and nothing else. And if that’s what you believe, then all of this talk of revolution suddenly doesn’t seem so crazy, it seems almost mandatory.

ROBERTS: Well, he would say – well, I won’t speak for him, but some would say that, well, there’s a social contract, we’ve all agreed to kind of play by these rules…

REYNOLDS: Oh really?!

ROBERTS: …of electing officials, and…

REYNOLDS: Well, the rules I agreed to electing these officials are the Constitution. I thought we were going to ignore that. That’s my social contract.

The interesting thing about Dionne and the article he cites isn't any novelty of insight or special penetration of logic; it's the reason for the argument they make:

The Constitution of the United States explicitly forbids nearly every element of the Leftist agenda.

Conservatives have been making headway in promoting the Constitution, noting its ties to the principles expressed in the Declaration of Independence, and raising general awareness of the "progressives'" destruction thereof. The process is gradually restoring Americans' sense for our libertarian heritage. This alarms the Left like nothing else in our national discourse.

So the Left has decided to wrest the Constitution away from us -- to turn it to leftists' purposes.

That is, leftists have decided to try. Which is why refreshing one's knowledge of the Constitution, and arguing from its text and nothing else is the order of the day...if you're not yet completely burned out from previous efforts, that is.

It's not possible, if one sticks to the text, to claim that the document authorizes an Omnipotent State, nor that it embeds at its core the notion that the federal government exists to oppose "inequality" or create "opportunity." The only way to make such assertions is to obscure the carefully phrased, closely fought text and prattle instead about what the Founding Fathers "must have intended" -- and then to obfuscate the meanings of terms such as "inequality," "oligarchy," and "concentrations of economic and political power." That's the heart of the Fishkin / Forbath project, which Dionne heartily endorses.

I will repeat this once more:

"The Constitution is the supreme law, the foundation for all other law. If it doesn't mean exactly what its text says—the public meanings of the words as ordinary people understand them—then no one can possibly know what it means. But if no one can know what the Constitution means, then no one can know whether any other law conforms to it. At that point, all that matters is the will of whoever's in power. And that's an exact definition of tyranny."

Consider this also, from novelist Lois McMaster Bujold:

"Egalitarians adjust very well to aristocracies, as long as they get to be the aristocrats."

If ever there was a gaggle of power-mongers determined to become an American aristocracy, it's our "progressives"...and they've made a disturbing start on the project.

On this front in our political wars, there can be no holding actions and no compromise. The life of the Republic is at stake. It will be victory or death.

Quickies: Labor Productivity And Standards Of Living

I hope Concerned American at Western Rifle Shooters won't be angry with me for borrowing this graph:

CA adds the following questions:

You should have 170% of the standard of living you obtained in 1980 from one hour of labor.

You don’t.

Why not?

And what is to be done?

"Should" is a funny word. It's used in all sorts of situations where other words -- "is," "isn't," "can," "can't," "must," "may," "might," and "must not" -- have greater objective import. Let's look at this instance of "should" with our best skeptical eyes.

The graph says one thing: that economic output per labor hour is up 70% since 1981. It doesn't say what caused that increase. Neither does it provide any information on the distribution of that gain across all kinds of enterprises, which, in the nature of things, is unlikely to have been uniform. But perhaps most important, it doesn't comment on the distribution of the gain across occupations.

Some occupations, especially those best positioned to capitalize on technological advances, have done very well these past thirty years. Others have slipped backwards, because their value in the labor market has been partially or totally displaced by technology. And another group has stagnated, often because the good or service they provide has itself remained static -- unimproved.

With a huge caveat, which I'll address in a bit:

• Persons in those trades in which technology, especially the microprocessor, has genuinely empowered the people involved, on the whole have done very well.
• Those in trades where technology has reduced or eliminated the requirement for human involvement have been penalized by the advances.
• And those where technology has failed to change the nature of the product they can offer in a substantial way have stagnated.

There are two counteragents to those effects: occupational mobility and political clout. The former is productive: it generally yields gains to the individual worker. The latter is destructive: in the short run it can reward those it favors, but over time it can cause the downfall of whole industries. Look at those trades conspicuously associated with new and advancing technologies, and you'll find a labor influx; look at those associated with heavy political interference, whether direct or indirect, and you'll find labor shrinkage.

Of course, it's possible to shrug all that reasoning aside and simply assume a de facto conspiracy among "industrialists" and "banksters." Such "devil theory" explanations are emotionally appealing: they give us a face, albeit an obscured one, at which to direct our ire. But they tend to imply other trends that aren't in motion -- at least, not detectably so. Nor do they counsel anything but violence and despair.

The best bet is still to rely on oneself: to work to make oneself ever more valuable to one's customers. That has its limitations, of course. Not all of us can become great scientists, engineers, or inventors. Not all of us are sufficiently energetic or unencumbered to drive ourselves eighty hours per week. And not all of us are positioned in space, time, and circumstance such that we can move adroitly among opportunities. As Ecclesiastes would remind us, "time and chance happeneth to us all." Still, working on oneself costs a lot less than getting Congressional subsidies or tariff protection, doesn't it?

What's that you say? But then there'll be nobody to blame for your failures except yourself? Hey, everything has its downside!