Fifteen years after emigrating, Holly—born Horace—Martinowski returns to Onteora County, New York where she was born and raised. Neither she nor it are the same as when she fled to Britain. Her earliest encounters are with people and events she didn’t expect. Her later ones cause her to wonder whether she might be home to stay.
A companion story to A Place Of Our Own and One Small Detail.
Only $0.99 in all eBook formats at Smashwords.
UPDATE: Now available at Amazon, as well.
The most curious aspect of our current situation in federal politics is one that’s hardly been discussed, much less explored in depth. The issue in controversy is the Republican Party’s stated intention to “repeal and replace ObamaCare,” the 2700 page legislative monstrosity that’s hashed medical insurance in these United States into an unpalatable mess.
It’s been opined by many a pundit that among the reasons Mitt Romney was defeated in 2012 was his inability to campaign against ObamaCare, since he’d imposed a similar sort of medical-insurance fascism on Massachusetts during his term as governor. This, of course, is unfalsifiable, as the “experiment” can’t be repeated in a controlled fashion. However, it’s plausible, especially in light of the smashing victory of a presidential candidate who did campaign against ObamaCare: Donald Trump. At any rate, Trump made the repeal of ObamaCare a major platform plank. As he’s a man who expects to keep his promises, and who believes the public expects the same, Trump has made that outcome an early-first-term goal.
Enter the Republican caucus in Congress. When we’ve spoken with disdain of “Establishment Republicans” these past few years, these are the specimens we’ve had in mind. The repeal-and-replace mission has caused them no small amount of agony. At this point it’s doubtful that any bill that reaches the floor of the House of Representatives or the Senate will much resemble what the millions who elected Trump had hoped for.
Why? The GOP now controls both the White House and Capitol Hill. With Trump in the Oval Office they no longer need to fear a veto. Senatorial filibusters have already been largely eliminated; the vestiges of that procedural rule are likely to fall very soon. The Supreme Court is unlikely to obstruct the process. So what’s the problem?
This deserves careful treatment, so grab a fresh cup of coffee while I limber up.
Any watcher of American politics will be aware that neither Republicans nor Democrats exhibit much fidelity to their campaign rhetoric. Both camps are aware of the general tenor of the electorate at any moment; they spend huge sums striving to make sure of it. And both camps will tell the voters what they think the voters want to hear, regardless of what they really intend once safely ensconced in office.
Donald Trump has upset the applecart by making it plain through his actions that he intends to keep his campaign promises. This has upset many of Capitol Hill’s veterans, to say nothing of the political strategists and kingmakers in the GOP. The major point here is one that is taken as axiomatic by those persons: that once an entitlement is created, it cannot be taken away.
That was the defensive redoubt of Social Security for many years. “They paid into it. They expect it. If we take it away, they’ll crucify us!” And indeed, there was some logic to it, as Social Security is nominally funded by a specific payroll tax. An American who believes he’s paid for something will not look favorably upon a politician who proposes to take it away. The same is true of Medicare, albeit to a weaker degree.
I have no doubt that some voters would be displeased by the repeal of ObamaCare...but who are they? Did they vote for Trump or any other Republican now in a federal office? Would they be likely to do so in some future election? Is there some prospect of a benefit from pleasing such voters that would outweigh the displeasure of those who did support Trump and the Republicans in Congress?
I can’t see it, myself. Moreover, we normally expect those we send to Congress to be reasonably intelligent. Granted that there are no Certified Galactic Intellects there, it’s not excessive to expect them to see what’s visible to the rest of us, and to answer easily answered questions...easily.
But perhaps the political context isn’t as clear to those federal Republicans as it seems to me.
In Robert Pirsig’s landmark Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, his alter ego Phaedrus is both inspired and confounded by a simple mantra: The more you look, the more you see. Rather than go into detail about how this was at first a stumbling block for Phaedrus, I’ll simply commend the book to those who haven’t yet read it. (For “extra credit,” determine why Phaedrus need not have been intellectually stymied, and what fault of logic led to his early troubles.)
What I have in mind this morning is the inverse of that mantra, to wit: The less you look, the less you see. He who refuses to look past a certain predetermined horizon simply won’t see what lies beyond it. That can sometimes be fatal. One such case, sadly, is the reliance of politicians on the reports of pollsters and other public-opinion flacksters.
The public-opinion “expert” has an agenda of his own. As with all of us, fulfilling that agenda will be higher in priority than anything else he might consider doing, including accurately and completely informing those who purchase his services. Indeed, the “expert’s” need to retain his clientele practically demands that he inculcate in them the assumption that his “expertise” is all they need – that they need not look beyond his reports.
There is, of course, a spot of negative feedback available here. Ask Alf Landon. But in the near term, if the “expert” can persuade his politician client that the “expert’s” surveys and reports are all the politician needs to formulate his posture, it will serve the “expert’s” agenda.
I have no doubt that many an “expert” has told his clients that his surveys indicate that the ObamaCare entitlement – i.e., the subsidies that go to some for the purchase of the insurance it mandates – is as untouchable as Social Security ever was. After all, no one has ever succeeded in repealing an entitlement. But then, no Congress has ever tried.
Finally, among the major inhibitors of conservative action by Congress we must never neglect the baleful power of the media. The major media are completely and irretrievably “in the tank” for the Democrats and their version of social fascism. They will never, ever approve of a Republican initiative that reduces to any degree the power or the intrusiveness of the federal government. They put their considerable megaphones to the denigration of Republicans and the ideas of limited government with absolute predictability.
The media get too much credit for just about everything. In particular, Republicans give the media too much credit for knowing the pulse of the American electorate. Every newspaper in America predicted the victory of Hillary Clinton. Despite her barely veiled promises to be a “third Obama term,” Republicans standing for office were virtually unanimous about their willingness to work with her and their uneasiness about Trump. They believed that the media and the pollsters it hired could see something they could not.
This is not a complete picture, of course. There are some Republicans who live for good press. John McCain comes to mind. That habit cost McCain heavily in 2008, yet it seems not to have taught him anything. Perhaps some old dogs can’t learn, after all. However, he’s an exceptional case. Most Republicans are aware that the press – especially its most powerful barons –would prefer to see them reduced to the status of the Whigs. Yet they accept the accuracy of what the press writes about them and the popular opinion of them even so.
Anyone can be wrong. Indeed, only by being wrong does anyone ever learn something new. But through this particular species of wrongness, the craven Republican caucuses on Capitol Hill are treading dangerously close to stamping a repealable entitlement with a Republican Seal of Approval. Perhaps the following graphic, shamelessly stolen from A Nod To The Gods, would enlighten them somewhat:
“There are none so blind as those that will not see.” And of course, “The less you look, the less you see.” Verbum sat sapienti.
“What can’t be cured must be endured.” – old saying
I was about to begin a typical tirade on a subject of current political interest. You can thank (or blame) Professor Reynolds for deflecting me from that course by reminding me about that little video just below.
Some truths, particularly truths about the nature of Mankind and its components, must be expressed through humor. They’re too painful otherwise. If we try to confront them in the stark, no-BS manner with which men approach most serious problems, they inspire an immediate recoil, a desire not to see. That ostrich-like “make it go away” response is really a confession of sorts: the admission that we have encountered a fact that displeases us greatly, but that we can do absolutely nothing about. That’s why – apart from the humor of it – I viewed that little video as important enough to feature here a second time.
For one with the engineering mentality – i.e., the mindset that views an encountered unpleasantness as something to be remedied as quickly and conveniently as possible – the acceptance of an immutable tragedy is about the most draining experience one can have. I’ve got that mentality in spades. All face cards, at that.
The old maxim at the top of the page has the feel of an eternal truth, and perhaps it is. But there’s a word in there that bugs the living daylights out of me, precisely because I see an unpleasant condition as something to be remedied. The word, of course, is can’t.
I view that word as a personal affront. I’ll divert the stars from their courses rather than concede that a problem is beyond my powers to solve. Whether the problem is expressed in formulas or homilies, my natural inclination is to solve the BLEEP!ing thing. The most painful moments in my life have been when I confronted a problem I could not solve...or a problem to which the only solutions involved consequences worse than the problem itself.
And I’m here to tell you: If you’re a man – i.e., a possessor of the fabled Y chromosome and its multitudinous glories – you’re likely to feel exactly the same way. It’s a better test for gender than anything but a crotch inspection.
A beautiful theory, killed by a nasty, ugly little fact. – Thomas Huxley
These days it’s considered gauche to talk about the differences between the sexes, despite their obviousness and their evident importance. But a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will be aware that that has never stopped me. Moreover, as the taboo against frank discussion of sex differences has persisted, those differences have become ever more significant drivers of the tensions between men and women. The urgency of bringing the subject back into our discourse is near to critical.
One of the most important of those differences is the response to pain or loss. A typical man will respond to an unpleasant event or condition by trying to remedy it. A typical woman will prefer to talk about it to a sympathetic listener or a circle thereof.
(Yes, there are exceptions. Need I remind my Gentle Readers – of either sex – that exceptions are exceptional? I didn’t think so.)
There are many possible explanations for why this is so. That this is so is a fact. It lurks behind the statistical distribution of aptitudes and occupations between the sexes. It’s the reason we don’t see nearly as many female engineers as male engineers. I mean engineer in its strict sense: one who solves technological problems. I consider terms such as “sales engineer” and “requirements engineer” to be nothing but amphigory.
In consequence of this difference, a woman who brings a personal problem to a man will likely be unsatisfied, perhaps even offended, by his response. “Fix the BLEEP!ing problem!” he will reply. He might even volunteer to do so himself. That won’t please her if what she wants is sympathy. Indeed, it might even induce her to perpetuate the problem deliberately until she can get some sympathy for it.
His frustration at having his inclination denied and his aptitude spurned will be as painful to him as her problem is to her. Possibly more so, as it amounts to a denial of his nature: a denigration of what he’s good at.
It’s one of the things driving an increasing number of men to go their own way.
Before the tide of propaganda condemning the traditional sex roles as “patriarchal oppression,” the phenomenon I’ve described above was far less important. Men had their duties and responsibilities; women had theirs. Men had their social circles; women had theirs. Men had their approaches to problems; women had theirs. Few women expected a man to treat a problem the way a woman does. Indeed, a sensible woman – and women were far more sensible back when – would bring a problem to her man only if she wanted it solved.
Such matters are torturous today for two reasons:
Of course, to say that where a woman can hear is likely to reap the whirlwind. As women have a disproportionate degree of social and political power today, the consequences can be devastating.
Yet the psychological cleavage between the sexes persists. Why should we have expected anything else? Propaganda changes nothing. It doesn’t reduce women’s greater need for sympathy, or women’s superiority in providing it. The major difference today is that women have been deflected from their traditional roles in numbers so great that when she wants sympathy rather than a solution, the person nearest her will most likely be a man.
Quite a lot of marriages have been wrecked on that rock. It’s made harder to avoid by another contemporary tendency: her tendency to object to his having space, time, and friends of his own. Should he bridle at that and insist on his prerogatives, he could find himself on the receiving end of a ton of shit – a metric ton.
Our society having become what it is today, there’s nothing he can do about it. He cannot cure it, much as he’d like to. Yet enduring it is damned near impossible.
“What can’t be cured must be endured.” It’s a tautology, really. Nor does it address those cases where “enduring it” brings suffering one might find too great to support.
There are times it seems to me that no one is getting what he needs – “he” this time in the generic-singular sense that encompasses persons of both sexes. Men need to be appreciated and accepted for what we are; women need to be appreciated and accepted for what they are. The solution is in plain sight. It seems too obvious for words. Yet it’s been anathematized by forces determined to remake Mankind according to patterns utterly antithetical to the natures of the sexes.
As matters stand, the problem is insoluble. And it hurts like hell to have to admit it.
Time for Mass.
Glenn Reynolds brought this oldie but goodie back for a well-deserved rerun:
I’ve sometimes wondered – and no, not when “in my cups,” or at least, not always – if some men who decide they’re really women are moved by a desire to have that particular tactic at their behest, instead of having it used against them.
I’ve received a fair amount of email since I penned the previous piece on this subject. Quite a bit of it was incredulous in the extreme, e.g., “How can you say that? Freedom of religion is a right.” Being indisposed to quarrel over premises, especially with persons whose premises I share, I’ve refrained from replying to those persons.
Yet the subject is important – perhaps more important than any other subject in the discourse of Man. The problem of rights is the central conundrum of the centuries. Brilliant men have worried at it from innumerable angles, all seeking to put rights on a pedestal too high to be challenged. Some, such as the Objectivists, have claimed that the rights to life, liberty, and peaceably acquired property can be logically proved.
It’s all froth and gas. There is no way to arrive at any right through a falsifiable process. In short:
Yes, I have an argument for that assertion.
Consider the following quote, which I’ve used several times in discussions of rights:
“Rights are an archist concept. Rights have no meaning except when confronted with superior power. They are what is left to the people after the government has taken all it wants. Your country's Bill of Rights defines your most cherished freedoms how? By limiting the legal power of government to encroach upon them.” [Eric L. Harry, via fictional anarchist theorist Valentin Kartsev in Harry's blockbuster Protect and Defend.]
The concept of rights – specifically, of rights against the State – arose with the emergence of the State. Rights matter solely in a political context: one in which a particular entity is charged with respecting and enforcing rights. Without the State, we would have only individuals, voluntarily assembled groups, and their interactions.
Yet we believe passionately in natural rights and in their supremacy over all other considerations. We want agreement on what rights individuals possess; the lack of such an agreement is at the base of most political discord in America today. We want rights to trump all other considerations. Yet anarcho-capitalist theorist David Friedman has demonstrated the impossibility of making rights so doctrinaire without endangering other things we hold at least as valuable:
A madman is about to open fire on a crowd. If he does so numerous innocent people will die. The only way to prevent him is to shoot him with a rifle that is within reach of several members of the crowd. The rifle is on the private property of its legitimate owner. He is a well known misanthrope who has publicly stated on numerous occasions that he is opposed to letting anyone use his rifle without his permission, even if it would save hundreds of lives. [From The Machinery of Freedom]
That’s a clear case of property rights in action in an undesired fashion: i.e., in a way that would, if honored, cost many lives. Many a dogmatist would argue that the rights to life of the innocents in the crowd are more important than that misanthrope’s property rights – in other words, that even among the natural rights there exists a hierarchy of priorities that requires that we honor some more stringently than others. But things are not quite so simple:
Xanten made an airy gesture. “A. G. Philidor, you over-simplify grievously. Do you consider me obtuse? There are many kinds of history. They interact. You emphasize morality. But the ultimate basis of morality is survival. What promotes survival is good; what induces mortefaction is bad.”
“Well spoken!” declared Philidor. “But let me propound a parable. May a nation of a million beings destroy a creature who otherwise will infect all with a fatal disease? Yes, you will say. Once more: Ten starving beasts hunt you, that they may eat. Will you kill them to save your life? Yes, you will say again, though here you destroy more than you create. Once more: a man inhabits a hut in a lonely valley. A hundred spaceships descend from the sky, and attempt to destroy him. May he destroy those ships in self-defense, even though he is one and they are a hundred thousand? Perhaps you say yes. What, then, if a whole world, a whole race of beings, pits itself against this single man? May he kill all? What if the attackers are as human as himself? What if he were the creature of the first instance, who otherwise will infect a world with disease? You see, there is no area where a simple touchstone avails.”[Jack Vance, The Last Castle.]
Where, in the above passage, does the right to life prevail? Whose right to life, and at what cost to others?
It’s not so simple, is it?
The natural rights – i.e., the rights to life, liberty, and peaceably acquired property – that libertarians and most conservatives would agree on arise from the nature of Man. They are not provable theorems. They’re abstractions brilliant men formulated after observation, not from deduction or induction, as a way to concoct a political order they believed would be viable. If those rights “exist” – and that’s a thorny row to hoe – they are metaphysical properties, just like the rest of the natural order.
The natural rights cannot be derived from other postulates as a matter of logic. When we say that we can “reason” our way to them, what we really mean is that from observation, we’ve concluded that certain conditions we regard as supremely desirable appear to require them. C. S. Lewis grasped that. But let’s try a few proofs. Here’s an advocatus diaboli sparring with a rights advocate:
AD: “Why do you believe there is a right to life?”
RA: “Because without it, society couldn't hold together.”
AD: “Well, why is it so important that society hold together?”
Or:
AD: “Why do you believe there is a right to life?”
RA: “Because without it people would slaughter one another.”
AD: “Well, why should that matter?”
Such ripostes might strike a decent man as forays into madness, but that’s just because he values the same things we do. History tells us of vast empires whose rulers would have scoffed at a right to life. Some of their regimes were successful for several decades. Consider the following hypothetical exchange with a famous villain:
FWP: “Herr Hitler, why did you kill all those Jews?”
AH: “Because it was intrinsically right.”
How would you refute that, especially in light of the historical fact that not one regime on Earth was willing to make war on Hitler’s Germany until he embarked on a campaign of military conquest?
Freedom of religion as enshrined in the First Amendment to the Constitution was a concern of importance to the Founding Fathers. Many of their forebears had come to the New World specifically to avoid having to support an established church: i.e., a church the State had selected as the “official” church of the realm, to which it directed funds from the public treasury. Under the Westphalian doctrine of cuius regio, eius religio, such churches were regarded as reasonable and proper. The religious dissidents of Europe disagreed with being forced to support such a church with their taxes.
Yet history tells us that the early colonists’ passionate belief in their “right” to practice their own faiths did not preclude the establishment of their preferred churches in the New World. Indeed, Massachusetts had an established church into the 1830s. Such churches were disestablished only after regional religious affiliations became too diverse for an established church to withstand popular disapproval.
Where, in that picture, is there any notion of freedom of religion as a natural right, beyond all contradiction?
For a final thrust, we have the irreducibly narrow case of freedom of religion as “freedom of conscience:” i.e., the freedom to believe what one likes, divorced from all considerations of conduct. Is that a “right?” Or is it merely a condition no one can undo except through murder? If the latter, how does it involve adjudication or enforcement? If it doesn’t, there’s no place for it in a legal or political scheme.
The pre-logical character of natural rights – i.e., as postulates rather than as theorems – is why Thomas Jefferson wrote that “We hold these truths to be self-evident.” Freedom of religion is no exception.
I've been down this road many times over the past three decades. It's time we were candid about it.
No op-ed today. No Rumination. No exegesis upon matters sacred or profane. Today is a day to mourn.
Yesterday afternoon, the Reverend Charles Papa, Pastor Emeritus of St. Louis de Montfort parish in Sound Beach, NY, was found dead in his room, shortly before he was scheduled to celebrate Mass.
Father Charlie, as we all knew him, was the Pastor at St. Louis for seventeen years. He’d retired from the pastorate only a few months ago, and was hugely enjoying “just being a priest again.” Sadly, he was granted only a short while to enjoy having shed that burden. The parish was unanimous in its love of him. We will miss him terribly.
No matter who might come to him, Father Charlie was whatever he needed: a confessor, a friend, a counselor, a confidant, a Dutch uncle, or what have you. His good humor was invincible. He’d happily share anything with anyone, whether it be one’s darkest fears and deepest doubts or a mildly irreverent jest.
Eternal rest grant him, O Lord, and may perpetual light shine upon him.
Every now and then I deliberately challenge myself to write something that will make me personally uneasy...even revolted. And every now and then it surprises me with an unexpected reward.
Just now I’m working on a short novel about a very unusual crime, coupled to an even more unusual romance. The co-protagonist is a young woman, genetically engineered for reasons I’ll keep to myself for now. This young woman, whose one and only name is Fountain, has been raised in total isolation from the larger world, and conditioned practically from birth to be property: a sex slave. Fountain has never come in contact with virtually anything you and I would take for granted. For example, she’s never come in contact with any food eaten outside her place of confinement – and all her conditioners ever fed her are nutritional gruels essentially without flavor. Fountain escapes captivity and comes under the protection of an unusually ethical young man who has no inkling of any of that. He acquires the legendary “Chinese obligation” for Fountain without knowing what she was raised to be or how she views him. I’m writing the story from a combination of his and her viewpoints.
The most difficult part of this undertaking is writing those scenes which must be told from Fountain’s viewpoint, especially the early ones in which Fountain first rubs up against the American context as we experience it daily. I have to imagine what Fountain’s consciousness is like, with all its inherent preconceptions and limitations, and convey that to the reader. And it is a considerable struggle to attain verisimilitude when Fountain first encounters coffee, or an Airstream trailer, or the unusually gentle, considerate, undemanding man whom she assumes must be a great and wealthy lord, who has taken her under his wing, and who doesn’t view her as a rightless piece of meat.
However, it just allowed me to write one of the strangest scenes, and funniest bits of dialogue, I’ve ever penned.
The trailer door opened. Fountain immediately laid the book aside and assumed the pose of waiting. Her lord and master entered and stood before her, looking as troubled as he had earlier.
Perhaps we have reached his manor. I must be absolutely attentive. I must overlook nothing and forget nothing. I must please him in all things.
I want to please him.
It was a thought she had never before entertained about a master, even in her most remote fantasies.
“Fountain,” he said, “we’re here. It’s time to get you, uh, settled.” He gestured at the paperback. “Bring your book if you haven’t finished it.”
She bowed her head. “As you command, my lord.”
A spasm crossed his face, and she tensed.
Have I displeased him already?
She forced the thought away.
I will learn in due course.
She followed him in silence, out onto the unfamiliar surface, over the grass, and onto the concrete stoop that stood before the door of a long, low house. She looked about quickly. The houses around it were greatly similar in size and form. They stretched off into the distance on both sides.
I must remember everything.
He pulled a key ring from his pocket, fumbled with it briefly, inserted a key into the lock on the door and opened it. He gestured that she should enter before him. She hesitated.
That is not how I was taught.
I must do as he commands.
She stepped into the darkness. A light went on overhead. She surveyed the surroundings, found them unaccountably plain and meager for a master, and turned to face him.
“My lord? Forgive me this presumption, but...is this your manor?”
“It’s my home,” he said. “Yours too, for now.”
For now. So it is a way station and not his place of power. Of course it is not. He is too great a lord to endure such paltry accommodations. For him to be surrounded by such hovels is unthinkable. Perhaps he intends that we shelter here only until he has alerted his other servants and has been notified that his palace has been made ready for his return.
He shepherded her into the structure, brought her to a room that contained a sink, a stove, an oven, a few other items she could not identify, and a small table and four chairs. He bade her sit, went to a tall stainless steel box, and pulled open a drawer near its base. He glanced over at her and grinned.
“Are you a little hungry, hungry, or very hungry?” he said
“I am...hungry, my lord.”
“Two slices then.” He drew several triangular shapes from the drawer, straightened, and went to the oven. He pushed a couple of buttons on its face and it beeped. He nodded, pulled a metal tray from a cabinet and set it on the countertop, unwrapped the triangles and arranged them on the tray.
Why has he not commanded that I make ready to see to his pleasure?
The strangenesses were multiplying faster than she could register and absorb them.
It appears that this way station was not fully prepared for him. Perhaps someone will soon suffer for the neglect of it. I will learn much, if I am permitted to witness it.
He slid the tray and its burden into the oven, pushed a few more buttons, closed the door and seated himself facing her at the little table.
“It’ll be ready in a few minutes. Hope you like your pizza with peppers and mushrooms.”
She had no idea what he was talking about, so she merely bowed her head.
I must learn. I must overlook nothing and forget nothing.
He peered at her in a curious fashion, as if she presented him with some sort of problem. As frightening as the notion was, she had no recourse except to do exactly what he commanded, as he commanded it and when he commanded it.
I am his. I must wait upon his will.
The oven beeped. He rose, pulled a heavy glove from a drawer, opened the oven, and slid the tray out. Before she could rise or speak he’d put the triangles on two waiting plates, brought them to the table, and placed one before her.
“Let’s eat.”
The triangles steamed up at her. The aroma was wholly new, and wholly luscious. She put a fingertip to the surface of one and jerked it away, scorched. He immediately rose, face tight with alarm.
“Damn. I should have known better.” He took her hand gently in his, examined the scorched fingertip, and pulled her out of her seat toward the sink. In a moment he had blessedly cold water running over her finger in a torrent, greatly easing the pain from the burn.
“Let’s hope this doesn’t blister,” he said. “You’ve never had pizza before, have you?”
“I have not, my lord.”
“I should have realized, damn it.” He banged a closed fist on the countertop. “You didn’t know coffee, so why did I expect you to know pizza? Stupid, stupid fuckhead.”
His dissatisfaction was evident...and evidently entirely toward himself.
“My lord?” she murmured.
He looked back at her. “Yes, Fountain?”
“What is a fuckhead?”
It had me in stitches – and I wrote it. Truly, wonders will never cease.
Working title: Innocents. Coming soon to an eBookstore near your browser.
I’ve never been a fan of what’s become known as “the Internet of Things.” Bandwidth around here is precious – too many people are online at all hours, and we have only one viable broadband provider – and I pay extra to make sure I’ll have what I need. I may be an old crank, but I’m neither old enough nor cranky enough to need light switches I can throw digitally from the smartphone I don’t own. I certainly don’t need for my appliances to be having conversations with their distant colleagues about how unappreciative I am.
I have no idea whether mine is a majority or a minority opinion. I know that some people have embraced the Fully Wired Home with great enthusiasm. I’ve often wondered whether those folks have grasped what they’re letting themselves in for. Today we have some thoughts on just what that might be:
The government is already spying on us through spying on us through our computers, phones, cars, buses, streetlights, at airports and on the street, via mobile scanners and drones, through our credit cards and smart meters (see this), television, doll, and in many other ways.
The CIA wants to spy on you through your dishwasher and other “smart” appliances.
NO! Our omniscient, omnipotent, omnibenevolent State wants to transform The Land of the Free into a Total Surveillance Society? Say it ain’t so!
Granted, the amount of digital traffic monitoring required to conduct effective surveillance of 330 million Americans is staggering. The amount of computer power required even to search for keywords that would trigger closer attention is even more staggering. The amount of storage required to save all that traffic for later perusal by analysts, or for use as evidence? Thank you no, I’m already staggered enough. But the more I think about it, the more plausible it seems.
The key is the motive.
My memory isn’t firing on all sixteen cylinders this morning so I can’t be certain of the provenance of the following, but I think it was Lavrenti Beria, the first head of the Soviet Tcheka (later to become the KGB), who said “Show me the man and I’ll find you the crime.” Harvey Silverglate’s recent book Three Felonies a Day provides great insight into the peril the ordinary American faces in our era of law grown luxuriant beyond all justification. The prospect of a database sufficiently expansive and well organized to support Beria’s boast should send a chill down the spine of anyone sensible enough to distrust government.
But why would a government want such a database? For intimidation purposes, of course! Imagine that the following conditions were to be satisfied:
Would anyone dare to criticize an entity (or one of its masters) that has access to the entirety of his stored transactions and conversations? Would anyone dare to ponder a move against it, whether political or practical?
Don’t know about you, Bubba, but I wouldn’t.
The question isn’t whether they who desire power above all other things would want such a system, but rather how close technology has come to making it possible.
“Motive, means, and opportunity” are and will remain the keys to analyzing any conceivable crime. In truth, they’re the keys to analyzing why anyone does anything, legal or otherwise. When power-seekers view their prospects for gaining, retaining, and increasing their power, the motive for adopting some particular means and maneuvering toward the opportunity will be obvious.
Back when I was still slinging bits, communications was one of my sub-specialties. Based on what I know, and on the current state of technology as I perceive it, I would say that the practical possibility of such a total-surveillance system is not yet here. A few things are still required:
Those conditions are not yet met...but we’re getting closer. While the steady pressure to make everything Internet-enabled is worrisome, even more ominous is the increasingly visible hostility of all governments to cash. Cash is the indispensable requirement of privacy in transaction. Should it be eliminated (or reduced to a trivial relic), no one would be able to buy or sell without the State knowing everything about the transaction down to the last detail. There’s more at stake here than keeping one’s tax bite tolerable.
Even today, it’s likely that a Beria-like inquest would have no problem catching and burning you or me, Gentle Reader. The subconscious awareness of our vulnerability is what makes that recent reality-TV show about ordinary citizens trying to evade detection and capture by professionals in that art lodge unpleasantly in our backbrains. Could you escape the agents of the State if they were determined to get you? I know I couldn’t.
The recent revelations about the CIA’s hacking abilities and the arsenal of tools it commands are enough to keep a lot of Americans – not all of us on the right of the political spectrum, but preponderantly so – awake at night. A total-surveillance system that employs the devices in our very homes, communicating over “hotspots” generously provided by regional broadband suppliers, is more threatening still. Given the luxuriance and ambiguity of the law today, we ought not to be assisting the State in constructing such a nightmare.
If you’ve been a Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch for a goodly while now, you’re probably familiar with the late Sam Francis’s coinage anarcho-tyranny. For those who haven’t yet made the acquaintance of this useful term, here’s the original formulation:
What we have in this country today, then, is both anarchy (the failure of the state to enforce the laws) and, at the same time, tyranny – the enforcement of laws by the state for oppressive purposes; the criminalization of the law-abiding and innocent through exorbitant taxation, bureaucratic regulation, the invasion of privacy, and the engineering of social institutions, such as the family and local schools; the imposition of thought control through "sensitivity training" and multiculturalist curricula, "hate crime" laws, gun-control laws that punish or disarm otherwise law-abiding citizens but have no impact on violent criminals who get guns illegally, and a vast labyrinth of other measures. In a word, anarcho-tyranny. [From the essay Synthesizing Tyranny, written shortly before Francis’s death.]
The longer I live, the more I come to view anarcho-tyranny as the terminal state toward which all governments tend as they mature and degenerate.
But that’s a subject for a later tirade. For today, let’s have a look at the most conspicuous recent outcropping: the assertion of various courts that they possess jurisdiction sufficient to block the enforcement of President Trump’s temporary ban on immigration from several chaotic, violence-ridden countries.
Mark Levin, in whose emissions I seldom take much interest – he’s simply too shrill for my tastes – captured the matter thus:
“We have, ladies and gentlemen, rogue federal district judges now; we have rogue courts,” Levin exclaimed. “We have judicial anarchy taking place…where judges are seizing plenary authority from the president of the United States to keep this nation safe — to control our borders and to determine the nature of our immigration in this country.”
Strictly speaking, there is no need to submit to "judicial anarchy." The courts have no enforcement arm for this very reason. With regard to the current foofaurauw, if the Attorney-General were to prepare a finding for the president that says the courts don't have valid jurisdiction over the subject matter, the president could ignore the courts, freely and without adverse consequences. Andrew Jackson did it; why not Donald Trump?
The reason might be that the Trump Administration fears a popular backlash: i.e., an adverse reaction from the portion of the electorate that believes the courts to possess plenipotentiary authority over everything. This actually helps to illuminate both the current contretemps and the intra-governmental relations of the courts and the other branches.
James Madison, often called “the father of the Constitution,” regarded the courts as “the least dangerous branch” of government. The widespread belief is that that was because the courts were allowed no enforcement arm, apart from the bailiffs allowed for keeping order during a court proceeding. However, this reverses cause and effect. The courts were allowed no enforcement arm because of the danger they would otherwise pose, as is well established by English history.
The great majority of judges in pre-Industrial Revolution England, from which much of our legal tradition derives, were not government employees, neither elected nor appointed nor hired. They commanded deference on the basis of their personal qualities and their willingness to sit as judges; in other words, from popular respect for their wisdom and diligence. If you’ve heard the term “circuit judge” and have wondered about its provenance, it comes from the time when a judge would routinely “ride a circuit:” i.e., he would regularly travel a known route from place to place, hearing such cases as were presented to him in each place and ruling on them according to the “common law,” another American inheritance from England.
To make this a workable living, a judge needed to be known and respected in each of the stops along his circuit. A judge’s enforcement arm was the willingness of the commoners whose cases he heard to enforce his rulings. Thus, he had to have a reputation for fairly and consistently applying both the common law and what precedents might exist for its enforcement. For a judge to become known as capricious or arbitrary – e.g., for promoting his personal views over the common law as English commoners knew it – would spell the end of his career.
England’s problems with “star chambers” and the like came about because of courts whose authority descended from the Crown – i.e., whose enforcement arm was the force commanded by the King. Common-law judges posed no such problems, precisely because they had no enforcement power of their own. Indeed, it was often the role of a common-law judge to prevent a lynching or other variety of mob “justice:” something only a very well known, well respected jurist could do by force of character.
Even though American judges are government employees, the essence of the English common-law judicial system – that the court have no enforcement arm of its own – was largely preserved by the Founding Fathers. The courts’ authority is essentially one of popular consensus concerning the probity and wisdom of the courts: i.e., that the courts are assessing the laws faithfully rather than whimsically or capriciously.
But by innumerable capricious judgments: both failures to uphold the black-letter law and usurpations of jurisdiction that in no way belong to them, the courts have destroyed that consensus. Where, then, do we stand?
Sam Francis’s thoughts on anarcho-tyranny are nicely illuminated by contemporary developments – and not just in the federal courts. A justly famous article about “the coming middle-class anarchy” makes the point quite well, albeit in language a bit rougher than is likely to be found in any judge’s opinions:
When the backbone of a country starts thinking that laws and rules are not worth following, it’s just a hop, skip and a jump to anarchy.TV has given us the illusion that anarchy is people rioting in the streets, smashing car windows and looting every store in sight. But there’s also the polite, quiet, far deadlier anarchy of the core citizenry — the upright citizenry — throwing in the towel and deciding it’s just not worth it anymore.
If a big enough proportion of the populace — not even a majority, just a largish chunk — decides that it’s just not worth following the rules anymore, then that society’s days are numbered: Not even a police-state with an armed Marine at every corner with Shoot-to-Kill orders can stop such middle-class anarchy.
Brian and Ilsa are such anarchists — grey-haired, well-dressed, golf-loving, well-to-do, exceedingly polite anarchists: But anarchists nevertheless. They are not important, or powerful, or influential: They are average — that’s why they’re so deadly: Their numbers are millions. And they are slowly, painfully coming to the conclusion that it’s just not worth it anymore.
Once enough of these J. Crew Anarchists decide they no longer give a fuck, it’s over for America — because they are America.
Please read the whole article, if you haven’t done so before. While it’s not merely the courts’ fault that this attitude is gaining strength, the descent of the courts – especially federal courts – are a major component of the machine steadily reducing us to anarcho-tyranny.
For decades now I’ve flitted between minarchism and outright anarchism. If you’ve read my Spooner Federation books, you’re familiar with the process I consider inevitable:
This cycle has overwhelming historical support. It suggests that there’s no way out of the cycle, which implies that for best results, one simply has to trust to luck – i.e., to be born in the right time and place – and mobility – the readiness, willingness, and ability to move from an undesirable society to a more desirable one. But where does that leave us of Twenty-First Century America?
Why, right where we are today, of course: enmeshed in a steadily deteriorating, ever more anarcho-tyrannical context. At the moment, the only escape is to even less desirable places. That might change; developments in space flight and workable space habitats are ongoing, and it’s impossible to say if or when they’ll mature. But the cycle itself appears to be embedded in human nature. If that’s the case, then no matter where men go, the cycle will go with them.
I yield the floor to my Gentle Readers.
Scandal appears to be the meat and potatoes of “journalism” in our time. At any rate it seems that way with the political ascension of Donald Trump. How many front-page / above-the-fold stories can you remember from the last four months that weren’t linked to some notion of a scandal in progress or a past scandal being covered up? Whether Trump was the central figure in the drama or not?
There’s a reason, of course. It’s not entirely about Trump. Indeed, the target could have been anyone. The “scandal” factor would improve as the target moves toward the Mother Teresa / Albert Schweitzer pole of utterly stainless character.
And we may hope that the more people understand the reason and the mechanisms employed for this purpose, the less power it will have over American minds.
Certain words have an ominous power to mislead us. Probably the most potent of them are if and the subjunctive qualifiers might and could. In the hands of one determined to whip up a scandal out of leftover scraps, they can be deadly.
Consider, for example, the Dishonorable Chuck Schumer’s attempts, during his interview by Bret Baier, to imply that President Trump is showing favoritism toward nations where the Trump Organization has hotels or other business enterprises. Schumer never openly said that that was the case. His statements were all in the subjunctive mood. He phrased them to leave an insidious impression; he avoided making an outright statement of fact by which his argument would be made falsifiable.
The following, while they’re condensed paraphrases of what Schumer a notoriously wordy spinner of political fantasies, said during the interview, they are accurate paraphrases:
Leaving to the side the dubious predicate allegation that Trump is treating the Russians with some unusual degree of deference, both statements are pure conjecture: subjunctives that invoke a possibility Schumer was unwilling to embody in firmer language. Of course, a definite allegation of corruption would raise a key question: “So why aren’t you straining to have him impeached, eh, Chucky?” But there’s a mite more to the story.
On January 20 of this year, the New York Times reported – front page, above the fold – that the Trump Organization had recently been the subject of federal wiretapping, for reasons connected to the Trump Organization’s Russian dealings. The Times has strained to efface that story from public awareness, but the physical editions of the paper, unlike its online doppelganger, cannot be denied. That story, regardless of whether it was perfectly accurate, created a basis for subjunctive implications that Trump or his businesses and associates had something criminal to hide.
The foundation for scandal was thus laid: “Where there’s an investigation there must be wrongdoing.” Note the parallel to “If the police arrested him, he must have done something wrong.” From there, unfortunately assisted by an unguarded statement from Trump about Vladimir Putin’s effectiveness in Russia’s national interests and about his (Trump’s) ability to deal with Putin, it was possible to spin conjectures about how the Putin regime “might” have had an interest in a Trump victory and “might” have exerted itself to bring that victory about.
To my knowledge, no federal authority has charged Trump or the Trump Organization with a crime. Neither has any federal authority produced evidence of Russian election “hacking.” But news of the investigation planted a seed of suspicion in many minds that the Left watered most assiduously. What sprouted was always couched in subjunctive terms: “might have” or “could have.”
The core idea was to get Trump to try to prove a negative, which is inherently impossible. Trump merely ignored the sallies. Unfortunately, other Republicans, including several who have personal reasons for resenting Trump, joined the parade by suggesting – in at least one case, demanding – a formal investigation into whether Russian meddling might have influenced the outcome of the November 8 election. The “scandal” gained legs: “See? Even Republicans think there’s something here.”
Once the media have, by repetition and careful maintenance of a subjunctive mood, breathed life into the suspicions, they can be coupled to just about anything whose details are not 100% visible: for example, a tax return. The Rachel Maddow clown show over Trump’s 2005 tax return was a typical next stage to the process: “What shady arrangements or (gasp!) unsavory foreign involvements might be hidden behind the numbers in this return?” Stacy McCain sketched the spine that supports it:
After finally “reporting” the numbers, Maddow then filled the extra time with a lot of blabber — wild speculation about what sinister secrets might be hidden behind those opaque numbers. She suggested there could be debts owed to shady foreign entities (Russians, nudge, nudge, wink, wink) who could thereby influence Trump’s policies. While it is of course possible that such things could be true, speculation is not news, or else I could win a Pulitzer Prize for my seven-part series speculating that Rachel Maddow could be having a secret affair with Mika Brzezinski. Because, hey, why not?The circular logic of Maddow’s “investigative journalism”:
- Donald Trump is a Republican;
- Republicans are evil;
- Somewhere, there must be evidence of how evil Trump is.
Really, that’s all she’s got — a belief in Trump’s evil, which permits her (and every other liberal journalist) to constantly locate mountainous “scandals” where anyone with common sense sees only a molehill. Ever since Hillary lost the election, the media have been dogpiling every possible variation on the Russians-hacked-the-election conspiracy theory, because that’s what their core audience of disappointed Democrat voters want to believe.
And all of it is premised on “mights” and “coulds” that no man could ever disprove.
Not to be neglected here is the immense power of coordinated media in concocting the subjunctives and stoking the suspicions attached to them. Were only a single source “reporting” on these notions, they would have a very limited scope in both space and time. But the national press and broadcast media read from the same scriptures and dance to the same tune. Virtually all of them have collaborated in the promulgation of these imputations. It’s good business for them, quite aside from their institutional inclination to back any Democrat against any Republican. People will more avidly consume sinister musings than hard journalism about actual events...and if they can be induced to talk up such stories, so much the better.
Gentle Reader, I firmly believe that if the Second Coming were to occur today at high noon, and the Redeemer were to issue an unconditional statement that Donald Trump is innocent of anything criminal (or even unpleasant) anyone has ever implied he might have done, the Left would arrange for its cats’ paws in the media to promote a unified broadside against Trump for “daring to breach the wall of separation between church and state.”
It’s been said, and truly, that a lie can get halfway around the world before the truth has got its boots on. When the lie is couched in “mights” and “coulds,” and any noticeable fraction of decent persons display a willingness to entertain it, that maxim acquires tremendous force.
It becomes overpoweringly ironic that so many Leftist mouthpieces have drawn specious parallels between Trump and Hitler, when one observes that their weapon for doing so is the Big Lie tactic Hitler so greatly favored.
No, we didn’t get as badly blasted by the snow as we feared. We got about three inches of snow that didn’t persist due to a lot of rain and wind. And for this there was much rejoicing.
But a PSA from my Internet provider – “we’ll work ‘round the clock to keep you connected” – got me to wondering: Now that just about everyone in New York has a backup electrical power generator, will we soon see New Yorkers installing backup Internet services, to maintain their all-important connectivity? I mean, if I were deprived of Internet access for as much as an hour, why, I might...read a book, or play the piano or one of my guitars, or something. The horror!
Anyway, on with the snow show.
1. Racism Review.
There are days when, all my natural inclinations to the side, being an ‘out and proud’ racist strikes me as the safer course:
The new Coleman Silk is Doug Adler, a (former) ESPN sports announcer whose career was demolished because of a frenzied overreaction to his (correct) use of a single word: Guerilla. Adler was calling an Australian Open tennis match between Venus Williams (who is black) and Stefanie Voegele when he said, “You see Venus move in and put the guerilla effect on. Charging.” Adler noted that “guerilla tennis” is a commonly used phrase and has been ever since a famous 1995 Nike TV spot of that title in which Pete Sampras and Andre Agassi hastily strung a tennis net across a busy city street and started playing right there.When Adler made his “guerilla” remark, a few Twitter users accused him of using the word “gorilla,” their complaints amplified considerably by New York Times tennis writer Ben Rothenberg. “This is some appalling stuff. Horrifying that the Williams sisters remain subjected to it still in 2017.” Wait, the Williams sisters, plural? Who said anything about Serena Williams? Rothenberg took one misunderstood word, turned it into an imaginary insult, then doubled the fantasy slur. When what Roth termed “the ecstasy of sanctimony” takes over, logic bows its head and retreats. Rothenberg’s Tweet was re-Tweeted 142 times, reaching many thousands and apparently Adler’s bosses.
Which has apparently brought an end to Doug Adler’s career.
Behavior such as this from a Times staffer shouldn’t surprise anyone. Remember the flap made about that poor clown who dared to use the word niggardly? On the other side of the political fence, remember when black conservative Niger Innis appeared on some talking-head show, and the station chyronned his name as Nigger Innis? All perfectly innocent, I’m sure. In the Great Cause of Social Justice, anyway.
As I’ve said more than once, this mick-wop honky has had enough, and all you niggers, sheenies, spics, beaners, slant-eyes, camel jockeys, and little brown fuckers had just better watch it from now on.
2. The Dead Thug That Just Won’t Die.
It appears that some “documentarian” is determined to keep Michael Brown’s death fresh in our memories:
Jason Pollock, the director of the “documentary” Stranger Fruit has been all over television, literally screaming that the authorities failed or lied about Michael Brown’s murder. As you’ll see in this clip from Fox News, Pollock is now including the FBI and the Obama Department of Justice in his claims. None of them, apparently, ever wanted to get to the truth....[Pollock] adds that anyone who sees the tape who is “not a bigot” will understand what happened. MacCallum doesn’t really challenge Pollock on what happened at the convenience store but as I showed here yesterday it appears whatever deal Brown tried to work out didn’t happen. The clerks did not take his pot. They place it back on the counter. When Brown tried to leave with a bag of merchandise they call him back and then put everything back on the shelves. Finally, the next day when Brown returned and choked one of the clerks, they called the police saying they had been robbed.Next, MacCallum argues that the real reason people think of Michael Brown as a “bad guy” is because of what happened during his interaction with Officer Wilson. When she suggests the FBI and the Obama DOJ would have indicted Officer Wilson if they had been able to Pollock yells, “Not true! Don’t just say that.”
“You’re suggesting that 40 FBI agents were all in cahoots…” MacCallum starts to say.
“I’m suggesting that the Department of Justice failed,” Pollock replies. “Yes, they failed! They failed!” he shouts.
“So it’s not possible in your brain that what happened there was what was found by the grand jury and 40 FBI agents. You’re saying all of that doesn’t matter?” MacCallum asked.
“Yes,” Pollock replied. “When the facts of this case come out in my film Stranger Fruit, the real facts of this case, the facts of this case that Bob McCulloch doesn’t want us talking about, like the fact that Michael Brown was shot in the head and a bullet came out of his eye. Do you know how that would happen?” he continues.
Near the close of this clip, MacCallum brings up “three different forensic investigations that were done.” Pollock literally waves these away saying, “I don’t care. They failed him. They all failed.” So now the medical examiners, including one hired by the family, are part of the conspiracy too I guess. How else to explain that they all reached the same conclusions.
“Don’t believe the forensic examiners, the grand jury, or your lying eyes, believe me!” This isn’t just a demand from one loony pseudo-journalist; it’s a standard emission from the SJWs. And it’s already way past its expiration date.
3. Say What?
Adrienne, I love you and all, but this is a wee bit shortsighted:
There's snow falling in New York on March 14th...and we should care, why?This snow storm even has a name.
Why is New York snow more important than, say, Odie The Woodsterman snow? Every time he gets his driveway and sidewalks shoveled he gets another two feet of unnamed snow. Does naming a snow storm make it more important? Hey, Odie - next time it snows run out, smack a berm with a shovel and cry out, "I dub thee Snow Charlotte", or any name of your choosing. Maybe the UK Daily Mail will pick up the story.
State of emergency, shelter in place (what the hell does that mean?) Does it mean I should stay on a city bus if the snow starts falling while I'm headed home? Or hunch pathetically in the corner of the subway?
Bread and milk wiped out. Schools closed. Flights cancelled.
It's going to snow!
I know a lot of persons outside New York don’t much care for the Big Apple. Hell, I could say the same for a lot of New York State residents outside the Five Boroughs. But that doesn’t change certain facts, as annoying or unpleasant as they might seem.
New York City is the financial capital of the Western world. Several trillion dollars worth of transactions flow through the city every business day. Anything that upsets that flow affects hundreds of millions of people worldwide. Yea verily, even a few in Idaho.
Remember a few years back, when some naughty types hijacked two airliners and knocked down a couple of tall buildings in lower Manhattan? The effects were rather widely felt. You might have felt them, too. So be not too quick to dismiss our seemingly provincial agonies. They could matter a lot more to your little province than you think.
4. Remember Those Naughty Congressional Staffers?
You know, the ones who leaked all the Democrat Congressvermin’s emails? Seems they might have had more than one paymaster:
Congressional IT staffers who are the subject of a criminal investigation into misusing their positions had full access to members’ “correspondence, emails, confidential files,” and there was almost no tracking of what they did, a former House technology worker said.Imran Awan bullied central IT to bend the rules for him so there wouldn’t be a paper trail about the unusually high permissions he was requesting. And their actions were not logged, so members have no way of knowing what information they may have taken, the central IT employee said.
Awan ran technology for multiple House Democrats, and soon four of his relatives — including brothers Abid and Jamal — appeared on the payroll of dozens of other members, collecting $4 million in taxpayer funds since 2010.
U.S. Capitol Police named him and his relatives as subjects of a criminal probe on Feb. 2, and banned them from the complex’s computer networks. But members of Congress for whom they worked have downplayed their access or publicly ignored the issue.
But of course! Those Democrats were proud they’d hired Muslims for their IT staff. They were conspicuously displaying how open-minded and tolerant they are. If it’s ever determined beyond a reasonable doubt that the Awans didn’t provide foreign adversaries with American national secrets, we should count ourselves supremely fortunate. But how likely is that?
5. And This Surprises You Because...?
Homosexuals have made a habit of defining themselves by their sexual preferences. They’ve made those preferences the center of their lives. They’ve trumpeted them at the normal majority in a blatant display of disdain for and triumph over millennia of social norms. Given that, should this really surprise anyone?
Julie Kay Werkheiser and Samantha Stone were both dance teachers in upstate New York. Werkheiser owned Studio J Dance in Waverly, about 40 miles from Binghamton, where Stone owned Creative Dance Elements. At some point, Stone divorced her husband and is now Samantha Werkheiser. And both of them have been convicted of molesting children. In February 2016, Julie Werkheiser was sentenced to 11 years to life in state prison after a jury convicted her of felony predatory sexual assault against a child. Police said that between July 2006 and November 2007 she abused two dance students, who were 6 and 8 at the time. Last week, a judge sentenced her wife, the former Samantha Stone, to 15 years in prison for first-degree course of sexual conduct against a child.
Lesbian Dance teachers were teaching their students Lesbian Dance. At least we got truth in labeling...of a sort.
That’s it for today, Gentle Reader. The Ides of March is a special day here at the Fortress of Crankitude: the anniversary – at least, in Shakespeare’s retelling – of the first completely justified political assassination recorded by history. Yes, there have been others. There might be more. But that first one was dramatic enough to inspire one of the greatest works in Western literature. That calls for an extra glass of Harvey’s around here.
Until tomorrow, be well.
I’m snowed in this morning, and the political news has been sort of flat lately, so I thought I might address the subject of religious freedom under the law: how far a religion may go in asserting the freedom of its adherents to live and act according to its doctrines, and how far the law, whether in an unbounded tyranny or in a republic such as ours that purports to recognize religious freedom, may go in qualifying the requirements and limiting the practices of a religion.
Mind you, I don’t expect this to be a “comfortable” essay. Some of my Gentle Readers are likely to take umbrage at what I write. But that’s in the nature of both religion and law...isn’t it?
1. What Is A Religion?
Fundamentals are...fundamental. They come before all else. Therefore, in an inquiry such as this, they must be soundly addressed before all else. Only when we’ve established the two most fundamental considerations – the nature of a religion and the nature of law – can we make any headway on examining the interfaces between them.
Men espouse many beliefs. Some of those beliefs are easily distinguished from the rest by their invocation of non-falsifiable premises. The premises of importance, for this essay, are the ones that address the possibility of entities and powers beyond those of our spatiotemporal domain.
(An aside: I’ve resolved here to avoid the words real and reality. I intend to avoid the words exist and existence with equal determination. As Man is a material, time-bound creature, our vocabulary doesn’t cope well with propositions about the “reality” or the “existence” of non-material, supra-temporal beings. Our familiarity and regular interactions with material objects within our spatiotemporal domain can easily lead us astray.)
Religious beliefs must be non-falsifiable, because by the very nature of human senses and abilities they are non-verifiable. Thus we establish our first firm condition for classifying some belief system as a religion.
Some will counter that “in theory,” the truth or falsity of certain religious belief systems, including Christianity, could have been made testable and therefore falsifiable. They would propose a “chain of evidence” that unfortunately doesn’t exist, reaching from the life of Jesus of Nazareth to the present day, through which the veracity of the Gospels could be determined as if in a court of law. Leaving aside the “CSI objection” (“People lie; evidence doesn’t”), there are even more basic problems with such a notion. They arise from the Law of Alternatives:
In other words, a phenomenon that can’t be reproduced can’t be definitively – i.e., omitting all possibility of an alternative – attributed to a single causal model. Indeed, the history of the physical sciences suggests that that’s also true of certain reproducible events. But that’s to the side.
To distinguish religious beliefs from other non-falsifiable beliefs, we must address their contrast from beliefs such as “The government is here to help me,” “My wife would never cheat on me,” or “My daughter is a virgin.” A religious belief must explicitly address entities that cannot be perceived – against their will, at least – by human senses. Moreover, such entities must be proposed to have a relationship with Man that begins with “Believe in Me” and continues on to “Live thus if you want Me to be happy with you.”
This leads to a genus and differentia for religious beliefs:
Thus, while “global warming” is often derided of as a “religion,” the denotation is satirical only. In contrast, Christianity is a religion, as are Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, and so on.
2. The Scope Of Law.
A republic such as the United States, which nominally functions within a Constitutional framework, makes it relatively easy to determine the supposed scope of law. However, we’re not here for the easy cases. Let’s ponder the scope of law in the absence of such a framework: say, in a dictatorship where the decrees of a single individual constitute the “law.”
If we start from the primitively brutal conception of law as a decree from an institution whose masters intend to back it with force, we can proceed without our usual concerns about Constitutionality and religious specifics. This is a fruitful origin for several reasons:
Law stripped of all notions of “legitimacy” makes room for more practical considerations:
Many a historical ruler of theoretically unlimited power had a far lighter hand than our contemporary federal government. Such rulers exerted the forces at their disposal most predictably when defied. They were plainly less interested in exercising their notional powers than in retaining them. Yet among them were many who chose to decree a state religion. In some such cases, the observance and practice of that religion was made obligatory; in others, the subjects were merely expected to support it with a tithe.
At the root of many such decrees was a need to put their regime on a religious foundation. The collaboration of Throne and Altar was critical to the perpetuation of many a monarchy. Here we see gropings for legitimacy that go beyond the might-makes-right rule of the preponderance of force. These became ever more important with the evolution of concepts of nobility and advances in technology that cast into doubt the proposition that any government, however constituted could really possess an unchallengeable preponderance of force.
The ultimate priority of every government is to remain in power and to be acknowledged as such. The principal requirements for that priority are:
Those three requirements interlock. They also interact with the dominant religious convictions of the subject populace.
3. The Facts.
Though it’s a near approach to tautology, we must allow that in any sociopolitical order:
The incentives and penalties here are imperative in the extreme. No political system can long endure without the consent – grudging or otherwise – of the subject populace. Any widespread belief that clashes with the State’s decrees is a source of opposition to it. Therefore, the State will be minded to act against such beliefs...but if its decrees exceed beyond its power to enforce them to a sufficient degree, the consequences will be bad, for the discovery that the State can be defied without penalty will engender an ever increasing amount of defiance. Thus, the State must take care to “stay inside the religious lines,” whatever they might be, if it wishes to keep a grip on its pretense of legitimacy and its effective power to rule.
Many tyrannies have discovered that the attempt to suppress certain religions and religious practices as hostile to the interests of the State is fraught with extreme peril. Only a group that’s both small and effectively demonizable can be treated in such a fashion with no risk of blowback. If you’ve ever wondered why the Jews have so frequently come under some tyranny’s hammer, now you know.
The matter is murkiest in a multi-sectarian society with a political order that requires more than one kind of popular acquiescence. Different religious sects promulgate different standards of behavior. For example, there are sects derived from both Amerind and Caribbean belief systems that treat certain intoxicants as sacraments. Those intoxicants are banned by federal or state law throughout this country. Yet when it comes to those sects, the laws go unenforced under a rationale of respect for “religious freedom.” In point of fact, the State feels no such respect and would suppress Amerind and Caribbean uses of those intoxicants if its masters felt they could do so without unacceptable consequences. They cannot do so because even among Americans who support the drug laws, popular convictions about religious freedom would evoke unacceptable degrees of resistance.
Inversely, American Catholic institutions are under tremendous political pressure to conform to certain laws that expressly demand the violation of Catholic convictions. The masters of the State have found in practice that they can enforce laws that override those convictions – that there’s sufficient popular support for those laws and for their enforcement, Catholics’ religious objections notwithstanding. The seeming paradox is that there are far more American Catholics than there are Amerinds or Rastafarians. What tips the scales is the magnitude of support for laws that require, say, Catholic pharmacists to sell abortifacients and Catholic employers to provide medical insurance that would cover abortions.
4. The “Shoulds”
“Should” – the modifier that denotes the imperative mood – is the toughest of all words to argue about. Many “shoulds” have been premised on beliefs that were later discarded, whether profitably or otherwise. Moreover, there’s no escape from that box:
From propositions about fact alone no practical conclusion can ever be drawn. This will preserve society cannot lead to do this except by the mediation of society ought to be preserved. This will cost you your life cannot lead directly to do not do this: it can lead to it only through a felt desire or an acknowledged duty of self-preservation. The Innovator is trying to get a conclusion in the imperative mood out of premisses in the indicative mood: and though he continues trying to all eternity he cannot succeed, for the thing is impossible. We must therefore either extend the word Reason to include what our ancestors called Practical Reason and confess that judgements such as society ought to be preserved (though they can support themselves by no reason of the sort that Gaius and Titius demand) are not mere sentiments but are rationality itself; or else we must give up at once, and for ever, the attempt to find a core of 'rational' value behind all the sentiments we have debunked. [C. S. Lewis, The Abolition Of Man.]
Whenever we use the word rights outside the legal context, we are saying “should” or “should not.” Such propositions, pace Lewis, cannot be proved or disproved. They can be denied; they can be violated, sometimes without penalty to the violator. But those are practical considerations only.
One of the least pleasant and most frequently averted objections to a demand for this or that is "Prove it:"
Prove that what you demand is yours by right.
Prove that the changes you advocate will do more good than harm.
Prove that history offers us any evidence whatsoever in support of your theories.Virtually no one raises that objection in its simplest, purest form. The losses have been staggering.
"You say your convictions are absolute? A clear matter of right and justice?" the counter-proselyte says to the proselyte. "But you can't prove them, can you? No, I can't disprove them, but neither am I inclined to allow you power over others on your representation. Go back where you came from and keep company with others of like mind. We'll have no truck with you here."
This is practically the American credo...which we persist in setting aside with distressing frequency, usually in the hope of mollifying some noisy pressure group. Indeed, it's been off the socio-economic-legal-political playing field since about 1913. And in consequence, the promoters of nostrums crazier than any Napoleon-wannabe have had their way with us as we've stood by goggle-eyed.
...I was thinking of my fervent, long-held conviction that every individual has a right to be left alone: a “should” that many would accept but many others would reject. It’s as un-falsifiable, and therefore as un-verifiable, as the demands of those who’d elicited my denunciation. The irony, as I review those words of nearly four years ago, is simply overwhelming. The only support it has is essentially religious: my belief, shared by millions of others, that “it should be that way.”
Marc Stiegler presented us with a sly “should” in his novel David’s Sling.
"The Institute recognized three broad classes of decisions, and three broad methods of decision-making: engineering decisions, political decisions, and unresolvable decisions...."Engineering decisions were made by finding the correct, or best, answer. This was the best decision-making methodology whenever possible, but often human affairs proved too ambiguous for this wholly rational analysis.
Political decisions were made by building an answer of consensus. In difficult cases, the consensus decision might be to let one particular man make a decision, but that was a form of consensus nonetheless. Because political decision systems could generate decisions in more situations than engineering decision systems, political systems typically gained pre-eminence over engineering. For the most part, this arrangement worked well—except that too often, the politicians made political decisions in situation where engineering applied, usually with tragic consequences. The key question was, how do you decide whether to use politics or engineering to decide? Politicians had all too often decided to use politics.
Zeteticism had recognized an important truth: the choice between politics and engineering is always an engineering decision.
Study that passage. (It’ll be on the final exam.) Find the hidden “should.” Decide whether you agree with the statement that contains it. Then consider whether you’d be willing to defend that statement in an open forum. Clashes between religious assertions and political assertions are of the very same sort.
As usual I could go on, but why bother? The problems involved are insoluble at the theoretical level. Only practical tests of State authority against popular sentiment can be studied – and worse yet, no one can accurately forecast the outcome of such a test a priori. Hari Seldon’s “psychohistory” remains a figment of the imagination.
It is perhaps unfortunate, despite the reverence we associate with the Bill of Rights, that “freedom of religion” appears in the First Amendment. Endless arguments over what constitutes a religion that the State must abstain from infringing upon have come nowhere near settling the matter. Had our political order remained within strict Constitutional constraints – i.e., that the federal government may only do what’s expressly authorized in the Constitution; that the state governments may only do what’s expressly authorized in their constitutions and charters; and that all else is absolutely protected by individuals’ and voluntary associations’ uninfringeable rights – many clashes over religious freedom would never have arisen. Nevertheless, here we are.
And we may expect the fusillades over what’s protected by religious freedom, and upon which of its fringes the State may tread, to continue for generations to come.
Unfortunately, I have a depressing subject for this morning’s screed. I know, I know: It’s Monday. Most Gentle Readers don’t need any more reasons to be glum. But then, you went to bed yesterday evening knowing Monday was coming, so why didn’t you brace for it?
Anyway, quite a lot has been written in recent weeks about the war between the fledgling Trump Administration and the Deep State. Conceptions of the Deep State tend to converge on the great importance of the millions of persons in the Executive branch “alphabet agencies.” The tenacity of their hold on their positions is unequaled by any other category of worker, anywhere in the world, owing to Civil Service laws so indulgent that a bureaucrat who’d raped a minor in Times Square at high noon, with reporters from the Times as witnesses, could retain his job, salary, and all other perquisites during three years of hearings before being discharged. Needless to say, the Left has made the colonization and conquest of the bureaucracies a high priority.
Outrageous. Intolerable. Terrifying and worse. But there’s more to the Deep State than that.
The array of unelected federal functionaries has more components than one, of course:
[T]he legislator gives general orders to his chief of staff, who then sets the others to work composing a bill to that end. Parkinson’s Law kicks in at this point. A staff of twenty or thirty is inherently incapable of writing a short bill. Among other things, each staffer wants the final product to have his fingerprints on it, to prove his importance to his coworkers and to the legislator. The consequence is invariably a bill that runs to dozens if not hundreds of pages, reads as if it had been assembled from a congeries of legal treatises, obsolete encyclopedias, and phone books, and contains almost as many internal contradictions and ambiguities as there are words in it.
Yet you might think that a federal legislator’s staff, which serves at the legislator’s pleasure and is not covered by the Civil Service laws, would be more likely to exhibit genuine loyalty toward the legislator, his convictions, and his agenda. That turns out not to be the case. Those staffers have far more in common, for both occupational and ideological reasons, with the time-servers in the bureaucracies than with their titular boss.
Remember Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics: Any organization not explicitly right-wing sooner or later becomes left-wing. This is well supported by recorded history. Moreover, it has some important corollaries:
Now consider the circumstances of a federal legislator of conservative convictions, newly seated in Congress. Everyone else in the building has a staff of twenty or thirty; therefore he must have one too. Where is it to come from?
A Congressional staff position is a prestigious job; the holder won’t want to lose it. Therefore, he must serve his boss in a fashion that persuades him, albeit subtly, that the staffer in question is an important pillar of support for his work. His competitors will be his fellow staffers, who share his desire to stand out from the crowd. He will seek allies wherever he might find them...and the bureaucrats in the alphabet agencies will prove only too happy to “help.”
Remember the outlandish size of the typical Congressional bill. Remember the incentive that drives every staffer to ensure that his fingerprints are on it. Remember that the longer the bill, the less likely is a legislator to read more than a staff-composed precis. And remember how easily words such as “discretion” and phrases such as “reasonable and proper” find their way into such bills.
The process is automatic; once in motion, it can’t be restrained. The legislator finds himself encysted and directed by the very persons upon whom he’s relied to keep pace with his fellows in Congress. There’s no more at work than the ordinary incentives that pertain to job holders everywhere. Yet it is curiously irresistible.
It takes a strength of will most federal legislators don’t possess to resist the above processes effectively. Even most of the strong-willed can be worn down, over time. That’s why there aren’t many long-serving legislators who both talk the conservative talk and walk the walk.
Popular perception of these mechanisms might be dim and fuzzy, but the image has gained intensity as the United States has slid down the chute of bureaucratic totalitarianism. The “Flight 93” election of Donald Trump can be ascribed in large measure to that perception:
Let’s be very blunt here: if you genuinely think things can go on with no fundamental change needed, then you have implicitly admitted that conservatism is wrong. Wrong philosophically, wrong on human nature, wrong on the nature of politics, and wrong in its policy prescriptions. Because, first, few of those prescriptions are in force today. Second, of the ones that are, the left is busy undoing them, often with conservative assistance. And, third, the whole trend of the West is ever-leftward, ever further away from what we all understand as conservatism.
Within the Washington Beltway, those who do think that “things can go on with no fundamental change needed” are thick on the ground. Their dominance of the thinking and proposals that reach the floor of Congress are the broadsword in the hand of the Deep State. They cannot be thwarted by any measure short of the wholesale destruction of the bureaucracies and the Congressional staff system.
Let the late, great Cyril Northcote Parkinson have the last word:
[This stage] presents us with no opportunity to do anything. The institution is for all practical purposes dead. It can be founded afresh but only with a change of name, a change of site, and an entirely different staff. The temptation, for the economically minded, is to transfer some portion of the original staff to the new institution—in the name, for example, of continuity. Such a transfusion would certainly be fatal, and continuity is the very thing to avoid. No portion of the old and diseased foundation can be regarded as free from infection. No staff, no equipment, no tradition must be removed from the original site. Strict quarantine should be followed by complete disinfection. Infected personnel should be dispatched with a warm testimonial to such rival institutions as are regarded with particular hostility. All equipment and files should be destroyed without hesitation. As for the buildings, the best plan is to insure them heavily and then set them alight. Only when the site is a blackened ruin can we feel certain that the germs of the disease are dead.
You might think he was kidding. I don’t.
