Proposal For A Counter-Hijacking

Say, I've got an idea. (Translated into the Southern: "Hey, y'all, watch this!") It derives from a widely cited column by Kurt Schlichter:

For the liberals who aren’t liberal solely because someone is handing them checks for plopping onto the couch all day instead of working, liberalism has become less an ideology than an attitude. It’s an attitude of serene superiority over everyone else based upon absolutely nothing more than liberals’ utter certainty of the rightness of their collectivist cause. [Emphasis added by FWP]

The original meaning of liberal was "favorable toward freedom." Americans' use of the word as a political label has been utterly severed from that dictionary definition for quite a long time now. So complete is the disconnection that the great Ludwig von Mises's landmark book on political philosophy, which he titled Liberalism, caused such confusion that shortly after its appearance in the United States was reissued under the title The Free and Prosperous Commonwealth.

But in recent years -- roughly since the Reagan Administration -- social-welfare fascists whose ideological ancestors succeeded in hijacking the word away from its proper meaning have largely abandoned it, preferring to style themselves "progressives." Granted that that's at least as much of a misapplication as "liberal," nevertheless it means that the ideology they attached to that noble term had acquired a taint they found they could no longer bear. Thus, today "liberal" lies pretty much unowned -- fallow -- vacant and begging for a new tenant.

Perhaps it's time to take it back.

I wrote quite recently that:

To be truly useful, a word must have an exact meaning. It cannot have more than one without becoming dangerous to one's thought processes. What recent political discourse has done to the critical labels has made them extremely dangerous to our thinking, and to the future of our already endangered Republic.

First consider liberal, a word whose original, exact meaning has been severed from it for practical purposes. Have a gander:

Liberal \Lib"er*al\, n. One who favors greater freedom in political or religious matters. [Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition]

Anyone who hasn't spent the last fifty years in a coma will immediately see how far the word liberal has been carried from that meaning. And it has indeed been carried away; it didn't migrate to its contemporary usage all by itself. The kidnapping of liberal was quite deliberate.

Similarly, we have conservative, whose original meaning has also been lost:

Conservative \Con*serv"a*tive\, n. One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs. [Webster's Unabridged Dictionary, 1913 edition]

Contemporary American conservatives could hardly be accused of that with any justice. Most of then are as hostile to the existing state of things as Bakunin or Kropotkin. Yet they stubbornly clutch the label conservative to their breasts rather than use a more accurate one, perhaps out of a misplaced...conservatism.

The damage consequent to these distortions has been incalculable. It's been inflicted upon us with malice aforethought. The profit has accrued entirely to the Left.

My suggestion proceeds from those observations as well as from Schlichter's skewering of the "progressive" mindset. How to go about it? Ah, that's the fun part!

---

Two hypothetical conversations follow. First:

Random Conservative:...so I favor greatly reduced taxation and regulation, a repeal of all laws that infringe upon individuals' Constitutionally protected rights, an end to the pervasive snoopery of the federal government, and a renewed emphasis on American sovereignty and American interests in all our foreign dealings.
FWP: Ah, so you're a liberal then.

RC: WHAT!??! Liberals don't hold those positions!
FWP: Then I must be confused. My dictionary says that "liberal" means "One who favors greater freedom." That sounds quite a bit like you.

RC: But...but...people who call themselves liberals disagree with me entirely!
FWP: Then they shouldn't be allowed to use the word, should they? Let's reclaim it for the true friends of freedom.

RC: What's wrong with "conservative?" It's what I've always called myself.
FWP: Out of habit, no doubt. My dictionary defines "conservative" as "One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs." That doesn't sound like you at all.

We'll pause that exchange here to look at a second conversation:

Random Liberal:...so taxes really have to go up, especially on the rich, we've got to put an end to private ownership of firearms, and we need much more stringent regulation of all businesses to do something about racism, sexism, sexual orientation discrimination, and the rise of inequality.
FWP: Ah, so you're a conservative, then.

RL: Excuse me!??! Conservatives don't hold with any of that!
FWP: Let's see now (flipping through imaginary Webster's Unabridged): "Conservative: One who desires to maintain existing institutions and customs." You're advocating taking existing practices and intensifying them. You could only be more conservative if you were to argue for keeping everything exactly as it is forever.

RL: (grimly) I'm proud to call myself a liberal, and I've done so for a very long time.
FWP: I can't imagine anyone with a dictionary letting you get away with that. (Flips a few more invisible pages) Ah, here we are: "Liberal: One who favors greater freedom." All your positions are very anti-freedom. Every one of them infringes upon private enterprise, private property, and private decision making. You have no rightful title to that word.

If properly executed -- i.e., with complete courtesy and the appropriate deadpan -- each of the above exchanges would eventuate in the same conclusion: A befuddled conversational partner with a single question on his lips:

Random Conversational Partner of either disposition: Well, what do you call yourself, then?
FWP: An American.

It could be both effective and fun, Gentle Reader. And we could abandon that sesquipedalian word libertarian in the bargain. Give it some thought.

Why Not Be Afraid? A Sunday Rumination

And when he had sent the multitudes away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray: and when the evening was come, he was there alone. But the ship was now in the midst of the sea, tossed with waves: for the wind was contrary. And in the fourth watch of the night Jesus went unto them, walking on the sea. And when the disciples saw him walking on the sea, they were troubled, saying, It is a spirit; and they cried out for fear. But straightway Jesus spake unto them, saying, Be of good cheer; it is I; be not afraid. And Peter answered him and said, Lord, if it be thou, bid me come unto thee on the water. And he said, Come. And when Peter was come down out of the ship, he walked on the water, to go to Jesus. But when he saw the wind boisterous, he was afraid; and beginning to sink, he cried, saying, Lord, save me. And immediately Jesus stretched forth his hand, and caught him, and said unto him, O thou of little faith, wherefore didst thou doubt? And when they were come into the ship, the wind ceased. Then they that were in the ship came and worshipped him, saying, Of a truth thou art the Son of God.

[Matthew 14:23-33]

"Be not afraid" might be the single most repeated statement in the Bible. Clearly the Redeemer wanted us to take it -- and Him -- seriously. But perhaps it's worth our time to view that exhortation its merits apart from the authority of the Son of God.

Why not be afraid? Surely there are plenty of things to fear in the world around us. Every step one takes outside his home, and quite a few inside it, puts him within the scope of something that might harm or bereave him. Pain and sorrow are certainties of human life. Indeed, no matter how fortunate any of us might be at any time, the future is unknowable except for one thing: we shall all die. And after we pass through that one-way door, we must face God's judgment on how we've lived, with no certainty about His verdict. Don't we have good reasons to fear?

There are enough "secular" takes on fear and the best attitude toward it that you've surely encountered as many as I have. You might have seen a few of them here. But today being Sunday, it's time for a specifically faith-based, Christian approach.

How could the Redeemer, He Who would ultimately face the most savagely torturous death His time could devise, counsel us lesser ones not to fear?

---

The premises of the Christian faith are few and simple. They're summed up in the Nicene Creed:

I believe in one God,
the Father almighty,
maker of heaven and earth,
of all things visible and invisible.

I believe in one Lord Jesus Christ,
the Only Begotten Son of God,
born of the Father before all ages.
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made, consubstantial with the Father;
through him all things were made.
For us men and for our salvation
he came down from heaven,
and by the Holy Spirit was incarnate of the Virgin Mary,
and became man.
For our sake he was crucified under Pontius Pilate,
he suffered death and was buried,
and rose again on the third day
in accordance with the Scriptures.
He ascended into heaven
and is seated at the right hand of the Father.
He will come again in glory
to judge the living and the dead
and his kingdom will have no end.

I believe in the Holy Spirit, the Lord, the giver of life,
who proceeds from the Father and the Son,
who with the Father and the Son is adored and glorified,
who has spoken through the prophets.

I believe in one, holy, catholic and apostolic Church.
I confess one Baptism for the forgiveness of sins
and I look forward to the resurrection of the dead
and the life of the world to come. Amen.

[Emphasis added by FWP.]

That is the entirety of Catholic Christian theology, except for two other items: the Immaculate Conception of Mary, the Mother of God; and the Assumption of Mary into Heaven after her death. But note the emphasized line in the Creed above: Jesus was the conduit through which His Father's power was exerted to create all things. The Gospel According to John reinforces this assertion in a poetic way:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him; and without him was not any thing made that was made. [John 1:1-3]

If Jesus, the Word through Whom all things were made, tells us to "be not afraid," He must have good reason. That reason is dramatized in Peter's journey across the surface of the waters toward Him: he was endangered by one and only one thing: the onset of doubt.

---

In another Gospel passage of great importance, Jesus's disciples ask Him: "Lord, increase our faith." But He replies, "If you had faith like a mustard seed, you would say to this mulberry tree, 'Be uprooted and be planted in the sea'; and it would obey you." To the Redeemer, and of necessity to us as well, faith is the touchstone for all challenges, temporal as well as eternal. For He "through whom all things were made" knows our capacities. He would not demand of us exertions that exceed our strength, nor would He set us to trials beyond our ability to withstand.

Remember that He gave His disciples powers comparable to His own; they too could heal the sick and the lame and cast out demons, as long as they did so in His name. There could be no clearer demonstration of the power of faith in Him -- and the Twelve, men of Galilee whom He asked to accept a proposition asked of no other Israelite, needed it more than anyone to walk the Earth since them.

But wait; there's more!

---

We fear death for several reasons. It's often preceded by pain and incapacity. It separates us from those we love. Perhaps it will interrupt undertakings of importance to us. But there is this as well: Death is the end of all temporal pain, struggle, and strife. No matter how intense the trials and sufferings that precede it, death brings them to an end, even as it delivers infinitely more to us, and us to infinitely more.

Faith, specifically in the New Covenant of Christ and in His promise of eternal bliss in His nearness at the bargain price of obeying a few exceedingly simple commandments:

And he said unto him, Why callest thou me good? there is none good but one, that is, God: but if thou wilt enter into life, keep the commandments. He saith unto him, Which? Jesus said, Thou shalt do no murder, Thou shalt not commit adultery, Thou shalt not steal, Thou shalt not bear false witness, Honour thy father and thy mother: and, Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. [Matthew 19:17-19]

...is all that's required to get there from here.

[Operators are standing by to take your order! Please, no C.O.D.s]

What a tiny price for so great a gift! How much more could we have been offered? How much less could we have been asked in return? And with that star to steer by, what could there be to fear...except a failure of our faith?

Though we can fail in faith, faith will never fail us. Peter, before whom stood the fleshly incarnation of God, learned that at first hand as he trod the waters of the Sea of Galilee. His lesson is ours as well.

May God bless and keep you all.

A Compact Insight

The esteemed CDR M at Ace of Spades' place presents us with a revealing photo and a very insightful assessment. First, the photo, of a restaurant receipt issued in Minnesota:

Now for the enveloping story:

A small cafe in Stillwater has thrown itself into the big battle over Minnesota’s minimum wage increases, inundating the cafe with dozens of phone calls and online comments this week after it tacked on a 35-cent fee to meal tabs.

Oasis Cafe owner Craig Beemer said the fee is needed to offset the 75-cent wage hike that took effect Aug. 1, the first time Minnesota’s minimum wage has increased in a decade. Even with only half a dozen servers, Beemer says it will cost him $10,000 more a year to pay servers $8 an hour instead of the federal rate of $7.25 an hour. Instead of adding it on to food prices, he added the “minimum wage fee” — the only restaurant known to do so in Minnesota so far.... “We believe that the industry is overreacting,” Wade Luneburg of the MN State Council of UNITE HERE Unions told the Star Tribune this week. “Putting [minimum wage] fees on tickets and passing the cost on to consumers directly is strange at best, and creates an ‘us against them’ mentality while ordering dinner.”

Finally, CDR M's highly valuable insight:

Democrats do hate people knowing what they're paying for and why.

Ponder that for a moment.

---

When you know what you're paying for and why, and you receive the good or service into your own hands, you're capable of making the most important decisions in the marketplace:

• Is this what I need or want?
• Is it of the quality I seek?
• Is it worth what I've been asked to pay for it?

Normal, "dyadic" or two-party transactions, in which a seller and a buyer exchange goods for money without the intervention of some third party, enable the buyer to answer those questions without deflection or distortion. However, when the State gets into the act with laws that compel or constrain something about the transaction, the matter becomes murky. This is particularly the case with minimum-price laws -- and a minimum-wage law is exactly that.

Milton Friedman was especially candid about it in his book Free To Choose: "Economists may not know much, but we do know how to create shortages and surpluses." The brief disquisition that follows on maximum and minimum price laws is more illuminating than the entire text of the Congressional Record.

When the labor market is unencumbered legally, a "market-clearing" equilibrium is swiftly established, in which the entire stock of persons willing to do that labor for the prevailing wage is employed by employers who want the work performed and are willing to pay the market wage for it. Let's imagine that the equilibrium results in 100 persons employed as waiters and waitresses at the prevailing wage. Other things being kept equal, were the wage to increase, then more persons would be willing to work at those jobs; were it to decrease, fewer persons would seek such employment.

Conversely, employers will only pay a certain wage for a certain job if it's consonant with their own objectives: i.e., their ability to stay in business at an acceptable level of profit. A free market causes the prevailing wage level for a job to settle at a level determined by the stock of willing workers and the ability of employers to profit from their labor at that level. As bloodless as it sounds, it's merely what arises from enterprise in a free market.

A minimum-wage law for a particular category of labor increases the number of persons who will seek that wage, while it reduces the number who will pay it for that labor. Thus, the "market-clearing" equilibrium that had existed before the minimum-wage law is ripped asunder, leaving:

• A surplus of persons willing to perform that labor;
• A shortage of persons willing to pay to have it performed.

What's most poignant about the situation is that it literally creates unemployment, for while the number of persons willing to do those jobs will be greater than the previous number -- say, 110 rather than 100 -- the number employers are willing to hire at the new, legally-mandated wage level will be fewer: no longer 100, but 90. Thus, the law will result in the dismissal of previously employed persons.

Surpluses and shortages are always about a particular price level: what the buyer must pony up for the thing being offered versus what the seller will accept for it. The buyer's readiness, willingness, and ability to pay that price is what determines how much of it he'll buy. The most basic of economic truths tells us that as the price increases, all three of those things will decrease. There's no escape.

And all that is before we introduce yet another factor: those times when the buyer is only purchasing the good or service indirectly, as part of a package whose parts he cannot separate or discriminate.

---

In a "bundled" purchase, where the parts cannot be purchased separately, the buyer might well be either indifferent to one or more components or actively hostile to them. In the former, more benign case, the component may be seen as a transaction cost, without accepting which the larger transaction cannot occur. This is definitely the case with table service. No one goes out to eat specifically to enjoy the attentions of a waiter.

Thus, when the cost of dining out rises because of an increase in waiters' wages, the ultimate purchaser -- the restaurant patron -- can easily be misled. He might not be aware that the increase derives from that source. If it's sufficiently large, it will discourage him from returning, to the detriment of the restaurateur and all his employees, the more highly compensated waiter included. Yet another route by which a supposedly benevolent law gives rise to exactly the opposite of its supposed intentions! But should the restaurant go out of business from the loss of patronage, who will be blamed?

Hint: It's seldom the proponents of the "supposedly benevolent law."

---

Craig Beemer is doing his patrons an unusual service by telling them explicitly where the increase in their restaurant charges is coming from. He cannot unbundle table service; it's an unavoidable cost in the restaurant business, "cafeteria-style" restaurants excepted. He must either allow it to reduce his profits or pass the cost along to his patrons. The former case might reduce his willingness to operate his cafe below the threshold of a positive decision, if not drive him out of business entirely. The proponents of the minimum-wage increase are undoubtedly furious about Beemer's decision to disclose his increased expense so candidly. As CDR M has already noted, they don't want you to know what you're paying for, or why: a key motivation behind ObamaCare and much else. To the extent that you're aware, you'll place the blame where it belongs: the ultimate statist's nightmare.

Let's give them more such nightmares. Many more.

As The Foundations Crumble

"All governments, even a benevolent despotism like my own, rest ultimately upon the consent of the governed." [Emir Abd al-Rahman, in Frank Yerby's novel of Saracen Spain An Odor Of Sanctity]

That there was ever a Muslim ruler as insightful as Abd al-Rahman is not supported by the historical record. However, novelist Yerby was on hand to provide that important Supporting Cast character the necessary insight. Those at the levers of power of America today behave as if they utterly lack that insight...which is doubtful, to say the least.

When Milton Friedman said that the key to good government isn't installing good men in power, but rather creating conditions under which bad men would find it desirable -- by their own standards -- to do the right thing, he was restating the key implication of the "consent of the governed" axiom in economic terms. Economics, after all, is just the study of what people do to pursue their desires. Bad men, a category which envelops the overwhelming majority of persons in (or who aspire to) the political class, have their desires as well. We must despise them and condemn those who pursue them; we must not act as if they were of no consequence.

Alongside that, we must be mindful of that subcategory of bad men of the political class who:

• Are aware that their power rests ultimately on the consent of the governed, and:
• Are determined that it shall no longer be so.

These might be the most important members of that class: not because they have much hope of bringing their ambitions to fruition, but because of the carnage they can wreak in the attempt.

---

It might be the case that every power-wielder dreams of making his ascendancy irreversible. We know that some have hoped to do so, because they've tried. Yet the record of history suggests that theirs is a hopeless quest:

    The moral dimension of arranging the assassination of a popular politician didn’t trouble Wriston at all. Living in the public eye had always entailed increased risk. Historically, whenever some troublemaker had roused the rabble to a greater pitch than the Establishment of that time and place could tolerate, it had disposed of him with no compunction and extreme prejudice. There were parts of the world where that was still the inevitable price of rising to power—places where a dismissal from high office was always administered with high-velocity lead. Power seekers in such lands arrived in their palaces with their death warrants already signed and sealed; they merely awaited delivery.

A goodly fraction of historical tyrants were pulled down and executed by their own subjects, while a few invoked the wrath of external powers, which then pursued them and brought them to their just ends. The former is the preferred end of a tyrant, for it bears a sharper lesson, with more deterrent effect, than the latter. Therefore, the aspiring tyrant-for-life must be watchful for the rise of those conditions that make popular uprising likely, and likely to succeed.

Hearken to the esteemed Ace of Spades:

The government's basis for rule over the citizens is based on two things:

1. Sheer naked coercive power.

And:

2. Moral authority, and the notion that, while a citizen might not like the particular government serving at any particular time, that citizen values something more eternal than the temporary political circumstances of a four year period of time.

Namely, the idea that it is best for everyone to follow the law, because it's more important to support a stable government without turmoil and violence than to violate the law to win on any immediate, ephemeral political point.

Let's pause here for a citation from a (hopefully) better-known commentator:

Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.

Now back to Ace:

Note that it is far better for any society that the government's power rests more on the second pillar than on the first. Because so long as that pillar, of moral authority, of general fairness, of a general sense that the longterm interests of America are better served by adherence to government than to rebellion against it, the government will rarely, if ever, have to resort to the ultimate pillar of authority, which is physical, violent coercion....

The law works when people see an inherent value of the law beyond their short-term interests.

When they see other people violating the law, they decide that only a Chump would obey the law, and they begin violating the law as well.

Is this what this Administration wants?

Is it even capable of the low level of thinking to see how deeply corrosive and dangerous that casual lawbreaking by the state can be?

As the Obama Administration continues to engage in casual, contemptuous law-breaking itself, do they ever stop to consider the harm they're doing to the oldest, longest-lived republican democracy in the world?

Do they even trouble themselves to wonder?

The ultimate question encapsulated in Ace's ponderings is whether American government's perceived legitimacy, as it derives from our nation's established patterns and practices, can survive the ongoing explosion of injustice.

---

As usual, I've been circling my main point, but then, it's one I've made before. Indeed, Isaac Asimov made it before I was born:

"The tale of my interrupted trial will spread through the galaxy. Frustration of my plans to lighten the disaster will convince people that the future holds no promise to them. Already they recall the lives of their grandfathers with envy. They will see that political revolutions and trade stagnations will increase. The feeling will pervade the galaxy that only what a man can grasp for himself at that moment will be of any account. Ambitious men will not wait and unscrupulous men will not hang back. By their every action they will hasten the decay of the worlds."

The contrast thus illuminated between legislated law and Natural Law could hardly be clearer. Legislated law depends upon the allegiance of those subject to it -- their willingness to conform their behavior to the law without being coerced into doing so. For there is never enough enforcement power to execute, imprison, fine, or intimidate the whole population into obeying any law. The idea is self-contradictory. Yet still more striking is just how small a fraction of the citizenry can effectively nullify a law by noncompliance. The experiences of the United States put that fraction at about 2%.

I've written about this, and the reasons for it, several times before this, but never before with such a specific law, nor such a specific fraction of the populace, in mind.

---

"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." [Yes, yes.]

As I write this, the Obama Administration has plainly flouted the Constitution's prescriptions and proscriptions a minimum of twelve times. Though in some cases the genesis is unclear, the implication that all such floutings occurred with Obama's approval, if not his active direction, seems inescapable. The general awareness of Obama's contempt for the Constitution -- the document that creates his office and bestows authority upon it -- has given rise to a horrifying secondary consequence:

Seeking to file a complaint about the Helmetta Regional Animal Shelter, Steve Wronko visited the Helmetta Police Department to air his grievances about the shelter falling prey to nepotism and corruption as a result of Helmetta Mayor Nancy Martin appointing her son Brandon Metz to head up the facility.

“I’ve made objections about what’s going on at the shelter over there,” Wronko tells the police officer, adding, “My first and fourth amendment rights were violated, my civil rights were violated.”

“Obama just decimated the freakin’ Constitution, so I don’t give a damn. If he doesn’t follow the Constitution, we don’t have to,” responds the cop, brazenly violating the oath he swore to uphold the Constitution.

The comment is self-evidently shocking, but it also provides an insight as to how corruption from the very top reaches all the way down to the bottom, providing law enforcement with a twisted form of justification for their unconstitutional activities.

At the end of the video, other police officers arrive to kick Wronko out of the building, with the cop who doesn’t give a “damn” about constitutional rights stating, “Either you get out or you’re gonna get locked up.”

Normally I would distrust anything from flagrant hysteric Alex Jones's InfoWars site, but this item appears to have been confirmed by video evidence -- which since it was first published has been taken out of general view. (See also these confirming reports.)

When municipal police express such attitudes in words -- never mind the innumerable, widespread accounts of police-state tactics wielded against ordinary, non-violent Americans merely going about their peaceable ways -- we can no long blindly place our faith in the "rule of law." That concept has all too obviously been set aside in favor of a far older conception: "Might makes right."

But who, ultimately, holds the preponderance of might?

---

If the armed civilian populace of these United States were an army, it would be larger than all the "official" armies that exist today rolled into one. It would boast more firearms, more ammunition, and of course more members than any army in history, including the fabled hordes of Xerxes, Attila, and Genghis Khan. Even the little local pockets of that "army" would be sufficient to resist any other local coercive force...or displace any "authority" that might stand in its way.

With the developments cited and alluded to in the above, the day will soon be upon us when events of that sort will occur.

The regime fears this, of course. It knows the foundations of its authority are crumbling beneath it, by its own actions. That's why it's bent its efforts to limiting public knowledge of its doings. Its moves to restrict civilians' access to firearms, which have fortunately been largely unsuccessful, should be viewed in the same light. If we proceed from the opening observations and categorizations of this essay, it seems clear that not only is that regime composed entirely of "bad men," but moreover that they are of the subgroup who are aware that their power rests on the consent of the governed, but are determined that it shall no longer be so.

Their strategy of "progressively" impoverishing as many Americans as possible will only take them so far. Indeed, it's a strategy that could backfire on them explosively. More anti-regime sentiment rests among America's working class -- the segment of America most brutally affected by the rise of Obamunism -- than many outside that class are aware.

The Battle of Athens provides the precedent and the framework:

The outcome will depend upon time, resolve, and the will to prevail...as will the blood price we must pay.

Squirrel Food

Yes, Gentle Reader: It's yet another "assorted" column. Please excuse me; I'm just dead resting. (Beautiful plumage, isn't it?)

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1. Leading From Behind Again?

You're probably aware that the Won has authorized "limited" air strikes against the ISIS forces encircling the Christians and Yazidis on that mountain in northern Iraq. What you might not know is that he's late to the party:

“The several hundred American advisers that I ordered to Iraq will continue to assess what more we can do to help train, advise and support Iraqi forces going forward,” Obama said. “And just as I consulted Congress on the decisions I made today, we will continue to do so going forward. My fellow Americans, the world is confronted by many challenges, and while America has never been able to right every wrong, America has made the world a more secure and prosperous place.”

Secretary of State John Kerry said in a statement that Obama “has acted expeditiously and appropriately in authorizing targeted military action and providing significant humanitarian assistance to the people of Iraq at this very difficult moment when it is vitally needed.”

“With a gut-wrenching humanitarian crisis unfolding, and the rolls of the starving and sick growing daily, there’s not a minute to waste. The United States is acting and leading, and the world cannot sit by and watch innocents die,” Kerry said. The Turks actually took lead on the first humanitarian drops escorted by their F-16s. [Emphasis added by FWP]

It hardly matters how one feels about the use of American military power on "discretionary" causes such as this one. The point is that Obama is deploying an old political tactic: "Show me which way the crowd is going, so I can lead them." Sentiment favoring humanitarian intervention in Iraq had grown strong enough to persuade him that such an intervention would be best for him personally. But note that he waited for other forces to act, so any unsavory repercussions from events in that theater could be credibly shifted to other shoulders.

2. The Devil You Know and The One-Vote Effect.

Lamar Alexander has defeated TEA Party favored Joe Carr for the GOP's Senatorial nomination in Tennessee:

U.S. Senator Lamar Alexander will hold the Republican spot on the November election ballot, despite losing in his home district of Blount County. The two term senator and former governor defeated tea party challenger State Representative Joe Carr in the primary Thursday.

"I look forward to the general election. I invite all those who voted for my opponents to work with me. I invite democrats and independents to join me," Senator Alexander told reporters after the race was called. "We've got to learn to work together if we're going to solve big problems in this country."

That's it for TEA Party challenges to Establishment Republicans in this election cycle. Given the degree of hostility to the political Establishment, it can be hard to understand.

Part of it is political inertia, reinforced by "the devil you know" effect. Quite a lot of voters will always prefer the familiar to the untried, which is one of the reasons I consider the success of this presidential bid fantasy rather than a plausible near-future development. But alongside that we have the "one vote effect:" the tendency of those who might have tipped the scales in the opposite direction to stay home out of inchoate despair: "My one vote can't make a difference."

While it's true that any individual vote is highly unlikely to decide an election, there's a renormalized rationality effect to be considered as well: the pernicious influence of such an attitude on like-minded others susceptible to its dreary lure. As the saying goes, "Hard work might pay off tomorrow; laziness pays off today." That applies to stirring one's stumps and getting to the polling place, though traveling the handful of miles required to get there doesn't strike many as "hard work."

Remember that your attitude can prove transmissible to others -- and that the "others" around you are more likely than not to hold similar opinions on political questions.

3. And While We're On The Subject Of Transmissibility...

The arrival of the Ebola virus on North American shores has the nation at the edge of panic. There are grounds for grave concern, to be sure. The disease is more often fatal than not, and horrifically so at that. But there are also reasons to remain relatively calm, though prudent in one's comings and goings.

First, even the most transmissible disease requires a vector: a mode of transportation from one infectee to the next. The vector for Ebola is virally-loaded fluid particles absorbed through the mucosa. More, the virus is adapted to tropical / jungle conditions and cannot survive for very long in a temperate climate, outside a compatible host. So public health provisions for preventing the spread of the disease are relatively simple:

• Minimize your exposure to strangers and large groups;
• Cover your mouth and nose when about to sneeze or cough;
• Resist the importunings of your Ebola ravaged lover to "do it just one more time before I croak."

Second, Ebola's speed of onset is a factor in limiting its spread: it incapacitates and kills rather quickly. Thus, the period during which a carrier can be out and about is limited to a short time, after which he's unlikely to be in Grand Central Station to cough on someone else.

Third, remember how clean Americans tend to be. Cleanliness is important in limiting the transmission of any microbe. When we face a threat like this, we tend to intensify such practices, which, even if unnecessary during happier times, is all to the good during a period of alarm.

Be not...well, be a little afraid. But force your fears to serve you. Don't let them paralyze you.

4. Ocean Habitation and Freedom Of The Seas.

Roger Zelazny, among others, wrote of ocean-floor "bubble cities" that would permit mass human colonization of the seas. He used the motif en passant in his novella "The Eve of RUMOKO," which can be found in his episodic novel My Name Is Legion, but without examining many of its deeper implications. Similarly, David Brin lightly explored the concept of ocean-surface colonization in his novel Earth, but left many side trails from such a development unexplored. One such pertains to conceptions of naval power and the concept of "freedom of the seas."

"Freedom of the seas" is an ancient concept predicated on the absence of persistent structures in the seas and oceans: that is, the sort of edifices humans create when we're making homes and such. If one assumes that such persistent occupation of a well defined place in or on the waters is impossible, it follows from Lockean principles that no one can acquire property rights in or on the seas. That assumption is already being challenged by deep-water oil-drilling platforms, but so far none of those have yet grown large or ramified enough to constitute an enduring habitat for Man.

Without the ability to seize a delineated portion of the sea and "enclose it from the common" in an enduring way, it becomes thinkable to propound the notion that "freedom of the seas" -- i.e., passage over or under the waters as one might prefer -- should be the right of all persons and nations. But imagine along with this half-deranged science fiction writer for a moment: What if either Zelzany's undersea bubble-city concept or Brin's floating-habitat concept should become a reality?

The problem is more complex than it appears at first blush, for it's a longstanding tenet of property law that property tenure upon the surface of the Earth implies certain rights over whatever is above or below, unless explicitly ceded at the time of acquisition. For example, cessions, adverse covenants, and zoning ordinances to the side, I could erect an orbital access tower on my property without concerning myself over any aircraft discommoded by it. They, not I, would have to adjust. (Granted that it would be pretty silly for me to do such a thing. My property taxes are already quite high enough.) Subsurface rights are treated similarly: cessions, adverse covenants, and zoning ordinances to the side once more, I have the right to excavate on my land to whatever depth I desire, and to claim whatever I might find there.

Bubble-cities on the seabed might be conceded similar rights, though they might prove unable to exploit them, owing to their need for watertight enclosure. Floating habitats wouldn't be likely to extrude structures far above them, but what about below them? And what influence would such developments have upon the free passage not only of passenger and cargo traffic through the seas but upon vessels of war, especially submarines? How much sovereignty in a portion of the seas would be consistent with any degree of naval power projection?

There's seed material for a story or two in there, I think. Alfred Thayer Mahan, call your office!

A Great Light Dawns Part 2: The Racial Front Lines

There are days I find myself wondering what's become of America's spine, that we tolerate so much viciousness without even rousing ourselves to denounce it. The many eruptions of racialist demagoguery, wherein black (and sometimes Hispanic) hucksters strain themselves to their limits trying to whip up resentment and hatred toward whites are typical occasions for that sentiment.

Now and then, such...persons even gather into "conferences" that include a few self-denouncing whites:

The April 2014 [White Privilege Conference] in Madison, Wis., was the 15th consecutive year of an event explicitly dedicated to training college and public school teachers to indoctrinate students with an intellectually toxic combination of critical theory, bogus history and ideological absurdity.

Officially, the "WPC is a conference that examines challenging concepts of privilege and oppression and offers solutions and team building strategies to work toward a more equitable world," according to its website.

WPC organizers also insist on their website that their event is "not a conference designed to attack, degrade or beat up on white folks."

That message clearly didn't get communicated to Kim Radersma, a former high school English teacher who led a breakout session in Madison.

According to the MacIver Institute, Radersma's presentation included these gems:

• "My racial identity, as a white person who believes that I am somehow better or more deserving, is the problem. The white supremacy, the structure is the problem ...
• "It's that savior mentality, like 'save them, because they are not like us,' and that normalization of whiteness. Whiteness is best and those poor others aren't as good as us ...
• "I have to every day wake up and acknowledge that I am so deeply imbedded with racist thoughts and notions and actions in my body that I have to choose everyday to do anti-racist work and think in an anti-racist way."

Other speakers at the conference said, according to a video provided by Progressives Today, colonial Americans invented racism.

"Racism is central to America. It's central to how the country was developed. It is central to how it operates right now," claimed Professor Adrien Wing of the University of Iowa. She also described President Obama as "the face of global white privilege."

Similarly, Professor Jacqueline Battalora of Saint Xavier University told attendees that "white supremacy has been embedded in America from its founding."

I don't think these folks -- whatever their skin colors may be -- are fans of the white race, do you? But enough of that. The point here is that this is par for the racialist course: their usual, preferred tactic for creating social and political divisions along racial lines. The WPC merely presents it in a more organized fashion. Suitable for strafing, you might say.

Whatever the organizers had in mind, they can't be terribly bright. This makes it all too clear that there is a strategically coherent attempt in progress to demonize American whites, to persuade whites to condemn themselves and to grant all manner of social, political, and economic privileges to blacks, and to inculcate firmly in blacks the conviction that we are their enemies.

Yet 75% of Americans alive today are whites. We hold so many edges over the minority races that were we minded to crush them into inescapable servitude, we'd have no trouble doing so. Indeed, the greater part of the progress blacks have experienced over the century past is owed to whites' collective decision to include rather than exclude them: in our social institutions, in our economic arrangements, and of course as equals before the law. They have no rational grounds for resenting us, much less for hating us and wishing us ill.

So why do so many listen attentively to the racialists? Why do they lap up the venom being poured out before them?

You won't like my conclusions.

---

Hearken once more to the great Clive Staples Lewis:

Democracy is the word with which you must lead them by the nose. The good work which our philological experts have already done in the corruption of human language makes it unnecessary to warn you that they should never be allowed to give this word a clear and definable meaning. They won’t. It will never occur to them that democracy is properly the name of a political system, even a system of voting, and that this has only the most remote and tenuous connection with what you are trying to sell them. Nor of course must they ever be allowed to raise Aristotle’s question: whether “democratic behaviour” means the behaviour that democracies like or the behaviour that will preserve a democracy. For if they did, it could hardly fail to occur to them that these need not be the same.

You are to use the word purely as an incantation; if you like, purely for its selling power. It is a name they venerate. And of course it is connected with the political ideal that men should be equally treated. You then make a stealthy transition in their minds from this political ideal to a factual belief that all men are equal. Especially the man you are working on. As a result you can use the word democracy to sanction in his thought the most degrading (and also the least enjoyable) of human feelings. You can get him to practise, not only without shame but with a positive glow of self-approval, conduct which, if undefended by the magic word, would be universally derided.

The feeling I mean is of course that which prompts a man to say I’m as good as you.

The first and most obvious advantage is that you thus induce him to enthrone at the centre of his life a good, solid, resounding lie. I don’t mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself. No man who says I’m as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, la-di-da affectation. Here’s a fellow who says he doesn’t like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here’s a man who hasn’t turned on the jukebox — he’s one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they’d be like me. They’ve no business to be different. It’s undemocratic.” [from Screwtape Proposes A Toast]

I'm as good as you, with all the accompanying resentments and licenses for foul behavior, is the sentiment being purveyed by every racialist huckster at work today. He seeks to have his audience adopt it for their mantra, but aimed at the white race: we who constructed and still maintain the society that coddles them. To wit:

1. Only whites can be racists.
2. Whites cannot be victims, at least if the aggressor is black. (They're only getting what they deserve.)
3. Whites have preferred positions in American society only because blacks have been excluded.
4. A black who attacks a white should be presumed innocent, but a white who defends himself against such aggression is an oppressor who deserves to be punished regardless of the facts or the circumstances.
5. Asiatics, who have prospered by conforming to the white-entrenched norms of this oppressive society, should therefore be considered "adopted whites," and equally deserving of black resentment and vengeance.

The black who accepts this unholy creed has prepared himself to commit injustice after injustice against whites while preening himself for his "racial solidarity" and murmuring that "they deserve it." But note: Not all blacks accept the racialist doctrine. Indeed, it appears to be palatable to a relatively small fraction of American blacks: probably less than a third thereof. What accounts for the difference?

I contend that C. S. Lewis pinned it, through Screwtape's mouth.

---

"No man who says I’m as good as you believes it." Indeed. No man would lower himself to such a statement unless he were persuaded, by objective evidence, of the reverse. I'm as good as you is at its core a demand that someone else step forward to equalize the complainer with his target, for the complainer knows he cannot do so for himself.

When a white man says I'm as good as you, he almost always makes himself into an object of derision, even contempt. But when a black man says so, whites are expected to agree enthusiastically, perhaps with a tug on the forelock for emphasis.

My reply?

"You think so? Prove it.
"Match my accomplishments.
"Equal my erudition and eloquence.
"Prove that you've met your responsibilities as well as I've met mine.
"Until you can do those things without flinching,
"You're just a mouthy, resentful idiot."

Somehow I don't think that would be a popular stance at a "White Privilege Conference." But then, my other opinions would suffice to keep me outside in the first place.

The Rebirth Of Evil

Men have known periods of both moral advancement and moral regression. When the context is politics and government, the least appreciated of the former is usually known as the Peace of Westphalia: a period in 1648 over which several highly significant treaties were agreed among the crowned heads of Europe, which could then still be non-sarcastically called Christendom.

The Westphalia treaties set down several principles most persons of our time take utterly for granted – indeed, to the point of shock upon being informed that rulers haven’t always conceded them. One of those glossed over more often than not was the proscription of private armies, a corollary of the reservation of the warmaking power to the sovereigns of nation-states. Private armies had long been deemed pernicious for several reasons, not the least of which was their habit of sweeping up any able-bodied man they found in their path and impressing him into their forces. In consequence, the wars in which those armies fought often reaped as many noncombatant as combatant lives, it being well nigh impossible to distinguish one from the other.

The sovereigns agreed, at long last, that allowing the carnage of war to embrace noncombatants was “bad for business;” that is, it impeded the economies of the belligerent nations. That could put a premature end to the fighting. Horrors! From that grudging recognition, added to the sovereigns’ desire to have the privilege of warmaking reserved to themselves, arose the formal distinction between soldier and civilian, the latter being protected from impressment or deliberate slaughter by general agreement among those who retained the privilege of making war.

Though the principle was sometimes disrespected “along the edges” – e.g., Napoleon’s imposition of conscription upon France during his years of dominance – no sovereign dared to denounce it openly for more than two centuries. What we know today as the Geneva Conventions on War began to germinate.

Then came a truly terrible day.

A government with evil intentions had sent two million men marching on a mission of conquest. Its liege lord and top military planners were angry at the stubbornness of a minor power, neutral by treaty, that refused those armies free passage through its lands. The conquest-minded state decided on a strategy of intimidation. An aircraft long kept in reserve was sent aloft on a mission of terror, the first since the Westphalia treaties inaugurated the moral renaissance of Europe.

The aircraft was a Zeppelin, designated the "L-Z" by the commanders of the armies of the German Empire under Kaiser Wilhelm II. Its weapons were gravity bombs, thirteen in number. Its target was the Belgian city of Liege, where the Kaiser's troops had met unexpected resistance to their Schlieffen Plan thrust against France. Its harvest was nine civilian lives: the first civilians deliberately killed by authorized military action since the Peace of Westphalia.

The date was August 6, 1914: one hundred years ago today.

---

Contemporary commentators don’t spend a lot of ink on that terrible day. Some of them are so shallowly grounded in history that they aren’t even aware of it. Others prefer the supposedly more dramatic events at Hiroshima, where many more nominally civilian lives were taken by a wholly new mechanism. But for a moral transition, an abandonment of absolute moral constraint for cold utilitarian preference, that day in August, 1914 stands infinitely far above any subsequent event.

The bombs Zeppelin “L-Z” dropped on Liege opened a gate to the aerial civilian slaughters of every subsequent armed conflict. Any one of those subsequent bombardments dwarfs the death toll at Liege, but Liege was what made them thinkable. Liege, by which the German Empire declared that the rules set in place by the Westphalia treaties would not bind it – that bypassing little Belgium and getting its forces into France trumped any moral considerations – liberated the rest of the governments of Europe from those same constraints.

When an unnamed scientist said in 1945 at Alamogordo that “Science has now known sin,” he was approximately thirty-one years too late. The sin was committed in 1914, over Liege. Only the science familiar to Sir Isaac Newton was required to consummate it.

---

One of the doctrines of my faith is that of Original Sin, with which I have long quibbled on moral grounds: i.e., that a just God would not taint the soul of a newborn with the deeds of his ancestors. Yet we are clearly a fallen race, ever in danger of ignoring the dictates of conscience in the name of profit or “practicality.” Worse, we are a backsliding race, prone to discarding the hard-learned lessons of our progenitors as if we were of a higher and more insightful species, and then painfully having to learn them all over again.

Liege and its century of consequences bring home to me what Original Sin is really about: our susceptibility to evil, rather than any odium for evils committed by persons long dead. Original Sin guarantees that evil cannot be put down permanently so long as we remain men under the veil of Time. It will rise from its supposed grave over and over, like a vampire un-staked, to drag us back to the abyss whence our forefathers so laboriously climbed.

Look to the east, to the blood-drenched lands of the Middle East. Look closely; squint if you must. After a while you will spy the armies of Xerxes and Muhammad. You’ll discover the slaughters of the Crusades era, and the blood toll collected at the gates of Vienna. You’ll discern the silhouette of Yeats’s “rough beast” slouching toward Bethlehem. You will see the shadow of Zeppelin "L-Z" hovering over Liege.

Pray for deliverance. I’ll be doing so shortly. It’s all I can do.

A Great Light Dawns Dept.

Now and then, the Beltway crowd belatedly allows itself a glimpse of reality, however distasteful it might be:

It’s a widely accepted idea that Republicans are sitting on a demographic time bomb: The GOP is getting whiter and whiter in terms of the voters it attracts even as the country is growing increasingly diverse.

Marisa Abrajano, an associate professor of political science at the University of California at San Diego, doesn’t dispute that basic notion in a new study of the electorate. But she does suggest that the time bomb may well have a very long fuse — and that in the time before it explodes, Republicans could actually benefit electorally from a consolidation of the white vote.

“Given that whites still make up about three-quarters of the voters in the nation and will likely be the clear majority for decades to come, there is every reason to believe that whites will have a real say in who governs,” writes Abrajano in “Will Immigration Spark a White Backlash in America?” “Indeed the white population’s growing allegiance to the Republican Party points to a very different short term future — one that might more likely be highlighted by Republican victory than by Democratic dominance.”

As the title of Abrajano’s study suggests, she ties these demographic shifts closely to the ongoing debate over immigration — and, specifically, what to do about undocumented immigrants — and the effects on our politics.

[Emphasis added by FWP.]

Abrajano, given her Brookings Institution affiliation, is likely to hold to left-of-center politics, wherefore she would consider her conclusion an unfortunate one. Yet she apparently possesses enough realism to state it unambiguously, which is a rare thing among persons of a left-liberal inclination. This might not be sufficient cause to say "there's hope for the nation yet," but it's not bad news at all.

The critical factor, which few on the Left have acknowledged, is their own role in bringing about whatever degree of "white backlash" they and their mascot-groups must face. For all their incessant racism-shouting, they've never confronted the extent to which racial division in America is of their making.

To this admitted racist, it's a source of dour amusement -- especially when I get to rub some sanctimonious leftist's face in it, as follows:

Sanctimonious Leftist: You're a racist!
Fran Porretto: And damned proud of it, baby. But do you know why I'm a racist?
SL: (sneering) I can hardly wait to hear it.
FWP: Because you made me one.

This is sometimes followed by dumbfounded silence, though now and then the conversation will continue along these lines:

SL: (shocked) How can you say such a thing?
FWP: Because it's true. You're my stand-in for everyone on your side of the political fence, while I represent my own. I wanted nothing but to be left in peace, to get along with my neighbors as best I can regardless of the color of their skins. You refused to permit it. You've emphasized race at every opportunity. You've harped on racial injustices in the distant past as if they were the doing of contemporary whites. You've taught American blacks and Hispanics to think of themselves as helpless victims of "Whitey." You've agitated ceaselessly for racial preferences in the law, and you've usually gotten them. You've excused non-white criminals, traitors, and other miscreants on the grounds that "they couldn't do otherwise in this oppressive society." You've granted a wholly undeserved degree of respect to racialist hucksters like Jesse Jackson, Al Sharpton, Julian Bond, Toure, Melissa Harris-Perry, and hundreds of others. You've used ordinary words and idioms as justifications for destroying decent men's lives and careers. You've used cries of "racism!" to silence anyone who disagrees with you about anything. Worst of all, you've got everyone in the whole damned country seeing race everywhere, and afraid to speak his mind if it might somehow touch on that subject. But now that whites are showing some racial consciousness, voting and relocating and arming to protect our own from the groups you've sheltered and coddled, you find that you dislike what you've wrought? Choke on it!

At that point the conversation usually trails off, though it might continue one exchange longer:

SL: I...didn't mean to do any of that.
FWP: If I accept your claim of good intentions, it makes you an idiot who shouldn't be allowed out of the house alone, much less permitted to have a voice in national discourse. But if you did intend this outcome, you're one of the worst villains in American history and deserve nothing but my contempt. In either case, get away from me.

Perhaps the greatest challenge, when I confront someone like "Sanctimonious Leftist," is not wishing him ill. Christians are taught from early in life not to hate. It's an important lesson, for hatred is an animating force that can have the most terrible consequences. A passage from C. S. Lewis's That Hideous Strength comes to mind:

[Dimble] seemed to Mark to be looking at him, not with anger or contempt, but with that degree of loathing which produces in those who feel it a kind of embarrassment -- as if he were an obscenity which decent people are forced, for very shame, to pretend that they have not noticed. In this Mark was quite mistaken. In reality his presence was acting on Dimble as a summons to rigid self-control. Dimble was simply trying very hard not to hate, not to despise, above all not to enjoy hating and despising, and he had no idea of the fixed severity which this effort gave to his face. The whole of the rest of the conversation went on under this misunderstanding.

However, I must hope that God will excuse thoroughgoing contempt and revulsion toward such a person, for at this point I find that I cannot deny it. I'd imagine that many decent Americans feel much the same, whether or not they ever "let fly" as I did in the exchanges above. Pray for our country, and for them...and for me.

"Fair" And Other Nonsense Syllables

I have a number of "favorite words." They're not my favorites because I use them often; I don't. They're not my favorites because they convey a meaning I find particularly valuable; they don't. They're my favorites because I laugh heartily whenever I see them used in a political or economic context.

"Fair" is one such word. As with most single-syllable words, it's very old. And it does possess a dictionary definition:

Fair adj.: Characterized by frankness, honesty, impartiality, or candor; open; upright; free from suspicion or bias; equitable; just; -- said of persons, character, or conduct; as, a fair man; fair dealing; a fair statement.

I must say, that's not the way my stepdaughters used it when they were smaller. "It's not fair!" translated to "But I want it!" in most cases; in the rest, it meant "Why can she have what she wants but I can't?"

It's also not the way the United Nations' Human Rights chairwoman would use it:

The UN's top human rights official again condemned Israel for its military actions to stop Hamas rocket attacks against Israeli civilians, accusing the Jewish state of “deliberately defying International Law... in a way that may constitute war crimes.”

Navi Pillay told reporters following yet another "emergency" meeting of the Geneva-based UN Human Rights Council that Israel was not doing enough to protect civilians. "There is a strong possibility,” said the known Israel critic, “that international law has been violated, in a manner that could amount to war crimes.”

Among the UN’s long bill of particulars against the beleaguered Jewish state comes the almost unbelievable accusation that Israel’s refusal to share its Iron Dome ballistic missile defense shield with the "governing authority" of Gaza – i.e. Hamas, the terror group created to pursue the extermination of the Jewish state and now waging a terrorist war against it – constitutes a war crime against the civilians of Gaza.

The UN chairwoman criticized the U.S. for helping fund Israel's Iron Dome system which has saved countless Israeli and Palestinian lives. "No such protection has been provided to Gazans against the shelling," she said.

Just because Hamas fires rockets indiscriminately aimed at Israeli civilian population centers without provocation and fires them from within its own population centers does not “absolve” Israel from its own legal violations, Pillay told reporters Thursday.

Translation: "Israel has Iron Dome. HAMAS doesn't. That's not fair!" (Applause to Phineas at Sister Toldjah for the link.)

Let's leave aside HAMAS's many aggressions, its unconcealed determination to destroy Israel and slaughter every Jew therein, its use of tunnels to commit atrocities against Israeli civilians, its use of human shields to discourage counterbattery fire by Israel, its repeated violations of previously agreed-upon cease-fire periods, and its general villainy toward those upon whom it has imposed itself. Gentle Reader, have you ever heard a military engagement condemned as "unfair" before? Specifically because the two sides were unequally armed? What would the United Nations have said to such a complaint, had it been raised by Germany or Japan in the closing days of World War II?

Good grief. Among American military officers of command rank, one of the homilies relevant to preparation for conflict is "If it's a fair fight, you haven't done your job." The entire point of military planning is to accumulate advantages over your putative adversary -- i.e., to make the coming fight as unfair as possible. But hark! The UN's top Human Rights official has just declared preparation that conforms to that maxim a war crime!

I have an uncanny suspicion that, were the balance of armaments just as asymmetrical as it is today, but in HAMAS's favor, Miss Pillay would not have emitted a word of protest. But hey, that's just me.

What about the conflicts between Russia and Ukraine? Or between ISIS and Iraq? Or the tensions on the Korean Peninsula, steadily escalating toward a rolling boil? Has Miss Pillay had anything to say about the imbalances of armament in those regions?

Or...say it softly, now...what about the card Israel holds that has kept its neighboring states at bay since the conclusion of the Yom Kippur War: its nuclear deterrent? Would Miss Pillay like to go on record as advocating Israel's sharing of those weapons with HAMAS?

I can imagine a time, not too far in the future, when the citizens of a restored America walk by that megalith on the East River, smile down at their minor children, and say, "Would you like to hear what the people who once worked in that building did there?" And after regaling Junior with fifteen or twenty minutes' worth of UN lunacies, conclude with, "And we used to pay them to do it!"

Before Dad launches into such a recitation, he'd better make certain that Junior has a healthy tolerance for absurdity. A program of nightly Monty Python productions might do the trick. Failing that, there's always the clown extravaganza we call Congress. But perhaps I'm being "unfair" to our esteemed legislators. Not that I care, of course.

Multiplications: A Sunday Rumination

No doubt any Christians in the audience will be familiar with this Gospel tale:

Now when Jesus heard this he went away from there privately in a boat to an isolated place. But when the crowd heard about it, they followed him on foot from the towns. As he got out he saw the large crowd, and he had compassion on them and healed their sick. When it became evening his disciples came to him saying, “This is an isolated place and the hour is already late. Send the crowds away so that they can go into the villages and buy food for themselves.” But he said to them, “They don’t need to go. You give them something to eat.” They said to him, “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” “Bring them here to me,” he said. Then he instructed the crowds to sit down on the grass. He took the five loaves and two fish, and looking up to heaven he gave thanks and broke the loaves. He gave them to the disciples, who in turn gave them to the crowds. They all ate and were satisfied, and they picked up the broken pieces left over, twelve baskets full. Not counting women and children, there were about five thousand men who ate. [Matthew 14:13-21]

Ah, yes: The Miracle of the Loaves and Fishes. Consider how this well known tale is usually retold and swiftly dismissed. Looky here: a miracle! That Redeemer was one awesome dude, eh? That’s that, everybody got the bread crumbs? Let’s pass on to something else now, children.

This morning at Mass, Deacon Michael Byrne of Infant Jesus parish in Port Jefferson told it properly. I can’t remember his exact words, but I can reproduce the gist of his explication. I doubt I’ll ever forget it.

First, Jesus elects to leave the populated area for “an isolated place.” But a huge crowd drops everything and follows him thence...out of a pure desire to be with Him, and remain with Him until night has fallen.

Second, His disciples implore Him to send the other followers away, so they can procure food. But He is moved by the crowd’s hunger for Him and instructs His disciples to feed them out of their own store.

Third, they protest – out of selfishness, or out of realism? – that “We have here only five loaves and two fish.” Clearly, the disciples would prefer that the crowd depart, leaving them alone with Jesus.

Fourth, Jesus would have none of that. He takes the disciples’ food into His hands, gives thanks, and returns it to the disciples for distribution to the multitude.

Fifth and finally, all are fed to satiety, yet the leftovers the disciples collect prove copious enough to give a Tupperware^® salesman an orgasm.

So what happened? Yes, there was a miracle. Yes, it was Christ at the center thereof. But note: It was His disciples’ charity from their own meager store, however reluctantly they provided it, that was the seed for that miracle, and His disciples that distributed the food to the hungry crowd. Moreover, the throng that had followed Him to that deserted place had asked nothing of Him...except to be in His nearness.

There’s a moral in there, isn’t there?

---

Sane persons who live in healthy societies don’t perform charity carelessly or thoughtlessly. They seek to know what they’re doing, and for whom, and what consequences it will have. But once such a man has identified a person in need, has decided that that person deserves assistance rather than being a freeloader of some sort, and has satisfied himself that his alms are more likely to conduce to good rather than harm – i.e., that his gifts will bring about a net improvement in the state of the beneficiary – he proceeds to give from his own store, and with his own hands. He doesn’t allow intermediaries between himself and the recipient, for one can never be certain that such persons will serve his agenda and not something wholly distinct from it.

That sort of charity is vanishingly rare in our time. Almost all contemporary “charitable giving” involves monetary gifts rendered to salaried intermediaries who work for corporate entities, on the representation that the funds will go to benefit “the needy.” Those “needy” never acquire faces or names.

As we know, in the usual case a hefty fraction of our monetary gifts won’t get anywhere near “the needy,” going instead to “operating expenses:” the salaries of those who collected the funds. That fraction has, in a number of cases, risen all the way to 100%. What remains to become benefits distributed to “the needy” will do so in an unpredictable fashion: the giver can know neither the form nor time of delivery. Perhaps worst of all, “the needy” are not guaranteed to be persons whose troubles are not of their own making, nor that the benefits will bring about a true and enduring improvement in their existences. Few “charitable institutions” bother to do the checking that might ascertain such things. Worse, they and those who work for them have an innate incentive to perpetuate dependency rather than to dispel it, for dependency is the source of their income and their importance.

Thus, quite a lot of our giving results mainly in paying well-to-do hirelings and perpetuating the dependency of persons who, in the most common case, feel no gratitude whatsoever for their blessings.

So why do we do it?

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Of all the glorious things Jesus said while He wore the flesh, none are more important than these:

Now when the Pharisees heard that he had silenced the Sadducees, they assembled together. And one of them, an expert in religious law, asked him a question to test him: “Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?” Jesus said to him, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart, with all your soul, and with all your mind.’ This is the first and greatest commandment. The second is like it: ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’ All the law and the prophets hang on these two commandments.” [Matthew 22:34-40]

Clearly, to “love your neighbor” implies that you should help him when appropriate – i.e., when he wants it, needs it, and deserves it. You must not do him harm: “Love does no evil to a neighbor.” But who is this “neighbor” of whom the Redeemer speaks? Is it anyone and everyone who might happen to profess a need?

Not at all. Your neighbor is he who is near you: near enough that you can determine what he needs, the reasons for it, and what might improve his condition for yourself.

Only if you’re confident that you know those things should you proceed to render charity – from your own hands, and never against your neighbor’s wishes or resistance.

Jesus had His disciples distribute the food He had blessed and invested with His power. He intended that they be the ones the throng see as their beneficiaries, perhaps because He knew that the disciples’ time on Earth would greatly exceed His, but perhaps more because He wanted them to know true charity as few, even in those years, knew it. They had performed the preliminaries: taking stock of the hour and the crowd’s lack of food, and providing their own food, however meager, for an offering. The third step – the actual giving of alms from person to person – was what remained. With it, the recipe was completed, and Love could act to multiply their gifts as He intended.

The lesson has largely been lost on us of the Twenty-First Century. It need not be so.

May God bless and keep you all.

Edging Toward Moral Equivalence Part 2

In the previous essay, in speaking of grievances old and new, I introduced a concept quite a lot of persons apparently find difficult to swallow: that of moving on:

[The] Palestinians' "grievance" [is] sixty-six years old as of today. How long must we wait for that "grievance" to expire? Are American Indians still entitled to claim a grievance against the European colonists of North America? Incidentally, the newborn state of Israel offered the "dispossessed" compensation for the lands and homes it had claimed. Though some of the Muslims thus dispossessed stepped forward to collect said compensation, many declined to do so, believing that they could recapture by force of arms what they had lost. As anyone familiar with the history of the region will know, Israel's uniformly hostile neighbors made several attempts to do so, all of which came to an abrupt end with Israel's acquisition of a nuclear deterrent.

They're not long words, so it must be the requirement they express that troubles the objectors. Inasmuch as two of the objectors have based their opposition on individual-rights axioms in the terminology customarily used by libertarians, I have tentatively concluded that the lunacy that caused me to leave the Libertarian Party with never a backward glance is still operating among such persons.

The great fallacy among libertarians is that their favorite moral-political axioms need respect no limiting principle. In other words, their domain of applicability is deemed unbounded. But this is plainly incorrect. Indeed, it accounts for by far the greater part of popular revulsion toward "Capital-L" Libertarianism.

As I wrote some time ago:

[T]he libertarian political philosophy, where applicable, is a very good one. It's more accurate in its assessment of human nature and its controlling influences, and leads to better societies and better economic results, than any other political concept ever advanced. But the "where applicable" part is very important; in fact, it's the most important part of this paragraph, as it explains in near-totality the "conservative-libertarian schism."

Where would the libertarian postulates of individual rights and individual responsibilities fail to apply? Three generic places:

1. Where the atoms that interact are not individuals, but collectivities;
2. Where the "individual" under discussion is incapable, either from innate incapacity or from injury, of understanding rights and responsibilities;
3. Where rights clash in an absolute and irreconcilable way.

Important specific topics that fall within these categories are:

1. National defense and foreign dealings;
2. The protection and restraint of the immature and the mentally diseased;
3. Abortion.

Quite a lot of animus arises from libertarian insistence that no such limitations nor exclusions can possibly exist.

---

One of the great moral problems throughout post-Enlightenment history has been that of the innocent shield: the individual compelled to stand between an aggressor and a defender -- alternately, between a armed criminal and those who would bring him to justice. The late Robert Nozick, himself no intellectual lightweight, pondered the problem in his masterwork Anarchy, State, and Utopia, without coming to a conclusion. Yet the problem only remains intractable if we insist that the premise of inviolable individual rights remains in force even under circumstances in which it cannot be honored: i.e., in a "lifeboat" situation.

"Lifeboat problems" are those in which no solution acceptable under conventional moral strictures is possible. For example, imagine a lifeboat adrift in the middle of the ocean, occupied by two persons, but with food or water adequate to sustain only one of them. There's no arrangement that will save both lives. Must they both die? Or is it licit that one should be sacrificed to save the other? If the latter, how should they "decide" who will live?

Head hurting yet? It's not uncommon to find such problems frustrating, because the situation they present us is highly uncommon. Indeed, it's one we've arranged our entire civilization to minimize.

Problems that force men into collectives have a similar character. Border control is one:

Borders matter because people matter. Borders are important because there must be a limit on every man's responsibilities for others, and on every nation's, too. Every political system binds its citizens in a web of mutual responsibility. Not for everything, but for the really big things commonly delegated to government: the defense of the realm, the maintenance of order in the streets, a common, generally comprehended legal system, and above all the protection of individuals' rights to life, liberty, and honestly acquired property. Israel granted the Palestinians autonomy within their zones, or, as Eric Frank Russell once put it, "the right to go to Hell in their own fashion." Now that they've chosen their course, they should be allowed to follow it to its conclusion, out of respect not only for their right to do so, but the right of Israelis not to be involved in it. Likewise, America did not agree to shelter or employ the whole world. If our borders were better secured, not only would our streets be safer, but Mexicans' interest in reforming their own polity would be greatly increased.

Some libertarians reject this by asserting that government is inherently immoral and illegitimate, a position that can only be sustained in practice by forcing it upon an unwilling and enormously larger dissenting opinion.

Needless to say, warfare is a comparable case.

---

In war, soldiers die. So, unfortunately, do noncombatants. While the accidental deaths of noncombatants are unfortunate and to be minimized to the extent possible, the deliberate targeting of noncombatants has been anathema, under the Geneva Convention and to general human sentiment, for many years. When a combatant nation is discovered to have transgressed, it earns the opprobrium (and sometimes the reprisals) it deserves...unless that combatant happens to be the Palestinian irredentists of Gaza and the West Bank zone.

HAMAS has verifiably used noncombatants -- men, women, and children -- as innocent shields for its offensive weaponry. It has sited missiles and other armaments in thickly populated residential areas, mosques, hospitals, schools, and United Nations emplacements of various kinds. It has then fired those missiles at targets in Israel, knowing that should Israel choose to respond with counter-battery fire, the credulous and the anti-Semites of the world would lay the resulting "civilian casualties" at Israel's moral doorstep. The Israelis, acutely conscious of this, have taken the unusual step of pre-announcing their targets to the people of Gaza, thus providing them with ample time to flee the target zone. Those that remain in the impact zone to become "civilian casualties" must occupy one of the following categories:

• Those who have chosen to ignore the warning;
• Those willing to die in service to HAMAS's war aims;
• Those who have been compelled to remain in the target zone.

The first category is of the tribe conventionally known as "idiots." Stupidity has always been a capital crime; few and far between are the commutations of sentence. This is especially the case when the lead is flying.

The second category are not true noncombatants, as they have willingly placed their lives at risk in the service of a combatant. They have no moral claim on anyone should they lose those lives, nor can they (or any third party) rationally blame anyone else for their deaths.

The third category are true "innocent shields." They have been conscripted as war materiel by HAMAS, which hopes to reap political capital, at least, from their deaths under counter-battery fire. Who is it that has placed them in the line of fire? Not the Israelis, who have done all that any combatant could do to warn them away from the danger zone.

There is no fourth category.

---

The Israeli / HAMAS conflict is not a scenario from William James:

Or if the hypothesis were offered us of a world in which Messrs. Fourier's and Bellamy's and Morris's utopias should all be outdone, and millions kept permanently happy on the one simple condition that a certain lost soul on the far-off edge of things should lead a life of lonely torture, what except a specifical and independent sort of emotion can it be which would make us immediately feel, even though an impulse arose within us to clutch at the happiness so offered, how hideous a thing would be its enjoyment when deliberately accepted as the fruit of such a bargain?

(Cf. this classic short story.)

It's far more serious than that, a test of the Israelis' moral fiber and will to survive against the hostility of a band of bloodthirsty religious fanatics whose creed demands their destruction. To this point, Israel and her people have met that test with a nearly perfect score. The carpers who insist that Israel refrain from acting to eliminate the threat HAMAS poses to its people have no basis for doing so except utter self-deception -- another crime for which Nature often imposes the harshest of penalties.

But there's yet one more point to be made. I've made it once before:

Imagine the following public statement from the president of the United States:

Inasmuch as the riots in Benghazi, Libya, which have taken the lives of four American diplomats posted there, indicate that that city has become lawless, I have decided to destroy it. I intend that it be completely leveled, the ground it occupies made uninhabitable for at least a generation. Therefore, exactly one week from today, one of our Trident submarines will launch a cruise missile armed with a mid-yield nuclear warhead, targeted on the Benghazi city center. The United States will undertake no subsequent cleanup or remediation of the site. It will be left as it is, as a warning to others inclined to attack American diplomatic personnel.

The one-week delay of our reprisal is calculated to permit the residents of Benghazi to escape before the destruction of the city. We don't seek to shed anyone's blood. However, the strike will take place on schedule, regardless of whether any occupants remain in that city. We will not be deterred by "human shields." Anyone who believes otherwise is welcome to remain in Benghazi, though it will cost him his life.

Moreover, this will henceforward be the standing policy of the United States. Should law and order in a city with an American embassy or consulate degrade so badly that American lives are lost or American soil is invaded, that city will be destroyed one week afterward. The world is on notice: Americans have had enough. From now on, if you dare to spill our blood, you will reap the most terrible consequences imaginable. Test us if you dare.

Needless to say, the denunciations would be worldwide. They would shake the very ground. But assuming the president were firm in his resolve, there would be no further attacks on American diplomatic institutions in other lands. You don't mess with a nation willing to respond to attack in such a fashion.

Our problem is that we've placed more weight on the opinions of our enemies -- in which category I include everyone anywhere who goes by some variation of "progressive" or "transnationalist" -- than on our rights and well-being and our duty to uphold them. Note that the Russians have never committed that error, and so have had a tiny fraction of our problems with Islamic savagery. It's time we learned from their example.

This is the only rational response to a degree of violence and chaos that demonstrates the abandonment of civilized norms. Such a place is a plague zone -- and for this plague, the only imaginable "cure" is the Hoof-and-Mouth Disease Cure: When there isn't any, there won't be any.

A polity beyond restraint by its subjects is an enemy of all Mankind.
Whatever would put an end to it is fully justified.

America applied that principle to Japan to end World War II. It applies to HAMAS and Gaza today.

Either HAMAS, the supposed political authority in the Gaza Palestinian zone, is beyond all restraint by its subjects, or its subjects are unwilling to make the effort to restrain it. In either case, Israel would be fully justified in eliminating HAMAS politically by extermination, even were that to require the death or expulsion of many supposedly uninvolved persons and the transformation of Gaza into an uninhabitable wasteland.

Israel has not yet endured the degree of terror or suffering that would trigger so wholesale a response. Let a few more teenagers be kidnapped and slaughtered -- let "world opinion" develop just a bit more in either direction -- and we might see it yet.

For my part, I would shed no tears.

The Limits Of Metrical Argument

"Mathematics is a meaningless formal game." -- David Hilbert.

Mathematics, whether high or low, is inherently independent of any connection to objective reality. It exists in a realm of pure abstraction. (You might even call it a Realm of Essences.) Though mathematical techniques can be used to describe reality, they cannot be used to control reality. (For the use of the inverse assumption as the driver for a fantasy story, see James Gunn's The Magicians.)

That doesn't stop tendentious types with an axe to grind, of course.

The most insidious use of mathematics to deceive is by extrapolation of some identifiable pattern. The extrapolator draws attention to the pattern, then forecasts the future as if it could be relied upon to continue indefinitely, when such continuation is in fact dubious or worse. Mark Twain made humorous note of this practice:

In the space of one hundred and seventy-six years the Lower Mississippi has shortened itself two hundred and forty-two miles. That is an average of a trifle over one mile and a third per year. Therefore, any calm person, who is not blind or idiotic, can see that in the Old Oölitic Silurian Period, just a million years ago next November, the Lower Mississippi River was upwards of one million three hundred thousand miles long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod. And by the same token any person can see that seven hundred and forty-two years from now the Lower Mississippi will be only a mile and three quarters long, and Cairo and New Orleans will have joined their streets together, and be plodding comfortably along under a single mayor and a mutual board of aldermen. There is something fascinating about science. One gets such wholesale returns of conjecture out of such a trifling investment of fact. [From Life On The Mississippi]

Somewhat more recently, the great Thomas Sowell lassoed, threw, and hogtied it in his masterpiece The Vision Of The Anointed:

[I]f the temperature has risen 10 degrees since dawn today, an extrapolation will show that we will all be burned to a crisp before the end of the month, if this trend continues. Extrapolations are the last refuge of a groundless argument. In the real world, everything depends on where we are now, at what rate we are moving, in what direction, and -- most important of all -- what is the specific nature of the process generating the numbers being extrapolated. Obviously, if the rise in temperature is being caused by the spinning of the Earth taking us into the sunlight, then the continuation of that spinning will take us out of the sunlight again and cause temperatures to fall when night comes.

Now and then, a tendentious extrapolator will resort to even worse deceits, such as picking his time base specifically to conceal the reversal of the trend upon which his argument is based. For example, a passionate advocate for increasing the number and visibility of police might pick a year -- say 1960 -- with an unusually low number of murders, compare it to the present number of murders per year, and thus imply that murder is increasing in frequency even though the murder count was higher in 1990 than it is today and has been declining steadily since then. He who fails to check the source data is vulnerable to being misled in this fashion.

Tendentious extrapolation is bad enough, but when we add the "apples to oranges" comparison -- i.e., inviting the audience to assume that the same rules and processes apply to greatly dissimilar situations -- it approaches criminality and should be treated with a comparable degree of contempt. That's what the "Global warming / climate change" evangelists do: they produce "simulations" of the atmosphere and biosphere that they claim "prove" that global warming -- and specifically anthropogenic global warming, at that -- is occurring and will have catastrophic effects in the reliably foreseeable future -- and then go on from there to scream that "the science is settled!" Yet as I wrote some time ago:

Science is entirely encompassed and defined by the scientific method. Scientific hypotheses must be confirmed or challenged by predictions about the outcomes of properly designed experiments that others can replicate. However, the anthropogenic global warming hypothesis cannot be confirmed or challenged by experiments of any sort, for several reasons:

1. Earth is an "open system," with a multitude of feedback mechanisms that influence atmospheric and oceanic temperatures; thus, producing a replicable experimental setup is inherently impossible.
2. There is no way to control or measure the amounts of the various "greenhouse gases" that are emitted per unit time.
3. The Sun, which is the principal determinant of temperatures on Earth, is a mildly (4%) variable star.
4. Temperature measurement itself is an inexact matter that's easily disturbed by environmental fluctuations of all sorts.
5. Even the most careful measure of temperature is nevertheless a local phenomenon, pertaining only to the immediate region around the measuring device. Thus, the exact placement of those devices, which is inherently a matter of judgment, is far more important to the readings than any other aspect of the matter.

Which is why the warmistas rely on simulations. But simulations, as I have excellent reason to know, are relevant only to the exact conditions simulated -- and those conditions cannot, in the nature of things, match the far more complex dynamics of the Earth's atmosphere and oceans.

Perhaps the supreme irony that emerges from this deceit-by-numbers is that those who perpetrate it ceaselessly congratulate themselves on how much smarter they are than "those rubes." The irony sharpens still further when we discover that among them are many who've succeeded only in deceiving themselves. On that note, I will conclude by citing a pithy passage from a recent essay by Charles C. W. Cooke:

One part insecure hipsterism, one part unwarranted condescension, the two defining characteristics of self-professed nerds are (a) the belief that one can discover all of the secrets of human experience through differential equations and (b) the unlovely tendency to presume themselves to be smarter than everybody else in the world. Prominent examples include MSNBC’s Melissa Harris-Perry, Rachel Maddow, Steve Kornacki, and Chris Hayes; Vox’s Ezra Klein, Dylan Matthews, and Matt Yglesias; the sabermetrician Nate Silver; the economist Paul Krugman; the atheist Richard Dawkins; former vice president Al Gore; celebrity scientist Bill Nye; and, really, anybody who conforms to the Left’s social and moral precepts while wearing glasses and babbling about statistics.

There is no substitute for familiarity with the ground data -- the unmassaged, reproducible facts provided by agenda-free Nature herself, including when and where they were gathered, how, and by whom -- and skepticism toward those who claim to know better than you, no matter how many numbers they claim to have at their command.