Terminal Illnesses: A Sunday Rumination

     Relax! I don’t have one. That I know of, anyway. The subject is on my mind for another reason.

     The current social milieu presents us with quite a lot of reasons for Christians to think of ourselves and our faith as beleaguered. Here in the United States, we have the swelling phenomenon of militant / aggressive atheism, which seeks to drive us completely out of the public square, if not entirely underground, like the Christians in the Catacombs of Rome. Add that to the mountains of derision various elements of the entertainment media regularly heap on Christians and Christianity, plus recent political developments that have made it legally hazardous to stand by our convictions in the practice of our trades, and the picture can look pretty bleak.

     Not quite as bleak as that faced by Christians abroad, of course. Nearly everywhere outside the Western Hemisphere, Christians are being persecuted, if not outrightly slaughtered, for their faith. The trend is so powerful that only the very worst aspects of it – e.g., ISIS’s routine beheadings of Christians in its region of control – make the news.

     Yet we seldom hear about apostates from Christianity. People renounce all sorts of allegiances every day: to a country, to a political party, to a spouse, to a favorite hockey team. But open renunciations of the Christian faith? There are some, no doubt, but if there’s a significant current in that direction, I have yet to read about it.

     Given that the disincentives to Christian affiliation and the hazards involved in openly leading a Christian life have mounted so steadily for so long, why aren’t we seeing more apostasy? It would appear to run counter to what we’d expect from the nature of Man.

     The answer lies in the gulf between what is seen and what is not.

---

     Life is a terminal illness. No, not in the sense in which medical men use the term, but in a more inclusive one that applies to everyone ever born: we shall all die. It’s guaranteed to us at the moment of birth.

     I allowed an immortal character to make that point to a very mortal one in On Broken Wings:

     "What can I do?"
     "Nothing."
     Louis Redmond gaped.
     "That wasn't the question you wanted to ask, was it?" An observer that could ignore the weariness of Malcolm Loughlin's face and the hardness of his eyes might set his age no higher than that of his protégé. But Loughlin's countenance showed eons of fatigue, and his eyes were chips of agate. "You want to ask if I can do anything. But the answer is the same."
     The cold fear that surged through Louis had the vitality of a tiger. It was all he could do to keep it caged.
     "Did you think your training would allow you to undo cancer, Louis? Or did you think it was just a trick I hadn't taught you yet?"
     Louis stiffened. "Don't mock me. You haven't earned the right."
     The older man's lips curved in the ghost of a smile. "That's better."
     "Defiance at all times, Malcolm?"
     "What would serve you better, now?"
     Louis scowled, irritation washing over his fear. "Malcolm, you are too damned smart, and one of these days it's going to land you in trouble." He rose, walked the length of the trailer, and stared out the tiny end window at the dozens of acres of Onteora County, New York, mostly left to scrub oak and pine, that Loughlin owned. After a moment, he returned to the table and waved an arm jerkily. "Why don't you get yourself a decent place? A man can't pace properly in here."
     Loughlin ignored it. "When does treatment start?"
     "It's already started."
     "Any nausea?"
     Louis nodded.
     "I was hoping you might be spared that."
     Louis caricatured a show of surprise. "I didn't know you cared."
     "Now who's mocking whom?"
     An awkward silence descended. Louis was reluctant to break it. Presently, Loughlin spoke.
     "What will you do?"
     Louis shrugged. "I don't know. It doesn't really seem to matter."
     "Why? Because you're dying?" Loughlin's voice turned harsh again. "You were handed your death warrant the day you were born. Do you really mean to say there's nothing worth your time or energy, just because you've been told you won't make your threescore and ten?"

     The ultimate lesson of life is that it will end. No effort, no advance in the medical arts, and no amount of wishful thinking can change that. Life can be prolonged somewhat; at this time, we have no idea for how long. But it will end. It’s part of the design.

     More, not only will we die, we will be forgotten. No achievement, however high is sufficient to guarantee that we will be forever remembered. Our prospect for temporal remembrance is that those who’ve loved us, and those who’ve benefited by our labors, will remember us...now and then, and for a little while. Except for the Socrateses, the Thomas Jeffersons, and the Albert Einsteins, that’s the best we can hope for.

     But while we live, we have tasks. We take them seriously. Ultimately, we do so for our own sakes. They give structure and meaning to our days. They allow us a measure of self-regard: something we need as badly as food or rest.

     Now ponder the man who absolutely rejects hope of an afterlife. Wouldn’t he logically look upon his labors, and upon the finitude of human life in comparison to the endless reach of Time, and ask “Why bother?” Yet few such men renounce their trades to pursue only temporal pleasures, which would be the sole logical course following from such a conclusion. Why not?

     Partly it’s that self-regard business. But partly, it’s because we’re hard-wired to hope.

---

     We’re hard-wired to hope, but what do we hope for? We can’t reasonably hope to live forever. Few of us can hope to achieve so mightily that our names will be remembered a thousand years from now. Of all the billions that have ever lived, we remember only a few hundred from the time of Christ or before Him...and let’s not flatter ourselves that we remember them in truth, with high accuracy. It will be the same for us two thousand years hence, assuming Mankind should last that long.

     Christian faith offers hope of two kinds. The first is the hope of an afterlife of bliss, which can be ours conditional upon having lived a satisfactory life and having repented of our moral sins before death. All by itself, that’s a powerful inducement to hope. Yet the second thing strikes me as even more attractive: the hope that when we face judgment, God will allow that we have done some good: some service to His Will for our temporal world. As the Supreme Judge, His assessment of our lives is the only one that ultimately matters...and He doesn’t give annual performance reviews.

     There you have my reasons for pitying the resolute atheist. He has deliberately rejected the only possible reasons to hope that his life will be more meaningful than that of a mayfly. His rejoinder, of course, will be that to need such hope, I must be “weak.” The meaning he ascribes to “weak” in that context has never struck me as sound – and note that when pressed to define it, he invariably makes it circular.

     Faith, like life, is a gift. It’s not given to all men. Some must stumble forward entirely on temporal ground. Yet if such a man lives a decent life, abusing no other man and abstaining from deriding others for their faith, he too will know eternal bliss, for God is just. That’s my hope for him. It’s why I pray for the atheists I’ve known: their paths have been made harder and more treacherous than mine.

     I know their trials from the inside, for I was once one of them.

     May God bless and keep you all.

The Unrepealable Law Strikes Again

     You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     Activists of many kinds share a common delusion that politics is invincible. In other words, they imagine that all that’s required to get whatever it is they’re striving for is an adequate degree of pressure on the relevant levels and branches of government. The concept of second-order effects – those that arise because of changes to the incentives people face – is anathema to them.

     But second-order effects do exist:

     It's no secret that Congress is dominated by men, but as women work to make inroads in the congressional boys club, some female staffers face a huge impediment to moving up: They're not allowed to spend one-on-one time with their male bosses.

     In an anonymous survey of female staffers conducted by National Journal in order to gather information on the difficulties they face in a male-dominated industry, several female aides reported that they have been barred from staffing their male bosses at evening events, driving alone with their congressman or senator, or even sitting down one-on-one in his office for fear that others would get the wrong impression.

     Follow-up interviews with other Hill aides make clear that these policies, while not prevalent, exist in multiple offices—and they may well run afoul of employment discrimination laws, experts say. Because of the sensitivity of the issue, and the fear of retribution, many of these women and some of their male counterparts spoke with National Journal on the condition of anonymity and declined to publicly name their bosses.

     "Even though my boss is like a second dad to me, our office was always worried about any negative assumptions that might be made. This has made and makes my job significantly harder to do," one female staffer told National Journal.

     Another reported that in twelve years working for her previous boss, he "never took a closed door meeting with me.…This made sensitive and strategic discussions extremely difficult."

     Male staffers said they'd also seen some female aides barred from solo meetings with the boss, and that they benefited in some instances from the exclusion of their female colleagues in high-level meetings, at receptions with major Washington powerbrokers, and just in earning a little more face time with their bosses.

     So far, a straightforward recitation of the facts: in other words, ordinary journalism. But let’s not imagine that Sarah Mimms, the author of the cited article, is any more conscious of what’s transpired than your average Newfoundland puppy:

     For these women, the lack of access has meant an additional hurdle in their attempts to do their jobs, much less further their own careers. And in many instances, it forced them to seek employment in other congressional offices.

     Poor babies!

---

     One of the downsides of high intelligence is the temptation to look down on those of lesser gifts. I struggle to resist it, though I haven’t always been successful. Yet there are times when nothing but an attitude of amusement at the stupidity of others is possible. Men’s reactions to feminism, as it’s pervaded our laws and social norms, strike me as inevitable, easily predicted by anyone with eyes that see. Thus, watching feminists become ever more stridently angry about the very conditions their activism has brought about only makes me chuckle.

     You asked for it, girls. And as H. L. Mencken would tell you were he here to do so, you got it good and hard.

     The signs are everywhere. The decline in male enrollment at colleges and universities. The increasing aversion college men are displaying toward college women. The “marriage strike.” Pseudo-scandals such as “Sad Puppies” and “Gamer-Gate.” Websites such as Chateau Heartiste, MGTOW, and The Return Of Kings. Even the independent publishing of fiction, with its emphasis on traditionally masculine adventures, bears testimony to the irresistible logic of The Law of Unintended Consequences.

     The Law pays no attention to political clout. Why should it? Politics can either articulate and endorse the natural laws of the universe, or it can attempt to contravene them. In the former case, nothing has really occurred; in the latter, we’ve invited our own comeuppance. God laughs at the vanity Man expresses with his notions about “law,” though perhaps only the saints and angels can hear Him.

     But feminists, who are among the stupidest of all activist communities, won’t hear any of that. They want what they want, and they want it now:

     What we are not supposed to notice is the problematic premises asserted within what I call feminism’s Patriarchal Thesis:

1. All women are victims of oppression;
2. All men benefit from women’s oppression; therefore:
3. Whatever.

     In other words, when your worldview begins with the assumption that normal human life is a system of injustice in which all women (collectively) are victimized by all men (collectively), then it is possible to justify almost anything you do as part of your effort to overthrow this oppressive system. Smash Patriarchy!

     The Patriarchal Thesis absolves feminists of any obligation to meet the ordinary requirements of intelligent discourse. Logic is unnecessary and, as for facts, they are (a) whatever feminists say they are or (b) irrelevant if they do not confirm the Patriarchal Thesis. Believing themselves oppressed, and believing that men universally participate in the oppression of women, feminists thereby justify themselves in telling blatant lies and insulting men. Anyone who dares call notice to the hateful dishonesty of feminism is presumed to be a dimwit with bad motives because, of course, feminists are the moral and intellectual superiors of anyone who disagrees with them.

     Bravo to Robert Stacy McCain. I could not have said it better.

---

     Only two climaxes are possible to such a development. One concludes with the end of the human race. The other necessitates whipping the snarling, mangy cur of feminism back into its kennel, that normal male-female relations might be restored. Which of these will prevail I cannot say, though if I cock my ear just so and point it toward England, I fancy I can hear a certain Thomas Stearns Eliot whispering to us from the grave:

     This is the way the world ends
     This is the way the world ends
     This is the way the world ends
     Not with a bang but a whimper.

     Got any daughters, Gentle Reader?

---

     UPDATE: A thousand pardons, Gentle Readers. I meant to include mention of Aaron Clarey’s comments about Mad Max: Fury Road, and of course the feminists’ reactions to those comments, but when the C.S.O. sauntered into my office in her sauciest negligee and speared me with those “bedroom eyes,” they slipped my mind. At any rate, do please enjoy the linked articles.

Making It Plain

     ISIS’s titular leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi has done us that service:

     The leader of the Islamic State group Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi on Thursday urged Muslims to emigrate to his self-proclaimed “caliphate,” in the jihadist supremo’s first audio recording in six months.

     “And we call upon every Muslim in every place to perform hijrah (emigration) to the Islamic State or fight in his land wherever that may be,” he said....

     Echoing his previous exhortations, Baghdadi said moving to the caliphate he declared over parts of Iraq and Syria in June 2014 or waging jihad (holy war) at home was an obligation for Muslims.

     “Has the time not come for you to know that there is no might nor honour nor safety nor rights for you except in the shade of the Caliphate?” he said in the speech, transcripts of which were released in five languages.

     “O Muslims, Islam was never for a day the religion of peace. Islam is the religion of war,” he said, calling for mass mobilisation on the battlefield.

     Which lickspittle political posturer or media pretender will be the first to proclaim, ex cathedra from his bellybutton, that al-Baghdadi is not preaching “true Islam?”

     Actually, that service has already been rendered us by Barack Hussein Obama, when he orated that the Islamic State “is not Islamic, and it is not a state.” Perhaps he received an advance transcript of al-Baghdadi’s speech and decide to “get out in front of it.” As Obama is the world’s supreme authority on everything – just ask him – I suppose we can all relax about it.

     Myself, I’m waiting for ISIS allegiants to commit a terrorist act here in the United States. That’s when the really thunderous denunciations will begin...but given the character of our political class and its media annex, they won’t be denunciations of Islam.

---

     Never go to a religious war without your religion – Tom Kratman

     George W. Bush, 43rd president of these United States, was a good man. He was an indifferent president, good on a few subjects and somewhat aimless about others, but the Oval Office has been occupied by few individuals of better character. Unfortunately, he was hobbled by a failing that afflicts many men of good will: he ardently wanted to see the other guy’s character as a match to his own.

     President Bush’s famous September 20, 2001 speech to the nation, in which he first proclaimed Islam to be “a religion of peace,” was probably the worst misstep of his presidential tenure. The historical record speaks clearly in the opposite direction. Ever since Thomas Jefferson’s presidency, the actions of Muslims and Islam-dominated states have unambiguously shouted Islam-Uber-Alles. Indeed, Islam is the only recognized religion whose highest figures made common cause with the Nazis in the 1930s and 1940s.

     (I’ve long suspected that the wholly unsubstantiated and unjustified odium poured upon Pope Pius XII was an attempt to deflect attention from the alliance between Hitler and Hajj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, at that time the highest authority in Islam. A great many persons revile the Catholic Church, mainly because it preaches against things they’d like to feel free to do. More, they’ve noticed that Christians don’t go on a rampage when slandered.)

     But there is no truth so starkly obvious that it cannot be denied by one resolutely determined to deny it. There is no fact so plain that it cannot be obscured with a mountain of distractions and irrelevancies. Perhaps most important of all, there are few who will speak openly and plainly against a moving force that:

1. Is religiously motivated;
2. Has infiltrated one’s own country;
3. Has demonstrated lethal intentions and capability;
4. Is ready, willing, and able to kill those who dare to speak against it.

     The recent attack on Pamela Geller’s Draw Muhammad contest in Garland, Texas should have provided a wake-up call. Yet note how many persons, on either side of the political spectrum, leaped to condemn Geller for her “provocation.” Note how many commentators spoke and acted as if utterly indifferent to the rather simple proposition that cartoons cannot and do not provide a justification for murder. Andres Serrano’s “Piss Christ?” Chris Ofili’s dung-festooned caricature of the Blessed Virgin Mary? These things provoked complaints, even protests, from Christians, but no violence whatsoever. But don’t you dare satirize the intolerance of Islam and Muslims; why, that could get someone killed!

     Such...persons are unlikely to acknowledge al-Baghdadi’s plain words, either.

---

     “What you are speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” – Ralph Waldo Emerson

     Among a Left that has enshrined tolerance as the supreme virtue, the irony of their passive acceptance of violently intolerant Islam stands as one of the marvels of our time. It could be cowardice, of course; many persons animated by fear will do anything not to admit to it. It could also be tactical, for what does the Left hate more than Christianity and Christian ethics? In either case, there is no better demonstration of the fatuity of Leftism than its celebration of homosexuality and abortion united to its angry defense of Islam on the grounds of “religious tolerance.”

     The political class, the media, and the educational establishment – the three major bastions of the Left in American society – are setting us up for a terrible calamity. They’re complicit in the continuing importation of adherents to this seventh-century murder cult. If it’s out of ignorance, it’s inexcusable. If it’s willful blindness – an insistence upon seeing in Islam a benevolence that is not there and never has been – its ridiculous. If it’s tactical, it’s vile and wholly to be condemned.

     The best service a President Cruz or President Perry could do for this nation is to reject President Bush’s “religion of peace” error and publicly recognize the facts as they are. Indeed, one of the criteria for selecting a Republican nominee should be the requirement that he announce his hostility to Islam and the immigration of Muslims to these shores, openly and without compromise despite any and all opposition. Americans – people who love this country – would love him for it.

     Let’s close with an old favorite:

The Urgent Need To Discriminate

     I’ve written about this before. I meant it then, and I mean it now. In light of some recent developments, it’s acquired overwhelming force.

---

     A couple of weeks ago, Ashe Schow wrote about the current feminist pogrom against college-aged men:

     If a student has been wrongly accused of sexual assault on their college campus, how are they supposed to prove their innocence?...

     After what [Emma] Sulkowicz claimed was a brutal rape in which she was pinned, beaten and choked before being raped, she sent [Paul] Nungesser numerous messages asking to hang out, even telling him she loved him. Nungesser tried to get those messages introduced as evidence during his Columbia University hearing, but was denied. Nungesser, who has since become the victim of a public campaign of defamation by his accuser, was exonerated anyway....

     A similar situation played out at Vassar College when Peter Yu introduced Facebook messages showing his accuser apologizing to him for the evening. She apologized for leading him on and said that she had "a wonderful time" with him. But a year later, when Yu produced these messages for the disciplinary panel, his accuser claimed they "did not correctly reflect her feelings" because she was in a state of "shock and disbelief" about the encounter. The disciplinary committee bought her claim and expelled Yu.

     Clearly, these “disciplinary committees” exercised no discipline over their own procedures. To steal a phrase from Joseph Schumpeter, they had the sentence of death in their pockets, and they were going to pass it regardless of any and all developments. Nor are Nungesser and Yu outliers; when it comes to accusations by women of sexual assaults by men, the trend on university campuses is exactly as they experienced it.

     Meanwhile, universities are experiencing an accelerating imbalance of young women in their enrollees. Marriage-minded young women complain that eligible young men are avoiding them. Employers are finding new and ingenious ways to avoid hiring young women, regardless of their credentials. And Friday nights find quite a lot of young single women sitting at the bar surrounded entirely by...other young single women.

     In other words, young men are learning to discriminate against young women.

---

     Discrimination works when it’s tried. Here’s a case where it badly needs to be tried:

     It just got surreal. George Washington University Law School Professor John Banzhaf filed a human rights complaint to the D.C. Office of Human Rights against Catholic University for hindering Muslim students’ free exercise of their faith due to the “excessive” amount of “Catholic imagery” on the campus. It seems that this man – who teaches at a different school across town – thinks that Catholic University’s adherence to the cultural aspects of Catholicism (we have a lot of artwork, Crucifixes, and statues in every nook and cranny) keeps muslim students from praying the required five times a day.

     Banzhaf, who already has a pending lawsuit against the university over ending its policy of allowing mixed-gender dormitories and has a history of filing civil rights suits on such topics as childhood obesity and smoking, filed the complaint alleging that Muslim students are not given their own prayer rooms.

     He alleges that the university, “does not provide space – as other universities do – for the many daily prayers Muslim students must make, forcing them instead to find temporarily empty classrooms where they are often surrounded by Catholic symbols which are incongruous to their religion,” according to the Tower, Catholic University’s student newspaper.

     Let’s leave aside this idiot Banzhaf’s obvious hatred for Catholic institutions and the Catholic faith. What makes allegations of his sort possible at all? That there are Muslim students at Catholic University! And why, pray tell, is that?

     A number of Catholic institutions have succumbed to the lure of increased revenue by admitting non-Catholic students. Some have even hired non-Catholic faculty and staff. As an example of arrant insanity, this would be hard to top – and given current trends in labor law and nondiscrimination law, it will be very hard to undo. But monetary considerations aside, it will require Catholic University and similar institutions to brace themselves for a necessity that will no doubt pain many: the need to say to a non-Catholic applicant for enrollment or employment that “You don’t qualify.” Upon being asked why, the sole adequate answer will be the one all of America has been inhibited against uttering:

“We discriminate in favor of Catholics.”

     And there must be no exceptions granted.

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     Riots in Ferguson. Riots in St. Louis. Riots in Baltimore. Massive looting and property destruction. And all the participants, to within the limits of measurement precision, have been black.

     Whites don’t riot. Even the highly disruptive “Occupy” demonstrations were never riots. Whites don’t assault random passers-by on public streets. Neither are whites inclined to rally around a convicted murderer because of his race. (See also this recent case.) In just about every situation where distinctions on the basis of race occur, those distinctions operate in Negroes’ favor and against Caucasians, regardless of any and all other considerations.

     At this point, even the most diehard, race-is-a-social-construct / I-don’t-see-skin-color leftist is aware that concentrations of Negroes are highly dangerous to non-Negroes. When the black population of a district passes a certain level, crime rates rise, conditions for ordinary commerce deteriorate, and white flight begins. As this happens even in left-liberal-dominated coastal cities – indeed, it’s most pronounced in exactly such cities — the claim that it’s only “racist conservatives” doing the flying is ridiculous on its face.

     What are we to make of this? Yes, there’s a strong argument that left-liberal policies give rise to the sort of cultural accretions that correlate with local deterioration...but so does race. Given that the politicians are elected by the local populace, the only credible responses are to disperse the populace or to confine it behind an impassable fence. Both constitute discrimination -- discrimination in defense of life and property. If this is forbidden, our rights to our lives and our property are shams. But then, the very people doing the forbidding are also working to deprive us of the instruments of self-defense, aren’t they?

---

     Discrimination has become a moral, social, and political imperative. Sorting among one’s personal associates isn’t yet illegal, thank God. But most other forms of discrimination are either banned outright or have been made torturously difficult. Indeed, with its “diversity” programs the federal government, which now controls approximately one-third of all spending in the United States, has added financial incentives to the maintenance of a “diverse” work force.

     Yet it must be so. There remain ways to do it. Some of those ways are gaining adherents by the day. And they are finding that their lives, their states of mind, and often their fortunes are being improved thereby.

     Discrimination isn’t bigotry; it’s a response to conditions. And it works.

Bizarre Discovery of the Month

     This might not appeal to everyone. Indeed, I’ll be surprised if it appeals to anyone but me. All the same:

Put a chunk or two -- about 2 ounces -- of freshly cut pineapple into a highball glass,
Add 4 ounces of Harvey’s Bristol Cream,
Top off the glass with crushed ice.

     It was an accidental discovery, but so were penicillin, the microscope, and vulcanized rubber.

     (Retirement is proving to be a fertile medium, as long as you don’t care what you germinate!)

Conversations

CSO: Don’t forget there’s a lot of fruit in the fridge.
FWP: What did you buy?
CSO: Lots of stuff.
FWP: You could be...more specific.
CSO: Well, there’s the clementines, and the grapes—
FWP: Whoa. Tweak that a bit and it’s a title for a historical novel: “The Clementines and The Greeks.” Political intrigue and assassinations in fourth-century Asia Minor!
CSO: Naah, keep it the way it is. In fact, you could add something: “The Clementines, The Grapes, and The Cherimoyas!” Now there’s a title!
FWP: Going for a global conflict, eh?
CSO: Think big, I always say.

Fine Lines Or Battle Lines?

     It’s gratifying to note how much attention Patrice Stanton’s short piece on “Free Speech & Fine Lines” has received. Truly, the ability to depict a conflict in a visual form has more impact than any number of words. But for some of us, your humble commentator most emphatically included, words are all we have...which might be a good thing:

     I damn sure didn’t go to war for this country twice to come home and be told by a bunch of homely chicks with daddy issues, effete literary fops scandalized by the notion of resistance to Third World pathologies, and nimrod sons of politicians playing at journalism what I can and can’t say. And I don’t think most Americans are ready to have everything they speak, write, or think perused for possible hate criminality by these same goose-stepping creeps.

     We’d rather die than “live” on our knees, begging permission to exercise the right God gave us to say whatever we damn well please, whenever we damn well please, and in the manner we damn well please. And those who want to shut us up better be equally committed if they want to succeed.

     After Garland, they went too far. They showed their hand and their goal, a world where they decide who gets to say what. Imagine the same hysterical social justice drama queens who shriek about microaggressions getting to decide what you can and can’t say. Just understand, you fascist bastards, that if you want to be Nazis, you’ll need to do what the Nazis did and find some armed thugs – yeah, I’m using the word “thugs” whether you like it or not – to come stop us. Tell them to wear Kevlar.

     Please read the entire column. Then multiply it by 100,000,000. That’s roughly the magnitude of the reaction against the sort of vilification that’s been heaped on Pamela Geller...for holding a cartoon-drawing contest.

     The Left’s cat’s-paws in the media may have finally gone too far. But let’s not leave it there, shall we? Let’s take a broader look at the “progressive” campaign against freedom of expression.

---

     “You got to use all your weapons.” -- Jim Bouton

     The Left understands Bouton’s insight. The Right does not...at least, we don’t often behave as if we do.

     The Left’s attack on freedom of expression is multi-pronged:

1. Legal: By “lawfare” suits against persons who express views inimical to its aims.
2. Financial: Through boycotts and threats of boycotts against the representatives of viewpoints it disapproves.
3. Ostracism: Through thunderous media denunciations of such representatives.
4. Deceitful: By slandering or libeling those whose statements it disapproves.
5. Tendentious: By carefully choosing words and phrases that misdirect one’s attention.
6. Physical: Through actual campaigns of destruction and physical intimidation.
7. Victim-Blaming: By recasting atrocities as somehow the fault of those attacked (e.g., the attack on Pamela Geller as “her fault” for “baiting” radical Muslims).

     Not every tactic works on every occasion, but the multiplicity of them is sufficient to intimidate, even paralyze, quite a few people with important things to say – things that must be said. If you can be made to feel that all of society’s “big guns” are aimed at you, you can be induced to self-censor, and those must-be-saids might just go unsaid.

     However, if they continue to be said, even by a tiny minority of the un-cowed, anger at the Left’s suppressive tactics will build. So the Left’s agenda depends on achieving total success...and fortunately for these United States, that has proved impossible.

---

     A few months back, the following sequence of simple drawings was used to dramatize the Left’s attack on our right to keep and bear arms:

     I submit that the Left has sought to apply a similar progression to freedom of expression, albeit not principally by legal means. Yes, their mouthpieces – including the evil bastard in the White House – have railed against the Citizens United decision, but short of a Constitutional amendment effectively repealing the First one, they’ll get nowhere with that. Their campaign against freedom of expression has mainly used “political correctness:” an attempt to get us to self-censor by disapproving of us so stridently that we become convinced that we’re being naughty.

     Mind you, these are the same people who praise “art” such as “Piss Christ” and “plays” such as The Vagina Monologues. These are the same people who celebrated Andrea Dworkin. These are the same people who adore homosexual-activist parades that feature all manner of “transgressive” dress and conduct. These are the same people who lionize Emma Sulkowicz. When the “naughtiness” supports their agenda, they have no problem with it.

     A full-throated, utterly courageous counterattack is the only credible response. Moreover, it, too, must be multi-pronged:

1. It’s not “reproductive choice;” it’s killing babies in service to irresponsible promiscuity.
2. It’s not “transgressive sexuality;” it’s perversion on public display.
3. It’s not “social justice;” it’s demands by good-for-nothings for what they refuse to earn.
4. It’s not “environmentalism;” it’s a back-door attack on capitalism by closeted socialists.
5. It’s not “anti-racism;” it’s black hatred for and violence against whites.

     ...and so forth. Take especial note of what Peter Berkowitz said in his recent essay on the subject:

     Nevertheless, most of the elite media—overwhelmingly left liberal—have largely neglected to cover the left's crusade against free speech. Operating out of newsrooms, as Powers observes, in which "there is nobody to push back on their biases," reporters seem unable to detect anything amiss on campuses, in the media, and in the political arena where, after all, the draconian regulation of speech is intended to serve avowedly left-wing causes.

     That deliberate averting of the eyes by the media will only break down if we resolve to break it. Now that there are alternative conduits for the news, the Main Stream Media are losing credibility, specifically because people have noticed that they won’t cover certain subjects, and will only cover certain others in a deceitful fashion. That makes it possible for us to bring them to heel, if only we’re willing to be loud enough, numerous enough, and persistent enough.

     Once the Left has lost its control of the media, all else will follow, for without media protection, its various initiatives cannot be sustained. Decent persons, heartened by the crescendo of sentiment against their schemes, will mass to wipe them out.

---

     There’s a “potential well” to be dealt with here. Until enough persons find enough courage to speak openly and stridently against Leftist attempts to silence us, there won’t be enough persons to speak openly. That’s part of why I’ve kept on with this drivel for eighteen years now. Someone has to take the early risks. Someone has to expose himself, and at least act as if there’s nothing to fear. Someone must say what must be said.

     The battle lines have already been drawn. Which side are you on?

The Coming Constitutional Clash

America is headed for a train wreck…you can see it coming if you look far enough down the tracks.  There was a small sampling of this coming wreck earlier this month in Garland, Texas.  The locomotive powering the American experiment – the US Constitution, has been chugging along for well over two-hundred and twenty-six years.  That freedom train is headed for a clash with Islam.  Not just radical, militant Islam, but “American” Muslims as well.

Our Constitution, in the very First Amendment, guarantees “freedom of religion” and “freedom of speech.”   Every member of the US Military takes an oath to “support and defend” that right and all other rights enshrined in that sacred document, “against all enemies, foreign and domestic.”  Our Christian founders knew these rights had to be enumerated to keep the federal government, and others, from dictating the manner in which people could worship, and to prevent the establishment of a national church like the Church of England. 

When someone exercises their First Amendment free speech rights in a way that offends Christians, Biblical response is to, as Jesus half-brother James said, “Consider it pure joy, my brothers and sisters, whenever you face trials of many kinds, because you know that the testing of your faith produces perseverance.”   Jesus put it this way, “Blessed are those who are persecuted because of righteousness, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.  Blessed are you when people insult you, persecute you and falsely say all kinds of evil against you because of me.  Rejoice and be glad, because great is your reward in heaven, for in the same way they persecuted the prophets who were before you.”

How have some Muslims responded to something that offends them concerning their “Prophet”?  We’ve seen it in Denmark, Paris, and most recently Garland, Texas.  Those groups were only exercising what the US should consider, constitutionally protected, First Amendment free speech. 

Wenzel Strategies conducted a poll of six-hundred American Muslims (with a margin of error of less than four percent.)  When asked, “Do you believe criticism of Islam or Mohammed should be permitted under the Constitution’s First Amendment?” 57.8% said, “No.”  A clear majority do not believe the Constitution protects free speech with regard to Islam.  Perhaps because, in the same poll, over 32%, nearly one-third, said Shariah law should be the supreme law of the land in the US.  Is it confusion about the Constitution, or an underlying belief that Sharia trumps the Constitution?     

It’s one thing to have a philosophical or theological disagreement, it’s quite another to believe you should be killed over it.  When those same American Muslims were asked, “Do you agree or disagree that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death?” 11.5% of the American Muslims surveyed either agree (4.3%), or strongly agree (7.2%), that Americans who criticize or parody Islam should be put to death. 

Given that a majority of American Muslims don’t think criticism of Islam or their prophet is protected, and more than eleven percent thinks that offensively exercising one’s Constitutional right deserves death, just how big is the impending train wreck going to be?  Let’s use the study titled, “The American Mosque 2011″ by Ihsan Bagby of the University of Kentucky.  

Bagby reports there are 2,106 mosques in the US, more than double the 962 in 1994.  This doesn’t include groups not considered Islamic, e.g. Louis Farrakhan’s Nation of Islam.  According to Bagby’s work, the states with the highest number of mosques are: New York (257), California (246), Texas (166), Florida (118), Illinois (109), New Jersey (109), Pennsylvania (99), Michigan (77), Georgia (69), and Virginia (62).  Based on his work Bagby projected 2.6 million “mosque participants,” up from 2 million in 2000.  Bagby extrapolates that if non-affiliated adherents were included the total “should be closer to the estimates of up to 7 million.”  

Using a conservative figure of three million American Muslims, there are roughly 1.73 million Muslims (57.8%) here that believe your First Amendment right does not allow you to criticize their religion.  That would also mean there are some 345,000 American Muslims (11.5%) that think Americans who do criticize or parody Islam should be put to death.  

The Center for Immigration Studies reports, “Immigrants from the Middle East are currently the fastest growing immigration demographic coming into the US” and predicts, “the immigrant population from the Middle East will double in fifteen years and triple by 2050.”  

The coming Islamic train crash is not with Christians, it’s with the Constitution.

It’s Time For Action

     No, not political action...at least, I wouldn’t call what I’m about to advocate political action. It’s more a matter of the withdrawal of hospitality from those who’ve abused it.

     Most Gentle Readers have families of one sort or another. Perhaps you’ve had the experience of the Boorish Cousin, the guy who tells dirty jokes among minor children, who slurs other family members’ religions, who comments negatively about others’ cooking or child-rearing. You’ve probably wished he’d come down with Adult-Onset Dumbness...and then refuse to learn sign language. You might have considered not inviting him to another family get-together. You might even have acted on such a decision.

     Well, in these latter days of the Renaissance Civilization, we don’t have large family get-togethers as frequently as our parents and grandparents did. In part that’s because family members tend to be more geographically dispersed than in previous decades. But in equal measure, it’s because we’ve lost the taste for them...in many cases because of the Boorish Cousin. Every family seems to have at least one, and among our several deteriorations we’ve lost the inclination to haul such a relative aside and discipline him. To avoid the need to endure him, we forgo the company of others we’d really like to see.

     Our more distant relations aren’t in our homes nearly as often as they once were. No, today, via the miracle of the World Wide Web, we admit total strangers.

---

     The powers of the Web are in large measure the powers of the Web browser. Every important browser embeds the ability, whether inherently or via “plug-ins,” to play sounds, play videos, service “pop-ups,” and download files that subsequently execute on the target computer. Some of those capabilities are easily disabled; others present a greater challenge.

     In recent years, the desire of the proprietors of popular Websites to make money from their efforts has led in two directions. The first of these is the for-subscribers-only section. Some such Websites have prospered; others, whose content has failed to inspire subscriptions, have failed. At least with such a site the potential customer has a choice about whether to spend his money on what lies beyond the paywall.

     The second approach is embedded advertising. This is the broadcast-media model: the site provides the “eyeballs,” the advertiser provides the revenue. Broadcast television has been having a rough time of it lately, which suggests to this commentator that the paid-advertising model might be on its last legs. But the Web offers more possibilities than one-way broadcast media...and some of those possibilities have had me reaching for my shotgun.

     “Pop-up,” “pop-under,” and “lock-em-in” pages (i.e., pages that attempt to prevent the viewer from leaving) are all annoying, but they can be thwarted by relatively simple actions. What’s harder to deal with are the “auto-play” sound files and videos. Quite a lot of the value the Web provides is in the form of audio or video recordings. But to impose such media on the viewer against his will leaves him worse off than a television viewer with the remote control in his hand – especially in those cases where seeking out the offending source and quelling it is deliberately made difficult.

     For my part, I’ve decided that henceforward I’ll tolerate none of it. Neither will I provide hyperlinks to such sites, for which reason I’ve just scrubbed the link to PJ Media from my sidebar. If the content at PJ Media were of greater value, I’d consider a low-cost subscription to it – but only if it were to forswear all such intrusions on my time and trials of my patience. I won’t have sugary jingles interrupting the music I prefer, and I certainly won’t tolerate the consumption of my CPU power by a video for some product I would never, ever consider purchasing.

     If you feel the same, please consider acting accordingly. Nothing but a wide-scale rejection of sites that indulge in such practices will get them to cease and desist. It might mean forgoing some minor pleasure; that’s inherent in the nature of a boycott. But consider the test of your good nature that’s involved, and how much protecting your bonhomie is worth to you and those around you.

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     I’m an old crank; I admit it freely. But one of the prerogatives of the old is to speak one’s mind plainly, without the need for circumlocution or dissimulation. If you’re equally old and cranky, or if you’re younger and still hale but tried by circumstances, and have pondered what you might do to reduce the stress in your life, please consider this course. Nothing else will persuade Webmasters worldwide to put a halt to these noxious practices. At least, nothing else has persuaded them to this point – and the Web browser makers appear determined to facilitate their machinations.

     Thanks for reading.

The GTOFTS Gazette: Audiences

     (No points for guessing what the acronym stands for; some things are simply too obvious...or should be.)

     If there’s a phenomenon that characterizes America’s public discourse more accurately than any other, it would be the separation of the politically engaged into two camps so hostile to one another that neither one is willing to confront the arguments of the other. This goes beyond motivation, evidence, and reasoning; it’s rooted in the under-strata of identity and identity management upon which social acceptance is founded.

     Inasmuch as I once called myself a libertarian, I’m familiar with the sort of ideological divide-crossing that a consistent attitude toward freedom requires of the politically aware American. Michael Emerling based a persuasive technique on it, which he called “political cross-dressing.” The technique harnesses the arguments and evidence of one side of the conservative / liberal divide to a position held on the other side. It’s frequently the most powerful way to analyze a new policy issue...if you’re interested in freedom as an other-than-instrumental value, that is.

     Perhaps I should spend a few words on that “other-than-instrumental value” business, lest the meaning be lost to a skimming reader. A value is instrumental or, alternately, relative, if it’s prized mainly as something required to gain some other value. Such a value is, in a sense, without independent meaning; is importance derives from its utility in reaching that other thing. A value prized for itself, without regard for what one could “use” it for, is non-instrumental or absolute. We want it because we want it, not something else it could help us acquire.

     Strictly speaking, there’s only a single completely absolute value: happiness. Aristotle defined happiness as that which we seek as an end in itself and for no other reason, which both captures the essence of happiness and conforms to the partition above. However, there are many values that have both relative and absolute aspects. Which of those aspects predominates is one key to analyzing political claims.

     Consider the eternally contentious subject of the legality or illegality of various “recreational” drugs. Time was, the conservative was absolutely against their legalization, while the liberal was somewhat in favor of it. The conservative position was based on a visceral reaction against the drug culture that was essentially absolute – i.e., no argument about utility was capable of overcoming it. The liberal position was akin to its arguments in favor of abortion on demand – i.e., that one should be free to do as one pleases with one’s body, that to do otherwise is to create crimes and outlaws where none exist. That, too, is an essentially absolute position, as we can see from the left-liberal refusal to confront evidence about prenatal awareness, suffering, and the unborn child’s right to life.

     Yet both camps’ positions were vulnerable to the other’s arguments from an instrumental perspective. To legalize a particular drug would rip its marketing out of the hands of organized crime, thus advancing the conservative value for crime fighting and “law and order.” To keep that same drug illegal would deny easy access (in theory) to children, long a specially protected community of interest in left-liberal thought. Was one argument stronger than the other? Of course, but we’re talking about the process of argument itself here...and the salient fact about this issue is that until one side agreed to see the other’s position as worthy of examination, neither side would consider demoting its rhetorically central value from absoluteness to something less.

     But this is only the beginning of this morning’s journey.

---

     Thomas Sowell has lambasted “the anointed,” by which he refers to the political elite to the left of center, for their relentless approach to disliked conditions as “problems” that “must” have “solutions.” In this he’s quite correct, for as H. L. Mencken has told us about political “solutions” to “problems” inherent in the nature of Man:

     [Havelock Ellis] admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death.

     If we omit consideration of those whose true aim is increased power rather than the “solution” to an inherently insoluble “problem,” we become capable of appreciating the ostensible motives of the advocate of such “solutions,” and of honoring them to a limited extent. Here is where the vectors of many political maladies may be found, for he who professes such motives might hold them for an instrumental reason. Indeed, it’s not necessary that he be consciously aware of it for it to be true.

     The instrumental reason behind the conscious motive is the holder’s desire to be identified with, and accepted by, a particular community that regards itself as a bastion of correctness and / or propriety. Such a community needn’t be as impenetrable as Eric Hoffer’s “compact and unified church,” but it can come awfully close. It will usually inculcate among its members an attitude of disdain, if not contempt, toward those outside its number. When such attitudes harden, they insulate those infected with them against any evidence or reasoning from an “outsider.” By insulating error from the counterevidence and counter-argument that could reveal it, this obstructs the improvement of public policies. Nothing could be more obvious about our current political dynamics as that the Left and Right refuse to converse as mutually respecting participants, nor that the consequences include a kind of stasis that favors only those whose sole aim is power. Yet it is among the most persistent political attitudes to be found in these United States.

     We must ask why – and refuse to be put off without a believable answer.

---

     One of the inevitable fruits of “problem / solution” political thought is the drive by an ever-multiplying gaggle of interest groups to have their particular interest deemed suitable for political methods. Contemporary feminism is a perfect example. The great Charles Hill makes the key point about this dynamic in his Vent of yesterday:

     The red-headed stepchild of Marx's dictum is the feminist argument "The personal is political." It is so only if you believe that there exist only political solutions to your personal problems. And if you wail "But we have no power!" I will point out that if you truly had no power, you'd be out on the margins with all those other folks who have surrendered personal agency in the hopes of getting free stuff.

     As clear as that is, why does it not penetrate the minds of the “feminists” who ceaselessly agitate for political intrusions into more and more areas of traditionally private life? Especially since the instrumental value of those intrusions has been decidedly negative.

     The self-protective nature of group identity is the only reason I can imagine. The evidence is plain...but those offering that evidence are rejected as having low motives. The reasoning is just as plain...but it can make no headway against feminists’ self-identification as “an oppressed community.” More, there exists a “hit squad” of particularly strident feminist activists ready to punish deviations from orthodoxy. Here’s one:

     [E]lites supply the labor for the decision-making classes -- the senators, the newspaper editors, the research scientists, the entrepreneurs, the policy-makers, and the policy wonks. If the ruling class is overwhelmingly male, the rulers will make mistakes that benefit males, whether from ignorance or from indifference. Media surveys reveal that if only one member of a television show’s creative staff is female, the percentage of women on-screen goes up from 36 percent to 42 percent. A world of 84-percent male lawyers and 84-percent female assistants is a different place than one with women in positions of social authority. Think of a big American city with an 86-percent white police force. If role models don’t matter, why care about Sandra Day O’Connor? Even if the falloff from peak numbers is small, the leveling off of women in power is a loss of hope for more change. Will there never again be more than one woman on the Supreme Court?

Worse, the behavior tarnishes every female with the knowledge that she is almost never going to be a ruler. Princeton President Shirley Tilghman described the elite colleges’ self-image perfectly when she told her freshmen last year that they would be the nation’s leaders, and she clearly did not have trophy wives in mind. Why should society spend resources educating women with only a 50-percent return rate on their stated goals? The American Conservative Union carried a column in 2004 recommending that employers stay away from such women or risk going out of business. Good psychological data show that the more women are treated with respect, the more ambition they have. And vice versa. The opt-out revolution is really a downward spiral.

     And courtesy of Stacy McCain, here’s another:

     Feminist research consistently shows the objectification of women and the pressure of feminine beauty ideals to be problematic and limiting to women. Consequently, the dual emphases of women’s freedom and adherence to feminine beauty standards seemingly render this popular form of feminism, not only internally incoherent, but counterproductive to women’s equality.... On the one hand, popular feminism applauds strong women and seeks to empower young women to achieve their goals, become educated and attain a greater level of self-respect. On the other hand, beauty ideals that are unattainable for most women are still held up as a standard to emulate and those who vocally support popular feminism are often those who also objectify themselves in order to conform to a male-driven understanding of what is ‘sexy.’... Feminism in its current, popular form, then, would seem reluctant to confront or criticise male power. These tensions between a ‘sexy’ popular feminism and more substantive challenges to the patriarchy are also played out in women’s magazines.

     The author of this bilge was apparently “triggered” by the following quote from the May 2013 Australian edition of Cosmopolitan:

     “I shave my legs, I own red lipstick, I wear five-inch heels. I love my job and I love men....I’m a feminist and I’m proud of it. I hope you are too.”

     Such deviationism cannot be tolerated. The speaker must be made to feel like a gender traitor, so that she’ll repent and bow before the orthodoxy being promulgated by her betters.

     In the above we see virtually the whole of the dynamic that closes persons to rational exchanges with those who differ with them. Needless to say, “feminism” is only one case among many, albeit a particularly pernicious one.

---

     There are many conditions around us that are less than optimal by someone’s standards. The coagulation into mutually hostile groups unwilling to talk to one another is not an inevitable consequence of this, but of Charles Hill’s observation:

     [“The personal is political”] is so only if you believe that there exist only political solutions to your personal problems.

     But let us not slide past the terms involved without casting at least one gimlet eye upon them:

• Who decided that thus-and-such is a “problem?”
• Who insists that only a political “solution” to it will do?
• Do those persons have ulterior motives for defining thus-and-such as a “problem,” or for insisting that political methods be applied to it?
• Is it possible that the “problem” is inherent in the nature of Man? If so, what can we expect to come of an attempt to “solve” it by the method of government – i.e., by force?

     These are the questions that virtually no one asks. They’re the only questions that have even a chance of dispelling the fog of cant, restoring a degree of respect among persons who differ, and reopening the possibility of freedom to a badly beleaguered America. Though we can do nothing but wait for the revelation to strike, quite a few of us are getting too old for this shit.

Free-speech & "fine lines"

Well, we can thank Alysin Camerota (especially at 2:30 mark+) for clarifying that whole Free-Speech + "fine line" thing for us. As you've already read here at Liberty's Torch (and many other places around the web since last Sunday's jihad-attack in Garland, Texas) LOTS of media-types agree wholeheartedly with her. This cartoon and an earlier version was inspired by all of those quislings. Islam aside (oh, that it was just that easy to brush barbarians away!), consider the Sisyphean task of pleasing an entire world all at the same time...and for all time. Whew! Makes me feel like a nap.

Naughty Words Part 2: “But”

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

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

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

     This essay is about one of the exceptions.

---

     First, a particularly piercing Bill Whittle video:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

---

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

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

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

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

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     George Orwell wrote:

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

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

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

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

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

But Me No “Buts!”