Liberty's Torch

Tuesday, January 5, 2016

Privileges And Immunities

Relax, Gentle Reader. This won’t be a seminar on the Fourteenth Amendment and why it embeds a phrase found nowhere else in the Constitution. No, today I’m thinking about privileged groups, the immunities they’ve acquired that others don’t share, and the general numbness to their privileged status.

There are several such groups in Western society today. In these United States, the most important ones to know about in your daily struggles to cope are:

Homosexuals,
Negroes,
Muslims,
Women.

The privileges these groups own confer considerable ability on their members to acquire benefits they don’t deserve. Their immunities allow them to avert punishment and general opprobrium they do deserve. Clearly, these are precious properties whose owners would hate to lose them. A great deal of time, money, and effort goes into retaining and increasing them.

It’s unnecessary for me to go into great gouting detail about the specifics of each group’s privileges and immunities. Any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch will already be familiar with them from reading the news if not from personal contact. No, the action for today is in the mechanisms that were used to acquire those properties, and continue to work to strengthen and enlarge them.

Concentration is the key to economic results. No other principle of effectiveness is violated as constantly today as the basic principle of concentration.... Our motto seems to be, "Let's do a little bit of everything." – Peter Drucker

Drucker, a writer on business and commerce, had those subjects in mind when he wrote the above. However, the principle of concentration applies to every area of human endeavor. He who cannot or will not concentrate on a goal is unlikely to achieve it. This principle powers the inclination to specialize in some field, giving it the greater part of our time and energy. Note how few “Renaissance men” there are with seven-digit incomes.

The acquisition of privileges and immunities is subject to the principle of concentration. If a group, however defined, is to acquire such, there must be a mechanism that focuses specifically on that goal, eschewing other considerations. Each privileged / immunized group named in the above possesses one or more such mechanisms. I call such a mechanism a mouthpiece group.

A mouthpiece group serves to concentrate the time, money, and effort that goes toward securing and enlarging the privilege or immunity it addresses. In that effort, it:

Solicits funding,
Hires specialists,
Builds social and political relationships with useful persons and organizations.

The funding is normally put to the salaries of the specialists, though in some cases it’s used to purchase influence or alliances. The specialists concentrate on relationships:

With the mouthpiece group’s supporters, to keep them loyally contributing;
With other organizations that can lend effort to the mouthpiece group’s goal;
With governmental institutions that can grant official recognition to the privilege or immunity.

A mouthpiece group formed around an identity won’t necessarily be effective in promoting its goals. If its members lack passion, have several goals, or diverge about priorities, it will fail to benefit from the concentration principle, a statement that verges on tautology. However, several identity-based groups have succeeded in specializing sufficiently to become effective; the four enumerated in the opening segment are the most prominent ones.

This is Public Choice economics in operation: a coherent, highly motivated group with a short agenda has far more effective social power than a looser coalition with distributed priorities and a broad agenda. That’s why the special interest groups have consistently outplayed those of us who merely prize freedom. Note that there are few successful broadly pro-freedom organizations. The most successful of them have been groups that address a single facet of the pro-freedom agenda, such as the National Rifle Association.

An important digression: Note how little success in the struggle to retain our freedom has arisen from efforts by the Republican Party. The GOP’s platform gives a lot of lip service to freedom and limited government, but nearly always fails to deliver. This demonstrates the results we can expect from ignoring the concentration principle. Indeed, the problem is compounded by the existence of groups unfriendly to freedom and limited government within the GOP. Their concentration on creating, retaining, and enlarging specific privileges and immunities for particular constituencies gives them more effective power than the party itself.

The salient point about mouthpiece groups is that they’re the point of the spear. They determine the success or failure of the effort. Others who want to defeat their efforts must focus as tightly on defeating the sought-after privilege or immunity as they do on acquiring and perpetuating it:

“Gay rights” mouthpiece groups must be opposed by specifically anti-gay-rights groups.
Mouthpiece groups dedicated to promoting “affirmative action” or exemptions from criminal justice for black lawbreakers must be opposed by groups specifically focused on defeating those goals.
CAIR, ISNA, and similar mouthpiece groups for Muslims must be opposed by groups specifically focused on denying special privileges to Muslims.
NOW, the National Abortion Rights Action League, and similar mouthpiece groups for “women’s rights” must be opposed by groups specifically focused on denying special privileges to women.

There are special problems to be solved in each case. Among the most important of them is linguistic hijacking. Each identity group has harnessed a powerful word -- rights -- to its service, and has flogged that word until most Americans can’t even begin to frame an argument for why the proposed “right” isn’t any such thing, but rather a privilege or an immunity. This is a critical factor in the public struggle.

A second, equally important problem is that of the “iron triangle.” A privilege or immunity once gained will thereafter collect defenders:

Bureaucrats: Those who operate The System;
Vendors: Those who sell to The System;
Beneficiaries: Those who receive direct transfers of wealth and privileges from The System.

They are usually about as well motivated as the mouthpiece groups themselves. They will support the mouthpiece groups with monetary contributions, volunteer effort, and (when possible) their votes. The triangles that assist in the defense of the privileges and immunities of the four identity groups enumerated in the opening segment are particularly firm. They include many Civil Service employees.

It will take more than a thousand-word essay to delineate the strategic and tactical problems involved. But perhaps the above will serve to launch the discussion.

Monday, January 4, 2016

Quickies: Three New Laws

These, from libertarian economic thinker Dan Mitchell, should sit beside Robert Conquest’s Three Laws of Politics on the required-reading-for-government-worshippers list:

See this essay for links to all their developments. And note, of course, that not one nation on Earth currently respects all three.

From A Balcony Seat

Time was, I followed the news almost obsessively. I wrote about it, here and elsewhere, from a conviction that if we’re to save our country, Americans need unassailable facts and the clearest possible thinking about them. With the most recent events, I find my mindset changing.

A state governor has announced his intention to defy an upcoming presidential executive order.

Two peaceable ranchers, recently released from prison, are being returned to prison because a federal judge thinks their original sentences weren’t severe enough.

At least one federal legislator has called for the repeal of the First Amendment. (Others have called for the repeal of the Second Amendment, but these days that’s not news.)

Despite the discovery that ISIS can now produce counterfeit passports indistinguishable from official ones, tens of thousands of unvetted Middle Eastern Muslims are to be admitted to the country as “refugees.”

Black-on-white violence is at an all-time high, yet the nation’s “paper of record” thinks it appropriate and constructive to print a black racialist’s “Dear White America” letter.

There is no longer such a thing as guaranteed non-felonious sex between consenting adults; any sex act, no matter how far distant in time, can be made the basis for an accusation of rape.

A major party’s probable presidential nominee has stated openly that a man accused of rape should be presumed guilty.

The great majority of college and university campuses now police the spoken and written statements of both students and faculty for political correctness – while simultaneously, leftists attempt to have the phrase “politically correct” declared politically incorrect.

The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act has made medical care less available by driving a significant fraction of the nation’s health care providers out of business. It’s simultaneously made medical insurance unaffordable.

Despite healthy Republican majorities in both Houses of Congress, the Democrats continue to drive the legislative agenda.

The federal debt – exclusive of its unfunded liabilities – is now over $18 trillion and is still increasing. With the unfunded liabilities included, the figure is too terrifying to put into a blog post.

And of course, while the official statistics tell us that unemployment is at about 5.4%, nearly 100 million Americans of working age are without full-time jobs.

The collapse has begun. The blood-dimmed tide has been loosed. Whether we have any slightest chance to draw up short of the abyss, I cannot say.

Commenting on social, economic, and political developments in tones of incredulity and outrage has become a game anyone can play. There isn’t much point in my doing something anyone with three functioning brain cells can do, especially when it costs me so much time, effort, and emotion. In perfect candor, the point at which it became pointless probably arrived some time ago: roughly when the nation returned Barack Obama to the white House for a second term. A country that did such an insane thing probably can’t be compelled to acknowledge the onrush of disaster, much less aroused sufficiently to avert or deflect it.

There is no salvation available from the political process – not when the Democrats are about to nominate inveterate liar and serial sex-assault enabler Hillary Clinton, and a plurality of Republican-minded voters favor crony capitalist and longtime supporter of Democrats Donald Trump. If those are the major party nominees, it simply won’t matter who wins.

There’s nowhere to flee, either. The entire land surface of Earth has been partitioned into States. The U.S., despite its accelerating descent, remains the best of them. Owing to the widespread private possession of firearms, it’s also the one with the best chance of reversing the trend toward political totalitarianism in the guise of “democracy.” The survivors might have it pretty good.

The militia occupying that federal building in Oregon in support of the Hammonds have my admiration for their courage. But unless many tens of thousands of other Americans follow their example very quickly, it will come to nothing: at worst, a bloodbath; at best, a “negotiated settlement” that will leave the usurped powers of the federal government unaffected.

The Civil War / War Between The States had better prospects for a successful resolution – and look what happened then.

I’m one of the more fortunate, at least for the moment. As I’m well provided for and live in a relatively safe part of the country, I can view events with a degree of dispassion. At least, I think I can. But no one is perfectly safe – and no one can stay above the fray when something he loves is menaced.

Freedom has many enemies. Indeed, the Regime is importing more of them as we speak. If it still has defenders sufficient to turn the tide, what are they doing? More germane to my personal problem, if an individual who is mortally distrustful of groups but who loves freedom and seeks to contribute to its defense has any part to play in the events of our time, what might it be? Just to sit here and keep writing until the totalitarians finally succeed in censoring the Internet and criminalizing all unapproved sentiments?

It appears we must revolt if our children and theirs are to know a free and prosperous society. But who will bell the cat? Not I.

Chalk this plaint up to a poor night’s sleep if you will. Maybe that’s really the case; in my current state of mind, I can’t be sure. But I haven’t been this down about developments since late 2008.

Later, Gentle Reader. I’m going to Mass.

Sunday, January 3, 2016

Eye Openings

Perhaps this Year of Our Lord 2016 will bring us more than just broken New Year’s Resolutions.

1. Muslims.

The Swedes are pulling in their “welcome” mat:

     ...after taking in more asylum seekers per capita than any other nation in Europe, Sweden’s welcome mat now lies in tatters. Overwhelmed by the human tide of 2015, the center-left government is deploying extraordinary new border controls and slashing benefits in an unmistakable signal to refugees contemplating the long trek to Sweden in the new year: Stay out.
     “We’re willing to do more than anyone else,” said Swedish Migration Minister Morgan Johansson. “But even we have our limits.”
     Those limits can be readily seen in a tent camp where dozens of migrants are bedding down in the frigid Nordic winter and at the train station where many new arrivals are turned back within minutes of setting foot on Swedish soil.

If Sweden, that most tolerant of the nations of the Old World – tolerant of everything except individual freedom, that is – can see the writing on the wall, can the rest of Europe be far behind?

2. “Black Lives Matter”

Large cities have borne the brunt of this outlaw gang’s depredations. That’s no coincidence, as most of America’s large cities suffer under Democrat administrations. However, the Democrats may have had enough:

Chicago’s Mayor Rahm Emanuel is starting to feel the bite of the political machine he spent decades protecting as more calls come for his resignation. When poverty pimp Al Sharpton calls for you to resign, you know it’s time to leave your vacation in Cuba and handle the powder keg set to explode in your city. Maybe Emanuel could pick up a few pointers from Fidel Castro on how to handle protesters before returning to the Windy City....
Rahm Emanuel isn’t cutting his vacation short to address the concerns of Chicago citizens. He is returning to Chicago to discipline his army for speaking up against him. Specifically, Al Sharpton. I predict those that have paid patronage to the Chicago machine will get Al Sharpton served on a political platter, the equivalent of finding a horse head in your bed.

A rift between the Democrat Party and black racialist activists would badly wound Democrats’ electoral prospects in 2016. The Negro vote has been a critical component of the Left’s coalition for four decades at least. Without it, the Democrats’ large deficits among whites and married women would finally outweigh their successes at harnessing identity-group politics.

3. Black Racists.

White Americans may have had enough:

Suspiciously overlooked in the disgusting "Dear white America" was the fact that charges of racism were leveled in the same pages as acknowledgements of black crime. Who would dare mention robbers and then demand indifference to robbery? Who has the audacity to bring up rapists and then pretend that raping is irrelevant? If there's a problem with black crime, then let's deal with the crime before dealing with our disgust for criminals. If there's a problem with character, then let men rise in our estimation before demanding that we re-estimate them. To ask the other way around isn't to ask for peace; essentially, it is a covert declaration of war. It holds forth an olive branch in one hand while hiding a dagger in the other.
The undeniable gist of the piece in the New York Times was that black people cannot any longer live in black society and are jealous of the stability, success, and harmony of white businesses and neighborhoods. It was a cry for inclusion masked in the unsociable language of the excluded.

Ann Coulter wrote in Mugged that the acquittal of O.J. Simpson was a turning point for white Americans’ attitudes about race. After a majority-black jury refused to convict Simpson despite overwhelming circumstantial evidence, millions of whites were finally moved to say “Enough. No further consideration on account of race!” That caused black race hustlers to bear down for a Battle-of-the-Bulge-like push. However, if the reactions to that scrofulous letter are any indication, the push has fizzled and the bills are about to come due.

4. Militant Homosexuals.

This unmasks the true agenda of the Sodomite Army:

     For over the past decade, [Dr. Paul] Church has expressed concern to his colleagues about [Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center’s] promotion of homosexual events. He has commented both via email and on the hospital’s internal portal that it is improper to promote lifestyles that are contrary to the goals of the healthcare community, and has been met with allegations that his comments constitute “discrimination and harassment” and are “offensive to BIDMC staff.”
     “The evidence is irrefutable that behaviors common within the homosexual community are unhealthy and high risk for a host of serious medical consequences, including STD’s, HIV and AIDS, anal cancer, hepatitis, parasitic intestinal infections, and psychiatric disorders,” Church wrote on the portal on one occasion....
     In September 2014, a formal investigation was launched against Church, and findings were turned over to a 25-member Medical Executive Committee for consideration. In March, the committee decided to expel Church for his “unsolicited views about homosexuality that were offensive to BIDMC Staff” and for violating the hospital’s discrimination policy.

I’ve written about the health consequences of homosexual sodomy myself. I’ve made no secret of it – and it never caused me the slightest fear for my occupation, my reputation, or the esteem of my friends and neighbors. Dr. Church has been grievously wronged. Worse, the very people who most need to listen to and act on his message are the ones who’ve wronged him. We should watch – and hope – for a recoil against this odious action.

5. What Does It All Mean?

As we can see from the citations above, not only are those groups determined to secure group privileges becoming steadily more demanding and militant; persons outside those groups are becoming more aware of the injustice of what they seek. Even prominent Democrats will occasionally allow that some group is asking for far more than its due.

The Era of the Group hasn’t ended yet, but there are some hopeful signs, both above and in the day-to-day exchanges of views among ordinary Americans. There’s a sense of resistance rising – of a renewed determination among the law-abiding to assert American principles and demand that they be honored...and when necessary, enforced.

Is the trend definite and positive? Unclear...but the fog of self-deception normal people have wrapped around themselves about the agendas of activist groups, including the groups mentioned above, might just be lifting. We shall see.

Looking forward.

THE NEXT 100 YEARS I am enclosing $4.00 on my account that is much past due, but wish to inform you that the present shattered condition of my bank account makes it impossible for me to send you my check in full in response to your request. My present financial condition is due to the effect of federal laws, state laws, County laws, incorporation laws, by-laws, brother-in-laws, mother-in-laws and out-laws that have been foisted upon an unsuspecting public. Through these various laws I have been held-down, held-up, sat-on, walked-on, flattened and squeezed and broke until I do not know what I am, where I am, or why I am.
These laws compel me to pay a merchant's tax, capital tax, income tax, incorporation tax, real estate tax, light tax, water tax, cigarette tax, school tax, syntax, liquor tax and carpet tax.
In addition to these laws, I am requested and requited to contribute to every society and organization that the inventive mind of man can invent. Give to the Society of St. John the Baptist, the Woman's Relief, the Navy League, the Children's Home, the Pro-Freeman's Benefit, the Dorcas Society, the Gold-Diggers Home; also, to every hospital and charitable institution in town, the Black Cross, the White Cross, the Purple Cross, the Red Cross and the Double Cross.

The government has governed my business so that I do not know who owns it. I am suspected, expected, inspected, disrespected, examined, re-examined, informed, required, commanded and compelled until all I know is that I am supposed to provide an inexhaustible supply of money for every known and unknown need, desire or hope of the human race, and because I refuse to donate to all and then go out and beg, borrow or steal the money to give away, I am ousted, cussed, discussed, boycotted, talked about, lied about, held up, held down and robbed until I am just about ruined. ~ ~
The only reason that I am clinging to life at all is to see what is coming next.

A Hundred Years of Progress. A History of the First 100 Years of Edgar, Nebraska.

Saturday, January 2, 2016

The Numbers Game

[I’m fresh out of ideas for a new piece, so I’ve gone back to the archives for the one below, which first appeared at the old Palace of Reason in 2004. It struck me as appropriate to the season, considering how many New Year’s Resolutions derive from frustration at the quest for love. -- FWP]

Since I posted the last Sunday Folly, I've received quite a bit of E-mail about my take on inter-gender relations. Some of the notes were complimentary. Many were very unpleasant: sermonettes on my appalling arrogance and sexism. And a few were poignant beyond measure. Herewith, a snippet from one such note, from a fellow whom we shall call (need you ask?) Smith:

    I'd love to do as you suggest, but I've got no one to wear the shoes.
    People keep telling me how many desperate women there are out there, searching in vain for a "good man." Well, damn it all, I'm a good man, and I've been alone for nearly twenty years. I've gone to the clubs, read the lonelyhearts ads, joined the dating services, hung out in art galleries and museums, all the stuff the advice columnists recommend. I get blown off so fast you'd think I'm covered with scabs.
    What does the Curmudgeon Emeritus suggest for me?

Before I say anything else, I must say this: Smith, if you're reading this, I've been there. I was "between engagements" for a very long time. It's a kind of suffering that the unafflicted can't quite comprehend. Other good men have the same complaint, and there are no pat answers or guaranteed solutions. If there's any balm in knowing that you're not alone, take it from me.

Second, I'm not going to kick this over to the Curmudgeon. I'm going to try to handle it myself. I'll do my best, but please remember: free advice is usually worth exactly what it costs. This is especially true concerning romance.

Though what follows will be from a man's perspective, and written as counsel for a man, I believe that it would be equally valid if the genders were reversed. Whether it's valid at all is, of course, a matter of opinion.

With regard to love, there are about a million fallacies circulating as gospel truths. Our modern era is unusual in many ways, and particularly so as regards our sexual-romantic minefield. Because the risks are large and the difficulties often appear insurmountable, we're unusually prone to believing things that we'd dismiss with a snort if we were in our right minds.

The worst of these fallacies is that of the One True Love.

There's nothing in this world quite as unlikely as the prospect of meeting a woman who's "perfect for you": ready for you to love unreservedly and unstintingly, and who'll love you back with equal fervor. It simply doesn't happen. Human beings are much too complex, and too imperfect, for such a fantasy to be made real.

If you've been looking for "the one," and wondering why you can't find her, you have your answer. Disabuse yourself of the notion that she has to be out there somewhere. You've been putting your energies into a hopeless chase. Until you admit it and reorient yourself, you'll reap naught but misery.

"The one," or some variation on the theme, is the reason most romances fail. A lot of younger folks carry an idealized picture of romantic bliss in their heads. They insist on comparing their current romance to that picture, and their current beau to the demigoddess of their fantasy. Besides being monstrously unfair to any human lover to do such a thing, it guarantees dissatisfaction from one end of life to the other.

To insist on "the one" is to insist that some real woman mold herself into a reproduction of your fantasies. It's a demand for a golem, not a wife. Every real lover you'll ever have will be irritable, distractable, ornery, perverse, and independent of mind. How could it be otherwise? Other people never live up to our hopes for them. Not even the best of them, and not even when you've made it crystal-clear what you want and expect.

But there is one person who has the potential to live up to your hopes for him.

You know who I'm talking about, don't you?

I'm no expert on romance. I'm just an engineer who likes to write. But I'm a successful engineer, very highly regarded by my peers, and one of the reasons is that I long ago grasped a handful of fundamental principles about, well, everything:

The Rules:

Reality is independent of your opinions.
It's also indifferent to your desires.
Every situation comes with incentives and constraints. Though you will try to maximize your harvest of the incentives, you must satisfy the constraints.
Effort put toward trying to control the uncontrollable is effort wasted.
The clock is always running; there are no "time outs."

I can practically hear you muttering, "Yeah, yeah, so what? Only a total bonehead wouldn't know all of that." Well, if that be the case, then to judge by the Romantic State of the Union, there are an awful lot of total boneheads running around loose.

The reality of American life at the opening of the Twenty-First Century is that the traditional mechanisms by which people found their mates -- church affiliations; involvement in charitable undertakings; introductions through family connections or mutual friends -- have all lost their zap. There are a number of reasons for this, but none of them are controllable, so I'll pass them by without comment. The reader is likely to be more interested in what does work than in what once worked.

The modern mechanisms -- singles' bars; dating services; singles' personal ads; trolling among coworkers -- are mostly inadequate, too. Now and then, one of them will score a major success for someone, but most of the time, the matches produced by these approaches are fleeting, and end badly. After such a liaison comes to a close, the victims are likely to feel worse than they did beforehand.

We all think we "ought" to be able to "find someone." Reality thinks otherwise. In fact, reality frowns on the very form of the statement.

If you're out there "looking for someone" -- worst, if you're "looking for Miss Right" -- you've already taken the wrong trail and are virtually certain to reap disappointment.

This isn't the way we want it to be, of course. We'd really love to be able to order the Perfect Wife out of a catalog, with a money-back guarantee that she'll meet all the published specifications, and a lifetime no-cost replacement warranty should that ever cease to be the case. Sorry, folks. Sears can only do so much.

There's a major constraint on your search for a lover that you must respect, ahead of and above any concern for your criteria for her: She'll be a flawed and variable human being, just as you are, and while you're measuring her against your list of desiderata, she'll be doing the same to you.

Can you control her? No. Dismiss that notion at once. You can't even select her with a high certainty that she possesses the qualities you seek. A human being is an iceberg; only a tiny portion shows at any given time. You might not live long enough to know her in her totality.

Can you control her evaluation of you? No. She could be insane, you know. I had a girlfriend like that, once. As soon as she sobered up, she left me.

If she's not insane, you can influence her evaluation of you. The only element in the tableau over which you have any control is yourself: your character and behavior. By building a better you, you can improve your prospects for gaining her good opinion -- and keeping it.

You don't have a lot of time to work. Most of us form our opinions of most of us within the first couple of minutes after being introduced. There's no way to recover from a major blunder committed in that precious opening interval. There's no way to recover if she adjudges you vapid, colorless, or spineless, either.

And always remember this: You don't know who she is, what sort of baggage she's carrying, or what she values. You don't even know if she's in the room with you. Any unattached woman you meet might be your future spouse. You have to be all that you can be, the best of you, every minute of every hour of every day. There are no time outs.

This romance stuff sounds pretty stressful, doesn't it? Well, that's because it is. The old methods were less stressful, but they required a lower level of expectation than the typical unmated American carries today. Everyone expected to marry a virgin who lived nearby, spend his whole life in the same geographic locale, work forty or fifty years for the same employer, rear children, compromise on many matters and bear a host of disappointments in stoic silence. A lot of the decision-making was left in the hands of others. That allowed people to relax a bit, strange as it sounds.

Would I turn the clock back if I could? What's the superlative of "Hell, no!" -- ? There was a lot of marital misery bravely borne, back when. Just because our ancestors bore it bravely didn't make it any less miserable. People are generally happier today, despite the romantic morass we must navigate.

But our ancestors did grasp a particular truth that we have largely lost. The revival of that truth, and its acceptance as a guide for our attitudes and our behavior, would go a long way toward easing the romantic frustrations of millions of Americans.

Love isn't just something you feel. It's also something you do.

There are millions of women you could love. If you happen upon one who's agreeable to the idea, then why not love her?

I'm not talking about having copious sex with lots of near-strangers. If you were thinking along those lines, you've missed the point completely.

You can love anyone whose fundamental values and moral standards are compatible with yours. The inverse is also true: if her values and standards are not compatible with yours, there's no point in trying, no matter how good she looks in Spandex^® and stilettos. So let's imagine that Miss Jones is there with you right now, and would find you acceptable on that basis. (It does have to be reciprocal, of course, but it usually is.) What would someone who loves Miss Jones, and was married to her, do? How would he behave?

The essence of it is that he would try to make her feel happy and secure.

Now, if we recall the assumption of uncertainty -- you don't know who she is, or whether she's in the same room with you even now -- what would that dictate about your behavior toward every woman?

No, you don't have to rub all their feet or buy them all minks. But you should conduct yourself the way a good husband would, when out in public with his wife. The "in public" clause restricts certain gestures and frees you from others. Fanny-grabbing would be disallowed, but you'd also be exempted from having to wash their cars or take out their garbage.

Miss Jones will notice. Take my word for it; today, the degree of gallantry displayed by the average unmated American male is so low that even modest efforts to do better will make you as conspicuous as a pearl on black velvet.

You needn't trouble yourself about the ones who look for reasons to take offense. These are not Miss Joneses. In fact, they've saved you work with their boorishness, by narrowing the field. As for their denunciations of your "chauvinism" or "sexism," if you know your behavior to be impeccable, why should the maledictions of viragoes concern you? Miss Jones might be in the next room. Smile at their pretensions and pass on.

Miss Jones will notice that, too.

It's frequently said among women that "you have to kiss a lot of frogs to find a prince." There's an uncomfortable amount of truth to that, these days. Most men are inadequately courteous, obsessed with their own drives and pleasures, and generally oblivious to the desires and prerogatives of others. But it also underscores the need for patience and perseverance, something women have traditionally understood better than we.

Let's imagine that you've forsworn all your illusions about hooking up with a ravisher from the cover of a pink-and-purple novel, no longer think romantic intoxication is your due, have ceased to think you can mold the character, behavior, and opinions of others, and are simply resolved to be the best person you can be -- but Miss Jones still hasn't appeared. What then? Hemlock?

Nope. "What then" is, in the words of the poet, "to keep on keepin' on."

After all, you're already doing it right. You can prove it; simply refer your critics to "The Rules." So why let impatience dissuade you from the proper course?

You might need to widen your social circle a bit. You might need to put yourself in the way of a greater number of contacts. But you emphatically would not profit from going back to the bars, the dating services, the lonelyhearts' columns, et cetera ad nauseam infinitam.

Just be the best that you can be. To love is to value another equally to oneself, such that one sees the other's needs, desires, and overall happiness as an integral part of one's own. If you keep being the very model of a courteous, considerate, responsible gentleman, you've maximized your chances. You've put the most attractive conceivable lure into the waters. A catch is not guaranteed, but no other bait would give you a better shot.

And if, by some mischance, you should go all the way to the end of your life unmated, you'll nevertheless be able to say, "I was the best possible me." What could be better than that? Aside from a weekend with Angelina Jolie, that is?

(tee hee)

Did Texans get out-foxed by anti-gunners?

I can't believe this development never even crossed my mind. Guess I'm just not as devious as I thought I was.

Friday, January 1, 2016

Quickies: For Our Lady

Catholics celebrate January 1 as the Solemnity of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Mother of God. It also commemorates the day Mary and Joseph presented the infant Jesus to the priests to be circumcised. The ritual circumcision of a male child signified his formal entry into the Jewish people.

The occasion wasn’t as significant as Mary’s own acceptance of her role as the Mother of God. Nevertheless, it was significant among the rituals of the Jewish people. It implicitly recognized the child Jesus as one among His own – yet only months earlier, Mary and her unborn Child had been in mortal danger, precisely because His conception was known to be outside of wedlock: in those days a stoning offense. With the circumcision of the baby Jesus, all possibility that the clerical authorities of the time would punish her, or Him, had been laid to rest.

It was also the occasion of the encounter with Simeon, whom God had promised would see the Messiah in the flesh: yet another confirmation that the virgin mother had not hallucinated the angelic Annunciation of her role.

Reflect on how great was the hazard for which Mary had volunteered herself. Yet she accepted it. In doing so, she accepted not only her role as the Mother of God, but also the sorrows that would attend it, all the way to the Crucifixion. Had she declined it, God would not have imposed it on her, for under the veil of Time He does not coerce His creatures.

Which is why Catholics venerate Mary as the Great Intercessor, highest of the saints, the Mediatrix of grace whose petitions her Son will not refuse.

May God bless and keep you all throughout the Year of Our Lord 2016.

Quickies: Starting Anew

Well, Gentle Reader, we’ve finally cleared away the last of 2015’s BS. Let’s see what BS we might do away with in 2016:

Islamic BS: These bastards are trying to remake America along shari’a lines. Either we stop them now, or we might as well all recite the shahada, because they won’t stop – ever.
Negro BS: Seven out of every ten black children are illegitimate. They grow up to kill one another at a terrifying rate or to produce still more illegitimate children, while their spokespeople blame it on “Whitey” or “The Man.” Either we put a stop to it or relax to seeing our gutters run red and having our sensibilities abraded by their noxious demands forever more.
Anti-Christian BS: We haven’t yet had a loud enough wake-up call to do what the Jews sensibly did after World War II and form an explicitly Christian nation. But the time is drawing near – and my preference would be for this nation to be the one so blessed.
Journalistic BS: Why haven’t we yet bankrupted the “news” outlets that persist in reporting only those bits of news they feel would be “good for us?” They survive on commercial sponsorship, just as do the entertainment media. Verbum sat sapienti.
Last but most certainly not least, Political BS: Members of the political elite in these United States routinely get away with every sort of crime and offense against the common mores, including murder. Shame those you know who refuse to condemn evil done by their political leaders – and don’t let them play the tu quoque game.

Hercules’s task was more daunting than ours...but he was one man, though supposedly the progeny of a god. There are many millions of us. Now if you’ll excuse me, I hear the faint cry of a mimosa calling out my name.

Bunny's epic fail.

Yesterday was the last day of the 60-day period within which I predicted that Angela Merkel would be forced out as chancellor of Germany. The massive influx of invaders seemed sure to bring her down and indeed there were calls soon after my prediction that she step down. The Bavarians were particularly testy about the massive influx and they are an important part of her support.

Surely pictures of gibbering Africans and of endless lines of foreigners streaming through the European countryside would be the catalyst for German anger, as it had been for Hungarians and other E. Europeans.

Merkel recovered enough of her political wits, which have historically caused her to move to co-opt opposition and sell herself as the best and safest compromise. In this case, she had the wit to order the reinstatement of border controls and that has appeared to have quieted down a lot of anger.

How well that has worked I don't know. Brad Macdonald's piece below indicates that she lied about the total that would be let in and, in any event, the original number of "only" 800,000 vice 1.5 million will work its magic on German minds as the effects of such an alien presence are felt in actual neighborhoods and in various budgets and (top secret) crime statistics. No longer foreigners walking through distant fields but now "Abdul my neighbor." Can love and harmony be far behind?

The German authorities are lying about and covering up the crimes and primitive behavior of the newcomers. Here's a telling story about that from Macdonald's article:

Across Germany, frustration, uncertainty and anger are welling up. A growing number of Germans are feeling betrayed and want change. They want a leader who will listen to their anxieties, defend their interests, and protect Germany.

In Stockach, I had coffee with a 20-year-old man who works as a security guard at a refugee camp containing more than 1,000 migrants. The camp, he explained, is a mix between a pigsty and a war zone. This man had witnessed migrants refuse to use the portable toilets and, instead, take care of business in the corner of the room or behind furniture. The camp was filthy. There was also rampant sexual abuse, rape, fights and knifings, and regular clashes between religious and ethnic foes (Shia vs. Sunni, for example). Are local politicians expressing concern about this in public? I asked. Is the local media reporting on what’s happening inside these camps?
They are totally silent, he said.^[1]

So Merkel confounded my prediction with ease by a little kabuki kapering at the borders. However, I don't think it will be long before a certain "social percolation" takes place and maybe in the early spring Merkel will come under increased pressure again as the extent of the disaster and the government's lying becomes clearer. Germans are not stupid and certainly not as supine as their government is counting on. Es kommt die Zukunft.

In the meantime, I will hew to the sage advice once given to economists: Give them a date or give them a number, but never give them a date and a number.

But Merkel will go. No politician can front such a gigantic, insane social catastrophe and again maneuver herself to some temporary safe space. The numbers are huge and the immigration catastrophe is finally developing some very sharp edges.

Notes
^[1] "Germany, Migrants and Angela Merkel’s Big Lie." By Brad Macdonald, The Trumpet, 12/29/15.

No. The GOP insists that only liberals must run the debates.

Why [don’t] Trump, Carson, Cruise, and Rubio, rent a building somewhere for a debate and invite the media to cover it. Sell 30 second advertising slots to each network for 150,000 a whack[?] Have Rush Limbaugh and Mark Levin handle the questioning.^[1]

Ultraright is on the right track here.

But no. When voters are interested in hearing about solutions to the nation's problems there's just nothing like "war on women" and "deporting anchor babies with terminal cancer" questions to liven up the debate for ratings. That's what debates are for. To play "gotcha," inject telegenic young lawyers into presidential politics, advance the progressive agenda, and sell advertising.

Couldn't Brian Lamb periodically come out of retirement and fix this? The man was decent and fair in his treatment of people on his C-SPAN shows.

The GOP insists on doing its deer-in-the-headlights imitation every bleeping time and dumps the whole debate process into the laps of progressives and intellectual nonentities. Guaranteed. Who was Candy Crowley anyway?

Without fail we have presidential "debates" that do not bring up

odiferous Supreme Court decisions (such as the long-ago disastrous expansion of the scope of the Commerce Clause that twisted the Constitution into a pretzel and handed a blank check to Congress to expand the size of the federal government to the roof tops),
vote fraud,
the role of big donors in the political process,
the role of the Federal Reserve,
Keynesian economics,
the inability of the U.S. government to control spending and federal debt,
the judicial doctrine of original intent,
waging undeclared war in Syria,
the unconstitutional Department of Education and the EPA,
U.S. support for ISIS,
the role of Saudi money in American politics,
importing foreigners to take the jobs of Americans,
the U.S. government's employment of members of the Muslim Brotherhood,
Hillary Clinton's employment of a woman with ties to Saudi Arabia and the Muslim Brotherhood,
the sharia's requirement of death for apostasy and how that is consistent with our belief in freedom of conscience,
the shariah requirement for supremacy over infidel law and how a Muslim can swear truthfully in a naturalization proceeding,
ending affirmative discrimination,
stopping not expanding all immigration,
black racism and criminality,
welfare parasitism as a formula for national suicide,
the devastation of our cities by the black underclass, and
how free speech can be protected against the assaults of homosexual zealots and progressives.

Maybe there are other questions that could be asked.

Notes
^[1] Comment by ultraright on "Rush Limbaugh Taken Back By Caller’s ‘Brilliant Point’: ‘Wait a Second…You Are Spot On Here.’" By Oliver Darcy, The Blaze, 11/3/15.

Thursday, December 31, 2015

A Maudlin Thought For New Year's Eve

In keeping with the sentiments in the essay below:

Hello, old friend!
What a strange coincidence to find you.
It's been fifteen years since we last met,
But I still recognized you.
So call the barman over here,
And let us fill our glasses,
And drink a toast to olden times,
Where all our memories lie,
Where all our memories lie...
Do you remember the time when we were young?
Lowly, lowly, low,
Outside the window, the frosty moonlight hung
On the midnight snow,
So we pulled our scarves around our faces in the night,
Huddled on the doorsteps where the fairy lights shone bright,
Singing Christmas carols while our breath hung in the light...
It all comes back like yesterday,
It almost seems like yesterday...
Do you remember the changes as we grew?
Slowly, slowly, slow,
Sneaking round the back way into movies after school,
For the evening show.
Chasing skinny bluejeaned girls across the building site,
Checking out the dance floor while the band played "Hold Me Tight,"
See the blonde one over there, I bet she'd be all right...
It all comes back like yesterday,
It almost seems like yesterday...
While I talked he sat and he never made a sound,
Staring at the glass beside me,
Hey, old friend, tell me what's on your mind?
Silence grows on you like ivy.
Do you remember the church across the sands,
Holy, holy, ho,
You stood outside and planned to travel to the lands
Where the pilgrims go,
So you packed your world up inside a canvas sack,
Set out down the highway with your rings and Kerouac,
Someone said they saw you in Nepal a long time back...
Tell me why you look away,
Don't you have a word to say?
He said "I don't remember,
"I don't want to remember,
"In fact I’ve heard too much already.
"I don't want to think,
"So just leave me here to drink,
"Wrapped up in the warmth of New York City.
"Oh, oh, it seems you just don't know,
"And you just don't understand me,
"I've got no use for the tricks of modern times,
"They tangle all my thoughts like ivy,
"Ivy..."
So I left him and I went out to the street,
Lowly, lowly, low,
Where the red-light girls were coming after me,
Forty dollar show,
All across the city's heart, the lights were coming on,
The hotel lift softly hummed a Cole Porter song,
If I went to look for him, I knew he would be gone...
A picture-card of yesterday
A photograph of yesterday...
And far off in a deserted part of town,
The shadows, like a silent army,
Flooded out the rooms in pools of blue and brown,
And stuck to all the walls like ivy,
Ivy,
Ivy...
(Al Stewart, "Modern Times," 1976)

Another Year In The Rear-View Mirror

Viewed objectively, our celebration of the New Year is more than a bit silly. December 31 and January 1 are entirely undistinguished days, no different from any others on the calendar. Yet millions of people deem them occasions for raucous partying and the consumption of way too much salty snack food. There are numerous television “specials” replete with celebrity hosts and performers. There’s the whole Times Square / ball-drop spectacle. And of course, there’s the way the partier feels the next morning: the salt-saturated “hangover” that reminds him of why he’d said “never again” exactly one year before.

The “year in review” column is a common practice among persons who write for public consumption. I’ve done a few, myself. (Perhaps this will be one such; you won’t know until you’ve read all the way to the end, now will you?) But the events of each year connect seamlessly to those of the year before it, and to the events that will follow. Apart from phenomena that are specifically tied to the calendar, such as sports seasons, the year-end punctuation is entirely a mental artifact.

We do it anyway, and for a reason few of us take time to contemplate: we need mileposts. We need ways to demarcate our lives into segments small enough to comprehend. Yes, life is an organic whole. Yes, it isn’t really possible to regard one day apart from all others, much less one calendar year. But we seem to need to try it anyway.

For obvious reasons, the elderly – I’m one such – are more likely to spend their time looking backward than forward. When we look backward, we might see particular years as particularly important to us, but it won’t be because of the number at the top of the calendar. It will be because the events of that period glow especially brightly in our memories. People and places, delights and disasters, and the recognition of important transitions all play a part. Most important is the way we remember those things in the context of life as a whole, for they, not the increments in the year, are the real mileposts in our lives.

Yet there’s much about any man’s past that he would rather forget. As Jean Valjean says at the conclusion of Les Miserables, we’re all fools most of our lives. The overwhelming majority of our lessons arrive through our mistakes – and the greater the lesson, the more painful the mistake.

Many of our worst mistakes arise from wishful thinking: that desire, in opposition to everything we’ve ever read, seen, heard, or experienced, to believe that “it will all be all right,” that “things will be better in the morning.” How often has it really been that way? How often have we awakened to a vista even bleaker than the night before? How many times have we said, to ourselves and to one another, “If only I’d known then what I know now?” How often have we strained to forget that we did know better then – that though we knew better, we willfully chose to do worse?

I once tried to keep a count of such episodes. I lost track long ago.

In his lawyer’s autobiography My Life In Court, the late Louis Nizer wrote that “Defeat is education. It is a step to something better.” That’s the optimistic view – the view that assumes that we’ll learn from our defeats, our mistakes. Yet in many cases we lose, or at least fail to gain that for which we strove, not because we blundered but because the prize was unattainable, or the enemy not defeasible, at least given the powers and resources at our command. Don Quixote isn’t remembered for fighting and losing to potentially defeasible enemies, but because he “tilted at windmills:” enemies he could not affect in the slightest, that didn’t even realize he was trying to joust with them.

Consider how many people rail against acquisitiveness, which they call “greed.” Consider how many people condemn “racism” and “sexism,” which are merely the human preferences for others of one’s own kind. Consider how many people denounce “homophobia,” mistaking the natural disgust at an unnatural, unhealthful, life-shortening “lifestyle” for a fear that it might be contagious.

These are “enemies” no man can defeat. They are written into our natures. To struggle against them isn’t noble, but foolish. Rather, we should seek to enlist them and turn their forces to our advantage. But try to convince a “progressive” of that.

We salve the wounds from our follies, especially those from the tendency to “think” with our desires instead of our reason, with a variety of balms:

“At least you tried.”
“It couldn’t be helped.”
“Now you know better.”

I did a few foolish things in the Year of Our Lord 2015. A couple were self-indulgent; others were merely heedless or thoughtless. No, I shan’t catalog them for you. As the gag runs in defense engineering: “How’re you doing?” “You have no need to know.” And I can recall, at least in a few instances, applying one or more of the remedies above to the hurt I’d earned. But those things can numb you to the lesson you could derive from your blunder. If there’s anything truly educational about defeat, it lies in the pain it inflicts; as P. J. O’Rourke has written, it teaches us that we’re boneheads.

A wise man I paid too little attention at the time tried to tell me so. Given how often I’ve excused myself for my stupidities and struggled away from the pain they brought me, to assume that I learned from them, that I’ll manage to avoid those or similar follies in 2016, might be the most foolish thing of all.

An odd column from the Curmudgeon Emeritus to the World Wide Web, eh? Chalk it up to too poor a night’s sleep and too good a memory. Kurtz looked into the abyss and was gripped by terror. I look back at 2015 and am gripped by if-onlies.

Happy New Year, Gentle Reader. I hope your 2015 was a good one and your 2016 still better. For my part, I’ll try to look only forward. Above all else, conserve your hopes, for oftentimes they’re all you have. Besides, hope is one of the theological virtues.

How a patriot would have acted in Benghazi.

Obama and the Treason Class are adept at "narratives." Whites are bigots, conservatives are racists and haters, this is a propositional nation founded by words located in the dictionary, the Constitution is alive and formless like an amoeba, AND that "it's all so complicated."

It's all so complicated, in fact, that reality is hard to know most of the time and that therefore political action requires so much great thinking that our caring and patriotic leaders will get back to us on that at the time of the next presidential or congressional election. During that election the "debate" about our nation's future will involve video clips of Republicans throwing old ladies in wheel chairs off a cliff and a level of bullshit exceeded only by protestations of future good behavior from a convict at his parole hearing.

This is what is known as "the democratic process."

One of the ways to achieve clarity in this life is to engage in the Holmesian elimination of the impossible, which approach I have extolled previously.

Another is to ask yourself what is it that we are NOT hearing from the politicians?

Here's a masterful video showing how that approach can work and upon hearing the first couple of sentence of what Bill Whittle had to say about Benghazi you instantly know what Obama and his toadies went to great length to conceal about the night that our fellow citizens died needlessly, the night when they were shamelessly abandoned. They concealed that they did not care about the lives of Americans heroically and ferociously fighting our Muslim enemies far away in Libya.

You can see that it wasn't complicated in the least: Our guys were in trouble. Muslims were again proving they cannot be trusted and that they are our enemies. There were plenty of military options.

Instead, what Obama and his disgusting, cowardly advisers chose was for America to act -- not like a major world power whom no jumped up gaggle of jihadis would ever dare antagonize – but like a nation no more consequential or fearsome than Cuba.

And like a nation whose top leadership would break faith with the very best of its people.

It's all just pretext.

Just as the US has done in Syria, using ISIS as a pretext to involve itself directly and militarily in the Syrian conflict without ever actually fighting ISIS, Saudi Arabia is seeking to create a plausible cover story to do the same.^[1]

ISIS toads burned a captured pilot alive. And at least three others were hung by chains and burned alive. ISIS beheadings are lovingly photographed and distributed on the web.

If that isn't satanic, what is? Yet, we only pretend to fight them and we still will not cut off their funding by destroying the oil tankers in Syria and Iraq. We still smile smugly as the Saudis and Qataris provide ISIS and the al Qaida forces with cash. What have we become? The acts I've described are unspeakably cruel but the ultimate dishonor is our refusal to change our policy and, finally, speak the anathema long since overdue. We have become numb to the reality of evil.

It's all just been a lie. It marks U.S. leaders as the most dishonorable men and women on the planet after ISIS itself. One cannot be allied with ISIS and be other than indecent and unclean. To state it delicately, there's no clean end of this that you can pick up.

This is justified because we're really after Pres. Assad. Why exactly Bashar al-Assad is a serious threat to the security of the United States is something that has yet to be laid out by Obama. But the servile American press cry crocodile tears over Assad's barrel bombs as though it were some new height of depravity. Which it isn't. And when hundreds of thousands of Syrians are killed in battles that would never have been fought had not the U.S. undertaken to sponsor a war against Assad, well, that's Assad's fault because he chose to fight the God-forsaken Western "coalition" instead of meekly roll over because Obama has a wish to dabble in The Great Game. Punahou boy makes good.

On top of which, the disgrace of our doing this doesn't seem to bother the Republicans. Nothing bothers those time servers, back scratchers, and Chamber of Commerce lap dogs. But wait! The likelihood of a Trump presidency fills them with horror so they're not without emotion.

There's that, I suppose.

Notes
^[1] "Saudi "Anti-Terror Coalition" a Facade to Hide Yet More Terrorism." By Tony Cartalucci, New Eastern Outlook, 12/30/15.

H/t: Land Destroyer.

Wednesday, December 30, 2015

The Collapse And The Crowd Part 2: The Lexicon

Has there ever been a time at which so many people were so strident, so brazen, in demanding that they be accorded so many “rights?”

My memory is a good one. I’ve lived sixty-three years. I remember nearly all of those years very well. And I cannot remember a time at which there was more political or polemical nonsense in the air than there is today.

The following statement by a largely forgotten French statesman of the Nineteenth Century is critical to this subject. As I’ve already used it once today, once more should do no harm:

Either rights exist, or they do not exist. If they exist, they involve absolute consequences...Furthermore, if a right exists, it exists at every moment. It is absolute today, yesterday, tomorrow, the day after tomorrow, in summer as in winter, not when it pleases you to declare it in force. – Louis Thiers

Though Thiers disagreed with the Lockean / Jeffersonian conception of natural rights, he possessed the mental attribute most important to any discussion, whether of rights or anything else: clarity. More, he was unafraid to articulate what he clearly understood.

We begin.

The notion that “rights” can be created or enacted by the State is part of the sociopolitical fallacy we call democracy. Indeed, democracy is inimical to the concept of rights, which is why, apart from the election of Representatives, the Founding Fathers averted democracy from the Constitutional design. Yes, things are different today, owing to the ratification of various Amendments to the Constitution. But different is not synonymous with better, as innumerable examples from recent history will attest. At any rate, the Founders were candid about their fear of democracy and its offspring faction, which have their best representation today in the “movements” to which we’ve been subjected by various voting blocs and interest groups.

Consider one of the day’s current contretemps: that over a “right” to a “living wage.” This notion has considerable popular support, and scant wonder: some millions of persons believe they would benefit from the elevation of the legal minimum wage to $15.00 per labor hour. You can count on the thoughtless and uneducated to back such proposals; just as they believe a “right” can be created by law, they believe the consequences of such a creation can be forestalled by wishing them away.

How much intelligence need one possess to grasp that you can never do only one thing? Every action has both immediate and contingent consequences. One contingent consequence of elevating the legal minimum wage – indeed, of mandating a legal minimum in the first place – is that some employers will find that they can’t afford to employ as many bottom-tier workers as they currently do. Some jobs will vanish; others will be curtailed in their hours or benefits; some businesses will never be started. Total bottom-rung employment will decrease. Given these consequences, the workers vulnerable to those effects should be skeptical of the “benefit” that will accrue to them. Sadly, not enough such workers possess the clarity for it.

That’s only one economic consequence of what happens when a legislature tries to create a “right” out of whole cloth. Another right – a real one this time – is infringed: the right to associate with others according to one’s own preferences and standards.

“You cannot do wrong without suffering wrong.” When a legislature tries to impose a fictitious “right” upon the nation, it abrades the citizen’s true rights while engendering suffering, resentment, and ultimately, resistance to the political class. It doesn’t matter whether the political class had “good intentions;” in failing to honor the nature of rights, it transgressed its proper bounds and did harm rather than good. It will suffer the reaction in due course.

Democracy, of course, is as notorious for destroying rights explicitly as it is for counterfeiting them. Consider the following snippet from Jonah Goldberg, cited this morning by Mike Hendrix:

Freedom has costs. And I think it is reasonable to ask whether some of those costs are too great for society to bear. Conversely, there are very strict limits to what you can accomplish with paternalism. And I think it’s beyond foolish to ignore those limits out of a desire to fix a demand-side problem with supply-side solutions. As a society, we’ve decided not to ban alcohol. That was the right decision, but it had costs. As a society, we are pondering whether to lift the ban on drugs. Excepting marijuana, I think that is the wrong decision. Reasonable people can disagree and they may be right. But reasonable people cannot dispute that doing so will have costs, too.

Goldberg is an intelligent and thoughtful man as well as an articulate writer. Yet in the above, he comes very near to stating outright that whether or not to honor the right to control one’s own body should be balanced against some concept of “costs.”

“Either rights exist, or they do not exist.” If rights exist, then they completely trump all other considerations: We are morally bound to respect them. Costs there may be, but to treat any right as if it can be legitimately traded off against some lesser consideration is to destroy rights as a concept – and “costs,” whether in the objective sense of the word or in some nebulous, tendentious “social cost” formulation, are definitely a lesser consideration.

But can you guess who absolutely adores the notion that rights can be traded off against “costs?” The folks who gave you the America of today, folks. The class that sees no harm in grouping us into voting blocs and horse-trading legislation for votes. The guys that came up with the notion of ”compelling government interest.” The people who believe that a thirty-round magazine for your rifle can be legally disallowed as “too dangerous,” but who think it’s just dandy to award weekend furloughs to convicted murderers sentenced to life without parole. Politicians.

How often have you heard some liberal mouthpiece say that “If it saves one life, it’s worth it.” Speak not to them of “costs” unless you’re braced for a stream of vituperation and condemnation in reply. Yet those very same persons will demand that we ignore the costs their policies incur once put in practice...even when they openly, unambiguously cost lives.

Five-day waiting periods for handgun purchases? So what if a few women aren’t armed in time to fend off their vicious ex-spouses? They should have waved their restraining orders more vigorously. Anyway, only the police should have guns.

Abortion on demand at any stage of gestation? So what if a Kermit Gosnell kills a few fully born babies...and a few women...after botched third-term abortions? Think of all the subsequent unhappiness he spared those unwilling mothers-to-be. Anyway, mistakes happen.

A luxuriant, no-conditions welfare state? When it’s the leading cause of illegitimacy, which is itself the best predictor of teen pregnancy, youth criminality and gang involvement? Women shouldn’t have to get married to have children, HDTVs or smartphones. A slew of broken homes and a little blood in the gutters is nothing to concern ourselves over...as long as we can live somewhere else, that is.

An educational system so overloaded with left-liberal social engineering that its graduates can’t form complete sentences or calculate the correct change from your purchase? We know what’s important: diversity. As long as the schools have the right racial and ethnic mixes in them and the teachers all toe the politically correct line, we’re satisfied. Besides, our kids go to private schools.

Tax policies that cripple small businesses and inhibit the formation of new ones? Big deal, the money to fund all our programs has to come from somewhere. Anyway, we all work for the government, so there’s nothing to worry about.

At one time or another, every last element of the left-liberal agenda has been promoted as a “right.” A right to abort. A right to welfare support. A right to “a living wage.” A right to “affordable housing.” A right to a “free” education. A right to medical insurance. A right to retire at State expense.

I could ask which of those “rights” Robinson Crusoe enjoyed, but I think the point has been made.

A crowd will back any assertion of “rights” uncritically, as long as it can be led to believe it would benefit. If they can be made angry enough, and ignorant enough, even the relentlessness and brutality of Nature’s correctives, demonstrated repeatedly throughout history, will fail to sway them.

There are innumerable more things to be said about this, including the importance of coalition politics, voting power effects, and “iron triangle” defenses for “rights” created by political decree, but I’ll spare you. The most important point is this: every “right” sleazed into existence by political action hastens the collapse and increases its eventual savagery. For we cannot indulge spurious “rights” without destroying real ones. As Ayn Rand has told us:

I could say to you that you do not serve the public good - that nobody's good can be achieved at the price of human sacrifices - that when you violate the rights of one man, you have violated the rights of all, and a public of rightless creatures is doomed to destruction. I could say that you will and can achieve nothing but universal devastation - as any looter must, when he runs out of victims. I could say it, but I won't. It is not your particular policy that I challenge, but your moral premise.

As we Christians would say, God is not mocked.

Cliff Notes version: Syria.

Made in America.

But when you step back and look at what's going on in Syria under Western covert action to regime-change the Assad government, the only reasonable conclusion that one can come to is that Putin is virtually the only world leader who is doing the right thing. Our own leaders are guilty of creating the civil war, giving birth to ISIS, recruiting and arming/funding terrorists, destroying yet another country, killing vast numbers of civilians and turning the rest into refugees.

Comment by Normalcy Bias on "What do they really think?" By Irish Savant, The Irish Savant, 12/17/15.

A Must Read

If you read anything today, please, please read Sarah Hoyt’s piece “Wanted.” It’s both critically important and powerfully compelling. It touches on the value of life ab initio, the inclination to “fellow-feeling” with which we respond to others – human and less than human – and the callousness that contemporary mores have heaped around them...and it does so without self-righteousness or descending to platitudes.

At least twice in the text, Sarah says that “this is not about abortion.” Perhaps it isn’t. Read it and decide for yourself.

More clarity on the criminal war against Syria.

Here's your new paradigm for events in Syria:

Being honest about what sort of conflict Syria is really fighting is the first step in finding a real solution to end it. The West continues to insist this is a "civil war." This allows them to continue trying to influence the outcome of the conflict and the political state Syria will exist in upon its conclusion. By claiming that the Syrian government has lost all legitimacy, the West further strengthens its hand in this context.

Assad's fault.
Attempts to strip the government of legitimacy predicated on the fact that it stood and fought groups of armed militants arrayed against it by an axis of foreign interests would set a very dangerous and unacceptable precedent. It is no surprise that Syria finds itself with an increasing number of allies in this fight as other nations realize they will be next if the "Syria model" is a success.
Acknowledging that Syria's ongoing conflict is the result of foreign aggression against Damascus would make the solution very simple. The solution would be to allow Damascus to restore order within its borders while taking action either at the UN or on the battlefield against those nations fueling violence aimed at Syria. Perhaps the clarity of this solution is why those behind this conflict have tried so hard to portray it as a civil war.
For those who have been trying to make sense of the Syrian "civil war" since 2011 with little luck, the explanation is simple, it isn't a civil war and it never was. Understanding it as a proxy conflict from the very beginning (or even before it began) will give one a clarity in perception that will aid one immeasurably in understanding what the obvious solutions are, but only when they come to this understanding.^[1]

Mr. Gunnar is not alone in arguing (elsewhere in his article) that ISIS, al Nusra, and al Qaida are creatures of Western governments. The idea that they are solely creatures of the Wahhabists and other sunni fanatics is highly suspect, if not unsupportable.

Notes
^[1] "Syria: It's Not a Civil War and it Never Was." By Ulson Gunnar, New Eastern Outlook, 12/28/15.

H/t: Land Destroyer Report.

Tuesday, December 29, 2015

The Collapse And The Crowd

It is with inexpressible joy that I celebrate the return of Ol’ Remus from his Internet hiatus. No one else writing for general consumption – and I include myself in this assessment – has his gift for the piercing, too-clear-to-be-misunderstood observation about our times. Here’s a brief snippet from his latest:

The "Ferguson Effect" is everywhere now. It's rank extortion, and violence is an accepted part of the process. When an unruly mob (wink wink) invaded the library at Yale, threatened and criminally assaulted students at their study, Yale apologized for being Yale and humbly caved to their demands, a lesson fundamentally different from what had been taught since 1701. What was unbelievable is unbelievable no more. In turn, the unbelievable will give way to the unthinkable, the unthinkable to the unimaginable. Violence works. It works because we are in collapse.

I added the emphasis.

With only a single additional observation – that the persons comprised by such an extortionate crowd are a small (often vanishingly so) minority of the community they seek to bludgeon – the entire temper and character of the American milieu is laid bare.

What’s that you say, Gentle Reader? It doesn’t quite gel for you? Perhaps it’s the hour. Fetch yourself another cup of coffee while I do the same.

Time was, we frequently heard a particular phrase in connection with warnings about misbehavior: “I read him the Riot Act.” Like most phrases detached from their geneses, this one has drifted from a useful invocation of a historically important development to a cliché whose referent is grasped by a very few.

Wikipedia’s entry presents the essentials of the thing:

     The [Riot Act of 1714] created a mechanism for certain local officials to make a proclamation ordering the dispersal of any group of more than twelve people who were "unlawfully, riotously, and tumultuously assembled together". If the group failed to disperse within one hour, then anyone remaining gathered was guilty of a felony without benefit of clergy, punishable by death.
     The proclamation could be made in an incorporated town or city by the mayor, bailiff or "other head officer", or a justice of the peace. Elsewhere it could be made by a justice of the peace or the sheriff or under-sheriff. It had to be read out to the gathering concerned, and had to follow precise wording detailed in the act; several convictions were overturned because parts of the proclamation had been omitted, in particular "God save the King".[2]
     The wording that had to be read out to the assembled gathering was as follows:
     Our sovereign lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons, being assembled, immediately to disperse themselves, and peaceably to depart to their habitations, or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George, for preventing tumults and riotous assemblies. God save the King.

In short, officialdom, upon “reading the Riot Act” to an unruly crowd, had put them on notice: Disperse within one hour or face the consequences, which just might include death. The British made use of the Riot Act to suppress all manner of public disturbances...and they weren’t bashful about it.

An old friend once told me of a case from Hong Kong, where he lived as a boy. A crowd of several hundred persons had assembled outside the headquarters of a large corporation. It had progressed from bullhorn-powered stridency to the verge of assault. So the British authorities sent out a constable.

That’s right: one man.

The constable “read the Riot Act” and commanded the crowd to disperse. He did so with a grenade in his hand. According to my friend, the crowd dispersed quickly and without protest. Frankly, I wasn’t surprised to hear it.

Unfortunately, not only has Hong Kong been “returned” to Red China; the courage and resolve demonstrated by that British constable have largely disappeared from the English-speaking peoples. Nor are they the only virtues we no longer exhibit.

A crowd moved to violence is a mechanism of great destructive power. It can reap lives as easily as a harvester reaps wheat. We get examples of this too frequently to require explanation. Any soccer-stadium riot will serve.

~~Well-meaning idiots~~ “Progressives” strain to “understand” the crowd’s “grievances.” There must be some, right? After, all, crowds don’t form for no reason. The folks in the crowd want something. Give them what they want and they’ll disperse.

Wrong. Giving a violent mob what it demands – assuming that it’s demanded anything in particular – only encourages it to demand more. Worse, it sets an example for other quarrelsome groups. You cannot propitiate a behavior without encouraging it. Successful tyrants understand this.

Once enough examples of violent crowds going unpunished have accumulated, there is no longer any safety to be had. The riotous crowd assumes the character of a lawless state: it will take what it wants, when it wants it, regardless of anyone’s notions about rights or justice.

A lawless state within a lawful one is an unstable configuration. Inevitably, one will put down the other. In a polity whose authorities have become unwilling or unable to disperse a violent crowd by force, all notions about law and public order are null and void. Crowds, wherever they may form and for whatever reason, are the true rulers of the domain.

Today, the most important survival tip you could give anyone is the one Remus offers in the brief essay cited above:

In short, I stay away from crowds.

This is essential because we no longer act as intelligent persons, determined that public order shall prevail, once acted. That British constable did. Yes, he was putting his life on the line; it was his job to do so. It was once generally understood that any “peace officer’s” duties required him to put his life on the line when it was necessary to preserve or restore public order. That’s become a pleasant fiction. We still give it lip service – how often have you heard some bloviating politician say that “a policeman puts his life on the line every day” and never bothered to question it? – but the reality is quite different.

When the “official” forces of order abrogate their commitment to order, what’s left are the “unofficial forces:” the crowds. Society has entered the penultimate stage of collapse: the one that immediately precedes Hobbes’s description of the “war of each against all:”

In such condition, there is no place for industry, because the fruit thereof is uncertain: and consequently, no culture of the earth, no navigation, nor use of the commodities that may be imported by sea; no commodious building, no instruments of moving, and removing such things as require much force; no knowledge of the face of the earth, no account of time; no arts, no letters; no society; and what is more, continual fear, and danger of violent death; and the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short.

Perhaps we’re not quite there yet. But we are at the point where political agitators eagerly assemble crowds that all too often turn violent. On occasion, the agitators intend violence from the start. The recent developments on major university campuses serve as examples.

In August of 1965 in Watts and July of 1967 in Detroit, military force was deployed to quell riots. In both cases, the peace that followed was an uneasy one. It lasted for some time nevertheless, because those who’d incited the riots had seen that the forces of order were willing to respond with the necessary degree of force. If we can judge from the more recent riots and mass disturbances of today, such a response in force is no longer very likely. Thus, every venue where a crowd might form, whether spontaneously or as a result of planned agitation, has become a dangerous place to be.

There is only one workable response to the proliferation of angry, violent, crowds uncurbed by the authorities: stay away from them. Assume every cohesive gathering of more persons than you could fit into your living room is headed for trouble, and head in the opposite direction. Assume that the forces of order will not respond – and that were they to respond, they’d treat you as part of the problem.

Assume, moreover, that rule-by-crowd will proliferate and become still more violent – that a collapse is nearing. Make the appropriate preparations. Pray with all your might that you won’t need them, but make them all the same.