Liberty's Torch

Monday, April 4, 2016

Monday Marginalia

Weekends often leave me with nothing “major” to blather about here. That’s the case this fine Monday morning, so I’m afraid my Gentle Readers will have to endure another column of assorted oddments.

Concerning nuclear weapons’ “democratization” of the modern battlefield, it occurred to me that I omitted one aspect of the “warrior-king” phenomenon that the H-Bomb doesn’t satisfactorily reproduce. I wrote about this in another context:

We of the Twenty-First Century are largely unaware of the obligations which lay upon the kings of old. They were not, until the waning years of monarchy, sedentary creatures whose lives were a round of indulgences and propitiations. They were expected not merely to judge and pass sentence, but also to lead the armies of the realm when war was upon it. The king was expected to put himself at risk before any of his subjects. Among the reasons was this one: the loss of the king in battle was traditionally grounds for surrender, after which the enemy was forbidden by age-old custom to strike further blows.
The king, in this conception, was both the leader of his legions and a sacrifice for the safety of his subjects, should the need arise. He was expected to embrace the role wholeheartedly, and to lead from the front in full recognition of the worst of the possibilities. Not to do so was an admission that he was unfit for his throne.

The emphasized portion is the critical consideration. A king who led his troops onto the battlefield could end the contest simply by being captured, or surrendering. That’s not the case today. But then, the characters of the creatures we call “world leaders” aren’t comparable to those of Arthur Pendragon, Charles Martel, or Jan III Sobieski, are they?

There’s a lapel button that’s gaining popularity:

I’m not quite that far gone in my rejection of the process – I still like Ted Cruz – but I can easily understand the animating sentiment.

The presidential campaign has been going for more than a year already. Hundreds of millions of dollars have been spent. Dozens of hours of network television have been dedicated to it. Both major parties have been rent and frayed. Agonies of indecision and bumper crops of bad will abound – and we still have seven months to go.

Chinese water torture is beginning to look pretty good – for the candidates, that is.

Many persons have protested the Fox show Lucifer as blasphemous or at least unwise. Certainly it was a brash notion to center a crime drama on the greatest villain ever conceived: the archangel who rebelled against God Himself. Yet I find it fascinating: a probe into the mechanisms of personal change.

No one is seriously suggesting that Satan has human-scale “father issues,” or would voluntarily submit to psychotherapy. What the show does is to pose the “what if” of the matter: What if Lucifer were open to the idea that his problems are his own fault?

Quite a lot of human beings could stand to entertain that possibility.

Yes, I really am writing a romance. Moreover, I’m having a lot of fun doing so. Details at some later date.

Hate Email Of The Week: This arrived just this morning, from “Anonymous,” of course:

So you feel perfectly comfortable with outright lies, thinly disguised slander and even death threats?. Trash like you are worse than the communists.

(In response to this piece, of course.)

To those who are members of Amazon Prime: If you have a box that supports Amazon video, I can heartily recommend two movies provided free to members:

Wild Card, starring Jason Statham, Anne Heche, and Stanley Tucci;
Solomon Kane, starring James Purefoy, Max von Sydow, and Alice Krige.

These are both primarily action movies, so they’re mostly for fun. Inasmuch as watching the Rangers slouch toward the playoffs has been no fun at all lately, I appreciated them greatly. Well, anyway, baseball season begins today.

Here’s a contretemps where the best possible outcome is for both sides to lose:

DALLAS, TEXAS — Thanks in part to a heavy police presence, a planned demonstration by armed members of the group BAIR — the Bureau for American Islamic Relations — went off peacefully, despite a counter protest organized by a group called the Huey P. Newton Gun Club that included members of the street gangs the Bloods and the Crips, as well as elements of Black Lives Matter.

Interestingly, the BAIR types were there to protest against a mosque: one being operated by Louis Farrakhan’s “Nation of Islam.” However, any group that styles itself as being about “American Islamic Relations” is anti-American and must be opposed.

As the event ended, an angry mob of black protesters advanced on the BAIR members, and frantic Dallas police ordered the group to evacuate immediately.

“Frantic Dallas police” is a phrase I’ve never seen before and would not have expected to see. But what was it that made them frantic?

Both members of BAIR and the Huey P. Newton Gun Club were openly armed, primarily with long guns.

Ah! Yes, of course. Dallas is in Texas, after all.

A friend and I have been exchanging jokes by email – Say what? Of course they’re bad jokes! I have a standard to uphold – and I felt I had to pass this one along:

     The parish needed a new secretary-receptionist, but the pastor was unwilling to hire anyone who wasn’t a Catholic, or at least knew the fundamentals of Catholicism. So he included in the ad “Must be conversant with the Catholic faith.”
     Three women submitted resumes. They were all the sort of resume you’d expect for a secretarial position, so the pastor decided he would interview all three. As it happened they were all available on the same afternoon, so he scheduled them back-to-back.
     The first applicant was a middle-aged brunette, pleasant-looking but not especially striking. After the formalities, the pastor asked her, “What do Catholics celebrate on Easter Sunday?”
     The brunette replied, “That’s the day Jesus was born.”
     The pastor shook his head, thanked her for her time, and showed her out.
     The second applicant was an elderly redhead. After the formalities, the pastor asked her, “What do Catholics celebrate on Easter Sunday?”
     The woman replied, “Isn’t that when Jesus entered Jerusalem?”
     The pastor shook his head ruefully, thanked her for her time, and showed her out.
     The third and last applicant was a stunning young blonde. Even the pastor, sworn to celibacy forty years earlier, was stirred by her beauty. Add to that her tight black minidress, high heels, perfect grooming, and overall poise, and she was almost enough to make the pastor ask to be laicized. But she was there to interview for the job, not to run away with him to Casablanca, so after the formalities, he asked for the third time, “What do Catholics celebrate on Easter Sunday?”
     The blonde smiled and said, “That’s when we celebrate Jesus rising from the dead.”
     The pastor was so overjoyed that he would get to hire the young woman that he shouted “Hallelujah” and rose from his chair to congratulate her. But as he extended his hand in welcome, she said, “And when Jesus rolls away the stone and comes out of his tomb, if he sees his shadow, we get six more weeks of winter.”

That’s all for today, Gentle Reader. I’m off to the dentist for my semi-annual ~~torture session~~ cleaning. Be well.

American conservatives.

Donald Trump may or may not carry his attack into the heart of the globalist treason class. However, even if he falls by the wayside, what will never be same after these days is the perception by whites that "conservatives" are any kind of allies in the battle with the destroyers of the left.

Trump did not effect this by himself. He only had the wit to understand what issues roil white America. The Great State of Catatonia that Boehner and McConnell entered after the 2014 elections was the last straw for many people, I suspect. It certainly was for me. As George Wallace correctly observed years ago, there's not a dime's worth of difference between the Democrats and the Republicans and substituting "conservatives" for "Republicans" doesn't change the truth of that one bit.

Conservatives see that Trump has exposed them for the useless group that they are. The desperate attacks on him reveal the volume of the alarms that are spreading through their comfortable think tanks and media redoubts. For decades they've done exactly nothing about feminist, racial, constitutional, fiscal, manufacturing, and immigration madness and, now that the toothpaste has come out of the tube, they're vainly trying to get it back in:

The key to comprehending American conservatives is to grasp that they think they are in charge, that they are winning, and that, in some vague way, their strategy is working. The Victory Narrative of the movement—that there was nothing, Buckley arrived, purged the “crazies,” and set the stage for Reagan and eternal glory—remains largely unquestioned. The key premise is that America remains a “center right” country that can be won with a cheery messenger about policies that apply equally to all people. As Matt Lewis declared—as he beat back those “vile goddamn racists”—“be optimistic about America” and “embrace our pluralistic society.”
Rather than the supreme function of statesmanship constituting the prevention of preventable evils, the American conservative intellectual refuses to consider the possibility that such evils could ever occur. Thus, champions of a philosophy at least nominally defined by respect for tradition and caution about radical and unneeded change are now stating the wholesale replacement of the European-American ethnic core will have no ill effects. More than that, trying to reverse this unprecedented demographic transformation should get you fired, because real conservatives are “optimists.”

And:

Mark Steyn writes in the “Two Party, One Party State”:
When the left wins, they’re in power; when the right wins, they’re in office, and that’s all. A substantial portion of the base gets that, and is sick of it. They feel like they’re losing their country, and they want more than a party that promises merely to lose it a little more slowly.

And:

In response to the great crises of the day, Conservatism Inc. has no answers. For its own supporters it has only contempt. And it remains relevant only because it continues to get in our way.

All quotes from "Protective Stupidity." By Gregory Hood, Radix, 8/18/15.

Denial.

I once read an account of an airplane crash from a stewardess who'd survived it. The plane crash-landed in more or less one piece, and then caught fire. The fire spread quickly, but still slowly enough that anyone who hadn't been disabled by the initial crash had just enough time to get out before the plane exploded. She did her job - guiding all of the passengers who could make it out of the emergency exits until she was almost the last one still left in the wreckage of the fuselage. Just before she got out herself, she noticed a normal-looking, middle-aged businessman, apparently unhurt, still strapped in his seat, calmly reading a newspaper. She yelled at him to get out while he could, but he just responded that he was fine, and everything was fine. She didn't stay to argue with him - she went through the emergency exit and managed to just barely get far enough away before what was left of the plane went up in an enormous fireball.
The thing was, the businessman had entered a sort of state of denial - he simply couldn't process the fact that he'd really been in in a horrible airplane crash. And, unable to process that fact, he simply continued to act "normally" - just calmly reading his newspaper, his brain still telling him that everything was alright. Unfortunately, for him, it wasn't, and his refusal to accept that it wasn't was ultimately suicidal.
Many mainstream conservatives are like the businessman in the crashed airplane. They look at everything that's happened in the past 50 years - or even just in the past 10 - and they can't quite process the idea that this is really all happening. Happening to them, to their country, to their churches, to their neighborhoods, to their children - even, quietly, to their race. They can't process what's going on, they don't know how to handle it, and many have entered a state of denial in which they're telling themselves that everything is fine; that everything will be alright just as soon as the Democrats realize that they're being the real racists, or we get just one more Republican nominee on the Supreme Court, or the Latinos finally start voting like the natural conservatives they are. Surely, if you present enough facts, the New York Times, Jon Stewart, and your kid's college professors will all have to eventually admit that you're right, won't they? I mean, we're all reasonable adults here, aren't we? What's that smell? It's kind of like a combination of jet fuel and burning seat cushions, but that can't possibly be what it is...

Comment by AntiDem on "Protective Stupidity." By Gregory Hood, Radix, 8/18/15 (re Northeast Airlines Flight 823, which crashed on takeoff from LaGuardia in February of 1957).

Sunday, April 3, 2016

Seduction Into Slavery

North Carolina was recently in the news for a law the New York Times says “eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people.” I hope some Gentle Reader will correct me if I’m wrong, but “gay and transgender people” in North Carolina still can’t be legally assaulted, stolen from, defrauded, raped, killed, or involuntarily tattooed, can they? All such actions remain forbidden by North Carolina’s penal code. So what “protections” do North Carolina’s homosexuals and transgendered persons lack?

Perhaps that doesn’t much matter, as I’m fairly certain that smart homosexuals and transgendereds will observe the ancient guideline for the preservation of social peace: “Don’t go where you’re not wanted.” That guideline would seem to apply to sex-segregated facilities just as to all other modes of human interaction. As for the less-than-smart individuals in those categories, there’s the Niven / Pournelle categorization: “Think of it as evolution in action.” Either way, reasonably wise individuals will behave with reasonable wisdom; the rest of us will have to live with the consequences of our stupidity.

One of the great stupidities au courant today is that if “we” want to mold human behavior in some desirable way, all “we” need to do is pass a law about it. The late, great Milton Friedman had something to say about that:

The view that if there is a problem, if there is something wrong, the way to deal with it is to pass a law, set up a governmental agency (staffed, of course, by the intellectuals urging this solution), and use the police power of the state to correct it is, as Mr. Simon demonstrates so well, superficially appealing view. It is simple, as well as simpleminded, and appeals to our natural impulse to take personal credit for the good things that happen and blame a “devil” for the bad things. [From the Preface to William E. Simon’s A Time For Truth]

(Being a snarky sort, I’d have sneer-quoted the words “problem” and “intellectuals” in the above. Being a scholar, Dr. Friedman refrained. Whether he was tempted to do so is unrecorded.)

But police power isn’t the only instrument at hand. What North Carolina must face is the consequence of having been seduced by federal money:

     The Obama administration is considering whether North Carolina’s new law on gay and transgender rights makes the state ineligible for billions of dollars in federal aid for schools, highways and housing, officials said Friday.
     Cutting off any federal money — or even simply threatening to do so — would put major new pressure on North Carolina to repeal the law, which eliminated local protections for gay and transgender people and restricted which bathrooms transgender people can use. A loss of federal money could send the state into a budget crisis and jeopardize services that are central to daily life.
     Although experts said such a drastic step was unlikely, at least immediately, the administration’s review puts North Carolina on notice that the new law could have financial consequences. Gov. Pat McCrory of North Carolina had assured residents that the law would not jeopardize federal money for education.

Federal funds are offered to state governments for a host of reasons. All such funding is wrong on principle. Funds collected by the federal government through taxation are Constitutionally applicable only to activities legitimate under one of the enumerated powers of Congress. The structure of Article I, Section 8 makes that quite clear. Of course, the Constitution is of only historical interest these days, but I thought it might make an interesting sidelight to the issue at hand.

Federal funding of state-level activities is a reliable technique for coercing state governments into compliance with federal wishes. At this time, the federal powers-that-be are propitiating every activist group within the Left’s coalition. Thus, homosexuals and transgendereds are receiving political obeisance.

The withdrawal-of-funding club has been applied to other socially divisive subjects as well. A couple of states have come under fire for legislatively protecting the right of individuals not to be coerced into participating, directly or indirectly, in phenomena that offend their religious beliefs, such as same-sex “marriages.” Such “marriages” have been a subject of controversy that has enveloped merchants with no possible connection to it – not even a hypothetical one. States that have attempted to protect those merchants’ religious freedom have been threatened with the loss of federal funds, just as has North Carolina.

The key here is that governments grow addicted to their sources of revenue. If a state government’s revenue stream includes a sizable contribution from Washington, it takes very little time for the state to think of that contribution as vitally necessary, regardless of the ostensible reason for the award. Money is infinitely fungible; funds awarded to the state for “flim” make it easier to find funding for “flam.” However, after a year or two, those involved with “flim” will howl at the very thought of losing the subsidy. It will become a “right.”

Two-hundred-plus years of political devolution, emphatically including the devolution of political language, have rendered states and localities incapable of declining funds from a higher level of government. Do their legislators and executives foresee the consequences? Unknown. What’s quite plain is that the funds are always accepted and put to some use that will later be termed a “necessity” and a “right.”

Federalism was supposed to make this sort of thing impossible as well as unthinkable. So much for federalism. The Constitution, as noted above, forbids it. So much for the Constitution.

Since 1933, seduction by the wallet serves federal power better than any other technique. Yet not one candidate for the presidency has had a word to say about this devious contravention of the federal idea. Perhaps they would protest that no one has asked them. So much for the trade of journalism.

Quickies: What I Will And What I Won’t

“Anonymous,” that lovable rogue we all know so well, has commented on a recent post here to the effect that it’s “complete BS” and that I’m ignorant of history. As you might expect, I deleted his comment. He followed it with another to the effect that I’m a “FRAUD.” I deleted that one, too.

“Anonymous,” if you’re still visiting my humble abode, I refer you to my comment-moderation policy, which appears in the box that enables comments:

Comments are moderated. I am entirely arbitrary about what I allow to appear here. Toss me a bomb and I might just toss it back with interest. You have been warned.

My Co-Contributors and I get absolutely nothing for what we write that appears here. I have no tolerance whatsoever for insults, whether to myself or to any of them.

This is a site by and for intelligent, knowledgeable persons who show respect for one another’s intelligence and knowledge. However, any of us can be wrong. For my part, I look forward to being proved wrong, as it heralds an opportunity to learn something. But I draw the line at insults.

Frankly, I’ve always been of two minds about permitting comments by “Anonymous,” as along with being a garrulous blowhard and a coward of neither insight nor erudition, he has the worst manners of anyone active on the Web. Occasions such as the one mentioned here cause me to reconsider allowing him to pester me. For the moment I’m resisting the urge to ban him completely, but things could change.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of comments I will delete:

Insults to any Liberty’s Torch contributor or their loved ones.
Solicitations to criminal conduct.
Unsubstantiated accusations of criminal or contemptible conduct by anyone.
Denigrations of Christianity.
Denigrations of the United States of America, its Constitution, or its military.
Anti-Semitic rants.
Advertising.
Requests for contributions to any cause of any sort.
“Click-bait,” however decorated or disguised.
Inducements to any of the seven capital sins.

Those who feel a need to submit such comments should keep that list handy. Use it as a labor-saving device. Rather than exhaust your precious fingers typing out a comment that will never see the light of day, consult the list, select the item that best categorizes your comment, and just send the number. You’ll get your juvenile catharsis; I’ll be spared unnecessary time and effort, and we’ll all be happy.

Some prospective commenters will find this method of venting too terse for their tastes. In that light, I’ll make a small concession to specificity. Along with the category number:

Indicate which Contributor you wish to insult: “1, Fran.”
Indicate the category of crime: “2, arson.”
As with #2 above: “3, pedophilia.”
Indicate which branch of Christianity: “4, Seventh-Day Adventists.”
Indicate the general tenor of your denigration: “5, mindless baby-killing robots.”
Indicate whether your hatred is focused or generic, e.g.: “6, Israel” or “6, Norman Podhoretz.”
Indicate product category: “7, self-help.”
Indicate cause category: “8, homes for brain-damaged welders.”
Include name of website: “9, PrepubescentFilipinoGirlsInThongsAndStilettos.com”
Indicate which capital sin: “10, lust.” (Images not allowed.)

Life, after all, is short. Don’t tempt me to dream about shortening yours.

Saturday, April 2, 2016

Quickies: The Democratized Battlefield

Yesterday, Bret Baier’s Special Report included a long segment of Barack Hussein Obama preening over his “nuclear security summit” of “world leaders” and its supposed “progress.” What progress, you ask? Why, toward Obama’s goal of eliminating nuclear weapons. All nuclear weapons, including those in the arsenal of the United States.

There are days I think “they’ll never learn.” There are other days on which I’m sure of it.

Russell Baker once noted that no one has ever died because of an H-Bomb: “There is no other bomb with a comparable safety record. You could almost grow fond of a bomb like that.” Yet virtually no one ponders the why of the H-Bomb’s remarkable record as a peacekeeper. Mind you, it isn’t that the H-Bomb could conceivably sterilize the entire planet.

As I wrote some time ago:

     Since Waterloo there have been no examples of the political leadership of a belligerent nation being part of its forces in the field. [NB: Tom Kratman notes that there have been two exceptions: Napoleon III at the battle of Sedan in 1870, and Santa Anna at the Battle of the Alamo.] Those who order armies into the field stay home. Seldom does a ruling-class politician even have a child in his nation’s army. The severance between decision and consequence, between authority and responsibility, could hardly be more complete – and it’s a great part of the reason so many nations are so willing to go to war over any and every issue, no matter how trivial.
     The United States, despite its large military and its ubiquity, has displayed more restraint about warfare than other historically dominant nations. There are many reasons for this, but the “citizen soldier” aspect of American military power should not be overlooked. Even a politician who has no blood stake in a contemplated war will have constituents to face, some of whom will have family members in the fight, come election time. He’ll have to persuade them that his decision to go to war was right and necessary. That’s not the case with the satraps of many other nations.
     The only way to give an autocrat a blood stake in the war he contemplates is to make it thinkable that he could be one of its casualties. Nuclear weapons, particularly the sort that can be delivered ballistically, do exactly that. Thus, nuclear weapons “democratize” the battlefield for the first time since the Age of the Warrior-King.

For as long as there are men to whom power is everything – i.e., as long as there are men – there will be a need to make them feel vulnerable. Nothing does the job nearly as well as the thought of a nuclear warhead falling straight down at their heads. To reject that device – that leash that pulls the dictator irresistibly onto the same battlefield as his armies – is to reject the most effective peacekeeping instrument Mankind has yet devised.

Quickies: A First And A Welcome One

According to Reason’s Hit & Run blog, Fox Business Network televised an unusual debate yesterday evening: among three contenders for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nomination.

No, I didn’t see that program, nor would I have stayed up to watch it had I known it was coming. This whole business of candidates’ debates has made me weary unto death. Moreover, I’ve distanced myself from the LP for reasons that have only grown stronger these past few years, so my interest in its conventions and such is zero.

However, I’m glad it took place. A rising percentage of Americans are disgusted with the two major parties, and for good reason. No matter how often they “pass the baton,” the Democrats and Republicans will not alter America’s political vector. Their inner circles are heavily invested in the status quo. They’ve strained to persuade voters that there are no alternatives to their political duopoly, precisely because any real change of direction would be unfavorable to both of them.

But no such effort can succeed 100%. The disillusioned are increasing in number. They persist in searching for a way out of the duopolists’ maze. They sense, perhaps unconsciously, that the fault lies in the assumptions both parties maintain. Those assumptions imply the perpetuation of the major features of the status quo:

America as “world policeman;”
The ever-expanding regulatory regime;
The most luxuriant welfare state in history;
Effective government control of all education;
A fiscal system that propels the erosion of the dollar;
The nullification of Constitutional constraints on government action;
A legal system so involute that every American is vulnerable to prosecution.

Only by rejecting those assumptions is significant change possible. Say what you will about the LP, at least it “starts from a different page.” That makes its candidates and their positions potentially interesting, though some features of “party libertarianism” contradict important fundamentals that must be respected.

After all, what else but a hunger for alternatives to politics as usual could explain the rise of Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump?

Quickies: The Shadow State

This piece at Stop Shouting is worth your time and attention. I recommend it highly, in part because it provides an alternate approach to understanding the solidity and resilience of the Islamic exclaves that have emerged in Europe.

The haymaker at the very end is particularly worth pondering:

No matter who "wins" in November, a shadow government structure is necessary for what will in the out years be called the Continuation War, which will be a continuation of America's 1st Civil War... which is what the original Revolutionary War was. I say this because more Americans fought each other than British fought the Insurrectionists. There is no voting our way out of this. The only solution is to build upon the revolution, one social structure at a time. Yes, some neighborhoods will have knitting circles, others will have "not a rifle club" structures. In the end, what matters is social, ethnic and cultural homogeneity. Nothing else is sustainable in the long term.

But why does such homogeneity matter more than, say, a uniform level of prosperity? The answer is simple, and simply elegant: A high degree of homogeneity translates into a high percentage of defenders, should the “shadow state” be attacked or otherwise challenged. It has the “consent of the governed” in the most meaningful way: its residents will defend it personally.

Europe’s Islamic exclaves are as impenetrable as they are because virtually the whole population of such an exclave is committed to its defense and maintenance. To dissolve it would require an assault of extraordinary magnitude. Success would probably require the complete dispersion of the inhabitants...assuming any were to survive.

The steady galacticization of American society, as communities draw in upon themselves and find ways to expel their dissidents, might well give rise to such “shadow states,” especially if our racial, ethnic, and sectarian tensions continue to escalate. Whether their residents would assert and maintain them as staunchly as the Muslims of Europe have asserted and maintained theirs, I cannot say.

Friday, April 1, 2016

The death-cult of Feminism can only be destroyed from within...

From the Overview of my 5000 word essay:

A future apocalypse is a perennial favorite in fiction. At the direction of authors and screenwriters, it has befallen our planet in countless ways. We’ve been overrun by zombies, aliens, machines; been done-in by enviro-disasters, medical-hazards, plummeting asteroids; been besieged by falling sharks, crawling fish, monstrous mutant insects; and finally, perhaps scariest of all, we’ve merely suffered to death under the boots or pumps of bleak totalitarians.

Welcome to 2016, wherein the feminized West is well into the process of eating its own tail. You see, in the real world, if one simply has patience, humans can be taken step by teeny tiny step until an entire civilized people are willing to commit cultural-suicide. Can those of us with eyes still wide open get our countrymen to stop before they get to a vital organ? Stay tuned.

Find the complete essay here.

Leaving The Question Unanswered

Note the following headline:

Why Big Government Wants to Micromanage Your Parenting

Doesn’t that suggest, oh so indirectly, that the associated article will address Why Big Government Wants to Micromanage Your Parenting? I mean, call me dense if you like, but that was the inference I drew from it. Yet the article does no such thing. Read it for yourself and see.

Though I got a chuckle from the disjunction, my thoughts this morning aren’t about poor headlining. Rather, they’re about the motives we occasionally attribute to institutions.

Organizations never know anything. – Marc Stiegler

The inclination to anthropomorphize organizations, institutions, political units, and so forth is an important component of the difficulty we have in comprehending the behavior of such aggregates. It takes only a moment’s thought to realize that an aggregate – an entity composed of a number of individual persons, plus other assets – cannot have motivations, knowledge, instincts, fears, or convictions.

(Yes, yes, as long as we’re being literal, aggregates don’t really have behavior, either. It’s even slightly misleading to say they have assets. But I trust you’ll follow from here.)

When “John Galt,” in his classic Dreams Come Due: Government and Economics As If Freedom Mattered, wrote that “The system has a will to live (and to grow like cancer),” he was doing the same sort of anthropomorphizing. “The system,” whatever we mean by that, has no will of any sort. What it has is a population of persons that act in its name. It’s their aggregated will to live and grow that gives “the system” its dynamic.

For example, when we speak of “the government,” we’re usually speaking of its dynamic: the correlation of incentives and penalties that act upon it through the desires, fears, and convictions of those who populate it. Mohandas Gandhi caught the essence of this when he wrote:

The State represents violence in a concentrated and organized form. The individual has a soul, but as the State is a soulless machine, it can never be weaned from the violence to which it owes its very existence.

A government is merely a facade behind which some group of persons wields coercive force, in each case for purposes of their own.

We who prize freedom have for some time struggled to find means by which to restrain and reduce government. Yet many of us are in thrall to the facade: the notion that “the government” is a unitary entity with its own motivations. In consequence, we seek to alter the incentives and penalties that apply to something that doesn’t really exist. And of course, we get nowhere.

Were Carrie Lukas, the author of the article cited in the opening segment, to address “why big government wants to micromanage your parenting” in an analytical fashion, she would make no progress whatsoever for as long as she remained bound to “big government” as an entity with its own motivations. Progress only becomes possible when we address the motivations of those who act in “the government’s” name, wielding its privilege of pre-indemnified coercion:

Job security;
The thrill of power;
The prestige of authority;
The desire to be “socially relevant;”
The belief in one’s moral superiority;
The conviction that an important cause is at stake.

In the usual case the lower-numbered motivations will be the more powerful and more enduring. (The reasons for this are best left to another screed.) Moreover, as time passes, those within “the system” would be ever more skewed toward the lower-numbered motivations; that is, an ever greater percentage of the persons employed there would be principally animated by job-security and thrill-of-power considerations. They would be innately opposed to anyone who might check their pursuit of those things – most emphatically including coworkers moved mainly by higher-numbered motives.

Some persons would seek positions in a Child Welfare and Protection department entirely for reason #6. However, once inside “the system,” their prospects would be conditioned and constrained by the motivations and decisions of many others. Imagine that Smith, a firm believer that CWP should only act when a child’s welfare is demonstrably endangered, were to be employed there. If he were to argue for inaction against the many Joneses who want CWP to grow (thus expanding their prospects for security and advancement) and act despite conflicting evidence and ambiguous accounts (because using State power is so much fun), he would almost certainly lose. The aftermath might include his demotion, or a transfer to “less demanding” responsibilities, or perhaps a campaign to persuade him that “a CWP career isn’t right for you.”

The application of that dynamic to the analysis of “CWP’s behavior” should require no further comment from me.

It should be clear that we cannot alter the behavior of “the government” by treating it as an entity with motivations of its own. All we can do is influence the incentives and penalties that pertain to those individuals who act in its name and with its privileges. As many a Gentle Reader is currently muttering under his breath, that’s difficult enough.

The late, great Milton Friedman famously said that it’s less important to get “good people” into government than it is to create incentives for “bad people” to do the right things. Dr. Friedman intuitively grasped the non-atomic nature of the State. He was thereby immunized against both devil theories and savior complexes. However, his insight hasn’t gotten sufficient circulation, possibly because he’s principally known as an economist, and a specialist in fiscalism at that.

This is how we must reorient: away from such things as charter limitations on governments and toward the re-engineering of the incentives and penalties that apply to the persons within it:

Term limits;
Elimination of “sovereign immunity;
Ironclad protections for “whistleblowers;”
Abolition of unions for government employees;
Repeal of the job-security provisions of the Civil Service Act;

...and any other special circumstances surrounding “government service” – I refuse to call it public service, as there’s nothing a “public servant” hates more than actually serving the public – that energize venal, authoritarian, and self-protective motivations for seeking government positions.

Shall we undertake this effort with full seriousness, or shall we lock, load, and start discharging government employees “informally?” As much emotional satisfaction as the violent course might offer, the alternative would result in a lot fewer bodies in the streets. The question demands an answer.

Thursday, March 31, 2016

US Security & INTELLIGENCE

[This was sent to me from a friend that works for the USAF.]

US Security & INTELLIGENCE . . .The single most prominent characteristic of contemporary America is that common sense has been abandoned to political correctness and "feelings".

  As President George W. Bush's top speech writer, Marc Thiessen was provided unique access to the CIA program used in interrogating top Al Qaeda terrorists, including the mastermind of the 9/11 attack, Khalid Sheikh Mohammad (KSM).

  Now, his riveting new book, "Courting Disaster", How the CIA Kept America Safe (Regnery), has been published. Here is an excerpt from "Courting Disaster":

  "Just before dawn on March 1, 2003, two dozen heavily armed Pakistani tactical assault forces move in and surround a safe house in Rawalpindi . A few hours earlier they had received a text message from an informant inside the house. It read: "I am with KSM."

Bursting in, they find the disheveled mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in his bedroom.   He is taken into custody. In the safe house, they find a treasure trove of computers, documents, cell phones and other valuable "pocket litter."

  Once in custody, KSM is defiant.   He refuses to answer questions,informing his captors that he will tell them everything when he gets to America and sees his lawyer.   But KSM is not taken to America to see a lawyer Instead he is taken to a secret CIA "black site" in an undisclosed location.

  Upon arrival, KSM finds himself in the complete control of Americans. He does not know where he is, how long he will be there, or what his fate will be.

Despite his circumstances, KSM still refuses to talk.   He spews contempt at his interrogators, telling them Americans are weak, lack resilience, and are unable to do what is necessary to prevent the terrorists from succeeding in their goals. He has trained to resist interrogation.   When he is asked for information about future attacks, he tells his questioners scornfully: "Soon, you will know."

  It becomes clear he will not reveal the information using traditional interrogation techniques. So he undergoes a series of "enhanced interrogation techniques" approved for use only on the most high-value detainees. The techniques include waterboarding. He begins telling his CIA de-briefers about active al Qaeda plots to launch attacks against the United States and other Western targets. He holds classes for CIA officials, using a chalkboard to draw a picture of al Qaeda's operating structure, financing, communications, and logistics.   He identifies al Qaeda travel routes and safe havens, and helps intelligence officers make sense of documents and computer records seized in terrorist raids.   He identifies voices in intercepted telephone calls, and helps officials understand the meaning of coded terrorist communications. He provides information that helps our intelligence community capture other high-ranking terrorists .

  KSM's questioning, and that of other captured terrorists, produces more than 6,000 intelligence reports, which are shared across the intelligence community, as well as with our allies across the world. In one of these reports, KSM describes in detail the revisions he made to his failed 1994-1995 plan known as the "Bojinka plot" to blow up a dozen airplanes carrying some 4,000 passengers over the Pacific Ocean . Years later, an observant CIA officer notices the activities of a cell being followed by British authorities appear to match KSM's description of his plans for a Bojinka-style attack. In an operation that involves unprecedented intelligence cooperation between our countries, British officials proceed to unravel the plot.

  On the night of Aug. 9, 2006 they launch a series of raids in a northeast London suburb that lead to the arrest of two dozen al Qaeda terrorist suspects.   They find a USB thumb-drive in the pocket of one of the men with security details for Heathrow airport, and information on seven Trans-Atlantic flights that were scheduled to take off within hours of each other:

* United Airlines Flight 931 to San Francisco departing at 2:15 PM
* Air Canada Flight 849 to Toronto departing at 3:00 PM
* Air Canada Flight 865 to Montreal departing at 3:15 PM
* United Airlines Flight 959 to Chicago departing at 3:40 PM
* United Airlines Flight 925 to Washington departing at 4:20 PM
* American Airlines Flight 131 to New York departing at 4:35 PM
* American Airlines Flight 91 to Chicago departing at 4:50 PM

They seize bomb-making equipment and hydrogen peroxide to make liquid explosives. And they find the chilling martyrdom videos the suicide bombers had prepared.

  Today, if you asked an average person on the street what they know about the 2006 airlines plot, most would not be able to tell you much. Few Americans are aware of the fact al Qaeda had planned to mark the fifth anniversary of 9/11 with an attack of similar scope and magnitude.   And still fewer realize the terrorists' true intentions in this plot were uncovered thanks to critical information obtained through the interrogation of the man who conceived it: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.

This is only one of the many attacks stopped with the help of the CIA interrogation program established by the Bush Administration in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks.
  In addition to helping break up these specific terrorist cells and plots, CIA questioning provided our intelligence community with an unparalleled body of information about al Qaeda.

  Until the program was temporarily suspended in 2006, intelligence officials say, well over half of the information our government had about al Qaeda-how it operates, how it moves money, how it communicates, how it recruits operatives, how it picks targets, how it plans and carries out attacks-came from the interrogation of terrorists in CIA custody.

  Former CIA Director George Tenet has declared:   "I know this program has saved lives. I know we've disrupted plots. I know this program alone is worth more than what the FBI, the Central Intelligence Agency, and the National Security Agency put together have been able to tell us."

  Former CIA Director Mike Hayden has said: "The facts of the case are that the use of these techniques against these terrorists made us safer. It really did work." Even Barack Obama's Director of National Intelligence, Dennis Blair, has acknowledged: "High-value information came from interrogations in which those methods were used and provided a deeper understanding of the al Qaeda organization that was attacking this country." Leon Panetta, Obama's CIA Director, has said: "Important information was gathered from these detainees. It provided information that was acted upon.

John Brennan, Obama's Homeland Security Advisor, when asked in an interview if enhanced-interrogation techniques were necessary to keep America safe, replied : "Would the U. S. be handicapped if the CIA was not, in fact, able to carry out these types of detention and debriefing activities, I would say yes."

On Jan. 22, 2009, President Obama issued Executive Order 13491, closing the CIA program and directing that, henceforth, all interrogations by U. S. personnel must follow the techniques contained in the Army Field Manual.

  The morning of the announcement, Mike Hayden was still in his post as CIA Director, He called White House Counsel Greg Craig and told him bluntly: "You didn't ask, but this is the CIA officially non-concurring". The president went ahead anyway, overruling the objections of the agency.

  A few months later, on April 16, 2009, President Obama ordered the release of four Justice Department memos that described in detail the techniques used to interrogate KSM and other high-value terrorists. This time, not just Hayden (who was now retired) but five CIA directors -including Obama's own director, Leon Panetta objected. George Tenet called to urge against the memos' release.

So did Porter Goss. So did John Deutch. Hayden says: "You had CIA directors in a continuous unbroken stream to 1995 calling saying, 'Don't do this.'" In addition to objections from the men who led the agency for a collective 14 years, the President also heard objections from the agency's covert field operatives. A few weeks earlier, Panetta had arranged for the eight top officials of the Clandestine Service to meet with the President. It was highly unusual for these clandestine officers to visit the Oval Office, and they used the opportunity to warn the President that releasing the memos would put agency operatives at risk. The President reportedly listened respectfully, and then ignored their advice.

With these actions, Barack Obama arguably did more damage to America 's national security in his first 100 days of office than any President in American history.

  But how many people know this?.... only the few that read this from beginning to end.

Entitlements, Privileges, And Immunities: A Tirade On Tribe

You may already have heard about this notable contretemps over a “cultural appropriation:”

     SAN FRANCISCO (KCRA) —A video showing a confrontation between two San Francisco State University students about dreadlocks and cultural appropriation has gone viral. University police are investigating the incident, the school said in a statement Tuesday.
     The 46-second video, posted on YouTube Monday, shows a black student confronting a white student with dreadlocks in the hall of a university building.
     “You’re saying I can’t have a hairstyle because of your culture? Why?” the man asks.
     “Because it’s my culture,” the woman replies.
     The man then attempts to walk away, but the woman blocks his path. He tells her to stop touching him and tries to walk away again. The woman seems to grab his jacket, telling him to come back.
     The man then turns around to walk away again, saying, “I don’t need your disrespect.”

Here’s the video of the encounter:

The esteemed Ace of Spades has provided a partial transcript:

"Do not put your hands on me," she demands, as he tries to pry her hands off of him while she drags him into a corner to further harass him.

So:

This young black woman asserted a privilege over the young white man: specifically, a proprietary interest in his hairstyle.
Moreover, she believes she enjoys immunity from the laws against assault.
She feels entitled to assert her imaginary privilege by physical force, while simultaneously protesting the reciprocation of that force by the white student in defense of his person.

There’s a 46-second eyeful for you. Even for San Francisco.

We’ve been hearing a lot about “tribes” lately, particularly with regard to the racial tension that’s flared up during the Obama years. Among the most important aspects of a society with several tribal components is the attitude of tribe members toward the society’s overall laws and customs.

Here’s what I wrote about tribes and tribalism back when. The bit that’s most on my mind at the moment runs thus:

Critical to the understanding of tribes' political importance is the appreciation of how they function in relation to one another over time. The cohesive identity of a tribe causes it to resist subsumption in a larger unit. That resistance is not absolute; tribes have often allowed such subsumption, when given a sufficient reason, as in the case of the formation of the United States from the freshly liberated states. However, since a tribe's ways and traditions incorporate preferences for its own members, the interpenetration of tribes, for whatever reason, will sometimes eventuate in violence. Neighboring tribes that have a history of violent interactions will thus have two reasons to resist subsumption, one considerably more powerful than the other.

Alongside that, here’s the haymaker from what I wrote about the creation of privileged classes:

     In the absence of a scrupulously observed Rule of Law, classes with differing degrees of privilege will emerge. The flourishing of the members of each class will be influenced, often heavily, by the class's privileges and how effectively they can be exploited. Men being what we are, we will be moved to use those privileges in our own interest, both against competitors within our class and against other classes.
     Success breeds emulation. If there are advantages to be had from the ruthless exploitation of a class privilege, over time more and more members of the class will be drawn into doing so. Thus, the coloration given to the class by its privileges will become stronger and more inclusive over time.
     This is not an unbounded progression; as in all other things, a tendency toward equilibrium will ultimately assert itself. However, the mechanisms by which equilibrium is restored are always unpleasant. The deterrents that curb full exploitation of a class privilege, if any exist at all, will be applied by other classes, whether through the law, other social institutions, or "informally." "Informally" usually means lynching: the application of extra-judicial, often unmerited punishment to members of one class by members of another. In the usual case, the lynchers come from a more numerous class than the lynchees, though there are occasional exceptions.
     Lynching, if it goes unpunished, is itself a class privilege. There are satisfactions in it that are incomprehensible to moral men who live in ordinary times. As with other activities with innate satisfactions, the popularity of the practice will grow over time. A mob that's tasted the blood of one aristocrat is seldom satisfied with just that one sip.
     Lynching writ large is genocide.

Read those pieces again. In the latter case, substitute the word tribe wherever the word class appears. I’ll wait.

A species of tribal particularism – i.e., the preference for members of one’s own tribe even when it defies the laws of the larger society – is suggested by the case cited here. I refer to the presence of a third party, plainly visible in the video. Note that:

He’s a black male;
He watches the altercation without intervening.

Were the white student to complain to the police about the assault, what do you suppose, in the absence of the damning video, the black man would say?

Imagine that the onlooker were white. Imagine that, instead of three persons, there were three dozen – and that all of the additional attendees were white males. How do you suppose matters would have played out then? Would any of the white spectators have dared to intervene to control the behavior of a black woman? Isn’t such a person privileged twice over?

You may not like it, but that’s the way things are at present in these United States.

I’m sure my Gentle Readers don’t need for me to beat this into the magma. Rather, I’ll let Nicki at The Liberty Zone provide the capper:

     We’ve become an entitlement society. I’m not just talking about those who feel they’re entitled to goods and services at others’ expense merely by virtue of existing. I’m not just talking about those who despise the success and achievement of others and feel themselves deserving of a piece of that pie they haven’t earned. All of these characters are symptoms of a larger problem....
     We have a society that’s so scared to hurt Precious Punkins’ feelings, and so afraid to allow them to fail, that they prohibit teachers from using red pens when correcting homework for fear that it might scar the FEELZ, and hand out participation trophies as prizes for not achieving!
     Results are not important. Effort is only marginally required, if at all.
     And the result is Special Snowflakes who feel they are entitled to “safe spaces” at colleges and universities to keep them away from anything that challenges their worldview.

Look at a Special Snowflake and see a member of a tribe. They’re asserting owners’ privileges over things they don’t own, and immunities against laws that bind the rest of us. They’re getting bolder about it with every passing day. They’re getting away with it, in part because of the collusion of public officials and other highly placed persons.

Combine those privileges, those immunities, and that sense of entitlement with the barely-checked racial animosity we suffer. Heat just a little more with “black lives matter” propaganda and outright lies about the Trayvon Martin and Michael Brown incidents. What sort of cake can we reasonably expect to pop out of our national oven?

Yet it puzzles my beloved wife that I refuse to leave the house unarmed. It is to laugh...hollowly, and with a deep sense of dread for our future.

New product idea: noble intentions insurance.

Liberalism has helped to make Western peoples blind by creating the belief that noble intentions are more prevalent than corrupt intentions.

"How They Brainwash Us — Paul Craig Roberts." By Paul Craig Roberts, PaulCraigRoberts.org, 3/30/16.

H/t: The Unz Review.

Political theater: the pretend U.S. war on ISIS.

For years, just looking at maps - including those produced by Washington-based think tanks themselves - revealed the true nature of Syria's ongoing conflict. Forces could be seen flowing into the country as one would expect amid an invasion, not a "civil war." While the West's military campaigns over and upon Syrian soil claimed to be taking on the so-called "Islamic State" (ISIS), it was clear that nothing was being done about cutting off the obvious supply corridors sustaining ISIS' fighting capacity.
In other words, the US and its "coalition's" war on ISIS was feigned. No genuine military campaign would ever be fought on the front lines while neglecting the enemy's logistical lifelines - especially when those lifelines led from NATO territory.
It wasn't until Russia's intervention on behalf of the Syrian government, that these corridors were targeted and disrupted -- thus fully exposing the gambit for all the world to see.^[1]

Lest anyone should think that hitting ground targets for the U.S. Air Force is difficult, this video shows that it is not.

Detecting ground targets is also not difficult. JSTARS aircraft were used to support air attacks on Gaddafi's forces in the amazing war on Libya where U.S. foreign policy was revealed for the genius enterprise that it is. Also, Navy’s P-3 Orion sub-hunters were operating in Libya and some have similar capabilities similar to those of the JSTARS aircraft. (Same link as the preceding one.) These aircraft were available in Libya so if they did not appear in the skies near or over Syria that was a command decision not a matter of unavailability.

So, now ask yourself if the oil tanker or 50-100+ Toyota convoys funding, supplying, and moving ISIS forces cleverly evaded detection and destruction despite the best efforts of the U.S. Air Force to do just that.

Or . . . was the "war" against ISIS just political theater?

Notes
^[1] "Syria: Phantom “Rebels” Return from the Dead." By Tony Cartalucci, New Eastern Outlook, 3/7/16.

H/t: "Who knew Islamic State was a fan of French colonialism?" By Pundita, 3/8/16.