Here's what no mainstream pundit dares discuss: the two-party system is sick unto death. Not only could the two-party system collapse, it should collapse. Nobody can say this in polite company, but reforming the corrupt two-party system is impossible, and so the only way forward is collapse."Why Aren't We Talking About a Four-Candidate Race for the Presidency: Two Party Hacks and Trump and Sanders as Independents?" By Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds, 4/12/16.Thomas Homer-Dixon described this dynamic in his book The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization.
The American public deserves a real choice, not the rigged non-choice between two party hacks. The American public deserves the opportunity to vote for Sanders, Trump, and whatever hacks the two elitist war parties select.
Wednesday, April 13, 2016
Just why is it we have only two major parties?
Because it's an excellent way to ensure that the people can express their will? Because it's a way to limit the influence of plutocrats?
Tuesday, April 12, 2016
TBD
Back when I was still involved in the implementation of military systems, there was an acronym of great and ominous import that sometimes approached ubiquity: TBD. It stood for “To Be Determined” or “To Be Defined.” It indicated by its presence that a requirement, or a fact that would support a requirement, was missing from the specification. Such a missing element would have to be inserted before the specification would be considered complete...yet there were cases in which a significant specification item remained TBD right up to the instant of the acceptance test.
Well, I don’t do that sort of work any longer, thank God and all the saints and angels, but as the title of this piece should indicate, TBD has made a comeback in my affairs. However, today it stands for To Be Deplored. It encompasses all those things which, in Reinhold Niebuhr’s famous formulation, evoke appeals to God for serenity. There are quite a lot of them, as regular Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch will already know.
Deplorables – a bit like Lunchables: they’re vended as individually addressable units that can be deplored independently of one another – span the entire range of human action. Their unifying characteristic is that under present conditions, there’s effectively nothing that can be “done about them.” However, they do consume a goodly portion of an American’s ire. By and large, we have not learned to bear them “with philosophy,” as H. L. Mencken counseled us:
There is no half-baked ecclesiastic, bawling in his galvanized-iron temple on a suburban lot, who doesn’t know precisely how it ought to be dealt with. There is no fantoddish old suffragette, sworn to get her revenge on man, who hasn’t a sovereign remedy for it. There is not a shyster of a district attorney, ambitious for higher office, who doesn’t offer to dispose of it in a few weeks, given only enough help from the city editors. And yet, by the same token, there is not a man who has honestly studied it and pondered it, bringing sound information to the business, and understanding of its inner difficulties and a clean and analytical mind, who doesn’t believe and hasn’t stated publicly that it is intrinsically and eternally insoluble. For example, Havelock Ellis. His remedy is simply a denial of all remedies. He admits that the disease is bad, but he shows that the medicine is infinitely worse, and so he proposes going back to the plain disease, and advocates bearing it with philosophy, as we bear colds in the head, marriage, the noises of the city, bad cooking and the certainty of death. Man is inherently vile—but he is never so vile as when he is trying to disguise and deny his vileness. No prostitute was ever so costly to a community as a prowling and obscene vice crusader, or as the dubious legislator or prosecuting officer who jumps at such swine pipe.
Rather, our ears prick up whenever some charlatan claims to have found a solution to one of them...and depending on how many of us buy his line, the consequences can range from a sore wallet to the destruction of a polity.
This morning’s line of thought flowed from my ponderings over this essay:
A buddy of mine has a very successful book series that he self-publishes on Amazon. Popular enough that he started earning “Quit Yer Job Money.” Although writing is actually a new job. The fans were voracious, and couldn’t get enough (Some even bitched when he tried to branch off and start a second series). Then one day, a week after a new volume came out and was flying off the virtual shelves, suddenly sales plummeted to about 10%, which killed his rise through the Amazon rankings – a key to getting new fans and continuing sales – and decimated his income. He had seen this pattern before. His new book had just been pirated. He went to the usual pirate sites and did his best to persuade them to take it down, but of course, the pirates were adamant. His sales were disappearing, but his bills were not. Now he is back in the day job market, which will slow down his writing, meaning the fans will have to wait much longer for new books. And that’s provided he doesn’t hang up his writer’s hat for good out of frustration.Now, I understand a bit of what’s going on, there’s an awful lot of piracy going on out there, and yeah, in strictest terms, virtually every picture you’ve got on your phone or hard drive that you didn’t take yourself is some kind of copyright violation. I’m not going to go down that puritan road. But let me go through the usual excuses and explain why they don’t apply to indy books.
The whole essay is worth your time, both for what it gets right and where it misses the mark. I exhort you to form your own conclusions. What it drew from me is an old “law” that I’ve made use of on many occasions:
For Every Engineer,
There Is An Equal But Opposite Engineer,
And Sooner Or Later,
He’ll Go To Work On Your Creation.
There is nothing that cannot be reverse-engineered, given enough time, manpower, and money. Anything one engineer has developed, another will eventually pull apart and figure out how to replicate. Shortly after that he’ll sell his “improved” version at a price that undercuts yours. In the nature of things, you will scream abuse and seek a remedy. However, the odds are against finding one.
Indie writers are currently coping with this, as “Dr. Mauser’s” piece should indicate. I’ve been there. I’ve had stories lifted from me and published under someone else’s name. Indeed, I’ve had whole novels pirated. In the nature of things, I felt violated and looked for a remedy...but it’s in the nature of the laws of digital content publication that no remedy exists.
It’s an aspect of the “free rider” problem. There are always free rider-wannabes, no matter what the good or service may be. Some goods make it easier than others to free-ride. Digital content provision is one of the easiest.
Software developers have known this for a long time. Way, way back in the darkest Eighties, there was an independent compiler developer by the name of Leor Zolman who introduced a low-priced (for then) C compiler that would run under the popular CP/M operating system for 8080 and Z80-based microcomputers: BDS C. As was the custom then, he provided a printed user’s guide with his product. In the introduction, he made one of the most poignant pleas not to pirate his creation that I can remember. Yet despite the low price of his compiler – approximately a quarter of the price of any competing product – Zolman’s BDS C compiler became one of the most pirated programs of its era.
What could Zolman do about it? Not much. He had to “bear it with philosophy,” as contemporary indie writers and publishers of E-books know to our sorrow.
Pirates gonna pirate, and free riders gonna free-ride, and in the usual case nothing much can be done about it. The only countermeasure of any sort is to price your product low and offer support only to registered users. (A help line wouldn’t do much for the typical indie novel, though there might be exceptions.) With a dab of luck, your early customers will protect you themselves, by refusing to give free copies of your work to others unwilling to pay. Yet it’s inevitable that eventually someone would succumb, after which your book or program might as well be in the “public domain”
This is most definitely To Be Deplored. We deplore it – those of us whose livings depend on income from a digital product deplore it with special fervor – yet we must “bear it with philosophy:” the attitude that flows from a comprehension of human nature and the wide distribution of human characteristics. The poor, Christ said, we will always have with us. He didn’t explicitly mention the thief, but I have a feeling it was somewhere in the back of His mind.
Quickies: Back By Unpopular Demand
Ragin’ Dave feels this deserves a rerun, owing to the weird popularity of the Bernie Sanders for President campaign, and I find that I agree:
The very first principle of economics is that all things have a price: that for anyone to have a thing, its price must be paid by someone, somewhere. That should lead to the automatic suspicion of the motives of anyone who offers you something “for free.” Tell your halfwit kids and neighbors who’ve been lured into thinking that socialism can actually work.
Uncapitalism and the immediate future.
From yet another thoughtful piece by Charles Hugh Smith:
All of these [hollowing out companies, share buy backs, high-frequency, computer trading, the carry trade] are "lawnmower" operations, rentier skims enabled by the Federal Reserve, its too big to fail banker cronies, a complicit federal government and a toothless corporate media.These scams produce "no new products/services, no new jobs and no improvements in productivity." And in 1997-2007, the top 1% increased their family income by 224%. The middle 20%, only 18%.This is not classical capitalism; it is predatory exploitation being passed off as capitalism. This predatory exploitation is only possible if the central bank and state have partnered with financial Elites to strip-mine the many to benefit the few.
This has completely distorted the economy, markets, central bank policies, and the incentives presented to participants.
The vast majority of this unproductive skimming occurs in a small slice of the economy--yes, the financial sector.[1]
I don't object to people getting very rich but I do when they do so by gaming the financial system and producing nothing useful. This is an astonishing failure on the part of the political system, not to have kept this from happening.
With an enormous amount of our manufacturing now in communist hands and our being flooded by unchecked and uninvited immigration from the third world that will forever change the unique identity of this country, the GOPe now thinks the time is ripe to alienate an infuriated electorate even further.
It's clear the country is advancing smartly to a giant crisis of legitimacy because voters see that on every front their wishes and interests have been completely ignored. Who among us asked that tens of thousands of Syrian "refugees" be brought to the U.S.? Yet the GOPe toys with explosive insider manipulations even after demonstrating that it has deliberately squandered the congressional majorities that the voters handed them in 2014.
It's astonishing. Political and economic leaders have watched passively, at best, while destructive, predatory, reckless policies have caused enormous damage to the country. Now that "politics" has broken out, they're in full panic/suicide mode.
Only Donald Trump comes close to addressing some of the the problems related to this, and that's not all that close. Clinton thinks that "pay equity" and "gun violence" are what vex us, and Sanders thinks sky-high taxes and free college will save the day. Cruz the constitutionalist still doesn't know what "natural born citizen" means and he's been dragged kicking and screaming in the direction of immigration patriotism while his wife is a shill for Goldman Sachs and the North American Union. Lord knows what Kasich proposes but it isn't border control and deportation of illegals.
God bless Donald Trump but it's hard to see how this election cycle is going to lead to the kind of changes that need to be made. Whoever the next president is, he or she is going to preside over a long-overdue economic, fiscal, and monetary crash. What will be demanded across the land then is anybody's guess but the replacement for all of this isn't likely to be marked by insight, rationality, and a re-dedication to constitutional basics.
Whoever makes it across the finish line, this crash will be laid at the feet of that person in its entirety. Given the inescapable "logic" of the MSM and no small proportion of the electorate, this will just be the case, just as Bill Clinton is seen by them as having presided over an expanding economy when the policies underlying the expansion were forced on him by Newt Gingrich. Since the coming crisis is the result of the political elite's enthusiastic willingness to abandon the Constitution and embrace the oppressive, exploitative state, it's important that voters see the final result as happening on the watch of a clueless leftist. Thus, I don't see a Clinton presidency as a disaster necessarily.
The mere fact that people like her and Sanders and Obama were ever given serious consideration is an indication of how corrupt and moronic the electorate has become. An electorate so indifferent to and ignorant of liberty makes rational reform impossible. About all the non-parasitic electorate is saying now is "we're hurting and we're pissed." That's wonderful but look at the difficulty bloggers and activists have in trying to warn of such a simple thing as the disaster of Muslim immigration. It's a rare American who understands the threat. Virtually the entire educated population lives to grovel at the feet of foreigners and grind their own countrymen into the dust. So how likely are the electorate to make informed decisions on anything? What can you say about a country that supports an Obama or a Clinton?
I hate to think of the damage Clinton can do but I'm quite certain that Americans have to get what they've voted for "good and hard" as Mencken put it. Trump appears to be willing to try a different approach but I think his understanding is thin. Historically, a vote for Republicans has meant a continuation and a strengthening of the progressive nightmare. Thus, if Trump fails and a Dem wins, it won't, to be frank, be that much worse.
Notes
[1] "The Root of Rising Inequality: Our "Lawnmower" Economy (hint: we're the lawn)." By Charles Hugh Smith, Of Two Minds, 4/12/16.
Monday, April 11, 2016
Quickies: How Much Further Can Rhetorical Idiocy Go?
Though I’m reluctant to lay a bet, perhaps no further than this:
HIROSHIMA, Japan (AP) — An emotional John Kerry said Hiroshima's horrible history should teach humanity to avoid conflict and strive to eradicate nuclear weapons as he became the first U.S. secretary of state to tread upon the ground of the world's first atomic bombing.Kerry's visit Monday to the Japanese city included him touring its peace museum with other foreign ministers of the Group of Seven industrialized nations and laying a wreath at the adjoining park's stone-arched monument, with the exposed steel beams of Hiroshima's iconic A-Bomb Dome in the distance.
The U.S. attack on Hiroshima in the final days of World War II killed 140,000 people and scarred a generation of Japanese, while thrusting the world into the dangerous Atomic Age. But Kerry hoped his trip would underscore how Washington and Tokyo have forged a deep alliance over the last 71 years and how everyone must ensure that nuclear arms are never used again.
I knew the man was a useless idiot, but it escapes me how his handlers could permit him to mouth such inanities. To wit:
- If anything is horrible about bombing a city, it’s the violence done to non-combatants...but the Germans inaugurated the practice in 1914, and it hasn’t ended yet.
- “Hiroshima’s horrible history” – i.e., the A-bombing – helped to end the war and saved at least 300,000 American lives.
- Violent international conflict does not arise from weaponry; it arises from evil: in the usual case, evil motives in the ruling cadre. That’s a huge part of what makes nuclear weapons vitally important.
- The only way to “ensure that nuclear arms are never used again” is to sterilize the planet – at the very least, to kill every sentient creature on it. Frankly, I’d just as soon not.
I know, I know; stupid presidents pick stupid Cabinet members. All the same, whenever this clown opens his mouth, he jams his feet deeper into it. What more can one say about John F. Kerry that even Hillary Clinton was a better Secretary of State?
Quickies: Tying It All Together
Now and then, a succession of articles will come my way that exposes Leftist economics as a highly odoriferous whole:
- First, there’s this citation of a Bernie Sanders statement;
- Second, please view this brief video;
- Third, take note of this analysis;
As a coda of sorts, view this brief video about an egregious abuse of power.
The Left’s attitude is founded on the hatred of individual rights, with particular emphasis on private property rights and all that goes along with them. Such rights stand in the way of addressing “social problems” with the power of the State. Sanders hates private charities because they’re private. He strives to condemn charity per se, but is a bit too bashful to pull it off. So he falls back on the old canard of “government responsibility for social programs.” However, that “responsibility” has no inherent limit; thus, as William Voegeli demonstrates, the Left will recognize no limits to the State.
Jonah Goldberg’s comments on the “rectification of names” (Confucius) cuts to the heart of the babbling, self-aggrandizing crap today styled as “political rhetoric:”
The disconnect between names and the named becomes most pronounced in totalitarian societies where words become weapons of the State. When language ceases to be a tool for labeling reality and higher truths and becomes one for upholding the agenda of a regime, the society rots and invites revolt. Try as they might, tyrants rarely have much success at persuading miserable people they are happy or hungry people they are full. As a result, regimes feel required to tighten their grip on society even more. Use of the wrong word — or the right word the wrong way — becomes ever more damning evidence of disloyalty or treason. And you know what? The tyrants are right: It is disloyalty and treason to an evil regime to accurately tell the truth.
And so it is with the innumerable conditions left-liberals yearn to have labeled “social problems.”
Finally, consider the video about the South Carolina councilman who didn’t want to endure questions from the citizenry. People were near to calling things by their right names. Truth might have been about to happen. He had to prevent that at all costs. The invocation of police power was essential.
Note in closing that the typical left-liberal doesn't feel personally responsible for “solving” any of the “social problems” he rants about. He bases his conviction of moral superiority on the way he votes and nothing else. It's a neat way to claim credit for “good intentions” while distancing himself from actual labor and (of course) from any responsibility for the consequences.
Pearls of expression.
When the Pope kisses the feet of Muslims and recommends a “proper reading of the Koran” to his “faithful”, he equalises everything down to the same level as much as the sham-secular propaganda cadres in the institutions, whose credo smoothens Islam out on a plane between “religion of peace” and “cradle of science”. Since Islamic violence is deemed “abuse of faith”, Europe’s totalitarian tradition can be rehabilitated by protecting the Koranic licence to power under freedom of religion.The E.U. is an authoritarian monstrosity designed to destroy the nation states of Europe. National Socialism is endlessly decried . . . while its return is enthusiastically accomplished through the back door.
"Europe’s Elites, EU Citizens and Islam." By Hans-Peter Raddatz, Die Presse.com, 3/6/16.
H/t: Gates of Vienna.
Sunday, April 10, 2016
Quickies: Undesirable Attributes
According to this piece, there are five specific attributes that brand a man as unsuitable for marriage in a woman’s eyes:
- Unreliability.
- A Poor Work Ethic.
- Selfishness.
- “Mixed Signals.”
- Poor Care of Oneself.
Well, may God forbid that I quarrel with any of that...but in my six decades plus, I’ve encountered far more women who exhibit those attributes. Moreover, the great majority of them were married women, whose husbands were, in every case, solid citizens of good character. All of them were still on the sunny side of the sod.
Accordingly I will ask: Does marriage to a suitable man – that is, one who demonstrates:
- Reliability;
- A Strong Work Ethic;
- Generosity;
- Clear Communications;
- and Proper Care of Himself
...bring about the development of the reverse characteristics by his bride? The public wants to know!
“Marriage is not a word. It is a sentence...a life sentence.” – Fr. Lennard Sabio
Fences: A Sunday Rumination
“All the way to heaven is heaven, because Jesus said, ‘I am the way.’” – Saint Catherine of Sienna
There’s a story from World War I about three American soldiers – one Lutheran, one Jewish, and one Catholic – who didn’t know one another when they first arrived in France, but became close friends as they endured the horrors and hardships of combat together. In those days, now a century behind us, men were more serious about their faiths, as were the pastors and churches that ministered to them. So it was that they vowed to one another that should any of them fall in battle, the others would see to the proper burial of his remains, as his faith directed they should be.
The war soon claimed the life of the Lutheran lad. The Catholic, upon whom the burden of seeing to his burial fell, searched in vain for a cemetery that accorded with the young Lutheran’s faith. The only Christian cemetery within a workable distance was a Catholic one. Accordingly, the Catholic soldier approached the pastor of the associated church and pleaded for a proper burial for his Lutheran friend.
Unfortunately, at that time the regulations of the Church forbade the burial of a non-Catholic in a cemetery consecrated to the Catholic faith. The pastor sorrowfully informed the survivors of this, but offered an alternative: he would have the young Lutheran buried immediately outside the cemetery fence. He personally guaranteed that the grave would receive the same care as any of those within the fence’s bounds. The survivors agreed, as there were no alternatives.
At the funeral, the survivors agreed that three years after the war, they would meet again at their fallen comrade’s grave, to remember him and share reminiscences of their wartime experiences. And indeed, in three years’ time, they returned to that little French church, converged outside the cemetery fence...and found to their great dismay that their friend’s grave was gone! They immediately sought the pastor and demanded to know what had become of their friend’s remains. The pastor merely said “Follow me.”
He led the two survivors to an area inside the fence, where they found their friend’s grave. The plot and stone had obviously been well cared for. Yet the location clashed with their clear and unambiguous memories that such a thing was forbidden by the solemn regulations of the Catholic Church. They looked to the pastor for an explanation. He smiled.
“The war was terrible,” the old priest said. “Man’s inhumanity to man made visible. For four years a fence separated our nation from its greatest neighbor...a fence made of trenches and barbed wire, surrounding a no-man’s-land watered with the blood of thousands. After you departed, I thought about that fence, and the one around our cemetery, and went back to the regulations that governed the matter. The regulations were quite explicit: they absolutely forbade me to bury your friend inside the fence. But,” he said with a raised finger, “they didn’t forbid me to move the fence afterward.”
It is, no doubt, impossible to prevent his praying for his mother, but we have means of rendering the prayers innocuous. Make sure that they are always very "spiritual", that he is always concerned with the state of her soul and never with her rheumatism. Two advantages follow. In the first place, his attention will be kept on what he regards as her sins, by which, with a little guidance from you, he can be induced to mean any of her actions which are inconvenient or irritating to himself. Thus you can keep rubbing the wounds of the day a little sorer even while he is on his knees; the operation is not at all difficult and you will find it very entertaining. In the second place, since his ideas about her soul will be very crude and often erroneous, he will, in some degree, be praying for an imaginary person, and it will be your task to make that imaginary person daily less and less like the real mother—the sharp-tongued old lady at the breakfast table. In time, you may get the cleavage so wide that no thought or feeling from his prayers for the imagined mother will ever flow over into his treatment of the real one. I have had patients of my own so well in hand that they could be turned at a moment's notice from impassioned prayer for a wife's or son's "soul" to beating or insulting the real wife or son without a qualm.[C. S. Lewis, The Screwtape Letters]
Fences are an important part of social existence. They’re important in many different contexts. (Mine keep my dogs from wandering all over Long Island, and Marty the Mount Sinai Woodchuck from eating the C.S.O’s garden.) But like any implement by which we seek some end, a fence can be misused or misplaced.
We fence off persons as well as property. Sometimes the fences are entirely practical: against the light-fingered neighbor who can’t seem to resist the lure of your toolshed; the children whose games have repeatedly trashed your flowerbeds; the garrulous old biddy who seems to know everything about everyone...and who already knows far too much about you. But as badly as we need them, we must not allow them to fence off more than they should.
The Screwtape citation above indirectly describes a fence of sorts. Such a fence separates the notion of one’s spiritual duty to love one’s neighbor from the actual, temporal treatment of that neighbor. You’d think the horror would be too obvious for any self-aware person to overlook...which only means that there are fewer self-aware persons than we might imagine.
There are other fences of a similar sort. The fence that concentrates our attention on what we lack, wholly ignoring what we have. The fence that precludes our enjoyment and proper use of today out of excessive concern for tomorrow. The fence that clusters the faults of a relative or spouse close around us, while keeping his virtues and kindnesses at a remote distance. Each of these works to degrade our temporal existence, by weakening our appreciation of what is and emphasizing our dissatisfactions.
Temporal happiness is important. The laws of the universe were made to facilitate it. In a sense, temporal unhappiness is a spiritual danger: an entry point for the seven cardinal sins and the actions they could precipitate. Yet our very natural tendency to look outward in time and possibility, allows us to cheapen the here-and-now in favor of an imagined otherwhen.
One of the great gifts that’s come my way with my retirement has been an improved sense for the richness of the present: the people and things that are present, and the present moment itself. I did a great deal of worrying about the future while I was still employed. In part, that flowed from my trade, but it was also powered by my concern for trends in our social, economic, and political affairs. Since I let go of wage employment, it’s become much easier for me to enjoy the now. It’s a development I hardly expected.
A guru of years past, Baba Ram Dass, used as his pet mantra Be Here Now. Say what you will about the gurus and shamans of the Sixties, Seventies, and Eighties – and some of them were pretty screwy – that’s damned good advice. Now, in the extended sense that includes all that’s around us, is really all we have. God designed us that way. He apparently wants our primary attention on now, coupled to constructive memories of what’s gone by and appropriate respect for what’s to come. The past – our trials, sufferings, and painfully gathered lessons – and the future – what we plan for, hope for, and what might be despite our best efforts – are only as relevant as now – our decisions, actions, and conclusions from present-moment conditions – can make them. Fencing past and future off at a respectful distance, and fencing the realities of now close to oneself, is the best recipe for it all.
May God bless and keep you all...and put that cell phone away!
Saturday, April 9, 2016
Quickies: The Most Emotional Issue
At PJ Media today, Daniel Glover – no, not that Danny Glover – discusses Christians’ agonies over whether, if abortion is to be outlawed, a mother who has an abortion should be punished under the law. In other words, he perpetuates the premise that abortion should be outlawed because abortion is murder, which God has forbidden. As you might expect, that leaves the readers unsatisfied and the division between “pro-choice” and “pro-life” unbridged.
Rather than perpetuate the sectarian divisions over abortion, why not take a deep breath and reflect on why we want to do what we want to do – whatever that might be.
The folks who want abortion to be legal at some stage of gestation have to answer some questions:
- Inasmuch as once born, the baby is recognized as a person with a right to life, why doesn’t he possess that right on the other side of the birth canal?
- If abortion is all right, why is execution for murder wrong? And why is it morally repugnant that Planned Parenthood sells body parts from aborted fetuses?
- Why doesn’t the baby’s father have any say in the matter, considering that if the baby were born, his father would incur legal obligations that would last eighteen years or longer?
There are others, of course, but those strike me as the big ones. For the pro-life crowd (of which I am one):
- Why do you want some or all abortions outlawed? What’s the moral / ethical basis? Can you defend it without recourse to religious proscriptions?
- How many criminals are involved in an outlawed abortion? Three, two, or one? If the answer is “It varies,” how would you arrive at the answer in a specific case? What are the appropriate penalties?
- How would you deal with the Fourth and Fifth Amendment issues involved? (Some early abortions are indistinguishable from a “menstrual extraction.”)
The cross-aisle shouting seldom attempts to answer any of the above questions. Instead, the issue tends to be framed along religious lines, which is why the pro-abortion crowd has succeeded in characterizing pro-lifers as “zealots” and “religious bigots.”
It might be the case that only non-verifiable, non-falsifiable bases exist for either position. But up to this point precious little effort has been put into trying to find secular ones. If we could arrive at moral / ethical premises on which both sides can agree, we might make progress.
Saturday Smorgasbord
I’ve grown terribly weary of the presidential campaign, so please forgive me if I go a decade or two without mentioning it. Perhaps some Gentle Reader will kindly ring me up when it’s truly behind us.
1. Same Lunatics, Different Asylum.
The Kentucky Derby, one of America’s most celebrated (and briefest) sporting events, will soon be upon us once again. For most, it means party hats and mint juleps, with maybe a little horse racing thrown in for flavor. But not for all:
There will not be a Kentucky Derby party at Dartmouth College this year because some students allege that one of the nation’s most prestigious horse races is racist....Back in 2015, a group of Black Lives Matter protestors targeted an exclusive Kentucky Derby party hosted by the ladies of Kappa Delta Epsilon – calling the event overtly racist and “recreating an Antebellum South atmosphere on the Ivy League campus.”
The protestors accused the party of being a “bastion of racism, exclusion and oppression.” They chanted, “What is Derby? It’s the face of genocide” and “What is Derby? It’s the face of police brutality.”
Accordingly, the Kappa Delta Epsilon sorority at Dartmouth University has canceled its traditional Kentucky Derby party. Can’t go commemorating the “antebellum South” when as prestigious a group as “Black Lives Matter” is against it, can they. However, as columnist Todd Starnes notes, there’s just one wee problem with that: The Derby was first run in 1875.
Perhaps Dartmouth’s core curriculum omits all mention of the Reconstruction period. It wouldn’t surprise me.
2. Wisconsin, Birthplace of American Progressivism.
Scott Walker’s term as governor of Wisconsin has done the state a great deal of good...but don’t imagine everyone is happy about that:
Wisconsin's right-to-work law, championed by Republican Gov. Scott Walker as he was mounting his run for president, was struck down Friday as violating the state constitution....Three unions filed the lawsuit last year shortly after Walker signed the bill into law. Right-to-work laws prohibit businesses and unions from reaching agreements that require all workers, not just union members, to pay union dues. Twenty-five other states have such laws.
The unions argued that Wisconsin's law was an unconstitutional seizure of union property since unions now must extend benefits to workers who don't pay dues. Dane County Circuit Judge William Foust agreed.
He said the law amounts to the government taking union funds without compensation since under the law unions must represent people who don't pay dues. That presents an existential threat to unions, Foust wrote.
"While (union) losses today could be characterized by some as minor, they are not isolated and the impact of (the law) over time is threatening to the unions' very economic viability," he wrote.
The people most concerned about “unions’ economic viability” are, of course, those whose paychecks draw from union coffers. The rest of Wisconsin’s workers are apparently less than concerned. But what’s more important here is the perpetuation of a pattern: judicial activism as the Left’s last bastion.
No other state with a right-to-work law has suffered this sort of judicial setback...yet. But I’m quite sure that the unions’ success in Wisconsin will inspire emulation in those other states. Stay tuned.
3. On The Globalism Front.
Seventy percent of the surface of the Earth is covered by its seven oceans...and the UN is preparing to assert hegemony over them:
The United Nations has launched a far-reaching initiative that could give U.N.-sponsored authorities sway over the biological resources of the high seas—all the waters that lie outside national territories and economic zones.The potential shift in power involves multi-trillion-dollar issues, such as whether large areas—conceivably, as much as 30 percent-- of the world’s international waters should be designated as no-go areas to protect biological diversity; whether and how to require elaborate “environmental impact assessments” for future ocean development projects; and how to divide up the economic benefits from the future development of “marine genetic resources.”...
Overall, the hoped-for treaty will cover “two-thirds of the oceans, almost half the planet,” says Lisa Speer, a senior official of the National Resources Defense Council (NRDC), which is in turn a lead member of a squadron of 33 environmentalist groups banded together as the High Seas Alliance to lobby for protectionist measures during the talks.
Don’t imagine that the Obamunists are uninvolved in this:
One of the biggest backers of the preliminary talks is the Obama Administration. Even though the U.S. has never ratified the 1982 U.N. Law of the Sea Convention—the new talks are aimed at creating an “implementing agreement” under the Law of the Sea umbrella—the Administration is deeply involved in the negotiations, as are some of the world’s most powerful environmental organizations.
Given the terrible destruction wrought by the collectivization of real estate on dry land, you might think the world’s largest supranational body would be at least a little tentative about collectivizing 70% of the Earth’s surface. You’d be wrong:
One of the “most animated” areas of discussion, prep-com chairman Charles told Fox News, was how the rewards of the world’s undersea bio-heritage could be shared. “We do not yet have a legal code for their exploitation,” he declared.Some countries were arguing that all such resources be considered the “common heritage of mankind,” a code term for a socialist-leaning vision of shared international ownership.
There are certain tunes you can’t get some bands not to play.
4. Restroom Follies.
Remember when seeing an obvious man in the ladies’ room was cause enough to summon the gendarmes? Well, as the poet said, the times they are a-changin’. But there remain a few holdouts...and God bless ‘em:
PayPal, the website known for processing online payments, believes grown men have a constitutional right to use the same bathrooms as little girls.So when North Carolina Gov. Pat McCrory signed a bill that banned people from using bathrooms not assigned to their birth sex, PayPal became enraged and retaliated.
They canceled plans to open a new operations center in Charlotte – a facility that would’ve employed more than 400 workers.
“The new law perpetuates discrimination and it violates the values and principles that are at the core of PayPal’s mission and culture,” CEO Dan Schulman wrote in a memorandum on the company’s website.
Oooh! Discrimination. The evillest thing in the whole world! Except that you, I, and your halfwit uncle Harley do it every single day, in choosing friends, business associates, leisure time activities and locales, and which brand of yogurt to buy. PayPal, that staunch defender of “equality,” simply won’t have it...or will they?
“PayPal does business in 25 countries where homosexual behavior is illegal, including five where the penalty is death,” NC Rep. Robert Pittenger wrote on Facebook. “Yet, they object to the North Carolina legislature overturning a misguided ordinance about letting men into the women’s bathroom? Perhaps PayPal would like to try and clarify this seemingly very hypocritical position,” he suggested.
Needless to say, our cultural midgets are also lining up against North Carolina. But that shouldn’t surprise anyone.
5. Merely One More Reason For MGTOW.
A European in Los Angeles has discovered the latest trend in feminist perfidy:
Dear Amy: I’m a European man living in Los Angeles. I use a dating app and the following situation has happened many times to me (as well as to other friends):We meet at a cool wine bar at 8 p.m. Kiss on the cheek, casual conversation.
We order glasses of wine. She orders the most expensive ($23 a glass). OK.
Then she says, “Do you mind if ‘we’ order an appetizer? I’m starving.” She orders lobster bisque — the most expensive appetizer on the menu. OK.
She says, “My family comes from money…I work with them in a nonprofit.” Then she says, “I’m meeting some girlfriends for karaoke after, but I’m still hungry, so do you mind if ‘we’ order another appetizer?” OK. Then she says, “I need to use the restroom. Let’s leave after that. Can you get the bill in the meantime?” OK.
So, Amy, am I a gentleman, or a sucker? — L.A. Confused
A gentleman? Perhaps. A sucker? Perhaps not. This is growing common among American women who identify as feminists, including some in undisclosed “long-term relationships.” They regard it as a form of income augmentation at “the enemy’s” expense.
Dating app, eh? Have you ever wondered who designed and popularized these apps? These anonymizing tools for luring in lonely men and parting them from their valuta? What his / her / its unexpressed motivations might have been?
I’ll ask once more: Do feminists have an agenda? That is, an agenda other than merely vilifying half the human race? If so, what might it be?
One of my readers’ favorite characters has expressed the matter admirably:
"We hold the veto power. We compel them to woo us, seduce us, cater to us. When we oh-so-generously let them near, they do almost all of the work, yet their orgasms involve only a tiny portion of their bodies and last a mere second or two. Ours are incomparably fuller and longer -- and at so much smaller a cost that it doesn't bear comparison." She shook her head. "We get so much more out of it than they do, it's a wonder they bother with us at all. So why do they bother with us, Marilyn?"
Helen's silent glare accused her of having missed something critical, something she ought to have known without needing to be told.
"I don't know. I...never thought about it."
The reproof in Helen's eyes remained strong, but something else entered to temper it, something wryly amused.
"You ought to have thought about it. But you're not the only one. Harridans all across this land have been telling women like you that you're owed, that men's desire for you is barely a hair's breadth from chattel slavery, that 'a woman without a man is like a fish without a bicycle.' And you're too afraid to contradict them, or too proud to ask your mothers whether it might just possibly be some other way. So they go on to catechize the men, telling them what oppressors they are, and how awful the burdens of womanhood are, and how unfair it is that they should get to exhaust their bodies and erode their spirits with wage labor while women sit in the safety and comfort of their homes, being most oppressively provided for." Helen shook her head. "If a hundredth of that were true, the race would have died out thousands of years ago. It's we who owe them, Marilyn. Without them, we would still be cowering in caves. They have made us a world where we can be whatever we please."[From Priestesses]
Have a nice day.
Friday, April 8, 2016
Quickies: The Demons, Not The Lunatics, Are Running The Asylum.
This left me absolutely speechless:
Senate Democrats on Wednesday couldn't agree that federal debt is a national security problem, in a hearing aimed at assessing the long-term strategic implications of the government's $19 trillion debt."A realistic discussion about it, and accepting expert opinion that this debt that we have is not actually right now a threat to our country, is I think a more realistic and honorable way of talking to the American people about it," Sen. Ed Markey, D-Mass., said during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing on Wednesday.
What’s that you say? Federal borrowing is crowding private enterprise out of the credit markets? The interest on the debt is squeezing the rest of the federal budget near to collapse? The dollar has weakened so greatly from federal borrowing that major countries are leaving the “dollar standard?” Sorry, Ed Markey can’t hear you. It might endanger his precious social programs.
And on that note:
Markey also insisted that Republicans drop their interest in changing entitlement programs as they try to mitigate the projected federal debt.
Gee, with entitlements near 70% of all federal spending and accelerating toward the stratosphere, wherever shall we look for reductions? Markey has the answer to that, too:
Markey suggested that nuclear weapons represent one of the top targets for such debt reduction. "There's a proposal to [spend] $1 trillion of new nuclear weapon systems in our country over the next 20 years," he said. "That's a crazy number from my perspective."
But never fear, there are other Democrats who have the answer:
"I don't want you to leave with the impression that the Democratic side of this committee is insensitive to the deficit. We're not," said Maryland Sen. Ben Cardin, the ranking Democrat on the panel. "I think Democrats are very concerned that there be adequate revenues in order to be able to make the investments that we think are important for the growth of our nation."
Yes, I added the emphasis.
Hide your cattle in the woods, Francois,
The lord is looking your way.
Hide your women and your goods, Francois,
They're coming around to make you pay.[Tom Paxton, “When Princes Meet”]
It’s impossible to believe that anyone that stupid could attain a seat in the United States Senate. They have to be evil...but they’ve both been there for quite a while, so what does that say about their constituents?
“We are doomed.” – John Derbyshire
Carrots, Sticks, And Great Heaping Mounds Of Dollars
Into what sort of investments does your IRA or 401(k) plan – I assume you have one or the other – put your contributions? Stocks? Mutual funds? Corporate bonds? Possibly a little goes into an interest-bearing money market fund? They’re all quite common in such plans. Most of the ones an investment advisor is likely to recommend are pretty good: that is, they won’t make you rich, but they’re unlikely to crash and burn and take all your money with them.
But then, your investment advisor is a private party, probably the employee of a company that specializes in that sort of work. A private company or self-employed financial advisor must perform or go under. One that underperforms for two or three quarters is likely to get a serious talking-to by his management. One that underperforms for two or three years is likely to take up residence in a cardboard box. And by “underperform,” I don’t mean “lose money;” I mean “doesn’t keep up with market averages,” at the very least. The ones that advise so poorly that they actually lose their clients’ money are in much worse trouble than that.
Now imagine that instead of that private advisor and his supervisors if he has any, your retirement savings were managed by a state government...or perhaps by the federal government itself.
Changes the whole picture, doesn’t it?
I’ve written before about an attempt to seize your retirement savings (and your pension plan, if you’re one of the fortunate few who still has one). It wasn’t a new idea then, and of course it isn’t now. The Ghilarducci proposal was too barefaced to pass muster. It was an outright proposal to steal from approximately half the population of the United States; it couldn’t possibly command enough support to pass Congress...though I have no doubt that were Congress to pass it, Obama would sign it, cackling with glee as he did so, and put it into effect upon the instant.
President Obama’s regulators aren’t slowing down, alas. And on Wednesday they unveiled another part of their plan to push Americans out of private investment accounts and into government-run plans.The Department of Labor says its so-called fiduciary rule will make financial advisers act in the best interests of clients. What Labor doesn’t say is that the rule carries such enormous potential legal liability and demands such a high standard of care that many advisers will shun non-affluent accounts. Middle-income investors may be forced to look elsewhere for financial advice even as Team Obama is enabling a raft of new government-run competitors for retirement savings. This is no coincidence.
Labor’s new rule will start biting in January as the President is leaving office. Under the rule, financial firms advising workers moving money out of company 401(k) plans into Individual Retirement Accounts will have to follow the new higher standards. But Labor has already proposed waivers from the federal Erisa law so new state-run retirement plans don’t have the same regulatory burden as private employers do.
This competitive advantage could be significant. Last month the board of California’s new “Secure Choice” retirement plan wrote to state legislators about their “exciting win” in Washington. They reported that employers enrolling workers in the new government-run plan “would have no liability or fiduciary duty for the plan.” Score! The California bureaucrats added that “we have been given the green light to auto-enroll workers into an Individual Retirement Account (IRA).”
Into what sort of “investment” do you suppose the state of California, now many billions of dollars in the red, would put the money thus entrusted to its “management?” Given that its “advisors” would suffer no penalty for losing every last dollar? Given that the account “owners” would have no recourse regardless of developments? Remember also that state governments are thralls to Washington, kept docile and submissive to federal demands by threats to which a Fidelity or a Vanguard are not exposed.
Scared yet? If not, check your pulse: you may have died but failed to notice.
The total invested in pension plans, IRAs, and 401(k) plans, in current dollars, is about $19 trillion. The total federal debt is slightly more than that. The aggregate of all state and local governments’ debts is about $4 trillion. Moreover, those figures don’t account for the famous “unfunded liabilities” represented by Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, and government pension programs.
To say that America’s 88,000-plus governments are eager to find new sources of revenue is quite an understatement. There’s a reason most of the revenue from state lotteries doesn’t go anywhere near the educational institutions they supposedly fund. It’s the same reason the Supreme Court ruled against Suzette Kelo.
The stick the Department of Labor’s new rule brandishes at private investment advisors in the form of enhanced legal liability will nudge them toward government-approved investments: state and local bonds and Treasury bills. The carrot it offers to the state governments will be eagerly snapped up. The consequence will be a diversion of a significant part of the flow of retirement funds toward loans to governments. The debtors can default on those loans without consequence, leaving the “investor” with no money and no recourse.
The Soviet Union did that several times.
A government bond is a certificate of guaranteed confiscation. – Franz Pick
Gradualism has eroded the core out of the Constitutions’ provisions for limiting government. It’s also bled the purchasing power out of the dollar. Today it’s at work on the remnants of liberty: freedom of expression; freedom of association; freedom of religion; freedom of movement, both intranationally and internationally; the security of one’s person and possessions, real or movable, against arbitrary search and seizure. The one significant retardant to our descent toward complete, rightless subjugation is the cost of enforcement.
I think those for whom totalitarianism is the end in view might have found the financing they’ll need. I think they might have found a technique for putting it over on us without alarming us into resistance until the seizure is complete and irrevocable. That technique would also leave the elderly completely dependent on the good will of the Omnipotent State.
I’m already elderly; thus I fear both for myself and for the investment advisor who’s served me loyally and well for many years. What about you, Gentle Reader? Feeling a chill just yet?
The mask of the E.U. slips.
The difficulty in handling debt problems and the needs of migrants is compounded by the thoroughly undemocratic nature of the EU. In the Guardian on Tuesday, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis recalled his attempts last year to find common cause with EU colleagues."Eamonn McCann: Undemocratic EU may not survive grim challenges." By Eamonn McCann, The Irish Times, 4/7/16.After he made a plea for an easing of the terms of the bailout, explaining that this was the devout wish of the Greek people as expressed in the recent election, German finance minister Wolfgang Schauble made a reply which should send shivers up the spine of every democrat: “‘Elections cannot be allowed to change the economic programme of a member state.’”
H/t: Gates of Vienna.
'Orrid it was. 'Orrid.
Apparently this nonsense [Western museums' returning "stolen" artifacts] started in the late 1980s and has been getting worse ever since. According to a plausible theory advanced by sociologist John Torpey, since the fall of the Berlin Wall, utopians have given up scheming about how best to change the future and have instead sought to create a better world by trying to remake our relationship with the past.[1]It seems to be the first impulse of leftists – to ask how they can milk ever last drop of ancestral cupidity, greed, lust, hypocrisy, oppression, overreach, misogyny, racism, and ignorance out of all that has gone before.
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Notes
[1] "Give thanks for the imperialist ‘tomb raiders.’ Without them, many of the artefacts now demanded back from museums simply wouldn’t have survived." By James Delingpole, The Spectator, 4/8/16.
Thursday, April 7, 2016
Today’s Obsessives
It’s not that long ago – the fabled “Sexual Revolution” years of the late Sixties and early Seventies – that those who favored uninhibited sexuality uber alles and the steady attenuation of the mores against it liked to style their opponents as “obsessed with sex:”
- If you favored decency in public dress, you were a prude.
- If you advocated premarital chastity, you were Puritanical.
- If you advocated marital fidelity, you were a religious bigot.
- If you deplored homosexuality, you were in the closet.
Other bits of demotic rhetoric were applied as well, but the hour being what it is, the above are the ones that come to mind. Nothing that followed – NAMBLA; the herpes and AIDS epidemics; the explosion of both abortions and illegitimate births; the demise of the family – sufficed to get the “sexual emissionaries” (Arthur Herzog) to reconsider their positions. And of course nothing could persuade them that those who differed with them were anything but stupid, evil, or both.
Well, tempora mutantur et nos mutamur in illis. Sexual restraint and fidelity have largely disappeared from the West. Indeed, to be in favor of them marks one as “out of step.” (Ask Tim Tebow what that feels like.) The abovementioned consequences are things we’ve sort of learned to live with, though not comfortably. But there are other consequences that remain capable of disturbing even the “liberated” mind.
Gentle Readers of Liberty’s Torch will be aware of the explosion of accusations of sexual assault on American college and university campuses. The usual treatment of such accusations is as true beyond refutation, even when they can be disproved by the available evidence. Moreover, the vector points in one direction only: if she claims she’s been assaulted, then it’s unquestionably true. His accusation, if he dares to make one, doesn’t get the same sort of preferential treatment.
The college campus has become a place where young men hardly dare to tread. (Frankly, I’d counsel an angel against it – a male angel, at least.) But at least we can say with some assurance that while nearly every sort of sexual indulgence has been destigmatized, rape and other forms of sexual assault retain their power to outrage us.
Have they?
Recently there was a debate of sorts over the tide of immigration, particularly Islamic immigration, to the West. Arguing in favor of that tide – the “pro” side – were former UN Human Rights Commissioner Louise Arbour and historian Simon Schama. Arguing against it – the “con” side – were UKIP luminary Nigel Farage and columnist Mark Steyn. The entire debate is available on video.
The part I want to highlight is captured in the snippet below:
For those who “don’t do video,” here’s the pith of it from Barbara Kay of the National Post:
To some audience members (not to me, but for example to my furiously tweeting companion, a young colleague who happens to bear the same last name as me), Steyn dwelt excessively on the sexual crimes we’ve all read about in Cologne, Hamburg, Malmö and elsewhere. So it apparently seemed to Arbour and Schama, because they mocked Steyn for it in their rebuttals. Arbour sneered at both Steyn and Farage as “newborn feminists” (she got a laugh), while Schama disgraced himself with “I’m just struck by how obsessed with sex these two guys are, actually. It’s a bit sad, really.” (That got a very big laugh.) I took one look at Steyn’s glowering face after that remark — Schama will regret having said it to his dying day, I know it — and I kind of felt sorry for those two liberals, because I knew what was coming.Steyn slowly rose and riposted, in a tone of withering contempt, “I wasn’t going to do funny stuff. I was going to be deadly serious. (But) I’m slightly amazed at Simon’s ability to get big laughs on gang rape.” Vigorous applause. He went on, “Mme Arbour scoffs at the ‘newfound feminists.’ I’m not much of a feminist, but I draw the line at a three year old … and a seven year old getting raped.” Vigorous applause.
So to the Left, endlessly willing to welcome the destroyers of Western civilization into its bosom, concern about the epidemic of rapes and sexual assaults – in public, at that – being committed by Muslim immigrants with no legitimate claim to “refugee” status constitutes “being obsessed with sex.”
Who are the obsessives here?
There are many attitudes, some subtle and some less so, that one can take to the changes in sexual mores these past fifty years. Mine is complex, flavored by both my religious creed and my overall love of freedom. My own attitudes to the side, it seems clear that some aspects of “sexual liberation” have been negative, both for the societies that have accommodated it and for the individuals that have indulged in it.
But rape is not “sexual liberation.” Neither is outrage over a torrent of rapes, including public rapes, gang rapes, and rapes of minor children, at all related to one’s personal convictions about sex. That nominally intelligent persons such as Louise Arbour and Simon Schama could characterize such outrage as “obsession with sex” says one and only one thing: They have subordinated all considerations of justice to their politics.
The anti-Western attitude beneath it all is what matters most. Islam is hostile to Western civilization and its principles. Therefore, he who is virulently opposed to that civilization and those principles will welcome Islam into the West, to aid in its destruction.
Sex has nothing to do with it.
“Refugee status” has nothing to do with it.
“Human rights” have nothing to do with it.
It’s entirely about winning the day for the Left’s vicious anti-Western, anti-Christian-Enlightenment crusade. If gaining victory requires that they ridicule persons outraged about the Muslim rape epidemic as “obsessed with sex,” they will do so...even as they would condemn the “epidemic of sexual assaults” supposedly occurring on college campuses.
Islamic nations don’t have a problem with “campus rape,” of course; women aren’t allowed to attend educational institutions. So perhaps there’s some element of consistency there...if you’re a demented Leftist lunatic willing to overlook any and every atrocity in pursuit of your goals. Can’t make an omelet without breaking eggs, right? Right?
You are looking directly and squarely at the essence of evil, Gentle Reader. Even those of us inclined to purge our societies of Muslims and Islam at gunpoint would still do so while saying “May God have mercy on their souls.” At the moment I cannot find it in me to wish such Divine mercy on Louise Arbour and Simon Schama.
Wednesday, April 6, 2016
Looking Underneath
Those Gentle Readers who’ve patronized Liberty’s Torch for a while are aware that I’m not the typical “select news story and vent anger” sort of blogger. There are plenty of those – I regularly read several such – and I’ve never felt I could add usefully to their number. I prefer to select events and stories that offer a useful, or at least interesting connection to some important current in thought. The consequences are the interminable, lugubrious essays for which I’m generally known.
This article, which reports on a possible reversal of a trend from some years ago, is a case of that sort:
Students at Stanford University have successfully petitioned to allow undergraduates to vote, on April 7 and 8, on whether to re-instate core Western civilization courses for all students. This bold campaign is headed up by undergraduate Harry Elliott, editor-in-chief of “The Stanford Review,” an independent campus newspaper.Before Elliott was born, a bunch of agitators marched through campus chanting “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Western civ has got to go!” in a crusade to abolish such studies and smear them as racist, sexist, and so on. The core humanities curriculum has since been replaced by a thematic batch of courses called “Thinking Matters.”
A major university must teach its enrollees that “Thinking Matters?” I wouldn’t have considered the notion disputable, but tempora mutantur and all that. Anyway, do read the article in full; it’s loaded with important insights. I’ll expand on one of them when you get back.
By my estimate, the key passage in the cited article is this one:
The dirty little secret is that suppressing the study of Western Civilization is really about suppressing knowledge itself—especially the true self-knowledge that sparks independent thinking and the imagination. When people are stripped of such knowledge, they are more easily conditioned, more easily manipulated by propaganda, more willing to cede their power to the elites doing the conditioning.
Excellently well put...yet what’s not stated explicitly is as important as what is. Western Civilization is the product of two currents of thought and conviction that first flowed together in the late Renaissance and flowered with the rise of the empiricist thinkers.
The first of those currents was Christianity. Christian moral-ethical thought had raised Europe out of savagery and set it on an orderly basis. There were problems with that basis; let there be no argument about that. However, Christ’s exhortation to Do unto others as you would have them do unto you provided the kindling for the match that was to arrive a millennium afterward.
The Christian ethos couldn’t create an entirely new civilization as it stood, principally because political power structures exempted themselves from its dictates, with the cooperation and collaboration of the Church. To rise above medieval political structures, it was necessary that royal and noble families be stripped of their pretense of “rule by God’s will.” In other words, it was necessary for thinkers to examine – and embrace – the possibility that Man is free, and therefore not to be coerced, by natural right: a complete inversion of the relationship between the people and the State.
Thus, the study of the rise of Western Civilization isn’t merely a celebration of “our culture.” It’s an investigation of the most important philosophical confluence in human history: that of the Christian ethos with the Enlightenment. Before it, all human relations were founded on force. Afterward – particularly after the Peace of Westphalia and the emergence of David Hume, Voltaire, and John Locke – power had to justify itself to persons whom it had previously regarded as rightless property, their existences wholly dependent on the good will of the king.
This answers for us the question of the hour: an hour in which attempts to destroy freedom, particularly freedom of speech and thought, are multifarious.
It’s often been asked, in puzzled and plaintive tones, why the American Left is so averse to America and American culture. The Left’s stentorian bellowings about “racism,” “sexism,” “colonialism,” and so forth are red herrings. Those who sincerely believe those accusations are mere movement fodder; those responsible for promulgating them know better.
In point of fact, the Left opposes the dissemination of knowledge about the rise of the contemporary West because the process by which it emerged illuminates the critical dichotomy in all of human relations: that between coerced orthodoxy and freedom of thought. He who demands that you not learn or think about a historical transition has an orthodoxy for you to swallow. He’s determined to ensure that you not learn about alternatives to that orthodoxy...because he fears that you’ll choose one of them in preference to his doctrine. If one of the alternatives gave rise to the freest and most just society in history, it’s critical that he steer you away from all knowledge of its intellectual underpinnings. He cannot afford for you to know about them.
The contemporary Left’s approach to this problem is the moral denunciation of the Western philosophical canon – hence the cries of “racist,” “sexist,” etc. – coupled to the vilification of those who disagree. Because many persons are unwilling to endure such vilification, the approach has known a great deal of success. However, if there exists a cadre which will not be deterred by any amount of slander, the Left’s next recourse, which we’re seeing ever more frequently, is to thuggery: force and threats of force.
Note the hundred-eighty-degree reversion to pre-Renaissance modes of thought and discourse involved. Note also that when Leftist thugs are rightly brought to book, they strain to their damnedest to characterize themselves as victims.
“By 2050--earlier, probably--all real knowledge of Oldspeak will have disappeared. The whole literature of the past will have been destroyed. Chaucer, Shakespeare, Milton, Byron--they'll exist only in Newspeak versions, not merely changed into something different, but actually changed into something contradictory of what they used to be. Even the literature of the Party will change. Even the slogans will change. How could you have a slogan like "freedom is slavery" when the concept of freedom has been abolished? The whole climate of thought will be different. In fact there will be no thought, as we understand it now. Orthodoxy means not thinking--not needing to think. Orthodoxy is unconsciousness.” [1984]
For the reasons above, I regard the Left’s inability to defend its positions by rational means as the key to understanding its determination to suppress the study of the Western ideological canon. Moreover, I contend that at any “institution of higher learning” that has caved to the Left’s demands for the elimination of such study, there will be no true education outside the sciences and engineering. Only Leftist orthodoxy will be dispensed to the student in the humanities, the social studies, and the arts – and it will be enforced upon him on pain of punishment.
There are insights available from the analysis of Leftist movements and disturbances in this light. Consider the “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations, manifestations of manufactured outrage defended by the chanting of those three words and nothing else. (“Four legs good, two legs bad,” anyone?) Consider the various attempts by feminists to silence those opposed to their dictates, and the fury with which they descend on anyone who dares to observe that a substantial number of women are freely electing the supposedly oppressive “roles” against which they rail. Consider the determination of the apostles of “climate change” to deprive skeptics of a hearing...including, at this date, attempts at legal intimidation by sixteen state governments.
When we look underneath the Left’s ostensible demands at the commonalities among their strategies for getting their way, the matter reduces to an observation most memorably phrased by Victor Marguerite: “The fascists cannot argue, so they kill.”
Tuesday, April 5, 2016
Gold And Silver Buyers Beware
This piece will remain at the top of the blog for a few days, to ensure that all visitors see it.
On November 4, 2015, I ordered a large quantity of silver from Northwest Territorial Mint, a company based in Washington state. Their representative gave me a projected delivery date of January 8, 2016. I wired the payment to them later that day.
By February 12, 2016 I was concerned and more. My silver had not arrived. Neither had I received word from the vendor about why it had not been shipped. In reply to my complaint, their representative wrote back as follows:
Thank you for your inquiry. We are continuing to ship all orders in the order of payment clearance as quickly as possible. We do apologize for the extended delay and we do appreciate your patience!At this time you do qualify for a full refund if you choose to liquidate your order. The refunded amount would be at the higher price of either the price you paid or the current market rate at the time you contact us to lock in that market price. You also have the option to have your order refunded and immediately applied to a new order. This would enter you into the shipping queue a new but also allow you to take advantage of the lower market rates we have been seeing recently. If you choose one of these options please call us at 1-800-344-6468 and let the receptionist know you are looking for a refund, they will connect you to the correct department.
If you choose to continue to wait for your order please be assured that we will ship it as quickly as possible. Based on the orders that are currently shipping, I would anticipate your order being filled within the next several weeks (approximately 5-7 weeks) or so. Please understand that this is an estimated time frame and shipment will be made at the earliest time possible.
I elected to wait, as the product I’d ordered was unavailable from other vendors.
Yesterday -- five months since the original order and payment for it – I called the vendor again. I was told that:
- The person who wrote the above reply to me “had left the company;”
- The company had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy;
- The owner had suffered a large judgment against him personally;
- No silver would be shipped and no refund would be made.
Despite all that, as of yesterday morning Northwest Territorial Mint was still accepting orders.
Read this article from the Federal Way Mirror for more details.
Because of the steady deterioration of the dollar, an unprecedented number of Americans have begun to acquire gold and silver as protective assets. That’s attracted an unprecedented number of persons and firms into the precious-metals business. Some of those persons and firms are thieves. Unfortunately, they aren’t discovered or charged nearly as often as they should be. When they are discovered, they don’t get nearly as much publicity as they should get.
It appears that Ross Hansen, the owner of Northwest Territorial Mint, has been running a pyramid scheme of an unusual kind. I’m out quite a lot of money for having been taken in by it. Let my experience serve as a warning to you.
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